My phone's autocorrect rejects epistemological relativism. It refuses to accept that "knowledges" are a thing but corrects to "knowledge."
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eg, in 14th century England, it was noted that patients of uneducated barber surgeons who worked on trial & error & passing on what worked were surviving better than patients of university-trained physicians who were going largely on a mix of ancient Greek medicine & theology.
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This was because empirical testing works better than received knowledge that remains static. When university-based medical science became evidence-based, it had the resources to do this much more efficiently.
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i was pushing back more in terms of fields like economics, urban planning, or even agriculture - i wouldn’t pick an argument for medicine or natural sciences. thanks for your responses!
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Same principles. If there is a right answer to a question in one of those areas, it will be found by both expert knowledge and local knowledge. If they differ (and they are genuinely asking the same question) one of them will be wrong.
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More often the difference is one of opinion of what the most important questions to answer are and what the desired result should be.
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isn’t this is where things like power, path dependencies, norms, values, etc. have some impact on the production of knowledge then? i guess my reading of such texts says we should take this into account. not as the only(!) factors, but factors nonethelessp
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No, this is where they have impact on the development of opinions. Yes, we should take opinions into account. With human beings, often how we feel about a certain thing is more important than the facts of the thing.
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In the case of a child who dies of cancer, there are things to know about cancer & how it leads to death but unless you are a medical professionals/scientist, this knowledge is less important than helping the bereaved cope with the loss. The knowledge doesn't vary. Priorities do.
End of conversation
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