Book | Series 5: Knowledge

Description

The course teaches you about the knowledge that acts as the basis for our thoughts, emotions and actions. We explore how knowledge is created, structured and modified over time. We explain why knowledge appears in the mind as thought.

INTRODUCTION

In this series we explore the creation of knowledge as the recording of sensation by perception. This leads us to understand that the knowledge we capture is a snapshot of perception. We then comprehend the acquisition of knowledge over time, making reference to the process having been taking place since we were born. This enables us to refine our understanding of knowledge, and state knowledge to be the totality of past perception.

Knowledge, recorded at an instance of time, is a snapshot of perception. We refer to the snapshot of perception, once it has been recorded into memory, as a knowledge fragment. Each knowledge fragment exists as a representation of the what one perceived. We discuss the activity of thinking as the means of organising the fragments of knowledge into a coherent whole, which we refer to as ‘the structure of knowledge’.

We explore the process of organising knowledge fragments in detail. We state that once a relationship between physical objects has been identified in perception (e.g. we see a bird with green feathers), the knowledge fragments that represent those perceptions are associated together in memory (to form an understanding that birds have green feathers). Our ability to identify relationships through perception comes from the knowledge we have already gathered and organised. This shows us that the identification of relationships produces knowledge, and our ability to identify those relationships is determined by the knowledge we have. Thus, the process of identification and knowledge acquisition is an indivisible movement: perception and knowledge are an interoperable system.

We discuss the process of identifying relationships in more detail. We state that the most significant feature of the object we are trying to identify is used to create a possible identification of the object, we then assess that possibility against all the other associations we relate to such an object. The more associations we can confirm, the greater the likelihood that what are perceiving is what we think it is.

We state that once thought has identified what it is perceiving, it is able to interpret what it is perceiving according to what it knows about that thing. This is necessary as the present moment we perceive is always unknown. The mind has to continually interpret what it sees according to what it knows to enable it to understand what is happening and act accordingly.

We explore how the perceptive relationships that form knowledge into a structure, result in knowledge forming itself into a hierarchical structure. For instance, birds have feathers, and birds are animals, We explain the significance of the hierarchical structure in the minds ability to identify what it is perceiving.

In addition to the acquisition of new knowledge, we discuss the minds ability to modify the knowledge it already has. We discuss thinking to be the process that brings knowledge into the mind (as thought) and modifies it. We understand the appearance of thought to be the expression of knowledge modifying itself. We discuss the significance of the mind being able to observe the process of thinking: as knowledge is modifying itself, the mind can be aware of what has been modified and what it has been modified into. This shows us that it is possible for knowledge to be aware of itself.

We discuss knowledge being explicit (appearing in the mind as thought and feeling), and implicit (influencing our thoughts, feelings, and actions without appearing explicitly). We develop the concept of knowledge being constructed in layers, and state that the foremost layers appear explicitly as thought, while the layers that precede them influence our thinking implicitly. The combination of knowledge being built in layers, and thought being explicit or implicit, establishes the notion of visibility: the visibility of knowledge. We state that new layers hide the layers that precede them, making the preceding layers implicit. We then demonstrate the inverse approach to expose hidden layers, stating that when we remove the foremost layers, the layers that precede them transition from an implicit state to an explicit state (appearing once again as thought). This approach enables us to readdress some conditioned behaviour that had been hidden for many years that is no longer working for us.