 2014 - 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0662-1762-01 | Don't Be Fooled: Testimonies & Falsehoods On the Web | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The course deals with network technologies, such as websites, social networks, and content-sharing sites as sources of knowledge. It addresses two main themes. The first is the implications of such technologies to the traditional conceptual analysis of notions such as knowledge, trust, and epistemic justification. Such developments give raise to many questions: What are the differences, in any, between online sources of knowledge and traditional sources of knowledge? Are they sources of testimony, or do they constitute a new source of knowledge altogether? How does collaborative group knowing differ from individual knowing? Can knowledge be obtained from anonymous sources? The second theme the course addresses is the ways in which we can distinguish reliable sources in the online world from unreliable ones. In particular, under what conditions, in any, can we trust source such as Wikipedia, product rankings on Amazon, or hotel rankings on Tripadvisor? How reliable are friends' testimonies on Facebook? How is medical knowledge from websites and online forums to be weighed against a physician's advice? The course readings will include philosophical sources from the field of epistemology, network studies, and online sources.