Week 2: More Problems

Welcome back! Unfortunately this week's post will be very similar to the last one in that this week was used to try and narrow down my interests in relation to my research question. I met yet again with my On-Site Mentor, Mr. Nair, and was able to read through multiple different articles and portions of books that were related to my topic.
Before I get into a few of the things I researched during this week, I would like to elaborate on the problems that I have been facing since the beginning of the Senior Project. As most of you know, my research question is notoriously vague. I believed this to be one of the strengths of my Senior Research Project as I thought this openness would allow me to pursue more ideas over the course of 10 weeks. Instead, I realized that this quality would force me to either research so much philosophy that it would be impossible to do during the 10 weeks I have, or to narrow my overall question to a much more specific question, but still very closely related. Over the past two weeks, I have attempted to do the latter, but with little success. That being said, my overall direction and focus of the project is being formed, and I hope to share that direction with you guys next week.
After all that, let me briefly tell you about what I did this week! I read into a book that focused on desires and tried to draw analogies between different types of desires and the corresponding type of knowledge. For example, the book defined a myriad of different types of desires, including warm, cold, base, trivial, and immoral desires. Each of these have there own respective qualities, but what I unfortunately concluded from this book is that actionability and desire are extremely intertwined, as a desire is what often triggers an action, and vice versa. In spite of this, I did find another quality that would determine what could make some types of knowledge more valuable than others, and that is well-being. The satisfaction of desires is what increases your well-being, and as such, the acquisition of knowledge may do the same thing, assuming it is not a desire of its own.
Outside of the book, I read into an article that defined the knowledge-action principle. As you can see, many philosophers do identify the link between knowledge and actionability, and this has been another of the problems I have faced, for it is very difficult to find a source that doesn't say that knowledge is valuable simply because it allows you to do more stuff.
I am sorry I wasn't able to go into more detail this week, as much of the research I did do ended up being trivial and unrelated to my topic. That being said, I am optimistic for next week and I hope to see you guys then!