• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Where did knowledge come from?

DashingAmerican

DashingAmerican

Civil Libertarian
DP Veteran
Joined
Jul 23, 2009
Messages
3,357
Reaction score
986
Location
Alabama
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Libertarian
An argument in another thread lead me to this question.

Where did knowledge come from?
 
DashingAmerican said:
An argument in another thread lead me to this question.

Where did knowledge come from?
Click to expand...

Knowledge comes from personal experience or anothers experience taught to you.
 
SocialD said:
Knowledge comes from personal experience or anothers experience taught to you.
Click to expand...

That's not what I'm talking about. If a baby was left alone somewhere, like in Jungle Book, what would it know, if anything. Who invented the alphabet and how'd they convince people to use it, etc.
 
DashingAmerican said:
That's not what I'm talking about. If a baby was left alone somewhere, like in Jungle Book, what would it know, if anything.
Click to expand...

If it was able to survive, it would learn through experience, as we all do.

Who invented the alphabet and how'd they convince people to use it, etc.
Click to expand...

No one person (save for St. Cyril, who took his alphabet from existing ones). Alphabets, writing, and language developed through consensus.
 
DashingAmerican said:
That's not what I'm talking about. If a baby was left alone somewhere, like in Jungle Book, what would it know, if anything. Who invented the alphabet and how'd they convince people to use it, etc.
Click to expand...

Same answer as what SocialD gave. :shrug: Knowledge comes from experiences.
 
Knowledge means familiarity with facts acquired by personal experience, observation, or study...therefore each individual's knowledge is unique...
 
DashingAmerican said:
An argument in another thread lead me to this question.

Where did knowledge come from?
Click to expand...
In the myth it comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fatal tasting of which occasioned the Fall of Man into experience, which is the source of most of the knowledge Man possesses or claims to possess in the Fallen World. But Man retains some innate knowledge as well, by way of Reason, which is an endowment of soul, and which in a dim and diminished way carries forward from the state of Grace from which he has fallen.

Again, this is all teased out of the myth. The truth conveyed by the myth is that knowledge is a shadowy thing which Man seeks in vain in the world of experience. The only intellectually respectable point of view in the course of human life is agnosticism concerning everything, and faith that there is something larger than ourselves at work in the universe. Our best bet is to stick to poetry. :)
 
Angel said:
In the myth it comes from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fatal tasting of which occasioned the Fall of Man into experience, which is the source of most of the knowledge Man possesses or claims to possess in the Fallen World. But Man retains some innate knowledge as well, by way of Reason, which is an endowment of soul, and which in a dim and diminished way carries forward from the state of Grace from which he has fallen.

Again, this is all teased out of the myth. The truth conveyed by the myth is that knowledge is a shadowy thing which Man seeks in vain in the world of experience. The only intellectually respectable point of view in the course of human life is agnosticism concerning everything, and faith that there is something larger than ourselves at work in the universe. Our best bet is to stick to poetry. :)
Click to expand...

No need for the smileys.
 
Knowledge is a useful model that approximates to reality.

Useful models can be tested by their predictive value.
 
DashingAmerican said:
That's not what I'm talking about. If a baby was left alone somewhere, like in Jungle Book, what would it know, if anything. Who invented the alphabet and how'd they convince people to use it, etc.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)
Genie (born April 18, 1957) is the pseudonym for a feral child who was a victim of severe abuse, neglect, and social isolation. Her circumstances are prominently recorded in the annals of linguistics and abnormal child psychology.[1][2][3] When she was a baby her father concluded that she was severely mentally retarded, a view which intensified as she got older, causing him to dislike her and withhold care and attention. At approximately the time she reached the age of 20 months he decided to keep her as socially isolated as possible as a result of this belief, so from that time until she reached the age of 13 years and 7 months, he kept her locked alone in a room. During this time he almost always kept her strapped to a child's toilet or bound her in a crib with her arms and legs completely immobilized, forbade anyone from interacting with her, provided her with almost no stimulation of any kind, and left her severely malnourished.[4][5][6] The extent of her isolation prevented her from being exposed to any significant amount of speech, and as a result she did not acquire language during childhood...... Upon determining that Genie had not yet learned a language, linguists saw Genie as providing an opportunity to gain further insight into the processes controlling language acquisition skills and to test theories and hypotheses identifying critical periods during which humans learn to understand and use language. Throughout the time scientists studied Genie, she made substantial advances with her overall mental and psychological development. Within months of being discovered Genie had developed exceptional nonverbal communication skills, and gradually learned some basic social skills, but even by the end of their case study, she still exhibited many behavioral traits characteristic of an unsocialized person. She also continued to learn and use new language skills throughout the time they tested her, but ultimately remained unable to fully acquire a first language.[8][9][10]
Click to expand...
 
DashingAmerican said:
That's not what I'm talking about. If a baby was left alone somewhere, like in Jungle Book, what would it know, if anything. Who invented the alphabet and how'd they convince people to use it, etc.
Click to expand...

The baby would know that which it would discover and find out. He wouldn't magically know the alphabet without ever being introduced to it.

Modern alphabets weren't something that just popped out of thin air that someone created over night. It was thousands of years of human evolution getting to the point where we could communicate effectively and then it required society as a whole to adopt a specific tool set like the alphabet.

We can be sure that if humanity started over from scratch that languages and alphabets would not be replicated in the same fashion as they are now, but they would likely create new ones.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom