You Are A Reliable Authority

No One Else Can Be You

Let's see, your mind has made its way to this post, which proves through perception to be one source of evidence. Helping you form opinions about simple and complex things that may or may not be reliable information/knowledge. A reliable authority such as our individual minds combine four sources of evidence to attain, retain and experience with knowledge and life; coincidentally furthering the well being of our collective universe. 

The four sources of evidence are perception, memory, introspection and reason.

Perception

The mind processes external information by perceiving evidence from our five senses. Now, each of us vary to the degree of which we can use our senses, some of us may be lacking one or two of them, but the potential is there for the human body and mind to see, smell, touch, taste and hear external and internal stimulus. Which, provides evidence for physical objects as we perceive and store experiences into our memory. 

Memory

You like me, rely on memory to act in certain situations, and retain information from our past to use for present and future instances. Aside from the four sources of evidence our memory can pull resources from experts, published content, cognitive processes and research & development.

Introspection

In fact, we develop habits based on our memory as we introspectively act to attain a third source of evidence. By way of mental states such as being hungry and eating, tired and sleeping, emotional and crying, or fantasizing about the future or whatever else you dream of. Most of the time these mental states are autonomous, but we are able to survive and adapt by using our fourth source of evidence. 

Reason

Reasoning grants you and I with the privilege to rationalize our thoughts and behavior, along with other variables. This is done by recognizing variables that follow from other variables. In turn making another variable probable, because we are able to learn from our mistakes and attain valuable knowledge to prevent unwanted behavior. 

Conclusion

Perception | Introspection | Reason | Memory

These four sources of evidence allow each and everyone of us to attain and retain knowledge as we survive and adapt with our very own experiences. Furthermore, knowing this will allow you to become far more effective with any situation you face. After all, you are the reliable authority to face a situation and seek understanding, luckily for you, other reliable authorities have already experienced similar issues who can be of assistance. 

Enjoy 

To be clear, I am taking notes from a book titled An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology by Matthias Steup; if you need a copy to follow along click on the the title in this sentence and a link will direct you.