Knowledge and Truth: What Do You Know?
February 8, 2001
A tall, slender seventeen-year-old girl walks in the locker room after an intensive workout during gym class. As she enters, the room seems to brighten with her confident and outgoing smile. She has a healthy-looking body without an ounce of fat, which is even more noticeable in gym shorts. To others, she seems to have everything going for her–almost perfect grades, lots of friends, artistic talent, and a promising future–and many classmates look up to her, wishing they had her life. But there is something they do not know. She suffers from a combination of two eating disorders called anorexia and bulimia nervosa. Around other people, she eats (little amounts, most of the time), but in secret, she rids herself of any and all food consumed through various purging methods. Why would a seemingly content teenage girl behave in such a manner? All in the name of thinness? Why would she risk her life in order to see a certain number on the scale or buy a particular size at the store?
I used to ask these questions all of the time last year as I watched my best friend struggle with anorexia and bulimia nervosa. As I talked more and more with her, I began to see how she viewed herself, the world, and the interaction of these two. Where I saw a thin and attractive girl, she saw a fat and dreadful human being. When I heard one of her nearly perfect performances, she heard those three out of tune notes. The difference in our views was in perception. In this situation, my perception of her size was more accurate than hers because she was looking at her body in relation to some idealized conception of what a "perfect" body should be while I was being more realistic.
As I try to understand perception, knowledge, and truth, many questions emerge. Is it just my friend and others with similar disorders who perceive things differently? Or do we all have areas in which we perceive something that goes against what is truly there? Does "perfect perception" exist? And if not, how are we assured of anything? Psychologists, scientists, philosophers, and others have asked similar questions, among others, in order to begin to grasp the ideas of perception, knowledge, and truth. By exploring questions related to these three concepts, we will begin to understand human potential and limits in knowledge and truth, which affect us daily.
One characteristic of perception I noticed in my best friend was attention to detail. She was aware of every flaw, knew each imperfection, and recognized every deficiency. Using that selective attention, she compared her body to the ideal perfect body that was in her schema. William James, in his article Attention (1892), calls this type of schema "preperception" where an ideal picture is in place before a perception can even take place. But schemas help us in normal circumstances, right? Where is it that this selective attention hinders us from seeing the truth?
Schemas are helpful because they make it easier for us to classify, categorize, understand, and relate different materials. Science often uses this concept. By means of selective attention, scientists label animals, placing them in categories such as kingdoms or species. Scientists examine animals, concentrating on slight differences, similarities, and various minute particulars. This becomes a problem when applied in life. If we focus on infinitesimal details, we run the risk of forgetting the larger picture. This "larger picture" can be intimidating because of the many connections and interdependencies saturating this world, but we cannot allow ourselves to take things out of context. Schemas and judgments tend to do this. As my best friend paid more attention to her flaws, she lost sight of herself as a human being. She valued herself only if she looked good in the mirror or saw that perfect number on the scale. Her schemas were dangerous and unhealthy, causing her to judge herself and her world based upon her "preperceptions."
If we take things out of context when implementing schemas, then how do we acquire knowledge about new materials, new ideas, new objects, etc? If the discovery does not fit within a pre-existing schema, how do we decipher its purpose and identity? Flexibility is the characteristic that makes this type of learning possible. Jacob Bronowski, in his lecture series The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, points out that this is one of the main differences between humans and machines. Machines have a capacity for great quantities of information, but they are limited in deductive reasoning. In contrast, humans learn from experience. The life of a machine is essentially stagnant, whereas the life of a human being is a progression in learning. We gather information from various events, put them together, and learn a completely different concept. For example, a young child learns that his pet is called a dog. He begins a schema that includes dogs: four legs, furry, slobbery, etc. Then, he sees a bear, but immediately classifies it as a dog. The logic in his schema still fits: four legs, furry, slobbery, etc. But after he finds out that bears and dogs are different animals, his dog schema is altered and a bear schema is added. This illustration displays the flexibility of the human mind. If a machine were given a similar problem, it would not be able to operate in such a manner.
But can we be sure that all of the new knowledge that we gain each year is accurate? We cannot be absolutely certain of all knowledge because of perception, limited knowledge, out-of-context analysis, personal judgments, and independency of all worldly things. But we can celebrate Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty that Bronowski identified in his lectures, which explores the possibility of understanding what we can and tolerating the fact that, as humans, we cannot know or understand everything.
My best friend is still in recovery, but she is beginning to see how her selective attention, perception, schemas, judgments, among other things had limited her ability to accept herself, learn from mistakes, and deal with life. As she continues to learn how perception, knowledge, and truth all function mutually, she will be able to let go of the eating disorder and seize more from her life.