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“Knowledge gives us a sense of who we are.” To what extent is this true in the Human

Sciences and Ethics?

Socrates once said, “To know, is to know that you know nothing.

That is the meaning of true knowledge” [1]. In similar vein, Ralph

Waldo Emerson once said, “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know” [1]. A great Indian

master, Nisargadatta Maharaj once quoted, “To know what you are, you must first investigate

and know what you are not” [2]. What were Socrates, Emerson, Nisargadatta hinting at?

Is there any such thing as ‘knowledge’ and if so, can this knowledge ever give us a sense of

who we are? Is there one concrete sense of ‘who we are’ that persists all throughout our lives

or is our sense of identity a montage of ever-changing psychological and behavioral

dynamics? Is the knower even capable of using ways of knowing to grasp a sense of who

he/she is? If so, which way of knowing is more trustworthy and which area of knowledge

should these ways of knowing be applied to, to get a better sense of who one is?

Human sciences provides a sense of how we behave in the social context but not a sense of

who we are at a personal level while Natural sciences while Thesis (….) I will be limiting

my areas of knowledge to Human Sciences and Natural Sciences.

Human Sciences, Psychology in particular, does attempt to answer questions about why and

how people think, feel, and behave as they do. In a sense, it does attempt to give humans a

‘sense of how they behave’ but it doesn’t really give us a sense of who we ‘are’. Let’s

consider Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience to authority. Stanley Milgram

was a Yale University Psychologist who, in the 1960s, conducted a series of obedience

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experiments to test that if an authority figure ordered one to deliver a 400-volt electrical

shock to another person, would one follow orders? [3]. When the same question was posed to

random Yale University students, it was predicted that only 3 out of 100 would deliver the

maximum shock. In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the

maximum shocks [4]. ‘Bystander effect’ is another monstrous revelation of abnormal human

behavior in social circumstances. The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others

hinder an individual from intervening in an emergency situation [5]. A recent case of the

bystander effect was the running over of 2 year old Chinese toddler twice as dozens just

watched her succumbing to her injuries without offering any help [6].

Many other startling revelations from the world of Social Psychology demonstrate ‘how we

behave’ in society but does this knowledge really give us a sense of who we are as

individuals? Although these experiments and many others, to a large extent, do accurately

provide a sense of how humans behave in public, I feel that such studies erroneously

generalize human identity in terms of how they behave in society but this doesn’t provide a

concrete sense of who one really is at the core. Just because one, under the multifarious

dynamics of public pressure, behaves in a certain way might not mean that one IS that way.

The biggest flaw of Social Psychology might be that it labels a string of behavioral

tendencies and actions as part of individual identity. Is how we behave under pressure really a

part of who we are at the core?

On the other hand, there are those who would claim that one is what one behaves i.e. one’s

actions are what gives on a sense of who one is. One always has the free will to choose to

behave in a certain way. This choice indicates a certain taste of personal character. The

circmstance might not be in control but the ability to react and act accordingly is a reflection

of who one is. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do” [7]. In that sense, our

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repeated actions, even if initially not part of who we really are, if repeated long enough, will

get amalgamated into our core sense of who we are.

Apart from actions, language too has an important role to play in giving solidity to identity.

Language influences and gives rise to a sense of belonging because language is itself a

universal medium of communication in exchanging ideas. In turn, cultural knowledge from

generations is passed down to the next generation in local dialects. With the development of

different societies, different cultures and languages integrate into a deeper part of humans.

All in all, over time, such cultural acclimatization forms one’s sense of identity. Even though,

the cultural idiosyncrasies defined through diverse language interpretations are subjective, as

part of a race, tribe or group in society, the language used is objective, unaffected by the

growing circumstances of humans. Therefore, although humans are a specific species of

animals, social and cultural knowledge gives us a larger sense of who we are as collective

bodies. But does this Cultural and language identity, give one a sense of who one really is?

Isn’t it wise to first understand what is this ‘sense of identity’ that we are applying this

knowledge to ? In the first place, is there a common identity that we humans share? Or, are

we individual bubbles with our own unique set of psychological and physiological identities?

National and cultural identities aim to segregate humans to different sense of belongings, but

knowledge about such social roles may not define who each individual really is. A certain

culture of humans may have a sense of nationalistic or cultural identity, however, each

individual is free and entitled to their own rights, opinions and unrestricted in their thoughts.

Thus, knowledge in the human sciences does not give humans a sense of who they are but

rather, it only gives humans a sense of who they are in terms of social position and function,

but not what differentiates them from other humans as unique beings.

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From a personal point of view, I feel that human identity is like a psychological onion, each

layer representing a sub-identity. One layer might be a layer of nationalistic identity, while

another might be a common identity of musical taste or scientific ethics. There seem to be

many such layers, each one derived from the unique desires, past experiences, knowledge

concepts from various areas of knowledge employing different ways of knowing and so on.

In that sense, the ‘I’ seems to be the sum total of all these mannerisms, cultural traits,

experiences, and knowledge concepts learnt so far. But, is there an area of knowledge, in

particular that is closer to the ‘true’ identity of the person or does all knowledge contribute to

the sense of who we are with equal strength? Does knowledge that come by way of emotion

or sense perception occupy a large share of our sense of identity than that that comes by way

of reason or language?

In Natural sciences, scientists have enabled human identities to be formed based on the

determination of the single differentiating molecule of all life – The Gene. Knowledge of

how genes are the determining factors of a wide array of physical and pyschological traits

gives scientists a sense of who we humans are. At the external level, the number of genes

differentieats the humans from other specieas. From the human comparitier level, the

ramdom variation of each of these genes and their unique combinatory permutaions, creates

no two individuals alike. This scientific genetic determinim seems to be at the core of what

one really is. Inductive and deductive reasoning have placed ‘Homo Homo Sapiens’ at the

forefront of evolution. Geneticists can by the mere perception of genetic fingerprints tell to

which evoliutionary branh does the particular species get identified to. In this sense, this

‘genetic’ identity is very rudimentary to attributing the human species a sense of who they are

to human species in purely bio-chemical world.

But, as a knower, can one’s sense of who one is be irreducibly boiled down to

molecular variation? Since, Genes, are in fact, at the basic level just macromolecules of

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carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and other elements, just like everything else around us, how is it

that we are any different from anything around us? Doesn’t this shove ‘identity’ in the realm

of paradigm shift?

Genetic determinimsm is a belief that genes along witth a host of enviromental

conditions determine morphology and behavioral phenotype of species. In a sense, it shows

that humans gain everything from a common ancestral genetic pool, but if that so, then how

can there be an‘individuality’ unique to each one of us? ‘Nurture’ gives humans a unique

conditioning variation which clashes with the regularizing ‘Nature’ impact of biological

identity.

On a different note, Free will might be the solution that reconcilles the apparent gap

between ‘Nature’ and ‘Nurture’. Free will, by providing us the choices to form our own

individual identity, is at the core of giving us a sense of who we are. By the very exercise of

free will, one has the ability to go beyond the ‘Knowledge’ of who one is. In that sense,

various areas of knowledge do provide us a foundational sense of who we are but free will is

the final ingredeient in the creation of the unique person that each one of us is.

On a more philosophical note, is there a part of one’s identity that is beyond of knowledge?

In other words, is there a sense of the knower that isn’t derived from knowledge concepts?

Enlightened mystics have claimed time and again that there is an unchanging ‘self’ that is

devoid of all knowledge labels. In fact, Indian mystic U.G. Krishnamurthi, once said that,

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“We are using the neurons, our memory, constantly to maintain our identity. Whether you are

awake, asleep or dreaming, this process is carried on. But, it is wearing you out… The so

called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to

discover” [13]. If U.G is given the benefit of the doubt, then with what ways of knowing does

the knower traverse on the inward path of self-realization? If Socrates’ statement that true

knowledge is knowing that one knows nothing is agreed with, then does Knowledge, in the

TOK sense of the word, still give one a sense of what one really is?

Having said this though, in the normal sense of who we think we are, Ethics, as an area of

knowledge, by way of emotions/intuition, provides a strong sense of who we are. On the

other hand, since reason, sense perception and language are part of knowledge acquisition in

most Human Science fields, one has to exercise caution to prevent being a victim of

fallacious deductive and inductive reasoning traps in one’s buildup of identity.

Word Count: 1599

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Bibliography

1) http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_knowledge.html

2) http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/nisargadattamaharaj.html

3) http://nature.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm

4) http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm

5) http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect

6) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051679/Yue-Yue-dead-Chinese-girl-Wang-Yue-

2-run-bystanders-watch-dies.html

7) http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/aristotle145967.html

13) http://www.stillnessspeaks.com/ssblog/u_g_krishnamurti_quote/

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