Wikipedia is increasingly becoming the first and often only source to which many people refer for getting information on many subjects. It has several features that distinguish it from traditional sources of knowledge: It is democratic, collaborative, and constantly changing.
But can we trust it? The aim of this post is to review some of the arguments for and against trusting Wikipedia, and arrive at some tentative conclusions.
In my previous two blogs I criticised the notion that there is a single identity of impairment. In my second blog in particular I argued that there are commonly two ways to consider the identity of an impaired person: the subjective and objective aspects of impairment. Subjective impairments are those that logically affect the life of a person given a particular circumstance; i.e. I find it hard to hear people on my mobile / cell phone in all but the most acoustically sophisticated and quiet surroundings, but I have no problem texting people. Thus my subjective hearing impairment only affects limited elements of my life and the environments that I work in. Objective impairments, on the other hand, are those that are defined by, and often imposed on the identity of a person by, the greater society. For instance, in my book God, Money and Politics (Hayhoe 2008a) I argued that asylums and schools for the blind were founded on the notion that “being blind” became a student’s identity, and one that had to be controlled morally, economically and even politically within the confines of their institution in order to control the society beyond its walls. In this blog I look at this objective aspect of impairment in particular, and the core qualities which (despite national and cultural differences) the greater Western society, or westernised societies classifies people as impaired.
In order to simplify a definition of deafness and blindness, it is necessary to see these conceptualizations in the context of a social and cultural epistemology of impairment. Firstly, impairment can be defined by the individual given particular circumstances: what an individual can do in given circumstances. This can be referred to as Subjective Impairment, and is so called because it examines each person’s trait according to its context and subject: the environment, the task, the man, the woman, the girl or the boy, not the impaired identity of the person. For instance, I have no hearing impairment whilst I am reading a book, but I have a walking impairment when I am carrying heavy shopping bags. Thus, my identification as a hearing impaired person by others is based on a number of different subjective concepts to those of a perception of my lived reality in many situations; i.e. although my hearing problem only takes up a little of my life and its degree of annoyance or impairment is dependent on individual circumstances, this is felt to control enough of my normal existence to constitute disadvantage, suffering or discomfort.
I am 42 years old. Tinnitus runs in my mother’s family. My mother has it; my uncles and aunts on her side have it; my grandmother had it for as long as I could remember. When I was in my mid-twenties, I began to notice my hearing deteriorating. Because this problem was in my family, my doctors monitored my progress. Early tests revealed that this problem wasn’t too severe. I resisted further hearing tests until my mid-thirties, when it became too much of a problem to ignore. At this point, I had a further hearing test and discovered I had lost enough high frequencies to be considered hearing impaired. I now have to wear an ugly National Health Service protuberance from my ear until I earn enough to afford a high tech Danish hearing aid that can sit in my ear (almost) invisibly.
So, am I deaf?
I’m currently in the midst of studying for a candidacy exam on a very specific topic: idealized scientific representations. A scientific representation or model is considered idealized, according to one influential account, if (a) it includes or asserts some falsehood, (b) this falsehood simplifies the model in some relevant way, e.g. to make calculation easier, or to make explanations clearer, and (c) the falsehood approximates some relevant truths about the system(s) being represented. Idealization, then, is a specific type of misrepresentation, distinct from useful fictions and plain falsities (since idealizations must at least approximate the truth). Examples of idealizations in science include (by no means exhaustively): Bohr’s model of the hydrogen atom, the ideal gas law, the model of the ideal pendulum, astronomical models that treat the Earth as a volumeless point-mass, ecological models that assume strict regional barriers, the economic assumption of perfect access to information about prices, and just about every line of best fit ever drawn.
There is a fast-growing literature on this topic, which is understandable given that all modern sciences seem replete with idealized representations. Indeed, according to some people working in this area, the methodological novelty that Galileo (arguably the founder of modern science) hit upon was not simply the use of mathematics to represent nature, but the use of idealized mathematical representations. Regardless of its origins, idealization seems to be a practice that lies near the foundation of today’s scientific practice. Given the pervasive use of idealized representations in science, there are many worthwhile philosophical questions to be asked about it. For example, what notion of “approximate truth” is appealed to here? How can we learn things by making false assumptions? What are we learning about the world through idealized representations?
The issues surrounding idealization that interest me most usually involve the application of idealized representations in critical settings, e.g. when crafting public policy on the basis of predictions derived with idealized models. Unsurprisingly, applying scientific representations that are known to include simplifying falsities makes everyone feel a bit uneasy, especially when the success of such applications really matters, and even more so given that we have some clear cases of idealization gone awry.
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Over the past year I have been conducting research, along with Mark Solovey, on something called the “Council of Social Advisers”. Some people have probably heard of the Council of Economic Advisers: a group of three economists appointed by the president of the United States to advise him on economic matters and produce an annual economic report. The Council of Economic Advisers has existed since 1946 and has traditionally been the primary interface between academic economists and the United States federal government. However, most have probably not heard of the Council of Social Advisers. This is because it does not exist. But the story of why it does not exist, and why it might have existed, provides a fascinating look at not just the interaction between social scientists and government, and also competing conceptions of what the responsibilities and limits of government ought to be.
According to recent views in philosophy of science and epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) the concept of knowledge is inherently related to practical concerns. In such views, whether a person knows a certain claim depends not only on the truth of the claim and the evidence she possesses to support this claim, but also on facts about her practical interests and social values. Specifically, if she has high stakes with regard to the claim, she is in a worse position to know that claim than a person with low or no stakes regarding it.
For example, suppose that Jack is in a train station, and is about to board a train to Toronto. He doesn’t know if he is at the right platform. He asks a random person at the platform, who looks like another passenger, whether this is the train to Toronto, and that person says that it is. Does Jack know based on this person’s testimony that this is the train to Toronto? According to these recent views, the answer to this question depends on his interests. If it is very important for Jack to arrive in Toronto on time, for example, to attend an important meeting, then he might not know this, and need to make further inquiries, such as asking a train station employee. But if it does not matter to Jack so much, then this random person’s testimony is enough to grant him knowledge on this matter.
Recently, I have been thinking about these views. In this post I will review some of the arguments in support of them, hopefully in an accessible manner, and share some of my initial thoughts about them.
Welcome to the latest in a series of posts about wildlife films and their representation of nature. New readers can catch up with an introduction to the history of wildlife films, Disney’s True-Life Adventures or Disney’s more recent foray into big screen family-friendly wildlife documentaries.
In this post I’ll be rewinding back to the precursor to wildlife filmmaking: photography. Concern about a film’s authenticity or the decisions of particular filmmakers are in line with a much older discourse regarding the authenticity of photographs of animals, and with the prevalence of professional and amateur photographers today, publishers walk a fine line between disclosing the gory details (which nowadays include staging, rented animals, and Photoshop) of how certain shots were obtained and losing an audience expecting the increasingly spectacular between the pages of National Geographic.
SPIEGEL: So the Human Genome Project has had very little medical benefits so far?
Venter: Close to zero to put it precisely.1
Biologists such as Richard Lewontin and Evelyn Fox Keller have long been challenging the view of the genome as a simple recipe that contains everything we need to know about organisms. The genome, our cells, our bodies, and the environments they inhabit are far more complex than most scientists suppose, they argue. Until recently, however, they have been marginalized voices. When the human genome was first sequenced 10 years ago, most assumed that dramatic advances in medicine, and biotechnology in general, were just around the corner. But as time went on, it has become increasingly clear that Lewontin and Keller are right.
A series on the historical, philosophical, and scientific foundations of the GM crop debate.
Heralded as both the cause and the solution of the world’s food production problems, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have become a hotly debated topic since they were first approved for use and human consumption in North America in the mid-1990s. The poles of the debate include staunch advocates of GM crops and environmental dissenters: large agribusinesses, such as Monsanto, who argue for the safety and utility of GMOs, and organizations such as Greenpeace International who maintain that the threat posed by GMOs is unprecedented and must be avoided at all costs. Ad campaigns, activist rallies, and glossy brochures abound in defense of each position.
In the midst of this debate it is easy to get lost in a mass of scary hypotheses, burdensome statistics, and confusing scientific terms. Yet, basic issues are left painfully undiscussed: what does it mean for a crop to be ‘genetically modified’ (is genetic modification a problem? If so, why?); what is the historical place of GMOs in agriculture (aren’t all crops ‘genetically modified’?); what is the role of private corporations in their production and distribution (are GMOs produced by evil multi-national corporations bent on world domination?); and what are the intellectual property structures that influence the creation of GMOs (you can patent a plant?).