Big data, epistemological problems and epistemic contextualism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15381/escrypensam.v21i45.23806Keywords:
epistemology, big data, data science, contextualismAbstract
Big data, and data science have become key instruments for the generation of knowledge. In this context, it is interesting to understand how these methodologies influence what users from different fields (scientific, economic, financial, etc.) can say about what they know about the world and what they do not know. This article describes the epistemological problems derived from the use of big data, it also proposes to consider to what extent this new technological reality can be a source of epistemic contextualism, and how, using the rules proposed in by Lewis (1996), can find a point of understanding between those who see the world as a huge set of data containing the answer to problems, and those who believe that only the scientific method and hypothesis testing can achieve the most accurate knowledge about the world's phenomena.
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