David Apgar

Disagreeing despite the Data (eBook, ePUB)

The Destruction of the Factual Commons

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Disagreeing despite the Data: The Destruction of the Factual Commons examines the pressing problem of factual disagreement between social groups, suggesting that the belief segregation underway in the United States may be irreversible. David Apgar draws on the work of twentieth-century philosophers of science and language-especially Popper, Wittgenstein, and Davidson-to identify three requirements for factual agreement to be possible at all: a pervasive habit of checking assumptions, densely connected communities, and projects that straddle those communities. The growing refusal to test assumptions and individual isolation can be remedied by critical thinking and community building. Factual agreement between groups is impossible without shared projects or other meaningful interaction, however, and a large part of American society has insulated itself from the rest. Without shared projects, communities lose the ability to tell whether they agree or not regardless of the words they use. Disagreeing despite the Data looks at the destructive effects of belief segregation with similar roots in several dissimilar developing countries on a path wide enough for richer ones, like the United States, to follow.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury eBooks US
• Seitenzahl: 154
• Erscheinungstermin: 19. August 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781666958256
• Artikelnr.: 74939240

Autorenporträt

David Apgar manages economic-development and climate-tech funds and has taught risk management and information theory at Johns Hopkins SAIS, George Washington University, and Özyegin Üniversitesi.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Fallibilism and Critical Thinking
Chapter 2: Critical Thinking and Complexity
Chapter 3: The Limited Language of the Lone Speaker
Chapter 4: The Partial View of the Lone Observer
Chapter 5: Radical Interpretation and the Factual Commons
Chapter 6: The Physics of the Factual Commons
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author