Do you ever think about
how we know what we know? I’m no expert on philosophy, but one branch of philosophy that is very interesting to me is epistemology, i.e., the study of knowledge - its origin, nature, different types of knowledge, etc.
There are many different ways to acquire knowledge. But instead of posting an exhaustive list, I think all of the ways can be grouped into four broad categories, or “avenues.” These avenues can also be viewed as levels. They often work together, but there is always a primary way in which knowledge first comes to us.
The framework I’m starting from is the idea that human beings are tripartite: body, soul, and spirit. Each part has different functions. This view that man is tripartite was taught by Watchman Nee, who was a 20th century theologian, evangelist and writer, from China. I believe it is scriptural. If you want to see the different functions, here are a couple images:
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The last one on this list will probably be controversial…at least to non-believers. But I don’t want this thread to turn into a theism-vs-atheism debate, that’s not what this is about.
With all that said, here are the four basic ways, or levels, to acquire knowledge:
- Through our body: our senses. This is the most basic way of knowing: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. This is empirical knowledge.
- Through our soul: our mind and intellect. We can acquire knowledge through reason or logic. This is rational knowledge.
The soul also includes our emotions, so I believe we can know things through emotional intelligence or empathetic understanding.
- Through our spirit: intuition and conscience. This is where it starts to get interesting, in my view. Intuition is a faculty of our spirit. This is knowledge that comes as a sudden insight, as opposed to step-by-step reasoning. This level also includes moral awareness, which comes from our conscience. Our conscience is spiritual, not intellectual. This is spiritual knowledge.
- Through God: divine revelation. Finally, the highest way of knowing is when God makes something known to us. This is obviously the most controversial one on this list. But in Christian belief, God can and does reveal truth to us. (1 Cor. 2:10, John 14:26, John 10:27, 2 Timothy 3:16, Romans 8:14-16, Psalm 32:8, etc.) This is revealed knowledge.
I know that not everyone will agree, of course. Even among Christians, there might be some different views on this. But that's OK...I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this topic, whether you agree or disagree. Thanks!
While most of that I largely agree with, I do have a few problems.
For example using your senses. Obviously if you touch fire with your hand, you realize through pain, that fire will harm you. And that is knowledge.
But then there are times in my life where I have learned something through personal experience that I was absolutely sure of with no question in my mind, only to find out that I was totally wrong.
So learning through only personal experience of the sense, can in fact mislead you, and it is a flawed way of gaining knowledge.
Similarly, our minds and intellect can help us gain knowledge, but that too is flawed, because you can use your intellect to learn something that is again, totally wrong.
Further, I would even go so far as to say that emotions are the least useful for gain knowledge, and even that emotions can mess up other attempts at gaining knowledge.
How many people have been a waiter or waitress at a restaurant, and had a customer come in that was angry and upset, or sad before they even sat down, and then complained the food was bad? Or how many have been the customer that came in emotionally messed up and thought the food tasted bad?
Your emotions can change how you perceive your senses, to the point that bad is good, or good is bad.
I myself have had more than a few times where I thought everything was going wrong, when in reality everything was fine, but I just didn't "feel" like it. Or had people I thought were irritating or even intentionally annoying me... only to realize... no they are not doing anything at all, I am just tired, or anxious about some other dumb issue, or I'm just not feeling well... and my emotions are coloring the senses.
The knowledge I was gaining from the situation, was being warped by my emotional state.
And real knowledge is to look at the situation you are in, and the world around you, while eliminated or at least minimizing the emotional influence. There is a huge value in life to being stoic.
Ironically we know this when we apply it to other people. If you watch a movie, the person who can remain calm in a crisis, and determine the best possible course of action, that's the person people look up to and respect. Not the person who freaks out running around crazy, letting their emotions run wild and control them.
Emotions in my view, are 90% bad. We need them. We have them for a reason. Like if you see something that is potentially dangerous to you, fear is a healthy thing that pushes you to find a way to save yourself from driving a car off a cliff. You look at the road, see it curves around, see the drop off.... a healthy fear of falling off the side, makes you slow your car down, pay attention to the signs instructing you, and keep your car on the road.
Equally if you meet someone, and you have absolutely no feeling of affection and attraction at all to that other person.... one would hope you don't date and marry them. That's how you end up in a miserable marriage. You want that emotion to be there.
But you don't want it to control you. And you certainly don't want to rely on your emotions for wisdom or knowledge. I've never met a person in my whole life, that followed their feelings and ended up somewhere good. Every person that achieves anything, they have to work at it.
And that's hard. If you want to be a world class piano player, you are going to be practicing piano at least every other day, if not every day. And news flash, you won't be 'feeling' like practicing most days. You have to do it anyway regardless of your emotions... or you'll never succeed at that, or anything else.
And then you talk about conscience.... and that's helpful, but the conscience, is informed by knowledge.
For example, there are still to this day, places in the world where cannibalism is normal. And if you were born there, you would have problem in your conscience with eating the people you capture and kill.
That conscience is informed by their knowledge that they have, just as you have a conscience informed by your knowledge.
So having a conscience is more of a reflection of gained knowledge, rather than a source of knowledge.
This is also true of intuition. Most natural intuition is born from mind seeing patterns in the world around us. You subconsciously are always seeing patterns. Patterns in your friends. Patterns of sound. Patterns of behavior. You might not actually directly say to yourself "When this X thing happens, then that Y result occurs." But your mind is constantly seeing those things. And women in particular do this more often than men. But at the end of the day, your mind sees a pattern, and can't quite place that pattern, but it seems similar to something bad. And you call that intuition.
But once again, it's a reflection of knowledge learned elsewhere. Not a source of knowledge.
So where does that leave us?
Well.... the gathering of knowledge in the human race, in my view is a bit like an ancient ship sailing somewhere on the sea. Like sailing a ship without stars.... without a compass... Without even a sun dial.
You know the sun rises somewhere in the east, and sets in the west. And so you can sail, and you will make progress, but it's imperfect progress. You are moving. You are learning stuff. But all of our ways of gaining knowledge are to some extent flawed.
So what do we do? Well we anchor our knowledge in the one source of information that is perfect, and that is the Lord. You still take the risk to learn, but you always hold onto the one source of knowledge that has been stable and accurate for all of human history. The Lord. No other source is more trustworthy.
And yes, you will learn things that are not true, and fall into false knowledge. And when you do, you just back up, until you are back on solid ground that God provides, and move forward again from there.
We need to remember as Christians that human knowledge is helpful and good, but it is also manipulated and flawed because it come from human beings that a flawed.
The current Replication Crisis in science if a great example. If you are unaware, we have discovered that more than half of all scientific peer reviewed, published papers in scientific journals... are actually wrong, and some are just... fraud.
What happens is that people will write a scientific paper, have it peer reviewed and approved, end up published in a professional journal, and then.... other people try to use that research to produce results, and they can't replicate the claimed results.
In medical papers, only 44% were replicated. In psychology, only 36% were replicated, while 25% not only couldn't be replicated, but actually had entirely opposite results. Not just wrong, but the opposite of the claimed results. And then all the rest they couldn't get any results from at all either way.
I would suggest that the reasons the psychology replication was far worse, likely has to do with psychology being more grounded in emotions. Where as medical research, you either get a result or you don't. And yet even those results are not all that great.
And why is this? Because knowledge by man is flawed.
But knowledge based on God's word, is never flawed. Only the person reading it is flawed.
