ToK Essay: mediocre (4)

To what extent do personal attributes affect Ways of Knowing and why, if at all, does answering this question matter in the first place?

The four different ways of knowing--language, perception, reason and emotion--are strongly affected by our personal attributes. Our attributes define how we interpret the knowledge provided by our ways of knowing and what our response to the information will be. Therefore, it is natural that our conception of various things is different dependent on our attributes as human beings.

Our language is our best mean to communicate with other people. Even if it is by the use of oral, written or sign language we depend a lot on our ability to give and receive information through the use of our language. Intelligence is an important attribute when it comes to language. An intelligent person who has much knowledge about how a language is built up and what techniques to use in order to persuade other people can use this in her or his advantage. An example of this is a public speaker. In order to deliver the speech in a way that seems credible to the audience, the speaker must know how to use the language in the most effective way. Likewise, a person that is listening to the speaker and has lower intelligence might not recognize the flaws in the speaker's arguments because of his or her inability to understand these techniques of persuasion.

The human senses could be said to be standardized in the way that the basic inputs received from them are, if not exactly the same, then at least similar in every one of us. If two persons look at an orange, they will both probably see a round shape with an orange color. However, personal attributes can still have an effect on the final impression. This is both applicable in a more literally sense, e.g. one of the two persons might be taller than the other, and thus sees the orange from another angle, revealing that one side of the orange is rotten, decreasing the tall persons desire for the orange, and in a deeper sense, e.g. the more empathic of the persons might feel dislike when seeing the orange because the sticker on it reveals that it hasn't been grown using ecological methods.

When it comes to reason, personal attributes tent to play a less important role. Of course, a person can be said to be unreasonable. That is, he or she fails to apply reason to her arguments or is generally not following logic and common sense. However, reason, when applied correctly, leaves little room for personal attributes to change the result of the conclusion. An example: “If George W. Bush is a member of the Illuminati, and all members of Illuminati have the purpose to take over the world. One can thus assume that George W. Bush has world domination on his agenda.” Whether or not the assumptions presented in this example are correct, it follows logic, and there is little personal attributes can do to change the outcome of this thought experiment (though perhaps ignorance can lead one to the, obviously false, conclusion that George Jr’s intentions are all benevolent).

Emotion as a way of knowing, and several personal attributes like loving, short-tempered and cold are very closely related. Although, other personal attributes might be useful in order to deal with the emotions that are aroused. A good example is Kitty and Britney. Kitty is miserable because she just divorced her husband. How she cried those first long nights. However, Kitty is a very sane person and knows that she is better off without him and that she now can pursuit her dream of becoming the world champion of hand standing. Good for you, Kitty! Britney, on the other hand is not so sane. Her boyfriend also left her with merely a void where her heart used to be, but instead of seeing the positive things that could come from the recent change her life has went through, she instead shaved off all her hair and got addicted to heavy drugs. Not so good at all, Britney! Abilities like being able to deal with negative emotions is a very good example of how we can use our attributes in order to manipulate our ways of knowing.

It is important to realize that knowledge, in whatever way we gain it from, is colored by us as persons. Our personal attributes allows us to interpret information individually. Some attributes are more attractive to have when it comes to processing knowledge gained thorough our ways of knowing, as discussed in previous topics. In our society, it is vital to identify these attributes in order to ensure that people that are fit to do their role in society. We make sure that a colorblind person cannot fly jet fighters because of the chance that they misinterpret the information given to them by their eyes and that people who are not compassionate and empathetic do not become psychiatrists. We use our knowledge about how effective certain personalities are to deal with situations involving ways of knowing, in order to make conclusions about how likely it is that the person in question matches the profile wanted for a specific task or place in society,

In order to reach a greater understanding between human beings, it is essential that we understand that knowledge is far from absolute, and that our interpretations of our various sources of knowledge differ greatly. To shape ideas and thoughts using what makes us who we are–our attributes, is something essential and that is why it is so important for us to understand the effects they have on our Ways of Knowing. Because of the fact that ‘knowing’ is such an indefinable word and seeing as though the personal attributes of a human being can vary greatly I’d like to take a minute–just sit right there–and I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-air. In west Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground was where I spent most of my days. Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool and all shooting some b-ball outside of the school, when a couple of guys that were up in no good, started making trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and my mom got scared, she said you’re moving in with your auntie and uncle in Bel-air.