Is Knowledge Possible?

BY

LO IVAN REYES CASTILLON

         From the moment we were born in this world, we started to grasp everything, one by one, step by step. We can say based on our experience that we know nothing as we open our eyes for the first time. I might believe now what John Locke was trying to present in that sense is true. We tried to relate ourselves to the world for us to know, to learn. Until such time, we went to school for formal education which the primary aim was for knowledge. For what? If I would try to believe it, then, how true it is of its promise of having good life of having such knowledge? Is it possible to have such? It is very crucial for us to believe in knowledge. But as rational being, we are expected to wonder, to search for the meaning, the truthfulness it brings, for all the things that brought us to confusions and doubts. We search for something. In a long run of my discussion, I will try to find means to answer my queries, all the questions that tickling in my mind, of the things that really bothers me.

            I would like to start with the main point of the subject that somehow ruined my life, triggered my migraine, waking my appetite in everyday that I enter the class. I am not that in real torment, a life or death choice, but it somehow pushed me to learn, to study. I would say I am just pressured. But in the end, I am partly satisfied with what I learned for I know there are more things to learn.

Epistemology has been commonly defined as branch of philosophy which deals with different theories of knowledge. Yes, this is evidently true. However, I think on some point for it is just some portion of reality that we have.  With Zagzebski’s characterization of epistemology which is the study of right or good way of grasping cognitive reality will tell us that this entity is not purely study of knowledge but of even ethical way of life. She also added that is the study of the other desirable ways in looking for truth.

Both perspectives about epistemology are true. They point to certain direction, certain predicament, certain end – truth. Is knowledge possible there are different theories of knowledge? They explain different ways on how to acquire such.  Further, they offer significant reflection and reasonable claims on how knowledge attained. Whatever they may believe is very helpful for us nowadays in recalling those theories they had to understand fully the things or the knowledge we have today.  At some point, they created a great avenue to find the source of knowledge so that we may not gullible of such deceiver.  Certainty and understanding possessed their claims. However, it strengthens us that this study will also guide us of what should and ought for us to do.

Absolutely, knowledge is good. If we are going to reflect its implication nowadays, we may say that knowledge is the center of our growth, main ingredients for our main menu of truth – in searching for truth.

Let us take a glimpse of how knowledge relates to certainty and understanding. During the ancient and medieval times, certainty is given much focused. The validity of reality held on the belief of certainty and go against on the value of dubitable areas of the external world. Everything is given the idea that what reality is what is conceived by reason that of having certainty. This posits much concern and over emphasis on the use of reason. However, as the philosophy journey its tremendous works of wondering, understanding came to savor the ideas of things even it is metaphysical as long as the basis would be precisely rational enterprise. That is why, according to the epistemologists, it is better to look back on the questions, what is knowledge? Is knowledge possible? How do we acquire knowledge? It may surely lead us to certainty and understanding that knowledge is good and good enough of worth of our effort in striving so hard to know such, to have such. 

Knowledge and beliefs have become the part and parcel of human existence. But how they differ? Knowledge has different meaning formulated and developed by philosophers and writers as time went on.  Knowledge as some says it is the way of believing the cognitive way in regards to its formal justification. It is a justified belief. It is something that is proven to be true. It is not considered knowledge if it does not pass in the verifiability of experimentation or observation as to prove its existence to be true. Belief, on the other hand, refers to the concept acceptable whether it is true or false of certain people or group. Other also would say that belief is just believing the things even out of reason, uncritical innocence or we can say in the state of first naiveté. Then, it is true to say that knowledge might be a belief and belief might be knowledge. However, not all belief is knowledge in the sense that there are some beliefs that are false belief.

Desirable life demands caring. It is said that we care about many things and we tend to be conscientious of the things we care about. Yes, it is true. We must be. Do. And act. The more we care about something, the more conscientious we must be so that the trust and certainty of the belief we had may prolong and lead to a desirable epistemic good life.

Conscientious belief is an attitude of caring about the true beliefs – for truth in a sense. We need to be conscientious so that we may not be gullible of any deceiver of true beliefs so as to care the things we care about with compassion and love. It is also non optional to be conscientious in our beliefs if we are going to contextualize it in morality. It will lead us to a good and right way to grasp the reality cognitively on the basis of morality. Knowing the beliefs which is conscientious belief will motivate us to care about in that domain and posit with certainty of being true. Thus, this will lead to trust towards the desirable life.

There are two ways that caring imposes a demand for conscientious belief. First, there is a demand to be conscientious in whatever beliefs we have in that domain. This implies that we already established the beliefs of certain point and consequently, caring is manifested. Furthermore, we need to be conscientious of that belief. We are not just accepting things as they are.  Instead we tend to involve ourselves in wonder, in act of questioning for we demand for a true belief. That is a manifestation that we become conscientious to our beliefs in particular domain. It is somehow that we have beliefs from the start that we are not pretty sure of its certainty, for we may deceive by such gullible deceiver. On the other hand, there is a demand to acquire conscientious beliefs in that domain. This entails our responsibility or maybe our natural inclination to demand in acquiring conscientious beliefs. We should bear in mind that caring demands us to desirable life or other way around. If this is so, we need to be caring to those things we care about or in the domain to get conscientious beliefs. For an instance, we go to school to study, to learn and to acquire new knowledge. Acquiring new learning experiences as we expected to have is a way of acquiring or demanding fro conscientious beliefs in the domain of education. These provide a venue for us to ne conscientious in such a way.

However, even though how meticulous we are, sometimes we cannot avoid to encounter some circumstances that somehow our desirability of one’s life will be shaken because of false belief that we are confronting. That is why we need that mechanism to sort out false belief from true or conscientious belief to recover and regain the trust we have from things we care about. With that trust and confidence that we have conscientious belief will lead us to epistemic good life.

In searching for truth, for knowledge, we may encounter a bullshit. It is a speech that does not show any proper concern for the truth. A bullshiter tends to pretend that he holds the truth where in fact he does not. On the other hand, there are also lies. A liar may have the capacity to tell the truth but he chooses not to say so. A truth-teller and a liar play the opposite but of the same game. The bullshiter plays another or different game but pretending of playing the same game. Indeed, how hard it is to be in this world full of complexities, full of confusions, of deceivers.

The skeptics as well provide several attacks and arguments against proponents of truth, of philosophy of how knowledge, is true and possible. This is not to undermine the existing belief that we have but it is to strengthen and be conscientious of what we believe. This response makes a true belief in an instance of knowledge in forming it by reliable process for obtaining the truth. It enlivens the argument that the experience, the environment is reliable in obtaining truth.

With strong constraints being put to validate the true knowledge or knowledge itself, we may find it hard to accept things that we know or cognize as such. Several criteria presented by many philosophers of what really knowledge is. However, this problem of criterion appears a just mere theory for some of its arguments posits only to the ways in which people think or to ways in which they use their language. Other would say that evidences will showcase true knowledge. I am partly agreed. But according to Chisholm (1966) in his theory of knowledge posted this query about the role of evidence in determining the trueness of a thing, what is it to have evidence and how are we to decide in any particular case whether or not we do have evidence? The depth of these questions really questioned the evidence as the foundation of searching for truth, for knowledge, justified knowledge I would say. Let us take for an instance, we have good evidence, eventually when scientists had declared that there were nine planets, for believing that claim. This evidence consists of various other facts we know about astronomy but it does not itself include the fact that there were nine planets. Should we say that, although it may be possible to know that there were nine planets, it is not possible to know that we know that there were nine planets? Or does the evidence that we have for believing that there were nine planets somehow guarantee that the belief is true and therefore guarantee that there were nine planets? This had been what we argued before. All the evidences were presented to prove that the truthfulness it possessed. Consequently, it may dismay us when the new study result appears that, it was just a false belief where in fact we have only eight planets. This example is just one of the many instances in the realm of knowledge wherein evidences showed its inconsistency. Before, we believed on it as true knowledge. However, this had changed when we confronted with the new declaration of knowledge. This may lead us to doubt that even the things that we believe today as true knowledge may appear to be as just false belief later on if the new discovery will come out. Thus, this makes knowledge somehow not possible.

We may argue that in evidence for some things, it would seem, consists of the fact that we have evidence for other things. Either we could justify the claim to know any particular one of these things; we can be led back, in the manner described, to various things that are directly evident. It speaks that this phenomenon we are experiencing in the present, the whole of what we know, at any given time, is a kind of structure having its foundation in what happens to be directly evident at that time. Our task then is to prepare ourselves of this claim that the foundation serves to support the rest of the structure.

On my stand, with all the discussions and researches, with all the reasoning and readings, with all the arguments and skeptical attacks presented, it never undermines my belief that knowledge is possible. Though many would argue that in several circumstances, we may end up to question this claim, still, it just strengthens the belief and the truthfulness of the knowledge that we possessed. From the point that we argue, we reason out, we deliberate, it justifies that we think, that we possess knowledge and we try to utilize it. It is very important that we must not just a “piggy bank” that our minds are mere storage of ideas. It also conforms to the philosophy of Whitehead (1929) that “the utilization of knowledge to a particular end is a worthwhile learning for”. This knowledge that we acquired will make us to be truly human, rational. All these are knowledge, we justify it with what we learned which also a form of knowledge. We should not put ourselves in a dire place isolated on a certain framework that would lead us to claim that we know nothing. Wake up? We are learned fro we believe that we possess knowledge. We need it. Thus, we must continue to strive, to stride, in the continuing pursuits of finding the real realm of reality in the context of knowledge. The most important thing is we must be convinced that we know something and we are capable of knowing.

In conclusion, I would like to say, no matter how brilliant we are, still, we are craving for knowledge.  That is why until now, we are still studying the study of knowledge and what encompasses it. That is why, we still searching, still wondering for truth which is the common denominator of all these endeavors. Thank you for the epistemology.