#05 Bacchus reading group summary
This month’s reading: Hardwig, J. (1991). The role of trust in knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy, 88(12), 693-708.
Notes of the comments made during the discussion:
Hardwig made an inference that although expertise is not strictly related to character, being excellent at something surely is. In the sense that it requires self-discipline (and sacrifice) to firstly acquire knowledge and secondly to stay up to date.
Hence, whilst character is not sufficient to constitute the category of expertise, it does represent a part of it.
The connection between trust and facts outlined by Hardwig, takes into consideration that humans have limited knowledge (i.e. bounded rationality), and hence trust becomes an essential aspect for any type of cooperation (scientific or otherwise).
Within the situation of new knowledge, the character traits of the speaker represent a heuristic of why the information that the individual is relaying are trustworthy.
Knowing which character attributes these are AND how they manifest (e.g. use of evidence, logical structure of argument, acknowledgment of limitations etc.) represents a skill in and of itself
The mechanism of how trust is established, is more foundational, than facts, as facts derive from that community of trust.
This becomes especially challenging in situations of multidisciplinarity, as there foundational assumptions in regard to ontology, epistemology, axioms etc. may differ (e.g. engineering vs. English literature). Trust, here can generate two knock on consequences:
On the one side in the sense if a community is too trusting into its own methods and results it runs the risk of becoming stultified and outdated (lack of renewal).
Meanwhile, when individuals with different backgrounds come together, and trust each other, there is the possibility of cross fertilisation and inspiration of new knowledge. Given that the individuals are not too dissimilar, as then trust breaks down and no new knowledge is created (lack of cohesion).
Within an impact context, the issue of trust creation inherent within a research context is magnified. In the sense, the same difficulties remain as in the research context as explained above, BUT other actors like the public, politicians, industry or other special interest groups are now also involved.
A difficulty with impact generation, establishing trust and maintaining the veracity of facts, is that by this very assortment the system in which the individual is operating becomes a multiply connected feedback loop.
In the sense, what feedback loops interact to cause something to be judged beneficial in the first place (e.g. why are batteries for electric cars a better strategy than hydrogen in order to mitigate human made climate change?).
In the sense, that the knock on effects cannot be delimitated and predicted (e.g. are the universities responding to political pressures because they are remunerated with resources or is the issue scientifically relevant?).
In the sense, that the cultural system that is pushing for the promotion of research impact created the evaluation of research impact, representing now a disciplinary pressure that creates more research impact (are academics engaging with impact because they have to or because they are passionate about it?)
Ultimately, do all of these issues matter in relation to trusting the knowledge claims made by academics?
Rene suggested, for any potential future research project / collaboration, he is more than happy to do the leg work in organising and putting it together etc.,. However, officially, from the university side of things, he would have to be involved in the impact dimension of it, and not the research side so that it falls within his work role.
Rene thinks, that keeping the complexity of; education, research evaluation, purpose of university, philosophical issues, management concerns, ethics etc. represents a strength, and any subsequent project ought to incorporate such a broad focus.
