What is knowledge? What happens when we achieve knowledge of something?
According to Dictionary.com, knowledge is acquaintance with facts, truths, or principles, as from study or investigation; general erudition; the fact or state of knowing; awareness, as a fact or circumstance.
I think the meaning of knowledge is fairly clear to most of us. Most importantly, it is not synonymous with belief. You cannot know something if it is not true. You can believe something that is not true, in fact you can believe anything you want…. belief is really about your state of mind, and knowledge is about facts. We can of course, know something and be wrong. Knowledge and knowing pertains to the world around us and what we learn about it collectively. Once we gain new knowledge, it can replace old knowledge, meaning that something you thought that you knew, no longer is so. If you hold on to that “knowledge” you don’t actually know it, but you do believe it.
I was wondering what the stages in accruing knowledge are, or the states of knowledge itself, and began looking on the internet, thinking this must be a common philosophical question. I am sure it is, but I was surprised to find nothing indicating this. I did find a lot on the four stages of competence related to how we learn a skill, often attributed to Abraham Maslow, but nothing on accruing knowledge.
I thought what these must be and what it may mean.
Are the states of knowledge the following (The first two are compatible with Maslow’s first two stages of skill learning)?
1.Innocence
Like a child
Innocence means lack of knowledge or understanding, freedom from sin or moral wrong, the origin from the Latin innocentia means harmlessness, from innocēns doing no harm, blameless. Innocence evokes the idea of a blank slate and of being harmless (unconscious lack of knowledge).
2. Awareness
An intermediary stage where life experiences result in a desire to know, or a feeling of deficit (conscious lack of knowledge), and of needing to know.
This is typified by the stage in kids’ lives when they incessantly ask questions.
3. Ignorance
This meaning is different from the standard modern English meaning of ignorance, which means not knowing. I mean the idea of having knowledge but not processing it, or purposefully ignoring the facts, due to laziness or fear, like most of us!
The original meaning of ignorance was lack of knowledge from the Latin ignorantia “want of knowledge”, so if we are to base our use on the original meaning, this word should not be used for this concept.
However there is no better word for the use that I describe for this stage of knowledge, and the verb to ignore from the same Latin root has the precise concept that I wish to convey. Ignore from an etymological dictionary – states “not to know, to be ignorant of,” from French ignorer “be unaware of” (14c.), or directly from Latin ignorare “not to know, be unacquainted; take no notice of, disregard“. The original sense in English has become obsolete. The sense of “pass over without notice, pay no attention to” in English was first recorded 1801.
Ignorance could be typified perhaps by a modern negative view of many teenagers… having the facts but feeling like it is not cool to know. An example could be somebody knowing that smoking is detrimental to their health but smoking because it is cool (to conform and feel they belong).
Another example could be Flat Earth advocates. They are ignorant, because we have the knowledge that the Earth is a globe. We have so much proof, including observations on Earth that can only be explained if the Earth´s surface is curved. Examples are seeing the smokestack of a ship if it is far, or the observation of a higher distant mountain which appears lower than a nearer lower mountain. Further proof are pictures taken of Earth from space, and the fact that satellites placed by us are known to circumnavigate Earth in orbit. A Flat-Earth believer cannot know the Earth is flat. There is too much proof to the contrary. They are in denial, and can only believe so.
When you pertain knowledge of something, you automatically become beholden to that knowledge. You are no longer ignorant, and can no longer claim to be innocent. You become responsible. Whether you take on that responsibility is another matter, but by having the knowledge you automatically inherit responsibility. In this context an ignorant person can know.
4. Full state of knowledge (wisdom)
Knowing and assuming responsibility for knowing – being adult and responsible.
This is our goal in a practical sense.
Caveat.
Philosophers have tried to determine how we really know that something is true. Perhaps the most famous is Descartes who tries to determine if he is sure that what he perceives is real. He decided that most things that he believed to be true were not necessarily so, beyond all doubt. Eventually he decides the only thing he can be sure of is that he exists, because he thinks.
Some beliefs, and especially ones interested in spirituality, describe a higher state of knowledge. Perhaps the most well-known held by Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism describe a state called Nirvana or Enlightenment. This state releases the soul from the entrapment in a cycle of births and re-births. Maslow, mentioned earlier, included Transcendence as the highest level in his later 8-level hierarchy of needs,
My thought process on knowledge ignores doubts such as Descartes´doubt not because the knowledge that we have is necessarily true in the philosophical sense, but because as far as we can understand, using the tools of perception that we have, with our explanations and testing of these perceptions, our knowledge holds true, and also is useful as such.
For instance I could doubt the existence of a bridge crossing a chasm that I perceive in front of me. However throughout my life the interpretation of what I see has held true. If I need to cross this chasm, it is likely that I will survive if I cross this bridge. There is no use me doubting the existence of the bridge on the basis that all experience is an illusion, or of the space in front of me and below the bridge, and the existence of the soil and earth under my feet, when I contemplate crossing this bridge.
At its core my description of knowledge is fundamentally practical, and not philosophical.
I am not sure where this leads, as personally I value the contemplations of philosophers a great deal. I think I mean that the knowledge in philosophy, physics, astronomy and other sciences is most concerned with truth. Knowledge that we require in living our lives demands an element of truth, but need not be too concerned with details that are in practical terms way beyond our reach of understanding or use. We should not tolerate falsehoods primarily because we are prone to believe them, and that leads us astray.