Nayef Al-Rodhan on Knowledge

"Much of what we often consider knowledge is actually a point of view held without sufficient grounds: in a word, dogma."

"People should be educated about the links between education, ideology, and politics as a way to promote the virtue of humility."

"Knowledge about things beyond our immediate environment may be acquired through deduction, if the initial premises are believed to be correct."

"The notion of innate knowledge is rejected, but that of moral sensitivities is accepted."

"All knowledge is acquired through the application of reason and has a physical basis."

"Knowledge is also inferred from what is accepted as established knowledge, with new knowledge being based on the best explanation. This includes possible truths subject to proof."

"There is a physical neurobiological substrate to all human knowledge, including thoughts, memories, perceptions and emotions. To this end, mental states and thought processes are physical."

"All knowledge is to some extent interpreted."

"Almost every golden age of geo-cultural domains has been characterised by good governance, exchanges, borrowing, innovation and the adaptation of earlier contributions to forms of knowledge, and rationalism."

"Indeed, collective triumph will also depend both on the application of reason and the recognition that a great deal of knowledge is indeterminate and may be temporally, spatially and perhaps culturally constrained."

"Morally relevant emotions are essential for living in social groups and they provide the basis on which we may construct conceptual frameworks that help guide our actions, but human beings should more accurately be thought of as being endowed with morally relevant capacities rather than innate moral knowledge."