This document is a 1572 word Theory of Knowledge essay written by a student named Umay Atay. The essay discusses the statement "The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives" and whether the student agrees with this statement. The essay explores how knowledge, meaning, purpose, religion, and human nature are interrelated. It argues that while knowledge can produce meaning and purpose, the primary purpose of knowledge is for humans to discover and understand themselves and the world through questioning and learning.

1. TED Ankara College Foundation Private High School
THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE ESSAY
Canditate’s Name : Umay Atay
IB Diploma Number : 001129 - 0015
Instructor : Emine Efecioğlu
Word Count : 1572
Prescribed Title : “The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and
purpose in our personal lives.” To what extend do you agree with this statement?

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→ “The whole point of knowledge is to produce both meaning and purpose in our
personal lives.” To what extend do you agree with this statement?
Is there even a simple moment in your life that you could stop your process of
knowing or knowledge forming? Searching for knowledge and instinct of learning
comes from our creation as living creatures. This process starts with the aim of
expressing our primary necessities like hunger or thirst and continues throughout life.
Our brain keeps on working even when we are asleep and make connection between
what we already know and what we need to know, to form our own knowledge.
According to the dictionary, “purpose is the feeling of having a definite aim
and of being determined to achieve it, the purpose of something is the reason for
which it is made or done.” In my opinion, purpose is a result of reasoning. When we
question something, our purpose is to reach a result but this searching process
generally comes up with new questions so it also brings new purposes. Moreover, in
dictionary “meaning” is defined with the sentence: “If an activity or action has
meaning, it has a purpose and is worthwhile.” Even the usage of the word “purpose”
in definition of “meaning” shows the chain relation between them.
We both tend to attribute meanings to the objects or actions and develop short-
term and long-term life purposes. This trend is particular to humans and differs us
from other living thing and each other. The concept believed or determined as the
purpose of life and the meaning attributed to the experiences varies with the person’s
character, background and knowledge. And it comes with the knowledge question “to
what extend knowledge produce meaning and purpose in our daily lives?”

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Recent increase in the number of books and talks about finding the meaning of
life and discovering life purpose may be the result of increased rate of depression,
caused by the pressure and challenge of modern life on people. Life seems
meaningless during depression. Psychology as a field of Human Sciences, one of the
AOKs, focuses on helping people to relate their backgrounds and meanings they
attributed to their experiences and find their own purpose of life. This issue can be
also discussed around the knowledge question “Does knowledge shape the way we
mean things around us and our experiences or the way we mean our experiences
forms our knowledge?”
According to Alfred Adler (1870-1937), the founder of individual psychology;
“Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the
meanings we give to situations.” Our experiences, background and character are the
factors that affect the way we give meanings. Since every person has unique reactions
and feelings towards what happens around, based on their own faith, memory and
sense perception, their knowledge that involves the meanings they found or concepts
aimed are different and unique from person to person. Various meanings shape our
“shared knowledge” which is formed by ways of knowing from exchanging
knowledge to emotion. If the meanings we gave to experiences or objects shape our
knowledge, it affects the way we evaluate future events with our knowledge. For
instance, as a result of previous misunderstanding we conclude on someone as a bad
person, when something unwanted happens then, our approach to this event will be
shaped around the meaning we have already attributed to this person. In conclusion,
the relation between meaning and knowledge is a cycle.

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On the other side, even a newborn baby attributes meanings to objects and
peoples around, without exchanging knowledge or memory. For example, the baby
calms down when cuddled by the mother or incidentally holds a blanket and feels
safe. They may use reasoning and intuition while choosing the person to be hugged
by, and begin to form their own knowledge. Besides, a newly hatched duck follows
the first moving object it saw and treats it as mother. They use their instinct without
reasoning even that object doesn’t look like a duck. Generally the first person a
human baby meets is the doctor but the doctor is not the one the baby attributes as
parent. This may be the result of gaining knowledge about parents by being familiar
with the mother’s smell, voice and touch while developing in the womb. People who
remember their intrauterine memories during hypnosis support this and it’s believed
that it’s a record of our subconscious minds. When the baby is born, the knowledge
gained in the womb, may be guiding the baby to give meanings to people and things
around by reasoning and intuition. This knowledge broadens with the baby’s postnatal
experiences and perceptions. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who is a Rationalist
believed “All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the
understanding and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. ” Therefore,
I believe that reasoning is the source and the starting point of knowledge but not
always leads to a conclusion. Intuition, meanings and purpose that are enriched with
our personal experiences, ideas and faith, also leads to knowledge gaining in our
personal lives. To sum up, the knowledge question “Does knowledge shape the way
we mean or the way we mean our experiences form our knowledge? ” come up with a
paradox in itself.

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As the second AOK, religion may be the result of human’s search to attribute
meaning to thing that they couldn’t understand by their knowledge or logic. Then,
prophets and holy books supported this search especially about creation and order of
life. Moreover, religion that we chose or chosen by our ancestors made us a part of a
socio-cultural group, which also shapes our personality and lifestyle. So “to what
extend does faith create a new meaning and purpose in our lives? ”
According to the Bible, “Life's purpose in Christianity is to seek divine
salvation through the grace of God and intercession of Christ. ” (cf. John 11:26) so
religion gives us a purpose in our lives like working for God’s sake or after death.
Even the need for any type of religion is born from this very same idea, giving a
meaning to the life as the precious gift of God. Conditions every religion born from
and the communities have believed them are different but every religion or concept of
faith has a common property: giving an explanation about the purpose of life since it’s
a common issue questioned by humans because of our curious and inquisitorial
nature.
Besides, technology and knowledge is improving cumulatively, and give us a
chance to understand the meaning of many things both in nature and human behavior.
At the ages when knowledge and technology were less developed, people were unable
to give meaning to things which we were taught in primary school, like nature events.
With the need to having an explanation and feeling safe, they began to worship
objects or ideas those are obscure because of limited knowledge. As Arthur
Schopenhauer (1788-1860) said, “Every man takes the limits of his own field of
vision for the limits of the earth.” If you were living in the dark ages of knowledge

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about the water cycle in atmosphere, even unaware of the atmosphere, raining would
mean the teardrops of God for you. Today, we are aware of the atmosphere and
almost every detail about it, know that there’s space beyond it but still in the dark
about what is waiting for us beyond the space or what we could observe by the
technology we have today.
However, even our knowledge is broader than ancient times we still need
religion because there are still many things we cannot give a definite explanation as
who created us and why. As the result of human nature, the need of a life purpose,
having a meaning for someone or something, feeling safe is prior. We still have
intuitions that push us to believe and trust something who is more component,
authorized and stronger. Holy books and tales supply us these kind of knowledge,
then we enrich this knowledge with our own thoughts and comments of theologians.
Maybe the pressure to find the purpose of our lives in modern world is what made
religion and spiritual beliefs that popular again in many countries and stated that
religion is a way to give meaning and finding a purpose of life or it’s the purpose of
life itself.
Albert Camus (1913-1960) said “You’ll never be happy if you continue to
search for what happiness consists of. You’ll never live if you’re looking for the
meaning of life.” He has a point according to the rising numbers of people who make
antidepressants as their companion on their life journey. But searching for a meaning
is an intuition of humans that cannot be controlled, especially when it’s related to
concepts which exceeds our knowledge and understanding. Knowledge can help us to
discover who we are or what we want in life through our experiences, emotions and

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observations but it can’t give a satisfactory answer to our whole questions or
problems.
In direct reference to the given quote – “The whole point of knowledge is to
produce both meaning and purpose in our personal lives.”- this essay agrees with the
part “knowledge produces meaning and purpose in our personals lives” but not the
whole point of the knowledge is to produce meaning and purpose. Knowledge is a
need that comes from human nature, to discover and improve both himself and his
environment. It’s the result of searching and questioning intuition which also forms
meaning and purpose in our personal lives.

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