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Adam Smith's View Of Shared Knowledge

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Shared knowledge is group perspective, it is propositional knowledge or belief produced by norms, which may be based on culture, race and gender. It is shared within a community, society or even spread around the world. Personal knowledge produces personal perspective, it is the knowledge from direct experience using our own ways of knowing. It is local to person and includes personal reflection. The word shape in this context implies affect and form. The title suggests that shared knowledge forms and affects our personal knowledge. I take the view that shared knowledge does shape personal knowledge as I treat shared knowledge as a framework of knowledge and through my personal experience, I can accept or reject the shared knowledge based …show more content…

Adam Smith, the father of Economics published papers that had changed the way Economists think. In his paper, he mentioned the “invisible hand”. The “invisible hand” refers to individual’s interests which generates a demand for goods and services that allow others to supply those goods and services. He suggests that a market work best under free market, without government intervention. There will be better allocation of resources as demand and supply will automatically adjust to equilibrium based on individual’s interest and utility. This way, the society is better off and this concept is now a well-known concept accepted by Economists. This theory transit from personal knowledge to share knowledge, which verify that personal knowledge have the ability to shape shared knowledge. Before Adam Smith’s theory of invisible hand, the discipline of economics didn’t even exist. Thus without his personal knowledge, I will not be able to learn about the theory of invisible hand in Economics lessons. Based on Adam Smith’s theory and the example about conformity, it highlights that shared knowledge and personal knowledge to a certain extent is …show more content…

On the other hand, personal knowledge provides personal, subjective experience that widen our lenses. Shared knowledge affect our personal perspective of the world, and our personal experiences can also influence our world view.
Hence, we must acknowledge that shared knowledge have the authority and ability to shape our personal knowledge. This supported by examples of conformity, virtue of Xiao and Utilitarianism. Moreover, personal knowledge have the ability to shape shared knowledge; it is bidirectional. Thus it can be unaffected by shared knowledge, supported by the murderer case of Chau, Kantianism, and Adam Smith’s

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