How do we know?

Let me take this time to share a little of what we are taught in class about acquiring knowledge and the confusion that I am faced with.

How do we know that we know?

Knowledge is knowing, right?

According to some school of thought knowledge is preconceived and what the instructor does is to give clues as to what is known by a student in isolation of experience. They believe that what we learn in class is not new to us. And that we have known this things in our subconscious mind but do have need of an instructor to initiate the thought and idea.

This brings us to the question of How do we know that we know?

When the lecturer asked and explained this question, I wasn't really getting it. I never thought there would arise the need to verify to be true all what one has known before now.

There are three steps to verifying and testing knowledge. Or we could out that knowledge is arrived at with mind paid to the following steps.

Number one step is that of belief

Belief is simply an idea that one accepts to be real or true even without a clearly verifiable evidence.

So knowledge begins from this point and gradually progressed to truth.

Truth is more or less the level of finding evidence to back up what is believed to be true.

Under this level we have

Doubt, finding out a corresponding response and others. These helps to make sure that that which is held as a belief system is true.

When we probe whatever ideas or facts we have we can now say that it is true of that which we know.

And then we arrive at knowledge

This is the end product of the processes we may have followed though...