The 4 Ways of Knowing

THE 4 WAYS OF KNOWING

REASON

PERCEPTION

LANGUAGE

EMOTION

The 4 ways of knowing provide humans with the source and the ability to gain knowledge on the world and what is occurring around them. We use these methods mainly subconsciously and prominently when we are children and only beginning to learn from our surroundings. Firstly, and the most obvious way of knowing, is perception. We observe our surroundings using our senses of hearing, touching, seeing and smelling to analyze our surroundings. This can be flawed for often our sense of perception is pre-conceited and biased and what we perceive and see might not be what is true. Next, there is language as a way of gaining knowledge. This leaves little room for personal bias, and even though language is very subjective, it is at the same time rule governed and therefore the basis for human communication of information. We accept what we are told, and we also excpet the reality that language provides us with, and consider this knowledge. Furthermore, emotion is one of the ways of knowing, and it is the one that we tend to rely on when making decisions, especially ones under pressure. Our emotions give us our intuition and our knowledge on what is right or wrong, and once we learn and adapt our morals from our parents, they often become embodied as part of our emotional knowledge, and we use this to gain even more knowledge. For example, we see a murder happening, and because we learned that murder is wrong through emotional ties, we know to tell someone what happend and condemn that action as immoral. Lastly, almost opposite to emotional knowledge aquiring, is reason. Reasoning is the ability to make conclusions accorfing to what we already know to increase our knowledge.