So, what have I learnt from this theme? Let’s begin with some meta reflection. Last week I had an important deadline in another course I’m taking, as well as a lot of work to do for Armada, a student project I’m engaged in. My schedule didn’t leave much time for this course and it resulted in me being late with the first blogpost. I’ve learnt that the preparations for this course takes time, and that I should make more time for it in my schedule. I’ve also learnt that if I know I will miss a deadline, (if only by as little as 30 minutes), the work will be so much more difficult for me to complete.
As I’m sure everybody has noticed, we did not have a lecture or a seminar this week. This was really unfortunate, at least for me, as I feel I would have needed that help to make sense of the material. Fortunately I got two comments on my blog post, which was surprisingly helpful as they forced me to go back and reevaluate parts of my writing that I was unsure of. Replying to the comments definitely helped me put my interpretation of Russells text into words, but I still feel I’m lacking a connection between this weeks theme and the theme for the entire course, theory and method for media technology. Reading my fellow students blog posts doesn’t help with this either, or at least not the ones I’ve read. While it’s interesting to read different interpretations of the same text, all posts are answering the same four questions, and very little I read help me understand not only what Russell is saying, but what it means for me and for my future as a scientist.
So, as I cannot find anything that will help me make sense of this material, I will attempt to do it by myself. It’s quite probable I’m way of the mark, if anyone happens to read this feel free to correct me!
What I think I've learnt from Russell and the various interpretations of his text:
- We cannot be sure of the real, physical nature of anything, all we can be sure of is what our senses are telling us about an object, which may or may not be the same thing. I think this hold true, not only for our senses, but also for the instruments we use for measuring different aspects of our world.
- There are many types of knowledge. Some types are self-evident and easy for others to accept as true, while other types have a more gradual degree of trustworthiness. For us interested in writing and reading scientific papers, it means that we can learn something true from others, but we need to pay attention to what kind of knowledge we have received.
The general opinion about the cancelled lecture and seminar of our group is that it was a pity and we all would have liked to attend it since we wanted to learn more through discussion and questions. Does our collective opinion make a truth?
SvaraRaderaWe got a description about the seminar being cancelled from Stefan Hrastinski and it was confirmed by many comments in the blogs, but we did not actually obtain a sense-data input. At least I did not, I didn't go to the lecture room to check it out, was there really no lecture? How can we be sure? Perhaps Hrastinski is trying to fool us. I am kidding of course, but I just wanted to try and give you an example of how I've understood the concept.
I'm trying to give you a comment about your last point that "there are many types of knowledge". In fact, we should question what knowledge is and we can never be 100% sure that we know anything, but we can have true belief backed up by proof from logical reasoning.