The Knower’s Perspective in the Pursuit of Knowledge
Being raised within the Christianity minority of Amman, Jordan and growing up in a Catholic private school, a large portion of my childhood was guided by the governing principle of blind obedience to our religious values, considered irrefutably true to my family and I. Once we moved to the United States, the refrain from the taboo concept of questioning God and his word, gradually began to diminish. Soon enough I began to wonder, to what extent does faith influence the pursuit of the validity of knowledge? And beyond that, to what extent does perspective play an active role in the pursuit of knowledge?
The pursuit of knowledge is largely dependent on its importance to the individual pursuing it and therefore, the values of each individual determine the extent to which they pursue different areas of knowledge. Examples of this occurrence of varying levels of knowledge exploration can be discovered when observing different groups of people throughout areas of knowledge such as the natural sciences, human sciences, and history. Largely governed by lifestyle, religious beliefs, and culture— each perspective can carry its own controversial level of pursuit of knowledge and often times, varying levels of validation of that knowledge.
Elaborating on the background knowledge I previously addressed, being raised within a religious minority, there was very prevalent cultural stigma against Christianity. Consequently, since our beliefs were repeatedly challenged by Muslims, the religious majority, rather than addressing those challenges or weakening or beliefs, our beliefs simply strengthened and our overall personal evaluation of our faith began to diminish. This is known as the “Backfire Effect”. This effect was studied by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in 2006 when they wrote fake newspaper articles about polarizing political issues. There were two sets of articles: the first was false, made up completely by the researchers, confirming a widespread misconception in American politics and the second corrected that misconception with accurate information. If the first article confirmed a particularly conservative belief, the results showed that conservatives tended to agree more with it while liberals tended to agree more with the second and vice versa. However, the most interesting aspect of this study was the conservatives’ reaction to being given the second article, disconfirming their previous notion that became supported by the original, false article. Rather than feeling discouraged in the initial knowledge they had so quickly accepted, they only felt more secure in their beliefs and stood by them much more adamantly. In the long run, the repeated occurrence of this effect only made people less skeptical and allowed them to hold their assumptions, true or false, with greater confidence. They found that the backfire effect strongly correlated with confirmation bias as well, which is our propensity to decipher new information in ways that correspond with our original beliefs. These concepts can be applied across most cultures in their interpretation of different areas of knowledge. By examining these attributes of our psychology, we can better understand why perspective makes such a large impact on what knowledge we pursue and to what depth.
How does cultural and/or religious perspective influence our interpretation of history? Through the evaluation of the ways in which history is taught and passed on across different cultures, this can be explored. I noticed this contrast between interpretations of historical events dependent upon cultural and religious backgrounds throughout several personal accounts. For instance, my friend Tosin is an African American and grew up with very socially aware parents. After studying America’s history of slavery, racial prejudice, and Jim Crow laws along with many others instituting segregation, we sequentially studied the Great Migration between 1916 and 1970. In school we were taught that the Great Migration was simply that, the migration of African Americans from the rural American South attracted to the more desirable economic opportunities of the North. However, as Tosin later explained to me, she had grown up learning that these African Americans were not drawn by a centripetal force, but a centrifugal one. As far as she understood, these African Americans were refugees of systematic and at the time, legal, racism in search of relief. The way the Great Migration is taught from the perspective of the American school system versus the way it is taught by African American families greatly differ in the way the event is interpreted, both adopting an implicit bias. Furthermore, religious faith has a similar impact on the interpretation of history. When learning about the Crusades —the holy war conducted by the Pope during the medieval period—in the Catholic school I previously attended, its damage on the Muslims and Jews in the seizure of Jerusalem was greatly minimized. Contrastingly, when relearning the same historical event at a public school, a large amount of blame was placed on the Catholic church for the harm imposed onto those other religious groups. Presenting yet again, implicit cultural bias. The way we interpret knowledge is largely dependent upon our religious and cultural backgrounds which in turn, determine the extent to which we pursue knowledge that may or may not support our preconceived notions.
Language, a means of acquiring knowledge, can reveal which aspects of knowledge are prioritized by the speakers of that language through its inclusion of specific words and concepts. For example, in Brazil, the Pirahã tribe has been the focal point of linguistic research for analysts worldwide. The Pirahã language lacks recursion, when a linguistic rule can be applied to the result of the application of the same rule, which has been globally accepted as the basic principle of language. Linguists have studied this to better understand the differing ways in which the Parahã view the world. The lack of recursion, as well as a past and/or future tense in the language suggests that the Pirahã live day to day life “in the moment”, finding actions outside of current happenings to be irrelevant. Additionally, they do not address quantitative amounts in numbers, but rather limit their quantifications to terms no more specific than “few” or “many”. In order to further study this unusual trait of the language, Peter Gordon asked a group of Pirahã speakers to remember whether he had put three or eight nuts in a can and discovered that these people did not have an ability to determine exact numbers. Through further analysis of this discovery, Gordon could concur that the lifestyle of the tribe simply did not demand a use for mathematics. The same goes for the absence of specific terms for colors. By examining the Pirahã language we can infer that their habitual behaviors did not require these certain qualities of specification and therefore that knowledge was not pursued. In another example on nearly opposite ends of the world, Russians use verb systems in various dissimilar ways than we do in English. The most significant grammar difference is that usage is based on whether the action is completed or not. Similar to the way that language is presents the emphasis or disregard of certain aspects in a culture like the Pirahã, Russian suggests that the Russian people emphasize completion of tasks in their speech and daily lives. This theory can be supported when considering that in order to be able to consistently distinguish whether or not a task has been completed in everyday speech, one must actually make the knowledge of status of that task available to them, allowing them to subconsciously search to identify completion of tasks on a regular basis. In these examples, the perspective of the knower was significantly influenced by the language they employ, leading them to either pursue or neglect knowledge conducive to meeting the grammar requirements of that particular language.
Across numerous areas of knowledge and through the various ways of knowing, it is evident that religious, cultural, and lifestyle backgrounds are active roles in determining our perspectives and therefore the extent to which we pursue knowledge to either validate or negate our preconceived beliefs.
Bibliography
McRaney, David. “The Backfire Effect.” You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney, 20 July 2015, youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/.
History.com Staff. “Great Migration.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2010, www.history.com/topics/black-history/great-migration.
Bredow, Rafaela von. “Brazil's Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time – SPIEGEL ONLINE – International.” SPIEGEL ONLINE, SPIEGEL ONLINE, 3 May 2006, www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/brazil-s-piraha-tribe-living-without-numbers-or-time-a-414291.html.
Sumerset, Laurianne. “English and Russian: Similarities and Differences.” English And Russian: Similarities And Differences, Laurianne Sumerset, www.languagesoftware.net/blog/english-and-russian-similarities-and-differences/.