Knowledge Argument

Started by BlancaLap, December 31, 2017, 10:35:15 PM

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BlancaLap

For  those who don't know, the Knowledge Argument is a mental experiment in which is said that if a person was locked in a room, with no other colours except from white black and grey and no posibility of seeing other colours, even though the person knows everything about the Electromagnetic spectrum, the wavelengths... does s/he really know or understand what the colours are?
Here you have a link to the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_argument

The same happens with things like dissociation, deppression, trauma...

People may have never experienced that, but they know exactly what the symptoms are because they have studied them, but, do they really know what they mean? Of course not, they don't know how it feels, they have never experienced that, they have never lived that, so, are they really capable of treating it?

Or maybe the other way around, maybe they have lived all their lives dissociated and now they are told they ARE actually dissociated, and maybe they know what's the difference between being and not being dissociated because people have told them it, but, do they really know it? They have always been this way so, they actually can't imagine, even less remember, how it FEELS, what it MEANS to not be like that. So, how do they know what are they looking for exactly?

The answer is no, the person doesn't know the real meaning of the words s/he thinks s/he knows.

*I don't know where to put this post so move it where you want.*

Rainagain

Hi,

A lot of the people I know who work in the mental health field are drawn to it because they have direct experience of some aspect of mental health.

Not sure about psychology, people could be academically interested without direct experience.

I think the issue for me is that some counsellors/therapists are pretty terrible whilst others are good.

Whatever the reason is for that, I think its an important issue.