Travel vs. Philosophy

In the Spring of 2018 I studied abroad in South Korea. I was particularly naïve in my knowledge of Korea before arriving and this made my experience even more remarkable. Of course, you could drink Soju, watch K-dramas, and listen to BTS before going, but the depth and breadth of culture there goes far beyond what is normally comprehended by people who have never been.

In fact, before going I took an Asian studies course, researched on the Internet, talked to friends who are Korean, and, naturally, watched the Winter Olympics (probably more than I should have). I’ve also had the privilege of traveling before and figured I’d be just fine winging it. Instead, however, I went on to accidentally insult a security guard on the first day, to know nothing about culturally- and religiously-dictated interactions with locals, and to be largely in the dark about most aspects of Korean life.

This experience revealed something epistemologically curious. Regardless of the efforts I made beforehand, I couldn’t manage to gain the kind of depth of knowledge that was needed to avoid the experiences I encountered above. In particular, it seemed that much of the information we rely on from the Internet and testimony is lacking in regard to rapid changes in Korean culture.

There’s no Yelp there, the best restaurants are often not on Maps, and the people I talked too mostly offered generalizations. I used both testimony and the Internet to build a body of knowledge that I quickly learned was full of errors and gaps.

Before my trip abroad I was able to take PHI269, a Professor Carlson course that focused on epistemological issues of the Internet. We studied a variety of ways in which testimony makes it harder to gain knowledge than perception does. This led me to realize that, often, the further removed we are from the information we receive (assuming, as I do here, that we can trust our senses), the more difficult it seems to be to justify that information—a key component in having knowledge (justified true beliefs).

This certainly seems true for un-testable information on the Internet, even in regard to the testimony of people we trust. One answer to this problem is skepticism—refraining from judgement towards testimony and information. This would mean disregarding available information and not even mustering an attempt at justifying our beliefs.

Another option, then, is going out and experiencing the world—partially so we can test the epistemological trustworthiness of our beliefs and partly because sometimes it’s just not possible to know via testimony, as I learned of Korea.

Whenever possible, then, we should strive to gather information ourselves: both to gain epistemological certainty and knowledge but also as the experience and process of taking in information via sense perception is extremely valuable and enriching.

Yes, knowledge is important to us and we should care for epistemological reasons, but there are more reasons to experience the world ourselves: it’s beautiful, scary, complex, and fascinating—it makes all of life an experience. I won’t remember Korea as much for the epistemological certainty it afforded as I will for everything experienced through sense perception.