All knowledge is predicated on revelation. In other words, you cannot have knowledge without experience, and you cannot have (1) experience and (2) knowledge1 without the former “coming into being” and without the latter “being.” This phenomenon of “coming into being” I term “revelation”; moreover, knowledge, insofar as I apprehend it, is through its “coming into being” into my being.
Knowledge is “being”2—or is—insofar as I cannot affirm that it is coming into being simultaneously with my own being. I do not know that “I” and “knowledge” came into being (or are coming into being) at the same time. What is certain is that I do not know everything, nor have I known anything since eternity. Knowledge, therefore, is not contingent on my being. But whence that knowledge came into being, I cannot say. For this reason, I say that unless you are eternal and have infinite knowledge, then any knowledge you have was necessarily “revealed” (i.e., came into your being at some point in time); this, I would say, also includes innate knowledge, which I will demonstrate below.
My experience with new knowledge is sometimes gradual, sometimes it is instantaneous, and sometimes it is voluntary and at other times involuntary. I know I “came into being” because I know that I do not know that I always did know; in other words, I know I am not eternal and that I do not have infinite knowledge. Therefore, what I know I know only from experience, which is coming into being (and is continuing to be while I type). To be more specific, I believe I was born because I know I was not always being. Thus, I know I am, I know I know, and I know that I do not know some things. Moreover, I also know that I “knew” (or have known) and am knowing; that is to say, whenever I am knowing (present), I am also incorporating new knowledge within the context of what I previously knew (past) to understand the present of what I am knowing.
Now, I cannot be in the process of knowing without anticipating or contextualizing the future. This is, for example, how music works: it is sequential in time, incorporating various musical notes into a harmonious whole from the past, present, and future. Each note is meaningful in so far as it is contextualized within a sequence of notes playing through time. This I know readily and with certainty; however, my anticipation of the future in music presupposes my recognition of patterns and order. I anticipate the completion and/or wholeness of a pattern that I perceive. Thus, I must have some knowledge that allows me to recognize patterns, which are a repetition of an element and/or elements in an organized whole.
In essence, I must have some innate knowledge of the past, present, and future; moreover, I also know that the distinctions of true and false and good and evil are first principles that are so fundamental that to negate them would be utterly absurd and nonsensical; therefore, this, too, is innate knowledge. And I know that particulars (e.g., notes, brush strokes, instantiations, etc.) are parts of a whole (e.g., song, painting, abstractions, etc.). Further, it is innate in me to believe that the truth is good; in other words, that I ought to know the truth. On the other hand, I ought to not know falsehood but rather shun it as being evil and therefore contrary to what is true and good.
That said, my argument here is that the revelation of knowledge does not make knowledge false since, again, all knowledge that I have or will have will have been revealed by virtue of its coming into my being. In other words, my having knowledge is not necessarily contingent on the exercise of my will, since it was not by my will that I first came to have knowledge.
For this reason I say the concept of “false” would have no guarantee of even itself if we denied that some knowledge (such as true and false) is revealed. Thus, “false” means exactly what it means, namely the opposite of what is true despite being revealed.
What I know, I know either by happenstance or by my own volition. Further, what I know is that I was born at a particular time and place with a certain disposition, such that I came to know what I know now. Most importantly, it may very well have been the case that I was born somewhere else at some other time with another disposition—or that I was not born at all. Regardless, I know that I am compelled to make sense of the whole of the web of interconnected concepts that I have come to know through my experience.
Knowledge and the subject matter of knowledge (i.e., the information of the cosmos).
Or Knowledge exists.