I'm very sure that all the knowledge I have attained are true. Or, at least I thought they were. I used to have an innocent naive mind, accepting all the things I have been spoon-fed with as true. But, how sure am I that all these "knowledge" are true? Is there a basis? Moreover, how can knowledge be defined? These questions have led my mind to venturing into the philosophical world.
Just like many other people, at first, I thought philosophy was a waste of time. I mean, why waste our time on finding reality when we are living in reality? In Plato's Myth of the Cave, there are prisoners that can merely see shadows of objects. They are so bored that they give names to these shadows, and everytime a shadow passes by, they would compete to see who can tell what that shadow is. One day, a prisoner gets out of the cave prison, and he finally sees reality. At first he wouldn't believe it, but slowly, he started to accept that those shadows before weren't the truth. Where he was standing, what he was seeing at that moment was reality. He then felt pity for his fellow prisoners, so he went back, but according to the myth:
"Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if anyone tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death."The prisoners' minds are also imprisoned to what they believe as true. In order to understand philosophy, find answers, we must experience it ourselves. We cannot depend on others to give us answers because we would only think they are lunatics, and we would just continue living our own lives assuming that we are already living in the world of reality.
I realized that as humans, we really like to assume things. It makes life easier. We assume that the cellphones we use are safe, the food we eat are clean, the people we mingle with are safe, the LRT we ride in will not suddenly fall of the rail, and so much more. It would take too much time if we think about so much things before doing an action, but this is a problem. How sure are we that the knowledge we have right now are not mere assumptions? We assumed that 1+1=2. If not, we cannot move on to higher maths. We will probably fail elementary, get dropped out, be jobless, get hungry, and then die. This is because society dictates what we should do to live a good life. If we don't get education, we will be regarded as stupid. If we don't have money, power, we are nothing. That is why we would rather assume than question. Our lives are so short, so many people might think that we are wasting this life questioning nonsense.
According to an article, there are different kinds of knowledge. It's different when you say that you know a person and when you say you know something about a person. The first is knowledge by acquaintance, while the latter is just mere descriptions about a person, or knowledge-that, which is the most common type of knowledge. So, how can knowledge be defined? In the article, it was defined as a well-justified true belief. We said that the belief must be true, and it must be supported with evidences. First of all, according to Descartes, a belief is true when the method is reliable, and a method is reliable if NONE of the beliefs based on that method is found to be false, but so far, I haven't found that method. Secondly, how sure are we that those evidences are true? Evidence 2 justifies Evidence 1. Evidence 3 justifies Evidence 2. Evidence 4 justifies Evidence 3, and so on, but where's the beginning? There must be a non-daxastic evidence, something that requires no evidence to prove it. We said in our philosophy class that experiences are the basis of evidences, but a question comes to my mind. Aren't experiences based on thoughts and senses? It is possible to trick our mind. For patients who lost one of their limbs, some of them can feel the pain of that lost limb, but because it's not there, they can't do anything about it, so doctors use the mirror to let the patients feel that the limb is still there, when in fact, it is just a reflection of their other limb. Since this is possible, shouldn't it be true that our thoughts are not reliable? But, saying that we don't have knowledge is implying that we do know that we do not have knowledge.
There is a problem though about the definition "well-justified true belief", and that is the Gettier problem. Gettier made an example. He said that there are two people, Person 1 and 2. They are both going to a job interview. Person 1 said that the person with ten coins in his/her pocket will be accepted. She counted the coins in Person 2's pocket, and yes, Person 2 had ten coins. In the end, Person 2 did get the job, but is the proposition "The person with ten coins in his/her pocket will get the job" counted as knowledge? Personally, I believe it is not, since other factors are not considered. Perhaps Person 2 really has better qualifications. It just so happened that he had ten coins in his/her pocket during the interview. That is why it is not sufficient to say that knowledge is merely a well-justified true belief. Other factors must be considered.
I realized that in my group's discussions during class, we always wind up saying, "It's different for every person. It depends on their perception." If knowledge is based on perception, how can we all understand each other? Or do we think we understand each other when in fact we are talking about different things? This reminded me of the time my dad was talking to my science teacher. My dad's English is not so good, that's true, but not to the extent that people can't understand what he's saying. They were talking about completely different things, yet they were still able to communicate with each other. This is how the conversation went: (not in exact words)
Dad: Do the kids need to memorize the periodic table?
Science Teacher: Ah, yes. The students really love to chit-chat during class.
Dad: Oh, yes? (looks at me) You need.
Science Teacher: Oh, Yu-Wen has no problem. She's very quiet in class. I hope she can recite in class though.
Dad: Oh, okay okay. Thank you teacher.Honestly, I understood that they were talking about completely different things, but I didn't bother telling them since I would have to explain from the beginning of their conversation, and chances are, they both won't understand what's going wrong since in their minds, they think that they are talking about the same things. How sure are we that this doesn't happen to everyone? What if the definition of blue for Person A is this, while the definition of blue for Person B is this. And, the sky is blue, so when they see the sky, Person A really sees it as this, and Person B really sees it as this. Since they both see it as their definition of blue, they understand each other even if it's actually different. Is this possible?
In Descartes' Meditations, he threw away all his beliefs, and tried to come up with at least one belief that is certain and indubitable. He said that the senses are deceiving, and the cause of this deception is a evil demon. He therefore concluded that he existed because he must exist for the evil demon to deceive him, but what if the evil demon is tricking him to think that he exists? Well, for him to doubt that, he must exist. But, if he exists, what is he? He said that the senses are not reliable, and so he is not sure if he has a body. He is sure though that he has a mind, so he made the conclusion "cogito ergo sum", "I think therefore I am".
Descartes also pointed out the dream problem. He said there is no way of distinguishing whether we are dreaming or we are in reality. We also use our senses when we dream. Also, we can't dream of something we haven't experienced in reality. This sparked my interest on dreams. It is said that one minute in reality can mean hours or even days in dreams. It's like in our dreams, we are capable of doing what we can't do in reality, but yet, still bounded by the limits of society. Before we die, we still have 7 minutes of brain activity. I really would like to experience how much images could appear in my head in that 7 minutes before dying, but of course, without dying. Sadly, it's impossible.
In conclusion, I realized that philosophy is a wide field for study. Knowledge is not as simple as we think it is. For a belief to be classified as knowledge, it must be well-justified, true, with other factors considered.
Lastly, here are some questions that I have on my mind: If knowledge is based on perspective, how is it possible we understand each other? Do we really exist? How do we know that we are living in reality? Is death really the end of life? How sure are we that the mind is dead when all that we could see is the dead physical body? Perhaps the physical body isn't even dead since are senses are deceptive. Also, I named this post Knowledge or "No-ledge"? because I wonder, is really no knowledge that is definitely true that can be attained by our human mind?
