As humanists, we create our purposes in life and then striving to achieve them can, in itself, provide a sense of meaning. This meaning is derived from the good we do such as, relationship building, the quest for intellectual growth, effort for physical and mental development, the satisfaction of productive work, the enjoyment of creative or artistic pursuits, the influence we create within society, and work helping others when needed etc. But the meaning of these achievements are not driven by any outside authority rather we define the meaning of life by ourselves. We can summarize this meaning as, “The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose”. Obviously, this
To answer this question, we must first understand the two main terms, personal knowledge and shared knowledge. Personal knowledge can be knowledge that is personal to an individual, through the ways of knowing and examples could be knowledge from memory, habits and emotions. Knowledge can also be the work of a group of people working together either in concert or, more likely, separated by time or geography. This is known as shared knowledge. ("Theory of knowledge guide," n.d.) However, this definition is limited as shared knowledge can also be seen as knowledge shared by a group and not something people come up with together.
My definition of knowledge is a true fact or justified belief that is acquired through a persons experience and education. To a great extent, faith does play a role in deciding if knowledge we acquire has purpose and meaning in our lives however, sometimes faith does not play a role. Personal lives refers to our day to day life and how knowledge provides us with meaning and purpose in it. Its how we take shared knowledge and apply it to our individual perceptions and perspectives of our lives. Knowledge provides with the understanding of the world and gives us meaning in life.
It is the way we gain knowledge that shapes what we know rather than the knowledge itself. It is all about the way we understand and interpret things for that knowledge is known to be transitory. The term ‘knowledge’ is an extremely vast concept and it is not to be seen as an end product. To know something means to have a specific understanding of a certain subject. Purpose is what gives us an emotive or solid aim.
The importance of life experiences and knowledge means that adults wants to apply their knowledge to what they do and to be acknowledged for it. Biases, self identity and habits are defined from experiences. Readiness to learn refers to a person's need to learn in order to cope better with tasks and problems. The need for practical and applicable learning refers to applying what they are learning to their lives. Lastly, internal motivation refers to motivators like better quality of life, increased job satisfaction, incentives that motivates them.
Knowledge, both shared and personal, gives us a source of familiarity, individuality and meaning in our lives. Firstly, it is important to make a clear distinction between ‘shared knowledge’ and ‘personal knowledge’. Shared knowledge is the result of the combined information and understanding of many individuals. On the other hand, personal knowledge can be defined as the subjective knowledge of a particular individual, based on personal experiences and perspective. In this sense, it seems that shared knowledge has the capacity to shape personal knowledge to an extent.
One makes the claim that knowledge is used everyday for it to be applied to the world. I will discuss this through the areas of knowledge mathematics and history, with relation to the light-particle theory vs. light-wave theory debate as my real life situation. Firstly, it is important to determine what value knowledge has with application. The value of knowledge can be defined as its ability to be shared. The use of personal knowledge, whether it be abolition or implementation, influences the creation of shared knowledge.
My Purpose of Life We often question why we are placed on this planet or do we serve a greater meaning to the evolution of this generation. Life’s meaning is a question that no one can really put into one definition and that is because there is no one answer. Every person has their own set of goals that they plan to accomplish or at least attempt before they reach their deaths. Then there are values which would be something important and of worth to you. What you value could be meaningful to your life because you spent time perfecting it and protecting it.
In this world we live in, it revolves around knowledge and wisdom. As humans, we always crave for something more—more about things we know, knowledge about things we don’t know about. Therefore, we dig deeper to know more about ourselves, don’t we? Knowledge, as defined, is the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association. Every day that we face bears new experiences which we encounter for us to learn.
Knowledge claims are constantly being produced, all with varying content and significance. However, certain knowledge is considered to be more valuable than others. We believe that knowledge that is produced with difficulty is intrinsically superior to knowledge that is reached more easily. And while I do agree with his, I do so under the notion that we assess the difficulty of production of knowledge differently in different areas of knowledge and even within these areas themselves. It is also important to consider what our the valuing of knowledge looks like across different areas.