Knowledge - Essay Example

Question 3 Knowledge is a very wide topic that if we started to talk generally about it, it would take several years to evaluate and conclude. Infact, the topic ‘knowledge’ is a recurring topic and for some philosophers, the studying of knowledge as a subject on its own has been in existence for as long as philosophy has been around. As one of those perennial topics, a team of philosophers decided to name the study of knowledge an epistemology. The word epistemology comes from two Greek words episteme (episthmh) meaning knowledge and logos (logo V) meaning reason. Others, philosophers nowadays would assign this subject as of fundamental importance; however, the subject about knowledge remains an essential part of philosophy (1997). Knowledge started way back, during the civilization period. By civilization, I refer to the many centuries back where humans managed the environmental change. For example there was the Egyptians in Mesopotamia, who discovered that with the possession of water(Nile) and their very fertile land, they could actually practiced farming and feed themselves and as well as making a living. From that, it is clear that knowledge infact is a tool to the ‘subject’ of change as opposed to the ‘object’ of change. You will notice that as time passed, the Egyptians transformed from farming to other form of activities such as architecture, pottery, animal domestication, writing and so on. The ancient humans continued to discover rapidly other fronts after the set up of infrastructure which was brought about by the early activities. People did not stop discovering new ways of living despite the hardships, from architecture and agriculture to religion and politics, animal domestication to economic set-up. There are two types of knowledge; Knowledge by Representation and Knowledge by Acquaintance. Knowledge by Representation basically refers to the way in which a human being expresses himself. This is normally done through aspects of communication like language speaking or gestures. Through representation, knowledge is fundamentally used as a surrogate. This is for example when someone finds an entity to determine the consequences of something by just thinking about it unlike acting on it. It is more of a belief condition. You will find out that, a person can claim to be rich one day but he does not even have a job yet being unemployed cannot stop him from proclaiming those words. In other words, on the subject of knowledge, dreams are part of representation. So many people out there would want to have something, some other want it so badly that they go to an extent of making it aloud. This is referred as belief. Regardless of the many difficulties experienced, you will get a person still having the same beliefs in making it in life. Off course everybody wants the best and will do anything to get there. This shows that regardless of the much opposition one might face, he or she continues to have a belief that he will make it. Knowledge by Acquaintance can be described as a direct relation without interference between a person and an existing thing. This is referred to as justification. For example, a person may be acquainted with a color or the texture of a table before him but this does not stop him or her from eating or leaning on it. This shows that human beings can be acquainted with something immediately without even knowing the real truth behind it. We must concede that words can have different meanings, and that each of the different meanings may be legitimate. For example, one might say, “It is better to be red than dead.” Here, “red” obviously does not refer to a particular color in a scheme of colors, but is intended to convey notions of communism (1955).It would be improper to say that “red” cannot be used in such a way. Faith provides for a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual belief rather than proof. This then leads to our next question as to whether we should continue inventing new knowledge or we should stick to the old ways of doing things. The facts are very clear; that the human mind is an ever curious creature, it always trys to find new facts, and always striving to increase its knowledge database in order to find the truth about his environment and his life. For this reason, there is always new and improved information being generated worldwide, in which either old concepts are re-examined or new theories and concepts are presented. Therefore it is indeed true that it is important to discover new facts and information as opposed to reinventing the way we tackle the existing knowledge, and our perception about what is already known to man. There is an assumption that there is a definite answer or solution to the debate between the existing knowledge and new information. This is because the relevance of the two is limited and dependent upon the context in which the information is required, that is the incidence of its application. One cannot adhere to just one side of this argument; both have their merits and demerits, as would be discussed subsequently(Lehrer, 2000). There is a distinction between available information and knowledge consumed or used, the latter forming a part of the discussion about finding ways to reconsider the available information, which forms the second half of this paper. Examining the existing database currently available to man, it is surprising at the enormity of the bulk that exists. What is more inspiring is that this pool of information is increasing on a daily basis . Other forms, such as photographs would occupy thirteen terabytes, sound recordings two thousand terabytes, videos five hundred terabytes, and geographical maps would occupy two hundred terabytes. This makes a total of around three thousand terabytes (2005) . It is established that there is a tremendous volume of collective information and facts already existing in the world, and a lot more is being produced every year in the various forms of database. Therefore issue as to the use of that information, and with the regard to the analysis as to whether all the information that is being discovered is beneficial to mankind arises. Alternatively, the case to determine whether it is wise to go on discovering new facts, or to devise ways to better make use of the existing facts and information to the benefit of mankind. It should be noted that data can be recalled by the human mind in order to perform operations similar to the ones that a computer performs. It has been estimated that a human brain allocates from a thousand to a hundred thousand neurons to process one bit of information . This means that it can effectively store around two hundred megabytes of information, or two hundred and twenty seven, to be precise . That is considerably less than the amount of new facts that are being discovered on a yearly basis. If a crude analysis is made, this would mean that at one time, only around two hundred megabytes of new facts are useful to the human mind, if used to the fullest of its capacity, the rest of the information in the world being wasted or being useless. Of course, such a conclusion would not be fair, as, firstly, people do not use hundred percent of their brain capacity, and secondly, if the available data amounted to the brain capacity, there would be no options for people to choose the information that is useful to them, and discard the rest. By increasing the data pool, a lot of options have been created for the people to choose and store the information and facts that they consider to be useful to them. For such customization of facts to be possible, it is imperative that the database be very extensive, given the exponentially increasing population of the world. This is the age of information, which means that the stress in human development has been placed on the discovery and availability of information and facts, preferably free, to the general public. However, from the preceding discussion, the fact that there is a tremendous amount of information already available, more than what the human mind can handle at any given time, has also been made clear. It has been predicted that the rate at which new information is being discovered would result in a time when there would not be any further information to be stored by the humans, so that the rest of the storage space would be utilized by the computers and other machines to store their own information . Let us see how knowledge influences a major part of life; Religion Referring to ethics in philosophy, faith contributes a whole great in Religion. To define its relation to religion to define clear, definitive ways in which one must act in society. To fully grasp the context of faith and its impact in religion, faith must be defined. Faith is vital to the practice and understanding of any religion. Without faith, religions could not exist. Faith aids the spiritual connections in religion, as well as constructing a foundation of beliefs that enable an individual to practice their religion to the fullest extent. Faith is based fully on perceptions and emotions. Religions are based upon higher beings, and there is no other way to connect to them other than with faith, hence a spiritual connection. Just as Christians worship God, and Hindus worship Brahma, faith provides a way to spiritually connect to such higher beings, which only benefits the worshiper with more knowledge. The knowledge of faith strengthens the worshiper by accommodating them with a way to connect to their god and to practice their religion fully (1955). Similarly, faith strengthens one's knowledge in ethical practices (moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior) by providing examples on how to act. Biblical faith shares the basic element of strong (rational) belief in that one is prepared to give reasons for his faith. 1 Peter 3:15 makes it clears that biblical faith must be based on good reasoning. Biblical faith, however, includes more than just being prepared to give reasons. Faith includes the notion of trust, which evidences itself in acting upon that which we believe. Faith requires belief (in the sense of intellectual assent); thus faith could include weak belief (where mere intellectual assent is offered) and strong belief (where one is prepared to give reasons for his intellectual assent).Each religion possesses its own ethical background, but faith is the only aspect of the religion that is able to set a path of just behavior. For example, having faith in Christianity's Ten Commandments permits one to become fully knowledgeable in their religion's moral behavior (1955). This strengthens one's basis of knowledge in ethics because it is supporting one's morally just views which are required of their religion. Work Cited Lesk, M. Arthur. How much information is there in the world? Oxford University Press, 1997. Larose T, Daniel. Discovering knowledge in data: an introduction to data mining. John Wiley and Sons, 2005. Mutahhari , Murtada. The Theory of Knowledge. ICAS Press, 1985. Lehrer, Keith. Theory of knowledge: Dimensions of philosophy series. Westview Press, 2000. Thompson, Samuel . A Modern Philosophy of Religion. Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1955. Read More