"The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives".

"The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives".

1. RLS

   • Shintoism - rebuilding of temple
     • Getting rid of empirical evidence (which provides knowledge) and yet produces meaning in personal lives
       • Without the knowledge of destroying and rebuilding the temple they would not be able to gain their meaning of rebirth. Need the knowledge from the empirical evidence -symbolic
       • people don't necessarily need knowledge to provide their own meaning and purpose in their lives - existence or religion which is based on the lack of sense perception
         • However the knowledge passed down serves to provide the meaning and purpose
   • Aesthetic movement (art and literature)
     • Knowledge which is based upon the lack of meaning
       • yet provoked social revolution in terms of morality
     • Oscar Wilde
       • The picture of Dorian Grey
         • Explored idea of living purely for the aesthetic - without meaning and the downfall of this. Result of aesthetic movement
       • The importance of being Ernest
         • Seems trivial but expressed political and social ideas
       • Both contain aesthetic structure but provide meaning which can be applied to personal lives - allegory
     • the lack of meaning allowed social development in morality; lead to people gaining meaning of hedonism in personal lives and warned against it

2. WOKs

   • Faith
   • Language
   • sense perception

3. AOKS

   • Religion
     • Shintoism
       • Shinto temple as sense experience
       • Faith as a developing knowledge and gaining meaning from knowledge
   • Art
     • Aesthetic movement in art and literature
       • language used in the aesthetic literature movement

4. Knowledge questions

   • To what extent can knowledge be valued/ have a point without providing meaning or purpose?
   • To what extent can the lack of knowledge provide further meaning and purpose in a persons personal life?
   • To what extent can knowledge exist without providing meaning? Is there such a thing?

5. Assumptions

   • Knowledge is pointless without providing meaning or purpose
   • You can only gain meaning and purpose using knowledge
   • Knowledge is pointless without providing meaning and purpose

6. Definitions

   • meaning : how your paradigm is impacted by the knowledge
   • Purpose; gives you an emotional or tangible aim
   • Produce; causes or creates

7. Implications

   • Agree
     • then without knowledge can we still gain meaning and purpose - huge implications for those with false knowledge e.g. north Korea dictatorship. Meaning and purpose manipulated? Free will and access to information
     • Religious knowledge - more valuable than e.g. scientific knowledge because of the meaning and purpose in peoples lives? Mean that religion is more important than science?
   • Disagree
     • could mean that religion loses validity: if knowledge doesn't have to does that mean we alienate ourselves? could hold implications in terms of morality? no meaning - robotic
       • Moral implications provided by the picture of dorian grey - hedonistic society? Can society function like this? do we need the meaning in order to make sense and function within the world?

8. Knowers perspective

   • as an agnostic - the idea of religion vs science in which is more valuable: impact on medicine
   • In IB English - reading literature; for its own enjoyment? Or to analyse the political and social context behind it? could argue we need meaning and the lack of meaning
     • appreciation of English aesthetic literature - yet no meaning. Shows that it is valued to an extent