Should a knower’s personal point of view be considered an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, or an obstacle to be overcome?
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A knower's personal point of view should always be considered an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, only when he ONLY sees that point of view is it an obstacle he must overcome.
ReplyDeleteAKC
Should a knower's personal point of view be considered an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, or an obstacle to be overcome? This all depends on how you look at it. It also depends on how you think. Are you one of those people who are open-minded, or one who is close minded? A person’s point of view becomes an obstacle when you think there is only one answer to be found. To me, a point of view can be either an asset or an obstacle.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it is important to know where your point of view comes from. These are called filters. These filters can range from where you live, to the people you hang out with. Where you live can have a huge affect on the way you think. Same as how you grew up. If you lived in a nice, gated community and your parents were so over protected that they got nervous over you crossing the street, than when your older your opinion on things is going to differ from one who had parents who gave them more space. A huge filter is your peers. The people who hang out with you have a big influence in your life. They might be a reason why you do most of the things you do. An example of how each person has a different filter is with orientation. Older generations think it is wrong for same sex relationships, but with our generation, we see nothing wrong with it. This can be because we are see it more in our everyday lives than they did back then. My filters change the way I think. I grew up in Thornton, I am female, and I grew up in a big family. This makes my point if view different from somebody who is an only child and grew up in Lakewood or somewhere like that.
A knower's point of view can be considered an asset because that one view can lead us in the right direction to gaining more knowledge. It can become a starting point for a whole discussion that will create the way to you finding the answer. For example, think about sitting in class and you’re having a class discussion on a certain topic, and somebody brings up a point. You think about the point and then create your own, than another person in class comments on your point, than so on and so on. That one comment, that the first person said, created a whole conversation that helped gain the knowledge you were looking for. With some points of view, though, you will hit a problem, and that is when a knower's point of view becomes an obsticle and not an asset.
A knower’s point of view can also be an obstacle to overcome. This sometimes concerns the closed minded people who think in black and white, wrong and right. They have a barrier in there mind that makes it harder for them to find knowledge. These people need to break down that barrier and figure out that some things don’t have a right answer. They need to notice that some things take more in depth thinking and have more than one way of looking at it. A question, for example, is one that we talked about for a while in Theory of Knowledge class. The question is what is truth? This one question works best if you have an open mind. It then becomes easier to answer, even though it will create even more questions. This is when it helps to think in shades of gray.
It really depends on the opinion, or point of view, that is being said. As I said above, the point of view can be a starting point in the quest, or make it come to a complete stop. This point of view can start an ongoing chain that makes people think in more depth, and eventually they will reach the answer.
Should a knower’s personal point of view be considered an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, or an obstacle to be overcome? Now let’s think about this question, a personal point of view is pretty much an opinion, and since this is your opinion you may not be able to see past this, especially if the pursuit of knowledge requires you to question your point of view. This may become an obstacle to overcome in the long run since you may want to rethink your personal point of view. Because I think you have to find out what’s it like to be in someone else’s shoes and seeing what their point of view on issues are. This requires you to open your mind and let knowledge sink into your brain as if acting like food for your brain and your brain is waiting for juicy knowledge from someone else’s point of view. If you don't open your mind, you will deprive your brain of the "knowledge nutrients" which will not let you see past your view and there for, become an obstacle to overcome. For example, I have a friend who will not open her mind to anything new, she absolutely won’t, she is stubborn and she thinks that her view is the only right one. I try to explain to her maybe one day she will be in a situation that requires her to change her beliefs and then she will understand why these other people have different views than her. Finally, one day something happened to her that made her change her personal point of view. She now understands why I told her that her view is not the only one out there, there are millions more. She understands that it got in the way of what was going on and she didn't see past her point of view.
ReplyDeleteIn many ways your point of view can be an obstacle to overcome but then again it may not be because if you’re open minded to everything, you will believe anything you hear and you wont argue with it and it maybe wrong, which will let in your way of the pursuit of knowledge. Say if this person is wrong and he/she is saying god is a mythical creature who lives underneath a well in New York City and you believe him you don’t question him at all and your perspective is that what this strange person says is right. It then turns out that God has lived under a bridge in California. Since, you never question this guy who said that God lived in a well under New York City you never found the Knowledge of God actually living in California under a bridge. On the other hand it can be an be an asset to have an open or closed mind because if you want to find out the truth about how the earth was created, but your point of view is that God created all.
It will pretty much be an obstacle to overcome if you find out it was actually the big bang theory this may affect your point of view and actually change it in the long run. In my personal perspective your point of view can be an asset or an obstacle it all depends on what you believe in. It always comes back on to what you believe in. Your mind set is the one that helps you judge what. It’s like saying the chair in the middle of the room is blue, but the people in front of the chair see it blue and they see the front of the chair and the people in the back of the chair see it blue but it’s the back of the chair. Both back chair people and front chair people are looking at the same exact chair their just looking at it through different perspectives. It’s just like looking at politics, religion, even food. None of us have the same perspective it differs from each one of our backgrounds. We all have our opinions on different things.
In the long run our personal point of view can be both an obstacle to overcome and an asset since our belief system is what we base it on. I might be a Muslim but a Christian on the other side of the world would have the same belief as me saying that dogs like to wag their tails. We all have different views and we don’t understand why so in the end of all this arguing we are all right………in our own opinion.
-Amanda C. P.S. I didnt know mayvilles email i hope this is okayI really want a good grade