To understand something you need to rely on your own experiences and culture. Does this mean that it is impossible to have objective knowledge?
In philosophy, an objective fact means a “truth that remains true everywhere, regardless of the situation, and is independent from human bias or emotions”. Whereas, a subjective fact is one that is “only true under certain conditions, at certain times, in certain places, or for certain people”. If you rely on your own experiences and culture to understand something, it is generally considered to be subjective knowledge, as it brings the involvement circumstantial situations. It is not impossible to attain objective knowledge, however, because of the ways our knowledge is gained.
Total objective knowledge is attainable, for example, when reading non-fiction texts for factual information to acquire knowledge on something. However, to understand something solely through objective knowledge does not allow for a full comprehension of that subject. Through objective knowledge, you are gaining pure textual information of a particular subject. In Physics class, when studying Hooke’s Law, I may have the knowledge that “the applied force is equal to the spring constant multiplied by the amount of extension within the spring” from my textbook. This is objective information because I am absorbing new information with no prior experiences or room for possible biases. But in order for me to understand the concept, I must gain the experience by applying this concept to problems. I can have knowledge about Hooke’s Law, but have no idea how to literally apply the concept. In order to understand something, you need to rely on your experiences and culture; but it is still possible for objective knowledge ...
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...and communicate with each other. Very rarely do we solely rely on our own experiences and culture to validate something as knowledge. For instance, when someone writes a paper on the “biological behavior of bats”, do they simply rely on their experiences? No! While you may draw from your experiences of hiking in the woods, you would also draw upon the experiences of others. These other sources of experiences may be recorded in books, journals and videos or television shows. Or when we do a project on human psychology, you often interview many people on their experiences, rather than draw from what you, personally, might have experienced. This comes to show that, for anything to be objectively credible; you can never solely rely on your own experiences. However, once you start to draw from the experiences of others, you come much closer to gaining objective knowledge.
In the book Who’s To Say? by Norman Melchert, a group of friends discuss relativism. Throughout the text, Melchert conveys that language can divide humanity and that this restrains people from getting a neutral observation. Through Peter, Melchert affirms that the way in which an event is observed is affected by how it is experienced, as well as the differences in observations amongst humankind. He concludes that our perspectives and testimonies are adulterated by our experiences.
There is a key difference between knowledge and experience. Knowledge is not useful until there is no experience. It is easy to obtain knowledge without having experience but it is impossible to gain experience without having knowledge. Experience becomes high-quality knowledge in the end. The author makes a convincing argument comparing the experience with enchilada, a Mexican dish. Salmón (2012) determines “the future of our foods, our lands, our economies and everything that we come into contact with depends on our ability to reconfigure this notion of a whole enchilada” (p. 162). It means that foods, languages and understanding are tightly linked to the places where people live and the experiences which people gain in those
In Barre Toelken’s essay “Seeing with a Native Eye: How Many Sheep Will It Hold?”, the ways in which one culture perceives another and the criteria used to make judgements are explored. Toelken states “I think I can say something about how differently we see things, envision things, look at things, how dissimilarly different cultures try to process the world of reality” (10-11). In essence, Toelken is alluding to how different cultures will interpret their experiences and rituals according to their own set of beliefs and practices. This complicates situations in which the experiences or rituals are not comparable across cultural lines; someone will always be missing an aspect or a significant purpose if they do not try to “see it as much as possible with the ‘native eye’” (12). In other words, one must immerse themselves in the culture they are analyzing, while not comparing it to their own cultural experiences. One must consider all the cultural implications of that specific culture when wondering why things are done a certain way. Toelken provides
Cultural relativism is powerful and unique, ascertaining and appreciating people cultural. Cultural relativism is unique but can be hard to understand, upsetting the views, morals, and outlines of culture from the standpoint of that civilization. When analyzing the hominid culture, it provides the luxury of understanding their philosophy from their viewpoint. Taking in another culture without being basis can be daunting. Anthropologist deliberated cultures by exploiting two methods, the emic perspective, and etic perspective. Crapo, R. H. 2013, Section 1.1 defines, the Etic perspective that is, an outsider's or observer's alleged "objective" account—creates a model of a culture by using cross-culturally valid categories, which anthropologists
Subjective truth, as I understand it, is truth. The only difference separating it from universal or general truth is “subjective.” Our understanding of truth can cause arguments when trying to distinguish what is universally true. My definition of subjective truth, not necessarily perceived as true to others, is that the truth of something that happened may not be what actually happened to you, but what you felt happened to you. Objective facts, however, are based on facts that cannot be denied.
How we approach the question of knowledge is pivotal. If the definition of knowledge is a necessary truth, then we should aim for a real definition for theoretical and practical knowledge. Methodology examines the purpose for the definition and how we arrived to it. The reader is now aware of the various ways to dissect what knowledge is. This entails the possibility of knowledge being a set of truths; from which it follows that one cannot possibly give a single definition. The definition given must therefore satisfy certain desiderata , while being strong enough to demonstrate clarity without losing the reader. If we base our definition on every counter-example that disproves our original definition then it becomes ad hoc. This is the case for our current defini...
Objective reality is the reality characterisic of ideas in virtue of the fact that the idea represents some realtiy.
Not only this, but anthropologists will also employ Ethnography, writing down a description and analysis, based upon the fieldwork. This helps keep a record of what was learned, while also keeping the culture being studied under its own viewpoint. These factors help impact the analysis of a culture, while still being observed under a cultural relativism outlook.
Ethnography is typically defined as research designed to explore cultural phenomenon that take place in another part of society or even the world. This requires a researcher to analyze similarities and differences between cultures through a perspective that is not judgmental, but more so open to new concepts that aren’t necessarily normal to their own culture. For my research, I decided to interview a friend of mine who is culturally different when compared to myself. Before beginning my interview I created a hypothesis, which I hoped to prove through my findings. Initially, I believed that most children, who are raised within a specific’s culture influence, tend to absorb the lifestyle and mindsets of their parents. Almost similar to the quote “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” By growing up within a specific culture’s influence, a child will grasp what they learned from their parents and apply it to their own lives.
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge. What is it that we can know? Scholars of epistemology are searching for the definition of knowledge. I believe knowledge comes from direct experience, experimentation, practicing what you are learning and by association. Furthermore, knowledge must be acquired through experience; it is not born into an infant. A child or adult becomes wise in the ways of the world through living life.
... pre-existing knowledge that when an individual recognise specific situations they use their own views, beliefs, understanding and stereotypes to form a full view or understanding.
General ideas can be formed by the mind without the use of our senses or sensory organs. Senses are acquired at birth but, the essentials of knowledge, truth and being, is slowly and hardly gain through many years of education, experience, and reflection later on. We now know that we cannot get the essentials of knowledge, truth and being for perception itself. Therefore knowledge cannot be based on
Knowledge is defined as facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. In Mikhail Zinshteyn study called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies Mikhail came to conclusion that a college degree confers core knowledge and adults without degrees are less likely
knowledge is useless. I think most people can relate to a class, or lecture, or other training event where
Learning is the most essential part of communication it shows that you can process multiple ideas at once and not judge but seek to understand where another person’s ideas are coming from as well. People have their own reasons and narratives that shape what they believe to be their goods and why they protect these goods. Each person’s goods are representative of their culture. Culture is a collection of ones history learned styles, patterns, and perceptions that continu...