How Wrong Ideas about Knowledge Can Ruin Decisions
Campbell’s law, unknowable things, and the illusion of control
Let’s do a quiz!
What do these things have in common?
- My happiness level;
- The job performance of a knowledge worker;
- The societal engagement of young people;
- How democratic a country is.
Well?
‘Things’ like happiness, job performance, democracy, and societal engagement don’t exist in a concrete sense. You can’t see or touch a happiness-particle or a democracy-atom. The things mentioned in 1–4 exist, yet are not “there”. In philosophy, we call them abstract objects.
They raise fascinating epistemological issues. ‘Raising pistemological issues’ is philosophers-jargon for: it’s not clear how can we know stuff about this stuff we can’t perceive because they are not objects that ‘are there’.
How can Amnesty know how democratic a country is? How can a manager know how well the new hire is performing? How can a teacher deduce how societally engaged his students are?
This time, let’s put it in terms of a multiple choice question:
- A) These are not concrete things I can put under the…
