Michael Lynch and Alan Sokal enagage in a most civil dialogue: Defending Science: An Exchange. Readers might also be interested in Susan Haack’s Defending Science-Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism and James Robert Brown’s Who Rules in Science?: An Opinionated Guide to the Wars – two cracking reads – and both past contributors to EPISTEME.
I chanced upon this painting entitled “Cosmos and Taxis“. The inspiration is, of course, as the artist states:
One effect of our habitually identifying order with a made order or taxis is indeed that we tend to ascribe to all order certain properties which deliberate arrangements regularly, and with respect to some of these properties necessarily, possess. Such orders are relatively simple or at least necessarily confined to such moderate degrees of complexity as the maker can still survey; they are usually concrete in the sense just mentioned that their existence can be intuitively perceived by inspection; and, finally, having been made deliberately, they invariably do (or at one time did) serve a purpose of the maker. None of these characteristics necessarily belong to a spontaneous order or cosmos. Its degree of complexity is not limited to what a human mind can master. Its existence need not manifest itself to our senses but may be based on purely abstract relations which we can only mentally reconstruct. And not having been made it cannot legitimately be said to have a particular purpose, although our awareness of its existence may be extremely important for of successful pursuit of a great variety of different purposes.
As mentioned in this paper, Locke and social epistemology is an improbable relation but . . .
Locke’s reputation as a sceptic regarding testimony, and the resultant mockery by epistemologists with social inclinations, is well known. C.A.J. Coady paints Locke as an extreme example of epistemological individualism; Frederick F. Schmitt argues that Locke regards testimony neither as a source of knowledge nor as a means to justify belief, whilst Michael Welbourne, in The Community of Knowledge (1981), depicts Lockean epistemology as fundamentally opposed to a social conception of knowledge; that he „could not even conceive of the possibility of a community of knowledge‟ (Welbourne: 1981, 303). This interpretation of Locke is flawed. Whilst Locke does not grant the honorific „knowledge to anything short of certainty, he nonetheless held what we would call „testimonial knowledge‟ in appropriate esteem. This can be shown by his careful distinction between testimony and mere received opinion. Furthermore, this distinction is dependent upon a knowledge community which enables hearers of testimony to access alternative accounts.
Here’s an interesting squib that references Hayek from Sapir Handelmanab who writes:
According to this perception, an effective peacemaking process becomes a discovery procedure. I was influenced by Friedrich Hayek perception of market competition. According to Hayek, an efficient competitive market, under a framework of general rules and institutions, creates a spontaneous order. In our context, one of the central questions is how to transform a destructive competition, an unproductive violent dialogue, to a constructive competition, negotiation by peaceful means. For a further discussion on Hayek’s perception of market competition as a vehicle for new discoveries, see Friedrich A. Hayek, “Competition as a Discovery Procedure,” in New Studies in Politics, Philosophy, Economics and the History of Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). For a further discussion on peacemaking as a constructive competition, see Handelman, Conflict and Peacemaking in Israel-Palestine.
Whatever difficulties one might find with Andrew’s eclectic philosophical reconciliation (queer theory, Catholicism, conservatism) he captures the essence of Oakeshott very well he in this “elevator speech.” Oakeshott’s so-called “conservatism” bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the ossified character attributed to conservatism by “conservatives” of a fundamentalist stripe. In any event, ideologies are far more fluid than is normally conceded in public discourse (check out Michael Freeden’s classic article on this).
Shapin’s London Review of Books review of Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science by Mary Jo Nye. (Both Hayek and Oakeshott are mentioned by Shapin).
Michael Polanyi lives on in the footnotes. If you want to invoke the idea of ‘tacit knowledge’, Polanyi is your reference of choice. You’ll probably cite his major book Personal Knowledge (1958), maybe the earlier Science, Faith and Society (1946), maybe the later The Tacit Dimension (1966). ‘We know more than we can tell’ was Polanyi’s dictum. We know how to ride a bicycle, but we can’t write down how to do it, at least not in a way that allows non-cyclists to read our instructions, get on their bikes and ride off. We can reliably pick out a familiar face in a crowd, but we can’t say just what it is about the face that we recognise. And, crucially, since Polanyi is now known mainly as a philosopher of science, a scientist can’t adequately describe how to do a bit of science through any version of formalised ‘Scientific Method’. Whether the craft is cooking, carpentry or chemistry, the apprentice learns by watching and doing. Where knowledge and skill are concerned, it’s not all talk.
Check out two forthcoming papers from Rob Rupert, one of the sharpest minds around:
1. Against Group Cognitive States (forthcoming in S. Chant and G. Preyer (eds.), From Individual to Collective Intentionality. No listing on OUP’s website yet).
English users are not fazed by such sentences as “Microsoft intends to develop a new operating system” and “England wants to retain the pound as its unit of currency.” We produce and consume such claims frequently and with ease. One might nevertheless wonder about their literal truth. Does Microsoft — the corporation itself — literally intend to develop a new operating system? Does England — as a single body — genuinely want to retain the pound as its unit of currency. More generally, it is a substantive philosophical and empirical question whether groups of individuals (who themselves instantiate mental states) instantiate mental states properly so called.
2. Keeping HEC in CHEC: On the Priority of Cognitive Systems
David Kaiser reviews Michael Polanyi and His Generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science by Mary Jo Nye.
Fifteen years ago, scientists, historians, and sociologists traded salvos in what was termed the “science wars.” Passions ran high; “social construction of science” became a battle cry. Critics like physicist Alan Sokal pointed an accusing finger at various humanists who had suggested that science was an inherently social phenomenon riven by rival interests rather than a rational pursuit of objective facts about the natural world. Some blamed the French sociologist Bruno Latour and his writings from the 1980s. Others highlighted members of the Edinburgh school of the sociology of scientif ic knowledge and their writings from the 1970s. Still others singled out Thomas Kuhn’s remarkably influential little treatise, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, first published in 1962.
