CC BY
34
УДК 165.3
DOI: 10.17726^ШТ2018.2.15.2
Что такое википистемология?1
Голубинская Анастасия Валерьевна,
младший научный сотрудник, ННГУ им. Н. И. Лобачевского, Нижний Новгород, Россия
golub@ioo.unn.ru
Аннотация. Термин, вынесенный в заглавие статьи, недавно появился в англоязычной научной литературе и выражает обобщение двух ключевых понятий своей проблематики: Википедия и эпистемология. Выступая в качестве объекта научного интереса, проект «Википедия» обычно встаёт в один ряд с энциклопедиями, которые во все времена служили средством трансляции научного знания. Однако эпистемологический статус Википе-дии не тождественен статусу энциклопедий, и обоснование этого решения является целью данной работы. Для достижения этой цели Википедия анализируется сначала как энциклопедия, а затем, с учётом выявленных характеристик, как самостоятельный объект. Ещё недавно сама идея сравнения эпистемических культур научного сообщества и Википедии, равно как и идея наличия у Википедии специфической эпистемической культуры, вызвала бы много противоречий. Однако в ходе исследования выявляется возможность как минимум двух новых измерений Википедии: как источника знаний об объектах интереса и как источника знаний об информационном компромиссе современного общества. В результате работы к дискуссии предложено заключение о том, что вики-проекты способны влиять и заметно изменять познавательные практики.
Ключевые слова: Википедия; информационные технологии; эпистемология энциклопедий.
What is wikipistemology?1
A. V. Golubinskaya
Junior researcher Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod, Russia
golub@ioo.unn.ru
1 The reported study was funded by RFBR according to the research project № 18-311-00061
Abstract. The key term of the article has recently appeared in the social-philosophical and epistemological literature in order to expresses a generalization of two key concepts of the problem: Wikipedia and epistemology. Speaking of Wikipedia as an object of scientific interest it is more often to rank it with encyclopedias, which served as a means of translation of scientific knowledge. However, the epistemological status of Wikipedia is not equal to the status of encyclopedias, and the rationalization of this statement is the purpose of this work. The author analyzes Wikipedia at first as an encyclopedia, and then, taking into account the characteristics, as an independent object. More recently, the very idea of comparing the epistemic cultures of the scientific community and Wikipedia, as well as the idea of a specific epistemic culture of Wikipedia, would cause many contradictions. In this regard the study reveals the possibility of at least two new dimensions of Wikipedia: as a source of knowledge about the objects of interest and as a source of knowledge about the information compromise of modern society. The conclusion provides the discussion about wiki-projects as the reason of significantly changes of epis-temic practices in the information society.
Key words: Wikipedia; epistemology; epistemology of encyclopedia.
Introduction
Almost a hundred years ago, the Polish mathematician and philosopher A. Korzhibski gave an analogy that the scientific theory is like a geographical map, i.e., it is a collection of representations describing reality, but not equal to this reality [1, p. 58]. However, taking into account the accelerating growth of scientific knowledge, science increasingly began to resemble not an ordinary geographic map, but a map from the works of L. Carroll, where scaling is 'a mile to a mile'. As the result, the encyclopedias became something like maps for more detailed maps, where the main roads and dangers (supposed to exist according to these largest maps) are marked. In our opinion, this analogy gives a very correct understanding of Wikipedia - it is not a repository of all humanity knowledge, but a map to this knowledge. Taking into account the amount of people using this map and the frequency of its opening, it acquires a great epistemological significance.
Wikipedia as an encyclopedia
P. D. Magnus formulates an interesting observation on this subject: we do not always know that we are working with Wikipedia, because its texts are easily and quickly distributed over the network, and "even if users avoided Wikipedia, they would still come across its contents" [2, p. 78]. In this perspective, the assessment of Wikipedia's influence on individual and group knowledge structures becomes necessary. For P. D. Magnus the introduction of Wikipedia into the field of philosophy begins with a new sound of one of the old epistemological question: is the statement "Wikipedia claims that p" is by definition equal to the statement "to believe that p"? [2, p. 74].
Wikipedia has become a kind of bridge between the epistemology of encyclopedias and social epistemology, because the cognitive processes occurring in the acquiring knowledge process are inextricably linked with social processes within it. The term "Wikipistemology" should be associated with the name of D. Phallis [3; 4]. He notes that in the wiki, the knowledge production passes from the hands of experts to the hands of a faceless mass, and this has more positive than negative consequences. The obvious risk is that access to making corrections to information included in the system of scientific notions about a phenomenon can lead to a knowledge distortion, and in the context of Wikipedia's mass popularity - to the misconceptions' and misinformation's appearance and rooting in the philistine mind. However, it is not entirely correct to put an emphasis on the Internet's "misleading forces" while ignoring the reverse side: the crowd's wisdom, the socio-techni-cal system for checking and assessing information, the policy of text constructing basing on reliable peer-reviewed sources.
For similar purposes, O. Sundin suggests referring to the Wikipedia editor as to a "janitor" of knowledge [5]: he compares the "production" of knowledge in Wikipedia (it should be understood allegorical-ly in terms of translating knowledge into the format specified by the project) and the production of knowledge in the laboratory (in terms of B. Latour, S. Vulgar, etc.). O. Sundin comes to the conclusion that the knowledge "cleaning" from "garbage" in the wiki-environment is very effective. Probably, it can be connected with the fact that this work is not paid, therefore, it is carried out on the principles of enthusiasm and personal interest in the result.
A completely different picture is outlined in the work by the philosopher of science K. Brad Ray. He notes that the lack of authority and
influence on reputation in the epistemic culture of Wikipedia lifts the share of responsibility even from those who are considered experts in real life, i.e., "on the other side of the screen" [6]. The comparison between the scientific community ethos and the Wikipedia authors' community makes it possible to reveal a number of interesting differences: if the first is characterized by reference to reliability and to thematic focusing, the second seeks rapid publication and vastness [6, p. 43]. The similar idea is notable in works of L. Gelernter: the specificity of the Wikipedia's epistemic culture is expressed in the preservation of tense negotiations on the description of a particular fact [7, p.3]. Indeed, unlike other storage forms and scientific knowledge translation, only the wiki format allows you to go beyond the expert opinion of the compiler, the responsible editor, the reviewer, and become acquainted with the comments of non-dominant or even non-paradigmatic points of view.
Wikipedia as not an encyclopedia
It is interesting to note, that the very idea of comparing the epis-temic cultures of the scientific community and Wikipedia, as well as the idea of having a specific epistemic culture in Wikipedia, caused many contradictions even recently. The main wave of research consists of the analysis of this project as an Internet phenomenon and its comparison with traditional encyclopedias [8], libraries [9; 10] and promo-technologies [11]. It is probably worth acknowledging that all these directions do not exclude each other, but express the multifacetedness of the same object, and it is hardly possible to exhaust the essence of Wikipedia by stating one sign of equality.
The idea of the incompatibility of the Wikipedia's and ordinary encyclopedias' goals is relatively new. At the current moment in opposition to those who predict the digital end of material books and traditional encyclopedias, there is a small number of researchers distinguishing these practices. So, for example, reaserchers from Lund University identified the categories of instrumental and emotional use of the encyclopedia. In particular, the appearance of the Internet and Wikipedia did not lead to a mass rejection of printed publications, and the authors ask why it happened. It is necessary to agree that the new does not replace the old only in the case when both the new and the old have unique properties. Evidently, emotional use is a unique property of classical forms of knowledge storage, while Wikipedia has a unique tool [12].
In our opinion, wiki projects are have at least two dimensions, not applicable to ordinary encyclopedias. First, the effects of the active inclusion of Wikipedia in the epistemic activities of the information society subject re-raise the question of the wiki-projects' objectives. In addition to creating universal or thematic, free and open encyclopedias, they form a community, and it is difficult to say which of these two purposes is more significant. This effect is not manifested in other, even more powerful, projects, because the "wiki" format allows not only to get knowledge, but also to share it. On the one hand, Wikipedia is an environment that allows to maintain the flexibility and adaptability of information. On the other hand, there is a kind of self-regulating mechanism for assessing the information correctness in such an environment. With this account, Wikipedia is not a phenomenon or essence, but a process that is constantly being renewed and reconstructed. This process is supported by a common goal, which reveals a new sphere of knowledge existence within society: along with the production and dissemination of knowledge, the practice of their continuous rethinking was formed.
Secondly, the illusory static picture seen when working with Wikipedia is the result of an agreement reached at an exceptional moment of time. In fact, only a small amount of information can be called static, which is obvious even to the ordinary person (hence, which is not the goal of working with Wikipedia). In this sense Wikipedia is perhaps the best embodiment of the conventional truth model, the effectiveness of which depends on the number of subjects involved in the adoption of compromise. This, in turn, determines the strategy for understanding Wikipedia not as a storehouse of facts, but as a repository of what people consider to be facts. From this point of view, Wikipedia is a godsend for a social epistemologist.
For example, it happens with interpretations of historical events in different cultural environments: "Let's take as an example the description of the Second World War in different languages, and we immediately encounter significant differences in the description of this global historical event: the articles will have different structure, volume parts devoted to this or that stage of the war, the "rating" of historical figures, and needless to say about the emphasis placed by the collective author on interpretations" [13, p. 79]. It turns out that Wikipedia is not only a large-scale repository of cultural values, meanings of the masses [14, p. 214], but it also allows you to view the history of changes,
which gives you an ability to monitor the dynamics of these values and meanings.
The last conclusion guides to the next question: is it correct to analyze the Wikipedia's information environment as an epistemic milieu? In other words, can it really transform the way people adopt knowledge?
Wikipedia as the specific epistemic milieu
In philosophical literature an epistemic milieu refers as organizational features with which learners are presented [15, p. 59], local epistemic circumstances which affect the choice of the optimal means [16, p. 32-33]. The adoption of a knowledge in a school classroom is the most common example for this concept. The statement, for example, "There is no gravity in open space", do not come to an ordinary person with the experience, because such terms as "gravity" and "open space" are quiet abstract for everyday consciousness. The closest conclusion that the person could work out on their own probably would be limited with the observation that "objects tend to fall". When a person meets this fact for the first time (in school), elements of milieu are active:
• the level of the authority of the teacher and the social image of a teacher as a "transmitter of truth" or an "intermediator of cultural and personal meaning" [17, p. 171] (the source-element of the epistemic milieu);
• the absence of conflicts in student's ingroup, which determines by reaction of social ingroup, when other students do not dispute the plausibility of teacher's statements (the social element or ingroup-element of the epistemic milieu);
• the relevance of new information and own beliefs of a student, who doesn't know anything about the cosmic space or gravity and accepts the fact without contradiction (the element of content relevance of the epistemic milieu).
The list is not exhaustive but it reveals at least three types of elements of an epistemic milieu. The epistemic milieu of traditional encyclopedia is based on the first element, represented with the authority of its editor, the group of authors, the publishing house. The second element serves for target distribution of information between different epistemic communities. Usually, the teacher or the expert guides a subject in situations of choosing the literature. Since encyclopedia as a
class of literature has certain status of reliability and the teacher or the expert acts as a guarantor, the third element is the least important. For example, reprints of encyclopedias is the tool of assuring readers in relevancy and actuality of its content. These conceptual drafts seem to be clear, but the shifts appear when epistemic milieu finds itself in wiki-milieu.
The first change is connected with the observation that the source-element of Wikipedia as an epistemic milieu is equal to the milieu itself. As it was described in previous parts, Wikipedia looks like an encyclopedia, but works different. Wikipedia as a socio-technical epistemic system [18, p. 1368-1387] provides the diffusion for subjective acts through the technical activity to produce multimodal (or "creolized") result. In this case, the user do not separate the actions of particular user from the actions of the whole system (in comparison to the classroom example, where the particular teacher can correspondent or not correspondent with the cultural image of a teacher).
The second change is that ingroup-element seems to disappear from the scheme at all. The social-philosophical meaning of this statement causes possible methodological paradoxes: a subject experiences an involvement in a social group in phenomenological sense as his conscious will. At the same time, the "janitors" and other actors do not interact with the user, who performs epistemic actions singly and independently. In previous ages of informational technologies, at traditional encyclopedias' times, the horizon of available information was also limited by language or literacy, gender, age, social status, social circle; or by such agents and social institutes as parents, school, church, government, publishers, sponsors, critics and experts. Apparently it is impossible to compare these situations, because a person has never before remained imprisoned in the information trap alone. All of these "censors" (also in a good sense) seems to be deprived from epistemic activity in the virtual information environment.
Obviously, wikipistemology, as a kind of epistemology studies, concerns the element of content relevance. At this point, Wikipedia as the epistemic milieu provides communitarian way of knowing, where knowledge turns from the result of rational activity into ready-made informational object, accompanied with the strategy of its arguing and its transmitting to equip a user with the logic of possible further disputes.
Conclusion
Thus, we can consider the connection between the subject and the wiki-projects in the process of individual epistemic activity in two ways: as a source of knowledge about objects of interest (from the scientist to the ordinary person) and as a source of knowledge about the information compromise of modern society (from the ordinary person to the scientist). Notable fact is that the second property is not typical for traditional encyclopedias, and the first one has shown the new side through the creation of a network of socio-technical relations. In these relations, a specific environment has already been created that is conducive to the formation of new epistemic practices, including co-creation, non-expert conventionality and formalization of the knowledge interpretation inherent in a particular social group.
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