Ben, I agree with most of what you say, but the last part on self-authority goes somewhat against current research. For those interested more, I include a link to a short news item. Apparently the smartest among us are better at both self-evaluation and self-criticism, but the less bright don't have this capacity.
At 09:11 PM 2014-04-09, Benjamin Udell wrote:
Among the methods of authority, perhaps the biggest temptation in discovery research is the method of status, especially when it is a method of _self_-deception, such that one grants oneself a status of greater knowledgeability, etc., than one fairly has; it's a temptation of the intelligent; magicians find it easier to bewilder or beguile 'smart' people than to do so with 'stupid' people, by whom magicians mean, the people who are unimpressed and chuckle, "well, you did it somehow" (but those people are obviously smart enough in another way). As Feynman said, the person whom it is easiest for one to fool is oneself. Peirce focuses, near the end of "Fixation," on the closing of one's eyes or ears to the information or evidence that might bring one the truth particularly when one should know better. This closing of one's perception, in sometimes less guilty ways, plays a particularly vulnerable role in the method of tenacity because it is there unprotected by folds of authority or of aprioristic emulation of some fermented paradigm; instead there is to keep practicing and repeating one's initial opinion, it seems a bit like the gambler's fallacy, boosted sometimes by some initial luck. Well, practice and repetition of something that has shown _some_ success is the core practical-learning method, not inevitably infallibilistic, of artisans and more generally practitioners productive and otherwise; to which method they add the appreciational method of devotees (including the religious) - identification (appreciation) and imitation (emulation) and, these days, the methods of reflective disciplines as well (sciences, fine arts, etc.). What I'm getting at is that some infallibilistic methods of inquiry can be seen as misapplications, or at least as echoes, of methods that have some validity outside of inquiry as the struggle to settle opinion, and thus have validity in applications in inquiry (e.g., one needs to keep _in practice_ in doing math, etc.), as long as those applications are not confused with inquiry itself. Anyway, one's barring of one's own way to truth inhabits the core of all infallibilistic inquiry. Perhaps one can reduce all logical sins to this, as long as one remembers the difference between logical sin and other logical errors, errors sometimes imposed on one.
Some excerpts
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/pure-genius/qa-why-40-of-us-think-were-in-the-top-5/?tag=nl.e660&s_cid=e660&ttag=e660&ftag=TRE4eb29b5
Psychologist David Dunning explains that not only are we terrible at seeing how stupid we are, but we're also too dumb to recognize genius right in front of us.
"One of my favorite examples is a study of the engineering departments of software firms in the Bay Area in California. Researchers asked individual engineers how good they were. In Company A 32% of the engineers said they were in the top 5% of skill and quality of work in the company. That seemed outrageous until you go to Company B, where 42% said they were in the top 5%. So much for being lonely at the top. Everybody tends to think that they are at the top much more than they really are.""People do what they can conceive of, but sometimes there are better solutions, or considerations and risks they never knew were out there. They dont take a solution they dont know about. If there is a risk they do not know about, they dont prepare for it. There are any number of unknown unknowns that we are dealing with whenever we face a challenge in life."
"Your recent work surrounds genius. Specifically the fact that we cannot recognize a genius even when they are right in front of us?
Our past research was about poor performers and how they did not have the skills to recognize their shortcomings. Well, ultimately, we found out that that is true for everybody. Its a problem we all have. We might recognize poor performers because we outperform them. The problem is we do not see mistakes we are making. But people who are more competent than us, they can certainly see our mistakes. Here is the twist: For really top performers we cannot recognize just how superior their responses, or their strategy is, or their thinking is. We cannot recognize the best among us, because we simply do not have the competency to be able to recognize how competent those people are."
He also has some suggestions for what to do when one finds oneself in a lop-sided situation, as well as how to get outide of the the problem of self-evaluation.
John
Professor John Collier [email protected]
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031
Http://web.ncf.ca/collier
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