What Do You Know?

What Do You Know?

What a loaded question. It leads, however to some pretty profound insights. (Maybe!)

David Hume in his Treatise On Human Nature put forward a proposal that I find compelling because of its usefulness in illuminating human behavior. He postulated a three tier hierarchy of information in the human mind. Stage 1 is perception, Stage 2 is belief, Stage 3 is knowledge.

He then defined 'knowledge' as that information which is so deeply ingrained that we act upon it without any conscious awareness of it. An example of 'knowledge': How do you walk? How do you talk? You can not tell me because you are not conscious of what it takes. You 'know' how to do it.

By now you see the problem with the title question. Under Hume's theory, any answer to that question is bound to be false. If you are conscious of it you do not 'know' it and if you are unconscious of it you would not be putting it in your list.

So how do we get to be what we are? Hume postulates that we perceive things and that when perceptions are consistent, persistent, and vivid enough they become beliefs and should they reach even higher levels of consistency, persistence, and vividness the information content of those perceptions becomes 'knowledge'.

Now according to the theory, we are born with a bunch of methods of perception and one basic piece of knowledge. For the most part, we can hear, see, feel, taste, smell and perceive our own thoughts. And what we 'know' is “I AM”. Everything else we learn over time.

How do we learn? We perceive! And if the perceptions reach a certain level of “persistence, consistency, and vividness” the perceived information is established as belief and if they are even more “persistent, consistent, and vivid” it becomes established as “knowledge” and is acted upon without any conscious awareness.

Two very important things should now be obvious.

One: If this theory is more or less accurate, we cannot possibly believe in our own non-existence. One might theorize that at some point one's self did not exist and at some point in the future one's self will not exist. One might even hold that idea as 'likely', however; since 'non-existence' cannot possibly be perceived, the concept cannot even reach the stage of 'belief', much less 'knowledge'. Therefore , by our very nature, we are bound to try to 'rationalize' this conflict between what we eventually come to perceive about everybody else, ie. They end, and what we 'know' about ourselves, ie. We have always been and will always be. Hence Heaven, Hell, Karma, Reincarnation, Valhalla, you name it. A million and one attempts to rationalize a dichotomy forced upon us by our very nature. To be human is to be tempted to religion. And to live without that crutch will ever be the hard road.

Two: Much of what we 'know' must be false! Why? Because our tools for perceptions are extremely limited and not very reliable. We can only see a very limited range of the electro-magnetic spectrum. We are so blind we 'knew' it was dark at night! We can only hear a small spectrum of sound waves so we 'knew' that giraffes make no sounds and bats fly silently trough the night. We knew that most things don't have a smell. We knew that the sun and moon were just a little further away than the top of a high tree or hill or tree on a hill. We 'knew' it for thousands of years and we were wrong for thousands of years. And there is a source of perceptions even less reliable than our eyes, or ears or nose. And if we don't learn to watch it closely at all times and question it constantly, our load of 'false knowledge' can actually threaten to overwhelm us entirely. That is our mind. Remember that a major source of our 'perceptions' is our mind. Our memories, of perceptions real or imagined, produce information we perceive almost constantly. Our conscious minds and our unconscious minds constantly serve us up thoughts. Our perceptions of these thoughts are as 'good' as any other perceptions, in that, if they are 'consistent, persistent and vivid' enough, their information will become knowledge! The problem arises from the fact that memories of perceptions are often inaccurate, either as the result of inaccurate perceptions from the physical world or from the fact that they are completely imaginary to begin with. But our mind does not care about truth! It only cares about 'consistent, persistent, vivid'. Meet that criteria and 'knowledge' is born. Serve a mind the 'consistent, persistent, and vivid' perception that Brits are cold and aloof sort of people and that mind will 'know' this even though its owner never met an Englishman. In fact, isolation from Englishmen will enhance the 'knowledge' as the consistency of the perceptions will be secure. Only constant questioning of perceptions and beliefs can possibly keep our 'beliefs' and 'knowledge' near the truth.

What do you know? Not all that much I hope!