Do We Really Know Anything?: A Philosophical Article

By Jason DeShaw

            Do we really know anything?  You are probably saying to yourself, "Sure, I know lots of things," but do you really?  How much do you really know?  How did you come about to learn these things that you know?  Did you read them in a book?  Did you see it on TV?  Did your parents tell you?  Is what you know true?

            To go about answering some of these questions, we must first define what it is to know something.  "To Know," as I'm going to define in this article, is having the knowledge of something and for you to know it is true.  After all, to know something, it must be true.  For example the statement, "I know I have three legs," isn't true.  I don't know that.  What I do know though, is that I don't have three legs.  Often things are more complicated than this, which brings up another question, how do you know something is true?

To know without a doubt that something is true, you must have physically experienced it yourself.  By physically, I mean you must have seen it with your own eyes or touched it with your own body or heard it with your own ears and so forth.  If you have not done this, you cannot say that something you know is absolutely true.

So what exactly am I getting at with this stuff?  Well here is an example.  I could state that The North won The American Civil War.  This seems like a perfectly logical and true statement, but do I really know that?  I've read it in countless books and seen it in countless movies, but do I really know that’s what happened?  In actuality, I don't.  I really have no idea who won The Civil War, or if there even was a Civil War to begin with.  I wasn't there.  I didn't see it.  For me it is as if it never existed, so who knows if it is just some fabrication or not?

About now you are probably thinking, "Wow Jason, you're an idiot," and I wouldn't blame you.  When someone is just out there saying The Civil War never happened, it sounds pretty crazy.  Well first let me assure you that I am not crazy.  I am pretty positive The Civil War happened and that The North won.  The point I am trying to make though is that you really don't know, and you are basing your knowledge on trust.  Trust that what you have read in books and what has been told to you by teachers and others is true.  It is good to have trust in the world.  Without trust the world would be in shambles, filled with everyone second-guessing everyone.  You might think I am trying to tell you to stop trusting people and forget what you have learned.  This is definitely not what I am trying to accomplish.  Just for fun though, let's take out the "trust factor" for the rest of the article and see where it takes us.

            What I am trying to do is open your mind.  I am trying to make you see things in a different light then you have before.  It's not always good to just sit and consume everything that is fed to you.  Sometimes you need to open your mind to a different way of thinking.

I came up with the idea of this article while looking up at the stars.  They have always amazed me.  Just thinking that every single one of them is another sun, each with its own planets, each farther away then I will ever be able to go.  Then another thought came to my mind.  How do I really even know that they are stars?  Sure, I have been told that is what they are, but for all I know they could just be holes in a giant black sphere.  I believe they are stars and I believe they are far away, but do I know that?  No.  All I really know is that I'm looking up into the sky and seeing bright little dots shinning back at me.

Often there are things that go beyond our abilities to prove the truth of.  I myself cannot currently prove to myself that I'm looking up at stars.  If I really wanted, I could go ask scientists, physicists, and astronomers to show me things to convince me and build up a pretty hard case that those lights in the skies are indeed stars, but would I ever really know for a fact that they are?  At what point does the line of believing it to be true cross over into knowing it is true?

Let's go even further.  God.  No one truly knows if God exists or not.  Many people could make claims either way, but no one knows for sure.  The argument of, "God does exist," is just as strong as the argument of, "God does not exist."  What it all boils down to is what you believe to be true.  Since God is one of those things that (as far as I know) is impossible to prove that without a doubt exists or does not exist, no one will ever really know for sure until it can be proven.

    "A person is smart.  People are dumb.  Everything they've ever "known" has been proven to be wrong.  A thousand years ago everybody knew as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe.  Five hundred years ago, they knew it was flat.  Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it.  Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

-Agent K, Men In Black

            I'm sure you are probably laughing at the use of a Men In Black quote, but it makes perfect sense for the point I am trying to make.  You may think you know something to be true, but if you have not experienced it on your own, how do you really know?  People believed they were at the center of the universe because they were told so.  Same can be said with the earth being flat.  They trusted that what they were being told was true.  It wasn't until someone stood up and questioned what we were being told or what we believed, that what we knew changed.

            It always seems that we have such a good grasp on reality.  We think of how our civilization is now compared to fifty, a hundred, a thousand years ago and we think we've got everything figured out.  In another thousand years we will look back at ourselves now and realize how naïve we were to believe we had it all figured out.  Another thousand years after that, they'll be thinking the same about them.  I wonder if we'll ever have a grasp on what things are.

            So do we really know anything?  Of course we do, we know lots of things, you were right.  Does that mean you shouldn't open your mind to the possibility that you may be wrong?  Of course not, you should always be questioning what you know, by either reinforcing it or by proving it wrong.  Just because you have read it in a book or seen it on the news, does not mean that it is true.  Just because you think you know something, doesn't make it true.  If you never question what you think you know, you really won't know anything.

    "It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."

-Epictetus

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