Social Construction of Information

1
Social Construction of Information

• Lectures 3 and 4
• Unpacking Knowledge in a Social World by Goldman

2
Student Observations

• SCIENCE Science is described as incomparably the
  most successful way of knowing, simply because
  the means of reasoning and results are objective
  and testable. PSEUDO-SCIENCE (s), however, are
  false science because they are often seen as
  science when they are not. Pseudo-science (s) are
  defined by five criteria (1) their fundamental
  assumption is that natural events can be
  controlled by supernatural forces, (2) their
  findings are biased rather than objective i.e.,
  they are accepted when they support a particular
  idea but rejected when they do not, (3) their
  ideas cannot be tested,(4) their results cannot
  always be duplicated, and (5) their predictions
  are correct no more often than one would except
  from chance occurrences. (Merritts, Dorothy,
  Andrew De Wet, Kirsten Menking Environmental
  Geology An Earth System Science Approach 1998)

3
This Just In

• Sunday morning (8/31/03) on CNN Reliable
  Sources, (an interesting name considering our
  concern with Truth), Tom Friedman, NY Times
  reporter said
• Some things are true even if George Bush
  believes them.

4
More Co-Adaptation Quotes

• Source Steve Lansing (2002) Artificial
  Societies and the Social Sciences
• How do we get from individual to collective
  knowledge? BL (1966) raised the paradox of how
  heterogeneous micro-world of individual behaviors
  can generate global patterns which in turn
  constrain the future behaviors of individuals.
• Darwin was wrong, individual cooperation is more
  important than competition. Together people
  engage in niche construction (Lewontin 2000).

5
Even More Co-Adaptation

• The growth of an organism affects its physical
  and chemical environment (Lovelock 1988).
• We see in these quotes support for our theory of
  co-adaptation. Individuals learn, share, and park
  findings (culture) so future generations do not
  question them (i.e. they become objective).

6
Epistemology

• Epistemology derives from the Greek word
  episteme, meaning knowledge.
• Doxology, from the Greek word doxa, meaning
  opinion or belief (whether true or false).

7
Epistemology and Postmodern Resistance

• Individual vs. social epistemology
• SE many routes to belief that feature
  interactions with other agents, social path to
  knowledge.
• SE examines the spread of information across a
  groups membership the distribution of
  knowledge in social cluster.

8
Veristic Epistemology

• VE production of knowledge, or true belief.
• VE production of error (false beliefs) and
  ignorance (absence of true belief)
• Which knowledge seeking (producing) practices
  have a comparatively favorable impact on
  knowledge as contrasted with error and ignorance?

9
Critiques of Veristic Epistemology

• Veriphobia fear of truth
• Social constructivism,
• Postmodernism,
• Pragmatism,
• Cultural studies,
• Critical legal studies
• They all share a deep skepticism or utter
  repudiation of truth as a viable criterion for
  studying epistemic phenomena.
• They maintain that knowledge is not true belief
  but something like institutionalized belief.
  Accepted Belief, Social Reality

10
Social Construction

• There is no such thing as transcendent truth.
  What we call truth is simply what we agree with.
  So-called truths are merely negotiated beliefs,
  the products of social construction and
  fabrication not objective or external features of
  the world.
• Truth is merely a compliment we pay to statements
  we find good to believe.
• Truth is not a property possessed by beliefs by
  virtue of some relationship they bear to worldly
  facts.

11
Problems with Social Construction

• Statement of truth may not derive from express
  agreement
• Role of negotiation mere agreement does not
  make something true. World is flat.
• Truth is what peers let you say but does it
  become truer the more peers permit you to say it?
• Truths do not need to be confirmed by humans
  the world simply exists without us or our
  awareness of its features.
• Argument that (C -gt) T -gt P -gt N -gt B doesnt
  there have to be a chemical before there is a
  trace on a machine, before there is a perceptual
  observation, before there is a negotiation ending
  in a belief that the chemical exists.
• The mere fact that negotiation plays a role in
  the formation of scientific beliefs does not
  preclude the possibility of a more complete
  explanation based on truth.

12
Approaches to Truth

• What do we mean when we say that something is
  true?
• What criterion or test of truth are used as
  practical guides for telling when something is
  true?
• Approaches to truth
• Instrumentalism
• Epistemic
• Realism
• Deflationism
• Correspondence

13
Correspondence Theory

• Truth involves a relationship to reality
• Items are candidates for truth only if they
  purport to describe reality.
• A theory of truth should require the truth bearer
  to describe reality.
• An item X is true if and only if it is
  descriptively successful, that is X purports to
  describe reality and its content fits reality.

14
More Correspondence

• Descriptive-success theory true is a term of
  descriptive appraisal.
• People sort or segregate entities or actions into
  various categories of success and failure, as a
  function of whether they live up to the primary
  aim or function associated with them.
• In my words, people decide what is true and if
  this concurs with science so be it, if not then
  the burden of proof is on science not people. or
  how exactly did science get center stage and put
  people aside?

15
Even More

• Linguist evidence true means faithful true
  friend, true to ones cause, true to life.
• Descriptive success is faithfulness to reality.
• To some facts are sentence-shaped pieces of
  nonlinguistic reality, but there are problems
  with this notion so it is not used in this
  theory.
• Instead propositions are made true by concrete
  events or relations among abstract entities. As
  long as anything that makes a proposition true is
  a part of reality (construed as broadly as
  possible) this fits the correspondence theory.

16
Some Questions to Ponder

• To what extent does Goldmans analysis reflect
  all human epistemologies? Give examples from
  other cultures.
• To what extent does Goldmans analysis not
  reflect non-western epistemologies? Give examples
  from other cultures.

17
References

• Lansing, S. (2002) Artificial Societies and the
  Social Sciences. Artificial Life 8 279-292.
• Berger, P. and T. Luckman (1966) The Social
  Construction of Reality. New York Doubleday.
• Lewontin, R. (2000) It Aint Necessarily So The
  Dream of the Human Genome Project and Other
  Illusions. New York Review of Books.
• Lovelock, J. (1988) The Ages of Gaia. New York
  Bantam Books.