Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Do You Know What You Mean?
Welcome to your thinky space. As you stretch your mind's legs and look around, please think about what you mean when you say you know. If and when you claim to know something, what exactly are you claiming? How do you know that you know? Please offer a thorough explanation of what knowing means to you. This writing is due by 8 am on Thursday, September 11.
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When I first started looking at SBS, and the IB, my dad told me about this really interesting course called the Theory of Knowledge, and when I asked him what that meant, he told me that it was basically asking "how do you know what you know?" That got me thinking about it, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. I'm honestly still trying to wrap my mind around it, but I think that the answer I have at the moment, is simply that I trust myself and the things that I've been told, read, or have otherwise been out into my brain. Perhaps trusting myself in that way isn't a great idea, because we can't really trust the things we know, but I think we have to trust that what we know is right, or else we have nothing.
ReplyDeleteHow do I know what I know?
ReplyDeleteTo me, the answer to this is simple: I don't. Forgive the following generalization.
We live our lives constantly in doubt; we look for solutions to everything through science or God or some internal compass. We claim certainty of many things: the sun will rise tomorrow, she loves me, Mr. Bogel will mark me down for not turning this assignment in by 8 AM. We claim this certainty because all of these things have happened before. The sun rose yesterday. She loved me a week ago. Mr. Bogel has definitely penalized students before. We know, in short, based on memory, and memory is a fallible thing. I remember, for instance, that my shirt was blue yesterday. Does that mean my shirt was really blue yesterday? I remember the sun rose yesterday-- did the sun rise yesterday? When I begin to think about this topic, I realize I know very little.
I know based on what I remember, and what other people tell me-- in short, their memory. We know only what we remember, and memory shifts as we think of remembered things again. I remember my shirt was blue, but Charlotte might remember my shirt was green; was my shirt blue or was it green? Now I'm thinking of the shirt as green. Poof, my shirt was never blue.
Memory is temporary and fallible, and most of what we know is based on memory.
Therefore, here is what I know today: I know that the sun rose today. I know that I woke up today.
I know these things because I remember them, and memory is fallible and untrustworthy, and therefore: I don't know anything.
We live our lives pretending not to be in doubt, and yet here we are, doubting.
When I claim to know something, it means that I am 99% sure that it is true. It means that I heard or received the information from what I consider a reliable source or I experienced the information myself. This raises a couple of questions. How do I know that where I received the information was a reliable source? How do I know that what I experienced was completely accurate? How do I know that I didn't just happen to blink when the pig flew by and started claiming that pigs couldn't fly? The answer is that I don’t know. I don’t know if everything I claim to know is accurate. However, if I start doubting everything that I ever say because I’m not sure if I know it 100%, I will gain a headache imagining all of the possible scenarios. For example, I can claim to know that I have history as my first class tomorrow morning, but how do I know that is true? What if Mr. Bogel switches up my schedule? What if history class is canceled? What if I am from the year 2158 and am in a simulation to see what school was like in the older times and will wake back up in the future world tonight? Despite these questions, I will still claim to know that I have history class tomorrow morning because I am 99% sure that it is true. In other words, whatever I believe to be true and reliable information at any given moment is what I will claim to know. If something that I claim to know is disproved, I will accept that I didn’t have full knowledge and learn from it. This way, I will be able to gain knowledge. Knowledge, to me, is a compilation of the things that a person learns, believes, and understands and is always shifting as a person learns more.
ReplyDeleteWhen I claim to know something, I always refer to my past memory and experience. The things I know come from what I remember in my brain. For instance, I know I am Yolanda, because my parents started to tell me my name and my identity from my very young age. Thus, I stored that memory in my brain. When I say I know who I am, I just take out what I have memorized in my brain. When I claim to know an ability instead of a thing, experiences play slightly a more important role than memories. When I say that I know how to ride a bicycle, that is related to my experience of learning and practicing riding it. When I claim that I know that ability, I am simply referring to my old experience in my brain and memory as well. Some of my memories and experiences are emotional because I have stored them in my brain through my perceptive feelings. For example, I know that I love my parents. The memory and experience about them are full of my emotions and feelings of love. I remember the feelings of pleasure while spending time with them. So far I know a lot of things, information, abilities, etc. I know that I know them because I have reliable memories and experiences stored in my brain.
ReplyDeleteThere is no way to truly know that we know. We have this feeling, this impulse that tells us we 'know' something. But what does it mean to 'know' something. I could argue that our knowledge comes from memory, which this is true, some of it does. But, not all of our knowledge can come from experience because what if we've never experienced something before, that something is new to us. It is new knowledge. I could argue that sense perception triggers our knowledge. But, "our" isn't the correct word to use. "My" is the correct word. Knowledge is different for everyone. It is my sense perception that told me I saw something red, but is my red your orange? It is my memory that tells me I know something cause I have experienced it. It is not our memory because we have experienced the same thing but in different ways. Therefore, knowledge is individually perceived. It's impossible to know that we know something. Yes we can justify our answers to a math question and we can use science to explain different theories. But what justifies these things as knowledge? We can prove we know something so direct like a math problem, but what we can't prove is our proof. How do we know we proved the problem? I can say that I saw a shooting star, and I can say that I know because I saw it. But how do I know I saw it? What does it mean to say I know I saw that shooting star? The answer is, well no answer. This doesn't necessarily mean that it means nothing to not know. It just means that knowing is everything. Life is complex, the world is complex, and we are complex. This complexity is based off knowledge. Everything we do, everything that happens, in the past, the present, and the future, was, is, and will be based off of knowledge. To me, to know is to risk. Knowing something is risking the fact that I may be wrong. I think that I know I know something when I come to a reasonable conclusion, this logic may come from my sense perception, emotions, memory, faith, or language. Is this how we know? No, this is how I know.
ReplyDeleteIn our modern world, we use the verb "to know" as part of an expression without truly reflecting on what that means to us. In the digital age, we as humans appear to be processing more information than ever due to the expansive material offered on the internet, but when do we ever actually truly "know" information, not just memorize it at its ground value? In order to find out, the essential questions we must ask ourselves are these: 1) what are the different ways of knowing, and 2) what are the steps involved in knowing? In our First TOK class, we already covered the bases of some of the different forms of knowing: through sense perception, language, feeling, emotion, memory, logic, and faith. You can know something via one or more of these means. Based off of the fundamental stages of learning, (and since learning is linked to knowing,) I believe the different steps involved in knowing are memorization, synthesis, analysis, and application. In my mind, in order to truly "know", you must have come to a conclusion through the different forms of knowing (memory, logic, ect) and then have appropriately memorized, synthesized, analysed, and applied that material or experience in your brain.
ReplyDeleteFor example, take the classic (albeit corny) phrase "I know I'm in love." If a neighbor were to ask the person who uttered these words how they know they are in love, the typical response would be an angelic sigh and the words "Because I just know." Upon deeper examination, however, we could say that the person knows he/she/they are in love because of the emotions of happiness, joy and admiration that arise when with a significant other, possibly the memories of belonging and comfort that are recalled, or the faith he/she/they has in the other person to stand by them in times of darkness and in light. The initial step of knowing would be isolating and memorizing small details about the beloved person and cherishing the lovely feelings they bring about. The brain stores those bits of information, and then they are synthesized and connected to each other so the feelings are not separate from the mental images. The subconscious and conscious brain then analyze those compiled pieces, questioning, doubting, and reassuring their truth. Finally, the brain categorizes and applies the word "love" to all of those experiences and qualities. In my humble opinion, that final moment of application is when the person has reached the point of "knowing" what love is. While knowing is not absolute (oh, the irony of that statement) and "love" may be different for everybody, if each individual has reached that point of application, they "know" in their minds.
When I say “I know” something, it could be: A) I am familiar with it; B) I understand it; C) I can do it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I know something, I often have some memory or information about it that exists in my mind. Either I have heard or learned about this a little, or I have this since I was really young and it is a common knowledge for me. For example, when I say I “know” Chinese, I mean I can speak it fluently because it is my native tongue. I have information of how to speak Chinese in my mind when I was born, so I am familiar with it. Then, I would say for certain that I “know” Chinese. In the other hand, when I say I “know’ Spanish, this only means I learned it, and heard it, but I am not good at it. So I am still familiar with Spanish because I am learning it, and it became a part of information that also exists in my brain. Therefore, as long as I am still learning or remembered how to speak Spanish, I still can tell people that I “know” Spanish.
When I say I “know” something, it might be also mean that I understand and agree with someone or somethings. For example, when my friends are making compliment on the Indian curry for lunch, one person would say something like “this is so good”, and when I want to agree on that, I would say “I know!” Also, when people are explaining about one thing, if I understand the concept, I can also say “I know”.
“I know” could also refer to if our body can do what we know. For example, when I first play volleyball, the coach would ask me if I “know” how to pass. If my body can not physically do it, then I would say I do not know it. Also, when someone ask me do you know how pass the ball, I would say “yes, I know” how to pass a ball. The difference between these two are whether I can do it or not.
How do we know anything that we know? How do we know that what we think we know is true? What is truth but the subjective of what we think we know? We can use our five senses to tell us what goes on around us, but what happens when one of our senses fails us? People go blind or lose feeling in certain parts of their bodies. Optical illusions, or even a really good picture of something like a porcupine, cause one sense to contradict another as our eyes tell us one and our feeling or our brain tells us another. If we believe in another person, we could trust them if they say something, but what if they are wrong? Then there is gut feeling. This is an intriguing idea, because it is your basic instincts that are telling you something. It is the hardwiring in your brain that is designed to keep you alive. What could go wrong there? Well one basic instinct might be to run, but in that particular situation, rrunning might be the worst possible option there is. Or your instinct might lead you to trust the very person who can harm you the most, while leading you to avoid the person who can improve you. Yet your gut is still an alert system that can save you. For me, I generally do not rely on my gut, because when I reason through it, my gut is not always right. Then there is language. They way someone says something has a large impact on how believeable it is, right? This almost goes along with believing someone simply because you have faith in them, but at the same time, language is different. An example might be that if a complete stranger were to come up to you and start to talk like an expert about a topic about which you do not know very much, would it not be potentially very easy to believe what they are saying? Someone speaking confidently can easily give off the appearence of knowing what they are talking about, even if what they are saying is pure fiction. That leaves logic. Pure basic logic. There is no feeling to it. It deals with basic facts. Logic is everywhere, in the interpretations of your brain of the senses it receives, in your decision to belive someone you trust, or your gut, in the decision to believe someone who speaks confidently. You reason that you know that they have been right in the past so they could be right now, or that your gut is your body's first line of defense so something must be wrong, or that the stranger speaking to you sounds like he is an expert, and experts know their topic, right? Even whe you feel something, your brain thinks I have eceived this signal before, it must mean this. Logic, in its pure unadulterated form is everywhere, and to a degree, it is the only way of knowing. Almost every other form of knowing is based off of, or utilizes logic. Last week Mr. Bogel gave the example of a baby crying when it is pinched as an example that sense can exist by itself. However, this is an example of unconsious logic. The baby did not physically think this, but in its brain it got worked out that it felt pain and a reasonable reaction is to cry. To realise that it did not like the sensation it felt required logic. It required use of the nerves in the baby's body taking it to the baby's brain and the brain having to understand what that signal meant for it to mean anything. For the baby to cry, a logical reaction was needed. For me, I rely on logic to say I know somting, becauuse if a statement has sound logic behind it, it can be near impossible to prove it wrong, especially with the technology available today. Science has been able to prove so much, like why the Earth rotates around the sun, why 'phenomonas' occur in nature. Often it may be difficult to understand, but most everything has a scientific explanation. Therefore, I generally find that a logical explanation is the most convincing argument that someone can make, how I can know what I claim is true, and how I can know that I truly know something that I think I know.
ReplyDeleteHow do we know anything that we know? How do we know that what we think we know is true? What is truth but the subjective of what we think we know? We can use our five senses to tell us what goes on around us, but what happens when one of our senses fails us? People go blind or lose feeling in certain parts of their bodies. Optical illusions, or even a really good picture of something like a porcupine, cause one sense to contradict another as our eyes tell us one and our feeling or our brain tells us another. If we believe in another person, we could trust them if they say something, but what if they are wrong? Then there is gut feeling. This is an intriguing idea, because it is your basic instincts that are telling you something. It is the hardwiring in your brain that is designed to keep you alive. What could go wrong there? Well one basic instinct might be to run, but in that particular situation, rrunning might be the worst possible option there is. Or your instinct might lead you to trust the very person who can harm you the most, while leading you to avoid the person who can improve you. Yet your gut is still an alert system that can save you. For me, I generally do not rely on my gut, because when I reason through it, my gut is not always right. Then there is language. They way someone says something has a large impact on how believeable it is, right? This almost goes along with believing someone simply because you have faith in them, but at the same time, language is different. An example might be that if a complete stranger were to come up to you and start to talk like an expert about a topic about which you do not know very much, would it not be potentially very easy to believe what they are saying? Someone speaking confidently can easily give off the appearence of knowing what they are talking about, even if what they are saying is pure fiction. That leaves logic. Pure basic logic. There is no feeling to it. It deals with basic facts. Logic is everywhere, in the interpretations of your brain of the senses it receives, in your decision to belive someone you trust, or your gut, in the decision to believe someone who speaks confidently. You reason that you know that they have been right in the past so they could be right now, or that your gut is your body's first line of defense so something must be wrong, or that the stranger speaking to you sounds like he is an expert, and experts know their topic, right? Even whe you feel something, your brain thinks I have eceived this signal before, it must mean this. Logic, in its pure unadulterated form is everywhere, and to a degree, it is the only way of knowing. Almost every other form of knowing is based off of, or utilizes logic. Last week Mr. Bogel gave the example of a baby crying when it is pinched as an example that sense can exist by itself. However, this is an example of unconsious logic. The baby did not physically think this, but in its brain it got worked out that it felt pain and a reasonable reaction is to cry. To realise that it did not like the sensation it felt required logic. It required use of the nerves in the baby's body taking it to the baby's brain and the brain having to understand what that signal meant for it to mean anything. For the baby to cry, a logical reaction was needed. For me, I rely on logic to say I know somting, becauuse if a statement has sound logic behind it, it can be near impossible to prove it wrong, especially with the technology available today. Science has been able to prove so much, like why the Earth rotates around the sun, why 'phenomonas' occur in nature. Often it may be difficult to understand, but most everything has a scientific explanation. Therefore, I generally find that a logical explanation is the most convincing argument that someone can make, how I can know what I claim is true, and how I can know that I truly know something that I think I know.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the time, the phrase “I know” is thrown around without much thought behind whom or what it is being thrown at. I find myself instinctively replying to quotidian, mundane things my mother tells me every day with a dismissive “I know” or using the phrase as an alternative for “I agree” when having a conversation with friends. However, excluding the instances in which those two words are used without appropriate intent (for I believe those instances to be too ordinary and ingrained into colloquial speech to give too much weight to), I have come to realize that knowing something relies almost solely on memory, and by extension, one’s own senses and perception of the events happening around one. As we discussed in class, the vast majority of things which we claim to “know” are merely recollections of patterns we think we remember. This merely proves that our brains fulfill their intended function of retaining information, but I am still unsure as to whether or not this fills the full implications of the word “knowing”.
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ReplyDeleteWhen I say "I know something", I am saying that, in my reality, I know this to be a solid and unbreakable fact. Of course, we often say that we know something in a laid back manner. "I just know I'll get invited to prom" or "I know that I'm going to pass IB Art", when really knowing something is a philosophically dense theory. Other times, we say we know something from past experience and knowledge, "I know that the sun will come up tomorrow". I know this because for as long as I have been alive it has, and that is all that my knowledge permits me to think. Other times, logic tells us that we know something, "I know that I could fail history if I don't try". I know this because if you aren't trying, you won't get a good grade, and thus will fail your class. There are many ways of knowing, some more stable and reasonable than others, but they all lead us to think that the way we know is in fact correct.
ReplyDeleteI know the things that I know because once I learned a new concept or piece of knowledge and I remembered it. Now I can call upon this knowledge at will and use it to my full advantage. When I make the claim to know something I am claiming that there is an idea which I believe to hold truths. I say that I know the quadratic formula works because my math teacher proved it to me. I remembered that she had proved it to me and that, combined with my faith in her results in my assertion that I can use the quadratic formula to find the roots of a quadratic function. I know what I know because I have committed it to memory and I use what I know by applying it in daily life whether it is acquiring more knowledge or not. I have never sat for long periods of time contemplating what knowledge means to me. At this moment I can only classify it as the accumulation of observations, ideas and concepts which I have collected over my lifetime. Some knowledge is more useful than others, which is why some things are forgotten and others are not. Sometimes, how often I use a piece of knowledge depends on how I was convinced that this information was true. The things that I know based on emotions and faith are less likely to be shared than those that I know based on logic and memory for argument's sake. I also believe that there are varying degrees of knowing. The more someone discusses a subject, (especially with new people) the better they get to know it and understand it. Something rarely discussed is not as well understood as something that is the topic of every dinner table. Therefore, I think it is safe to say that for me knowing something is linked to understanding it. If a concept (i.e. a thought more complex than a fact) is presented to be and I do not understand it but I commit it to memory then I am not knowing, I am merely memorizing. When I assert that I know this to be true or I know it to be false, I want it to be able to mean that I believe it to hold truths or fallacies, I understand its implication on me and my environment and I remember it.
What does knowing mean to me? How do I know that I know? After being asked these questions, the word know looks different on my computer screen. It looks foreign and I feel as though I am spelling it wrong. My head keeps reading it as "now" and every time I type it I have stop and think "Am I spelling this right?" I have never really thought about knowing. I have never thought, how do I know that I know? After some thought, I think that to me knowing means that you wholeheartedly believe in something. Believe in something so much that believe is too weak of a word. You can believe in the tooth fairy or believe you did well on a test; but who would say "I believe that the sky is blue," "I believe that my name is ________," "I believe that I go to school in Massachusetts." It doesn't sound right. You know these things. So what do I know right now? I know that I am sick and disturbing study hall with constant sniffles and blows of my nose. I know that I enjoy playing the saxophone. I know that I am listening to calming music to get me into the mood of deep thinking. I know these things. But how? To me, my proof is physical. How my nose hurts from rubbing too many tissues against it. The way my heart picks up it's pace and the feel of excitement rushing through every time I pick up my saxophone. How it felt to touch my keypad and select the playlist "Deep Focus" on Spotify and the feel of my headphones covering my ears as I hear the music start. I know these things because I can touch them, feel them, see them, taste them (although I don't plan on licking my dirty tissues or laptop any time soon). Of course, there are always the questions of if we should trust our senses, if our senses are lying to us, if we live in an alternate universe to everyone else. The problem with me thinking that to know that I know is related to sense, is that there may also also be questions like "How do you know that 1+1=2?", "How do you know that London exists if you haven't seen it in person?" And for those questions the answer is I don't know. Maybe the proof that I know, the proof of knowing is that there are things that we don't know. Every reaction has a different and opposite reaction right? If I don't know something, then I have to know something. Do I know if this is true? I don't know. But I know that I know because I don't know.
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, before I started this class I never gave a second thought to what it meant for me 'to know' something. I had always considered 'knowing' as just another verb like running, swimming, reading, or showering. When I say that 'I know' something, it typically means that I believe that it is true. If I know that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, that means that I believe, even though I cannot feel or touch either gas, that it is true through science and facts. With that said though, I run into the issue of defining what is fact and what is fiction and I truthfully do not know where to even start with that question. When I say 'I know' something that can also mean that I have dealt with something extremely similar to that thing in my past (no matter if that means two seconds or two years ago). I know that ice cream tastes awesome, roller coasters are fun, and swimming is relaxing all because of my experiences with those things but those thoughts are all part of my opinion as well as my knowledge. This makes me think that, when using the phrase 'I know', I'm not only stating what I consider a fact but also what is part of my perspective. I now believe that when I say that 'I know' something, it means that it is something that I have experienced and is a part of how I view the world. I believe that this is why you could give two people the same set of directions for something and that thing would be different for each individual. I believe that so much of our lives are based on perspective that even simple things like colors and smells all are interpreted differently to every person and I believe that this applies to knowledge too.
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