Kelsey Amadeo-Luyt Theory of Knowledge September 2, 2014 Prompt: To understand something you need to rely on your own experience and culture. Does that mean this it is impossible to have objective knowledge? As children we are immersed in our communities in which we are fed predisposed knowledge that has been passed down and developed within our communities or families for numerous generations. Not until we begin primary, or even secondary school do we start to formulate ideas and opinions of our own. Through schooling and being exposed to the more general world, we are able to acknowledge different perspectives on what is occurring around us and as we grow, we evolve as individual thinkers and begin to formulate our own ideas. However, …show more content…
The word ‘subjective’ can be defined as “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.” Thus, subjective knowledge is knowledge that is unique to certain people or to certain cultures. Objective knowledge and subjective knowledge can be compared to shared knowledge and personal knowledge. Shared knowledge is knowledge that is “highly structured, is systematic in its nature, and the product of more than one individual.” Personal knowledge, on the contrary, “depends crucially on the experiences of a particular individual.” When comparing shared and personal knowledge, it is apparent that although shared knowledge is subjective itself and not always objective, personal knowledge will always be far more subjective than shared knowledge. Moreover, personal knowledge is solely based on one person and is therefore, shaped by their personal beliefs. Shared knowledge, although subjective in that the knowledge of Christmas, for example, is reserved to Christian people, is also objective in that the basic idea the holiday is a universally wide-spread idea. If you imagine a spectrum, with one end being absolutely impossible to have objective knowledge and the other end being absolutely possible to have objective knowledge, shared knowledge would fall somewhere in the middle, but closer to the end where it is impossible to have objective knowledge. On the other hand, personal knowledge would fall at the very end of the spectrum where it is impossible to have objective knowledge since personal knowledge is not independent of
Even since I was young, I constantly prided myself in thinking in what I considered a mature and logical system. I was never captivated by the social trends that my peers always seemed to hold in high regard. I would collect and store random bits of information from the various works that I read, and then turn that information into something useful be it a story or a school assignment. I was always extremely focused on myself due to my introverted nature, but as I grew older I began to question other people, why they did certain things and why they thought the way they did. It’s a complicated thing the human mind, extremely complex and difficult to understand. Every human who has ever lived on this Earth has never been the exact same, always
Even since I was young I constantly prided myself in thinking in what I considered a mature and logical system. I was never captivated by the social trends that my peers always seemed to hold in high regard. I would collect and store random bits of information from the various works that I read, and then turn that information into something useful be it a story or a school assignment. I was always extremely focused on myself due to my introverted nature, but as I grew older I began to question other people, why they did certain things and why they thought the way they did. It’s a complicated thing the human mind, extremely complex and difficult to understand. Every human who has ever lived on this Earth has never been the exact same, always
Public education is run by the government and thus cannot tell people what they should think. But one thing missing from schools may be teaching what other options of thinking one could explore. Mill believes that government run education limits the diversity of thought among people growing up and that more private schools should aim to teach differing views of matters. Not only would teaching opposing views of philosophers, politicians, and religions allow students to choose their own paths, but would further encourage people to create their own belief systems. As Mill states again, “unmeasured vituperation, enforced on the side of the prevailing opinion, deters people from expressing contrary opinion” and transversely listening to
Throughout this term I learned so much about young children, anti-bias education, developmental growth and so much more. Education is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly; these are development steps of a young child that could help determine their future. Children need to be guided emotionally, academically, mentally and emotionally. Parents teach their children practices and their beliefs to help the child get ready for the world. Parents and teacher should always be involved in a child's learning process, despite of their values or beliefs. Everyone cultures are different, and how they expect their children to behave is different too. As adults, and teachers, we can’t have a set mindset on what we only believe in because, there is always
As Frye (1986) quotes, “the vast majority of things we hear today are prejudices and clichés, simply verbal formulas that have no thought behind them but are put up as a pretence of thinking”. This is still incredibly true today. Prejudice is defined as “a negative feeling toward a group based on faulty generalization…something we think and feel” (Bergen, 154-155). With no concept of how to critically evaluate one’s prejudices, there will be no change in problematic thinking. Thus, in order to address society’s and one’s own prejudices, critical thinking must be incorporated, which can be fostered by a diverse
In this paper, I will argue that Objective List Theory is the best theory of well-being because it answers many questions brought up when discussing someone’s life, such as how someone can determine if a person’s life was good or bad overall or what aspect of their life dicates whether that person 's life was good or bad. Objective List Theory is the theory of well - being that states the only ingredients that are intrinsically valuable to one 's well-being are, accomplishment, freedom, and knowledge. Ultimately meaning, that these three characteristics are the only aspects of life that dictate if a person’s life is a good one or a bad one.
What is knowledge? Knowledge, according to the Oxford Dictionary, is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Knowledge is also known to be “true, justified belief; certain understanding, as opposed to opinion”. Knowledge can be objective, but can also be relative. Knowledge can be objective meaning it is free of any bias or prejudice caused by personal feelings or beliefs. Knowledge can be relative meaning that a term, thing, or concept that is dependent on something else. But then again, which is correct; this argument came up in Protagoras’ claim. Protagoras claimed that man is the measure of all things. In this paper I will argue that Protagoras’ claim is true.
Knowledge, that certain indescribable thing that everyone thinks they have a little bit of, is an elusive concept that nearly every philosopher from ancient Greece to the modern day has given at least a nod to. How, after all, can we know that we are right in something if we don't know what knowing is? This question, and the sometimes futile attempt to answer it, is called epistemology. More specifically, it is the study of how we know and what that knowledge actually is. Is knowledge objective, subjective, something else, or even possible?
Knowledge is defined as information and skills one acquires through experience or education. There is; however, a certain knowledge than cannot be certain and is unjustifiable from the scientific perspective. Karen Armstrong, Robert Thurman, and Azar Nafisi wrote about this type of knowledge in their essays: “Homo Religiosus,” “Wisdom,” and “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” respectively. Each of these authors has a different view of what knowledge is exactly, how it can be achieved, and what it means to have achieved it, but each author takes on the view that the concept of knowledge should be viewed from a social stance. Armstrong refers to this uncertain knowledge as “myth,” Thurman refers to it as “wisdom,” and Nafisi refers to it as “upsilamba";
Research completed on infants, children, and adults across a multitude of cultural environments proposes that no human mind is alike. Spelke found that the four systems on core knowledge are a basis for cognitive systems. This means that some humans learn things easily, while others learn with greater difficulty (Kinzler and Spelke 2007). The core knowledge theory can be seen as both a positive and negative topic. The possible fact that human beings, as well as other species, could potentially be predisposed to cognitive capacities instead of acquiring capacities through experience is an overwhelming and controversial topic. There is not enough research or evidence to deem the core knowledge theory to be an absolute fact, but a strong opinion could be derived. If these cognitive capacities are integrated into us before birth, that would create a strong foundation for building new skills or capacities; it would be difficult to imagine an individual starting their life without this foundation of core symptoms because problems may arise. The core knowledge theory is helpful when studying development because the idea has been apparent in studies since Jean Piaget and could eventually unveil the roots of an evolutionary
It proposes that the capacity for reasoning develops in four sequential and interconnecting stages throughout infancy to adulthood. Some main pieces of the theory are schema, assimilation, and accommodation. Hutchison (2015) describes the schema as “an internalized representation of the world or an ingrained and systematic pattern of thought, action, and problem solving (p. 119). Dan has developed a certain schema throughout his life, which includes his beliefs that people should reach for high-success, respect and obey authority, and men are responsible for the women. Assimilation occurs when an individual reacts to an experience based on prevailing schemata (Hutchison, 2015). Accommodation happens when a person adjusts his or her schemata to a new situation in which the old schemata could not relate. After observing Dan’s case, I can see that he is assimilating to every situation and struggles with accommodating to a new situation that does not fit his existing schemata. When Dan’s friends and family present ideas that oppose his schemata, he seems to become frustrated, anxious, and sad. Dan’s lack of accommodation is creating conflict in his
In Carol Dweck’s “Brainology” the article explains how our brain is always being altered by our experiences and knowledge during our lifespan. For this Dweck conducted a research in what students believe about their own brain and their thoughts in their intelligence. They were questioned, if intelligence was something fixed or if it could grow and change; and how this affected their motivation, learning, and academic achievements. The response to it came with different points of views, beliefs, or mindset in which created different behavior and learning tendencies. These two mindsets are call fixed and growth mindsets. In a fixed mindset, the individual believes that intelligence is something already obtain and that is it. They worry if they
There are no two people in the world that have the exact same thoughts and feelings. Each person forms their own ideas on certain subjects, that others will disagree with. Many aspects of a person’s thoughts are based on their background. From as early as childhood, a person’s thoughts and opinions start to form, and change based on influences, such as parents or teachers. For example, if a child’s parents raise that child a certain way, that child will likely choose to raise their children the same way. This does not necessarily mean that the parents raised their child the right way, but they raised their child the way that they felt was right. This is to prove that there is no right or wrong. People will develop their own ideas on right and wrong based
As an educator, we need to ensure that children develop strong sense of critical thinking as this would help to ‘interrupt the tabloid culture’. When we look at the media-driven society, we see that children are constantly being bombarded with messages about how to live as part of the socially acceptable herd. They are being initiated into ‘herd thinking’ and ‘groupthink’ (Janis 1972) at a very early stage. Groupthink describes how individuals feel pressured into agreeing with the consensus of the group, often against their own better judgement. The group can make bad judgement due to lack of consideration of alternative viewpoints. I believe that children need to be able to think critically so as to make informed choices. They need to be able to think for themselves so as to resist ‘herd thinking’ and
Per Dew and Foreman (2014), “Skepticism raises important questions about our cognitive and perceptual limitations but goes too far and leaves us with nothing, or almost nothing, that can be known. In the end, there are good reasons for thinking that we can have varying degrees of knowledge about the world” (Dew & Foreman, 2014, p. 162). Furthermore, Dew and Foreman state that “Virtue epistemology attempts to emphasize the important role that intellectual virtue should play in our pursuit of knowledge” (Dew & Foreman, 2014, p. 125). They show similar and different ways people can gain knowledge through individual “internal or external” life experiences, but no matter the experience individuals are capable gaining true