Disinterested Knowledge

Hello again coberst,

Everytime I reply to one of your threads I seem to be nitpicking but here goes anyway.

I think the term "disinterested knowledge" is an oxymoron because "information" cannot exist independently of the seeker. Perception is active not passive. This point is an epistemological one rather than say a personal criticism of anyone who would become an accumulator of "facts" for whatever social purpose, and by "social" I include internal self dialogue.

The central issues for me are "what is meant by knowledge" and "is it always related to prediction and control". You can therefore see why "disinterested knowledge" begs a few questions !

I dunno fresco, take the assembled findings of science, for example - would not "Science" properly be termed "knowledge"?, And would not, by definition, science be dispassionate, objective, fact-dependent, and without subtext or agenda beyond its own advancement? That strikes me as fullfilling the condition of "Disinterested Knowledge".

Fresco

Fresco

Take almost any post I have made and you will find me writing about some disinterested knowledge I have acquired including disinterested knowledge itself.

I am using knowledge in the sense that everyone normally talks about knowledge. O am not trying to make some epistemologically profound statement.

I am not trying to gather facts I am trying to understand something that interests me. I am amazed that this concept is so difficeult for people to understand. I am saying something very simple but unorthodox in our society that cannot accept anything to be important if it is not instrumental to intertainment or making money.

timberlandko

Thats a nice piece of idealism but it doesn't work like that. Thomas Kuhns "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" makes it clear that "science" progresses spasmodically with respect to the inertia of prevailing paradigms. Such paradigms have a social and hierarchical power base and are fuelled and funded by commercial and military interests. Even in the cocooned microcosm of the individual research worker what is it that constitutes "new knowledge" other than an extension of "prediction and control" as in the anthropocentric macrocosm?

cobert

The problem with steering clear of epistemology is that you delimit your audience. The apochryphal "lover of learning for its own sake" may be fine as a character sketch but it has little to do with philosophy. You quote Socrates about " a life examined.." but are you examining "the life" i.e. the acquisition process, or merely the acquisitions? I acknowledge that you do refer also to "self-knowledge" but thats the "big one" which cannot but trigger epistemological questions about the perception of "reality". So it may be that your posts are not so much "misunderstood" as ignored because of the level they appear to address.

He means that you should have a lean on the bar and just go with the flow.It's not bad.Something good usually comes up by the third pint and if it doesn't there's always tomorrow night.