Theory of Knowledge

Matthew Gates 7m 1,697 #knowledge

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

The Knower: The Philosophy of Knowledge

There are two types of knowing that are clearly distinguished: Knowing how to do something and knowing facts or information about something. Something comes to be known when it is infallible or fallible: that is, knowing that something is true or false leads to the belief that it is true or false. Knowing that something does lead to something else is cause and effect, and therefore, knowing is processing and remembering types of information, and in essence, it is processed into the brain as knowledge.

A human being is an organism that is born with sensory nerves that are present throughout the body, and the nerve receptors relay sensory information to the organism’s primary functioning tool, the brain. The brain has developed the ability for a “consciousness” or “mind” in order to become aware of its surroundings.

The organism is designed to survive in the world, and therefore it must adapt to its environment. With this awareness comes the ability to reason and understand what it is perceiving from the world around it, grasping objects, interacting with its environment, and eventually forming language which, in turn, forms thoughts.

Before thought occurs, however, the organism becomes aware of what brings it “good feelings” or “bad feelings.” The easiest way to understand that the organism does, in fact, experience pleasure or pain before it forms language, is to observe a dog’s actions. A dog cannot talk and supposedly cannot think in a way that humans do, yet it knows that consumption of certain foods causes it to experience a good feeling; in turn causing it to wag its tail and salivate. Perhaps this is the language of the dog; and if the dog’s tail is stepped on, then it experiences a bad feeling, and it will yelp.

Humans have the capacity of knowing through the learning of certain adaptations or impressions, over generations among generations by learning and remembering. In other words, the evolution of the brain has developed to such a level that it has become innately aware, inheriting certain types of knowledge, even having an awareness that it exists as a functioning organ within a shell. After all, the brain did name itself.

The brain is able to send signals to the body and have it perform actions, while also taking in information from the body and the surrounding world to interpret them and react. The brain is even far more advanced than just being able to do this, because it has the ability to form memory and thoughts from which it has had millions to billions of years of evolution to develop, starting from a single-cell organism.

From thoughts, the organism has developed the ability to think so that it can now derive what gives it pleasure and what gives it pain, therefore it will establish a memory database of what brings about these feelings and sensations. It will often pursue these feelings of pleasure and avoid anything that gives it pain.

Knowing something or knowing how to do something is established in the memory and the organism can be considered to have some knowledge or truth of its reality. It continues to learn information from its surroundings, acknowledging what it needs to do in order to obtain either pleasure or pain.

The system of knowing is based on the brain’s perception of the world through the senses. While perception is not knowledge itself, the senses are the pathway to knowledge, which produce information that is both abstract and concrete. Perception allows for an organism to understand its feelings of pleasure or pain.

Since there is an abundance of information in the surrounding world, the senses gather information for the consciousness, which quickly makes judgments rendering the information relevant or irrelevant. The consciousness may not consider some information due to its snap or automatic judgments, which are known as heuristics.

Heuristics are the organism’s brain or consciousness learning to calculate situations in its environment as quickly as possible, and remembering past events and applying them to future situations. The consciousness is aware because of a functioning brain and it is perceived by the organism to protect itself and its parts at all costs, learning to use these heuristics to distinguish perceived information in a quick manner, so that it does not need to calculate the possibilities in the same situation each time. Once one touches a hot surface, they know to try and avoid it forever.

With the use of language, the organism establishes verbal cues to represent meanings and symbols which become relevant to how it lives and functions in the world on a more psychological and behavioral level. The use of language is a very important step in the development of the organism.

When it comes to the facts of knowing something, such as information that the brain can perceive, it would seem that the consciousness would want to know the information. However, this is not always the case. For example, I come across a picture of a decaying body, and just because I do not want to have any memory of it or impression of it in my consciousness or memory, does not mean that it will just disappear. My eyes showed me an image which the consciousness perceived as something of disgust or pain, but the memory is still imprinted into an area of consciousness.

On the other hand, knowing is also optional or may rely on the practice of memory. For example, I am put into a Spanish class and asked to know what certain words represent. I am asked to study a list of five words and know them. I am given a test and realize that I remembered all five of the words.

A month later, without repeating, using, or acknowledging those words the entire month, I am given the test again, but this time, I remember only one of the words. A month earlier, did I come to know these words? It seems, I just remembered them for the time being, in my “short-term memory”, but did not come to store them in my “long-term” memory or know them.

It might be safe to say that knowing is being able to store something in the memory. The short-term memory is ruled out because I am only holding information, such as a telephone number, for a short period of time and will soon forget it afterwards. Long-term memory happens to be the primary focus of knowing. The examination of the long-term memory may lead to knowing.

If I forget about certain events from my childhood, does that mean that I do not know? If events are forgotten, then they clearly are not known. This does not necessarily mean that they did not happen to me, it just means that they were not significant enough for me to know them and remember them in my mind. Also, time and decay may have been a factor and caused my memory to forget these events.

If I remember certain events from my childhood, than they are clearly known and were probably significant. This means that I have come to know them, as they have made an impression on me, and therefore my memory is able to quickly recall these events, or able to recall them in some other fashion, either through deep thought or intense reflection.

Knowledge is a combination of signals that are interpreted to mean something to the central nervous system and the brain. Knowing is a combination of these interpreted signals in which the brain comes to know or remember what is important, by making “impressions” on the brain and being stored via the long-term memory.

How the long-term memory comes to actually store events is left to science, but the organism often takes in information it feels is necessary for it to survive and thrive, or that it is required to know, and therefore remembers or knows the information for future recollection. Returning back to the basic perception of pleasure or pain, the long-term memory is likely to store both feelings, in order for the organism to understand that which causes these feelings. Furthermore, it enables the organism to make references so that the organism has memory of recollected events of what caused it to have pleasure, so that it may pursue that pleasure; or events that caused it pain, so that it may avoid pain.

Knowing is a form of learning, understanding, and experiencing that enables the consciousness to remember and apply this information to reality. Knowing can also come in the form of understanding or coming to the conclusion that I do not know something and therefore I can come to know it.

The consciousness will grasp and remember what it needs to if the information is relevant to the organism, thus the consciousness has developed the ability of knowing. The cause and effect of knowing are that something is to be known, and I begin to focus my attention on it for reasons known or unknown, such as my curiosity for it or my grade depending on it. That is the cause of my beginning to want to know.

The effect is my familiarizing myself with that something, and making a decision to either make an impression in my consciousness or memory to either remember it as useful information and pursue further, or discard it as information that is not relevant.

To be a knower is to have some curiosity or some inclination to want to know what a thing is. The ability to question who, what, where, when, why, and how provides more insight into being a knower. A knower is a sentient being with the ability of intellect that is capable of sensing things, perceiving them, experiencing them, interpreting them, giving meaning to them, understanding them, judging them, remembering them, using them, and applying them to the world.

Once knowledge has been reflected upon, interpreted, and used as useful information in one’s life, then knowing can be applied to the world appropriately, and it becomes insight and wisdom. The brain has evolved to become a knowing thing, which gives the consciousness the impression of itself, the knower.

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