I’m trying to keep it simple here, and I’m talking about personal knowledge that is applicable in day to day life. The individual as the unit that holds and uses the knowledge.
In the main I see three sources :
Direct experiences
Inductive reasoning
Other people telling you about their experiences (or inductive reasoning)
What am I missing?
Memory?
You could make a case for memory, allthough it’s a derivative of direct experience. It is used in inductive reason and it certainly has a role to play in the proces, but maybe I wouldn’t exactly call it a source of knowledge, in the sense of giving you new knowledge that isn’t provided by other sources.
Keep em coming…
deduction
following authority - which might fall under your last item, but it might not. If, for example the authority did not learn whatever they are saying via experience
intuition
imitation - this will then lead to learning by experience - or not - so it could be seen as a subset
Deduction?
Indirect experiences.
Wikipedia?
I jest…
Why the need to know where knowledge comes from?
What is that?
Experience you here of from an indirect link.
that sounds like
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But I’m thinking about something you are told, but you can relate to at the same time too.
Generally when I ‘can relate to’ someone else’s experiences then I am connecting them to my experiences. So this would seem to be a mix of two of his categories.
I thought about this one, but I opted to not included it because it seem more of a rearangement of knowledge as the conclusion is allready present in the premises. This in contrast to inductive reasoning, which does give new knowlegde. I’m also not sure how useful it is, again, inductive reasoning seem something you can’t do without. Maybe if you could give me an example of how you would use deduction in practise, to inform a decision for example?
Okay, fair enough, i did put (or inductive reasoning) between brackets. Would this be included in “or inductive reasoning”?
Yeah, I’m not sure about intuition because it’s not entirely clear what is meant by it. It’s vague, but we do seem to decide a lot on something like intuition. I’m thinking maybe that part of it is uncounscious inductive reasoning, where we skip a whole lot of obvious step and aren’t really aware how we came to the conclusion, another part of it is maybe habit and feeling, but this doesn’t seem propper knowledge.
Yes, agreed.
The internet, philosophy, and generally an overload of information got me confused, I think. I’m having a strong sense that there’s a lot of redundant information (in my head and elsewhere 
) that I can’t trust, and has gotten in the way of my ability to make good decisions. Intuition, yeay . Or maybe it’s Faust who’s got me looking for sneaky metaphysians in the bushes…
I’m thinking if I can identify the different sources of knowledge looking at it from a practical personal point of view, and look at the various and specific conditions for these different sources, it’ll be easier to sift through all the nonsense that is flying arround.
genetics.
What do you mean by genetics? A branch of science, your and my genetic structure individualy, DNA, common family traits…?
knowledge is a process, a processing. ordering of information within the brain.
genetics contains the information for what we are, and how we become more than what we are. genetics also contains instinctive knowledge, and leads to HOW we know what we know, e.g. such things as proficiency in various disciplines, curiousity, tendency towards religiousness, IQ, perception and awareness, these all have their base in genetics, in heredity.
so, direct knowledge is contained within and decoded by DNA in the form of protein synthesis. in addition, HOW we process information and thus produce and derive knowledge is also controlled by DNA. since “knowledge” is nothing fixed or static, but is a process of ever-flowing and changing patterns and feedback, that this process itself is constructed and mediated by genetics is no small fact, not when we consider that it is this process itself which GIVES RISE TO all of what we would call our “knowledge”.
Okay. Your are mainly giving a biological description of HOW knowledge is processed and influenced by genetics. I might agree (my knowledge of genitics is limited) but again genetics in itself is not directly a source of new knowledge which I have access to. I mean, how do genetics inform me how and where I can buy some food?
A case might be made for instincts giving rise to some form of new knowledge, but like intuition it’s kind of vague, and i’m not sure i’d call it knowledge. This doesn’t mean I don’t use my instincts or intuition and disregard them altogether, I just wouldn’t put the “label” knowledge on it. I’m talking only about sources of knowledge here, and specifically in the sense of the OP. I’ve cut it up in three categories, this might or might not prove to be a useful distinction. I’m trying to figure this out, it’s an exercise…
if you think that experiencing supplies you with knowledge, then you must also think that genetics does as well, since nothing is pure experience-- genetics and environment interplay with each other, it is meaningless to speak of one without the other.
in addition, there is innumerable actual INFORMATION encoded within our genes. they even found that people’s favorite colors and favorite types of music have genetic influences. so, even if you want to ignore the fact that you can never have an experience without the interplay of environment and genetics (which would be a foolish thing to ignore-- as i said, you can never have one without the other), you still must acknowledge that there is a great deal of what we call “our” thoughts, inclinations, valuations, assumptions, which are very heavily influenced and pre-determined by our genetic structures.
Agreed.