Welcome back guys, it's been an interesting first week! I was able to meet with my professor this week and we started to grasp what concepts I am attempting to research and planned on how to make my question more concrete and direct. We addressed a lot of the problems that have surfaced as a result of the Senior Project starting, and are attempting to deal with them by narrowing down my interests and by identifying a few texts that might help me along this journey.
As a brief summary of what I have done this week, I am going to give a few examples of the things Mr. Nair (My On-Site Mentor) and I discussed, as well as a couple things that I noticed while performing research. For one, we talked about one the most popular justifications for what makes certain types of knowledge more important than other types, and this is through actionability. Simply put, this justification claims that knowledge is more important if you can derive an important action from it. For example, knowledge is actionable if you can bring it up in a conversation, or integrate it into your livelihood. Therefore, knowing how much money someone else has is not as actionable as knowing how to cook a variety of dishes, which would make knowing how to cook a more valuable piece of knowledge, according to this theory. I will continue to explore this idea in the coming weeks to determine whether this is a valid method of determining the importance of certain types of knowledge.
Another topic that came up during this week was the similarity between desires and knowledge. Many of us value certain desires over others the same as we value certain types of knowledge over others. As such, I will be exploring this analogy further next week in the hopes that it will shed some light into other ways of determining how valuable certain types of knowledge can be over each other.
That concludes my first week's blog post! Unfortunately, it wasn't as insightful as I'd hoped but that's because a lot of the hours this week were used to plan and address the problems that have come about as a result of how abstract and open my question is. I hope to see you guys next week and look forward to reading your comments!
"knowledge is more important if you can derive an important action from it." This is a great way to guide your research.
ReplyDeleteThank you Mr. Lambert!
DeleteAcctionability explains a lot about humans that I wish more people understood. A lot of people want to know everything others say, whether or not they can use that information. I feel like "knowledge" tends to be positively connotated in general, but using actionability characterizes the different uses of knowledge even further. Thanks for the insight!
ReplyDeleteInteresting observation, why do you think "knowledge" has more positive connotations? I hope to continue bringing insight, thank you for reading!
DeleteI'm glad you have a plan going forward! Aside from your talks with your on-site mentor, are there any plans to do work outside of that -- let's say read a book about this? Although I bet it is pretty hard to find a book discussing this topic specifically.
ReplyDeleteHi Adam! My plan going into the project was to read a book or two that was going to be directly related to my project and analyze them in-depth. Unfortunately, there aren't many sources that are directly related to this topic, as you noticed. As such, I will most likely be reading excerpts or chapters of books, so as to make the research more narrow. Thank you for asking!
DeleteHi Liam! I'm excited you have a specific goal you can work towards now! I know that epistemology is a branch of philosophy which is the study of nature and scope of knowledge. What new discovery of knowledge would you be trying to find that hasn't already been discussed in epistemology?
ReplyDeleteHi Nichole! Very good question! Unfortunately, I am not sure whether or not I will discover something new within the field of epistemology. So much as already been discussed within this field that a new discovery or finding would be very difficult to achieve.
DeleteHey Liam! Seems like you spent a lot of time having in-depth discussion about actionability this week! Is actionability subjective or is there always a more valuable answer? How are you planning on using that towards finding an answer your research question?
ReplyDeleteHey Urmi! Actionability is very subjective, as the importance of the actions derived from it as well as what determines an "action" are both subjective. As of now, I do not know of a more valuable answer, but I do hope to find one!
DeleteI like how you're toning down your search area of information. This will allow you to more efficiently search for what is important to know. Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteHey Liam! In my opinion desire and knowledge may go hand it hand. For me, if i am very interested in learning about a subject i put more time into it, and usually gain more knowledge about that subject. Actionability also seems like a very viable subject to focus on, and i hope you pursue it further.
ReplyDeleteHi Cole! I too hope that these two things, desire and actionability, play a large role in my research question, and I will pursue these topics as a focal point of my research.
DeleteHey Liam! Since people have different values on what information is necessary, would this affect what info a human what need to know? And how exactly would you be able to pick out which ones are necessary?
ReplyDeleteVery good question! Subjectivity plays a large role in what makes humans determine whether one piece of information is more valuable than another, and I hope to account for this by researching into what kinds of information would be necessary for everyone. As of now, I am exploring the ways of how we determine knowledge to be important, but this will definitely be a factor later on in my research.
DeleteThis is some really awesome stuff Liam. When I first read your introduction I had no idea how you would go about researching this topic, but it sounds like you have a pretty solid direction. I think it is really cool how some of these ideas can be thought of kind of logically, based of need or desire. I'm excited to see everything you're able to learn through your research. Just wondering, it seems like you could get some information by talking to people and seeing what knowledge they find actionable, do you think that is a possibility for your work?
ReplyDeleteThanks Luke! Unfortunately there are still a lot of problems that I need to address but hopefully those will no longer be apparent soon. I was actually considering doing something like a few interviews later into the project, I would just need to find individuals who are willing to do it.
DeleteHi Liam! I'm really sorry for the late reply: I've been having internet problems and my earlier comment must not have been registered. I like how you are starting to delve into comparisons between different types of knowledge to see why certain kinds are more desirable and effective. Your conclusion about actionability definitely makes sense in this context. However, I think that your analogy could be made more clear by addressing the fact that certain desires, such as learning a skill, are achieved through the acquisition of knowledge, which makes this a possible cause and effect relationship. It's interesting to see you narrow your focus from your original question, which was rather vague, and I'll be interested to see how it develops further.
ReplyDeleteHi Nicolas! Actionability and desire do have a lot of overlap when it comes to knowledge, as a desire will often trigger an action. I do hope to sift through the exceptions though, as I am sure that there are cases where desire and knowledge are intertwined, without the need for actionability.
DeleteHi Liam! I am glad to hear that your first week went well. It sounds like between your on-site mentor and faculty adviser you have all of the guidance and support you need to have a fantastic project! Could you expand on some of the problems you have encountered so far with your research question?
ReplyDeleteHi Ms. Conner, during the first week, the largest problem I had was narrowing down my question so I could focus on a few sources rather than a lot. I am still dealing with this problem as my research question tends to be very broad. Hopefully as the project continues this problem will be solved.
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