diving bell essay

Andrew Cameron

Q: to what extent can we distinguish between knowing as a community and knowing as an individual? How much does one’s knowledge depend on interaction with other knowers?

Knowledge is some thing that can be either collective among people, or kept to a personal level.
Knowledge has both advantages and disadvantages to being an individual thing. When knowledge is a personal thing is mainly an empirical knowledge. For example, when some says that something is hot, it is their preference. However, you might have a higher tolerance or a lower tolerance that the other person. Only I know what I think is hot and no one else. However, even though individual knowledge has advantages, it does also have some disadvantages. For example, it is difficult be communicated or confirmed by others. It is difficult to explain to someone exactly how hot, cold, or painful something because each person has different thresholds for their own personal knowledge.
Knowing as a community has advantages and disadvantages. When we know as a community, we have the advantage of verifying and establishing knowledge with each other. This relation is used to create rules and laws. For example, we are taught that when you drive, a red light means to stop and a green light means to go. Without this collective knowledge, there is not any way that society can establish a code of law. Also, the community is used to ensure comfort to the ones who have knowledge because the community allows them to see that their knowledge may be valid with the knowledge of others I think that this is evident in “the diving bell and the butterfly.” Jean-Dominique likes to have the community around him because it gives him comfort from himself. This is why he hates Sundays because he is all alone on these days without any reassurance. Even though knowing as a community has its advantages, it also has disadvantages. Knowing as a community changes between different communities. This is seen by the travel between different cultures.
Knowing as a community and knowing as an individual are related, but cannot be confused with which is which. I think that we as people can distinguish between knowing as a community and knowing as an individual with ease. For example, we know as a community that green means to go and red means to stop. These kinds of rules and laws cannot be know on an individual level through empirical experience, but through education by the community since the community had made these rules. Individual knowledge is known through empirical experience because we know things on a personal level and through the use of our own senses. For example, “I know that the coffee is hot because I burnt my tongue when I drank it.” This knowledge that the coffee is hot is individual knowledge because I had to drink it to know how it felt. Of course I could have been told that the coffee was hot, but I would not know how hot I thought it was until I tasted it for myself.
When people are alone with themselves, they will only apply on the knowledge they gain on an individual level. This is because there is no reason for a person to have knowledge with the community when the only knowledge they need is knowledge that will benefit the individual. For people alone, there is no need to have knowledge as a community.
In both knowing as a community and knowing as an individual, I think that empirical knowledge is the most important way to gain and retain knowledge. It is also the most justifiable way to claim knowledge. I think this because with empirical knowledge, things are experienced with a firsthand view, which gives the knower how he/she is affected by the experience. When we use deduction we are making assumptions on a single case is based off of a belief. However, we may not know what the end result or that it is accurate on with what we assume it is. I think that the same thing applies with induction, which is when we make a general statement out of a specific example. This way to gain knowledge is not as valuable because it involves some belief. This is because we also assume things with induction. When we base a general statement off of a single specific thing, we are taking the risk that the specific example is a normal example and not some form of an abnormality.
Even though most knowledge can be gained through personal experience and ways that we perceive things, we cannot determine knowledge by acquaintance without interaction with other people. If there are no people to interact with then we cannot know how people react to things outside of what we react to. How can I say, “I know how Jim reacts to these things,” if I do not know Jim on a personal level. With this said, I cannot know what a typical reaction or response is to something without first knowing how other people react to an event.
In knowledge, knowing as an individual, and knowing as a community have both their advantages and disadvantages. As well as they can be distinguished apart from each other. Even though each type of knowledge is essential, you cannot live without knowledge on an individual basis. This is true because a single person cannot be unaware of his or her own thresholds.