Ethics and Values in Social Work, Essay Example

In respect to ways of knowing (WOK), shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge through a variety of paths. For starters, before the relationships between the two types of knowledge can be discussed, key terms need to be defined. For example, knowledge is the awareness or familiarity of a subject or process that is gained through experience. Within the areas of knowledge, history and human sciences are shared in ways of experimentation, adaptation, experience and interpretation of data that is constructed into a form of information that is capable of being consumed by the person experiencing the knowledge opportunity. The only way to gain this knowledge is to experience it in some way.  To gain knowledge the experience can be either active or passive in nature but it also includes personal knowledge and shared knowledge. Personal knowledge and shared knowledge revolves around the concept of what one knows, individually, and what is known, collectively. Shared knowledge represents sociocultural knowledge, often the cummulstive result of combined perspectives through the process of elimination to form a commonly shared consensus view, or belief. For example a commonly held consensus view on a particular law that was once viewed as necessary now being viewed  as unnecessary, or perhaps even unfair, could result in the law being overturned in response to the new consensus. The same example applies to science and active experimentation in respect to shared knowledge.

Personal knowledge is usually acquired through three key types of individualised experiences, specifically perception, emotion and memories. These in turn give way to subcategorical ways of acquiring personal knowledge such as through intuition or inspiration, while shared knowledge ties into a more diverse range of ways of knowing, virtually all ways of knowing apply in respect to shared knowledge as knowledge acquired indivudally on a personal level can be shared. The Knowledge Question

The knowledge question focuses on this moment of interaction between the two forms of knowing, when personal knowledge becomes shared and how the sharing of this knowledge impacts the personal knowledge of the individual or indivuals with whom it’s shared.

Ways of Knowing

The previous experiences, perceptions, how the knowledge was communicated as well as the association of the experience with other experiences coupled with a multitude of other cognitive processes influence how the knowledge is received and processed.  Knowledge is known because that information can be reutilized to base new experiences and it also influences future knowledge that is gained.  The knowledge one has and that of what knowledge is shared varies dependent upon the group of people sharing their expertise.   The reason why it’s not always ory of knowledge is based on the question of how do we know what we know?  The knowledge issues are based on discovering and sharing information to garner increased knowledge.  The primary focus of the knowledge issues is to explore the ways of knowing, senses, reasoning, emotional state and communication method, the area of the knowledge, science, math, physics, history, ethics, art and the environment the individual is pursuing the knowledge issue (Barsky, 2009).  The environment includes the cultural influences, group settings for learning and the ability for the individual to utilize the knowledge.  The theory of knowledge is based on reviewing an example in real life that encompasses the ability to understand “how do we know what we know?”  This is garnered by utilizing the ways of knowing/areas of knowledge to decipher how we know (Schragenheim and Passal, 2005).  The ways of knowing include sense perceptions of hearing, smelling, seeing, feeling and tasting.  The areas of knowledge include math, science, history, arts and ethics but also can include religious and indigenous knowledge systems.  The ways of knowledge are the ways in which we gain knowledge from the world around us.  Each of these areas are corollary in nature to one another and do not necessarily work independently. Emotion impacts how the world around us is interpreted and it helps or hinders the way our perception is created. Faith guides people in their choices and views as well as how faith facilitates the interpretation of the world.  Imagination facilitates the creation of new ideas and helps the person fill in the blanks when information is not available. Intuition is used when there is not a frame of reference or use of reason.  Intuition drives individuals toward new goals by assuming certain information and then striving to validate that information. Language provides the conduit on how well information is exchanged. Language can be an inhibitor to knowledge if there is a barrier.  Reason is in opposition of emotion.  Through deduction and direct information collection facilitates reasoning. Memory is a compilation of things that are already known and allows for new knowledge to be built upon existing knowledge. The senses are seen as the frontline of gathering knowledge (Audi, 2009).  These are the first interactions with new experiences and provide immediate feedback about the new knowledge.

Through the ways of knowing, each way of knowing results in either personal knowledge or shared knowledge. The shared knowledge includes things such as historical events, cultural traits or scientific laws.  This core commonality between known and verified natural sciences is shared and thus a common denominator between people.  To interpret this knowledge includes multiple opportunities.  Through the use of logic, reasoning, intuition, and revelation acquiring knowledge is observed and filtered to create knowledge for the person or if in a collective environment where information can be shared, could be shared knowledge.  The shared knowledge creates personal knowledge by interacting between groups of people.  Social experiments in which the  group watches a historical account and then talks to one another is a combination between ways of knowing and the shared knowledge.

Through the eight ways of knowing there are real-life examples that can be evaluated and examined for knowledge.  Gaining knowledge is based on perception, reason, emotion, faith, imagination, intuition, memory and language. Using history as the area of knowledge, this encompasses the studies of recorded past. The crux of the historical event is balanced on the ability to discuss the event as fact or how in depth can the event be understood because it happened in the past.  I believe that through the sharing of personal knowledge, each person creates new opportunities for a common shared knowledge base.  This leads to further capability of building knowledge and a greater understanding of the knowledge base.  Deciphering historical events lends itself to the ability to understand human behavior.  The transcription of the event in the past to those seeking knowledge is influenced by the historian presenting the information.

The faith, emotion, imagination and intuition come into play when making or taking the ethical stance while all of the ways of knowing are interrelated when gathering knowledge of the world.  The knowledge issue that distinguishes the difference between whether or not something has been learned individually on a personal level or whether or not the knowledge was acquired through the sharing of information revolves distinctly around how the knowledge is obtained. For example, a news broadcast reporting objectively on a crime where there is an accused party and a victim constitutes shared knowledge as the broadcaster simply provides the facts of the case that have been collectively retrieved via his news staff and from across other media news outlets. In this particular circumstance, the shared information will have less impact on any single individual’s personal knowledge than the impact their personal knowledge will have on how they perceive the shared knowledge. In the news broadcast example, while the broadcaster can provide facts like the race, gender, age of the victim and accused as well as details of the crime, based on personal knowledge drawn from personal experiences and the emotions memories of those experiences trigger, it is more than likely certain bias will interfere with the individual acquiring knowledge of the incident identical to that of the knowledge shared. In this sense shared knowledge does not shape personal knowledge on its own, but personal bias and preconceived notions already held by the individual interact with the shared knowledge in such a way that personal knowledge is formed. It should be noted however, that this is knowledge based on shared information in collaboration with ways of knowing like intuition, perception, authority etc… This means the personal knowledge could be more accurate or less accurate than the shared knowledge depending on how credible and capable the person is as an authority on the subject. For example, when a scientific hypothesis or theory acquires the title of scientific fact through active experimentation and peer review, the authorities that share the findings of their studies can be discredited by greater authorities or more thoroughly and extensive experimentation that refutes established knowledge. The knowledge that is gained from the Iraq incident formulates the knowledge we now how regarding the incident.  The way we harness that knowledge and ultimately utilize that information is dependent on the external factors that impacted the way we received and interpreted that information that formed our knowledge. Personal observations and experimentations can prove a hypothesis or null-hypothesis and with each result knowledge is built.

An example of shared knowledge impacting personal knowledge can be seen with the website WikiLeaks and their ability to process and provide information about key events of the world.  The group has released numerous documents ranging from the efforts in Afghanistan to the corruption and violence in Kenya.  In addition to the documentation provided there have been numerous videos and other footage that was presented for public consumption.  One of the more influential videos included the gun sight footage from an Apache helicopter striking Iraqi journalists.  WikiLeaks purpose is to bring important news to the public and they do so through collectively acquiring the information in one central location where visitors can anonymously be informed or inform one another. Just like with the previous news broadcast example, the network being anonymous does not  They also want to provide key informants, sources and whistleblowers do not experience retribution for their actions to provide this information.  Within the scope of the organization’s purpose there are multiple ways of knowing that are impacted, especially, emotion, reason and the imagination.

Part of the ways of knowing include building knowledge and reverting back to memory and instinct to interpret new experiences.  The way in which knowledge is gained is based on the perception of the individual experiencing the information.  The ability to enhance the observation based on the information already gathered allows the person to create a reference and a point to build knowledge based on the new experiences.  This is true when learning about historical events and culture, for example.  The foundation of the learning experience regarding a culture includes studying what they eat, how they dressed, their religious preferences and their daily habits.  This leads to creating a knowledge base and formulating why they performed the tasks and rituals in which they partook.  This observation and participation in learning allows for a bridge to be gapped between basic understanding of culture and more advanced understanding of why humanity does what it does.  The memory of the basic fundamentals of the society and their processes of finding solutions in gathering a better understanding provide the stepping stones to advanced theology, archeology, and other humanity based sciences.  Natural sciences build on both the personal and shared production of knowledge.

Conclusion

In sum, the ability to understand shared and personal knowledge is critical in the process of developing knowledge.  The ways of knowing and the knowledge areas all mold the influence data is transformed into usable knowledge and information. The real way shared knowledge influences or shapes personal knowledge is through resulting in action. When knowledge is shared, there is no way of knowing how that shared knowledge impacts any one individual’s personal awareness, without available observable factors. For example, when WikiLeaks shares facts about social unrest and political injustice that were before unknown to the public, the actual impact of the release of this information is measured by the public response which relies on the ability of this information to influence personal knowledge of individuals in such a way that they chose to behave differently from how they would have prior to having the information.

Bibliography

Audi, R., (2009). A contemporary introduction to the theory of knowledge. Routledge, Taylor & France Group. New York.

Barsky, Allan Edward. (2009) Ethics And Values In Social Work, An Integrated Approach For A Comprehensive Curriculum. Oxford University Press, USA

Schragenheim, E., (2012). Learning from one event. Retrieved from: https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/tocico.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/docs/learning_from_one_event_pape.pdf

Schragenheim, E., and Passal, A., (2005). A structured methodology based on theory of knowledge. Human Systems Management, 24 (205).