Explain How The Knower's Perspective Is Essential In The Pursuit Of Knowledge

Theory of knowledge essay
“The knower’s perspective is essential in the pursuit of knowledge.” To what extent do you agree?
In investigating how the knower’s perspective affects the pursuit of knowledge, there are several keywords to define and explore before going in-depth. This process will lead to an overwhelming agreement, validation of the statement and exploration of the implications and different knowledge issues.
The knower is the one who seeks, perceives, understands and interprets information through ways of knowing in areas of knowledge. Perspective in itself is synonymous with experience, bias, or circumstance. It could also refer to a knower’s gender, race, identity, geographical location, socio-economic status or anything else
Most relevant is cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. Each of them is an example of how the knower’s perspective motivates us to reaffirm existing beliefs.
Cognitive dissonance occurs when an individual holds contradictory views or when confronted by new information contradictory to their beliefs, values or experiences. It causes the individual mental stress, psychological discomfort and they will actively avoid information that causes them this dissonance or disequilibrium, as one would be motivated to strive for internal consistency. In the context of the knowledge question, if a knower cannot accept new knowledge that contradicts former beliefs or experiences, they will dismiss or ignore that knowledge.
Closely related is the confirmation bias, which is when an individual selectively ignores information in favor of information that confirms existing beliefs and opinions. A study at Stanford in the 1970’s, brought in two separate groups of participants, one in support and one in opposition for capital punishment. They all read one study that confirmed and one study that disconfirmed their existing beliefs about the deterrent effect of the death penalty. While the studies were both fake, the both proponents and opponents of the death penalty rated the study that confirmed their belief higher than
People who share similar perspectives naturally form groups. Discussions in groups with like-minded participants, often lead to an exaggeration of initial preferences rather than averaging them out, and radicalizes their final, collective preference. Like war-supporters become more supportive of a war after a group discussion with other war-supporters and people with initial prejudices come out of group discussions more prejudiced, any initial tendencies become more pronounced. Main and Walker (1973) is an example of group polarization in the US legal system, analyzing the decisions of Federal district court judges in 1,500 cases, when either sitting in groups or sitting alone and how it affected the outcome. Only 30% of the judges sitting alone took an extreme course of action compared to the 65% of the judges sitting in a group of three, and the study seems to indicate that group polarization influences even well educated