Mike Dryden
October 28, 2008
Theology III

Three Kinds of Knowledge

There are three kinds of knowledge that we use to obtain information and analyze information every day. These three are experience, authority, and reason.

Experience
Knowledge from experience comes from our personal experiences, and enters the mind through the five senses. For example, I know that a lemon is sour because I have tasted it; I also know that fire is hot because I have felt its heat on my skin while sitting next to it on a cold winter night. Any knowledge you gain from sight, touch, taste, smell, or sound is experiential knowledge. Knowledge from experience can also be empirical knowledge: that is, knowledge that is gained from measuring something. For example, knowledge of how cold it is in the morning is gained by looking at a thermometer and measuring the height of the mercury in the thermometer.

Another View of Knowledge from Experience Authority
According the the RB, an authority is "simply a person who claims to have knowledge that I do not". Therefore, knowledge that comes from authority is knowledge that we gain by trusting sources who have had experiential knowledge themselves with things, places, or people that we have not. For example, I never personally met Pope John Paul II, but when a cardinal says that he was a kind and loving man, I trust his word even though I have no personal experiences with Pope John Paul II from which to gain knowledge. Knowledge from authority makes up most of the knowledge in our brains; if you don't believe this, think about all of the textbooks you have studied for school. All that you have learned from these textbooks is knowledge from authority; you trust that the authors are correct. However, the cost of this kind of knowledge is fear of the cost; you need to be open minded to believe knowledge from authority, which means being both unprejudiced and receptive.

Reason
Reason is the power to think in such a way that we proceed from what we know to what we do not yet know. According to Aristotle, there are two processes in reason: deduction and induction. According the the RB, deduction is "the power to draw a conclusion (new information) from two premises (statements we already believe are true)", and induction is "the power to make universal statements based on limited experience". Induction is also used to make universal assumptions about things with which we have limited experience or knowledge. An example of deduction would be reasoning that since SLUH is a school for young men, and Billy Joe goes to school, that Billy Joe must be a young man. An example of induction would be assuming that all flamingos are pink or white or orange, even though the only flamingos you have personally seen are the ones at the local zoo.


Stanford Analysis of Knowledge
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