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Knowledge through tradition and culture is often learnt through teaching, or the passing down of knowledge through generations. Cultural epistemology can be described as “a cultural group's ways of thinking and of creating, reformulating, and theorizing about knowledge via traditional discourses and media of communication” (Babauta, 2018). Traditional/cultural knowledge is built on the lessons learnt from elders, based on their experiences, and the lessons they were taught from those before them. Before they were introduced to Western medicine, the Chamorro people practiced healing using plants, roots, and leaves. Their ‘doctors’ are called suruhana, and thousands of years after being exposed to Western medicines, they continue to make medicine from the land, like their ancestors. Bernice Nelson is a suruhana living in Guam, who was taught the practice of healing from a young age, by her grandmother (a surahana as well) and has been practicing for nearly 40 years (Babauta, 2018). In Canada, doctors are taught by other doctors, professors, and other experts, just as the Chamorro people are taught by other suruhana. Both are forms of cultural knowledge, they are just different because they come from different cultures.

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How is this considered knowledge and not a belief?

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How is this considered knowledge and not a belief?

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Knowledge through tradition is not a belief because it is based on past experience and outcomes. To connect back to the Chamorro people, they continue to practice their traditional medicine because their techniques have always worked in the past. They were never struck by diseases such as small pox, the plague, or influenza, and overall, were healthy people. The knowledge passed from suruhana to suruhana is based on experience; they know that a certain plant will heal a headache because it has cured the headaches of thousands before. The knowledge passed down from generation to generation is factual because it has an abundance of evidence to support it. I chose a video of a sunrise because like traditional knowledge, we do not believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, we know it will. We know this because it has every single day of our entire lives.

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Awesome Time Lapse Video of Ocean Sunrise to Sunset 1080p

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Is this way of knowing rational or empirical?

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Is this way of knowing rational or empirical?

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This way of knowing is empirical because traditional/culture knowledge is based on experience. The purpose of this type of knowledge is not to ‘figure it out in your head’, but to internalize what others have taught you and add on, so that you can pass it to the next generation. Whether we like it or not, we are immersed in a culture from the day we are born and are constantly learning from the people around us. A lot of the experiences that shape who we are, are because of the people within one’s culture and the lessons that they teach. For example, in Canada education is a major part of our culture, and so we learn that our school system provides us with the best knowledge through the best techniques. At the same time, a child in another culture believes that their form of education is the best because that is what they are surrounded by and that is how children in their culture have been taught for centuries. All of this knowledge of the world is a posteriori, coming from the experiences a person has within their culture and the interactions they have with other members. Therefore, this way of knowing is empirical.

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What do philosophers/knowledge-seekers say about this way of knowing?

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What do philosophers/knowledge-seekers say about this way of knowing?

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Intellectuals struggle to determine whether or not traditional knowledge should be regarded as fact. It is clear that it has value as qualitative knowledge and ethnographic documentation, however the risk of subjectivity is very real and poses a problem in the world of public policy and law. Some people believe that traditional knowledge should be treated as scientific knowledge in situations that involve decision making or political dispute, however when it comes to high-stake scenarios such as pipelines and land-claims, this becomes a grey area. That being said, while some stories of traditional knowledge may come across as metaphorical, mythical, or even emotional responses to the environment, who is to say that the knowledge passed through generations are any  less real than scientific data? Who has the authority to translate the reality of another culture (Guidotti, 2007)?

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Overall, do you consider this way of knowing a “valid” form of knowing and reaching the truth? Why or why not?

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Overall, do you consider this way of knowing a “valid” form of knowing and reaching the truth? Why or why not?

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In conclusion, I do not consider traditional/cultural knowledge a valid form of reaching the truth. This way of knowing is so often lacking in evidence due to the scarcity of documentation of cultural traditions, making it difficult to label it as reliable. This form of knowledge is also very reliant on people’s recollections of past experiences, the lessons they learnt from others, and events in general, and people often recall incorrectly. Consider the game telephone; a message is started by one person and passed through the rest via whisper, and almost every time the message at the end is different from the one at the start. Imagine this game on a bigger scale, instead of a message passed around a room this is a message passed through generations and generations, how is it possible that this message is the same as when it started? A system of knowledge as unreliable as this cannot be considered factual. However, that is not to say that knowledge from culture and tradition is not important. Culture is such an principal and crucial aspect of society, and the knowledge within it is what creates the diverse world that we live in. Without teachings such as the healing techniques used by the Chomorro people, societies would have died off long ago.

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Where is the authority of this knowledge located?

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Where is the authority of this knowledge located?

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The authority of traditional/cultural knowledge is held in various places depending on the culture. In some cultures it is rooted only in the people who carry it; elders or experts that pass on information based on their experiences. In other cultures it is stored in textbooks, dictionaries, media formats, and history books. But what links the two is the fact that knowledge is primarily held in the people as a whole. All forms of recording information are created by people, and as a result, people are responsible for the sharing of traditional knowledge from generation to generation. In the video below, Scheaffer Okore calls on the older generation to mentor and aid the young and innovated minds of today, so that they are not taking on the responsibility of the future empty-handed.

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Passing Knowledge and Skills to the Young Generation - Scheaffer Okore

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Is truth absolute or relative in this way of knowing

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Is truth absolute or relative in this way of knowing

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The truths within cultural knowledge are relative because they are based on opinion and people’s recollections, and vary greatly from culture to culture. People often misinterpret situations, miss important details, and alter facts based on opinion, making it hard to label accounts of past events as absolute fact. A renowned chair of the department of history of a British university, Charles Kingsley, resigned from his position because he came to believe that there was no such thing as history, a subject to which he had dedicated his entire life. He claimed that there was “no dependable knowledge of past events as they actually happened, only inaccurate accounts colored by prejudice and bias” (Pittsburgh post, 1994). Furthermore, statements discussed earlier, such as; the sun will rise tomorrow’ or this plant will heal a headache, can never be 100% factual, because the future is unpredictable. Unbelievable things have happened before, and so knowledge passed down through generations, based on past events, cannot be absolute, but are relative; dependant on opinion and probability.

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Babauta, C. B. (2018, Mar 26). Learning how to heal through chamoru culture, tradition. Pacific Daily News Retrieved from https://explore.proquest.com/document/2017876495?accountid=81894

Guidotti, Tee L,M.D., M.P.H. (2007). Traditional knowledge: Challenge or complement to science? Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 62(4), 167-8. Retrieved from https://explore.proquest.com/document/201148286?accountid=81894

"A Society that Loses Truth Loses its Way." Pittsburgh Post - Gazette, May 29, 1994, pp. NV-3. eLibrary, https://explore.proquest.com/document/391983644?accountid=81894.