In this episode I talk about how “Google is knowledge.” The basic argument is along these lines:
- There is this concern that the internet is making it harder for us to build knowledge.
- If we consider “knowledge” as John Locke did (the relationship between ideas in the brain), it’s rather easy to argue that the internet definitely supports the creation of new knowledge.
- Furthermore, one could argue that–based on the features and “actions” taken by Google, Netflix, Amazon, et al–the internet, to a certain degree, is knowledge.
The always wicked smart and attention-paying Olly Lennard points out what is admittedly a perfectly un-confronted flaw in this episode: Locke’s theory allows that knowledge need not necessarily be true. The question, then, is whether or not it is possible to “know” something which is absolutely false. Spoiler alert: I think the answer is “yes”.
So but how do we even get to this “knowing”-the-not-true? An example: before germ theory, many people thought that deadly diseases such as the plague and cholera were transmitted through dirty, putrid air. This was called the Miasmatic Theory. In the brains of the people who believed this theory, there was a very strong relationship between ideas: the qualities and activities of air and the transmission of disease.
A longstanding description of knowledge–on which the assertion that you cannot know the untrue is built–was put together by our old pal Plato. He said that in order for someone to know something, three conditions would have to be met:
- The proposition (miasmas cause disease) would have to be true.
- People (plague doctors) would have to believe in this truth (we assume they did, but more on that in a bit).
- This truth would have to be justified (I’m sure they thought it was).
This is called Justified True Belief and our plague doctors fail outright at condition #1. You could cast this as the difference between “knowing” and “thinking”. They did not know miasmas caused disease, they thought they did. However, in my mind, the use of this information is essentially indistinguishable from knowledge: if you were to ask a Plague Doctor if he knew that miasma caused disease he would say “Duh-doy.” Except he’d probably be Italian so it’d most likely be something like “Duh-doy-a”. Will we deny him the existence of what he (and maybe his whole community, or the world at the time) would assert is his own knowledge?
In “Knowledge without Foundations”, Philosopher of Science Paul Feyerabend writes
A myth can very well stand on its own feet. It can give explanations, it can reply to criticism, it can give a satisfactory account of events which prima facie seem to refute it. It can do this because it is absolutely true.
-Knowledge, Science and Relativism, p64
In other words: if it looks, acts and smells like knowledge…
Feyerabend allows that myths might be religious, sure, but they might also be scientific, philosophical, political, etc. What is problematic is not when knowledge is based on the absolutely false, but when knowledge refuses to change in the face of such discoveries. Feyerabend describes this as a dogmatic approach to knowledge. Its opposite, the critical approach, seeks to constantly revise and challenge what is known, even if by all accounts it is considered certain. I especially enjoy his dethroning of “certainty”:
…certainty is not something that exists independently of the human will but rather a reflection of the way in which we (consciously or unconsciously) proceed. If certainty is our own product then it cannot be worth more than the human beings who created it in the first place.
-Knowledge, Science and Relativism, p72
This doesn’t prevent something from being knowledge, though it does suggest a necessary qualification concerning Justified True Belief: if, in essence, anything can be true then one must assume an honest, and good faith experience of the world providing those ideas relating to one another. Someone who believes miasmas cause disease or the world is flat in 2013 would do so in light of overwhelming scientific and empirical evidence stating otherwise. If they construct a system (i.e. relate ideas) that answers all the very practical challenges to their beliefs, then they’ve developed a myth. Though it might be absolutely false, and dogmatism masquerading as critique, it qualifies as knowledge.
Basically, what I’m saying is that unless someone can point me towards some literature explaining how the whole Plague Doctor thing was a racket set up by, idk, the pope? and they didn’t believe the masks, potpourri or warding sticks did much of anything at all, I think it is fair to say that Plague Doctors knew miasma caused disease.
The fallibility of knowledge is somewhat present in the video, with the discussion of networked facts containing (or referencing) their own opposites. That connection is not made explicit or supported any way other than circumstantially. Sorry!
Finally, we’ve yet to escape the specter of “belief” or “experience” in the process of building knowledge. Up until now we’ve been talking about biological entities so by our yardstick, if Google itself is (or has) knowledge, it must believe or experience the world similarly. To claim that it does is–I totally agree–far fetched, but impossible…HHHMMMMMQUESTIONMARK.
It is easy to say Google is not/does not have knowledge because it is machine. Binoculars do not see, records do not perform, etc. This is a criticism I have no handy retort for: you could argue that my reading of Locke is irresponsible because he clearly considered biological consciousness only. However, as Google takes further steps towards embodying and enacting a kind of want (wanting to collect information, wanting to correct you, wanting to advertise to you, wanting to get you the right results) independent of direct human involvement, I think it is fair to say that it has a type of experience. Arguable is whether it is a conscious experience or not. This issue is a big one, and I’ve already written too much, but essentially as we begin to think of robots and software as moral subjects (see The Machine Question) then we’re going to edge closer towards sussing this one out.
So! I think where this leave us, is that if you buy Google’s “experience” as a good-faith interpretation of the world resulting in relationships between ideas that it wants to be accurate–but maybe aren’t, and that’s ok–then the claim that, as an extension of human cognition “Google is knowledge”, or as an entity itself, “Google has knowledge” becomes much easier to swallow.
If not, that’s cool too, tho.
