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 Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:29 pm
Hi folks,
What I find interesting is how many of my friends depend on gossip in order to know what's going on in their world.
Starting with Descartes, gossip becomes an invalid form of knowledge. The more something is said silently isn't the marker of knowledge.
Yet, even though a lot of philosophers don't think gossip is knowledge, there was a time when I heard something through the grapevine and it turned out true. E.G. I heard through the grapevine that my friends Steve and Anna we're going out. A week later they told everyone, "We're going out."
What is gossip? If it's not valid knowledge, why do we depend on it so much? Who knows the most gossip? Is there a way of evaluating the accuracy of gossip?
Cheers,
Cyphgenic
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Posted: Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:27 pm
i think that just because gossip turns out to be true, that doesn't make it knowledge. it seems more just coincidence. now, that notion could be just because in my personal experiences gossip turns out false (i couldn't speak for anyone else in that regard, so these thoughts are all subjective), other people may disagree. but what seperates gossip from rumor? some rumors end up true i suppose, but most are just trash.
i think gossip is just something to do. people like to talk, they like to debate, and they like to feel as if they're part of a club by talking about something that isn't supposed to be known. depending on who or what the gossip is about, it can be used as a social adhesive of sorts. it can be used by people that need to reaffirm their connection with certain others (2 people talking about someone neither of them likes that may have done something scandalous) or even something more broad or vague such as two people talking about some distant part of the world or some celebrity.
crap, sorry. i totally lost my train of thought, my roomies are over and playin' games at my place. anyways, more people post! surprised
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Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:30 am
I can understand that when gossip is false, it is clearly not knowledge. But when gossip ends up being true, what about it makes it not knowledge?
Take Wikipedia for example. You'd be hard-pressed to find a professor who will allow you to cite it as a source, and yet people on the Internet treat it like gospel. Is Wikipedia a source of knowledge, or an elaborate form of gossip? Why would a regular encyclopedia be any more reliable? Because an arbitrary authoritative body sponsored it and the contributors are not anonymous but known experts? But who are these "experts?" How do we know with certainty that what they are producing is knowledge?
Another example: in the time of Galileo, the scientific experts believed in Aristotelian physics, and they've since been proven wrong. What they had thought was knowledge turned out to be false.
Tell me what you think of this definition. Knowledge is that which is both true and known to be true. If that is the case, then the source is of little relevance. Rumors can be verified or debunked. If they are verified, they are knowledge. If not, then they aren't.
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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:40 pm
"even in the wildest rumors there is a grain of truth"-unknown
when it comes to gossup it will mostly always have a root in truth otherwise its just sabotage. things tend to get exagerated and distorted with many tellings, though, and I don't think they qualify as knowledge.
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