Earl

One entry point to postmodernism is the criticism of the correspondence theory of truth, which theory is that truth is the "agreement" of statements with the "facts." This highly commonsensical theory turns out to be difficult to explain. What is a "fact"? Perhaps the best answer is that a fact is a state of affairs in the world. Thus, "The Bush administration is planning to bomb Iraq" would be true were the appropriate properties or events to obtain. Yet the "obtaining" and the "appropriateness" of the things in question (the existence of the Bush administration, Iraq, the meetings of military officials about the future campaign, and so on) seem to be ways of saying that these things _are true_, which is precisely what is at issue. Appeal to "the facts" in a theory of truth seems to presuppose rather than explain the concept of truth. And similarly damaging objections have been levelled against the notion of "correspondence."

As a result of these objections, the coherence theory of truth has become popular. This is the view that truth is a relation between beliefs or sentences rather than between linguistic and worldly entities. One of the problems with this theory is that a set of beliefs could seemingly be self-consistent and yet false. Denial of this would seem to reward too easily a set of beliefs with the merit of truth, which is to say that this theory of truth implies relativism, a trivializing of truth by making falsity rare or even impossible.

Two directions which distinguish these theories of truth are realism and antirealism. Realism is either the minimal affirmation that there is a mind-independent world or the more engaging one that the knowledge we actually have is a set of beliefs which is true in being about the mind-independent world. An antirealist either denies that there is a mind-independent world or else contends that since truth is reducible to mind-dependent factors (bias, culture, values, assumptions, metanarratives), the appeal to a mind-independent world is unnecessary. Naturalists tend to be realists whereas "postmodernists" tend to be antirealists.

Does the postmodernist reject science? A postmodernist would likely claim that what she rejects is not science but scientism, the metanarrative that science is a supremely privileged method of acquiring knowledge. Science may be understood in purely instrumentalist or utilitarian terms according to which the value of science is not that science finally provides us with Truth, but that scientific theories are useful for particular purposes, such as consumerism or the improvement of life's quality.

"The Lone Ranger/Michael" says that sociologists would find human behaviour less mysterious if only they would study the harder science of evolutionary biology. Hilary Putnam, the Harvard philosopher and pragmatist, responds very forcefully to this view. I'll quote at length from his 1987 lectures on realism, _The Many Faces of Realism_:

"If there is any appeal of Realism which is wholly legitimate it is the appeal to the commonsense feeling that _of course_ there are tables and chairs, and any philosophy [such as postmodernist antirealism--Earl] that tell us that there really aren't--that there are really only sense data, or only 'texts', or whatever, is more than slightly crazy. In appealing to this commonsense feeling, Realism reminds me of the Seducer in the old-fashioned melodrama. In the melodramas of the 1890s the Seducer always promised various things to the Innocent Maiden which he failed to deliver when the time came. In this case the Realist (the evil Seducer) promises common sense (the Innocent Maiden) that he will rescue her from her enemies [who include Idealists and postmodernist antirealists--Earl] who (the Realist says) want to deprive her of her good old ice cubes and chairs. Faced with this dreadful prospect, the fair maiden naturally opts for the company of the commonsensical Realist. But when they have travelled together for a little while the 'Scientific Realist' breaks the news that what the Maiden is going to get _isn't_ her ice cubes and tables and chairs. In fact, all there _really_ is--the Scientific Realist tells her over breakfast--is what 'finished science' will say there is--whatever that may be. She is left with a promissory note for She Knows Not What, and the assurance that even if there _aren't_ tables and chairs, still there are some _Dinge an sich_ [things-in-themselves, be they atomic particles, superstrings, or whatever--Earl] that her 'manifest image' (or her 'folk physics,' as some Scientific Realists put it) 'picture.' Some will say that the lady has been had."

Lone Ranger/Michael implies that sociology is reducible to evolutionary biology. The mysteries of human behaviour are removed by the evolutionary explanation. Yet evolutionary biology is, many Scientific Realists would want to say, reducible to chemistry and physics. And there is nothing more mysterious than how human behaviour could really be nothing but tiny superstring vibrations.

pug846

Tron said:

And why exactly is holding that science is just another way of looking at the world at all contradictory to using some of the fruits of science? You’re simply defining “valid” as useful in this case…which is where your confusion lies.

(added later)

Earl said it better than me:

Vorkosigan

Does the postmodernist reject science? A postmodernist would likely claim that what she rejects is not science but scientism, the metanarrative that science is a supremely privileged method of acquiring knowledge.

No, this is wrong, Earl. Postmodernists may claim that they are against scientism, but what they hate is the power of science, its authority in dispute settlement. I've actually sat in seminars and listened to people argue with me that yes, it really is just as effective to rub cowshit in wounds as it is to use antibiotics. "How would you prove that antibiotics are better?" I was told. "Look at the death rates!" "Ah, with you, it always comes back to death." An intelligent woman once told me that there had been no improvement in death rates for women giving birth since the end of the 18th century. And so on. I could catalogue many instances of similar stupidity.

What Postmodernists have done is confused epistemic authority with political authority.

Vorkosigan

The Lone Ranger

Please note that I never claimed that "Evolutionary Biology" should or even could replace Sociology.

I merely pointed out that they might benefit from a better understanding of it.

Cheers,

Michael

Earl

LONE RANGER: Please note that I never claimed that "Evolutionary Biology" should or even could replace Sociology.

I merely pointed out that they might benefit from a better understanding of it.

EARL: I appreciated your careful language, which is why I said that you "implied" that sociology is reducible to evolutionary biology. What you said is "My impression is that if more sociologists had a better understanding of the 'hard sciences' - particularly evolutionary biology -- they'd find human behavior much less mysterious." By itself, the notion of "hard" and "soft" sciences suggests a difference in the depth of explanations offered, assuming sociology is even a science. (Postmodernists like Richard Rorty call the hard/soft distinction "phallogocentric.")

Assuming, then, that my statement was unfair, could you please give an example of a finding in sociology which is not subject to a deeper, harder, more complete and accurate explanation in evolutionary biology? I suspect that any such finding in sociology would be considered speculative and non-scientific in the first place; in this way the sociologist would be aligned with the theist who argues for a "god of the gaps."

Do you think scientists should aim for consilience in relating one scientific discipline to another? Were sociology not reducible to the hard sciences, why should hard scientific explanations clarify so many of the mysteries of human behaviour? Shouldn't we then instead expect that sociology should have its very own irreducible subject matter? What percentage of the mysteries of human behaviour would you say are better explained in evolutionary biology?

I should clarify that I'm not a postmodernist but a realist. There is a mind-independent world, we do have knowledge of this world, and science is indeed a privileged method of acquiring knowledge. Scientism, however, the view that scientific answers are the only ones which count as knowledge, seems to me false and powered by a form of religious faith.

****

Vorkosigan,

I suspect that you're right about the motivations of many postmodernists. However, this is an ad hominem and anecdotal argument. The person who tried to diagnose you as suffering from some sort of death fixation engaged in a personal attack. The other person who at least offered evidence for her view could be easily refuted were the evidence against her.

In talking about scientism I was trying to indicate the best possible defence of a postmodernist's view of science. I agree, though, that many antirealists do more than argue against scientism. There is widespread ignorance of science and a dumbing down process at work which is deleterious to democratic governance, in my view. Antirealism is a symptom of this larger process.

Richard Rorty, antirealist and so-called "pragmatist," has a neo-Kuhnian view of science as divided by incommensurable revolutions and "normal" periods of puzzle-solving. Here's a quotation about the initial "hermeneutic" nature of paleontology. Note especially the last sentence:

"If we think of the fossil record as a text, then we can say that paleontology, in its early stages, followed 'interpretive' methods. That is, it cast around for some way of making sense of what had happened by looking for a vocabulary in which a puzzling object could be related to other, more familiar objects, so as to become intelligible. Before the discipline became 'normalized,' nobody had any clear idea what sort of thing might be relevant to predicting where similar fossils might be found….On my view, being 'interpretive' or 'hermeneutical' is not having a special method but simply casting about for a vocabulary which might help. When Galileo came up with his mathematicized vocabulary, he was successfully concluding an inquiry which was, in the only sense I can give the term, hermeneutical. The same goes for Darwin. I do not see any interesting differences between what they were doing and what biblical exegetes, literary critics, or historians of culture do" (_Consequences of Pragmatism_, 199).

The notion that astrology or any other "discipline" is as good as science at producing knowledge is often defended in a Marxist or Foucaultian manner which shares assumptions with the most paranoid conspiracy theorist: by induction (familiarity with history), distrust of "facts" and statistics emanating from a power centre is warranted. History shows not only that virtually every "fact" accepted by experts has subsequently been rejected, but that there is a pattern in the way these "facts" have been used to political advantage, by providing metanarratives, subtexts, and rationalizations for elite attitudes towards the subservient classes.

Darwinism, for example, was distorted by the non-scientific, value-laden assumption that life is an amoral "struggle," a view which excuses political realism, the view that foreign policy is necessarily amoral and selfish, operating as it does within an anarchistic vacuum. Even if this hyper-Darwinism turned out to be accurate, it would not be merely scientific or neutrally, innocently proposed and confirmed. The same is true for political realism, or social Darwinism. There is at least a suspicious conflict of interest among those well-financed scientists who championed and institutionalized colourful versions of evolutionary theory. This conflict is that financers tend to be defensive about their financial success and could be expected to welcome a metanarrative which considers moral, and therefore Christian egalitarian, principles to be fundamentally irrelevant to animal behaviour. Again, I lay this view out only to spark discussion.

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: Earl ]</p>

The Lone Ranger

Earl:

I'm not certain that I consider Sociology to be a "true" science, at least not in the sense that Geology, or Chemistry, or Physics, or Biology are.

The thing that all the "hard sciences" have in common is that they all have a central organizing principle that provides a basic framework and guides investigations. For example, it has been said (with considerable truth, in my opinion) that before Darwin, Biology was no more of a science than is Stamp Collecting. By demonstrating the fact of Evolution, Darwin gave us an organizing principle to guide biological investigations and to make sense of the results.

As far as I know, Sociology has no such organizing principle, which is probably why Sociologists seem to have such trouble framing and testing hypotheses.

One could argue that Chemistry reduces entirely to Physics, but Biology does not reduce entirely to Chemistry, because Biology has an historical component which Chemistry lacks. (In other words, you need some knowledge of an organism's evolutionary history in order to understand why it is the way that it is today.)

In somewhat the same way, I don't think that a study of human societies could possibly be reduced entirely to Evolutionary Biology. Human culture "evolves" very rapidly, and in a distinctly non-Darwinian way. Without accounting for this, one cannot hope to explain human societies, even in principle. I think that Evolutionary Biology can illuminate the study of human societies, but it cannot explain them.




I'm not sure that -- at this stage in its development -- Sociology can actually explain anything. When Sociology produces its own Newton or Darwin, then it may become an explanatory science. Sociologists have done some interesting studies and discovered some interesting phenomena, but I can't think of any good, testable explanations they've been able to come up with. In my limited experience, Sociology is good at posing questions, but has very few answers. [All sciences started this way, though, so I'm hopeful for its future.]


I do think that consilience is a worthy goal. All of the (hard) sciences share a common methodology and philosophy, after all, and all are presumably seeking to further our understanding of the same world.

Having said that, it is nonetheless important to keep in mind that it's not always possible to reduce one science to another. Biology is not "just" chemistry, and the social behavior of humans surely is not reducible to "just" Evolutionary Biology.

Quote:

Were sociology not reducible to the hard sciences, why should hard scientific explanations clarify so many of the mysteries of human behaviour? Shouldn't we then instead expect that sociology should have its very own irreducible subject matter?

One cannot hope to understand living organisms without an appreciation of the principles of Chemistry, but no matter how detailed your knowledge of the subject, Chemistry won't help you understand why humans have non-functional ear-articulation muscles. To understand that, you need to take evolution into account.

In the same manner, an understanding of evolutionary theory would surely help us to understand human societies, but it's not sufficient to explain them, I strongly suspect. Human behavior is surely influenced by our evolutionary history, so Evolutionary Biology can illuminate the study of human societies, but it cannot explain human societies all by itself, anymore than Chemistry can explain the nature of living organisms all by itself.




I don't think that this is the way to look at it. It's a lot like the old "Nature vs. Nurture" argument in genetics -- it's a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as a "genetically-determined" trait. Similarly, there is no such thing as an "environmentally-determined" trait. Even something so seemingly-intractible as my eye color is influenced by the environment. And even something as seemingly "environmentally-determined" as my ability to speak is strongly influenced by my genetic makeup.

Analogously, I don't think that one can say that "X"% of human social behavior is due to our evolutionary heritage and "X"% is due to our upbringing. Accordingly, I think that Evolutionary Biology can shed light on some questions that Sociologists may find perplexing, and help to answer them, and perhaps it can suggest some promising lines of research.




I agree, in principle. I'm not entirely certain what you're saying, though. When it comes to understanding the real world around us (which, as far as I can tell, actually exists independently of us), I would argue that scientific methodology is far and away the most successful and reliable tool we've ever come up with. It's not much use for evaluating the merit of a painting or a piece of music, however.

Cheers,

Michael

[ August 16, 2002: Message edited by: The Lone Ranger ]</p>

phaedrus

It would be great if anyone can resurrect the old thread (link above) by posting arguments ....last i remember people just faded away after their initial comments from that thread

PS : Cant help it, need some real prodding...not many interesting topics around.

Earl

Lone Ranger,

Thanks for clarifying your position. I have just a couple questions. You wrote: "I'm not sure that -- at this stage in its development -- Sociology can actually explain anything. When Sociology produces its own Newton or Darwin, then it may become an explanatory science. Sociologists have done some interesting studies and discovered some interesting phenomena, but I can't think of any good, testable _explanations_ they've been able to come up with."

Are you using the technical definition of "explanation" which, as I understand it, is that an explanation is a full reduction that allows for prediction? What would you say is the relationship between knowledge and this level of scientific explanation? Would you say, for example, that knowledge is confined to "explanation" in the hard scientific sense? Is there such a thing as an explanation of the merit of a painting or a piece of music? The difference is usually taken to be that the latter is subjective, opinionated and thus a mere "evaluation."

Yet on precisely this point, Hilary Putnam argues persuasively that the scientific sense of "explanation," which appeals to a "cause" is itself subjective and evaluative in selecting _relevant_ factors from what Mill called "the total cause." The total cause includes all the conditions sufficient for the effect. "What we do, according to Mill and Mackie, is _pick out_ a part of the total cause that we regard as important because of its predictive and explanatory utility. If we discover that the cold was correlated with something that by itself provides an explanation of the material's becoming brittle, and the material will become brittle even in the absence of the cold if this correlated factor is still present, then we will change our inference-licensing practice and we will also select a different part of the total cause to call 'the cause.' Which is 'the cause' and which a 'background condition' depends on a _picking out_, an act of _selection_, which depends on what we know and can use in prediction; and this is not written into the physical system itself" ("Is the Causal Structure of the Physical itself Something Physical?" 87).

Moreover, there is subjectivity in appealing to any version of "non-Humean causation," that is, any appeal to a causal structure built into the world which singles out reference and provides the necessitation Hume showed is not observable. "When we come to sciences less fundamental than fundamental particle physics, say sociology or history, or even to evolutionary biology, or even to chemistry or solid-state physics, then, of course, we find that causation-as-bringing-about [the "necessitation" Hume spoke about--Earl] is invoked constantly, in the guise of disposition talk ('the gazelle's speed _enables_ it to outrun the lion most of the time'), in the guise of counterfactuals ('the salt would have dissolved if the solution had not been saturated'), and in the guise of 'causes'-statements ('the extreme cold caused the material to become brittle')" (86).

What this means is that even the scientific use of "explanation" is evaluative. The only difference left between scientific "explanations" and non-scientific "evaluations" is that the former are more useful in daily life. In this case there would seem to be much room for sociology of science. Perhaps the sociologist's acceptance of postmodern assumptions is stultifying. Yet can we blame the sociologist for focussing on the subjective factors, given these factors' apparent influence even on scientific "explanation"?

The Lone Ranger

Earl:

More or less. It would seem to me that it cannot be truthfully called an “explanation” if it’s not predictive. If it doesn’t allow for prediction, then it’s an observation at best, not an explanation. There are levels of explanation to consider, however, and a “full” explanation is seldom necessary or even desirable, I suspect.

A chemist need not invoke quantum mechanics in order to explain the bonding patterns between atoms, for example. Even though by ignoring QM, he’s not giving a complete explanation, if the explanation given is usefully predictive, it’s probably not necessary to go to a deeper level. After all, there are practical considerations to consider, and explanations for virtually all phenomena would quickly become very tedious indeed if we insisted upon full reduction.

Besides, many systems are simply so complex that it will probably never be possible (or at least practical) to gather enough data to predict their behavior exactly. (Eventually, you’ll run up against the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, if nothing else.) The weather is like this; it’s probably never going to be possible to do better than make generalized probabilistic predictions about the immediate future.

Human societies are probably the same – there are so many things that influence the development of societies that it will probably never be possible to make anything other than very generalized and probabilistic predictions. The further one tries to extend these predictions into the future, the less likely they are to pan out. That’s why I doubt that Sociology will ever become an explanatory science in the way that Physics or Chemistry, or even Biology is.

The same can be said for areas of Biology. A student of animal behavior (an ethologist) can formulate explanations for observed patterns of animal behavior, but (s)he is painfully aware that there’s only so far you can go with this. [There’s a well-known “law” of ethology: “Under the most carefully-controlled conditions of temperature, humidity, and lighting, the animal will do exactly as it darn pleases.”] At some point, you simply have to say that “this is the best explanation we can offer.”

For example, I can explain why male animals tend to compete for females rather than vice-versa, but there’s probably not even any point in trying to explain why the cat chose this moment to leap onto my lap. She happened to choose this moment, under the influence of lots of different factors, no doubt, and that’s about all I can say.



Probably not, really. I suppose that, in principle you could learn enough about a person to understand his or her taste in music or art sufficiently to predict with some certainty what sorts (s)he would find appealing, but it doesn’t seem practically possible. Given this, it doesn’t seem to me possible (or at least practical) to codify “objective” standards of good versus bad art. You could judge the technical proficiency of an artist, perhaps, but was Mozart a better composer than Beethoven? I don’t see that the question can be answered as anything other than a matter of personal, idiosyncratic tastes.

For example, I’m more than a little tired of the fact that I can’t turn on the radio right now without hearing something by Elvis Presley. Now, I know that he was a talented musician, but I never cared for his music, personally. Plenty of people think very highly of his music, and I don’t think they’re wrong – I simply don’t much care for it myself.




We can never be absolutely certain about anything. It’s possible that the world around me is a delusion, and I’m only dreaming that I’m typing this. It doesn’t seem to be a very practical philosophy on which to structure my life, though.

Accordingly, there are different levels of “knowledge.” Certainly, I could count as “knowledge” only things for which there is so much evidence that we can deny them only by denying the validity of our observations. Even Foucalt, for instance, pointed out that the evidence of the basically-spherical nature of the Earth is so conclusive that to doubt it is essentially madness. For anything that isn’t established beyond a reasonable doubt (and even some of that might eventually turn out to be wrong – it’s possible, however unlikely), we can only establish levels of likelihood.

Is the Earth basically spherical? Certainly, unless we’re living in a delusional state. If I am delusional, I have no way of knowing, so I must presume that I’m not. Is the Earth more than 6,000 years old? Again, it certainly is, unless we’re delusional.

Is it raining somewhere on the Earth right now? Almost certainly, but I have no way of checking to find out. Will the Sun explode tomorrow? Almost certainly not.

Did millions of Jews perish in Nazi Germany? The evidence for the conclusion that they did seems to me so conclusive that I do not consider the subject to be worthy of debate. I suppose that it’s remotely possible that the Holocaust was fabricated, but the evidence for this conclusion would have to be very convincing before I’d consider the question worthy of serious consideration.

Does “Bigfoot” wander the Pacific Northwest? The evidence here is intriguing, but hardly convincing. At best, therefore, I can only say “probably not.”

And so it goes. “Knowledge” (to me) means “established beyond any reasonable doubt.” Everything else is opinions for which there are varying degrees of probability that they're correct. [In answer to the question of “What do you know?”, I always answer, “Very little indeed, but I have lots of suspicions.”]

Naturally, any “explanation” is typically going to be at least somewhat subjective in the sense that one must choose which relevant factors to include. This is necessary because a complete explanation would seldom be desirable or even possible. Nevertheless, some explanations are clearly better (more predictive) than others. An explanation is, to some extent, a model, and no model is completely reflective of reality. As such, it’s important to craft an explanation that is sufficiently predictive for your purposes (seldom, if ever, will it be completely predictive), without being too complex to be useful.

[In theory, one could use the principles of quantum mechanics to exactly predict the behavior of molecular assemblages. In practice, however, even with supercomputers, it would take years to model the behavior of chemical reactions that take place in much less than one second's time. There comes a point where the model may be too complex to provide a useful explanation.]





No real argument here. My only comment is that some explanations are clearly more useful than others, for reasons given above. Given how poorly-understood and poorly-defined these subjective factors tend to be, I have grave doubts regarding their utility in constructing useful explanations.

A poorly-constructed explanation will make poor predictions; specifically, an explanation that is too vague will make only trivial predictions. Most of the “explanations” I’ve read in Sociology books and journals have been too vague to be of any real use, in my opinion. Sociologists seem to be forever rediscovering the obvious, therefore.

I don’t know if it will ever be practically possible to make predictive statements about human societies with the kind of detail that Sociologists aspire to, since gathering the necessary information would be so difficult (and subject to error). In the meantime, I suggested that they could benefit from an understanding of Evolutionary Biology simply because it might give them some insight into some of the broad patterns of human behavior that they seem to find so perplexing.

***

Anyway, it’s late and I haven’t slept in a long time. Hopefully, I’m making at least some sense, though.

Cheers,

Michael

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: The Lone Ranger ]</p>

Earl

Lone Ranger,

Thanks again for clarifying. You've made some very Putnamian comments that I'm quite happy with. Your statement, for example, that "An explanation is, to some extent, a model, and no model is completely reflective of reality" summarises Putnam's model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism, a prevalent materialist doctrine that not only is there an external world about which we can know, but that there is One True Description of this world, from a God's eye view, as it were, and that subjective factors play no limiting role, in principle. Putnam's pragmatic realism is meant to be a compromise between Realism and Relativism, or Subjectivism. Putnam stands between the postmodern antirealist and the anti-subjective realist.

One point about the usefulness of predictions. Given the subjective factors, postmodernists would likely approve of the following passage by Nietzsche, from his "On Truth and Lies in a Non-moral Sense:"

"As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding 'truth' within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare 'look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be 'true in itself' or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation."

Nietzsche was wrong about the bees, though.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Earl ]</p>