Which sources of knowledge do you consider to be the most trustworthy? (eg. books, web sites, the media, personal experience, authorities etc). Why? This is getting to me!! 
Your own observation and a range of books which cover different viewpoints on a particular subject.
If you need to use the media, checking against different sources is always good, or seeing how it is being reported in different countries can also help, as long as they are not to similar to your own.
None of them are reliable. Even your senses can be decieved with drugs and lunacy.
I kinda assumed he wasn’t looking for an epistemological definition.
Although +slightly+ biased towards the socialist libertarian wordview of Chomsky, I heartily recommend medialens.org especially if you’re British. Subscribe to their Media alerts.
Do you think that getting various sources on the same subject is more reliable than personal experience?
Are you asking, what are the most reliable sources for an essay?
For me, there isn’t any.
I, myself, read books, however i still have my doubts. Some call me paranoid but think for a while…
The media: They are actually companies who sell image, the truth will only be broadcast if it brings them some sort of ‘reward’. Channels, magazines, newspapers, they are all inclined to a certain view and they must keep the identity for that’s how people identify them.
Website: you can have loads of rubbish. I could if i wanted, to post something saying that Saddam killed my Iraqi family… well, it’s not true, but who controls it? However, the lack of control means that things that can’t get to the public, either because they are censored or due to lack of money, have a way of showing the truth.
Personal experience: People look at events differently. All that i’ve been through is from my own perspective. Probably i tend to look at things differently from a… say… right wing soldier.
Authorities: I personally don’t trust them. They are the ones who censor everything, they need to keep themselves trust worthy so they can’t always tell the truth about things… also they have interests (diplomatic maybe) that we don’t.
Books: Well, that depends. My mum used to say ‘history is written by those who won’ which means that u basically gets one side of the story. As i said before, many books, documents, music, poety are being censored at this very moment is many places of the world (including britain and america of course). If i were you i could read many books of the same subject but from many points of view. I’m very interested in Russian history and we know that what really happened inside the Soviet Union is still not certain. But there are different sources. I’ve read 2 books about the revolution written by 2 different american historians. Their views were very similar but one ‘supported’ Kerensky and the other was a bit more factual. Of course it wasn’t enough, so i read one from a british author and another, written by Trotsky himself. After reading other texts and articles I realized that you can’t rely in one single source
consider: much of what we typically say we know we learned in school, at least the “facts”. In this case, we are put in this position of trusting the teacher, who in turn has trusted her teachers, etc. For example, insofar as the empirical sciences are concerned, none of us really has an empirical basis for the belief in these theories insofar as we have never ourselves conducted the given experiments that lead to the given conclusions.
in short, there is a high emphasis on “trust” and the basic assumption that the books we read are “telling the truth” and not decieving us, either intentionally or simply through ignorance.
on the other hand, as common citizens, in most cases we are not in a position to postulate alternate theories to the ones that we learn: we are not willing, or able, to conduct experiments that might plausibly refute the findings reported to us in, for instance, biology class. We are not able to list and classify the animal and plant kingdom, for example; it simply is beyond the capability of any one human being to do this. Moreover, even should we engage in such research, there will be other areas in which we will remain more or less ignorant if we assume that we must ourselves, as individuals, verify the empirical truth of a given theory.
Hence, we are generally not in a position to refute or replace the theories and ideas fed to us in our schooling.
One path that is open is one of passive resistance. Instead of asserting the truth of the doctrines transmitted through compulsory education, we can simply say, with all seriousness, “I dont know.”
One example could concern the theory of evolution. Certainly the theory seems to make some degree of sense, and purports to explain a great deal. Additionally, there seems to be good evidence to support this theory. However, this does not mean that it must be dogmatically accepted as some sort of ultimate explanatory mechanism, as it often is today. The common response to the rejection (failure to accept) of evolution is: “So you’re a creationist?” But it is of course possible to believe in niether of these theories with any degree of conviction; again, it is certainly possible to respond “I dont know.” Moreover, though we are naturally inclined to have opinions on these matters, it seems as if the “I dont know” response to these complex, theoretical questions is probably the appropriate response for most (if not all) human beings.
Sorry, but that’s rubbish. You don’t just trust teachers, you need many sources to study, and you teacher had many sources too. Is not a ‘mouth to mouth’ learning scheme.
“You don’t just trust teachers, you need many sources to study, and you teacher had many sources too. Is not a ‘mouth to mouth’ learning scheme.”
—well, that’s obvious enough. but the point, if you read the rest of my post, concerns the fact that we ourselves typically do not engage in the research ourselves. For example: We read the history, but don’t write it. The case is more obvious with natural sciences. We don’t go out into the world, disect animals, etc. We read about it, and trust that the information we recieve is reliable. Or perhaps we don’t.
—on a side note, isolating one phrase apart from its context is an excellent way to find a view that you can easily criticize, but it is a rather poor technique of understanding, and criticizing, the view that is actually put forth.
But we did experiments in school, dessections etc, which let us explore things for oursleves. These count as personal experience. Do you think it’s possible for us to be deceived in such situations?
And about books… The more books that agree on something, the more likely it is that the information on that something is true?
damn it! I had a big long post with points and wit and everything and it got erased!! Annoying…
Meh, I don’t have anything better to do, I’ll rewrite what I remember.
Clementine, I’ve found that paranoia is alot more realistic (and safe) then trust.
Now, about the issue of sources of information. Now if you’re going for what sources you can trust, then I would go for personal experience. You may not be able to trust yourself completely, but you can trust yourself alot more then anything else. Don’t ignore the other sources, though. Read all the books you can, visit all the web pages you can, and draw your own conclusions. That will be the truth, to you, no matter what anyone else says.
If you’re going for the sources with the most information in them, I’d again go for personal experience, though for different reasons. The experience of someone else or yourself has not only the factual information, but can inform you of how the person was feeling, thinking, so on. Next in line, in my opinion is the internet. It has it over books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, if only because of it’s sheer size. It’s more conveniant; you can get alot more information in alot less time and effort. It has information that you might not find anywhere else.
That’s just my thoughts. They were better before they got erased, stupid computers…
true knowledge in the sense that you can describe something meaningful doesn’t exist. true knowledge is beyond definitions, categorisations and efforts at description. knowledge beyond saying that something is 3 metres will be lacking in accuracy and thus completeness. it’s a hopeless task, but that’s not a problem since one shouldn’t hope for it. the urge for naming, calling and “defining” things is related to the need for control and the conception that there actually exist something like autonomic humans (which excludes the possibility that there actually is no such thing as ‘you’ or ‘I’ and that “we” simply “are” part of what is). what we do know, however, is that “we all” share something meaningful. the essence of being. “we” can’t describe this essence. it’s beyond “our” vocabulary and all those sorts of perception-tools. so, “humans” can never obtain any true meaningful knowledge beyond the living energy “we” experience/“are” part of but can’t describe through vocabulary only feel.