Question

1- According to Plato, science can only give us opinions, not knowledge. Do you agree? Why or why not?

2- After reading Googling is Believing, what solutions might you present to the author's concerns regarding about our "faith in the idea of an informed citizenry"?

ANSWER EACH QUESTION WITH A MINIMUM OF 200 WORDS.

Answer 1

1)No , I don't support Plato's view. According to me, Knowledge is the information acquired by learning from teachings, books, experiments and observation of the world around us. But Plato advocates that knowledge is not a matter of study, learning or observation, but a matter of recollection. Many of Plato's ideas and theories were largely influenced by his mentor, Socrates, including his theories of knowledge and education.

On the other hand, Opinion is a personal judgement about something. It is the result of internal emotions, thought processes and the way one interprets information (knowledge). Science helps us to gain information or facts about world around us. Roughly speaking, Understanding one's environment is knowledge and science helps us to understand it well.

2)There are too much information, not all of it entirely reliable available on internet.                                                             “The very availability of information can make us think that the ideal of the informed citizen is more realized than it is — and that, in turn, can actually undermine the ideal, making us less informed, simply because we think we know all we need to know already.” - Author

But how do you know that when you google something, the facts you get are really reliable? Isn't it easy to edit a Wikipedia page and make your personal opinion a wiki fact. Knowledge is power; capture it and you capture power in a democracy This is one reason philosophers have always been worried about the ebb and flow of information, and who controls it. Plato argued in “The Republic” that the fact that democracies couldn’t control that flow and point it toward truth was one reason they often dissolved into tyranny.

Anyone who relies solely on one source of information is going to have a lot of misinformation(there are opinions not information) You must go to multiple sources to authenticate, and try to balance the views you encounter.Consider if your own opinion could affect your judgement. We need to be discerning in our use of information found on the internet. Check the author, Do a quick search on the author. Are they credible? Are they real? Finally Ask an expert of concerned subject matter, or consult fact-checking site.