Core Theme: Perspective

AOKs as maps
The metaphor of knowledge as map

Knowing the world or creating knowledge about the world is a lot like creating maps of
the world. Various maps will highlight certain information, ignore other

information, guide our thinking and possibly distort our understanding

of the world. The knowledge we construct about the world will do these things, too.

● As mathematicians construct mathematical knowledge, they will highlight concepts

like number and logical deduction, but might ignore other concepts like culture.

● A historian, however, will consider culture and its influence on the individual as
important, so will discuss as they construct their historical narratives, but will
perhaps ignore the nature of basic mathematical axioms.

● Similarly, the artist or philosopher might emphasize the individual experiences of

singular human beings, while the economist might accept they are part of an
economic analysis but limit that effect in favour of developing generalizations about
how groups of people tend to behave.

● Likewise, an artist might highlight the notion of inspiration and intuition in the artist,
while the natural scientist might accept that individual scientists have moments of
inspiration, but make sure that this inspiration has been tested against repeatable
and publicly observable experiments.

● In other words, each area of knowledge will emphasize and prioritize some
aspects of reality and try to describe those elements, while perhaps leaving
other aspects to some other field of knowledge.

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 Core Theme: Perspective

Background beliefs
We’ve considered two metaphors (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and the map
metaphor) to help frame our thinking about knowledge, arriving at two outcomes:

• Our knowledge is heavily impacted by those individuals and institutions around

us.
• The models and maps we choose to use in interpreting the world around us will
distort reality and guide our thinking in ways we might not be aware of.

Learner profile:Reflective-
How do my own background beliefs influence the way
I engage with the world?

These discussions are a way of exploring what might be called ‘background beliefs’ –
beliefs which we hold and use to make sense of what we see around us. They are in the
‘background’ in the sense that we often are not consciously thinking of them when
we investigate the world, though the beliefs themselves may or may not have been
consciously arrived at.

None of us approach a situation as a blank canvas; we make sense of everything around

us through the beliefs and ideas that we have already formed. People who tend to believe
in conspiracy theories are an obvious and extreme example of this.

E.g.s
● fake Moon landings
● 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001

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 Core Theme: Perspective
These people are interpreting the world through the lens of their pre-existing beliefs
about the way the world is. Often in conspiracy theories, these beliefs are about secret
and powerful groups who want to harm us in some way or another (whether it be
simply ‘keeping us in the dark’ or hiding their true evil intentions).

There are more mainstream examples of the impact of background beliefs.

The basic idea here is that our interactions with others are filtered through pre-existing
biases which then impact our interactions with people. These biases usually have the
biggest impact in ‘quick thinking’ situations, where people are making fast, non-reflective
judgments in the immediacy of a situation. However, they also have an impact in
situations where people are meant to be reflective.

Unconscious bias:
https://youtu.be/dVp9Z5k0dEE

In 2013, the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU), a group that helps universities in the UK
and around the world develop programmes that promote and protect diversity, explored
unconscious bias in relation to hiring practices at universities (Equality in Higher
Education Statistical Report 2013). This was in response to worries identified by the ECU
that the majority of full-time academic positions were held by a disproportionately high
number of white staff, which was inconsistent with the proportions of ethnicities in the
student bodies. One reason suggested by ECU for why the proportion of white academics
is inconsistent with the proportion of black and minority ethnic students is that universities’
hiring practices are influenced by unconscious bias. The suggestion is that hiring
committees, even when they are being reflective and making attempts to be aware of
any conscious bias, may nevertheless allow their unreflective background bias to impact
their decisions in reviewing applications, short-listing candidates, interpreting interview
responses and ultimately making job offers. The claim that unconscious biases exist is

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 Core Theme: Perspective
not the same as claiming that individuals are ‘racist and don’t know it’. Rather, in forming
our understanding of the world and the people around us, we form non-conscious ‘short-
cuts’ to thinking that are sometimes hard to identify and challenge, even when we think
carefully about them.

DEEPER THINKING
Background beliefs and intuition
What are your own background beliefs?

Thinking about who your puppet masters are and what maps you use to navigate the
world are ways to identify and describe these influences.

If you are a student at one of the universities described in the ECU study, for instance,
what impact does seeing one ethnic group over-represented around you have? Does it
seem to be ‘normal’ and does this ‘normal’ lead you to think differently about what is
outside this ‘norm’? Another example might be to consider how different your social,
religious, political or economic beliefs and expectations are from those of your parents
and your friends.

Malcom Gladwell’s Blink is an excellent introduction into an implication of how these

background beliefs work in our claiming to know about the world.

Gladwell describes a process he calls ‘thin-slicing’, which refers to making quick,

seemingly non-conscious judgments about situations in which people find themselves.

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 Core Theme: Perspective
What is Thin slicing?
https://youtu.be/we8uIdSKAvg

https://youtu.be/LgaW2cfX_5A

Gladwell describes a case in which the art community had accepted a statue, the ‘Getty
kouros’ as being an authentic statue from the sixth century BC.

(Please Turn Over)

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 Core Theme: Perspective

However, many scholars just weren’t sure – initially their intuitions were leading them to
question the authenticity, but they couldn’t quite justify why or articulate their misgivings.
It turns out that having taken these doubts of a few experts seriously, the community has
arrived at a position where the authenticity of the statue cannot be clearly established.

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 Core Theme: Perspective
After some critical reflection and further research it appears that the initial intuitions of the
doubters and their subsequent investigations were warranted. Even today the J Paul
Getty Museum suggests that the statue is from ‘… about 530 BC or modern forgery’ and
claims that ‘… the anomalies of the Getty kouros may be due more to our limited
knowledge of Greek sculpture in this period rather than to mistakes on the part of a forger’
(Getty Museum).

What this suggests is that intuition, even though it is non-reflective or non-

rational, can actually be better. The intuitions of art, history experts, for
example, can be better than the intuitions of other people and the reason for this is
background beliefs and knowledge. The expert’s wealth of experience, knowledge and
ability means that their non-reflective intuitions about things in their realm of expertise are
more finely tuned. So even when they are not thinking explicitly about a problem, their
intuitions should be relied upon and listened to as authorities in their field.

We've explored the sources from which individuals develop their own perspectives on the
world and the conditions under which they do so. We’ve also explored how we can
selectively choose how we want to engage with the world of knowledge, depending
on what models and maps we wish to apply to the confusing and ambiguous reality
that we find ourselves confronted with. These perspectives and maps do require some
connection with the facts of the world around us. There are, in other words, better and
more useful perspectives and maps. A perspective or theory that starts with the
assumption that the Earth is flat, for instance, will not be able to explain all sorts of
features of our experience of the world with any precision or succinctness.