Thursday, November 5, 2009
Epistemic agents: Individuals, groups, or?
Who has knowledge? Can individuals have knowledge? Can groups? Can both? On what does it depend? Use specific examples. Consider scientific knowledge, medical knowledge, knowing that p, knowing how to do y, embodied knowledge, disembodied knowledge, cultural knowledge, etc. (just comment on some of these--not all. Try to build on each others' posts, rather than repeating what someone has already said.)
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I think that both individuals and groups can have knowledge. Both can have justified knowledge about a certain subject as long as they have adequate evidence to support how they know. For instance, our baseball team, as a group, has certain knowledge about what our team’s strengths and weaknesses are. We have adequate evidence because we are at practice every day. Someone who is not a part of our team would not have adequate knowledge about our style of play or what our strengths and weaknesses are because they are not around enough to have sufficient evidence to really know.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that both individuals and groups can have knowledge. Anyone can have knowledge as long as they have evidence to support what they believe. An example could be shown in the medical field. All doctor's will believe in the same diagnosis based on the symptoms of the patient because certain symptoms go to certain diseases. However, one doctor can believe the same as the others but he or she could also believe there is an additional problem along with the original diagnosis due to other factors they could have noticed in the patient.
ReplyDeleteI believe as well that individuals as well as groups can have knowledge. The knowledge that an individual has, as well as the knowlegde that the group has needs to have evidence in support of what they believe is knowledge. Not every person or group may have the same evidence. Someone might know 'p' because of example of evidence and another person might know 'p' because of a different example of evidence. Both examples of evidence can be right and can support that the knowledge is true.
ReplyDeleteI agree that individuals and groups have knowledge. Individuals possess knowledge from experiences in which they encounter on their own. Groups possess knowledge based on experiences they encounter with each other. Different types of groups possess different types of knowledge (work groups, sports groups, social groups). Others may not be able to justify a group’s knowledge due to a lack of experience or a lack of evidence to possess the knowledge at hand.
ReplyDeleteI believe that knowledge is always changing and that it depends on your view points to believe in what is being stated. Galileo believed in a heliocentric view of the universe; meaning that the Earth was in the center. Galileo was threatened with torture, forced to deny his beliefs in the heliocentric model, and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. We now know that his knowledge was correct on his belief and that the individual was correct. The groups of people in the political and religious front were not only wrong, but tried to hide it from the masses and creating a false belief for the people in those times.
ReplyDeleteIndividuals cannot have knowledge by themselves for they need to learn their knowledge from another individual who has been taught by another individual, and the chain will continue. There are some examples of children who “learn” even though they have been locked up and all human contact has been withheld for key developmental stages. Yet this “knowledge” is mostly instinctual, how to eat, communicate, and primitive human functions.
ReplyDeleteWe need to be taught by others. Who were taught by others. Yet, who were those others taught by? Allow me to channel Descartes, “God.” Not a totally convincing argument but an argument nonetheless.
We learn in groups because then all the information learned from the multitude of teachers who have taught all the members of the group can be brought together. More group projects have been added to curriculum in recent years than in years past. I had to take Directing I and II, required courses for Theatre majors, by myself last year. This was very difficult as I was not able to bounce ideas off other students and get their input. In directing we deal with abstract ideas of plot and how the story progresses, even if it is not clearly stated. Some very complicated plays, like ones with multiple sub plots can be difficult to analyze by oneself. Only bringing one set of ideas to a project could hurt progress in the end because of the narrow-mindedness of one person. Adding more members of the group would broaden the perspective and the knowledge.
I believe that both individuals and groups can have knowledge. Justified knowledge from an individual though may have to be obtained from a group or outside source. Groups and individuals both have to gain knowledge and test it to see it if is justified in truth, and worthy to keep that knowledge. Cultural knowledge for example, is basically the passing of knowledge though a group of people who are relating in ideas and beliefs. Their knowledge and beliefs will be spread through generations, as long as they have the support of evidence to be then passes on to individuals or groups. Overall cultural knowledge is very dependent of your region, such as medical practices which have their own set of medical knowledge.
ReplyDeleteIndividuals can have knowledge but I would think that most of stems from social knowledge, linked to other people. If I fall and hit my head on the concrete, it know it hurts, I don't need anyone else to figure that out. We can read books, watch tv or movies, hear a lecture or have a conversation, those types of interactions are social knowledge. Groups also can have knowledge collectively if they are exposed to the same types of messages over & over. They can also interpret the same message in different ways and remember it by relating it to their own past experiences. Epistemic agents can also be grouped by their cultural beliefs and ceremonies which may be knowledge only they will truely believe and udnerstand and outsiders may not believe that is knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of these post. I think both individuals and groups can have knowledge as long as the individual/group can justify their knowledge. As nick stated in his example, his team as a whole has common knowledge of his teams strength's and weaknesses. They can justify this knowledge because they practice as a team everyday. Just as my soccer team has knowledge about our team. However, since I don't play baseball I could have common knowledge about what baseball is, but I wouldn't maintain the knowledge nick and his team has about his baseball team just like he wouldn't know the same things about my soccer team. I also think individuals can have knowledge, but sometimes the knowledge is linked to outside sources, such as from a group.
ReplyDeleteCultural Knowledge- is dependent on where you live. People from different cultures might have different knowledge because of how their cultural functions and the location of the place they live.
I do not think their is such a thing as group knowledge. The ball team example above is a good example of how we might think their is group knowledge. If we ask everyone on the team we would get different answers about how every one else plays. What you have is a group of guys who practice together and learn traits of the others the do not play as one mind if they did errors would never happen. They have just learned the same sport which has rules and individually learned how their team mates play
ReplyDeleteCan an "individual" have "knowledge?" What is an "epistemic agent?"
ReplyDeleteFirstly, we must understand that Knowledge and Knower's are really inseparable. Part's and whole's are really inseparable.
I think it is very plausible that we are under an illusion with regard to ourselves and the so called external world which is mainly brought about by the idea that there are separate things and events. We believe there are separate things and events because of the way we think. As Alan Watt's say's, "In order to think one must THING, that is to say, divide this astonishing cosmic Rorschach blot into bits." Our conceptions and interpretations, as a result of thinking, distort our perceptions of the state of affairs known as the physical universe.
Using Alfred North Whitehead's, fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which is committed, "when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality," it is easy to understand how we can consistently conceive of knower's, individual persons, and epistemic agents as separate indivisible beings "with" something (knowledge). When in fact what we conceive as separate, indivisible, and whole (e.g. cognitive agent) is always dependent, divisible, and part of a larger whole. Arthur Koestler coined the term "holon," which is a system that is always simultaneously a whole and a part. This term "holon" destabilizes the problem of misplaced concreteness, and the problem of beginning with parts as if they were wholes. to be continued. . .
I think that everyone has knowledge. Humans and animals. I think that each individual has their own sense of knowledge, some areas more then others and when you get individuals into groups, i think that the amount of knowledge each person has expands. The individual in the group all contribute their own personal knowledge and combined the amount of knowledge is greater. I think that the above example given by nrz2305 about the baseball team is a great example. Commenting on the scientific and medical knowledge; I think the same scenario applies here where one person knows something and another person knows something else and when you get a bunch of people together you have an infinite amount of knowledge that leads to even more knowledge. I believe knowledge for individuals is based off of past experiences, experience, and examples of others. The knowledge of a group is combined by experience and past experiences. The group works together to build knowledge off of each other to form a whole group of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge in my opinion is at first learned mainly through your parents and in later years learned through experience. One example could be cultural knowledge if you are traveling. Chinese and Japanese people do not like or consider it an insult if you stare them in the eyes. If somebody did not tell you or you did not have this experience you would not have any knowledge of this because in America it shows that you respect the person and you are paying attention to what they are saying. It does not matter if you care or not it is a sign of respect.
ReplyDeleteI'll explore embodied knowledge--
ReplyDeleteTo me, it's pretty apparent that our time, place, and standing have a lot to do with the knowledge we have. DesCartes removes his mind from his body, then finds an objective 'Truth' on which to begin theorizing--which is preposterous to me. For one to assert that anything an objective foundation can be flushed out is a fallacy! Where did DesCartes learn of God? Isn't language subjective in itself? Can we truly describe the external world objectively?
I agree with Michelle Crowley: individuals cannot have knowledge solely on their own. This is because the conditions for knowledge are largely social in nature. How can a person learn while being completely isolated from outside social influences? Total isolation (being locked in a closet for years) results in nothing more than “instinctual knowledge” of primitive human functions.
ReplyDeleteA person can learn independently while reading a book for example… Except that book was written by another individual or a group of individuals… and before the individual can read the book which was written by another person, he or she must have been taught how to read by another person. Before learning how to read the individual must understand their socially constructed language. Knowledge is therefore social in nature no matter how you look at it.
Knowledge exists outside of individuals, otherwise we would never be able to discover what we know.Therefore, individuals cannot have knowledge on their own. A group of individuals can have knowledge, cultural knowledge, medical knowledge, etc. which is often passed down from generation to generation. Without other individuals, groups could not have knowledge either.
ReplyDeleteTHE thesis if my blogs is that KNOWLEDGE and KNOWER'S("traditional cognitive agents") are actually INSEPARABLE. INDIVIDUAL's(“traditional cognitive agents”) and SOCIETY are actually INSEPARABLE.
ReplyDeleteThe resulting notion is thus: the COGNITIVE AGENT is the WHOLE OF SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE which “individuals” are only a part of.
I actually think that there may be a sort of paradox here when it comes to the topic of the “epistemic agent.” An important point I want to make is that I think the paradox may be a result of the inadequacies and limitations of language, our commonsense notions and unquestioned assumptions. I am going to eventually try and relate this to my stuff in the previous blog about the illusions brought on by our use of language and the idea of separate things and events.
KNOWLEDGE IS SOCIAL: I would say that the idea that knowledge is totally a social phenomenon is an absolute given. It is a fact. This is evident for countless reasons but I believe they all fit into either one or both(because they are continuous) of two categories: Biological and Cultural. Reasons under the biological category would relate to the fact that we are given the biological knowing "hardware" through social means(reproduction). Also, all "know-how"(skills) are a result of biological process (like instinct) if not cultural processes(like propositional knowledge). Reasons under the cultural category would relate to the fact that we are taught all skills “know-how,” that were not acquired biologically, through socio-cultural means. Even more evident for western culture, is that all "know-about" (the realm of conventional/propositional knowledge) is learned through the medium of language/symbols which is obviously acquired through socio-cultural means. I say this would be more evident in the west because of our restricted view of knowledge. It seems that most westerners don’t really feel they know something unless they can represent it to themselves in words. This is called conventional knowledge because of the very fact of its sociality. Language is a matter of social agreement as to which particular codes of communication refer to which objects. What’s less evident is that the powers of language directly influence the stuff of experience itself. As Alan Watt’s says, “We have no difficulty in understanding that the word “tree” is a matter of convention. What is much less obvious is that the convention also governs the delineation of the thing to which the word is assigned. For the child has to be taught not only what words are to stand for what things, but the way in which his culture has agreed to divide things from each other, to mark out the boundaries in our daily experience.”
Another vitally essential point to recognize about KNOWING, whether the skills to do so were acquired through "biological" or "cultural" means(both being SOCIAL), is that the process of knowing is always simultaneous to an environment (external). All knowing is reaction to problems posed by what is “external” to the individual/subject. This is why all thought seems to follow a question based format. At a fundamental level simply not knowing something is a problem posed by the unknown, and what is unknown, by definition, has to be external to the cognitive agent (subject.)
ReplyDeleteAll knowledge, even “introspective knowledge”, is social and simultaneous to the environment. In other words knowing is action towards the world and by the world. The recursive nature of the knowing subject and world was realized by Merleau-Ponty, “The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects.” The “interior” (the first person experience) of an individual consists of what the individual experiences and knows and what is experienced or known was previously unknown and external to the subject. Simultaneously, the world gives rise to conscious experience through the structure of the organisms nervous system, which is a function and continuous with the body/total organism, which is a function and continuous with the total environment. This means that the structure and content of introspective thought is shaped by the environment. “Introspective” knowledge is actually social and not private because the content is a public language. There is nothing you can say that would only make sense to you and not anybody else who also shared your language. In this sense, language is one aspect of the cognitive agent and not something the cognitive agent “uses.”
KNOWLEDGE ISNT A SUBSTANCE: Here’s the seeming paradox. Knowledge is social process and simultaneous to the environment but it does not exist outside of individuals. It cannot. I think that so many people wish to believe that knowledge is some independent, substance like, thing waiting to be "discovered" by any individual. I think that it is somehow comforting and maybe useful to some people to think of knowledge as a sort of product that could be made available to everyone. The problem, however, is that this common sense notion of knowledge as substance denotes that all people are substitutable, when it comes to knowledge (all people or any multiplicity of people can have the same knowledge), which seriously downgrades the role of interpretation and situated cognition. "Individual" knowledge is a result of the whole of society, and thus a person’s knowledge is the result of another person’s knowledge, but a person cannot "give" another person knowledge the same way you would hand someone an object. When I hand someone an object it’s the same object when they receive it. If I try to teach someone something through, let’s say, the communication of a stream of verbal signifiers (language) those words have to pass through many interpretive contexts. My words have to be heard by you and your own unique perceptual instruments, and in the midst of understanding what it is that I am saying you process my words according to your own preexisting conceptual networks and ideas which have all been acquired through the history of your experience and unique situatedness. This common sense way of thinking (knowledge as substance) even shows up in scientific talk with the use of this metaphor “a body of scientific knowledge." The notion is that individual scientists help to build on to this sort of preexisting grand edifice of knowledge with its own separate structure by inserting their own little part. Then when it comes to justification and evidence they can resort to saying, “a growing body of research suggests,” instead of saying “in a scientifically specialized ongoing dialogue someone just made a claim”. All knowledge is known by someone. All knowledge is somehow a function or a part of knower’s. Knowing what they know and the way they know it is some function of them not some substance “out there.”
ReplyDeleteThe traditional cognitive agent is this sort of separate entity with the “knowing equipment”(ex. biology and language) which it uses to acquire this separate knowledge stuff. But this “knowing equipment” is acquired through social process and it is the knowledge itself. You don’t learn semantics(meaning) after you learn language because to use a language is know the meaning.
to be continued. . .