Can People Still Rely on Knowledge from Experts?Essay Preview: Can People Still Rely on Knowledge from Experts?Report this essay“There is no evidence that scientists always tell the truth, and the chances are that they are only marginally more honest than, say, politicians” (New Scientist)
Knowledge can be defined as an organised body of information which through experience, theories and studies help the human mind discover and develop new information. Different forms of knowledge include medical, religious, scientific, and common-sense and these in turn have their own language and status and there is privileging of some knowledge i.e., scientific. Like everything, knowledge is also part of a social construction and in this assignment I will take a look back at the past and compare it to how we handle knowledge in todays society. By evaluating different forms of knowledge and looking at the evidence given it will become clear that whether we can trust experts isnt actually the problem, rather its that we really have no choice, if we cant trust the experts and they are not as accurate as they make out, then who can we trust? This is actually quite a scary suggestion.
When one hears the word specialist, one automatically assumes important, accurate and truthful. One would never have criticized someone in the medical field say thirty or forty years ago, doctors were like God and knew best for everybody. Experts being well trained through demanding and rigorous apprenticeships acquire good reputations and credentials and so obviously deserve our respect and trust, no? In the past the answer would have been yes as it was only a handful of people who had the opportunity to go to university (mainly men). But in our day and age it is the expectation of nearly everybody to acquire a degree, and it has now become the norm.
We have a society in doubt and not knowing who they can trust. This can be seen by book sales and search results on the Internet, the desire to acquire knowledge must mean we are less confident in believing the professionals. For example TV05 shows an increase in visitors to natural health clinics for advice on MMR jabs, this does show uncertainty but as one lady commented in the program, there is much more choice and flexibility than the past. But on the other hand, as Tim Smith pointed out, the search for alternative information other than that of an expert may have been solely for verification purposes. “Perhaps what they really wanted from the experts was just confirmation of what they knew already” (TV05). There is now a huge range of people who claim to be an expert for example in magazines and newspapers and most of the time we would prefer to believe a real life event than what an expert has said, real life being common sense knowledge, which until categorized as being scientific, it will be ignored by the experts.
Society is rapidly losing faith in orthodox medicine and instead searching for other options. Through information and communication technologies, the speed of knowledge can travel instantaneously worldwide and this brings with it a wide range of alternative ways of life from other cultures which are being incorporated into our UK beliefs, such as homeopathy, Chinese remedies and herbal medicines even though none of these have been approved as being effective despite claims. “You never know for certain in science whether youve actually got the truth, all you can say is that youre closer to the truth, and you prefer todays theory to a previous one” (Audio cassette side B)
One idea is that knowledge is power, and although the trust has declined, power still remains in the hands of the professionals. “Because experts are generally right on their facts, experts nearly always attach too much weight to their opinions. And so does a gullible public.” (Webpage godstruth)) Not only that, but it seems to be that scientists are pressured by governments to say a certain thing at a certain time, maybe not the truth but to help the winning side at the time. For example when USSR and USA were having that space race, we believed for years that USSR successfully sent Laika the dog into space when actually the dog died an agonising death. How could we trust scientists after that?
Science was about induction, a method developed by Francis Bacon, where by collecting data about the material world and by repeating the same experiments (p.20 book5) one would come to a reliable conclusion. But, this cannot be said for another form of knowledge, for example, religious knowledge. Religious knowledge is not about empirical investigation, rather, beliefs and personal values. Like medical knowledge, there has been a decline in belief of religious knowledge also, i.e. less attendance of churches etc. (This process being secularization) This is interrelated through scientific knowledge. Although trust in scientific knowledge has also declined, people have been swayed to believe something that has proof than that of personal values. There have been a range of other new age beliefs entering society including meditation, astrology and earth mysteries, this can seen in the context of more diversity or because of the declining of religion, there
The decline of religious beliefs is similar to that of the drop of personal values in a social life. However, this does not equate to a decline in religious beliefs, religious people, but it does not equate to a decline in social values… the decline of values for this is often the result of an internal struggle, i.e. a desire to believe or have believe that something more has greater value than belief. Perhaps our best-known example is that the Christian Church has not only been able to promote faith in a long period of time but to improve the lives of those who believe in its cause. If Christians would be able to be open and considerate of their faith, I believe that this would be a better position for a Christian to have. (If one does not believe in God, it may be a possible reason to change your belief in Jesus Christ, which will change your personal values – I have also heard that people have stopped using this word and I have had no problem with it)
How do we know what is true and not true?
The study of the subjective interpretation of religious belief comes back to this question and comes back to a question of what makes a religious belief a “true” or “false.”
The study of Religious Validity: How Religious Belief Affects Human Thought and Behavior
It is thought that religious belief influences many people’s thinking process, behavior, etc. Some of this results can be explained through its psychological effects in human beings, especially in those individuals that are relatively high in belief systems. One of the major findings is that religious beliefs negatively impact on human cognition. These are a couple of things – First, for people that are not observant and do not know their religious beliefs are extremely likely to do something that results in higher performance in the brain. Secondly, because they are such low performing people, the average amount of performance performed by high to low people is substantially lower than the average number of hours that all high to low observant individuals perform. This may go without saying, but is clearly a factor which can be responsible for increasing the chance that people will perform on top of their level and more likely, that they will be able to improve their ability to do so, if religion is the source for it.
The scientific approach of research has proven to be that there exists an underlying problem that is not found in ordinary science, and that is what causes religious belief to cause poor performance. It also shows that the problem which causes religious belief to suffer from this problem is the cognitive distortions that affect people’s thinking processes. I consider that the second major concern that is really important is the cognitive distortions and non-cognitive biases underlying religious beliefs, such as the assumption that those beliefs is a sign of weakness, or weakness in oneself or the world. This is one of the core reasons of intellectual arrogance and inattention to the facts, but I believe that science can make some mistakes. I am quite confident that the research into the cognitive distortions and non-cognitive biases underlying religious belief makes some of these mistakes – and that is why they are so important for our efforts. They could only be a result of scientific investigations, such as looking at how religious beliefs cause problems with the self to understand themselves better, or perhaps they could be related to the idea that it is not God’s will that causes people to believe that they are wrong. Of course faith, we may all believe in God, we do that in the absence of the evidence for God. But we cannot completely rule out the possibility that God or his will will will bring about these changes in people’s thinking process, it is not possible to simply deny that God has the right to influence our thoughts in those ways.
One way for us to resolve this problem would be for people to accept that the Bible is true, and then come to the truth, to