The Changing Nature of Knowledge

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“That which is accepted as knowledge today is sometimes discarded tomorrow.” Consider knowledge issues raised by this by this statement in two areas of knowledge.

Knowledge is ever changing in the world therefore the acceptance of knowledge changes daily. The issues raised by the statement are determined by what determines the acceptance of knowledge. In ethics, people decide the acceptance of right and wrong. People change everyday and such change alters the acceptance of what is right and wrong in ethics. Meanwhile in natural sciences, evidence supports what is knowledge until new evidence alters the current knowledge, discarding prior knowledge. Therefore, in ethics and natural sciences this continuous change in knowledge raises many knowledge issues.

The reason as to why ethics changes every day is due to how people constantly evolve judgment. For example, what is regarded as a swear word 50 years ago would not be regarded as such today. The justification as to why such an event happens is due to the human judgment by the people as a whole. As a collective group people judge what is ethical or not, such as the death penalty. In the United States, 32 out of 50 states have capital punishment. The 18 states that do not have capital punishment currently, had capital punishment. Therefore, capital punishment was once accepted by those 18 states but now, it has been discarded by those states. At some point in time, votes were casted by the citizens of the state to abolish capital punishment. This would imply that the majority are the ones who decide what is accepted as ethical knowledge in this situation. This causes each side, for or against capital punishment, to debate whether or not capital punishment is justified to gain s...

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...dence have debunked the knowledge and idea of an “edge of the earth” and has been replaced with: the earth is round.

This change in knowledge heavily influences many knowledge issues that occur. In ethics, an issue could be, “Can our values change our perception of things?”(timwoods.org). If values can change what we view as right and wrong then can't emotion also influence our ethical codes to benefit one’s self interest? This is clearly shown in the evidence about domestic surveillance due to the fear of terrorism that has allowed countries to break an ethical code of privacy for the collective security of the country. Furthermore, if knowledge is capable of being influenced and altered, how can it be considered knowledge? Because in ethics if taking one's privacy is wrong but it has to be accepted for the safety of the majority then was the privacy ever present?

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