PHILO ESSAY

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2. What are the limitations of our knowledge? Is there anything we can know for certain?

Human beings behave in a way that is drastically different from animals, be it their way of eating, thinking or even sleeping. In addition, under similar conditions and environments, each individual being has their own unique method of solving a problem. The basic reason for this is actually that as human beings, we each have our own set of knowledge and perception of the world. As such, our behaviour differs from one another, depending on the perceived knowledge that we have. In other words, we do and act in a certain way because of the knowledge that we hold to be true or false. For instance, cannibals living in the world feel that it is alright to eat human flesh and thus hunt for humans, whereas vegetarians feel disgusted at the mere thought of just eating meat, let alone human flesh. The question comes in here: to what extent is the basis of our knowledge reliable? Can we know anything for certain?

Firstly, let us define the word ‘knowledge’. Based on the definition given by the Oxford English Dictionary, knowledge is defined variously as facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, or the awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. This indicates that knowledge is restricted by many factors, such as the experience and education that one is exposed to, as well as the different understanding that everyone acquires in a subject. Due to these various factors, we are therefore unable to come to any consensus about ‘true knowledge’.




From this, it is justifiable for us to say that we cannot know anything for certain, because different people have different experiences and as such we acquire different information and possess differing ‘knowledge’.



Knowledge is defined (Oxford English Dictionary) variously as (i) facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories.
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association, and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose.





http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/Know.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge