Is there a difference between Knowledge and Education?

[Paragon]

"Go away to the mountains with these four hundred sheep and come back when they are one thousand", said the master."

 

Conquest, thats a very good way of telling the difference. You've got a good story there. I shall come backt o this topic... coz it interests me much.

[missy_1]

hi guys,

i just came across this topic which seems very interesting. education is a system that can only teach so much, and to me seems to be somewhat less wider than knowledge.

however knowledge is a concept that knows no barriers.

am finding hard to describe what am thinkin so am gonna come bck to this subject.

[dreamlover]

i would personally have to say there is no difference between education and knowledge however i acknowledge the fact that education is a formation of knowledge.

Before i get into their inter-relationships ,i want to determine that education is not just about pen and paper but about the concept of learning, now by possesing aspects of learning you are also possesing characteistics of knowledge. the more you know the more knowledge can be ascribed to you,

so, ladies and gentlemen i want to breifly conclude by saying that educationa and knowledge share a lot of similariates but their key and vital point is they both can be ascribed to learning and training of mind.

 

p.s i would like to acknowledge the author of this topic and just wanted to say that you are a person who is obviously searching for answers, not that i got any problem with that but just like to say you posted a beneficial, and a civilized topic,

 

salamazzz

[Warmoog]

Knowledge and Education are two different things. There are many Somali elders who, although illerate, are very knowledgable. For instance, Ayeeyo X can recite Somali poems from centuries prior or she can make up a complex one of her own instantly, but she gets others to write her letters because she can't write a word, Somali or otherwise.

 

PS - Ayeeyo X is just someone I made up, she's not my granny (although I've met many like her).

 

Salaama.

[7_steps_2_Heaven]

jamaal_11 is this one of your seen exam questions or something to do with an assignment?

do u need our help?

[Paragon]

Caramel...sister, the topic isn't an assignment. Just a question I posed to Nomads. I started the topic in the year 2002.

[Vanquish_V12]

i think knowledge is result of education, you gain the know how because hopefully u went through the rigorous tasks, but wisdom thats a different story. its the ability to envision, understand both mentaly and with your heart, you dont need to know the mechanistic logic to completely forcast the retroputions of certain actions or ideas.. wisdom is a gift from Allah n given only to those of pure heart, such as Luqman of Africa.

[Baashi]

Yes, there is a difference, to answer the question. It might help if we use the END and the MEANS analogy.

 

Knowledge is the end and the education is the means to that end.

In other words, education is the process one has to go through in order to acquire knowledge. Whether that process is formal (schooling) or informal (experience), the end result is same - you learn, grow, and attain knowledge.

 

There is a famous quote I’ve once read somewhere and it goes like this: To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

 

Ain’t that true?

[Sirrus]

Bashi

 

Respectfully NO, education is not the means to knowledge. Knowledge is the child of experience and capacity. In fact wisdom is the greatest portion of such. Education is mearly one of the modus to obtain financial freedom and prestige. The other way being trechery and robbery.

[Maymuunah]

sister what is with the indian picture..do you like those indian movies alot or is there somehting to it abaayo.. just curious

 

about the topic i have nothing to say about it, but my humble opinion says in order to have knowledge you have to gain education.

[Maymuunah]

guys what is the difference between the chat room and the forums. whenever i click one of them I am dragged to the same page. do they have here chatrooms or wuxu ma isku midbaa.

not a new member but definitely not a frquenting one.

[Baashi]

Sirrus,

I see what u getting at. The END is synonymous with INTENTION and in this case the intent of getting educated is to obtain financial freedom. I see!

 

Well, the END in this context is merely an outcome. Hence, the education is the act and the knowledge is the outcome of that act. The intent of the act itself could be many things. Many knowledgeable scholars of Islam or Greek philosophers were in it for different purpose than financial gain.

[Sirrus]

BR Bashi

 

Logic follows, if all object "A" are cats, and simon is object "A", then simon is a cat.

 

If all educated persons are knowledgeable, you are educated does that mean you are knowledgeable. Unfortunatly the premise in this case of education vs knowledge does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that knowledge is the product of education. Perhaps I am too narrow with my defination of education. Any event to which you retain a skill or memory from is considered education. But we are talking about official education.

[SCORPION_SISTA]

Sundus r u asking me or someone else?

[Zaylici]

The following paper was written for a class( Epistimology) two years ago, it discusses about the nature of knowledge, please enjoy reading it. The paper was written non other than Zaylici.

 

In this paper I will discuss the accounts that internalists and externalists provide for knowledge, then I will discuss their differences and similarities and finally I will side with one of the accounts and state my reasons for doing so.

I

Internalist account of knowledge

Internalists, as the name suggests stress some aspect that is internal to the person or the entity that has the knowledge, they seem to be saying, as I understand, something like the following, if someone has knowledge, then that person must have justified true belief, the justification is understood partly as having access to the reasons that ground the belief in question. As you can infer from here, accessibility to the internalist is necessary condition for knowledge. Consequently, one distinction according to the internalist between true belief and knowledge is accessibility, having knowledge means, partly, according to the internalist, having access to the reasons that ground your belief (see Pojman, 136). To convert true belief to knowledge, therefore, one must have reason that he can use to support his belief, and such reason or evidence must be accessible to him.

 

Having accessible ground to support your beliefs is necessary condition for knowledge, so, how did you access the basis of your beliefs, you could do so by examining your internal thoughts, and by reflecting on one of the following to access the basis of your belief: perceptions, memory reports, emotion, testimony, or inference from set of other beliefs. (See Pojman, 137).

Now,what does it mean to have an access to the reasons that justify the relevant beliefs. Accessibility can be understood in two ways, either in the strong or the weaker sense, in the former, the knower can retrieve upon reflection the relevant reasons and use them to substantiate her beliefs, whereas in the latter the knower cannot by her self retrieve the relevant evidence, consequently, she needs the assistance of the other to access the grounds of her beliefs. (Regarding the two senses of the accessibility, I benefited from the lecture notes of Epistemology 4105 at the University_of_Minnesota.)

In addition to the accessibility requirement, internalists require people to form their beliefs through truth seeking process (see Pojman138). This is what is referred to as epistemic responsibility (Pojman 137). Though truth may or may not be attained, nevertheless, truth must be the goal. Thus, an individual who believes something because it useful to her, does not have epistemic justification, because she does not aim at the attainment of the truth, but rather aims at something other than truth. Internalist, therefore, are committed to the truth. They see reason to be subjective or fallible enterprise, nevertheless reason remains the vehicle that gets us a closer to the objective truth, ( Bonjour, Pojman 138). Now, the reason for a belief might be perception, memory reports, emotions, testimony or inferences from set of other beliefs (Pojman, 137). Internalist demand the reason provided for a given belief to be the best available in given subject, what determines the best available evidence seems to be dependent on the specific area of inquiry.

Two points are quite clear from the internalist position, that is, accessibility and epistemic responsibility. These two conditions distinguish knowledge from true beliefs. Internalists also offer solutions to the Getteir counter examples; one of them is non defeasibility. Defeasibility , as I understand, is an intuitive notion, and it goes like the following: you are allowed to hold your justified true beliefs so long as there is no evidence available to you that would defeat your belief, Tripartite analysis and the notion of Non defeasibility combined seem to be plausible response to the Gettier counterexamples. (I owe again my understanding to this notion to my lecture notes of the Epistemology)

II Externalist account of knowledge

Externalism emphasizes the processes that produce and sustain true beliefs; they seem to be saying something like the following: what is needed to convert true beliefs into knowledge is reliable process, or some low like relationship that connects beliefs with truth (see pages 320, of Lehrer, Critique of Externalism). Now what do externalists mean reliable process, to the externalist ( at least as far as the reliabilists are concerned) is whatever process that produces high percentage of true beliefs in a particular subject, reliable processes, therefore, convert true beliefs into knowledge( see the article of the Goldman,395 Strong and weak justification.) In order the belief forming mechanisms and processes to be reliable, the belief forming process such as human vision must function properly( I.e. not impaired) in suitable context (I.e. Appropriate conditions, for instance, certain planes are reliable means of transportation in specific weather conditions, extreme weather conditions flights are often suspended because planes are no longer reliable means of transportation in such extreme weather conditions). So, both the external circumstances, such as poor vision, and the mechanisms of forming beliefs such as vision or thermometer must be reliable and for that to be the case, certain conditions (to be specified by relevant truth trackers) must exist.

 

Externalists do not only require reliable processes functioning in a suitable environment, but they also appeal to the notion of non defeasibility. Which we have discussed earlier. Thus, whenever someone believes something and does not have defeater in so far as she is concerned, the subject in question, Goldman, says, is weakly justified( weak justification, according to the Goldman is more complicated because it has many conditions but this I think is sufficient for surveying the general position of the externalists). Weak justification as opposed to the strong justification is employed when the subject uses unreliable process such as astrology to form beliefs, whereas strong justification happens, when the subject uses a reliable process such as thermometer to inform us or predict the temperature of given place. Weak and strong justification may fail to tell us the truth, nevertheless, thermometer is more reliable than astrology, and the preceding assertion (with regard to the thermometer and astrology) rests on many facts including possible statistical analysis of both methods.

III Similarities and differences between the two accounts

Both externalists and internalists agree that the processes that allow one to form beliefs must be committed to the truth, in other words, believe forming processes must not be processes that aim at, say what is useful to the subject, but processes that aim at the acquisition of truths. However, they disagree with regard to their emphasis on the processes that lead to the formation of the beliefs, internalists emphasize accessibility of the grounds one has for his beliefs, whereas externalists emphasize reliable process in general including good reasons (see Pojman, 143). Externalists do not require people to have access to the reasons that support their beliefs, internalists do. Thus, it seems that internalist privilege individual’s perspective or what is some times called first person perspective. Intuitively, people seem to have more direct access than others to their own feelings, thoughts and other cognitive processes, thus by not requiring cognitive accessibility, externalists seem to be downplaying the significance of the first person perspective and thus biasing toward what is often called third person perspective. Moreover, externalists attribute knowledge to the subjects in question based on the reliability of their belief forming process. Thus, their concentration on the process as opposed to the people’s cognitive access to the reason that justify their beliefs makes them biased to the non first person perspective ( again this preceding ideas are from the lecture notes of the epistemology class). Needless to say, they both require people to believe the proposition that are candidates to the knowledge and be committed to the attainment of the truths.

IV

My views and preferences with regard to the aforementioned accounts

I seem to favor the externalists more than the internalists for the following reasons. First, externalists allow people to hold beliefs without necessarily having access to the reasons or evidences for that belief, by dropping the accessibility requirement, externalism seems to be consistent with the modern age, I say this because of the following: for the last three hundred years or so, something that had never happened before in the recorded human history have taken place, that is the enormous expansion of knowledge resulting from combined or interacting historical forces. The consequence of this expansion was the availability of large amount of ideas and information. Consequently, it was no longer possible for an individual (like it was possible in the ancient times for an individual to master almost all branches of knowledge like Aristotle did) to master all branches of knowledge. This historical development created conditions where one might be able to believe some conclusion, from given discipline, without necessarily having reasons for that conclusion other than what some reliable truth trackers have asserted in their books. In modern day mathematics, for instance, one might teach integral and differential branches of calculus, however, she might not be able to provide reasons or proofs for her beliefs with respect to a given principles, she might relay on others, say theoretical mathematicians, who if needed, could demonstrate to the inquirer the grounds for believing given basic principles of integral and differential calculus. Shall we not attribute knowledge to the one who believes certain mathematical conclusions, so long as the belief in question is produced through reliable process?, I think we do, that is what the externalist as I understand hold.

We might benefit, therefore, from variety of disciplines and use their conclusion for our advantage without necessarily having reasons for that conclusion or even having the necessary capacity to grasp the reasons for that belief due to the complexity of the subject and our preoccupation with some other pertinent matters. For this reason, I prefer the externalist because they seem to attribute knowledge to whatever is produced by a given reliable process such as truth trackers or experts. Having preferred externalism, I think I need to defend it, that is precisely what I shall be doing in following paragraphs.

It has been said, the so called reliable processes or belief forming mechanism are vague (see Pojman 147). Externalist themselves (at least Goldman, see 395, Strong and weak justification) gave an answer to this question, they say, any process that produces high percentage of truths is reliable. To substantiate the vagueness of this process Pojman asks something like the following: what is the percentage needed to make a given process a reliable one (see, Pojman P147). I think this question is legitimate one. In answering this question, I can relay on my general background. In science, statistics and surely in Engineering there are percentage of error that are allowed, and there are certain percentage of error that are not allowed because they make the processes in question unreliable. For instance, the polls or the statistical analysis usually tolerate certain percentage of error, say 5%, they are roughly willing to make errors in their predictions 5 percent of the time, so as to be correct, say 95% percent of the time. Thus, the percentages that make a given process reliable are determined by pertinent subjects such as Statistics and Engineering, and it is outside the province of philosophy to specify what makes a given process a reliable one.

It has been suggested that externalism abandons, rationality and accessibility. The latter had been discussed before. However, I do not think that externalism drops rationality, bur rather regards it as part of the reliable processes that enable one to form beliefs, nevertheless, externalism does not regard reason alone to be the process that enables one to convert true beliefs into knowledge, some other reliable processes, externalism recognizes, could convert true beliefs into knowledge, for instance, ordinary watches functioning in normal circumstance are reliable belief forming mechanisms (see Pojman 143). Externalists do require people to have some basis or grounds for their process, as Goldman clearly stresses, reliable processes do not appear from nowhere or out of the blue, in fact externalist require people to form their beliefs in a suitable fashion to be determined by their specific topics( see Goldman, 395).Thus, externalists do not drop rationality or reason, but relax the accessibility requirement, that is, they do not require people to have access to the reasons or the grounds that support their beliefs, so long as the belief in question is formed by reliable process.