Knowledge Requires Trust

Yesterday I asked the question, “What is it that makes trying to learn about and understand the world so unappealing to so many people?”

While I was writing the post I thought about a lot of things. For example, I thought about what I’ve learned about human beings’ tendency to value the present over the future. The benefits of learning aren’t always obvious. I’ve talked before about how things I learned in high school would come back to me ten or twenty years later when I had had some new experience that gave those things I learned a new relevance. I treasure those moments of rediscovery, but that’s a long time to wait for a payoff. I can understand why someone might not choose to make the effort required to get information into the safe deposit box in hopes that it will become valuable later.

I also thought about our resistance to change and our fear of the risk that comes from entering the unknown and embracing it. When the new things that we learn can not easily be assimilated into the beliefs we had before, we have to make some tough choices. We may have to admit we were wrong or give up beliefs and habits that have provided us security and enjoyment. I know about the links between meat consumption and climate change, for example, but it is really hard for me to incorporate that knowledge into my daily activities. So instead I often get into arguments with myself or expend effort trying to rationalize behavior I don’t complete support. If I didn’t know any better, I could avoid that.

Of all the things I thought about, though, there was one idea that hit me such that I had to write it down, because I don’t think I had ever put the thought quite this way to myself before:

Knowledge requires trust.

I think we all know this, but it can be so obvious that I think sometimes we gloss over it. The pragmatist philosophers like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey talked about the social nature of human knowledge. No one person personally experiences and verifies everything, so we rely on other people to do it. I have never been outside of the country, so when I talk to my students about Japan’s geographical relationship to Hawaii and China, I am trusting the mapmakers and authors whom I have read. My students have to trust the people who make our educational resources. They have to trust me. We all have to trust ourselves and our ability to make good decisions about where to place that trust.

Well, once again I will state the obvious: trust is hard. And when it comes to knowledge about the world, it is very difficult to establish where to place that trust. There is no one central authority on any subject; instead we are exposed to a cacophony of competing sources and we have to work our way through the noise. I often cite the old adage that you should never ascribe to malice what you can explain by incompetence, but the fact of the matter is that there is plenty of both in the world. And even the people who are competent and well-intentioned make mistakes. If you place the trust that is required to learn, you will get burned. If you try to learn a lot, you will probably get burned more often.

The reason I’ve been going over this in my head is that it opened up a way of thinking about the emotional aspect of learning and knowledge. We don’t just need to be intellectually ready to learn, we need to be emotionally ready. And there are people who, consciously or unconsciously, choose to limit the occasions in which they will make that leap and place their trust in something or someone outside of themselves. Those of us who believe in pragmatism or empiricism or whichever ism you want to call it need to keep that in mind and work on forming the bonds that will help our students and our neighbors go out on that limb with greater confidence and willingness.

About Dave Thomer

Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.

March 27, 2013 @ 1:18 pm

Education