I need more than written words or general consensus - and I need to be able to understand something before I accept it as a reasonable assumption.
I believe that is how you see it. You perceive "
knowledge from written words" as a separate category and put a great emphasis on it, where as most people probably do not even have that category.
If someone makes a claim that I don't understand, I challenge that claim. If it makes sense - even beyond my complete understanding, I'll accept it as a reasonable approach to the subject - but it's not necessarily factual or "true" at that point. Very often, the case is that people make claims based on information they haven't fully understood themselves - and when challenged, they come up increasingly short when it comes to logic or comprehensive arguments.
Problem with that perspective is that the capacity to see and comprehend is based on knowledge. To use a trivial example; to comprehend why a vehicle must stop at the end of the sea you must know the difference between a car and a boat. At the same time, to understand why uncertainty-identity theory isn't based on psychodynamic personal theory even though identity and person seems to be related requires you to first know the difference in the basic perspective cognitive (uncertainty-identity theory) and psychodynamic theory (psychodynamic personal theory), you then need to understand the bulk of former research in each that lead up to this point. If you actually did that you would also know that neither perspective is based on "books" but on quantified data rooted in empirical experimentation and here's the crux;
most people who work with each theory have physical real-world experience with the theory they work with. To them the reality of the theory and their differences is as close as the real differences between a car and a boat.
Treating "books" as a specific category and building a dichotomy between "book knowledge" and other forms of knowledge is a false dichotomy that isn't rooted in how the people you speak about actually approach their fields.
This was surprisingly common during the time I studied - and not any less so at KU/DIKU (university of copenhagen). Teachers are as prone to misinformation as any human being is. It's all about the will or desire to remain truthful, precise, and wholesome. So, so many people aren't dedicated enough to that pursuit - and that includes the people who're supposed to keep that task sacred.
To understand science you must understand the Philosophy of Science. You cannot form an understanding from what you see or saw.
There's a difference between ethics and behavior. What you refer to is behavior. Early on people begun to spot the same inconsistencies between how people believe they are and how they are that you have seen, so they begun to try to correct that.
The philosophy of science is an application of the philosophy of knowledge which in turn is an application of ontology (what is). These are based on debates/discussion and experience that spans at least two thousand years. Together they form conclusions that can be summed up as "
this seems to be the most effective way to obtain knowledge we have came up with".
However, there is a sideroute, a philosophical dead end that happens to most students of philosophy, which is especially dangerous to those who engage philosophy 2nd hand. This dead end is so common that every single person I talked to who ever engaged in philosophy are aware of it, know exactly what I talked about and been in that dead end themselves. That includes me.
In your philosophical evolution there's a place in which you have to pick between two paths;
1. We must solve the questions in ontology before moving to philosophy of knowledge and we must solve the questions in philosophy of knowledge before moving to philosophy of science. This is the dead end.
2. Despite questions remaining in ontology and philosophy of knowledge, we still benefit from working with what we got and build a philosophy of science. To do so we create the PoS on an internal structure that isn't founded on the former but on itself.
When you wish to solve questions philosophy of knowledge before moving onto philosophy of science you have reached the dead end. Philosophy of science requires the person to accept that it's fruitful to not take that path and find it acceptable that we cannot perfectly solve the questions in those fields before moving on to the next.
It's that fruit that makes it acceptable to do so.
Since PoS cannot be founded on the former philosophies, it's based on an internal structure. When you accept philosophy of science follows a bunch of ethics, such as;
1. It doesn't matter what people believe and think, what matters are the data that supports one conclusion over another.
2. At any given time a person regardless of place have to step down if the data shows something that is against their position.
Now that's a structure of ethics, not behavior. That is how people should behave according to PoS but not how scientists behave. Paradoxically as it might sound, it's the understanding that scientists do not behave like they should, that puts emphasis on these structure of ethics. If you believe scientists automatically and always behave according to the ethics of science you ignore why the ethics are required.
Then we reach the question; how are the ethics uphold? The current answer is "In a social structure". Scientists rely on other scientists to correct their behavior while they correct other scientists. They correct according to the ethics and it's during this correction that ethics are uphold. Much of the debate within the scientific community and the evolution of science is to detect problems with upholding these ethics and how to improve the structure so it's upheld further.
Naturally, I could be wrong - but the more you write, the more you fit a number of ultra typical patterns. Oh, and yeah - I do believe in patterns in human behavior.
I am aware of several of my patterns. But having personality quirks doesn't limit the capacity to grasp something. It's fairly common to rule out what someone have to say based on the fact that they belong to a certain category. But I wouldn't even rule out the experiences of a schizophrenic even I know that a such person is messy in how they absorb, compare and comprehend what they learn.
Then we need to agree what you mean by study. If you mean reading, sensing, interpreting and reflecting - then I agree. It's just that you seem to think such things are more valid when done in an academic fashion.
An "academic" approach means two things to me;
1. The speed, time and energy put into absorbing new information, new theories and new ideas.
2. Greater requirement on the data being consistent and coherent, including the requirement to discard information that do not fit.
Given the topic, an academic approach to racism includes spending most of the day learning about racism, all sorts of racism. Via books, field-studies, articles, statistics, media etc. Then one form a conclusion on this data that must in itself be internally consistent, coherent and logically valid. That is, the theory must include and explain everything on the table which tend to be quite a lot if you spend 4-8 hours per day on simply accumulating experience in the field.
There might be information that "slip" in this approach. There might be cultural biases and other problems. The only way such slips can be addressed is to rely on others who do the same thing you do to correct you, which is why the "academia" isn't just a place for study, but a social community that are by ethics required to criticize.
Will all of this create a 110% waterproof situation? No. It just means that the frequency of correcting false ideas and false conclusion is maximized.
An interesting theory - but it seems more like one you've personally created to try and fit me into some obscure category.
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You're not less valuable than I am - regardless of the flaws I perceive. I'm just as flawed as you are - presumably. It's not important.
I say you have categorical concepts that I believe are invalid (in which you emphasize forms of knowledge as unique/separate and exclusive). That said, we all build categories to understand the world and we do this based on context. Categories are helpful because they speed up processing but can at the same time be misleading when we have few categories or false categories.
When I say you put a great emphasis on certain categories I am not placing you in a category, but address and individual who have certain categories. I also do not claim my categories are better, they are just different and I personally rely on others to correct my categories all the time.
As I said, it comes down to how you respond to criticism and scepticism. It doesn't take a lot of effort to notice that every time you've made a statement, you'll do all you can to back it up - and it's often so ludicrous and so far removed from the original point of contention - that it's impossible to carry a conversation based on the desire for mutual understanding.
To back up statements is a cardinal rule in the skeptics community. After being exposed to that community for awhile you do it automatically because if you do not you are taken down and smacked around, so you change your behavior accordingly. To back up every single statement is also a cardinal rule when writing a scientific article. The rigidness of this requirement is so harsh that you learn to do it without thinking to avoid further problems.
You simply can't admit you're wrong or that you might have misunderstood something. This is very basic psychology - and I'm sure you've come across it in your studies. You could call it pride or arrogance - or vanity. I don't really care what you call it - but that's what it is.
This is a projection. You go by the rules right/wrong and assume others do the same. I do not need to admit I am wrong since I made no claim to be right in the first place. To me, data is everything and a persons belief to be right/wrong is merely an obstacle. Since I form my position on the data I automatically correct myself whenever more data is presented. Let's now go back to what I said about perceptions. You do not have the value of presenting data to support your position. Since you never added data you have also never seen me correct my position. This create the illusion on your behalf that I never change my position. Yet I change my positions daily. You demand a moral stance I already have but you do not provoke the response you wish to see.