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This question has been answered many times with excellent discourses in philosophy. Empirical philosophy teaches  that all knowledge is from sense experiences. All knowledge starts as inputs from sense organs. Transcendental philosophy teaches that one cannot recognize the objects in their real form due to the influence of individual sensibilities are affecting one’s perception. Once the objects are realized than associations will generate knowledge.

Object + associations -> Knowledge

Example:

Let us give a two-year-old  a candy for the first time.

Child will pick it up – start with sense of touch

Puts it in the mouth –  sense of taste.

Commits the object to the memory.

Associates it with food.

A few days later, give the child with a sour candy with the same shape and color.

Child will get excited on seeing the new object because of association with taste.

Once it is tasted, immediately a clear association error is obvious on the disappointed face.

I specifically made the point with a simple example as children do not hide their honest emotions. Grownups disguise their associative errors out of pride and egoism. 

Objectification:

In this world, one will objectify all real-world entities both animate and inanimate. Objectified entity is result of prior knowledge or information being gathered through sensory inputs. There is a fine line between objectification and association. For example, If I mention the word “library”, you will objectify it as a building with books. Right?.  Once that object is created in your imagination, you will associate library with people going there to study.  You may ask, why not just building be the library and books be associated with it. However, books are a necessity for the building to become a library.  Even with such clear understanding, it may not be universal.  There are a few bars in US named ‘Library’, where people socialize over a drink or two . All objectifications have some probability of an error.

Some objectification errors are accidental (bars names like Library)  others are over generalizations.

Exercise: 

Read the following lines one at time. After you read the line take a few seconds to objectify it in your mind.

Pumpkin.

Doctor.

Fire Fighter.

After you have identified an object for each in your mind then continue reading the rest.

Now most of us imagine pumpkin to be big and images of Halloween may come to mind. However there are many small pumpkin varieties and many other uses of pumpkin.

Most often doctor is imagined to be a gray haired gentle white male. There are many non-medical doctors in other sciences. There are many female medical doctors as well.

Fire Fighter evokes an image of handsome, tough, tall male with helmet and firehose. One must be aware there are female fire fighters and not all firefighters need to be tall or handsome.

For knowledge to be true,   objects must not be over generalized.

‘Consider all possibilities” should be the principle for good generalization of any given scenario.

Association:

Having read about objectification, let us move on to associations.

This is where the wise are separated from the rest.

For unwise utilitarian goals, irrational fears and prejudice gets involved in presenting and managing the associations.

For example, Hiking in the mountains, one person associates it with outdoor enjoyment.  Another associates it with possibility of attacks of wild animals. Both are right and wrong at the same time. Neither can summarily deny the other. Wise will make the correct associations, while going to the hike, carries a whistle and hike with a crowd while on the mountain.  This example is trivial, however, the message is true to the fact.

For another serious example, who among us are free from prejudice while we make personal assessments of people based on their political leanings. The scale of these extreme associations is beyond imagination. Errors of associations were displayed on a grand scale in plain sight recently in USA. Some republican party members associated democratic party members with child molesters and sex traffickers.  They are completely convinced of that  and they have no doubts about that. Remember Pizzagate conspiracy theory – Wikipedia.

What we need to learn this is that associations can go miserably wrong, if not watched and corrected on a continuous basis. 

“No person’s associations are faultless.”   Knowing this, one must strive for continuous evaluate the associations with reason and validation (what would ‘man on the Clapham omnibus’ would have done).

Generalized Objects + Reasonable Associations -> Knowledge.

Temporal modifications:

I would be missing  the full picture, if this article does not include the fourth dimension – temporal modifications.

Influence of time affect both the objectification and the associations.

Examples of temporal associations:  When John in in High School, he will be associated with high school and activities of high school. When John goes to college, joins a job, gets married the associations keep changing with the time.

Examples of temporal objectifications: Human behavior is influenced by age.  Some get wiser and others get grumpy. All objects change over time and as qualities change and necessitates modifications to the objectification.

Knowledge is dynamic and ever changing and no one can rest on their laurels in the subject of learning the world around them.

(Generalized Objects + Reasonable Associations) with temporal modifications -> Prudent Knowledge.