Upon reading this prompt, I’m immediately drawn to my own culture as a British, English speaking individual and how this affects both what I can learn as well as the way I learn.

While English is just the language I happened to be born into using, it is almost globally used to the point where many find no need in learning extra languages. Already, this impacts hugely the information ( such as word translations ) we can know, but more than that, is the problem of having such a small perception of the world rooted just in our obstinance to learn another language? Following Whorf’s Linguistic determinism, our language limits the knowledge we can comprehend. For example, many expressions and idioms are unique to the languages they come from, and hold contextual meaning or cultural significance, as well as having weight on location. For example, for it to be raining “cats and dogs”, most of us assume it to be chucking it down, heavily raining. But thanks to the rainfall in the UK being so high, those from more arid locations or sunnier areas like in the Med, may misinterpret the meaning of this expression. This is due to their having a different perspective of the meanings and ideas of words, built up over time by differences in habitation, and culture (through language and ideas of what things are). This calls into question if there is a difference between learning a language and “knowing it” For example, does it matter if I learn French, since I will always only think of French in terms of English, rather than in terms of French, and therefore not gain any new perspective on the meaning of words? The follow up to this being : what requires us to experience new points of view?

What we may begin to understand is that different cultures and languages very much have weight on what we can know. Of course, many would claim that language and word meanings can be subjective to begin with, but even when casting this aside we see that the issue of the way we learn is rooted in how we grow up. This creates potential for those who have greater terms/ words for similar things to develop a greater understanding/knowledge over that subject (like bilinguals), as defined by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. In summary, it is very possible our social customs and definitions make us biased in the interaction with new information, and block us, even after taking in new forms of communication, from different perspectives gained through the complete knowledge of a language.

Ivan Sproats.

When I read this prompt, I immediately think of the Bible, the Holy text of Christianity, because of its myriad versions and interpretations and its relation to me as a Christian.

To know something is to have an understanding of its concepts, often to a standard where it can be understood by others if explained to them. But this transfer of information is precisely where information, and thus knowledge, can be lost.

The Bible is a compilation of texts written over centuries, detailing the Story of Jesus Christ, and God’s teachings, but it wasn’t all written at the same time and by the same author. Each of these authors would’ve interpreted the experiences they viewed differently, due to their application of their own senses. Modern science shows us that our senses can be easily flawed, and illusioned. Donald Hoffman proves this in his TED Talk via the use of optical illusions, of which there are hundreds you can try on YouTube. These views align with Descartes, who came to the realization that his senses couldn’t be trusted, and that the only knowledge he could be sure of was his existence. Take the Gospel (story) of Jesus Christ’s life in the Bible: 4 accounts of the same life, all including their own takes of information, and analysis of the events that occurred. If someone had remembered wrongly along the line, what would that mean for the future of the religion? It would be untruthful, built on misinterpretation – causing severe doubt and loss of faith, ruining trust for billions who follow the religion.

Add to this the effect of language. The Bible was mostly kept fresh in the minds of people by speaking about its stories, before most of it was written in Greek, especially in the time of the New Testament. From there, it was kept in Latin by priests for a long time, until its eventual translation into world languages. But there aren’t always smooth translations, and those who do not speak Greek or Latin can’t fully interpret what was written as solid knowledge, only as a translation into their common tongue. For instance, certain words like: “l’appel du vide” have no direct translation. Yes, the words may be converted to their equivalent – in our case, “the call of the void” – but they don’t translate the meaning of the metaphor. Nor do they convey the same feeling that those who understand the phrase as part of their mother tongue would. You can see here that there is a problem of experience. Every being’s unique upbringing allows for unrepeatable experiences to be felt as our influences from family, culture, education, community, society and many more factors carve particular values into each of us – forming individuals. This changes the way we interpret information, in a way that we can never truly know what another knows in the same way because we will never share all of their values and memories.

To summarize, while there may be certain truths that we can share, such as mathematics, we can’t know the same experiences and interpretations of other as they are unique to their senses and values. In this we find that our knowledge is limited to our experiences, influenced by our specific values and can even by altered by language and faulty memory. Therefore, I am inclined to admit that there are truths and states of being that we can never achieve or replicate, and thus never know.

Ivan Sproats.

In this question I’m going to be exploring the meaning of knowledge, and if we can ever truly know something in order to draw a boundary between things that are known and that aren’t.

To answer this question, we must first consider : what is knowledge? The dictionary defines it as “facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. ” Taking this meaning, we see that knowledge is directly related to experience. In practice, the application of our senses allow us to interpret and know what objects lie around us due to what we’e been told they are called previously, say at school or by our parents. However, this implies we can only know and grasp concepts which fit with our preexisting truths or “knowledge” ( Coherent Truth ). The problem should be becoming clear – how is this knowledge reliable? If I base my knowledge off of what I’ve been taught how do I know what I was taught wasn’t wrong? It needed only to coincide with the teachers’ prior knowledge in order to seem appropriate to teach to me. All over the world, people are raised in different conditions and with different values and different learning processes. Take my painting, for example. I may tell you it is unfinished, but I may be lying because I want it to appear this way. Your social experience and knowledge of paintings and my painting history will have to be used in order to determine whether I am telling the truth or not. This truth validates the knowledge I’ve given you, letting you “know” it as you have evidence for it. In the end, each of you will form a different opinion on whether I tell the truth and thus gain different knowledge.

What I’ve proven is that none of us know things in the same way – knowledge is not a shared in its exact form between individuals – and thus there is no boundary to knowledge. Since we rely on each other’s words, our shared knowledge of their meaning and whether they are telling the truth, there can be infinite interpretations of things we see firsthand and things we are told. It even extends to the imagination. I may know in my mind what something is, but you can’t reliably know if it is the case if I tell you, or exactly imagine and know what describe : there are too many factors of uncertainty.

That painting is my most recent IB artwork, (spoilers, it is actually unfinished!) and I decided to use it since it ties well into opinion and knowledge – visual stimuli always causes great debate and is easy proof that we all see differently, and thus can never know the same things in the same way.

To conclude, if we can’t know things in the same way – our thoughts and concepts are always subjective and influenced – then there is no baseline knowledge and thus no boundary to the interpreted knowledge. We have no way of truly identifying the nature of something in an objective way, thus even the meaning of knowledge itself is speculation. We aren’t limited to what is and isn’t, because we cannot agree on a foundation of knowledge.

Ivan Sproats.