1. “The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.
2. “The production of knowledge is always a collaborative task and never solely a product of the individual.” Discuss this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge.
3. Do good explanations have to be true?
4. “Disinterestedness is essential in the pursuit of knowledge.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge.
5. “The production of knowledge requires accepting conclusions that go beyond the evidence for them.” Discuss this claim.
6. “One way to assure the health of a discipline is to nurture contrasting perspectives.” Discuss this claim.
I expect 1,2 and 4 to be popular.
As Paul has noted, the questions seem to have a greater sense of direction than previous ones.
Question 1.
“The quality of knowledge is best measured by how many people accept it.” will give us a chance to explore fake news/social media with the students. Nick has been urging me to put together an optional Unit on this very issue….it’s coming
Here are some of the resources Nick has shared with me:
“The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News”
Which contains the wonderful Jonathan Swift quote “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.”
How Online Trolls Divide Americans
Or even…
In Italian Schools, Reading, Writing and Recognizing Fake News
Specifically for the question above, the debate might focus on ‘…if something has been ‘shared’ by thousands of people on social media does it have a greater weight of truth than the opinion of one expert?” The internet may have democratised information but at the same time it has undermined the authority of that information. Established sources, traditional media (e.g. bbc), scientific organisations (e.g. the Royal Society) were previously ‘gatekeepers of truth’. There is no better illustration of this than the fact that 1970’s CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite was viewed as the most trusted man in America.
Information, knowledge, truth has gone through a sociological transformation. This phenomenon was ‘predicted’ 12 years ago by a Computer Scientist Jarod Lanier “What we are witnessing today“is the alarming rise of the fallacy of the infallible collective.”
QZ online magazine highlights how the use of ‘elite’ has replaced the term ‘expert’.
There is an increasing distrust of the informed opinion of groups of experts and greater trust of ‘gut-feeling’.
A supplementary argument in answering this question could be the dangerous role of group think. This also linked to Question 6
Question 6.
“One way to assure the health of a discipline is to nurture contrasting perspectives.” Discuss this claim.
There are healthy and unhealthy debates within disciplines. In evolutionary theory debate has led to confusion which has been exploited by Creationist to undermine the faith in the overall theory.
When Darwin wrote that he had tried to be open to other mechanism or drivers of evolution other than adaption this was used to suggest that divine intervention may also be involved, ”
I placed in a most conspicuous position—namely at the close of the Introduction—the following words: “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.”
In some discipline the different perspectives were beyond reconciliation and the governing body or authority had to make a definitive statement to stop the whole discipline from being discredited. This is certainly true in relation to the Recovered Memory issue in Psychology during the 90’s. The APA put out a Position paper, the words may not seem that strong but they worked in helping finally dismiss the idea that an individual’s memory is a true record of events.
Research has shown that memory does not always
record events accurately. In the presence of severe or
prolonged stress, people may suffer significant impairment
of the retention, recall and accuracy of memories.
Memories can also be altered as a result of suggestions
particularly by a trusted person or authority figure.
There are similarities between this question and last year’s ‘robust requires both consensus and disagreement’. Here are the most relevant points from the examiners remarks on this question.
It may even be advisable to shut down pointless discussion about it when it involves the participation of outsiders lacking in relevant credentials (eg climate change, Holocaust denial, evolutionary origins) and who may have little stake in the disinterested accumulation of knowledge. Disagreement can narrow to trivial details or the absurd. Sometimes there is a need to avoid engagement with adversaries in order to prevent legitimization of corrupted views. Disreputable disagreement stems from ignorance or from those with an agenda in mind. Often such disagreement is focused on the practitioners rather than on the knowledge itself.
Question 4
Disinterestedness is essential in the pursuit of knowledge.” Discuss this claim with reference to two areas of knowledge
If we were to have an objective judgement of beauty if would have to be ‘disinterested’ and not in the eye of the beholder. Kant believed appreciation of true beauty can only be disinterested.
Question 5
The production of knowledge requires accepting conclusions that go beyond the evidence for them.’ Discuss this claim.
This week the Grade 12 students had a chance to look at my brain. I volunteered to have an MRIf scan at the NUS laboratory.
The images are impressive but it is hard to remember that image is not the brain! This article deals with this problem of assuming that image and brain are the same thing and how we go beyond the evidence to make assumptions that border on pseudoscience,
From “Metaphors, modules and brain-scan pseudoscience.”
“It’s not the science itself that is the problem. It’s taking a little bit of science and going way beyond it.”
Question 2
“The production of knowledge is always a collaborative task and never solely a product of the individual.” Discuss this statement with reference to two areas of knowledge.
Much creativity comes out of the dynamics of groups who bounce ideas of each other and support experimentation. However, painful loneliness, isolation and social exclusion has given many an artist, scientist and mathematicians an opportunity (at enormous cost) to look at he world from the outside and with a singular perspective. I was recently reading about the life of the British Comedienne Victoria Wood. In an interview Wood spoke about how she “..suffered from low self-esteem and later talked about being shy, lonely and overweight as a child.” Wood had gone to a school of high achievers and felt she did not fit in to any social group. Her comedy was always focused on keenly observed social interactions, perhaps an ability she developed because she was not part of ‘normal’ social interactions during her school life.