08/10/2024
SIMPLE DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE
We ordinarily think that the sentences of dictionaries, encyclopedias and similar books can be treated as knowledge. But that is not true actually. Our deliberation about knowledge starts from the fact that the mind of a person continuously interacts with environment, including his own body as well as external things of world. On the basis of such interactions, human mind gets experiences and consequently it produces various mental states which are conveniently classified here as emotions and ideas. The word ‘emotion’ represents many kinds of desires, feelings and will. On the other hand, ideas form a separate class of mental states; it is conventionally treated as the result of the activity of thought. An idea contains information (content) about external objects as well as about the mental states of the concerned person. The mental image of some object is also an idea. But in most of the cases, an idea is expressed in verbal language involving words and sentences.
We consider here only our ideas expressed through the medium of verbal language, by excluding communications through signs and noises. The capacity to conceive words and sentences is a distinguishing feature of human mind, in comparison to the minds of animals and lower beings.
The most elementary components of a language are alphabets. When a set of alphabets is given particular meaning, it is called a word. A group of words are arranged according to the laws of grammar to form a sentence. The essential property of sentence is that it contains one or more ideas. Hence, we can define sentence as a combination of words for expressing some idea through the medium of language. Obviously, the sentences with same idea are different for separate languages like English, Malayalam and Tamil.
Here we do not consider the sentences denoting questions, commands and exclamations. See the following examples.
1. Question: What is the time now? What is your name?
2. Command: Shut the door. Get out.
3. Exclamation: Oh, what a heat!
But we must focus on those sentences, which would express the idea (information) about the existence of some aspect of universe. Such sentences can be divided into two classes – subjective and objective.
A subjective sentence expresses the feelings of a person including all kinds of emotions, imaginations, opinions and illusions – it is in first-person perspective (FPP). We can easily to recognize that religious prayers as well as various forms of art and literature such as poetry, drama and novel fall within the realm of subjective sentences. Suppose the author of a novel describes a character by saying that he was wearing white shirt in an occasion; it is clearly an expression of the imagination of the author. The class of subjective sentences includes knowing how to do an activity, such as knowing to drive a car, knowing a person and knowing a place.
The first, second and third perspectives are aspects of grammar since these are basically linked to the words I, You and It. We can add that he, she, they, that, thing and similar words stand for ‘it’ depending on the context. Accordingly, ‘earth is round’ is a proposition – it is expressed in third-person perspective referring to a particular planet of sun. Similarly, the sentence ‘yesterday I had a dream of walking upon Mars’ also is a proposition because it expresses the occurrence of a dream. The content of the dream is a subjective experience and it is not relevant here. The said proposition is true if the event of dream is established by factual evidences.
We may treat belief as a sentence occurring in our mind regarding natural or supernatural aspects. Such a sentence may be expressed in either first-person perspective or third-person perspective; and it may be true or false.
From out of our numerous beliefs, it is possible to consider a special class called proposition with the following three essential characteristics:
1. A proposition is an objective belief expressed in third-person perspective.
2. A proposition asserts, on the basis of evidences, the existence of certain object or event in this universe.
3. The information contained in the proposition may be true or false.
Now we may define proposition simply as an objective sentence which is valid on the basis of a set of evidences. Based on the fact that a proposition may be true or false, we can now give the simple definition of knowledge as following: Knowledge is a true proposition.
Thus, we have to define knowledge at the level of source, that is the human mind producing the concerned propositions. Accordingly, knowledge is the product of the mind of a person or a group of persons. This point is underlying in the statement that proposition is a belief. For a person to get knowledge, he or she must have desire for it. For example, suppose two persons A and B are engaged in conversation. A is trying to explain a particular philosophical subject to B. If B is not attentive, lacking the motivation to understand philosophy, the talk of A would not generate belief (knowledge) in the mind of B. It is necessary to keep the human mind at the centre of the landscape of knowledge, for embarking on further analysis. But it is possible to store propositions (knowledge) in books and newspapers as well as other mediums like electronic devices.
When we analyse the above simple definition, there are some serious issues involved here.
The question of true or false depends on the meanings of words as well as on external evidence. How can we get reliable evidence? This is a perplexing question.
There are many unobservable objects in the universe such as electron, virus and bacteria and so on. The entities like God, soul and angel can also be treated as unobservable. In such cases, there are controversies about evidences. Also, obviously, the propositions under the fields of science and religion have wide differences, which are to be explained.
The above points indicate that the simple definition of knowledge is inadequate. To proceed further, we may deliberate in the next section upon the method of classifying the range of propositions, so as arrive at a complex definition of knowledge.