Sally & All,
Just a brief note on the question of sincerity. A useful set of concepts for
discussing
this issue can be found in the work of Argyris and Schön, where they make a
distinction
between "espoused" goals, values, etc. and "enacted" or "actual" goals, values,
etc.
In these terms, honesty, integrity, sincerity, etc. would be measures of
coherence
or consistency between the espoused and the enacted.
Jon
Sally Ness wrote:
Segment 4
Dear List,
This post will address paragraphs 18 to 21 of the paper, "Sciences as
Communicational Communities." The paragraphs are reproduced below in
their entirety. As I have mentioned before, this segment appears to be
the crux of the paper, where JR lays out his vision of scientific
communication (similar in most respects to that already discussed in
this slow read in relation to the paper, "Peirce and the Socratic
Tradition"). He then formulates his understanding of the relation of
scientific communication to academia, and delivers his key insight
regarding how, in practice, scientific communication can be maintained,
despite the realities confronted in academic institutions.
JR makes four important points in these paragraphs about the character
of scientific communication:
1) [P18] Scientific communication must be sincere. Otherwise multiple
perspectives on the subject-matter will fail to cohere in a coordinated
manner, and the subject-matter will cease to control inquiry.
2) [P19] Scientific communication must be about subject-matter that is
unitary and real. Otherwise, the subject-matter itself will fail to
produce a coherence of perspectives.
3) [P19] Scientific communication must evidence objectivity, which can
be defined both as an attitude of the inquirer and as a formal feature
of the inquiry process. Otherwise, communication will tend toward chaos.
4) [P20] Scientific communication must regard all (sincere) participants
as being peers, equal with respect to both the shared public
understanding of the community's subject matter and with regard to being
entitled to respect in relation to the perspectives they contribute to
the community's communication. Otherwise the coordination of
perspectives will become deranged (fail to cohere as the subject-matter,
in truth, would dictate).
JR then concludes with a final point about the relation between
scientific communication and academia:
5) [P21] While the fundamentally hierarchical character of academia
inevitably plagues the sciences, corrupting and compromising its
practices, the norms of science remain unchanged by this corruption and
stand in enduring opposition to those of academia.
In this section, JR sets forward an alternative to the academic
politician's negotiational view of the relation between scientific
inquiry and academia. He grants that science is generally situated in
academic contexts that disease and deform it politically. However, JR
does not recognize the same degree of integration occurring at the
science/academic interface that the sociologist of knowledge does. In
JR's view, this interface does not permeate the sciences so completely
as to have modified the community's basic norms of conduct. As a
result, it is still possible to conceive of living a scientific life
while also maintaining a separate status as a professor. The two
identities may come into conflict when their norms are not in harmony,
but they nonetheless each have their own discrete character.
In this final point, JR is able to explain how the authoritarian,
hierarchically-oriented, politically-governed behavior that scientists
have been accurately documented as occasionally (even habitually)
exhibiting can be seen to occur while science in general can remain
apolitical. Because scientific norms remain uncorrupted and
uninfluenced by academia, it is possible for scientists, even if they
are also professors, to engage in scientific inquiry according to the
norms of a scientific life proper. If they fail to do so, it is because
they fail to conduct themselves according to the norms of science, not
because science is nothing but a "negotiational" endeavor.
A few questions arise in relation to JR's views presented in this segment:
* How distinctly is JR speaking "in the spirit of Peirce" here, with
regard to his 4-fold definition of scientific communication? Does
Peirce place the same kind of stress on each of these four points as JR
does? Is there any deviation or inclination, however subtle, that might
identify a Ransdellian take on Peirce here? Would Short, or Ketner, or
Houser, or de Tienne, or Apel, or deWaal, or even Eco, or other
interpreters of Peirce put it quite the same way?
* What, exactly, is "unitary" subject-matter as JR employs the term? A
great deal is hanging on this concept, it would seem. Is inorganic
subject-matter more unitary than organic subject-matter? If so, that
would explain why the hard sciences have the superior status they are
granted in this paper (it might even necessarily explain it, following
JR's logic of objectivity). I have no immediate recollection of how
Peirce uses this concept in relation to science. Perhaps some listers
may be able to give some additional detail on this.
* In the paper, "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?," listers may recall that
JR stressed the differences between what he termed the
"mechanistic-technological" conception of science (p. 5, 6), associated
with Descartes and, more recently Kreis and Carnap, and Peirce's
pragmaticist (teleological) conception of science. JR claimed that for
Peirce, the character of the subject-matter did not exercise a defining
influence on the identity of science. In this earlier paper, JR writes
that Peirce, "does not identify science or the scientific by reference
to any special type of property of the subject-matter of the science
(its "primary qualities," for example), or by reference to some special
"scientific method" (in the sense in which that would usually be
understood) but rather by reference to the communicational relationships
of its practitioners . . ." In view of the arguments presented in the
paper now under discussion, it would seem that JR, in the phenomenology
paper, is edging up to more of a "negotiational" perspective than would
seem to be tenable under the terms of the present paper. I wonder what
"unitary-ness" is if it is not a "primary quality" of scientific
subject-matter. I wonder what "controlled observation" is if it is not
a special method developed in relation to the primary quality of
unitary-ness of scientific subject-matter. Do other listers see here a
contradiction in JR's two papers?
It seems worth noting that, in the phenomenology paper, which was not
addressed to scientists, JR seems strongly critical of the
mechanistic-technological conception of science and characterizes that
conception as having "reigned in modern times." One would assume that
JR saw it as having reigned in modern times in the discipline of physics
as well as in the other sciences. However, in this paper, addressed as
it is to physicists, JR seems to be retreating from that critical view
of the reigning conception of science in their discipline. Instead, JR
presents a view in which "unitary and real" subject-matter is an
essential condition for enabling scientific communication, and praises
the hard sciences for its special method of dealing with such
subject-matter. Has JR compromised Peirce's perspective here as well as
his own? Has he made the subject-matter of science unnecessarily
exclusive and hierarchical? For, if some subject-matter is better for
science than others (more "unitary"), is there not then a politics
inherent in the hierarchy of unitary-ness as exhibited by the various
objects of scientific inquiry? If not, how can JR's views as presented
in these two papers be reconciled?
I hope to post again in 5 days times.
Best,
Sally
SEGMENT 4 of "Sciences as Communicational Communities"
[paragraphs 18-21]
But leaving the plight of the sociologist aside for the present, I
believe that if the basic conception of scientific publication as
communication that I articulated above in a crude but basic form is
thought through consistently, it will be seen that this entails first of
all that everything said about the subject-matter should be said
responsibly and sincerely, which is to say that lying, misdirection,
evasion, waffling, and all other forms of deliberate or tolerated
misrepresentation--in short, any of the many forms of insincerity--are
the most fundamental of all violations of scientific method. Secrecy is
a limitation on science: where secrecy begins science ends, strictly
speaking; but that is a limitation on the scope of inclusion of a
scientific community, and although necessarily crippling to whatever
extent it is practiced, it is not secrecy but rather insincerity--lying
in its most general form--that kills science immediately insofar as it
enters into it effectively. Why? Because no real subject-matter can be
understood from the perspective of a single person--reality has
facets--but is essentially a matter of the coordination of multiple
perspectives on the same thing, and lying introduces pseudo-perspectives
that tend toward defeating attempts within a scientific community to
establish a coherent coordination of the perspectives available at a
given time, thus deracinating inquiry by destroying the integrity of its
connection with its subject-matter as its ultimate source of control.
[19]
The coordination of the diverse perspectives of the individual
members of the community, which is a primary function of the publication
process, assumes that the subject-matter which concerns its members is
unitary and real, since if it were unreal this would be shown by a
continuing inability to establish such a coordination. And what is meant
by objectivity in inquiry, considered as an attitude of the inquirer, is
the commitment to establishing such a coordination by reference to a
common object, and by the cultivation of communicational practices
designed to maximize the kind of collaboration that can have such a
result. Objectivity considered as a formal feature of the inquiry
process, rather than as a stance taken by the inquirer, is that
referential structure in the communicational process regarded logically.
Where such communicational practices exist, authentic publication
policies are in effect and are working effectively; where there is no
attempt at such a coordination there is no objectivity in the field, and
the publication practices are more likely to be conducive to chaos than
to growth and to function more as a blight than a blessing.
[20]
Though it may not be readily apparent, this also implies that
every individual in such a community is to be regarded as presumptively
equal with every other as a provider of content to be assimilated into
the coherent coordination of perspectives sought for, and although it is
true that some people's opinions will inevitably be weighted more
heavily in practice than others--and no doubt should be if they
establish a track record that warrants it--this must remain at the level
of individual judgment and not be confused with the shared public
understanding of a given scientific community, which is always concerned
only with characteristics of the subject-matter since it is that and
that only which constitutes the concern constitutive of the particular
community of inquirers as such. In other words, no community of
scientific inquiry as such can legitimately concern itself with ranking
its own members in terms of their status and worth in the community
because to do so is to lose sight of its subject-matter by lapsing into
group introspection instead. More could be said about this, and will be
elsewhere, but I will only add further here that we see here the typical
point of attempted entry of authoritarianism into inquiry, and can see
why its effective entry always corrupts to the extent that this effect
ramifies.
[21]
This is why it is of the first importance not to confuse what it
means to be a scientist of this type or that with being a professor of
this rank or that in a local hierarchical university system. I don't
doubt that such confusions do in fact plague the sciences like they
plague every other academic field, causing a falling away from science
into the acrimony of politics, and that the essential egalitarianism of
science is betrayed in many ways as it actually exists in practice; but
these compromises and betrayals are academic diseases and deformities,
inherited as congenital birth defects due to the origins of academia as
a medieval hierarchical institution, not a norm of the scientific life
proper, which is fundamentally at odds with this hierarchical heritage.
Let me stress that the point is not to adopt an unrealistic view of the
importance of prestige and accomplishment, but rather to recognize that
pains should be taken not to allow this to subvert in practice the
principle of presumptive equality which is the essential element of the
idea of a peer. The reason is essentially the same as in the case of
lying: a peer is--logically regarded--equivalent to a respected
perspective on the subject-matter, and to treat a peer either as
superior or inferior is to derange the coordination of perspectives
which is the constant task of the ongoing science.
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