Personal and Shared Knowledge Personal knowledge The knowledge

Personal and Shared Knowledge

Personal knowledge • The knowledge that a particular individual has of the world – Experiential knowledge: based on personal acquaintance or practical know-how – Second-hand knowledge: Acquired form sources such as your culture, school, the Internet and the news media • Academic knowledge – your understanding of academic subjects • Informal knowledge – Your stock of cultural and locla knowledge, random facts and trivia

Shared Knowledge • The sum total of knowledge which we can communicate to one another • Includes: academic knowledge, informal knowledge and that part of practical know-how we can communicate verbally or non-verbally • Usually shared by groups: – Friends: bound together by shared experiences and knowledge known to them – Subject specialists: Own set of assumptions, specialist language (philosophers, doctors, etc. ) – Cultures: Have their own hidden assumptions and unwritten rules which may be difficult to explain to outsiders

Personal Knowledge • Majority is derived second-hand from other sources – Background knowledge plays a major role in critical thinking – To the ignorant mind nothing is surprising and all knowledge claims, no matter how outlandish or bizarre, will seem equally plausible

Obstacles to Personal Knowledge • Ignorance – we need to know what we DON’T know – “Illusion of explanatory depth” – you don’t understand something as well as you think you do • Apathy – Once we form an opinion about something we don’t want to change our minds – Attached to our beliefs because they are: familiar, partly reflect our identity, we dislike the uncertainty we feel when we question them – Fantasy – Easy to slip from wanting something to be true to believing that it IS true (wishful thinking)

Obstacles to Personal Knowledge • Bias – Difficult to resist the feeling that our way of looking at the world is uniquely perceptive and insightful – Easy to spot biases in other people’s opinions, but not our own • Peer pressure – Most people would rather be liked than be right – We overestimate the extent to which people we associate with think as we do. This is called “false consensus effect”

Shared Knowledge • Vast majority of our knowledge • Closely connected with language • Culture – passing on beliefs and practices from one generation to the next – We build on the accumulated achievements of past generations • Great amount of research is conducted by teams – When people work together they can discuss, check, and critique one another’s ideas – Creative new ideas, approaches and solutions may arise from this approach

Dangers of Shared Knowledge • Authority Worship – Blindly accepting what we are told without thinking about it – Nothing should be accepted as true just because someone says so – Claims based on authority must be validated in terms of evidence and argument Are we obliged to take the opinions of experts simply on faith?

Dangers of Shared Knowledge • Groupthink – A form of peer pressure which leads everyone in a group to think in the same way (or act in the same way) • Power Distortions – Government and corporations have a vested interest in influencing our beliefs and values – Power can distort the content of knowledge (changing statistics), influence the direction of academic research, dictate the kind of information people are exposed to

Dangers of Shared Knowledge • Fragmentation – Due to intellectual specialization – Experts struggle to keep up with new developments in their field of expertise

The Internet • Changing our conception of knowledge • Drawbacks – Lack of quality control – anyone can publish anything about anything and say anything they want, true or not – Superficiality – Increasingly difficult to concentrate on one particular thing – we no longer look at things in depth – Too many distractions – Filter bubbles – making us narrow minded, only visit websites that agree with our way of thinking

Cultural Tradition • A culture is a map through which a group of human beings try to make sense of the world and it consists of beliefs and practices that are passed on from one generation to another – We can learn from other cultures – Reminds us there are many ways of being human and many perspectives on reality – Remember that the longevity of a belief does not mean that it is true

School • Play a key role in transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next – Must be careful of indoctrination: the difference between education and indoctrination is not what is taught but the way it is taught – Teaching must be balanced, showing both sides, allowing students to make up their own minds

Expert Opinion • We rely on expert opinion to justify many of our knowledge claims – Sometimes they are wrong – Particularly unreliable when predicting the future – Have a limited range of competence (no great wisdom outside of their area of expertise)

When to trust experts • Credentials: they have the expertise • Evidence: support their position with evidence and argument • Corroboration: their views are supported by other experts in the field • Track record: good record of honesty and reliability • Neutrality: do not have biases

News Media • Agenda Setting: the tendency of the news media to influence which stories the public consider important – Sensationalism bias: “If it bleeds, it leads” • Sensational stories attract our attention • Focus on the extraordinary • Focus on the sensational to the detriment of less dramatic but equally important stories – Bad news bias: helps to create and sustain a climate of fear – National bias: focused on own country

News Media • Framing: The news media’s use of picture and language to shape the way a story is presented – Influences the way readers or watchers see the story – Blame frames – somebody has to be at fault – Pictures – flattering or unflattering can bias an audience