Talk:Traditional knowledge
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[edit] POV
I have the feeling that the article is slightly biased towards the local community's interests. No explanation is made indeed as to the potential importance of a specific knowledge (a plant, or whatever) to create new medecines for the community as a whole. If you can save the life 10 millions people by openly sharing traditional knowledge known for centuries in some cases, in order to make new medicines to cure some diseases, a balance of interests should be made. --Edcolins 13:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Response
Any bias is unintended. This article is relatively new and is still being expanded. I have tried to strike a balance by presenting a summary of the issues from an objective perspective. However, because of the general subject matter, bias positions are sometimes difficult to "neutralize" in a short and concise style format. Nonetheless, I suspect that as this article grows, interests will become more equally balanced. --MrMMattson, 17 December 2005
[edit] Response
I made an extensive rewrite of the entry. Although I understand the need for "balance", I believe the article as it stood, was inadequate to reflect the debate as I know it (I worked as a negotiator on the issues for the last 15 years). Some of the comments, I believe, were misleading. For example, it was generally not indigenous peoples who brought the issues to WIPO and the WTO - the intellectual property approach was set by the state members of WIPO, the WTO and the CBD. Indigenous peoples have been in a mostly reactive mode to these developments.
I also believe that any statements about conflicts with national laws and constitutional laws have to be heavily qualified. The United States, for example, now recognizes tri-federalism: there are three sovereigns, not two, in the the federal dance: federal government, states, and tribes. The US maintains a government-to-government relationship with tribes. And the tribes have a unique relationship to the Federal government - they signed treaties, and the Supreme Court ruled over 150 years ago that they retain sovereign, prior rights not granted by the US but retained until ceded or expressly terminated (which requires extraordinary reasons by Congress). These rights do not diminish with time: in the Pacific Northwest, tribal salmon fishers were deprived of much of their salmon catch, against treaty guarantees, for over 50 years. Despite long suppression, the Supreme Court awarded the tribes of the PNW collective rights to 50% of the fish in 1979. There has been no litigation of the Constitutional provisions for IPRs and tribal rights to identity and cultural protection (which are mentioned as positive rights in many treaties). And it is indsputable that the Supreme Court has interpreted the rights as recognized prior rights (arising from self-governance prior to contact) and treaty rights (positively guaranteed by treaty), not grants of rights by the US government.
I've added a few more references, including a few by indigenous peoples themselves. If you follow this debate, you can't help but be struck how the intellectual conversation is dominated by non-indigenous and non-local scholars. I've tried to present some of their views here in an objective manner, reporting but not editorializing on the substance of the debates.
I made a minor change from "positivism" to "positive protection" (which is the term of art being used at WIPO, the CBD and the WTO).
~~phardison, 13 September 2006
[edit] Is "traditional knowledge" knowledge?
This article needs a major edit to reflect the fact that much of what is referred to as "traditional knowledge" is not really knowledge at all. The article mostly focuses on how "traditional knowledge" should be recognized and, most importantly, paid for, without acknowledging that the existence of "traditional knowledge" itself is debateable. The very term "traditional knowledge" is tendentious, for it purports to decide by terminological fiat precisely the fundamental issue under debate: namely, whether the beliefs in question in fact constitute "knowledge", i.e. justified true belief.
In everyday language, as in philosophical discourse, a distinction is made between knowledge and mere belief; that is why the word "knowledge" has a positive connotation, while "belief" is neutral. Though philosophers continue to debate the precise meaning of "knowledge", the general consensus is that "knowledge" is, roughly speaking a synonym for "justified true belief". Thus, if I believe that Ontario lies due south of Mississippi, or that American troops have found weapons of mass destruction (other than their own) in Iraq, these beliefs would not constitute knowledge, for the simple reason that they are false. Similarly, if on the night of September 10, 2001 and dreamt that the World Trade Center towers would collapse the next day, and then awoke believing it, that belief would still not constitute knowledge, for though it turned out to be true, that was so by accident; I did not have any good reason to believe it was true, i.e. it was not a justified true belief relative to the evidence at my disposal.
The central question, then, is whether so-called "traditional knowledge" in fact constitutes knowledge, understood as justified true belief. For each element of purported "traditional knowledge", we must ask, first of all, whether the belief is in fact true (i.e. a factually accurate representation of the world), and secondly whether we (or its advocates) have good reason to believe it in the light of the currently available evidence.
Much of what is put forward as "traditional knowledge" does not satisfy this criterion. "Traditional knowledge" is actually comprised of four elements (all of which are conflated in this article): observations, beliefs, values and practices. Beliefs form much of what is touted as "traditional knowledge" and none of them qualifies as knowledge. There is no such thing as "spiritual knowledge", as is stated in the article, because there is not good reason to believe that such a thing exists. Values and practices also cannot be considered knowledge. They could be the result of knowledge, but just as easily, they could be the result of ignorance. "Traditional knowledge"'s value of "respect", for example, is based on the belief that animals communicate with human beings, and there is absolutely no evidence for this assertion. "Traditional knowledge" also involves the practice of throwing beaver fetuses into the water so that they will be "reborn" - a practice that reflects the unsubstantiated belief in reincarnation.
It is only some aspects of the first element, "observations", that actually constitute "knowledge". These concern matters such as animals' migration paths, which plants have curative properties and weather patterns ("red sky at night, sailors' delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning", for example {that is, a red sky in the evening is generally followed by balmy weather the next day, while a red sky in the morning generally indicates that a storm is brewing)). Some "traditional knowledge" observations, however, might not constitute knowledge in that they could be unrepresentative of material processes (the earth appears to be flat, after all, and it was only after various forms of controlled experiment were undertaken that this was understood to the case). "Traditional knowledge" observations are also less likely to be more accurate than modern scientific knowledge where the latter exists, but where the latter does not exist or is incomplete, indigenous people's ideas might be useful at least as a starting point for more rigorous investigation. Each claim has to be judged on a case-by-case basis in the light of all available evidence - giving low but not zero weight to anecdotal evidence.
This article, however, does not acknowledge this debateable character of "traditional knowledge" in any way. This is because the article reflects the advocacy stance of most of the work that is being done on the subject. Assertions about "traditional knowledge"'s importance are being made by aboriginal organizations who are using such allegations as a lever to extract funding from various sources (mostly governments and developers), as well as to assert rights to lands and resources. Franceswiddowson 16:46, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Encyclopedicity?
This article reads rather more like an essay (and a biased one at at that) than an encyclopedia article. 121a0012 21:33, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a correct analysis. The article is written like a biased essay (I have tried to make a few additions to counter this bias, but a major rewrite is required). The problem is that almost everyone who writes about "traditional knowledge" - like the person who originally wrote this article (he has been a "traditional knowledge" negotiator for 15 years) - is not interested in describing or analyzing the subject, but in promoting it. It is political advocacy at its worst under the pretence that the subject is a legitimate area of study. Franceswiddowson 15:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
