Dear Terry, List,
Thanks for your responses. I am going to focus here on the initial
post as the later one relates more to segments that are still ahead
of us in the slow read--it's never too late to join in, of course,
and I'm glad to know the topic of this paper is of interest to you.
While there are, of course, limits to the degree of latitude that
can productively be taken in these slow reads (as Michael J. De
Laurentis' response seems to acknowledge--thank you, Michael, for
your consideration in this regard), the points you make are
interesting to consider in relation to JRs paper.
As my background is definitely not in the philosophy of science,
however, I'm going to defer for the most part to other listers to
respond to your main assertions, and, indeed some already have with
regard to post-scientist philosophy.
With regard to your first point, however, I do want to say that I'm
very glad to see you put the focus on the term, "objectivity," as
that concept will soon become centrally important in JR's text.
Also, I am interested to read your comments about the different
meanings that this term can take on for philosophers of science, and,
I would assume, for scientists as well. JR seems to be presenting
his thoughts in this paper to an audience that he believes shares in
common his (Peircean-spirited) views on science--on what objectivity
is, on how truth is sought, on the role of fallibilism, etc. I am
somewhat skeptical about this homogeneity, however. I would expect
there might have been a number of scientists that might have been
more closely aligned with views you identify as those of Mechanical
Philosophy, and/or Logical Positivism, or a number of others,
perhaps, as well as those that might have been more accepting of
pragmatist or pragmaticist views (I seriously doubt there were any
self-identified post-scientists in the room in 1995). As your
comments indicate, this would create quite a spectrum of
understanding about what science and being a scientist might mean.
In this regard, JR's paper doesn't deal with the philosophical
diversity of the scientific community as it actually exists, and this
is somewhat disappointing--or perhaps he does and I'm missing it.
Perhaps, he is just in a very subtle way attempting to sway some of
the non-pragmaticists in the crowd to his way of thinking, without
confronting them directly or opposing any other points of view.
Also with regard to your last point about value and the shift you
identify away from problems of inquiry designed to discover fixed,
observer-independent truths (which definitely sounds like what JR had
in mind as a Peircean take on the practice of science--listers, and,
in particular Michael, if you have the inclination, correct me if I'm
wrong here), it would seem that your developmental/how-should-we-live
orientation does not recognize the kind of special relationship
between the practice of science and the physical sciences that I
questioned in the last post and which I saw JR, in the spirit of
Peirce, confirming. This leads me to a sort of, "will the real
pragmatist please stand up" question. You argue that Pragmatism has
made this turn. JR seems to be saying it definitely has not. I
would be interested in knowing your views on how the position JR
takes in this paper leads him astray, and away from the "turned"
spirit of Peirce, as well as how it weakens his own arguments about
how scientists might best deal with academic politicians. To put it
perhaps too bluntly, would the post-scientist philosophy you advocate
deal with academic politicians any better? Would you have used
Peirce differently from the way JR does? or do you come down,
basically, to offering the same advice that JR does to these physical
scientists?
One last question, would the post-scientist approach to doing
experimental work be any more likely to find its objects of study any
more inherently political than the approach JR adheres to? JR's
arguments indicate that he finds the Objects studied by the physical
sciences to be absolutely devoid of political significance. If this
were not the case, then object-driven truth-seeking science would
have to entail a political dimension. JR's position here is humanist
as well as not post-scientist (only humans are political, physical
scientists study non-human phenomena, therefore the physical sciences
conduct inquiry in apolitical ways unless intruders take over). Is
it really pragmatic, however, to understand any Object as completely
dissociated from power relations that configure or prefigure human
politics?
Thanks again,
Sally
Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Slow Read : "Sciences as Communicational
Communities" Segment 2
From: Terry Bristol <bris...@isepp.org>
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 10:33:47 -0700
Cc: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
To: Sally Ness <sally.n...@ucr.edu>
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Sally -
Thank you for your lead on this thread. I agree with most everything
you have said.
I am coming in a little late on this read, but I trust that is OK.
Since my background is philosophy of science (Berkeley/London with
Feyerabend and Lakatos as mentors) I have some interest in the
current topic and JR's comments. (I did a year of grad work at UCSB
when JR was there and received some Peircean guidance from him, but
I missed the chance to get close to him.)
I always have problems with a focus on what someone (either JR or
Peirce) said or meant in a paper without an inclusion of thoughts on
the topic independently presented.
We are all likely to understand JR, to at least some extent, in
terms of what we think the real issues are. With that as
introduction....
Point One: The term 'objectivity' has a very different meaning in
the Mechanical Philosophy (and Logical Positivism) than it does in
Pragmatism.
This was pointed out - that JR's 'objective reality' is (must be)
consistent with freewill, with choice. James pointed out that
acceptance of freewill is the beginning of Pragmatism.
The challenge then is to make sense of a world where we can acquire
mechanical knowledge - that is nonetheless not objective in the
sense of being true from all possible perspectives.
It is because mechanical knowledge is (somehow) inherently limited
that freewill action is possible.
Point Two: Another core theme that distinguishes Pragmatism from
the Mechanical Philosophy is that in Pragmatism the universe
evolves. The Laplacean mechanical deterministic universe just
rearranges (at best) the same eternal elements or phenomena. Peirce
in particular voices his debt to the evolutionary thinkers. The
challenge then is to be able to make sense of the repeatability (viz
time-space invariance) of mechanical knowledge while allowing for
development of the system.
Point Three: Once you lose classical (universal, mechanical)
objectivity then the image of inquiry as converging on a fixed (viz
universally time-space invariant) reality is lost. The notion that a
later superseding scientific theory is 'better' because it more
closely corresponds to this fixed reality is lost - at least in the
universal global sense. You can still argue for local 'objectivity'
(viz how many chairs are in this room) where making sense of the
claim depends on a background (assumed) specification of when and
where (and in many cases who and how) the observation is made. -- So
'better' needs to be judged by some More General standard than
correspondence to a fixed, non-evolving, reality. The Pragmatic
standard is that 'meaningful knowledge is always potentially
useful.' (Arguably this is closely tied to the fact that it is
always fallible - and (ala Popper et al) indeed false. In other
words to say that a statement is meaningful and falsifiable - means
that in this universe it is possible to falsify it (viz it is a
property of this universe), possible to show that it is not
universally (classically objectively) true. (Popper et al.: All
meaningful theories are false.)
If all theories are false and yet some seem to be 'better' than
others, one way to characterize the situation is to say that the
choice of what is 'better' to believe, how to 'better' observe and
how to act 'better' is under-determined by reality. The 'appropriate
choices' depend upon but are not determined by one's current
circumstance and purposes. There are always options. But given a
particular local circumstance and aim, only a few are viable. Better
knowledge 'can' expand the opportunities (viz greater freedom).
Point Four: The relation between science and politics (values) is
complete independence in the Mechanical (Positivist) Philosophy.
Values simply don't make sense, cannot be made sense of in terms of
a world of material, mechanically determined, facts. Pragmatism is a
post-scientific understanding of reality, where 'scientific' is
understood in the classical mechanical objectivist sense. I think it
best to think of Pragmatism as making a Turn - one that calls for a
More General Theory, one that can make sense of the success of
mechanical knowledge and freewill together. Pragmatism is what Dewey
called a Participant theory as distinct from the classical,
objectivist (completely) observer-independent Spectator theory.
The Turn involves a fundamental problem shift. In classical
Mechanical Philosophy 'the problem of inquiry' to discover the truth
- where the truth is a fixed, completely observer-independent
reality. It must be 'fixed' in order for us to be able to converge
on the truth, for our knowledge to eventually correspond to the
fixed reality.
The Turn is to a new inherently developmental (and developing)
problem: How should we live?
This context supersedes the classical scientific. The mantra:
engineering (free (existential) constructive activity) is not
'merely' applied science. Rather (classical) science is engineering
research.
How should we design the irrigation of our fields, how should we
design our houses, how should we design our neighborhoods, how
should we design our cities, how should we design our economy, how
should we design our politics so as to preserve our economic system.
These are all questions of how we should live, all served by - but
not strictly determined by - better scientific knowledge. The US
Constitution is a design document - an experiment in how we might
live better.
Classical science is meaningful only in a context where we have the
ability to alter the course of events and change the organizational
structure of the universe.
Terry
============================================================
On Sep 3, 2011, at 7:27 PM, Sally Ness wrote:
Segment 2
Dear List:
I progress on, now, to paragraphs 7-11 of the paper "Sciences as
Communicational Communities," Again, the text segment is
reproduced at the bottom of this email in its entirety.
In this segment, JR focuses mainly on the details of the case made
against scientists by academic politicians. He describes two false
images of scientists that academic politicians employ in order to
justify their own intrusion into the internal governance of
scientific inquiry. In my reading, JR is speaking very clearly in
"the spirit of Peirce" in conceptualizing these images and in a way
that relates back to earlier papers discussed in the slow read.
The first false image, which JR notes is held plausible by "large
numbers of students and faculty alike" (p7), is one of scientists as
being "infallible knowers of the truth" (p 7 emphasis mine).
Peirce's concept of fallibilism here becomes plainly visible in JR's
argument. JR establishes fallibilism as a basic character of the
scientist--so important that without it any notion of what it means
to be a scientist is not only false but preposterously so. The
strength of JR's criticism of this false image of science can be
read, in this regard, as a way to emphasize to his audience the
importance of fallibilism in any scientific identity, including
theirs.
At this point, fallibilism would seem to have been, in hindsight,
the main concept that JR had in mind when he emphasized earlier that
scientific inquiry should be understood, first and foremost, as a
matter of "discovery processes"--that is to say, as processes that
are not infallible, not mechanistic, not perfect. Once fallibilism
is recognized, in JRs view, the false image of the scientist as a
magical, omniscient figure becomes obviously and entirely
untenable--so a great deal is hanging on the recognition of
fallibilism in JR's argument. This would seem to be very much in
the spirit, as well as in the letter, of Peirce. As a matter of
rhetoric, at least, JR assumes that his audience is already in
agreement with his comments along these lines, already on board
Peirce's fallibilist scientific band wagon so to speak.
One question that comes to mind here is whether or not the previous
posts on fallibilism add anything to JR's remarks here.
At this point in the essay, JR turns his critical attention onto the
scientific community itself for a moment, stating that the
widespread dissemination of this false infallible image "should
surely give scientists pause that they apparently present themselves
so poorly" (p7) He warns against using this false image in order
to "sell" science to the general public (implying that this may well
already have been done and done as a matter of regular practice).
JR finds this strategy unnecessary (given how impressive the current
record of scientific achievement is) as well as dehumanizing (p7).
This is the first indication that JR holds the scientific community
partially responsible for whatever success academic politicians are
currently enjoying.
The second false image of scientists, which is directly and
specifically tied to the academic politicians (who claim it as their
own contribution to knowledge, according to JR), is that scientists
are negotiators who do not really seek truth but who falsely
represent themselves as doing so in order to "buttress their
institutional status as authoritarian dogmatists" (p8). Here,
again, JR turns his critical gaze toward the scientific community,
holding its membership accountable for allowing such a false image
to stand unchallenged and to gain adherents (p9).
The question that comes to mind here is, who is JR (in the spirit of
Peirce) really going after when he goes after the false image
falsely "discovered" by "academic politicians"? JR is careful to
name only Kleinman, but he even relegates Kleinman to an unoriginal
role, repeatedly characterizing him as being only a generic token of
this academic politician type. Who are the leaders of this type?
What philosophical approaches or influential social science research
is the "academic politician" representing? As I mentioned in a
previous post, my first guess would be proponents of Foucault's
theories of power/knowledge. However, perhaps there are other
philosophical figures that JR was more interested in taking on.
In the final paragraph of this section, JR concedes that the second
false image of scientists does contain at least one important grain
of truth: that there is a communicational aspect of scientific
inquiry that does require individual scientists to settle certain
matters of truth and knowledge by "collegial communication" (p10).
This kind of communication is not absolutely different from the
"negotiations" on which the academic politicians fix their
attention. While JR largely rejects the "political model" that the
idea of negotiation entails, he does grant that a detailed
examination of scientific communicational processes is necessary to
sort out what is and isn't involved in it and to determine what is
false and what is of value in the work the academic politicians have
done. This brings JR to the main focus of his paper: the nature of
the communicational process and professional scientific
communicational practices.
JR complicates the picture of the relation between professional
scientists and academic politicians in this segment, as he zeroes in
on what--as Jon A. asked in an earlier post--to do about the
problems evident in this relation. What JR wants to do is clear: 1)
get a handle on the difference between political negotiation and
truth/knowledge communication and 2) motivate scientists to be more
pro-active in representing the fallible, discovery-oriented
character of scientific inquiry. He will spend much more time on 1)
than on 2) in the segments that follow.
At this point, JR has done a masterful job of translating Peirce
into non-specialist terms, identifying how the scientists in the
audience are already Peircean in certain critically important
respects, and demonstrating the value of setting some of Peirce's
main ideas to work on serious problems of current interest to these
scientists. Yet, he also seems to have made it clear that Peirce is
a hard scientist's philosopher in the main, that there is a special
bond between Peirce and the physical sciences. Would listers agree?
The mainstreams of the soft sciences certainly have worked very
hard to replicate the hard sciences in every way possible, including
(I would even argue especially) their communicational practices.
Are the communicational practices of hard scientists nonetheless
distinctive in some general respect that JR is here illuminating, in
the spirit of Peirce?
I plan to post on the next segment in 3-4 days time.
Best regards,
Sally
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