From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 14 2003 - 19:05:11 GMT
Erin,
Erin said:
I'm just trying to figure out if I like this idea
that knowledge is determined by majority opinion (did I say that right?).
You can have a consensus of opinion that the earth is flat in one
era and a consensus of opinion that the earth is round in another era.
Saying knowledge is consensus is equating these when one
seems closer to the concept of knowledge.
Matt:
Yeah, being concerned about knowledge being determined by majority opinion
is more understandable. But the pragmatist will point out that the notion
that there is a concept "Knowledge" that we must get our little "k"
knowledge closer to, so that they will ultimately correspond in a
one-to-one relationship is a Platonic notion, one that the pragmatists are
trying to get rid of. In place of that they erect the continuum. The way
we talk about the past then is changed from describing history as the
progression towards Knowledge, but the progression of our knowledge towards
greater and greater utility. Our knowledge is better then our
predecessors, not because it is closer to the concept of knowledge, but
because it is more useful. It is more useful to describe the world as
round rather than flat because when we describe it as flat we start to
think we could fall off, which after people started sailing around the
world, wasn't a very useful thing to think.
As for the politics of academia, I think the emphasis on certain standards
is a useful thing to have. If I came along, not having read any
philosophy, and said to my local philosophy department, "The Platonic
tradition of philosophy is a load of bunk," I would expect them not to take
me seriously and I think they are justified in doing that. But when Rorty
says the exact same thing, I think they are entitled to take him a bit more
seriously because he was in the trenches for 20 years, he did his homework,
he's read his Plato through Carnap. What the university wants to encourage
is the learning of a tradition, so that a person can then break away from
that tradition. If they don't learn the tradition, then a lot of time
could be lost covering old ground that others have covered. "If you don't
learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it." This isn't to say that
some person, ignorant as a box of rocks, could come along and change the
face of a discipline. But I think the chances of him even remotely
speaking the same disciplinary language, enough for the old guard to even
understand what he's suggesting or how it even affects their discipline, is
pretty slim.
On folk knowledge, all I can say is good knowledge is useful knowledge. I
find it hard to believe that a good empirical study, covering all the
bases, wouldn't corroborate a tried and true piece of folk wisdom, or at
the least explain why the folk wisdom works. For instance, your cold
example. Given that we assume that being cold outside isn't the direct
cause of our getting colds, and that we actually receive the germ when we
are inside with other people. And we assume that being cold for long
periods of time lowers our immune system's resistence to germs, we could
construct an explanation as to why it seems as if we get colds from being
outside in the cold. We get them because we _were_ outside, and then when
we move inside we actually come in contact with the germs.
I find it hard to believe that cold weather has _nothing_ to do with
getting colds, and that its only about how often you are inside with other
people, because I'm indoors at a consistent rate throughout the year (I'm
not an outdoorsy type) and I get more colds in the winter. But, this is
definitely folk wisdom. I haven't done any tests, I know nothing about
germs, and I have about zero expertise in medicine. A good empiricial
study could come along and show me what's more useful to believe.
Matt
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