Information And Knowledge

Every moment that a person is conscious brings either a new experience or a continuation of a current experience.  With this comes continued memories, sensory information, and possibly emotional fluctuations.  With this also comes inescapable reliance, whether known or unrealized, on the laws of logic.  And then there is the fact that even dreaming cannot occur without conscious experience, for a dream is just a purely mental experience that does not pertain to the external world.  Any perception at all requires that the mind doing the perceiving intakes information, which is something that could be reflected on (taking the form of anything from a personal emotion to hearsay to a logical concept to a sensory experience).  Not all information, though, is knowledge, not in the way that some might imagine.

Yes, conscious beings are constantly encountering information, whether on a conceptual, sensory, or introspective level, but some information does not prove anything more than that the information is being perceived, as is the case when one sees a tree in the distance or hears a sound.  Even thinking about or experiencing the same thing for multiple moments means one is perceiving new information about one's thoughts and general experiences.  However, especially with sensory information, information does not always provide knowledge of anything more than perceptions.  In order for rationalistic knowledge--the only true knowledge--to be established, one must not make any assumptions about anything whatsoever.

Reason must be used to recognize the inherent truth of logical proofs; reason must be used to even understand and analyze sensory and introspective experiences and to grasp concepts beyond the baseline laws of logic.  Sometimes all that reason reveals about something beyond the fact that no aspect of reality, no matter how obscure or seemingly bizarre, is not governed by the laws of logic is that a perception itself exists and either corresponds to an external part of reality or does not.  There is still no knowledge apart from reason even though reason is sometimes used to illuminate experiences of various kinds to the different extents that are possible given human limitations.

Perceiving anything at all brings with it knowledge of the immediate perceptions, but it does not necessarily provide knowledge of anything more than one's perceptions--the key difference is one that almost everyone one will encounter seems to constantly overlook throughout their lives.  The different metaphysical and epistemological categories something is related to determine what can and cannot be known about the issue, but, at a minimum, it can always be known that logical axioms apply and that there must be some truths about the matter.  All the same, every single thought or broader experience contains some sort of information of which at least some things can be known, even if only in the aforementioned foundational way.

New perceptions still continue regardless of what can or cannot be proven about them.  As I experience life, I form new memories, encounter numerous sensory perceptions whether I find them pleasant or not, and am constantly aware of my own thoughts and feelings, whether they arise in response to specific experiences with memory amd my senses or due to thinking that would occur anyway.  This information is before me on a daily basis.  What I can know about each domain depends on the nature of the category.  Information does not and cannot automatically bring the extensive knowledge so many assume it does (according to their own words).  Reason is ever before a person whether they consciously seek it out or not, but I must use it to uncover what does and does not follow from certain kinds of "information" on am individual basis.  Only in this way can I or any other being like myself establish knowledge instead of leaping into petty assumptions.