Fear of monopoly

Citation

Magala, S. (2006), "Fear of monopoly", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 19 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2006.02319caa.002

Fear of monopoly

Fear of Knowledge. Against Relativism and ConstructivismPaul BoghossianOxford University Press2006

Kuhn vs Popper. The Struggle for the Soul of ScienceSteve FullerIcon BooksCambridge2003

Keywords: Philosophy, Sciences, Social justice, Methodology, Knowledge

Paul Boghossian wrote a passionate polemic against relativism and constructivism, which in his view are defended by Richard Rorty, Bruno Latour, Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam as well as by patron saint Ludwig Wittgenstein, and less saintly but closer to us in time – Michel Foucault and Paul Feyerabend. Boghossian’s arguments are logical and methodological, and they make us, readers, take two steps. First, we have to come to understand that relativists and constructivists are wrong in questioning the monopoly of a neo-positivist view of science defended by academic philosophers with an analytical frame of mind, and then, with alternatives tucked away as not demonstrably better than the neo-positivist monopoly, we are free to draw conclusions about inherent superiority of this mode rationality, that is of producing legitimate knowledge. His view is that a view from an artificial nowhere (to paraphrase the title of one of the books by his favorite academic philosopher, Thomas Nagel) is preferable to views with contingent price tags, even if the latter are “empowering” (as is the case with philosophical arguments of de Beauvoir and Appiah in hands and minds of, respectively, female and non-white individuals). His book makes excellent if disturbing reading, but his title is misleading. Neither relativism nor constructivism arose out of fear of the light of true knowledge, and his defense of the neo-positivists on purely methodological grounds has to be set against the background of constructivism’s defense on purely sociological grounds.

This is exactly what Steve Fuller does in his “Kuhn vs Popper. The Struggle for the Soul of Science.” His arguments match Boghossian’s with respect to elegance (although he does not follow the neo-positivist fashion of reducing all major dilemmas to narrowly rephrased and retranslated professional issues). By linking the consequences of Kuhnian victory in the philosophy of science to the reconstruction of historical context of the Cold War, in which “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” was embedded, Fuller manages to become much more relevant to us as concerned citizens, responsible members of academic communities and human individuals. He did not hesitate to assume responsibilities in public sphere – by testifying before the Pennsylvania court, which had to decide about parallel teaching of theory of biological evolution and of the theories of intelligent design in public schools.

The most interesting conclusion from reading them both, however, is that they converge on condemning Kuhn’s reconstruction of scientific procedures and patterns of research communities’ development – but for reasons, which, albeit similar, are propped with different arguments. Boghossian rejects Kuhn because he wants to go back to analytical philosophy as a logical analysis of the language of empirical sciences and stay there. Fuller rejects Kuhn, because his vision of academic community suited Cold War military-industrial establishment, while Popper’s evolutionary epistemology served both research communities and open society around them much better (and will probably fit better with post-Cold War global disorder). To put it bluntly: Kuhn was good for you if you wanted to survive the McCarthy’s HUACs, but Popper was better for you, if you wanted social justice and environmental sustainability. Is there a possibility of seeing common ground, on which we can compare the quality of both author’s arguments, with which they hope to persuade us to forget Kuhn as a minor Cold War distraction? Can somehow their arguments be made commensurable on some preferably neutral “third ground”? Or are we forced to choose between two circular arguments, which begin with the sacramental words; “if you accept my basic premises, then my conclusions will strike you as correct and just?” Basic answer, which Boghossian gives to the dilemmas of circularity (visible already in the above description of both author’s approaches), is that one should not be afraid of epistemic absolutism. One should simply and openly state that this is true according to one’s norms but then demonstrate that in fact everybody, even relativists and constructivists are at the bottoms of their hearts “like us” (e.g. realists and neo-positivists on all counts that matter – in the eyes of Boghossian, or relativists and constructivists – according to Fuller). In other words, if all constructivists agree with Fuller, that Kuhn’s victory in persuading academic scientists that his reconstruction of science’s progress is superior to the one offered by Popper should be reversed, and all neo-positivists agree with Boghossian that Kuhn should be dropped, because he belongs to the methodological “paradigm”, which is flawed beyond any logically acceptable repair, and if all of us agree, then what should we do when writing an explanation of our choice, in legitimizing the choice we had made on methodological grounds, as a choice of a certain philosophy of science? Boghossian clearly thinks that we should all run over to his camp and admit that there exist justified beliefs about “absolute epistemic facts” which come in handy when we have to choose between multiple and often incompatible, incommensurable approaches, let us say, between different scientific paradigms, or between science and magic or between science and religion. He admits that we have to pay a price, namely make a leap of faith (supported by logic of inquiry and besieged by paradoxes to which choosing otherwise we would succumb) and calls it “blind entitlement”:

. . . some form of blind (unsupported) entitlement to fundamental parts of one’s epistemic system is clearly unavoidable (p. 99).

Our blindness, however, is not eternal: we do not have to die with our epistemic principles, because we can be persuaded by some alternative epistemic systems with “impressive” track record (examining this record we are allowed to start harboring doubts about our own). In two cases, which illustrate Boghossian’s view of dealing with epistemic alternatives, namely the dispute between cardinal Bellarmine and Galileo and the logic of the Azande inheritance of magic powers, we can either demonstrate that epistemic systems are less distant than they appeared to be (Bellarmine and Galileo) or they do not run in the same race (they are not competing alternatives to ours). Bellarmine and Galileo use similar approach, and agree on many common philosophical premises – they differ only in attributing different properties to the Bible as the report on revelation. If one wants to rephrase this argument in terms of methodology of scientific research programs as introduced by Lakatos at the time of the Kuhn-Popper debate, then Bellarmine, according to Boghossian, represented a “degenerative” and Galieleo a “progressive” research program (both were, however, research programs, one directed more towards examining revelation, another more towards collecting experimental evidence, and thus both could be compared). The Azande do not really disagree with our reconstructions of kinship systems and the logic of attributing magic powers to some male descendants, because they choose different concepts to express this lineage, concepts which cannot be directly compared to ours (Boghossian uses analogy with Wittgenstein’s remarks on comparing amounts of wood and finding out that differences exist in defining “a lot of” or “little” depending on a location and in accepting a different system of payment, which is incommensurable with ours, since it is much more context bound). There are many problems with Boghossian’s translation of constructivists’ views and the most important one concerns his separation of “relevant evidence” and “contingent needs and interests”. When defining a strong version (“potent form”) of constructivist view of knowledge, he renders its claim as: It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe solely on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence: our contingent needs and interests must also be invoked (p. 111).

However, he forgets that he had already rigged the boxing ring so that his enemy has a choice only between considering relevant evidence or invoking contingent needs and interests. Unrigging the boxing ring would involve demonstrating that definition of relevant evidence already presupposes interests and needs – why, for instance, until today no professional bureaucracy considered it relevant to examine evidence about discrimination of women in their careers in spite of the fact that even if slightly more women begin at the bottom, very small minority of them matches male progress to the top? Boghossian makes us believe that considering these contingent gender needs and interests would compromise genderless and universal logic of scientific inquiry, by admitting impediments to the true love of knowledge. But first, no constructivist claims that gendered science would rewrite Newton and Einstein or check observations of cats on the roofs to see if they coincide with feminist party line. Second, this definition forms a strong defense of not only a conservative but also fairly obsolete concept of universal logic of scientific inquiry – which Popper (unnoticed by Boghossian) had already rejuvenated in quite radical evolutionary and historical way. One does not need to read Latour in order to discover that decision about relevance of empirical evidence is theoretically determined. A cat may sit on the roof according to both constructionist and neo-positivist, but will not, if a Berkeleyan solipsist closes his eyes (and, according to his definition, ceases to perceive the cat, thus terminating cat’s

existence at least for believing solipsists). I evoke Bishop Berkeley, because Boghossian does not shy away from evoking Descartes in order to illustrate his belief that “some beliefs are intrinsically credible or self-evident” (like, for instance, our common sense belief that we are “currently conscious”). By leaving Popper aside and focusing on attempt to demonstrate that Kuhn does not support constructivist claims, Boghossian again rigs the boxing ring – while it is obvious that the concept of a paradigm is notoriously imprecise, and thus can relatively easily be criticized, Popper would be a much more sophisticated sparring partner than Kuhn. Popper would agree with Boghossian’s conclusions that there are ways in which things are independent of human opinion and that evolving standards of scientific rationality allow individuals to agree upon relevant evidence “regardless of social or cultural perspective” (p. 131). But he would not agree that we should, therefore, return to the ideas of the “Vienna circle” as a universally valid program in philosophy of science and the most rational ideology of professional academic communities. He would also introduce the distinction between the context of discovery (collecting evidence and making sense of it) and the context of justification (establishing evidence’s relevance).

And Popper would be right. As Fuller demonstrates, contemporary academic communities follow two-pronged strategy of developing scientific knowledge; by pursuing discipline-based research subject to strict but overspecialized peer controls on the one hand (mandarinization) and by constructing hybrid projects, like the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb (in which academic professionals, state politicians, and military-industrial establishment forged a temporary alliance) on the other. Fuller’s argument in support of Popper and against Kuhn is that Popper develops the unfinished project of enlightenment, which calls for criticism as the most important precondition for the growth of knowledge, much better than Kuhn ever did or might predictably stimulate researchers to do. What is wrong with Kuhn? He promotes a tacitly conventional and conformist view of “normal science.” As Feyerabend had already noticed in “Consolations for a specialist” Kuhnian normal scientist curbs his tongue and mind and conforms with his superiors patiently focusing on daily puzzle-solving. Ideological view of instrumental experts made Kuhn, in Feyerabend’s own words, “disguise ideology as history.” According to Feyerabend, if one believes that Kuhn had correctly uncovered mechanisms which govern growth of knowledge, than one finds easy historico-scientific “justification for the ever growing need to identify with some group” (Feyerabend, quoted after Fuller, p. 194) – which is not exactly what critical attitude and criticism so vital for the growth of knowledge are all about. Foucault, on the other hand, is quoted as an academic and public intellectual, who was very profoundly concerned with the practical uses to which knowledge he co-created would be put (focusing on those uses of expert knowledge which he considered illegitimate and damaging for an open society). However, as Fuller notices, a paradox emerged in the last period of the Cold War and in the first phase of the post-Cold War history of academic communities:

What neither Conant nor Kuhn anticipated, or approved, was that their shared non-instrumental vision of science would be appropriated by humanists and social scientists, in part to relativise the nature of science to whatever a community of inquirers happens to agree as their “paradigm” (Fuller, p. 205). Fuller claims that this paradox obscured the hidden and much more dangerous function of Kuhn’s ideological reconstruction, which was to justify the unholy alliance of academic, political, and military-industrial establishments in Cold War US. His reconstruction of the political trenches in academic communities involves a positive evaluation of those, who did stand up against this alliance. First, Popper himself, who had proposed a sort of a generalized Hippocratic Oath for all scientists (in order to prevent them from participation in research programs, which might become very harmful for mankind) at the time of Vietnam War. Second, Lakatos, who had classified the particle physics as a degenerative methodological research program shift, sustained only by the alliance of establishments – which could expect increasingly “powerful computers and atom smashers” as byproducts of this program. Third, Paul Feyerabend, who wanted to implement the “devolution” of science’s funding (from national to local community level) in order to subject it to closer democratic scrutiny. Fourth, Stephen Toulmin, who thought that the ideals of enlightenment were betrayed by academic establishments, which assumed the role of integrated expert bodies facilitating political governance and economic wealth production and shelving criticism, indispensable for a more human-friendly growth of knowledge. Foucault and Chomsky are also on the positive side – while Kuhn is not. Fuller actually compares Kuhn to Heidegger, in their function of famous public intellectuals, claiming that in both cases their fame is artificially inflated and is not justified on rational grounds (he may have a point there, their basic claims to glory are pretty thin). He claims that both had tried to please political establishments – Heidegger – Nazi’s in Third Reich and Kuhn – academic-military-industrial complex in Cold War US.

The most interesting theme in Fuller’s critical analysis of a historical “anomaly” of Kuhn’s surprising victory over Popper (for anomaly it was from most points of view – including the point of view from neo-positivist nowhere), is the attempt to understand leaps of faith or the “religious unconscious” underlying the entire popper-Kuhn debate. It has already been suggested before Fuller that Kuhn reconstructs the sequence of “normal” periods (in which knowledge grows due to the efforts of researchers pursuing “normal science”) and periods of “scientific revolutions” (in which knowledge grows because a new paradigm overturns and replaces the old one) as if they were periods of religious orthodoxy separated by brief periods of crises and schisms (John Watkins, quoted by Fuller on p. 100).

It is here that Fuller also introduces the concept of the “leap of faith,” but not as an abstract principle for standing firm and upholding self-evident epistemic standards, but as a historical, existentialist principle first used by Kierkegaard as an inspiring philosopher preceding and ushering in the “existentialist” philosophy of mid-twentieth century Europe (at the expense of Hegel as the philosophical supplier of Marx and Marxists). We are reading an extremely well written, passionate intellectual history of ideas and political sociology of complex societies, a reconstruction of actual processes of growth of knowledge and dynamics of knowledge communities. Kierkegaard had made a “leap of faith” to Christianity and from his point of view, entrenched in this way, found a courage and inspiration to criticize various theological doctrines belonging to different churches and sects in Christianity. He became Popper’s a vaccine against Hegelian and Marxian legitimation of violence:

For Popper, a genuine commitment to the truth gives scientists the courage to challenge the truth of particular theories, including the ones associated with a scientific paradigm. Such a commitment is demonstrated by upholding standards of criticism whose fate is independent of the fates of particular theories tested by them (p. 108).

Here, then, Fuller’s and Boghossian’s verdicts about Kuhn coincide. Fuller sees Kuhn as a persuasive Bellarmine and Popper as both Galileo and Luther. For Popper, Kuhn had perverted the ideal of truth and loyalty to standards of criticism, betrayed open societies at large, by allowing scientific communities and their academic establishments to pursue their own professional and institutional advantage by convenient and conformist, instrumental and strategic behavior. Popper, Feyerabend and the “Popperians” wanted to uphold critical standards in spite of their evolutionary transformations and to serve broader interests of an open society. Who are we closer to? And why?

Slawek MagalaErasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands