Perceiving and Knowing

What does it mean to perceive? To perceive, one must do the work, given new information, to interpret and organize that information into something that makes sense. This requires one to make connections and establish how it corresponds to what you know. Many factors contribute to what one makes of the information, culture and personal bias, consciously or not, take part in creating one’s perception. For example, if a student walks into class and all his peers are franticly dashing about the room looking at various papers and reading from the textbook, that student may perceive, given the situation he sees, that there is going to be a pop quiz in class. The way one perceives any situation may not always be correct, but perception is a building block in the foundation of cognition. It allows for each person to establish his or her individual ideas, to take information in their own way, seeing, hearing, smelling, and so on.
“I know,” is an extremely common response in conversation, whether it be regarding parents disciplining children or teachers reprimanding lazy students, these five letters signify the significance of knowledge. Knowledge is understanding information universally accepted as true. Once one is given the hard facts, and there is no room for interpretation, one gains knowledge. Knowing is the conscious process of taking in information that is established as true. Many psychologists who focus on the study of intelligence consider basic knowledge a key aspect in defining intelligence. General knowledge that most people are expected to have are facts such as the number of legs on a horse or the meaning of a given word.
Contrary to perception, knowledge is not subjective, it does not matter what you “think” something is; it just is. Both knowing and perceiving are conscious cognitive processes that require one to take in information. To gain knowledge is to understand and apply the information one learns into life, perception is making sense for oneself of the new information. One’s perception of a situation, for example, can be incorrect to what is actually occurring. This is because to perceive is to use one’s own brain to create the idea, and one may not see something vital in a situation. Knowledge, like one gains in school, is very objective, there is a correct and incorrect answer, but one cannot have an incorrect perception, the information one derives from that which was interpreted can be incorrect, but perceiving uses one’s own mind, each individually. When personal ideas or biases get in the way of the information it is perceived and no longer knowledge.
Since these two mental processes are a key element to what makes one human, is it possible to have one without the other? To know something may have begun with a perception of the information, but one must put aside personal interpretation when in regards to the proven facts that make up “knowledge.” For example, often times the homework given on the day of an exam is to begin reading the next assigned chapter in the text. The initial read-through for the student involves a lot of perception in putting concepts together to create clear ideas of what the text is trying to say. A second read-through the next night may involve some knowledge since he is familiar with the terms and he may begin to establish the connections with previously learned concepts thus creating knowledge of the subject.
Knowledge to some may seem like a daunting term, London taxi drivers’ ability to navigate throughout the extremely intricate and confusing system of roads and locations of buildings is referred to as “The Knowledge.” There is an unspoken bias in knowledge, for no one person can be right. Information is attained every day and new ideas and thoughts are formulated and change what is widely accepted by humans. There can be no “definite knowledge” one may be close and have data to prove his point, but there is no telling what the future might hold for that subject area. There are people referred to as “know-it-alls” who believe they have knowledge of everything, but that in itself is incorrect since they do not take into account that knowledge is ever-changing, growing, and expanding. There is no superiority to any one type of knowledge, whether it be historical or scientifically proven, or an ancient epic poem passed down from generation to generation. More important than raking knowledge is accepting that there are no walls around it, while still seeing the line where your personal opinion interferes with the generally accepted information. One may believe his perception is truth, but that would be allowing personal bias to stand in the way of knowledge. No one way of knowing is better than another.