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Claims to Knowledge. The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. David Hume
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Claims to Knowledge The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. David Hume Hume, David (2000 [1740]) Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). 1.4.7.8 Paul Reynolds Reader in Sociology and Social Philosophy MRes Lead, Social Sciences edgehill.ac.uk
What is a claim to knowledge? • Specific knowledge – disciplinary expertise or intellectually generic knowledge/insight • Knowledge reinforced by the claim to using authoritative methods to arrive at it • Credibility, demonstrable knowledge and credentialism • Trust, scepticism and the notion of validation • Knowledge tests – disciplinary critiques, data openness and scrutiny of its use to support and reject claims, common patterns of reasoning • The plausibility threshold • What’s at stake – what we know, what we reject and how we make reasonable judgements (and evaluate knowledge) edgehill.ac.uk
Demonstrating a claim • Clarity of question/problem • Statement of suppositions, demonstrating where and how they might be validated or invalidated and what that looks like. • Clear narrative of methodology, method, research process/decisions and analysis • Clear statement of sources of prior knowledge and of data • Clear statement of what we claim from that analysis and its scope and limits. • What's at stake, where it leaves us and what next? • Judicious refutation and acknowledgement of criticism • Distinguishing and engaging disagreement against dismissal • Why do you need to demonstrate a claim to knowledge? edgehill.ac.uk
Are there types of claim to knowledge? • James Letts (1990) 6 Tests • Falsifiability • Logic • Comprehensiveness • Honesty • Replicability • Sufficiency: • The burden of proof is on the claimant • Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence • Evidence based on authority is inadequate • Knowledge Claims (SocSci) • statements of fact, • Generalizations estimates of conditional probabilities, • causal hypotheses, • theoretical statements, • interpretations of meanings of actions and symbols • https://understandingsociety.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/kinds-of-knowledge-claims-in-social.html • What do natural sciences and arts and humanities add? • Culbertson’s criteria – Memory, Testimony, Perception, Introspection, reason edgehill.ac.uk
Claims to Knowledge - Reflections • Arguments against claims to knowledge: • Limits to what we know and what we can claim and the imposition and disciplining of meaning – post-structuralist critiques • Relativism and matters of reach, scope and the limits to claims • The limits to claims in respect of the singular case • Knowledge claims and the MRes • A claim to knowledge is always: • Both provisional and a concrete claim • A punctuation and part of a process • A contribution to knowledge and an abstraction from knowledge • Original and part of a corpus or tradition • Part of an MRes and part of a wider framing edgehill.ac.uk
Claim to knowledge and your work? • In small groups, Brainstorm (that is throw down quickly to the group rather than labour the discussion): • What claims to knowledge do you make in your MRes? • Where do these claims come from? What are they rooted in? • How do you understand making such claims and do they conform to best practice criteria? • Have you tested them? How would they stand up to relevant tests? • What is at stake for you here? What is the learning message for this session? edgehill.ac.uk
