In looking at three components of faith, I will put forward three elucidations in subsequent blogs.
Faith in a thing requires three essential elements.
- Having knowledge a thing exists
- Believing its existence is valid
- Trust by action.
So what do these things mean? Let’s look at the first: Knowledge
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand. – Frank Herbert
Knowledge is to see something as valid and applicable. It is functional information. The attributes, or ontological aspects, of anything, are what makes it unique or separate from all other things. This is directly opposite, or antithetical, to belief.
Immanuel Kant proposed that there are two sources by which we obtain knowledge.
- A Posteriori — Information gained through empirical observation, introspection, or inference.
- A Priori — Information gained independently of experience.
When I say experience, I mean by direct observation through our senses and not through another actor. I can watch a TV program, sit in a lecture, or have a drink at the end of a bar and experience another actor relating their experiences. This is not a direct experience because the actor interprets the event or observation according to their view of reality—their a posteriori knowledge. There is no absolute universal truth to compare their testimony or gauge the level of introspection. Yet, knowledge is gained, and the validity of that knowledge cannot be measured by truthfulness, only by trial. Wisdom speaks to when action should be taken or not, without the trial of experience—don’t fight a land war in Asia. Sound advice, wives’ tales or folklore, and the proverbial horse’s mouth are a priori examples. Knowledge is valuable information applied, but all information is not valid.
The validity of information is dependent on its use or function. A conscious entity can only determine functional information. Human, biological, or machine languages are sets of instructions—information, to perform a specific function. All other information is descriptive and meaningless without a relevant functional structure derived by an intelligent agent. Like in any language, an intelligent agent explicitly organizes bits of information to convey knowledge. A computer programmer uses bits of information specifically arranged to direct a machine to carry out a directive.
For Kant, all knowledge arises from experience but is not necessarily derived from it. We experienced the class where we learned 2 + 5 = 7, where the principal understanding of mathematics was conveyed and not derived from our introspection. This paper, including the research that went into it, is also an example of a priori knowledge. Science types use a posteriori knowledge through experiments, confirming or verifying a priori knowledge. We use introspection to judge the validity of knowledge without condemnation. Because we use knowledge to seek purpose, a posteriori introspection weighs information to find its relevance. It’s the conveyance of functional information, often with nonfunctional components organized by relevance, to suit a purpose.
So what does this say about knowledge?
Knowledge is the psychological result of perceiving information, learning from it, and reasoning its functionality.
The more I know about life a priori, the more I understand the limits of a posteriori.