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Review of Steve Fuller, Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future, David C. Winyard

Jim Collier —  January 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

Author Information: David C. Winyard, Virginia Tech winyard.david@gmail.com

Winyard, David C. 2013. “Review of Steve Fuller, Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (2): 16-18.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-Fe

Please refer to: Weiss, Sabrina. 2012. “Review of Humanity 2.0 by Steve Fuller.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-9M

Steve Fuller. Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, Pp. 1, 265.

In his introduction to Humanity 2.0, Steve Fuller writes: “I have spent much of the past decade engaged in redefining the foundations of the social sciences in the face of a pincer attack from biology and theology” (3). The warfare analogy seems apt, for Fuller has made a habit of stepping into the no-man’s land between these rivals to seek peace. Unfortunately, his courage has exceeded his persuasiveness, for he continues to take fire from both sides.

The new fighting front is transhumanism, the application of technology to enhance human capabilities. Its advocates foresee an end to biological evolution — the old battleground — as an anthropogenic alternative takes over, with convergent technologies (CT) yielding god-like power to upgrade, alter, and even eliminate our physical bodies. Transhumanism’s pace, scope, and ethics raise anew old struggles over human nature and its place in the universe. Theology and then biology have offered their definitions of humanity, but transhumanism has raised new questions and rekindled simmering animosities. Fuller’s proposed peace treaty seeks to balance Christianity’s investments in science with biology’s need for religious motivations and heuristics. How does this deal appear to the combatants?

For Christians, Fuller reviews a bewildering diversity of views regarding personhood: from classic Greek philosophy, through traditional Roman Catholic, Eastern, and Reformed Christianity, to the latest thoughts from post-secular Radical Orthodoxy (98). He affirms the important concept of man made in the image and likeness of God — the doctrine of the imago Dei — and the uncertain meaning and means of its restoration after the fall. Indeed, the central issue of Christian theology is sin, with its consequences (e.g., death) and how to deal with them. Unfortunately, Fuller never deals with sin as the root cause of humanity’s problems. Instead, he offers to (re)sanctify science through two Theology 2.0 candidates from Joseph Priestley and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, described as “heretical scientist-theologians.” (195). Exploitation of questionable theology for secular, even hostile, purposes is unlikely to satisfy the Church. As Jack Swearengen notes, “For the Christian, such utilitarian uses of religious motives are not only empty, but they are tantamount to suggesting that it is acceptable to believe a lie as long as the belief produces desirable results” (239).

So, are scientists — biologists in particular — open to Theology 2.0 help? I think not. In his defense of teaching intelligent design (ID) in public schools, Fuller pointed to multiple historical examples of religious viewpoints and motives benefiting science, but to no avail (Fuller 2005, 7-9). Evolutionary biologists and their philosophical allies held firm in opposing any intrusion of religion in experimental science. Fuller notes that biology’s aversion to ID persists even though “designtalk” has “grown stronger as the discipline has migrated from the field site to the molecular laboratory and computer simulator” (Fuller 2011, 191). Fuller refers to this obstinacy as Neo-Darwinian apologetics, a kind of fundamentalist belief system that sacrifices the coherence of science for the sake of maintaining independence from theistic thought (164-173). This strongly contrasts with increasingly open discussions of metaphysics and the supernatural in general philosophy (e.g., Plantinga, 1967).

So, does Humanity 2.0 offer anything new? I think so, especially in its powerful critiques of the embedded theology of CT policy, its underlying aspiration to enhance evolution, and the incomplete ethics of John Harris’ Enhancing Evolution. Fuller holds nothing back, reaching a climax in his observation that Harris lacks a “religious sensibility” regarding transhumanism (159). This is a serious handicap, for transhumanism’s rhetoric is saturated with terms with religious meaning: life, death, immortality, resurrection, spirit, perfection, transcendence, eschatology, millennium, progress, faith, hope, and love, to name just a few. Transhumanism and its goals cannot be effectively approached without religion, Christianity in particular.

On this point, Sabrina Weiss’ excellent review of Humanity 2.0 goes astray. She questions Fuller’s “presumption of Abrahamic theology as the best tradition to use” (2012). Weiss seems to overlook the well-documented links between modern science and Christian thought. If science is off course, is it not wise to look first for a causative error in Christian theology?

The key figure in Fuller’s account is Franciscan John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), whose “theological innovations” were identified by Radical Orthodoxy as “the founding moment of modernity, a version of Original Sin in secular time” (98). Thomas Aquinas and his followers (Thomists) saw man’s characteristics in the imago Dei as analogous to God’s, what is known as an equivocal version of divine predication. But Scotus argued for a stronger univocal relationship (79-81), thus opening the door to mankind sharing in God’s divine attributes, including those regarded as incommunicable: omnibenevolence, omniscience and omnipotence.

Transhumanists aspire to these qualities, but their approach is one of self-reliance, not faith in God. Unfortunately, Fuller stops short of any critique of transhumanism as idolatry, but perhaps that is best left to professional theologians.

Humanity 2.0 documents the theological insights — and heresies — that have shaped science and technology for centuries, but which continue to be ignored by scientific fundamentalism. Fuller’s proposed peace treaty is inadequate, but it is a serious contribution to resolving the science-theology dualism at the heart of modernity’s problems (3). [1] Whatever faults it has can be forgiven, for serious consideration of religion is critical to dealing effectively with run-amuck science and its nascent offspring: transhumanism. Instead of filling the gaps himself, perhaps Fuller (and other scholars) could engage directly with interested theologians? [2]

References

Cole-Turner, Ronald, ed. 2011. Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement. Washington: Georgetown University Press.

Fuller, Steve William. 2005. “Rebuttal of Dover Expert Reports.” Accessed November 12, 2012. http://ncse.com/creationism/legal/expert-witnesses.

Fuller, Steve. 2011. Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future. Palgrave Macmillan.

Harris, John. 2007. Enhancing Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Plantinga, Alvin. 1967. God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Swearengen, Jack Clayton. 2007. Beyond Paradise: Technology and the Kingdom of God. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf &Stock Publishers.

Weiss, Sabrina. 2012. “Review of Humanity 2.0 by Steve Fuller.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-9M

[1] Fuller refers to such dualisms as “a bipolar disorder that runs deep and long through Western culture.”

[2] A place to begin: Ronald Cole-Turner, ed. Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2011).

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Reflections on the interdisciplinarity project: A response to an interview with Carl Mitcham and a keynote address by Stephen Frosh, Emma Craddock

Jim Collier —  December 1, 2012 — Leave a comment

Author Information: Emma Craddock, University of Nottingham, SERRC, emmacraddock1@googlemail.com

Craddock, Emma. 2012. Reflections on the interdisciplinarity project: A response to an interview with Carl Mitcham and a keynote address by Stephen Frosh. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (1): 1-4

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-vx

Carl Mitcham notes how we need to “raise the concept of interdisciplinarity for greater thematisation … for further reflection”.[1] I hope to contribute to this aim in the following piece. I explore the challenges that interdisciplinary work poses, alongside possible solutions to such problems, by reflecting upon an address by Stephen Frosh alongside the interview exchange with Carl Mitcham and my own experiences.

As a graduate student exploring interdisciplinary practice what strikes me on reading the interview with Mitcham is that interdisciplinarity’s appeal — spanning across disciplines and boundaries — may lend its demise. Whilst many aspects of interdisciplinarity certainly have merit, the worry surrounding interdisciplinary studies seems precisely that they are not tied to a particular discipline. Mitcham refers to the importance of crossing boundaries, but the risk of doing so is that one falls into the gaps between disciplines — an academic no man’s land. Indeed, Frosh argues that once we leave the safety of our disciplines “we lay ourselves open to the problems faced by all amateurs and migrants: we do not really belong anywhere; we have no safe space to stand upon”.

As Stephen Frosh stated in his keynote address at the Enquire conference this year, “Disciplines are reassuring things”.[2] Boundaries allow us to organise knowledge in a particular, ‘tidy’ way. Furthermore, they provide us with a sense of belonging, of knowing who we are as academics and where we fit in. Indeed, disciplines are comforting things, offering containment. However, as Frosh rightly points out, the downside of this is that we are also constrained. Indeed, the interview with Mitcham highlights the need to sometimes step outside of the boundaries of a discipline in order to achieve a greater understanding of it and to address particular issues.

The idea of branching out from one’s own area and comfort zone is an exciting prospect and a valuable process to experience. However, the phrase that springs to mind here (perhaps wrongly) is of being a “jack of all trades, master of none”. I suppose that is where the doubt (and maybe even fear) towards interdisciplinarity enters. For within academia it certainly seems to be the case that becoming an expert in your field is the ultimate goal, with expertise affording respect. Indeed, Frosh reinforces this idea by noting how expertise can only exist within a limited area. He argues that “diluting it by moving too far away from our training and area of competence is a way to introduce error and misunderstanding, and perhaps also professional panic”.[3] Mitcham admits that he will “never be a real expert”, but also that “this is okay”, which seems to suggest it is not possible to be an interdisciplinarity expert.[4] Mitcham bravely admits and accepts such a stance, one others would not readily make, giving a reason to perhaps avoid interdisciplinarity. This may especially be the case within the current academic and economic environment where such discomfort and inexperience may turn into insecurity. Given this, why should interdisciplinarity be pursued? And, indeed, where does interdisicplinarity fit?

Frosh’s stance is that the current push towards interdisciplinary work within universities and funding bodies reflects a wider discourse concerning the desire to produce ‘a unified knowledge of everything’. He acknowledges that we live in a fragmented world, with the need being perceived as one of drawing together disciplines in order to solve common problems. However, he questions what these ‘problems’ may be and to whom they are concerning. Furthermore he is suspicious of where the cause of such a need to achieve a unity of knowledge grows from — is it political, psychological or scientific? The route Frosh decides to pursue is that of questioning this seemingly intrinsic impulse to unify knowledge and understanding. This impulse, he argues, can detrimentally lead to simplification of issues and reductionism — both of which lead to errors. In fact, his main argument seems to be that this need to connect a fragmented world arises from a desire to be comforted and consoled in the face of uncertainty. Yet this desire contradicts the very nature of human beings, who are themselves fragmented, and “never a whole”. Frosh summarises: “Interdisciplinarity is a response to the demonstratable inadequacy of single discipline approaches to this complex fragmentariness, but it carries within it the same hope — that of achieving unity of knowledge”.[5] I can certainly recognise the downfalls of pursuing such an unattainable project, especially as to focus on such a goal serves to ignore the power relations at play which actually maintain separateness, given that some positions dominate others.

Frosh certainly presents a convincing and complex argument about the “fantasy” of a theory of everything and its effects, an argument that is too intricate to fully untangle here. However, in response, I would argue that the interdisciplinary project should be a relational one, rather than one which seeks to attain an all-encompassing theory of knowledge. Indeed, I believe in encouraging and fostering relationships between and across disciplines by immersing oneself within disciplines other than your own (of course, without losing your roots within your ‘home’ discipline). Building relationships between and among disciplines may be the best way forward in the current academic culture and a step towards avoiding falling into the gaps between disciplines when attempting interdisciplinarity. My own experience suggests as much.

Interdisciplinarity is encouraged by combining students from different disciplines to attend modules that supposedly span across the disciplines (in my case, in regards to research design and practice). Assignments were designed to foster communication between disciplines and to produce self-reflection of one’s own discipline. Group work asked students to consciously reflect on, and explore, the similarities and difference between disciplines and to approach topics from an interdisciplinary perspective. For example, during a qualitative methods module groups of five or six students were composed where each student came from a different disciplinary background, including nursing, politics, psychology and sociology. The task was to then select a methodological issue and to produce a poster that encompassed each discipline’s perspectives and yet combined them into a coherent whole. Perhaps inevitably, when the posters were presented, the number one criticism was that they did not draw together the disciplines satisfactorily, instead relating them to one another rather than producing an all-encompassing, over-arching framework. For me, this reflects Frosh’s concerns with interdisciplinarity being interpreted as a way of pursuing a unified knowledge and understanding and emphasises that disciplines need to be regarded relationally.

I found this experience both useful and eye-opening, but with significant drawbacks. The main problem I encountered is that whilst modules are, in theory, meant to span across disciplines and be relevant to all, they are often taught from a particular position. Here we get caught in the trap that the university is intrinsically designed to support separate disciplines rather than interdisciplinarity. This is highlighted by the story of how, despite attempts to resist, science and technology studies became its own discipline and how Mitcham struggled to find a publisher for a book that did not fit neatly within a disciplinary box.

Within the university, instructors come from a certain discipline, with a specialised background and often (unfortunately) an inability to step outside of their training. I came across this within a research design module where the instructor was a politics professor. Despite the class being described as exploring many different approaches to research, including qualitative methods and constructivist epistemologies, it was clearly focussed on a strictly positivist, quantitative notion of research. The views of the professor were clearly revealed by comments concerning how any research that does not deal with cause and effect and assess this quantitatively is “not proper research”. In all, this can be an extremely frustrating experience, as well as a lost opportunity for the growth of interdisciplinarity within the university. However, I acknowledge that these are beginning attempts to move towards interdisciplinarity and as such, are prone to ‘teething problems’. Following feedback this module will be jointly convened this academic year by professors from several disciplines who will aim to work together to provide a more interdisciplinary experience for the students. Taking into account interdisciplinarity’s relatively new position in the university should we then accept that maybe something is better than nothing?

Rather than falling into the gaps between disciplines, perhaps interdisciplinary work can be conceived as bridging these gaps, a position demonstrated by science journalists, for example. For despite neither possessing the same subject area knowledge as the experts they interview, nor understanding the intricacies of their theories, the science journalist’s unique position and abilities can bridge the gap between the often inaccessible knowledge of experts and the general public. A key point here is making knowledge accessible, as well as offering a different approach. Examples can be found in science journalism’s use of metaphor as a way to communicate the complexities of science to a wider audience. The following submission won a competition to produce a metaphor describing DNA: “DNA is the web that spins the spider” (2009, 154). A rather charming and engaging description, it perhaps demonstrates how reflections on subjects with which you are not comfortable and not expert can create a refreshing way of thinking.

Academics seem unnerved by moving outside of their disciplinary boundaries. It means moving outside of one’s comfort zone. Interdisciplinarity, then, is currently seen as an uncertain, cloudy area that risks disappearing in between the cracks of disciplines or over-reaching itself by attempting to produce a unified “theory of everything”. I suggest that a way forwards is to approach interdisciplinarity in terms of relationships, and perhaps most importantly (as well as most dauntingly), we need to be braver in following Mitcham’s lead and “accepting not being comfortable”.

References

Frosh, Stephen. “Transdisciplinary Tensions and Psychosocial Studies.” Keynote address at the 5th ENQUIRE Postgraduate Conference, University of Nottingham, England, September 11-12, 2012.

Mitcham, Carl. Interdisciplinarity and pedagogy: Disciplining collaboration in academia. By William Davis. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. February 10, 2012.

Strauss, Stephen. “Metaphor Contests and Contested Metaphors: From Web Spinning Spiders to Barcodes on DNA.” In Communicating Biological Sciences: Ethical and Metaphorical Dimensions, edited by Brigitte Nerlich, Richard Elliott, Brendon Larson, 153-168. Ashgate, 2009.

[1] Carl Mitcham, interview by William Davis, Interdisciplinarity and pedagogy: Disciplining collaboration in academia, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, February 10, 2012.

[2] Stephen Frosh, “Transdisciplinary Tensions and Psychosocial Studies” (keynote address ENQUIRE Postgraduate Conference, University of Nottingham, England, September 11-12, 2012).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Carl Mitcham, interview by William Davis, Interdisciplinarity and pedagogy: Disciplining collaboration in academia, Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, February 10, 2012.

[5] Stephen Frosh, “Transdisciplinary Tensions and Psychosocial Studies” (keynote address ENQUIRE Postgraduate Conference, University of Nottingham, England, September 11-12, 2012).

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Reply to Ron Westrum, Henry Bauer

Jim Collier —  November 21, 2012 — 1 Comment

Author Information: Henry Bauer, Virginia Tech, hhbauer@vt.edu

Bauer, Henry. 2012. Reply to Ron Westrum. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (12): 21-23.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-vb

I am quite gratified by Ron Westrum’s review, in particular that he found the “arguments convincing and . . . examples disturbing”. (10) That was my chief ambition for the book. I should add that I concur that there are pertinent issues that I failed to address, like groupthink that affects scientists as much as any other human beings. As to the incidence of fraud, though, I do think it is the case that uncovered fraud has been much more common in the last two or three decades than earlier. My reading of Brush’s essay had been that popular views of science as objective were not true to reality, but not especially regarding the issue of fraud.[1]

In my reading over the years, I had become increasingly disturbed as more and more instances of unwarranted dogmatism turned up in more and more fields of science and medicine. In my earlier career as a chemist, I had noted instances of unjustified dogmatism on the part of individuals, but I was not prepared to find it in whole disciplines. What was worse, and what made writing this book even more difficult, was that I found the evidence and arguments presented by the dissenting minorities to be so often more plausible than the mainstream dogmas.

But I had a sense of how any reasonable person would react if I claimed outright that science is wrong about global warming, and about HIV/AIDS, and about string theory, and about the death of the dinosaurs, and about cold fusion, and about other things as well; so, I tried to acknowledge my beliefs while also claiming that I was asking readers to follow me only so far as to recognize — at least at first — the unequivocally demonstrable fact of suppression of minority views. I worried all along that the attempt not to be directly arguing for my actual beliefs could detract from the effort to gain conviction.

That I had good reason for concern was soon evident. I had offered review copies to a number of STS journals: “I hope . . . might be interested in reviewing my new book, Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth (McFarland 2012). Here’s a synopsis:”

Unwarranted dogmatism has taken over in many fields of science: in Big-Bang cosmology, dinosaur extinction, theory of smell, string theory, Alzheimer’s amyloid theory, specificity and efficacy of psychotropic drugs, cold fusion, second-hand smoke, continental drift . . . The list goes on and on. Dissenting views are dismissed without further ado, and dissenters’ careers are badly affected. Where public policy is involved — as with human-caused global warming and HIV/AIDS — the excommunication and harassment of dissenters reaches a fever pitch with charges of “denialism” and “denialists”, a deliberate ploy of association with the no-no of Holocaust denying. The book describes these circumstances. It claims that this is a sea change in scientific activity and in the interaction of science and society in the last half-century or so, and points to likely causes of that sea change. The best remedy would seem to be the founding of a Science Court, much discussed several decades ago but never acted on. If you are interested, please send me a mailing address to which I may have a copy of the book sent.

The editor of one STS journal responded: “Interesting topic for a book. One would expect innovation to derive from dissent; without it there is the risk of stagnation. Does your ‘dogmatism’ include evolutionary theory in biology?”

I was a little taken aback at this apparent ignorance of the routine resistance to innovation as well as dissent documented long ago by Bernard Barber and Gunther Stent (not to mention Thomas Kuhn) but restricted myself to a very brief reply:

Editor: “Interesting topic for a book. One would expect innovation to derive from dissent; without it there is the risk of stagnation.”

Bauer: “Expectation and ideals are one thing. Actual practice is another.”

Editor: “Does your ‘dogmatism’ include evolutionary theory in biology?”

Bauer: “No.”

A few weeks later, the book review editor of that journal did request a review copy, mentioning however that it was intended for an essay review of several books on “denialism”. I await that review with a certain amount of interest. Will that reviewer also find my examples and argument disturbing and convincing?

After the sheer weight of evidence had forced me to recognize that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, I struggled for years to try to understand how so massive a mistake could not only occur but could persist for so long to the detriment of so many. It seemed incredible that there could be so enormous an aberration in medical science and evidence-based medicine.

At some point I recalled my introduction to the story of the Loch Ness Monster. In the book of that name by Tim Dinsdale, I found quite believable his recounting of capturing on film something large moving in the loch, and the supporting evidence from many eyewitnesses and a few other photos added believability. But then came a chapter (“Monsters Galore”)[2] citing evidence of similar creatures from many other lakes all around the world, and I balked — surely one such big, dinosaur-like creature yet unknown to science was hard enough to swallow, let alone dozens around the world . . .

I do not recall how long it took me to realize that my reaction was the very opposite of logical. If Loch Ness Monsters are real creatures, then it is much more likely that they have siblings in other parts of the world than that they are the sole surviving family of this species.

So too with global warming or HIV/AIDS. If the mainstream really is dogmatically and massively wrong on one of those, it seems more likely that science is far from self-correcting than that there could be such a single lonely enormous and long-lasting aberration. If one of these is really a mistake, then it is very likely that there will also be other such mistakes.

And indeed the array of examples I found points to an underlying fallibility in every situation where science determines public policy on a socially significant issue — and even in such abstract matters as string theory, I suggest because the erstwhile ivory tower is now a hotbed of cutthroat competition for grants and careers and social or political status.

The point that I would really like to be taken up and discussed is this broad and deep claim that scientific activity has undergone what amounts to a sea change, from largely reliable to very often untrustworthy, understandably so because it was in earlier times largely in an ivory tower but is now so significant to society that it is subject to all the pressures that influence any social or political activities.

References

Bauer, Henry. 2012. Dogmatism in science and medicine: How dominant theories monopolize research and stifle the search for truth. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Brush, Stephen G. 1974. Should the history of science be rated X? Science, New Series, 183 (4130): 1164-1172.

Dinsdale, Tim. 1961. Loch Ness monster. Routledge.

Westrum, Ron. 2012. Review of Henry Bauer, Dogmatism in science and medicine: How dominant theories monopolize research and stifle the search for truth. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (10): 10-11.

[1] Editor’s Note: Bauer refers to Westrum’s mention of Stephen G. Brush’s article “Should the History of Science Be Rated X?” (PDF; 695 KB) (Science, New Series, Vol. 183, No. 4130. (Mar. 22, 1974), pp. 1164-1172).

[2] Editor’s Note: In an email on 21 November 2012, Bauer writes: “The Dinsdale book was originally 1961, 1989 was the 4th (and last) edition; and the chapter “Monsters Galore” in the first edition was re-named “Review of interesting cases” in the 2nd and later editions.”

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Fleshing Out the Structural Aspects of Hermeneutical Injustice, James McCollum

Jim Collier —  August 7, 2012 — Leave a comment

Author Information: James McCollum, Saint Louis University, jim.mccollum@gmail.com

Please cite as:

McCollum, James. 2012. Fleshing out the structural aspects of hermeneutical injustice. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (9): 33-36

The PDF for the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-qC

Editor’s Note: For additional context, please refer to:

Sandra Marshall (2012) puts pressure on several aspects of my account of hermeneutical injustice in the social sciences. Her comments are useful and give me an opportunity to broaden the scope of my research. Her most significant concern, from my point of view, is whether the social sciences and the bureaucratic epistemes that they underwrite actually constitute hermeneutical injustice.

Hermeneutical injustice is, in Fricker’s words, “the injustice of having some significant area of one’s social experience obscured from collective understanding owing to persistent and wide-ranging hermeneutical marginalization.” (Fricker 2007, 154) This injustice, because it is conceptual in nature, affects the way we interpret our world and render our experiences intelligible to others. Marshall rightly highlights the intelligibility condition of hermeneutical injustice, for it is not merely a refusal to hear a complaint but a failure, a structural failure, to understand a certain form of harm.

I sought to show in the paper that this concept could be applied to institutions, specifically institutions that used concepts from the social sciences to understand problems in international development. Since sometimes the concepts of the social sciences are inadequate to illuminate the nature of development problems, there is an intelligibility gap created between the various development agencies and the people for whom they work.

Marshall argues that when development agencies are insensitive to problems of transportation to medical clinics, there may be no hermeneutical injustice. Indeed, she says, “This looks like a kind of stupidity, or carelessness but what is needed for this to be a case of hermeneutical injustice is for there to be a ‘failure of communicative intelligibility’.” Marshall puts her finger on the sine qua non of hermeneutical injustice, the lack of intelligibility engendered by various forms of marginalization.

Marshall points out that some problems may be perfectly obvious to those on the ground, so the intelligibility condition of hermeneutical injustice seems to be lacking. Taking it further, the problems even may be perfectly obvious to the bureaucrats and administrators, even if their institutions don’t have the necessary rules or resources to effectively solve them. I have no quibble with this diagnosis, but I think this puts the structural aspect of hermeneutical injustice in full relief.

As Elizabeth Anderson says, “Hermeneutical injustice is structural, because hearers are not at fault for not being able to understand what the victims are saying.” (2012) The hearer in the institutional case is not a lone administrator or a single victim of bureaucratic stupidity, the hearer is the institution. The regulative frameworks in which institutions operate are structures with their own forms, checklists, and operating procedures, irreducible to the agents, employees, and other stakeholders that inhabit them.

Institutions have a life of their own, but it is not as if the various stakeholders are always or even most of the time aware of the pitfalls of these institutions. The lines are more fluid than that. Administrators sometimes uncritically accept the frameworks of the agencies and sometimes citizens see their own claims in light of a schedule of rights provided to them by an institution or even a constitution. In these cases, intelligibility will be doubly-hindered by narrow institutional frameworks.

Whatever the empirical relationship between how these stakeholders see themselves and how the institutions represent them, intelligibility is not merely an interpersonal affair. It is mediated and filtered by a complex institutional apparatus. Ought one to call this a failure of intelligibility? This is not the place to argue about a notion of intelligibility that can be applied to institutions and persons alike. Suffice it to say that some facets of the situation remain off the institutional radar, precisely because of the organizational structure and concepts that are in place.

Marshall and I agree that these failures of intelligibility are contingent insofar as they relate to the organizational structures in play. These structures can be amended and participants can be further empowered to change them. At another level, the concepts deployed by various agencies are also the products of the social sciences. The use of a neo-classical economics is my primary example, but Marshall is concerned about a broader skepticism that my account may facilitate.

Marshall asks:

The question is how far this constitutive form of hermeneutical injustice runs in the social sciences…the idea of hermeneutical injustice to the social sciences if taken up would surely require a more detailed look at the conceptual structure of more than just neo- classical economics before we can be sure that there really is any useful place for the social sciences in policy making. (23)

This extreme view is unwarranted. We may need better social science, but policy without the perspectives afforded by the social sciences would be just as hermeneutically stunted as policy in a narrowly neoliberal economic model. More participatory forms of the social sciences exist that can help to avoid the idealizations and generalizations that create narrow policy metrics in which people and their interests are misrepresented and their problems misconceived. Moreover, local perspectives do not always afford an optimal vantage point to view macro-level problems.

I do concede that the social sciences are guided by ideals that do not always mesh with the view from the ground. Generalization and idealization may always create rather low-resolution views of the complexity of social problems. However, I do not doubt that such idealizations and generalizations are useful, even necessary features of the social scientific viewpoint. While generalizations are useful, any particular generalization is contestable.

Generalizations are contestable for two reasons. First, progress within the social sciences may result in the reformulation and further characterization of the social data. Second, when institutions rely on these generalizations, they create social categories that form the basis of institutional relationships and expectations. The normative pull of these epistemic categories create the structures that can be characterized as hermeneutically just or unjust precisely because of the dual moral/epistemic significance of these categories.

At the forefront of analyzing these dual relationships is the French “école des conventions” approach to economics. Robert Salais, an important figure in this approach, argues that differences in the concepts of employment and unemployment are sometimes insufficient to gauge the impact of joblessness:

The rules by which the list of registered jobseekers is managed are such that any beneficiary of an active measure is removed from the list. If, as is often the case, the measure fails to integrate its beneficiaries into employment, they are, when they reregister, considered to be new jobseekers. The indicator “% longterm unemployment” is mechanically improved while the actual longterm unemployment situation remains the same. These are examples that are in no way marginal, but are true of many countries and have a significant impact on statistical outcomes. (Salais 2005, 248)

Concepts like unemployment are artifacts of both institutions and the social sciences that ground them. Sometimes people who are underemployed are unable to report their problems or apply for assistance precisely because they are not accounted for by these indices. Their problems are unintelligible to the institutions for reasons that are built into the organizational structures themselves.

The power dynamics and intra-institutional relationships are complex, but social scientists like Salais are responsible for illuminating them and giving us avenues for further advancement. Thus, the social sciences, like bureaucracies, are a double-edged sword. They give us powerful epistemic instruments to measure and predict the effects of human interaction. Nonetheless, they can be progenitors of epistemic injustice because they too have cognitive blind spots.

References

Anderson, Elizabeth. 2012. Epistemic justice as a virtue of social institutions. Social Epistemology 26 (2): 163-173.

Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. 1st edition. Oxford University Press, USA.

Marshall, Sandra. 2012. A problem for the social sciences: A comment on James McCollum on hermeneutical injustice. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (7): 21-23.

Salais, Robert. 2006. On the correct (and incorrect) use of indicators in public action. Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 27 (2): 237-256.

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Social laws should be conceived as a special case of mechanisms: A reply to Daniel Little, Johannes Persson

Jim Collier —  June 7, 2012 — 3 Comments

Author Information: Johannes Persson, Lund University, Johannes.Persson@fil.lu.se

Persson, Johannes. 2012. Social laws should be conceived as a special case of mechanisms: A reply to Daniel Little. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (7): 12-14

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shotlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-nG

Please refer to:

I am grateful to Daniel Little for his insightful reply to my recent article in Social Epistemology (2012, 105-114) about what appears to be a flaw in Jon Elster’s conception of mechanisms. I agree with much of what Little says, but want to amplify a different underlying problem with Elster’s conception (fourth point below) than Little suggests in his reply (third point below). This underlying problem connects nicely with a passage in Little’s reply, which he thinks unconnected with the point on which I focus.

First, I briefly state Elster’s position.

Elster roots his perspective in a traditional view of explanation. A traditional view holds that a perfect covering law explanation is the best kind of explanation. The problem, as Elster sees it, is that we know of few such explanations in the social sciences. To bolster our explanatory resources, Elster introduces mechanistic explanations. Elster partly frames these mechanisms in terms of epistemic uncertainty. For instance, Elsterian mechanisms “are triggered under generally unknown conditions” (Elster 2007, 36). Elsterian mechanisms, then, depend on current epistemic conditions. Some day we may come to know the triggering conditions, thus we will no longer have an Elsterian mechanism. In Elster’s view this outcome does not matter since we now have something even better — a covering law explanation — to replace mechanistic explanations.

For the purposes of this reply, I will assume I offer a correct interpretation of Elster.

Second, I want to formulate the paradox Elster’s position generates.

I argue (2012) that Elster’s view does not fit one important kind of scientific development. We can come to know the triggering conditions of local mechanisms without coming to know any covering laws. In those circumstances, Elster’s conception of mechanism leads to the paradox that while we know more relevant causal truths than before — since we neither have the mechanism nor the law — these truths explain less. In Elster’s words we would (quite surprisingly) be thrown “back on mere description and narrative” (Elster 1999, 1). The paradox is worrying as a logical possibility, but I think that scientific development often takes this path — developing an understanding of a particular mechanism before claiming that that mechanism is widely distributed (Persson 2005).

Third, I want to agree with Daniel Little’s claim that Elster’s epistemic conception of mechanisms generates this paradox.

Little’s response (2012) to me in the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective locates an underlying problem with Elster’s position. He claims that Elster’s epistemic conception of mechanism generates the paradox: “I think it reveals an important underlying issue: the importance of treating causal mechanisms realistically rather than epistemically” (2012, 1) and “Or in other words: if Elster had taken a realist view of mechanisms, then his account would not be subject to the logical criticism that Persson raises against it. It is the relativization of ‘mechanism’ to ‘what we know’ that causes the problem” (2012, 5).

Moreover, a shift to realism about mechanisms (or “ontic mechanisms” as I prefer, Persson 2010) would align Elster’s conception not only with the contemporary literature on mechanisms but also with the way social scientists think of mechanisms — in line with what Little (2012) argues.

I fully agree with Little on these points, and I have little to add to the way he thinks that Elster’s position should be reformulated.

However, we are both attracted to realism about mechanisms for independent reasons. Little (1991) develops such a position in one of my favourite books, Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science. I have struggled with ontic accounts of mechanisms as well (Persson 1997 and 2005). Given our positions, we both risk a bias with regard to the remedies we suggest to remove the paradox.

Fourth, I want to propose, then, another underlying problem with Elster’s view.

One reason why I construct the argument against Elster (2012) without assuming a realist position is that I want to highlight a partly different underlying problem and to suggest another kind of remedy in addition to the kind Little proposes. The major problem with Elster’s conception of mechanism, I think, is that it cannot guard itself against the risk that there is a gap between mechanisms and covering laws. The paradox builds on the possibility of such a gap; we can add causal truths to a mechanism in order to disqualify it as a mechanism without adding so much that we end up with a causal law. Interestingly, this problem does not depend on an epistemic conception of mechanisms. A similar problem might arise in connection with ontic mechanisms as well.

The identification of this underlying problem is not in disagreement with Little’s remedy. A shift to ontic mechanisms from Elsterian mechanisms effectively eliminates this underlying problem as well. In Elster’s case, the fact that mechanisms depend on our epistemic condition gives rise to the existence of the gap between mechanisms and laws.

However, understanding the underlying problem with Elster’s conception, in the way I propose, makes other remedies possible. In particular, conceiving of causal laws as (generated in) a special case of mechanistic situation — a situation where the outcomes and triggering conditions are not indeterminate, for instance — would simply eliminate the paradox. And it does so whether or not an ontic conception of mechanisms is adopted.

Making this adjustment has consequences for the way we understand mechanistic explanation. For example, Elster could adjust his conception of mechanisms in the way I describe and still hold the view that covering-law explanation is the best kind of explanation we can have. But he would have to reconsider the idea that mechanistic explanation is preliminary or second best. It would simply not be right to say: “Mechanisms are good only because they enable us to explain when generalisations break down. They aren’t desirable in themselves, only faute de mieux.” (Elster 1998, 49)

Little (2012) concludes by claiming that “social-mechanism explanations are the very best explanations we can hope for or should expect.” Making social law-explanations a special case of mechanistic explanation makes part of that claim necessary without falsifying or trivializing Little’s insight — an insight Elster (1998, 49) in fact shares — that the covering law explanation ideal is sometimes the enemy of the good.

References

Elster, Jon. 1998. A plea for mechanisms. In Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory, ed. by Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg, 45-73. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Elster, Jon. 1999. Alchemies of the mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Elster, Jon. 2007. Explaining social behavior. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of social explanation: An introduction to the philosophy of social science. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Little, Daniel. 2012. Social mechanisms and scientific realism: Discussion of “Mechanistic explanation in social contexts” by Johannes Persson. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (3) 1-5.

Persson, Johannes. 1997. Causal facts. Stockholm: Thales.

Persson, Johannes. 2005. Tropes as mechanisms. Foundations of Science 10 (4): 371–93.

Persson, Johannes. 2010. Activity-based accounts of mechanism and the threat of polygenic effects. Erkenntnis 72 (1): 135–49.

Persson, Johannes. 2012. Mechanistic explanation in social contexts: Elster and the problem of local scientific growth. Social Epistemology 26 (1): 105–114.

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Joseph Agassi. “Reply to ‘The Rationality of Extremists’ by John Wettersten”

elisabethsimbuerger —  January 11, 2012 — 3 Comments

Agassi, Joseph [2012]. ‘Reply to “The Rationality of Extremists”
by John Wettersten’ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Reply to “The Rationality of Extremists” by John Wettersten

Joseph Agassi, Tel Aviv University and York University, Toronto

(Editor’s Note: John Wettersten’s article “The Rationality of Extremists”, to which Joseph Agassi replies, appears in Social Epistemology 26.1 (2012) available through Taylor & Francis Online. Please see “The Social Scientific Study of Rationality: A Reply to Joseph Agassi”.)

Wettersten investigates rationality. He begins with the principle of rationality; action is always explained as the outcome of some rational decision. Two or three disputes traditionally surround this principle.

The first dispute is, whether the rationality principle applies to successful action alone or to any action. Of course, assuming that an action was successful one can conclude that its goal – or at least its partial goal — is what it has reached. Obviously, failure is as common as success if not much more so. Is failure to be explained as due to rational action? The idea that rationality is proof led to the conclusion that in principle suffice it to view only successful action as rooted in rationality. This is obviously too strict a position. Using our brains to plan actions must count as rational even if misguided, as all our cogitations are likely to be.

The second dispute was about the conditions surrounding a decision: can these include social settings even though these are given rather than rationally constructed? Again, decision goes the social way and this is more-or-less decided (even though it is the minority view, like most of what we may deem avant-garde): irrational assume social institutions surely are, the rational takes them into considerations either when acting within their rule  or when trying to improve them, say by legislation.

The third dispute is as to whether the rationality principle applies not only to individuals but also to societies. The latter view allows for social or historical forces, for destiny and such. We can ignore this and agree that only individuals act, not societies and not social institutions. We do observe mass movements and notice that in mass movements interactions between individuals are so strong that they make masses of people move in unison so that the mass seems to have its own purpose. Whether we deem mass movements rational or not, we tend to view the actions that move them as of individuals in them, not of the masses as such. (Thus societies and institutions are not reducible to individuals but social or institutional actions are.) This idea becomes less obvious when we consider not the movement of a mass of people (often called a herd with unjust contempt) but such items as the national interest, since they are institutions that often reflect a majority view of the view of the leadership and similar institutionally-determined groups of individuals.

Here Wettersten has introduced his own innovation. In classical, strictly individualist social science, the goal of any individual is given (as exogenous). This was justified as liberal: we do not impose a goal on individuals, as they possess the inalienable right to their tastes. It was also justified in a naturalist way: we all have more-or-less the same basic needs and our chief aims are to satisfy them in reasonable ways. Wettersten says, more reasonably, we must agree that our tastes too are largely socially determined. We all must eat, but our tastes in food vary, and they are largely determined socially! Thus even the most basic individual needs are not independent of their given societal frameworks. Moreover, given any demand one makes on oneself or on the environment in which one acts, there is always the question of how high it is.  And this too is largely socially determined. One such case of high standard is that of extremism: the extremist raises some standard as far as possible.

And so we come to the question at hand: what is the rationality of extremism? This question gains import in the light of the fact that some people may alter their views and attitude and remain extremist; indeed they may alter their views and attitudes in search of extreme standards that they may aspire to.  As individualism may lead investigators to play down the role of social environment in action, it leads its adherents to psychology. They may then adopt the view of Alfred Adler that people who fear failure raise their stakes as much as possible, thus, paradoxically, insure failure. Moreover, they may act obsessively that way. (This is not to say that the adoption of Adlerian psychology imposes the individualist mode of explanation. Indeed, Adler himself was a socialist and so he rejected the extreme individualist mod of explanation.) We may ask, then, what social conditions direct individuals to extremism? Wettersten’s purpose is not to explain “why specific individuals or groups of individuals choose to adopt extremist positions … but only [to claim] … that institutionalized standards of rationality help them along the way to defending, even to institutionalizing, their views when they choose to do so; [and] that institutionalized views of rationality can be changed to improve the practice of rationality; and that such an improvement can remove this means of legitimizing extremist positions.” This is very exciting as it is another instance of philosophical considerations claim to improve significantly our ways of thinking and even the quality of our lives.

The trouble is that rationality should but does not as yet help us avoid extremism.

Extremism regarding any item is the idea that only extreme cases of that item are available, or that only they are reasonable to seek. The simplest case of extremes is the idea that the item in question is present or absent, like life and death: when we say that some person is almost dead, whatever we may by that, it is not that the person in question is literally partly dead and partly alive. Indeed, the law of all civilized societies defends the lives of individuals without allowing for the view of them as nearly dead or anything of this kind. Many other things are familiar only in their extreme forms. One prominent example here is the present of things in any point in space-time: in Newtonian physics every point I space-time is either occupied or not. Kant denied this (under the influence of Leibniz) on the ground of some questionable considerations. Field theory nevertheless vindicated him: whereas classical physics took an extremist view of occupation of matter in space, modern physics takes it for granted that no point in space-time is utterly empty. An example that takes us nearer to the present discussion of Wettersten is the idea of Francis Bacon that unless one is utterly free of all preconceived notion (dogma, prejudice, and superstition), one cannot function as a scientific researcher. This is important, if at all, only on the supposition that utter freedom form all preconceived notion is possible. Bertrand Russell called this supposition humbug, thus rendering it possible to grade the level of intellectual freedom that one may reach.

Bacon first promised success for all research: proper research is bound to be successful. He then said, this is so on an obvious condition: before an experiment takes place one should not decide its outcome: one must let facts speak for themselves. This sounds very reasonable, but it turns out to be very hard; our awareness of the difficulty to be intellectually free mounts as log as despite our raising of our efforts to succeed in research we remain frustrated.  This is a pattern: first make a fabulous promise, then make it conditioned on a small sacrifice, and then make the size of the sacrifice grow as much as necessary to avoid the conclusion that the promise was broken. The paradigm is not Bacon but the promise for salvation of all religion. The Pauline promise for salvation is the most prominent: just believe that the Savior came to save you, that the Redeemer came to redeem you of all you sins.

What this shows, says Wettersten, is that rationality alone does not suffice to avoid this kind of trap. It is a special case of the trap that Popper called reinforced dogmatism. Like everyone else, Popper deemed dogmatism irrational. Jarvie and I tried to square rationality with dogmatism (“The Rationality of Dogmatism”, in our Rationality: The Critical View, 1987). We even tried to square the theory of rationality with irrationalism (“The Rationality of Irrationalism”, ibid.).  Going further, Wettersten claims that likewise rationality needs squaring with the prevalence of extremism even in the very best intellectual circles. This is quite agreeable to us, of course.

Partly, Wettersten finds the fault with some simple confusion, of course. Thus, we regularly confuse the idea that rational action maximizes results — we take the shortest routes to our goals — with the idea of maximum rationality — we always choose the best possible goals and the shortest possible routes (rather than the best we know of, for example). But confusion is only a part of the story. Error is the other part: we assume that going for the highest degree of rationality possible is more rational than going for the highest degree of rationality available. For, it is suggested, going for the impossible strains our muscles most and so brings about the best result available, whereas going for the best result available may make us content with less than with what we can achieve. (This error too, incidentally, may be viewed as confusion of the diverse senses of availability and possibility. But then, confusion clarified usually becomes clear error.) Wettersten also suggests another error: having some of us go for the highest degree of whatever they are doing may benefit us all and at least tell us what is the limit that is at all possible. (A most conspicuous example for the public benefit of extremes is the best achievement in science and in technology; the most conspicuous example for the fixing of the limit is top-level sports.)

Wettersten takes as his paradigm the philosophy of history that is the background of the terrific historical studies of Jacob Talmon. This is a very good choice, since Wettersten considers Talmon’s output excellent, since Talmon considered disastrous the extremist rationalism and utopianism of the Enlightenment Movement, since Wettersten agrees with him about that, yet while considering Talmon an extremist too, albeit of a different sort. The excess that Talmon wrongly supports lies in his view of an earthly liberal democracy as insufficient, since there is the need for higher, transcendent values. He finds this excess in accord with the identification of all theories of rationality with the extremist theory of rationality that the Enlightenment Movement had advocated: limiting the variants of a theory to its extremist versions reduces their number drastically. This, says Wettersten, constrains Talmon’s view: he can offer no theory of the rationality of liberal democracy.

This failing of Talmon is quite general. As noted above, the classical theory of rationality was limited to successful conduct, and Talmon cannot see liberal democracy but as a failure, since it falls short by his extremist criterion. Nor does Talmon take his own alternative as a theory of rationality, since his alternative is highly socially oriented and the classical theory of rationality, as noted above, disregards social circumstances, as they are often far from rational. Disregarding historical circumstances leads to utopianism, and Talmon rejects it. So he replaces it with a Hegelian theory of history, says Wettersten, but without a theory of destiny. This, adds Wettersten, deprives it of all explanatory power: by Talmon, the fate of a historical movement is determines not by its goal and not by any rationality, and so it is unexplainable.

This is not easily obvious, since Talmon does explain much. In particular he explains failures as rooted in erroneous (extremist) views. But the failures then lead to further changes (“dialectically”), and these are not explained. For the new ideas to develop and bring about new failures there has to be some rationality to them, and this Talmon ignores in favor of some vague transcendentalism, to repeat.

There still is a need to explain the prevalence of extremism. I have indicated above, the extremist view is the simplest and it clashes with reality rapidly but then the requirement of some small sacrifice to make it true becomes very appealing: we all think that small sacrifices are inevitable except in very extreme cases. Also, this demand seems morally right on diverse views of morality and so it looks a winner. This is a general fact. To take the most prominent example, let me refer to Marxist social thinkers, since Marxism is opposed to moralizing. Marx assumed that the workers will be driven to the revolution because their fight for the improvement of their lots under capitalism must fail since the competitive nature of the system will force capitalists to pay them minimum wages. Marxist social thinkers notice that this is not true. Nothing is more rational than to say that Marx was in error, since the introduction of trade unions limits the competition in the system. Instead they blame workers for their greed.

Blame, to repeat, is popular. It appears in theoretical discussions under a famous extremist ploy: if only. This ploy is already in bacon’s writing: if only people were a little less self-centered and more generous, then science would flourish and all our problems will be solvable. And so, a few simple techniques interlock to block progress. It is particularly hard, Wettersten observes, to demand the lowering of standards. This sounds paradoxical and so it has, he says, little chance of implementation. Perhaps: such things are not given to rational prediction. But then we do not know and we should try. The analysis that Wettersten offers, if it has any merit at all, should make us reasonably more optimistic. And its merit is so obvious that it should lead to serious discussion and efforts at practical improvements.

Contact details: agass@post.tau.ac.il

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