Knowledge And Objective Knowledge

1229 Words3 Pages

This prompt promotes the idea that knowledge is objective and not subjective to an extent. In my opinion, objective knowledge is basically things that have a greater degree of tangibility and are unbiased, for example mathematics. However, subjective knowledge is one’s impressions and opinions (i.e. those shoes are the best – not a fact because other people may like it). To start off, the term knowledge must be defined. It is defined as a justified true belief. Another term that must be defined and evaluated is the systematic organization of facts. A Fact is a numerical piece of information that is tangible and subjective. It involves one’s opinion by basing it on personal experience. The first knowledge issue that will be evaluated throughout this essay is; to what extent can one use only logic and reason to evaluate a knowledge claim? The second knowledge issue is; how does emotion as a way of knowing hinder of help our ability to search for or evaluate knowledge? I will be evaluating these knowledge issues through the use of two areas of knowledge, mathematics and human sciences.

We must discuss the two types of knowledge; objective and subjective knowledge. Objective knowledge is what happens in nature without the mind. However, this is not considered knowledge quite yet. This is just existence, and the small things that make up the event are just existing. When there is finally a mind that has a language, we have the ability to have knowledge. The mind can use whatever means necessary to explain this event, but they cannot fully explain it without words. Lets take this example, a caveman, who lacks any sort of language, but can create cave paintings. He comes across the edge of the hill and he sees the sunset. He stands and ...

... middle of paper ...

...er, promoting one’s interests in knowledge, it would lead to certain biased views/ perceptions, which ultimately would hinder some of the knowledge that exists. For example, in psychology, some researchers tend to repeat the same experiment over again in order to obtain certain results as hypothesized. This is a result of researcher/ experimenter bias. This allows the researcher to ignore all other factors and results that may have an effect, once the desired results are obtained. Therefore, emotions are capable of both, hindering and helping us to understand knowledge.

In conclusion, knowledge is more than the systematic organization of facts. Whilst some knowledge is formed on the basis of the organization of objective facts, such as personal experience, sense perception, logic and reason, we humans use all ways of knowing to make sense of the world around us.

Open Document