The Knowledge That We Value the Most Is the Knowledge for Which We Can Provide the Strongest Justifications Essay

gEORGE c. MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL |
“The knowledge that we value the most is the knowledge for which we can provide the strongest justifications.” To what extent would you agree with this claim? |
Theory of Knowledge 2011-2012 |
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Honor Pledge ______________________________________________________________________

Annie Greenwood
Word Count: 1,428

“The knowledge that we value the most is the knowledge for which we can provide the strongest justifications.” To what extent would you agree with this claim?
When many people think about the knowledge that they have, it is usually on a basic level of presence or absence; you either know something or you don’t. But the depth of knowledge goes into a way deeper category than simply the presence of “knowing-that”. How do we know something and how does that coincide with how we can prove that claim? Our accuracy of knowledge and confidence of proving that knowledge is based on the justification that we have to support that category of knowledge. These examples of justification can be categorized by personal experience, secondary sources and emotion. These forms of justification interact and correspond with one another to create an ultimate conclusion that will result in a piece of knowledge.
In the question being analyzed, we are meant to find out how to determine the “knowledge that we value”. But what does it mean to value knowledge? Does something have to be true for us to value it? Knowledge is defined as acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience or report. But is this necessarily the same as truth? Truth is simply conformity with fact or reality. So technically, we can have knowledge about something that is completely untrue. Likewise, we can value something untrue. But what factors contribute the level of value that we have in our knowledge? This depends on the support we have for our claims. The more we can prove something, the more value it has. To me, as stated before,...