2.
I, Fatin Hasnaa bt Azmi former high schol student would like to give my opinions
and beliefs on the question number two for the MyPO 2022 essay writing competition. I
would rst de ne the sentence above thoroughly.
First, I would like to give the de nition of the phrase in the question. Letʼs take on
the word ʻknowledgeʼ itself. What is knowledge? Is knowledge just something you know or
believe? Everyone can have false beliefs so does just believing is enough or is truthfulness
important as well? Based on the Cambridge Dictionary, knowledge means the state of
knowing about or being familiar with something. That is the general meaning of knowledge.
In my opinion, knowledge can be very simple or very complex when you think about it
deeply. Most people would consider a teacher teaching in class as knowledge being given to
the students. But what about a mother teaching her kids swimming, cooking and some
other living skils? Does anybody have the requirement to be a person of knowledge or is it
only speci c person is accounted as a knowledgeable person? Knowledge itself could be
very general or very restricted. But when i comes to ʻproperʼ source of knowledge, it
doesnʼt come easily, you canʼt ask anybody on the street for proper knowledge. Based on
the Cambridge Dictionary, proper gives the meaning of showing standards or behaviour that
are socially and morally acceptable. So weʼre looking at socially and morally acceptable
knowledge. That phrase means that the knowledge has to be restricted and standardised by
the community and not just some random irresolute source. What makes you think that
person would give the right and standardised answer if he doesnʼt get the ʻproperʼ
knowledge? None of us are sure they are very moral themselves. The person you ask could
be a serial killer or a rapist which is surely unmoral of them. Thus, a group of people which
is a lot of personal backgrounds and maybe couldnʼt be considered as moral. If the group of
people is a group of religious people which have the same beliefs, then it can be only
consider as a proper sorce of knowledge. Same goes to a group of teachers that takes the
same course and did get THE standardised knowledge, then in my opninion, could be
regarded as the proper source of knowledge. However, the question is, how do they
ʻinteractʼ? Could it be that they ask each other questions then discuss? Or is it a person
demanding that the answer should be as what he beliefs? Interacting could happen in
various ways. Eye contact could be taken as an interaction as well right? Which form of
interacting is acceptable by the community? So to rephrase the sentence above, can
knowledge, which is an understanding and certainty of certain information that is produed
by a group of people interacting ( discussing, asking queestions, demanding ), be considered
as a socialy and morally acceptable source of knowledge?
And I totally disagree. No, knowledge that is produced when a group of people
interacting couldnʼt be considered as a proper source of knowledge. To discuss a proper
knowledge isnʼt simple. Weʼre looking at a knowledge that the society can accept, that is
logic to the mind and is true . Everything must have proofs, cause then, the society would
accept it without any arguments because the proof is undeniable. So letʼs say that the group
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of people are only discussing and then produce a fact that is unproven, unexperimented,
irrational, and impractical, I can con detally say that society wonʼt even take a glance at it.
Why? This is because not all testimony is trustworthy unless that testimony comes from an
expert on the topic in question, then we can say that the testimony is reliable. It is true that
in fact, most of us humans learn in life by taking someoneʼs testimony from the classroom,
books, videos and so on so forth which we apply to our beliefs. And as we all know, some
of us can have false belief, but none of us can have false knowledge because knowledge is
something that is proven and have evidence or scienti c explanation of certain questions
and observation. Thus, a knowledge requires eviedence, belief and truthfulness. Now back
to the group of people interacting, keep in mind that the people are random. They could
come from many religions, races and ages. Some can also have justi ed true belief. For
example, anti vaccine people guessed that if you take the vaccine, you will get a heart
disease. Then a person that already has a heart disease takes the vaccine and dies. And so
the anti vacine people have the justi ed true belief that the vaccine will cause people to
have heart disease without any scienti c proof of it. Like Edmund Gettier said, “You donʼt
know something if you simply stumbled into the right answer.” Therefore, chances are,
those people could have false beliefs and if the false beliefs is being considered a proper
source of knowledge, then everyone in this world would have false belief. To add on, us as
humans have emotions and feelings that sometimes can be uncontrolled and out of hand.
So when producing such proper nowledge isnʼt as easy as just a group of people which are
full of emotions interacting. Di erent people have di erent opninions and experience. Thus
the level of knowledge is di erent for each people because based on what John Locke said,
“No manʼs knowledge here can go beyond his experience”. Letʼs say me myself is looking
for a source of porper knowledge, i would de nitely refer to a high institutions and trusted
websites or a person of knowledge like a teacher. Therefore, I strongly disagree that the
knowledge produced by random people interacting could be a proper source of knowledge.
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The justi ed true belief will be passed from generations to generations.