1. Over the summer, a friend of mine asked another friend's parent why she always wears gloves when washing the dishes, to which she responded, "Because I'm allergic to water." We all thought she was joking, but she quickly clarified that tap water does, in fact, often irritate her skin.
2. One area of knowledge involved is the natural sciences because our decision on whether or not to believe the mother's statement was based on our knowledge of the natural sciences. Ways of knowing involved include language (because what she said and the way she said affected how we believed her) and reason (because deduction affected how we interpreted her statement).
3. Because of the ambiguity associated with language, we all assumed that the statement about being allergic to water was a joke. The tone of voice she used could have been interpreted as either serious or joking.
4. The knowledge problem is that we interpreted the individual's use of language to mean the complete opposite of how she intended it to mean.
5. Knowledge Issue: What do the limits of spoken language (or lack thereof) reveal about the reliability of language as a method of gaining knowledge?
