Essay+Title+1

Can we have beliefs or knowledge which are independent of our culture? Knowledge issues brainstormed in class. (//Be aware that these knowledge issues in some instances need reworking)//
 * ESSAY TOPIC 1**
 * Is it possible for culture to limit our interaction with knowledge?
 * To what extent can humans use reason independently of their culture?
 * Does culture influence our emotions and therefore the way we structure our beliefs?
 * To what extent does culture affect our reasoning?
 * To what extent does culture influence our reasoning?
 * To what extent can knowledge be gained independent of culture?
 * To what extent does culture influence language and hence or acquisition of knowledge?
 * To what extent can knowledge be distinguished from culture?
 * To what extent does language act as a medium for the acquisition of knowledge and cultural beliefs?
 * Can culture act as a way of knowing?
 * To what extent are our beliefs the product of our culture?
 * To what extent does culture affect the beliefs we draw from evidence?
 * To what extent does our cultural framework limit/affect/ influence the acquisition of knowledge?
 * To what extent can belief/ knowledge be independent of culture?
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">To what extent is language influenced by culture and therefore acts as a barrier to knowledge?
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">To what extent is knowledge in Mathematics and Natural Sciences independent of culture?
 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Is knowledge in the Human Sciences a manifestation of culture?


 * <span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 19px;">The ideas about question 1 that follow are from **

<span style="font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 23px;">[]

<span style="color: #cc6600; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 23px;">You must reference this website if you use the ideas that follow.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">My gut instinct leads me first to attempt to define culture — roughly perhaps as 'that which is cultivated as a pattern of behaviour in a group of humans over time, and the manifest fruits of that pattern'. This would presumably include manifestations like the arts as well as structural behaviours such as organisational ethos.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I think the next thing to look at is that naughty little word, 'independent'. These days, it implies separation or lack of relation between two entities. It can also mean that there is no clear relationship and hence we can imagine the two entities (in this case, culture vs beliefs/knowledge) to have little to do with each other.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">To me the obvious argument is this: culture is a pattern (or the results of such a pattern) formed from human intellectual activity. Human intellectual activity tends to be based on beliefs or knowledge, which in turn are developed from information constructed out of data. Or you might say human intellectual activity constructs beliefs/knowledge from information constructed from data. This data is obtained from sensory perception and the interactions of various organs (such as the brain and various chemical factories like the adrenal glands).None of this activity requires culture. However, once enough humans get together to develop culture(s), no matter how we define culture, it will act as a feedback input to human intellectual activity.This is why I would argue that you can indeed have beliefs or knowledge independent of culture.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Georgia','serif'; font-size: 16px;">However, a number of fairly bright people have claimed otherwise. There is a counter-case to be made here.Most of the stuff a baby learns through language or other forms of experience is mediated heavily by environment. This means that if a well-defined culture is present, it will colour the learning experiences of young humans. This is true even of older humans exposed to a well-defined culture — we call this acculturation (humans 'converted' by culture) or cultural propagation (culture 'converting' humans).If this is taken to the extreme, everything we believe or know is believed or known in terms that have been mediated by our cultural filters. Not many people have no cultural filters/lenses at all, or can function while effectively neutralising any filters they might have. Yet, I still think that such cultural influences must be in some sense known (i.e. they are knowledge, whether consciously or subconsciously attained) before they make your knowledge-construction or belief-construction processes dependent on them.