Shared Knowledge Vs Personal Knowledge

Knowledge and the acquiring of knowledge today has become more important than ever. The two primary sources of knowledge are methods of inquiry, rationalism, or through experience and circumstance, empiricism . The interaction between these two forms of knowledge means that knowledge itself can be induced or influenced, thereby being ‘shaped’. The question of how shared knowledge affects personal knowledge is rather subjective and is dependent on how one defines shared and personal knowledge. I define personal knowledge as the knowledge acquired through one’s own experience and understanding and shared knowledge as the knowledge that arises as the product of more than one individual or the product of one individual that has been vetted, cross

An example is the case of the solar system during the 16th century when most people believed in the church backed Ptolemaic system which was a geocentric view of the universe. It was only when Copernicus published his book ‘Commentariolu’ , that the scientific authority of the church was questioned. Through his ingenuity and foresightedness, we now have the basic model of the solar system. Due to the fact that knowledge within the scientific community is always subject to change and just like in the case of astronomy in 16th to 17th century, what is considered right by society today is always subject to changes in the future. Due to objective nature of the sciences, once a theory is correct and accepted all other theories on the issue are immediately discarded. Similarly, the definitions of neuroplasticity stated by natural science are subject to change, which is a factor that affects the above claim as it challenges the validity of the research. This means that due to the paradigm shifts that take place within the natural sciences someone’s personal knowledge does have a chance or the power of inducing and influencing the shared knowledge of the

Religious Ethics area is concerned with the meaning of religion for the lives of persons and the ordering of societies, and, therefore, with problems of the good life, justice, and the common good. As a young child how do you decide what is right and what is wrong? From a young age I was told to obey both civil and religious law as that was the right thing to do and that stealing is the wrong thing to do as that is against the law. As a Hindu I was told to treat others or other beings the way I wanted to be treated as it was mentioned in a holy text , which resulted in me avoiding meat till this day. The moral principles that affected my decision-making in my later years were instilled to me as a child. I was told to listen to my parents, elders and my religious texts. My personal knowledge today that I carry with me as a young adult is the result of my parents instilling the shared knowledge of society around me when I was younger.

Ethics just like the natural sciences however is subject to paradigm shifts. The constant shift in ethics is called moral relativism. Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others . Although rare this is true within Religious Ethics as well. Homosexuality was widely condemned by the