Is some knowledge unknowable?

Word count: 1282

Session: 5 June, 3PM.

Object 1: The holy grail.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "chalice." Encyclopedia Britannica, September 22,

2011. https://www.britannica.com/topic/chalice.

The holy chalice, commonly known as the holy grail, is the cup that was supposedly the
chalice where Jesus poured wine in the last supper. This chalice remains in existence in the
catedral de Valencia, in Spain.
What I defined to be unknowable is the history that lies behind it, we can never know if it
actually contained the wine Jesus poured. However, there are a number of people that
believe this history to be true, in the next paragraph I will discuss under what circumstances
would this knowledge be knowable.

We all know what the holy chalice is, we know it exists, we know what the history it has
and the importance in religion it possesses, but can we actually know if Jesus poured wine
in it?
Following TOK concepts, what we need to evaluate first is under what circumstances and
for whom is the object considered to be knowledge. The key concept this relies on is
context. Based on my context, given that I come from a Jewish family, I consider the fact
that Jesus poured wine in that chalice to be unknowable.
Therefore, the context of living one has, leads them to consider this as knowledge or not
and changes our perception about religion and to an extent even history that relates to
religion.

Different perspectives in this case change because of the methods and tools we have to
acquire knowledge, the main method being our communities' opinion on the matter ergo the
knowledge we consider to be a justified true belief from other people. Although from a
TOK point of view, for the knowledge to be knowable, it needs to be true, and in this point
we come back to each peoples’ context. For instance, we have Rodrigo, Rodrigo is a person
who is surrounded by a Christian community, which believes firmly that the objects’
history is true. For this reason, in his case, this passes all four truth tests. First, all the
people around him believe it, so there goes the consensus truth tests. Then, the knowledge
is useful to him because he is a very religious person, and therefore it also checks the
pragmatic truth test. Additionally, the object is located in a possible reality and although it
is not observable right now, for Rodrigo, this was something that actually happened and
therefore it is correspondent. Lastly, since religion is a reality in Rodrigo's life, Jesus
pouring wine in the chalice is completely coherent.

This gives room to say that knowledge, in this case the knowledge of the divine, is biased
and limited by each person’s perception of what may or may not be sacred.

In conclusion, knowledge can be unknowable for people depending on their context and
their perspective of the world.
Object 2:
The deepest part of the sea:

Wise , Richard. “How Deep Is the Ocean? 7 Miles down in the Mariana Trench.” American
Oceans, May 25, 2023. https://www.americanoceans.org/facts/deepest-part-of-ocean-
mariana-trench/.

This is unknowable because until right now we do not have anything that could take us to
the deepest part of the sea, although we know it exists we can not know what lies in it.
It is related to natural sciences and it is useful to acquire knowledge about all the marine
life we do not know about.
First we know it exists because we know the sea exists and the fact remains that it has a
bottom.
Therefore we claim that what lies in the bottom of the sea is knowable. In the following
paragraph I will discuss whether this claim may or may not be able to be considered as
knowable.
To relate this to unknowable knowledge, we need to first establish that unknowable
knowledge includes knowledge that can not be known until right now.
That means that to this day we do not have any tools or methods to experience that mystery.
With this premise we can conclude the issue with some areas of unknowable knowledge is
what we can know to an extent until this day.

This does not make the knowledge specifically unknowable because we are trying to find
ways to get to the deepest part of the sea, and there are not any facts that disprove the idea
of getting there. So in that sense there is room to say that it could be knowable, although
right now it is not.

Most of the subjects related to the core theme, natural sciences, were once undiscovered,
this means that they too, were once unknowable but they became knowable as there
appeared tools and methods to prove them.

In conclusion we can say that in this particular case, even though there is knowledge about
something existing, knowledge remains to be unknowable until there is a way to justify and
evidence it.
Object 3: A Spanish Dictionary;

Source: “Diccionarios.” ASALE. Accessed June 8, 2023. https://www.asale.org/obras-

academicas/diccionarios.

The Spanish Dictionary of the Real Academia Española is a very relevant object to me
because it is my go- to knowledge source for consulting language knowledge. It is
undeniably the most used and most famous Spanish dictionary there is and a lot of people
tend to use it for consulting words, phrases and concepts. This object is considered to be
and contain language knowledge in its full. This does not mean that everyone agrees with
the definitions that lie in the dictionary, the dictionary is written by language specialists
who claim to know what the words mean due to their etymological definition. But how do
we know that a certain combination of letters should have a specific meaning? I have been
asking myself this question for a while because there isn’t any evidence that sustains that
letters organized in words should create a link to an object. The answer to this question lies
in each person’s perspective and their critical thinking. Me for example, I consider that I
have a very critical way of thinking and since I do not consider the definition of words to be
justified, even though I use them to express myself, I consider definitions to be
unknowable. Therefore I can say that although the dictionary is useful and considered to
contain knowledge, the actual meaning of the words is unknowable.
On the other hand creating a link between a word and an object can also be subject to
interpretation about whether it is knowledgeable or not depending on the purpose and
creation of the object.
Objects that were discovered for example fire is knowledge that has a link to a word that
even though is knowable to the world, no one is certain that those flames together should be
called fire. This knowledge is considered to be a social construct. There has been the same
link for fire since it was discovered so society considers the link, ergo the definition to be
knowable, but that does not mean it should be called fire. When talking about objects that
were invented, the links to the object could be knowable because just as the object was
invented, a name for the object in question was also invented, so there is an unprecedented
word for an unprecedented object, this leads to the word and the object being knowledge
that is knowable.
In conclusion, there are two answers to definitions being knowable or unknowable. The
first one being that something is considered to be knowable because of history and the
tendency over time of defining something in a certain way by society. The second one
including critical thinking stating that links to objects can not be knowable for what they
should be just because of consensus.

Sources:

Conference, 38th Social Research. “Unknowability: How Do We Know What Cannot Be

Known?” newschoolcps, January 10, 2019.
https://www.centerforpublicscholarship.org/single-post/2019/01/10/unknowability-
how-do-we-know-what-cannot-be-known.

Conference, 38th Social Research. “Unknowability: How Do We Know What Cannot Be

Known?” newschoolcps, January 10, 2019.
https://www.centerforpublicscholarship.org/single-post/2019/01/10/unknowability-
how-do-we-know-what-cannot-be-known.