Midterm Exam 1 Flashcards
What kinds of thinking run contrary to a liberal education?
A partisan and all biased approach’s run contrary to a liberal education, since a liberal education circulates around evidence and research, and often individuals adopting a political, ideological or moral stance are too absolute and rigid to their bias
According to A.C. Grayling what is the purpose of a liberal education? What kind of thinking does a liberal education promote?
the aim of liberal education is to help people continue learning all their lives long, and to think, and to question.
What kinds of thinking do universities oppose?
Morality, Ideology, Partisanship, Blind Activism, Brainwashing, Editorializing, Ad hominem arguments, Noble Cause Distortion, Confirmation on Bias, Conjecture
What is Morality as a thinking
the imposition of absolute values based on morality (E.g., disputes regarding abortions are often detested by religious groups and individuals due to their rigid and absolute stance founded by no evidence nor statistics but rather by their commitment in faith.)
What is Ideology as a thinking?
Absolute ideology can be grounded in devotions and loyalty, evident through partisanship and nationalism
What is Partisanship as a thinking?
Prejudice in favor of a particular cause, often seen as political partisanship through individuals’ loyalty to their political party.
What is Blind Activism as a thinking?
blind belief in a cause an individual cannot and/or will not question.
What is Brainwashing as a thinking?
Indoctrination, the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically, evident in propaganda
What is Editorializing as a thinking?
Creating comments or expressing opinions rather than just reporting the research or evidence found. Editorializing drives away evidence
What is Ad hominem arguments as a thinking?
Snarky remarks and personal attacks, evidently used in propaganda as a method of using hateful comments to impose ideology
What is Noble Cause Distortion as a thinking?
The belief that a noble cause automatically indicates truth and rightfulness in an ideology.
What is Confirmation bias as a thinking?
Disregarding evidence against your hypothesis and only acknowledging
Conjecture
An opinion or conclusion formed based on incomplete information, relying on a gut feeling and ignoring evidence
According to Mark Mercer, what three values should a university promote?
Critical thinking, Teaching and Research
Research covers three activities?
the need to inquire and research, the ability to create interpretations based on evidence by breaking down evidence, the emotional and intellectual appreciation of the world as understood through inquiry and by interpretation
What are the results of promoting academic values
- Autonomous individuals: students becoming an autonomous agent.
- Sharing of ideas establishes the ability to freely share ides in conversations
- Discovery of higher (provisional) truths: The free flow of ideas leads to the discovery of higher/provisional truths in contrast to absolute truths
According to Jonathan Rauch, what does the reality-based community consider to be valid forms of knowledge? What is invalid knowledge?
- Metaphysics
- Avoid Metaphysical phrasing
- Propositions
- Colloquial definition of reality
- Reality Epistemically
What is Metaphysics ?
thinking of reality metaphysically as an external unknowable world out there
Avoid Metaphysical phrasing in terms of reality
Truth that is independent of human perception, interpretation and experience does not use an objective criterion.
Reality based communities utilize ..
Colloquial definition of reality, as the world independent of human perception and cognition,
Reality Epistemically
we have objective knowledge, they think of reality as a set of propositions (or claims, or statements) which have been validated in some way, and which haver thereby been shown to be at least conditionally true
What is propositions in terms of reality based learning?
have no volition and can do nothing on their own, yet once they are acquired by the reality-based network, they can interact with each other across the network – the adjustment, acceptance or rejection of one proposition can force adjustments to many others.
- Reality based networks behave like an ecosytem
What are the core rules that derive from the liberal science’s distinctive quality?
The Fallibist Rule and Empirical Rule
The Fallibilist Rule
no one gets the final say, you may claim that a statement is established as knowledge only if it can be debunked, in principle, and only insofar as it withstands attempts to debunk it.
The Empirical Rule
no one has personal authority; you may claim that a statement has been established as knowledge only insofar as the method used to check it gives the same result regardless of the identity of the checker and regardless of the source of the statement
What is invalid knowledge
- Breaking the empirical rule by exempting my views from contestability by others – (E.g., claiming access to divine revelation or claiming race)
- Claiming that a conversation is too dangerous or oppressive or traumatizing to tolerate will always break the fallibilist rule
- Arguing in bad faith (when individuals resist honest conversation, they drop out of a reality-based community.)
What does a sociologist accept as valid knowledge?
- Thriving to seek out objective (provisional) truth, finding higher truth through evidence-based research, evaluating all evidence related to the topic.
- Evidence based research.
- Epistemology – investigating what distinguishes justified belief from opinion, with regards to methods, validity and scope.
- Credible theories (however, they can be manipulated through cherry picking quotes, hence changing the objective of a credible theorist’s text to suit their data).
- Data
- Surveys
Where is truth found?
- Evidence and arguments.
- Asking tough questions.
- Judgment of ideas.
- Conversation (cross-fertilization of knowledge) – learning through the diversity of ideas.
- Marketplace of ideas
What poses as objective truths
Strong Relativism and Culturally specific knowledge
Strong Relativism
“all truths are of equal merit”, E.g., an individual who believes that the persecution of Jews is acceptable, arguing that their truths are as equal as yours. – Giving merit where merit is not wanted, why give such individuals the platform – all things are equal, however not everything is relative