Should a knower's personal point of view be considered an asset in the pursuit of knowledge, or an obstacle to overcome?

-- ashley park (contradicktion@excite.com), July 28, 2002

Answers

Big question! One classic book on this in the philosophy of science is Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1958), a book based on Polanyi's 1951-1952 Gifford Lectures at the Universt of Aberdeen. Another classic, in the field of education, is Parker Palmer's To Know as We are Known: A Spirituality of Education (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983). I would answer the question differently depending on whether knowledge is to be pursued in the realm of the impersonal, the interpersonal, the intrapersonal, or the transpersonal, each of which have their epistemological traditions. As a clinical psychologist interesed in knowing my clients, I'd say their personal perspective is absolutely essential.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), July 28, 2002.

I think you'll find that this is one of the the central issues in the approach known as hermeneutics (roughly, the study of interpretation). Hemreneutics began as the study of biblical and legal interpretation, but spread in the 19th-century to historical and literary interpretation, and in the 20th to all kinds of interpretation, including scientific. The most inflential hermeneutic theorist in the 20th century has probably been Hans-Georg Gadamer (see esp. his _Truth & Method_), a one-time student of Martin Heidegger. There is also an excellent collection of historically-important readings edited by Mueller-Vollmer called _The Hermeneutics Reader_.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), July 29, 2002.

In my opinion,human tend to become emotional knowers. this is because they have high propensity to make a generalizations and to the certain extent most of thier views are not proven so. Thus they will tend to defend their personal view and reluctant to accept other people view. Otherwise, we are bound with our own values, knowledge, religion theory that definitely contradict to other peoples personal view. As an independent and unbiased thinker we should not justify through belief because we have to look things on different angles and personally each individual are different and unique in their own sense.

-- akagi (akagi83@hotmail.com), September 11, 2002.