Social Epistemology
This is a good read. At least if you’re interested in social constructivism – and how could you not be? It’s quite reflexive – a review of a book about Steve Fuller’s social epistemology. So we have three levels here: the reviewer, the book being reviewed, and the subject of the book being reviewed, which is the work of Steve Fuller. You need to know that to understand the quotations.
The framework of the book is outlined in the Introduction and further elaborated in Chapter 1. “Kuhn’s questioning of legitimation has become a central problem for discussion in the philosophy of science. The question that arises from Kuhn’s work is: What legitimizes scientific knowledge claims if science does not have a method to yield truth?” (2) Needless to say, this is a tendentious way of putting matters: what is meant by “if science does not have a method to yield truth”? Unobjectionable if it were to indicate the mere fallibilism of knowledge claims, discussable if it were to suggest instrumentalist anti-realism towards theoretical entities, interpretations become highly problematical when they deny the applicability of epistemological standards to the cognitive efforts of scientists.
Yup, that’s a tendentious way of putting matters all right. I wonder if social constructivists ever put matters in any other way. ‘If science does not have a method to yield truth’…Feh. Yeah I could put it better but Thomas Uebel did it for me, so I’ll just go with Feh.
“If science does not have the right method, a method that would guarantee access to truth, then it does not have privileged authority.” (11) That’s like saying that unless knowledge entails certainty, any belief is as good as any other. Yet no better argument for taking the radical problematic seriously is ever given
That ‘privileged authority’ trope is very popular. As, for that matter, is the slide from fallibilism to anything goes.
Again it is hard to discern an argument in Remedios’ review of Fuller’s tu quoque responses to various critics beyond the insistence that “normatively constituted groups” lie behind the “‘oversocialized individual who is a microcosm of the entire social order to which she belongs” (18). Instead, things begin to fall into place when Remedios observes that Fuller is not interested in “traditional problems of knowledge such as justified true belief” but rather “in how texts become certified as knowledge” (ibid.) and in “the material embodiment of knowledge”(19)…[I]ssues pertaining to epistemological justification are simply dropped from the discussion. Certainly Remedios’ affirmation that Fuller pursues the normative project as a “rational knowledge policy” with the goal of the “self-conscious reorganisation and administration of scientific disciplines for democratically chosen goals” (20) and his defense of Fuller against criticisms that he fails to address epistemological concerns do not allay the worry.
Uh oh. ‘self-conscious reorganisation and administration of scientific disciplines for democratically chosen goals’ is it. Have people like Fuller never heard of little items like ‘Intelligent Design’? Do they not realize that if it were put to a vote in the US, ID would replace biology in a great many public schools? Or do they know that perfectly well and think it’s only fair? Social constructivists are scary…
Remedios is aware that “philosophers may find Fuller’s rhetoric of inquiry unsatisfactory, for they may accuse Fuller of changing the subject to sociology and leaving problems of epistemic justification unanswered.” His response in Fuller’s voice, however, is equally unsatisfactory: “traditional notions of knowledge and justification are contested notions and cannot be assumed to be valid”. (7) The paucity of this response should be readily apparent. Calling notions contested does not absolve us from the task of providing defenses of the alternatives put forward. It is no good, therefore, to dismiss demands for explanations of why the replacement of epistemological concerns with political ones should help answer the original problem.
Especially since they’re the ones doing the contesting. That move is way too easy. Hey, I contest the traditional notion that the moon is a satellite of the earth, so it’s a contested notion, therefore the traditional notion that it is a satellite of the earth cannot be assumed to be valid. Period. On my say-so alone.
There’s a lot more. Check it out.
Nice link. I think Thomas Uebel has written a good review. Fallibilism is one of my favourite concepts, and the point you make about fallibilism not entailing relativism is very important. If social epistemology were restricted to study of sociological factors effecting all beliefs, including science, then it would be perfectly legitimate. The problem arises with the insistence that science is no different from other belief generating mechanisms.
I’m not a philosophical sophisticate so I would appreciate if someone could lessen my confusion on one question:
Quoting Remedios in “Fuller’s voice”, Uebel says “traditional notions of knowledge and justification are contested notions and cannot be assumed to be valid”.
Olivia gives an example of where this leads, writing of the Moon: “the traditional notion that it is a satellite of the earth cannot be assumed to be valid”.
Is Olivia not confusing “notions of knowledge” (which presumably means theories of knowledge) with an example of knowledge, a datum if you will ?
It seems to me that OB’s criticism is right on target, PaulP, and that she has not committed the kind of category error you imply.
The stance she (and Ueber) are attacking is that there are two kinds of claims, contested ones and uncontested ones, and that somehow uncontested claims are stronger than contested ones, more deserving of respect; that there is some special kind of can of worms that is opened as soon as anyone expresses doubt about a claim. The stance is nonsense, because all it takes to make a claim “contested” is for someone to say, “I contest the claim”. This applies regardless of whether the claim is in physics or epistemology.
By the way, I contest your claim that our host’s personal name is Olivia.
Cackle
Thanks, ACW. Yup, Olivia is the cop; I’m not the cop; therefore I have a different name.
And yup, that’s all I was doing, PaulP. Just a reductio. If any claim is contested merely because someone contests it, then any fool can contest any claim and then announce that it’s contested.
It’s related to the argument from personal incredulity, I suppose – the one we see so often from the ID crowd. “I don’t believe that all this could have just happened.” Not a compelling argument when there’s massive interlocking evidence that it did.
Ophelia:
I beg forgiveness for getting your name wrong. I had just read that actress Mariska Hargitay, who plays a TV character called Olivia Benson, is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield (the one and only). So I am offering male hormonal interference as a mitigating factor. Please be kind.
On the substantive issue, I was merely seeking guidance. Do Fuller et al attack the existence of knowledge itself on the grounds that every theory of knowledge is contested ?
Actually, it seems to me that Paul P. was on to something. The attempted reductio is far to simple. “Traditional notions of knowledge and justification are contested ones and cannot be assumed to be valid.” Now I’ve never heard of Steve Fuller, let alone read the book under review, but all the review says is that the “answer” is an incomplete one. But the cited sentence is true, if incomplete. It should be added that the review is apparently hatched from the standpoint of the project of Analytic philosophy for a naturalist epistemology. But naturalism is one thing, epistemology another. (Has anyone actually heard of scientists appealing to philosophers to resolve their conundrums?) And a naturalistic epistemology might itself be prone to engendering some strange beasts, say, a psychologization of knowledge, which, when combined with formal computational accounts of cognition, might just yield a giant petitio principii. The pursuit of a science of science, which would putatively answer all our questions about science and the stakes involved, might just be a delusive quest. Perhaps any real answers to such questions would lie elsewhere than in the entertaining of traditional “epistemological concerns”.
The attempted reductio reminds me of the sloppy notion that Copernicus’ heliocentric theory refuted the evidence of the senses. Actually, it did no such thing, but rather refuted and replaced the Ptolemaic geo-centric account, since, toegether perhaps with some slight incremental accumulation of improved observations, all those epicycles were proving burdensome, and the heliocentric account was a more economical, if not more elegant, rendering. The significance of the “Copernican Revolution” perhaps lies less in the discovery of the fact that the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa, than in its shifting of conceptual frameworks. But ever since, the notion has been promulgated that science attains its legitimation by virtue of being counter-intuitive, in opposition to common sense. But to me, the really interesting question is the non-epistemological one of the translation between our everyday, ordinary epistemic practices, which are intricated with all sorts of practical interests,- (and the claims of which, yes, can be contested, but precisely because they rely on uncontested claims, the take-for-granted),- and the claims of specialized, formal sciences. Surely it can not be that scientific knowledge simply displaces and replaces our everyday knowledge. Rather doesn’t the pursuit of scientific knowledge draw on, as well, our everyday sense of cognition and its significance, on our experience of existing in a world?
“the self-conscious reorganization and administration of scientific disciplines for democratically chosen goals”- Is that not just a restatement of the old dream of the Enlightenment? As in, “The Open Society and its Enemies”,- (as if socieies were things than could be open or shut like doors.) Unless, of course, one assumes that the “progress” of science will dissipate and eliminate the notion of choice. (And why cite ID? Perhaps one could add Lysenkoism. It seems that “democratically chosen” is being subjected to either an overly broad or overly narrow interpretation.) Admittedly, the relation between rationality and politics has always been a vexed one,- (cf. Plato),- but insisting on scientificity as the sole criterion of rationality would seem to bear damaging mortgages, as well. Wouldn’t the insistence upon the unique autonomy of science, its purity as the sole source of epistemic validity, de facto amount to an aquiescence in, if not a tacit alliance with, corporate oligopoly and militaristic imperialism? I have no idea how well Fuller would negotiate this complex matrix of questions and their interactions, from a short, slightly hostile review. But perhaps they are worth asking and perhaps all anyone could do is try.
Actually, it seems to me that Kuhn gets himself into trouble with relativistic and even psychologistic implications precisely because he holds fast to the notion of the autonomy of science. But neither Kuhn, nor Popper really address the question of where scientific conceptions originate and derive from that they should be so eminently worthy of experimental testing. It seems to me that if one attempts to address such a question, then the broader burdens of science, and, yes, its “authenticity” come to the fore. But why should science be possessed of any authority, “privileged” or otherwise? Authority comes from nowhere. The paradox of authority, most evident in politics, but applicable elsewhere, is that it is at once necessary and impossible. The difficulties of rationality in negotiating a path between the Scylla and Charybdis of relativism and absolutism are perhaps more burdensome than B&W will allow. Certainty in one domain can provoke or license relativism in another. Just ask any advocate of “Creation Science”…
Shame on you, Olivia, for being so blythe and indifferent to the vexing problem of navigating twixt Scylla Relativism and Charybdis Absolutism! Doncha know that there are more shades than just black and white? Well, you would if you’d read Derrida! Whyncha follow John’s siren song for once, steada binding yourself to the mast?
Actually, Karl, I’ve never read Derrida. But if you want to go about errantly projecting on anyone who does not confirm your prejudices, be my guest. I’ve noticed the tendency among positivist types to claim that anyone who disagrees with or criticizes positivism must be a post-modernist. It is a multiply ignorant reaction. But it was that bit about authority being at once necessary and impossible that made you think, however dimly, of Derrida, eh? As I put it a couple of years ago, in a thread chez DeLong on Krugman’s qualified defense of then Malaysian prime minister Muhathir, “politics is always about the paradox between freedom and authority”. Do you have a better account? Or are you just content to bask in willful naivete?
But the main burden of the above was that if one is really concerned with showing the validity and basis of science, the “translation problem” is a more interesting and fruitful approach than the “certification problem.” And it is certainly better that pointing at a fact and proclaiming,” there, you see, reality exists!”, as if one could prove a tautology.
[Edited for ad hominem, irrelevance, silliness and general tedium.]
Actually, Karl, I didn’t bother reading the latest diatribe. Too long, too rambling, too unclear, too much trouble. John tends to treat these comments as his diary, and I don’t always feel like reading his diary.
PaulP, quite all right. I knew you were misled by that tv detective – that was my little joke about the cop.
I don’t know whether Fuller claims that or not; Uebel is criticising the author of the book on Fuller for doing so, rather than Fuller himself. I have to say, though, it is a fairly common move: I’ve seen it around. But some people make more of an effort to avoid silly non-arguments than other people do; Fuller may well be an effort-maker.
Lighten up, John. Here at B&W, we’re all about the love. Can’t you feel it, man?
But, Olivia. How do you know John’s penultimate post is too rambling, too unclear, and too much trouble if you didn’t even read it?
I could tell by sniffing.
Well, let’s be scientific in our methods, shall we, and use random sampling. Just read every twentieth word.
It’s so nice to not always have to defend oneself. I feel so relieved. And I think aphasia is an excellent intellectual method: it speeds up the reaching of conclusions without having to undergo the burdens of thought.
Actually, Habermas tried the turn to “social epistemology” some four decades back in “Knowledge and Human Interests”. The book was regarded as something of a failure, however, when critics pointed out its reliance on a “Fichtean enthusiasm” and so Habermas moved on.
Quite.
Emm…my comment was edited for silliness, tedium, ad hominem irrelevance,etc. and Karl’s wasn’t? In fact, you did more or less make the mistake that PaulP identified and buried in my ramblingness was an indication of why the difference between uncontested, (i.e. taken-for-granted), claims and contested claims is a relevant consideration. But some people are terribly jealous of their own dignity. What’s the half-life of this comment?
No fair, Olivia! How come Karl’s stupid comment wasn’t edited too? You always did like him better than me!
It’s true! I’m just like totally no fair! I edit John simply because I get so bored with his rants and I don’t edit other people because I don’t get bored with theirs. Is that partial or what. Mind you, John does type about 100 words to everyone else’s 1, and he does resort to whiny abuse a lot – but all the same, that just boils down to Mom always liked you best. Good night, Tommy.
Tune in for more of “The Sock Puppet’s Revenge”, same bat time, same damn station.