Authors Present Knowledge in the Form of Claims

10

Roger saw the knowledge he gleaned from texts as claims to be argued for. For him, reading was a process of identifying, sorting, and evaluating the claims made by the various authors. This required him to analyze an author’s claims into parts and to think about the validity of each part separately. It also required him to be able to assign a provisional truth status to a claim, a status that could change as his work progressed. In an early session, for example, Roger voiced the suspicion that his current definition of paternalism, which included two conditions—that it be against the beneficiary’s will, and that it be for the beneficiary’s good—was incomplete. By the next session he had tentatively decided to solve this problem by adding a third “morality condition” suggested by, but not the same as, the condition given by the authors Gert and Culver. In doing so, he was rejecting an alternative position put forward by the author Childress. Towards the end of the project, however, he reversed himself, arguing as he drafted his paper that the definition of paternalism should not include this third “morality condition.” Thus, in his think-aloud protocols, we found Roger making distinctions, embracing or rejecting claims tentatively, and flatly changing his mind, all in ways consistent with his view of truth as multivalent.

11

Janet’s goal, however, was not to evaluate claims but to search for facts. Claims and proposals in the readings often became “facts” in Janet’s notes. For example, in response to a statement by Childress that “Some arguments for the legal prohibition of some sexual acts between consenting adults hold that such acts are wrong even if they do not harm others or violate principles of justice and fairness,” Janet wrote a note that stripped away the rhetorical context: “Some acts are wrong even if they do not harm others.” Similarly, Childress’ point, “Some arguments for the prohibition of contraception... sterilization and abortion contend that they are inherently immoral” became, in Janet’s notes: “Things that are inherently immoral such as contraception sterilization and abortion.” In ignoring both the original and current rhetorical contexts, Janet created a series of unauthored and undisputed facts.

12

This is not to say that Janet was unreflective. On the contrary, her protocol transcripts contain numerous instances of evaluation and response:

I don’t think that that um... governments... governments should not interfere with parents and children... unless children are being abused or seek... seek seek help...

If someone younger were reading this... younger were reading this thing would have different opinions.

Such comments demonstrate Janet’s ability and inclination to exercise critical evaluation, but these reflections were uniformly absent from her written text, suggesting she did not consider them relevant to the task at hand. As a consequence, her final text not only stripped away any evidence of the role of other authors in constructing the domain knowledge of ethics, it also eliminated any evidence of her own role.