YSK about the different “ways of knowing”

moistclump@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 133 points –

On these types of forums it’s easy to jump into an argument about the technicalities or a post or comment.

You should know, though, that there is a theory called Ways of Knowing which defines Separate Knowing and Connected Knowing. It’s been a part of my masters program I’m taking.

Separate knowing disconnects the humanity and context from what’s being said and tries to only argue the “facts”. But facts, and the things people say, don’t just occur in a vacuum. It often is the case when people are arguing past each other, like on the internet.

Connected Knowing is approaching the thing someone said with the understanding that there is a context, humanity, biases, different experiences, and human error that can all jumble up when people are sharing information.

Maybe even just knowing that there’s different ways to know would be helpful for us to engage in a different level of conversation here. I’m not sure. I just wanted to share!

https://capstone.unst.pdx.edu/sites/default/files/Critical%20Thinking%20Article_0.pdf

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Intetesing. But doesn't that like forget about bad actors? People arguing in bad faith and so on?

Also it's obviously waay different if you "debate" someone on the internet vs someone say at work when eating together.

Something I've encountered constantly online is the pedantic type who simply wants to "win" the argument at any cost, and will very much argue in bad faith and ignore (or pretend to not understand) a solid counter-argument or facts that don't fit their narrative.

I think making a good effort at radical empathy and trying one's best to see the other side can potentially help expose the bad faith arguments. But, there are a lot of dirty tricks out there like the Gish Gallop, etc.

And I don’t always have the energy if I’m being honest! Connected knowing takes energy and heart and it’s not always available for me to use. I have to pick my battles with this one too.

Same here. I prefer discussion with reasonable folks. When it starts getting nasty I usually disengage or even block the person. I respect the radical empathy approach, and I try to use it with people I engage with in person. But I have little patience with online trolls and pendants anymore. It's a waste of time and energy.

the pedantic type

The pedantic type is one thing; the propagandist troll is another. "Making a good effort at radical empathy" won't do a damn thing against the latter; in that case the correct tactic is to call out their bullshit and mock them mercilessly until they're driven away (or get the mods to ban them, but you can't always count on that).

I guess it’s also getting curious about their intentions and that would be part of learning about the context. Bad people say true things for evil reasons sometimes, does that bad intention matter?

It probably matters if the goal is to harm you or your close friends.

It's always a good idea to understand ppl and their views, because it helps to confirm or reject your own hypotheses, which are plenty. But there's a reason you always have to take any claim from an unknown or untrusted source with varying grains of salt. Especially considering we are living in a world where the internet is the one central source of information and bad actors are starting to flood all channels that provide information.

Agreed! Because the way I understand it, connected knowing isn’t trusting the other peoples truths as fact, it’s understanding that it’s true for them and getting curious about that. We can’t just go around equating other people’s beliefs with fact and losing our sense of reason, science, and truth.

Can you share some examples? This concept is too obscure for me to understand.

Here’s another example I saw on the inter webs. One of the questions in the research was “Do you start to argue the opposite point of view of what someone’s saying while they’re saying it?” Or something like that.

Yes good question! It was actually this response on one of my posts that got me thinking about it: https://programming.dev/comment/4765560

I felt it missed the point of my original post, because I didn’t do intensive research before posting it and just wanted to have a casual discussion and start some Lemmy engagement. I think this would be an example of Separate Knowing, missing the forest for the trees of a sentence or two I threw together in passing. And then I remembered that happens a lot on the internet but I didn’t want it to deter me!

You can just frame this as semantics and pragmatics. I basically disagree with the premise of this branch of sociology and find it disrupts discourse and effective problem solving.

Another way of putting that would be, such nuance is the skin on the apple, not the whole apple. It can add a little extra to your analysis, but shouldn't be used as a cudgel to undermine the foundation.

I would argue that having facts without context isn't knowing. I accept the definition of knowledge to be justified true belief. Ultimately this is a probabilistic argument, Solipsism cannot be overcome so we can never absolutely know anything but phenomenologically it is best to assume our external reality exists and functions roughly the way we perceive it. With absolute knowledge out of reach we need a functional construction to serve in it's place. Justified true belief is as close to absolute knowledge as we can achieve. In this construct belief uses it's conventional definition, true means that it doesn't contradict reality as we perceive it, and justified means that we can point to strong evidence in our perceived reality to support the belief. Without at least some context the belief cannot be justified so the thing cannot be known.

This reminds me of the One Health approach to healthcare.

One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach — working at the local, regional, national, and global levels — with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment.

One example of this would be trying to curb antibiotic resistance. We have banned certain antibiotics for human use, but let veterinarians still use it for animals. Well humans aren't dumb and just went to a vet for the same antibiotic they're used to using which defeated the purpose of banning it for human use (to reserve it so resistance to it doesn't spread). An understanding of the connectedness of people and a bigger picture of antibiotics use was needed before policy should have been made.

This is really interesting. Without knowing there was a word for it, I've often found myself wishing people (including myslef at times) did a better job of the Connected Knowing approach.

I thought so too! It can feel like people are missing each other and talking past one another in our typical discourse. It’s not how adults change each others minds though, or change our ideology or grow our understand, we have to connect at a deeper level for that.

Personally I've always found that style very patronising.

Arguing from empathy with no regard for facts is hopeless.

Arguing from facts with no regard for empathy is dangerous.

We need both.

Most times, empathy is not enough. And for some people, nothing is enough.

“There's simply no polite way to tell people they've dedicated their lives to an illusion.” —Daniel Dennett

Not all people can be persuaded by "connected knowing" (not a big fan of this terminology), but many can be (over time).

NOBODY, however, who can't be persuaded by "connected knowing" will be persuaded by "separate learning", so I'm not sure what your point here is.

My point is some people are beyond hope.

Those are the ones who will destroy the world, and they'll do it cheerily.

Yes. Some people are beyond hope. Therefore we shouldn't bother with empathy with all people. This is exactly how logic works. Yes.

But yes, indeed, some people are beyond hope. It's why I won't bother engaging with you further. (Guess where you just got categorized....)

Bye, Felicia. Keep empathizing with nazis, flat earthers and religious nuts. And bankrupt yourself to get therapy.