Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Reflection 7/30/14
Today had some interesting discussion around the book, some of which I do not know how I feel about, bu was still nice to hear. My own group put the big sentence "reality is relative" on the top of our paper, and to be honest I don't know what is meant by that. Does this mean that everyone perceives an objectively existent reality differently? Or does it mean that objective reality does not exist and nothing is really true for everyone? If the second is meant I must say that this is false. For example, we know as a scientific fact that the human body can replenish its blood, while the Hmong believe that there is limited blood in the body. They are welcome to believe this, and the fact that they do does not make them less intelligent or less worthy of dignity and respect, to the contrary their steadfastness in their beliefs I believe is an admirable quality. They are wrong however, in an objective way they are incorrect. That was a point of some confusion in class, and I do not think that it disturbs the main point of the book, but it is good to consider in class that for the most part western medicine is correct, as well as the fact that, "western medicine saves lives."
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Patrick--I'm glad to hear your perspective on your group's discussion today! Let me play Devil's advocate for a minute and see what you think. I think the statement of "Western medicine is right" is interesting, as it didn't seem to be the only "right" answer in Lia's case. While Western medicine may have figured many things out, when it is practiced out of context of people's values, it can lead to sometimes disastrous results, as we see in the book. Philosophers of science have argued that there is, in fact, no such thing as a purely "objective" reality, as it is always observed through some scientist's perspective, who will have their own ways of interpreting those observations. The question then becomes "what is objectivity?".
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing up this point!