This strikes me as a great idea. Should we organize ourselves a party for the debate? Think we could get some department funding for it, maybe do it in a big room on campus with undergrads in attendance? Seems like it would be a good way to kick off the quarter and advertise philosophy to new undergrads.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Two Pragmatists? Two Pragmatisms: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama
Cross-posted at DM Smith. Some last minute, insomniac thoughts about the presidential debate. Maybe this isn't the best forum for this, since its pretty contentious political stuff I'm going to say. Hopefully you won't take it as rude, and you'll just take it as interesting. Let me know if you think I should take it down. Have a good Super-Tuesday!
Hillary Clinton, in recent debates and throughout her campaign, represents herself as the hard-headed pragmatist in the contest. In her opening remarks in the debate with Obama in Hollywood last Thursday, she said:
Music to my ears, in a way. This is certainly an attitude I'd like to see more often in politics---not big ideologies and grand visions, but tough problems and the gumption to get to work and solve them. Clinton gives us a stack of problems that we (in the reality-based community?) uncontroversially face: Iraq, Afghanistan, economic disparity, the health insurance gap, energy, and global warming. She's ready to talk about how to solve them.
(Though, of course, in the very first question, she says, "I believe absolutely passionately that
we must have universal health care. It is a moral responsibility..." Which makes it sound like an absolute vision, rather than a pragmatic problem-solution. Of course, this rhetoric is very useful, so it is not likely to disappear anytime soon, but I think we can be suitably deflationist about it in the context.)
Barack might seem, by contrast, to be the idealist in the race, and Clinton certainly wants to set him up as such, the naive, unexperienced idealist (though let's not mention that, if we're talking about first-hand political experience, he's got a heck of a lot on Clinton). Obama talks big talk about hope, about change, about new directions:
He pushes for a politics free from "special interests" and the influence of lobbyists as they function today. And yet, when asked to describe the major policy differences between himself and Senator Clinton, Senator Obama doesn't make the distinction as one of moral compass, or in terms of ideology. He makes careful points about the difficulties of policy: if you mandate health care, you may end up hurting those that you want to help. If you freeze interest rates, you may make things difficult for those you want to help. If the president meets with Iran, we may be able to resolve our differences in a way that doesn't cost lives and billions of dollars. These differences are based in careful analysis of policy and the practical problems therein, not in mere ideals and visions.
On the other hand, to mix up analysis and personal prejudice for a moment, the type of hard-headed policy analysis that Hillary Clinton is willing to engage in frankly terrifies me. Consider the much-publicized statement by Hillary in October last year:
Really, Hillary? All options? Would that include bombings? War with Iran? Nuking them? Clinton voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that approved the Bush administrations case for war with Iran, so that, in her words, we would have "leverage when we negotiate with them." This was not unlike her attitude in approving the war with Iraq. Recall her reaction to Mike Gravel, who exposed her in the September debate as voting for Kyl-Lieberman: she giggle, no, cackled at him. For his naivete? For not being willing to "put teeth" into our negotiations with Iran.
Unfortunately, we don't know what Obama would have done in this vote; he wasn't there. We know that Obama was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, whereas Clinton did not. And we know that he's in favor of more open negotiations with Iran. To try to be a little more removed for a moment, it is clear that Clinton is more willing to take a tough attitude to get what we want, to "do what it takes" to get the job done, whereas Obama is less willing to take the tough route.
While we might be inclined to regard the difference between Clinton's pragmatic attitude and Obama's idealism (perhaps, idealistic pacifism?), this seems like a mistake to me. I've come around to see the difference instead as that between a hard, unflinching pragmatism in Clinton and a hopeful, empathetic, softer pragmatism in Obama.
Let's return to the worry about hope from earlier. In another speech a few weeks ago in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama lays out part of what we might call his politics of hope that he has been talking about at least since the Democratic convention in 2004:
Far from being an exhortation to faith, or a naive ideal, Barack Obama's talk of hope is talk about moving forward, about finding a way to work together to achieve better things.
Richard Rorty also talked about hope:
And elsewhere, he compares Dewey and Foucault, arguing that while they were trying to do the same thing, Dewey did it better because he gave us room for hope, ungrounded and ungroundable though it may be, rather than attempting to make the very concept seem like nonsense.
We can look to hope, not just to the machinations of and struggle for power, or to whatever will give us "leverage" or "protect" us from threats.
Far from being a vice of idealism, hope is one of the paradigm virtues of the better kind of pragmatism of Dewey and Rorty.
A crucial component of Obama's politics of hope is "unity."
In his MLK Sermon, Obama quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
In order for hope to become efficacious, we need unity. We need to work together to achieve our country. In his discussions of "hope" and "unity," Obama sets himself up, probably without knowing much about it, as the heir to the democratic ideals of Dewey. His is the kind of politics I would want to call pragmatist.
In contrast to Obama's politics of unity, we have Clinton's politics of "us vs. them." She outlines "the differences that we have with Republicans... because its really a stark difference." While Obama also outlines his differences with Republicans, he also talks about "bring[ing] Democrats [and] Republicans together to get it done." Clinton is eager to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a huge chunk of the Iranian government, a terrorist organization. Obama is eager to have talks and attempt to find a way to reconcile with Iran.
In contrast to Obama's politics of hope that we can work together towards what seemed impossible, we have Clinton's politics of playing tough, to force people who don't know better to do what's good for them, to force "the others" to get in line with our interests, or else.
Just the difference by itself is interesting. William James argued a century ago that temperament had a determining role in philosophy that was rarely recognized, and that the defining feature of pragmatism was that it mediated between the extremes of "tough-minded" (empiricistic) and "tender-minded" (rationalistic) temperaments. Of course, not long after he said it, it was pointed out that within pragmatism as a movement, there were still leanings towards one temperament or another. And there were even wider swings within pragmatism of political temperament. It is interesting just to look at not only the degree which pragmatism rather than moral absolutism plays such a role in the major democratic hopefuls, but also the quite different forms that pragmatism takes between them, what we might call their very different temperaments.
There's always a time for playing tough, and there are cases in which we have to do what's good for people against their will, when the other options have run out. But these should be the exception, not the rule. In my view, now isn't the time for an approach of getting tough, of us-vs-them. We need a softer, more ameliorative, more hopeful pragmatism in 2008, and it seems like Barack Obama is more likely to deliver it.
Hillary Clinton, in recent debates and throughout her campaign, represents herself as the hard-headed pragmatist in the contest. In her opening remarks in the debate with Obama in Hollywood last Thursday, she said:
... the next president will walk into the Oval Office, and waiting there will be a stack of problems ... I think it's imperative we have a problem-solver, that we roll up our sleeves. I'm offering that kind of approach, because I think that Americans are ready once again to know that there isn't anything we can't do if we put our minds to it.
Music to my ears, in a way. This is certainly an attitude I'd like to see more often in politics---not big ideologies and grand visions, but tough problems and the gumption to get to work and solve them. Clinton gives us a stack of problems that we (in the reality-based community?) uncontroversially face: Iraq, Afghanistan, economic disparity, the health insurance gap, energy, and global warming. She's ready to talk about how to solve them.
(Though, of course, in the very first question, she says, "I believe absolutely passionately that
we must have universal health care. It is a moral responsibility..." Which makes it sound like an absolute vision, rather than a pragmatic problem-solution. Of course, this rhetoric is very useful, so it is not likely to disappear anytime soon, but I think we can be suitably deflationist about it in the context.)
Barack might seem, by contrast, to be the idealist in the race, and Clinton certainly wants to set him up as such, the naive, unexperienced idealist (though let's not mention that, if we're talking about first-hand political experience, he's got a heck of a lot on Clinton). Obama talks big talk about hope, about change, about new directions:
And at this moment, the question is: How do we take the country in a new direction? How do we get past the divisions that have prevented us from solving these problems year after year after year? I don't think the choice is between black and white or it's about gender or religion. I don't think it's about young or old. I think what is at stake right now is whether we are looking backwards or we are looking forwards.
He pushes for a politics free from "special interests" and the influence of lobbyists as they function today. And yet, when asked to describe the major policy differences between himself and Senator Clinton, Senator Obama doesn't make the distinction as one of moral compass, or in terms of ideology. He makes careful points about the difficulties of policy: if you mandate health care, you may end up hurting those that you want to help. If you freeze interest rates, you may make things difficult for those you want to help. If the president meets with Iran, we may be able to resolve our differences in a way that doesn't cost lives and billions of dollars. These differences are based in careful analysis of policy and the practical problems therein, not in mere ideals and visions.
On the other hand, to mix up analysis and personal prejudice for a moment, the type of hard-headed policy analysis that Hillary Clinton is willing to engage in frankly terrifies me. Consider the much-publicized statement by Hillary in October last year:
Iran must conform to its nonproliferation obligations and must not be permitted to build or acquire nuclear weapons. If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table. (my emphasis)
Really, Hillary? All options? Would that include bombings? War with Iran? Nuking them? Clinton voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that approved the Bush administrations case for war with Iran, so that, in her words, we would have "leverage when we negotiate with them." This was not unlike her attitude in approving the war with Iraq. Recall her reaction to Mike Gravel, who exposed her in the September debate as voting for Kyl-Lieberman: she giggle, no, cackled at him. For his naivete? For not being willing to "put teeth" into our negotiations with Iran.
Unfortunately, we don't know what Obama would have done in this vote; he wasn't there. We know that Obama was opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning, whereas Clinton did not. And we know that he's in favor of more open negotiations with Iran. To try to be a little more removed for a moment, it is clear that Clinton is more willing to take a tough attitude to get what we want, to "do what it takes" to get the job done, whereas Obama is less willing to take the tough route.
While we might be inclined to regard the difference between Clinton's pragmatic attitude and Obama's idealism (perhaps, idealistic pacifism?), this seems like a mistake to me. I've come around to see the difference instead as that between a hard, unflinching pragmatism in Clinton and a hopeful, empathetic, softer pragmatism in Obama.
Let's return to the worry about hope from earlier. In another speech a few weeks ago in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Obama lays out part of what we might call his politics of hope that he has been talking about at least since the Democratic convention in 2004:
Some are scornful about my message of hope. "He's talking about hope again. He's so idealistic and naive. He's a 'hope-monger'." Love, education, and hope were my birthright. Hope is not blind optimism, it is not ignorance of the barriers and obstacles and hazards that stand in your way. Hope is just the opposite. Nothing worthwhile has happened in this country unless somebody, somewhere decided to hope. (1/20/2008, Ebenezer Baptist Church)
Far from being an exhortation to faith, or a naive ideal, Barack Obama's talk of hope is talk about moving forward, about finding a way to work together to achieve better things.
Richard Rorty also talked about hope:
[The Right] sees the Left's struggle for social justice as mere troublemaking, as utopian foolishness. The Left, by definition, is the party of hope. It insists that our nation remains unachieved...
[Dewey and Whitman] wanted to put hope for a casteless and classless America in the place traditionally occupied by knowledge of the will of God... it is a matter of replacing shared knowledge of what is already real with social hope for what might become real. (Achieving Our Country, pp. 14, 18, my emphasis)
And elsewhere, he compares Dewey and Foucault, arguing that while they were trying to do the same thing, Dewey did it better because he gave us room for hope, ungrounded and ungroundable though it may be, rather than attempting to make the very concept seem like nonsense.
We can look to hope, not just to the machinations of and struggle for power, or to whatever will give us "leverage" or "protect" us from threats.
Far from being a vice of idealism, hope is one of the paradigm virtues of the better kind of pragmatism of Dewey and Rorty.
A crucial component of Obama's politics of hope is "unity."
In his MLK Sermon, Obama quoted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
"Unity is the great need of the hour" is what King said. Unity is how we shall overcome.
...
That is the unity---the hard-earned unity---that we need right now. It is that effort, and that determination, that can transform blind optimism into hope---the hope to imagine, and work for, and fight for what seemed impossible before. (1/20/2008, Ebenezer Baptist Church)
In order for hope to become efficacious, we need unity. We need to work together to achieve our country. In his discussions of "hope" and "unity," Obama sets himself up, probably without knowing much about it, as the heir to the democratic ideals of Dewey. His is the kind of politics I would want to call pragmatist.
In contrast to Obama's politics of unity, we have Clinton's politics of "us vs. them." She outlines "the differences that we have with Republicans... because its really a stark difference." While Obama also outlines his differences with Republicans, he also talks about "bring[ing] Democrats [and] Republicans together to get it done." Clinton is eager to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a huge chunk of the Iranian government, a terrorist organization. Obama is eager to have talks and attempt to find a way to reconcile with Iran.
In contrast to Obama's politics of hope that we can work together towards what seemed impossible, we have Clinton's politics of playing tough, to force people who don't know better to do what's good for them, to force "the others" to get in line with our interests, or else.
Just the difference by itself is interesting. William James argued a century ago that temperament had a determining role in philosophy that was rarely recognized, and that the defining feature of pragmatism was that it mediated between the extremes of "tough-minded" (empiricistic) and "tender-minded" (rationalistic) temperaments. Of course, not long after he said it, it was pointed out that within pragmatism as a movement, there were still leanings towards one temperament or another. And there were even wider swings within pragmatism of political temperament. It is interesting just to look at not only the degree which pragmatism rather than moral absolutism plays such a role in the major democratic hopefuls, but also the quite different forms that pragmatism takes between them, what we might call their very different temperaments.
There's always a time for playing tough, and there are cases in which we have to do what's good for people against their will, when the other options have run out. But these should be the exception, not the rule. In my view, now isn't the time for an approach of getting tough, of us-vs-them. We need a softer, more ameliorative, more hopeful pragmatism in 2008, and it seems like Barack Obama is more likely to deliver it.
Monday, February 04, 2008
What's so great about experimental philosophy?
Since we’ve been implicated by the New York Times, I think it’s time to have a chat about the notion of “experimental philosophy.” Understanding and interpretation of important philosophical practices regularly follow their reception as revolutionary; this is no exception.
There is a conversation starting about what exactly separates EP from traditional philosophical work that we ought to be in on. And a literature building under that mantle. And EP, it seems to me is being treated as a revolution (in the Khunian sense) for philosophical practice. I gather this from a number of sources: the institutionalization in separate groups who identify themselves by the practice of EP (EPL, for example, but also on the internet); the increasing collaboration of philosophers with empirical scientists; and revolutionary rhetoric (yeah! X-phi!) about the defects of contemporary “analytic” philosophy (this ranges from challenges posed in reviewed journals to clearly revolutionary imagery like armchairs being burned).
Part of what interests me here is whether the revolution label is appropriate and why, since I for one am convinced that it is, in fact, being applied. But figuring this out requires understanding what exactly experimental philosophy is supposed to represent—how it changes or challenges philosophical practice and what it proposes in its place. Or if it doesn’t challenge traditional methodology, content, etc., then what does it mean that the label is being used with bated breath. I’m going to lay out a few obvious issues here to get a discussion going, but the target should be determining:
(A) What “experimental philosophy” picks out
(B) Whether it is a revolution for philosophy or just “normal science”
We should try to answer these questions before it becomes embarrassing to ask them (perhaps it already has … but I’ll bite the bullet):
1. Experimental Philosophy as a Revolution
Wikipedia has it that EP means two things: the incorporation of empirical research into philosophical analysis, and a preference for opinion polling of public intuitions rather than reliance on the philosopher’s own intuitions. These may not be the defining features of EP, and comments on this post should do their best to suggest better ones. But nor are they way off. At least one claim of EP is that the relationship between the empirical sciences and philosophy should be strengthened.
This however strikes me as distantly removed from any kind of radical shift in philosophical investigation. Is it really a surprise that good philosophical analysis takes into account empirical data when it’s relevant? I feel like incorporation of empirical science into philosophy is as at least as old as Aristotle, but probably includes the very first pre-Socratic poets challenging each other on how to characterize the arche. If this is the big point then armchair burning seems like rather unbecoming adolescent angst. Why isn’t philosophy that incorporates or is sensitive to empirical data, when relevant, just the ongoing standard of what makes good philosophy? Here’s the somewhat grumpy way to put the point: if EP is any kind of a challenge or objection, which I think it’s pretty clearly supposed to be sometimes, then why isn’t it just a straw man or significant only to long-dead logical positivists (pache Beck)? If it’s not posturing as a revolution, then why all the press and why all the revolutionary language?
2. Philosophical Research
On to Wikipedia’s second characterization. The two flagships of the popular understanding of EP are philosophers’ use of fMRI’s and surveying non-philosophers about their intuitions. While these two technologies certainly yield interesting and important they seem limited in familiar ways. First off, the scope of their relevance seems like an interesting and contentious philosophical issue. Is it a claim of EP that the application of particular empirical technologies is wider than supposed? And then there are the familiar epistemic worries, especially with neuroscience. As a kind of meta-analysis, it might be interesting to compare the philosophical conflicts that arose around historically failed empirical methods of analysis (e.g. phrenology) and the epistemological arguments supporting fMRI’s (there, that ought to rub someone the wrong way).
Surveys also raise some difficult issues. As far as I can tell, they are most challenging when they show either that largely settled philosophical intuitions are wildly off. This could either be if surveys yield no results or the results are similar and radically different than our intuitions. I haven’t seen either of these happen yet, but that doesn’t mean they won’t. We’ve seen surveys get used for questions about free will and responsibility, but the upshot is unclear since I think that our philosophical intuitions about these things are just as scattered as those of the people polled. Are surveys of non-philosophers valuable? Why?
Then there’s the problem of experimental design and philosopher-directed research. Philosophers are not trained in empirical sciences generally. But perhaps it is a claim of EP that they should be. This is probably what the encouragement of increased interaction with the sciences championed by EP is supposed to suggest. But philosophers so far have been more than happy to engage in survey design, which I bet they think is closer to what they do already. You have to be trained to use an fMRI machine, but anyone can write up a survey, right? Survey design, however, is a science and it’s pretty clear that you can illicit false positives and negatives with less-than-carefully written surveys. How should philosophers respond to this in their research?
3. The application of EP
Does the trend toward EP have an impact on important social institutions or policy? Take, for example, the buzz about “neurolaw.” Some have suggested that fMRI scanning will change the law by challenging our conceptions of autonomous action or by making it easier to identify when someone (especially with a very untrustworthy agent like a small child) is telling the truth. Does neuroscience really have normative implications for law and society? That depends on whether the relevant issues within these areas are touched by the implications of neuroscience. If, as Stephen Morse thinks, the concept of the person within the law “flows from the nature of the law itself,” then maybe not so much, EVEN IF the neuroscience generates a new and convincing notion of the person. Can you think of other examples where the EP’s are suggesting there will be impacts on our institutions on account of their research? How should we regard these claims?
I’ve gone on a bit here. Please don’t feel that you have to answer in kind – any thoughts about how to best characterize and understand EP (especially about its putative revolutionariness). And don’t misunderstand my point in writing this. I’m not digging my heels in against EP, as far as I can tell I count as a non-experimenting experimental philosopher, at least insofar as my own research on responsibility relies on developmental psychology. The point of this was to simply raise the definitional question which is oh-so-important for any budding philosophical movement (if this is one).
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Common Sense, Science, and "Evidence for Use"
A crucial point that follows on the discussion of Dewey's pattern of inquiry is the relationship between scientific and commonsense inquiry. In this post, I'll be presupposing a lot about Dewey, but hopefully it won't matter too much. By commonsense inquiry, all I mean is inquiry into everyday affairs of use, practical quandaries in a narrow sense. It is commonsense inquiry to which the discussion of the pattern of inquiry that I discuss in my dissertation, and I discussed at my GPC talk in the department, most clearly and obviously pertains. No one could mistake a commonsense problem for a paper problem. However, if the account at hand is to explain genuine scientific inquiry as well as commonsense inquiry, and to give a better account of science that other accounts in philosophy of science, then the relationship between the two types, whatever similarities and differences there might be, must be specified in a clear and compelling way, and it must be shown that the main points of these two chapters apply just as well to science, and if any modification need be made, that must be specified as well.
The difference between the two modes of inquiry is clear from the start. Dewey gives us a basic characterization:
Dewey sharpens the distinction a bit by suggestion that it is, fundamentally,
While this is clearly true, so far as it goes, it doesn't help us to understand how scientific inquiry can yet be genuine inquiry in the sense that we've discussed so far. That is, we need some explanation about the continuity of scientific and common sense inquiry such that, despite scientific inquiry not being directly involved in the immediate environment of the agent, it can nevertheless be seen as a genuine inquiry.
The problem is, in essence, a problem of the relation of the problems and subject-matters of the two kinds of inquiry:
As a first pass at an explanation of their relationship, consider the following story:
A young auto mechanic, call him Rob, is confronted by a problematic situation involving the engine of a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle. He has proceeded from the initial indeterminate situation which confronted the owner of the car and was communicated to him when the car was brought to his shop, to the point of locating the source of the problem somewhere in the engine, though a more specific and adequate determination of the problem has not yet been reached. Luckily, Rob is something of an expert in engine repair, especially in vintage German cars. He has even spent some of his spare time studying up on the theory of combustion engines from the field of mechanical engineering, and while his amateur knowledge is far from systematic, it occasionally helps him to solve certain prickly problems.
Normally, in the course of engine repair, Rob might use various pieces of this accumulated knowledge as ideas, as theoretical resources that might help resolve the problem. Suppose things don't go quite as swimmingly in this case, however. Rob, at first convinced that he is guilty of some major confusion, dives into the relevant textbook on the theory of combustion engines, and as far as he is able to determine in his personal study, he has understood the relevant theoretical ideas, and yet they fail to function as advertised.
Now, for Rob, the theoretical materials in question themselves cause a new problematic situation. If he chooses to pursue the resolution of that problem, he must begin a new inquiry, related to but distinct from the inquiry into the concrete car engine. The inquiry is into a difficulty in the theoretical materials, as they play their role in the practice of analyzing and diagnosing problems in automobile engines. The problem at hand is no longer with the car engine, or more properly, in the practice of using car engines, but rather in the theory of combustion engines, or rather, in Rob's practice of using that theory for solving the problems that it is putatively designed to help solve. Its problematic character depends crucially on a real feeling of doubtfulness produced when they disrupt the practice in which Rob is attempting to use them.
We might imagine that Rob gets an education in mechanical engineering and goes on to do important work in the field on the topic of combustion engines. He is devoting the major portion of his efforts now in investigating the problematic situation that involves these ideas from the theory of combustion engines. And one might imagine a similar story that moves from combustion-engine engineering to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to higher-level physics and so on, though of course such extensions strain credulity if we're talking about a single person.
Now having resolved the problem in physics, Rob might never actually return to the "lower-level" problems from which this one grew. Nevertheless, Rob has solved an important problem, one that originated way back in the activity of car repair, and it is not diminished in any degree if he chooses to stop there. In any case, the original customer who brought her old Beetle to him is probably not counting on his return. Rob's story serves to make vivid how a highly abstract and theoretical pursuit, such as the working out of certain improvements in the general theories of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, might be connected to and continuous with those commonsense, narrowly practical inquiries which more obviously fit the pattern and tests of genuine pragmatic inquiry. It also shows us that such high-level inquiries nonetheless fit the basic patten: they begin in a qualitatively felt problematic situation, they require the determination of a specific problem, the problem is pragmatic in the sense that it arises from the disruption of a kind of practice, etc.
Now, this just-so story is no literal description of how we get from commonsense to scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, it makes it clear how current scientific practices might be continuous with commonsense inquiry, and it shows how they might be counted as genuine examples of inquiry. In order to make the example more realistic, one might consider how the story could be extended from a story about a single agent, to a story about a community.
Dewey describes the fundamental continuity between the subject-matters of science and common sense in this way:
Which is to say, the theory of combustion engines is about the combustion engines that are actually used in car engines, and which car mechanics must repair, despite the fact that it is abstract and technical. And the theory of thermodynamics is itself about the quality of heat that plays a role in everyday affairs, despite the fact that it treats heat in a highly abstract, technical, and quantitative way. Despite the fact that thermodynamics may well abstract away from qualitative features of heat that are absolutely crucial to the meaning that heat has for common sense affairs of use-enjoyment (just as optical theory abstracts away from the place that light and color play in social and fine arts, the daily routine of waking, business, going about one's business, and sleeping, and the practices of dyeing, rug-making, and so on), it nevertheless should provide help in those pursuits.
As to how the current scientific disciplines came into existence, that is a historical question that probably contains as many contingent, arbitrary factors as ones that might be explicitly justified. On the other hand, the reason that they continue to exist has much to do with their ability to provide systematic ideas, liberated in a sense from their particular circumstances, which can replace the highly parochial and unreliable ideas that had previously played a role in common inquiry. As Dewey says,
In the story about Rob, the relevant scientific disciplines may already be in place. But consider a similar scenario outlined by Dewey:
And so we move from the common sense purposes of husbandry and agriculture to scientific astronomy and horology. Dewey suggests we might tell a similar story moving from medicine and the practical needs of healing to the development of physiology and anatomy.
We might consider the mark of science to be its systematicity,[4] then, and its major aim as achieving coherence and consistency in providing resources for the resolution of problems of more specific, concrete situations.
While something like the story of Rob may be helpful in justifying the practices of higher-level science, it should not be the only story about how scientific problems can be counted as genuine. Once we recognize that science is an relatively autonomous practice, we can see that a wide variety of problems might arise in the course of its pursuit. A working physicist may encounter a variety of perplexities that are not tied to specific problems of application, such as the ones that Rob dealt with, and yet they might be quite genuine. For example, a practitioner may disturbed by the lack of consistency between two fundamental theories in physics, or the lack of a comprehensive theory of measurement in quantum physics, or the inchoate and inconsistent uses of the concept "species" in biology, and this may lead them to investigate these problems, though nothing is immediately at stake in terms of everyday practices of use. This is, in part, because for applicability to be both wide and consistent, the theory must be both internally coherent and consistent and clear in its application.
There is some reason to think that the bottom-up story I've told, from "application" (i.e., use) up to theory and back down again, has some plausibility. Frequently, technology has progressed independently of any science that might explain how or justify that it works, for example, prior to the existence of systematic and applicable theory in the area, and it would seem that even in areas where the science is quite mature, related technology might progress largely independent of specific reference to the theory, especially the cutting edge.
For example, consider Steven Gulie's account of how he was treated for Parkinson's using implanted electrodes ("A Shock to the System," WIRED Magazine vol 15.03, March 2007). The surgery implants two sets of electrodes near the subthalamic nucleus, an small cluster of neurons near the center of the brain. The electrodes are hooked up to a kind of pacemaker-like computer than is implanted under the collarbone, and delivers a constant flow of electricity to the electrodes. A variety of options on voltage and number of contact points activated can control the exact area stimulated. This stimulation counteracts the disease, which is caused by the death of cells in substantia nigra, where the neurotransmitter dopamine is produced.
The FDA approved this procedure for treatment of Parkinson's in 2002, which meant that it met the government standards for being an effective treatment, though long-term side-effects are unknown. What is certain is that it is far more effective, with fewer side effeccts, than the older chemical treatment, which is taking high doses of a L-dopa, a building block of dopamine, in attempts to spur dopamine production. On the effectiveness of his own implant, Gulie writes,
And while Parkinson's is a degenerative disease (the dopamine-producing cells keep dying), patients four years after the surgery still required an average of fifty percept less L-dopa than they did prior to it.
And yet, in terms of the science behind the treatment, there are more questions than answers. Anyone familiar with the neuroscience knows that our knowledge is largely incomplete. Even those philosophers who tell us to look to neuroscience when worrying about philosophical problems do so with a bevy of warnings about the tentativeness and incompleteness of the science, and a litany of promissory notes about future developments. What systematic treatments we have are highly idealized and largely unrelated to specific application and fine-grained detail, and what we do know at a more fine-grained level is very narrow to specific neuronal and sub-neuronal structures and low-level systems.
In terms of his procedure, Guiles writes,
In terms of programming the stimulator to effectively control the symptoms, Guiles at first speaks charitably: "Getting the settings right is midway between an art and a science." But his further descriptions show a mounting frustration, "Ultimately, getting the system to work comes down to trial and error," and "Finally, after three months of tinkering..." Guiles goes back and forth between neurologists, goes through months of trial and error, and has many frustrations along the way. Clearly, no sorts of systematic knowledge yet guide this part of the process. There are, according to Guiles, 1,200 permutations of the settings of the device, and the hope is that one of them will work out. And yet, in the end, for Guiles, and for many other patients, it does!
This modern example is complemented by a variety of examples employed by Feyerabend to call into question the view that development of science is univocally beneficial and progressive. On the one hand, Feyerabend points to the variety of specific knowledge of materials, how to manipulate them and use them, that was possessed by common people and alchemists prior to the rise of Chemistry, which was originally quite impoverished in terms of specific knowledge about how to manipulate various materials, relative to those traditions it purported to overthrow. Likewise, folk or traditional medicine in various parts of the world was able to do much that scientific medicine could not do, and some things that it still has yet to reproduce.
One might likewise point to the relative success of local, subsistence agriculture in poorer cultures, in terms of meeting basic needs of the populace, as compared to what happens when entities like the World Bank come in to attempt to develop these countries. Charlie, environmental advisor to the President in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Sixty Days and Counting, says, in an angry diatribe at a meeting between the World Bank and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
In all these cases---cutting edge neurosurgery, the knowledge of materials and medicine in traditional culture, and subsistence agriculture---able use is made prior to, or independent of, systematic knowledge in the relevant science, whether that be as-yet-unrealized neuroscience, early chemistry, scientific medicine, or modern agricultural science and capitalist/neoclassical economic theory.
Compare discussions in philosophy of science of applications or use. The traditional answer is Euclidean: applications are deduced from a combination of general principles and specific conditions of the situation. To launch a rocket to the moon, one plugs the weight of the payload and the various properties of the Earth, Moon, and other relevant planetary bodies into Newton's laws, to determine the force necessary to launch the rocket (and further such derivations are necessary when seeking a source of the force, such as chemistry for burning fuel, and so on).
Or consider what happens in "science lab" classes in college, where one follows directions from a manual or instructor to set up an "experiment,"[Though it should be clear from the discussion of the necessity of experiments, that such demonstrations lack the force and function of real experiments.] then derives an expected result from the relevant theory. Finally, one checks the results against the expectations, and does it over again if one doesn't get the "right" answer!
The traditional answer presumes that the lab demonstration generalizes to all of science application. We know that this is problematic for a number of reasons. First, for purely logical reasons, the straighforward deductive schema for confirmation/falsification has given way to confirmation holism, so that even those who would give something like the traditional answer must admit that a variety of auxiliary assumptions play a role in such deductions. In the context of justification, this means that no evidence by itself can clearly confirm or refute a general principle, and in the context of use, it means that there is a certain slippage already between principle and application.
But more recent developments have caused further reasons to doubt the standard story. For one, there are many reasons to doubt the picture of scientific theory as a system of statements from which consequences can be deductively derived. This has led to an explosion of alternatives, from models and modeling (Suppes, Giere, van Frassen), to a mangle of practices (Pickering), to cognitive maps (Churchland). Given the complexity of the current field as compared with the traditional picture, it is not at all clear that the present thesis, which involves a significant independence of specific use from general theory, given that they occur in different kinds of inquiries, is so implausible.
A very contemporary discussion which the present picture might be revealingly contrasted with has been spear-headed by Nancy Cartwright. Cartwright asks us to look beyond the traditional questions of how is a general claim in science justified or confirmed by evidence, and how do we have evidence for a particular use of that claim. The question takes on board certain developments from recent work, and so assumes a slippage between theory and application. But it also assumes a certain temporal development that I'm trying to deny: first, a theory is justified by evidence, then we try to apply it in the various fields.
Evidence
On the view discussed here, no such simple story is available. There are many options available. There could be a history of more or less unsystematic inquiries into matters of use, which eventually lead to a systematization of theory, which then helps guide further inquiries of application. Or, in the process of inquiring into general questions, we may discover a range of potential applications which we mark as future tests of the theory. What is clear is that, in an inquiry into some potential matter of use, a theory can never wear its usability on its sleeve; it is a matter to be decided by inquiry, not one decided ahead of time. If it is decided ahead of time, then there is no inquiry; but there is also no question about whether there is evidence for its usability. It is simply used unreflectively.
The difference between the two modes of inquiry is clear from the start. Dewey gives us a basic characterization:
[Commonsense problems] may be reduced to problems of use and enjoyment of the objects, activities and products, material and ideological, (or "ideal") of the world in which the individuals live. Such inquiries are, accordingly, different from those which have knowledge as their goal. The attainment of knowledge of some things is necessarily invovled in common sense inquiries, but it occurs for the sake of settlement of some issue of use and enjoyment, and not, as in scientific inquiry, for its own sake. In the latter, there is no direct involvement of human beings in the immediate environment---a fact which carries with it the ground of distinguishing the theoretical from the practical.
[Common sense inquiries] are those which continuously arise in the conduct of life and the ordering of day-by-day behavior. They are such as constantly arise in the development of the young as they learn to make their way in the physical and social environments in which they live; they occur and recur in the life-activity of every adult, whether farmer, artisan, professional man, law-maker or administrator... On their very face they need to be discriminated from inquiries that are distinctively scientific, or that aim at attaining confirmed facts, "laws" and theories. (LW 12:66-7)
Dewey sharpens the distinction a bit by suggestion that it is, fundamentally,
that between significances and meanings that are determined in reference to pretty direct existential application and those that are determined on the ground of their systematic relations of coherence and consistency with one another. (LW 12:71)
While this is clearly true, so far as it goes, it doesn't help us to understand how scientific inquiry can yet be genuine inquiry in the sense that we've discussed so far. That is, we need some explanation about the continuity of scientific and common sense inquiry such that, despite scientific inquiry not being directly involved in the immediate environment of the agent, it can nevertheless be seen as a genuine inquiry.
The problem is, in essence, a problem of the relation of the problems and subject-matters of the two kinds of inquiry:
In saying that [that the difference between common sense and science] is logical [not metaphysical or epistemological], it is affirmed that the question at issue is that of the relation to each other of different kinds of problems, since difference in the type of problem demands different emphases in inquiry. It is because of this fact that different logical forms accrue to common sense and scientific objects... the question... is that of the relation to each other of the subject-matters of practical use and concrete enjoyments and of scientific conclusions. (LW 12:71)
As a first pass at an explanation of their relationship, consider the following story:
A young auto mechanic, call him Rob, is confronted by a problematic situation involving the engine of a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle. He has proceeded from the initial indeterminate situation which confronted the owner of the car and was communicated to him when the car was brought to his shop, to the point of locating the source of the problem somewhere in the engine, though a more specific and adequate determination of the problem has not yet been reached. Luckily, Rob is something of an expert in engine repair, especially in vintage German cars. He has even spent some of his spare time studying up on the theory of combustion engines from the field of mechanical engineering, and while his amateur knowledge is far from systematic, it occasionally helps him to solve certain prickly problems.
Normally, in the course of engine repair, Rob might use various pieces of this accumulated knowledge as ideas, as theoretical resources that might help resolve the problem. Suppose things don't go quite as swimmingly in this case, however. Rob, at first convinced that he is guilty of some major confusion, dives into the relevant textbook on the theory of combustion engines, and as far as he is able to determine in his personal study, he has understood the relevant theoretical ideas, and yet they fail to function as advertised.
Now, for Rob, the theoretical materials in question themselves cause a new problematic situation. If he chooses to pursue the resolution of that problem, he must begin a new inquiry, related to but distinct from the inquiry into the concrete car engine. The inquiry is into a difficulty in the theoretical materials, as they play their role in the practice of analyzing and diagnosing problems in automobile engines. The problem at hand is no longer with the car engine, or more properly, in the practice of using car engines, but rather in the theory of combustion engines, or rather, in Rob's practice of using that theory for solving the problems that it is putatively designed to help solve. Its problematic character depends crucially on a real feeling of doubtfulness produced when they disrupt the practice in which Rob is attempting to use them.
We might imagine that Rob gets an education in mechanical engineering and goes on to do important work in the field on the topic of combustion engines. He is devoting the major portion of his efforts now in investigating the problematic situation that involves these ideas from the theory of combustion engines. And one might imagine a similar story that moves from combustion-engine engineering to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to higher-level physics and so on, though of course such extensions strain credulity if we're talking about a single person.
Now having resolved the problem in physics, Rob might never actually return to the "lower-level" problems from which this one grew. Nevertheless, Rob has solved an important problem, one that originated way back in the activity of car repair, and it is not diminished in any degree if he chooses to stop there. In any case, the original customer who brought her old Beetle to him is probably not counting on his return. Rob's story serves to make vivid how a highly abstract and theoretical pursuit, such as the working out of certain improvements in the general theories of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, might be connected to and continuous with those commonsense, narrowly practical inquiries which more obviously fit the pattern and tests of genuine pragmatic inquiry. It also shows us that such high-level inquiries nonetheless fit the basic patten: they begin in a qualitatively felt problematic situation, they require the determination of a specific problem, the problem is pragmatic in the sense that it arises from the disruption of a kind of practice, etc.
Now, this just-so story is no literal description of how we get from commonsense to scientific inquiry. Nevertheless, it makes it clear how current scientific practices might be continuous with commonsense inquiry, and it shows how they might be counted as genuine examples of inquiry. In order to make the example more realistic, one might consider how the story could be extended from a story about a single agent, to a story about a community.
Dewey describes the fundamental continuity between the subject-matters of science and common sense in this way:
In the first place, science takes its departure of necessity from the qualitative objects, processes, and instruments of the common sense world of use and concrete enjoyments and sufferings. The scientific theory of colors and light is extremely abstract and technical. But it is about the colors and light involved in everyday affairs. (LW 12:76)
Which is to say, the theory of combustion engines is about the combustion engines that are actually used in car engines, and which car mechanics must repair, despite the fact that it is abstract and technical. And the theory of thermodynamics is itself about the quality of heat that plays a role in everyday affairs, despite the fact that it treats heat in a highly abstract, technical, and quantitative way. Despite the fact that thermodynamics may well abstract away from qualitative features of heat that are absolutely crucial to the meaning that heat has for common sense affairs of use-enjoyment (just as optical theory abstracts away from the place that light and color play in social and fine arts, the daily routine of waking, business, going about one's business, and sleeping, and the practices of dyeing, rug-making, and so on), it nevertheless should provide help in those pursuits.
As to how the current scientific disciplines came into existence, that is a historical question that probably contains as many contingent, arbitrary factors as ones that might be explicitly justified. On the other hand, the reason that they continue to exist has much to do with their ability to provide systematic ideas, liberated in a sense from their particular circumstances, which can replace the highly parochial and unreliable ideas that had previously played a role in common inquiry. As Dewey says,
Gradually and by processes that are more or less tortuous and originally unplanned, definite technical processes and instrumentalities are formed and transmitted. Information about things, their properties and behaviors, is amassed, independently of any particular immediate application. It becomes increasingly remote from the situations of use and enjoyment in which it originated. There is then a background of materials and operations available for the development of what we term science, although there is still no sharp dividing line between common sense and science. (LW 12:77)
In the story about Rob, the relevant scientific disciplines may already be in place. But consider a similar scenario outlined by Dewey:
For purposes of illustration, it may be supposed that primitive astronomy and primitive methods of keeping track of time (closely connected with astronomical observations) grew out of the practical necessities of groups with herds in care of animals with respect to mating and reproduction, and of agricultural groups with reference to sowing, tilling and reaping. Observation of the change of position of constellations and stars, of the relation of the length of daylight to the sun's place in relation to the constellations along the line of the equinox provided the required information. Instrumental devices were developed in order that the observations might be made; definite techniques for using the instruments followed.
Measurement of angles of inclunation was a partical part of meeting a practical need... something of this general kind certainly effected the transition from what we call common sense to what we call science. (LW 12:77)
And so we move from the common sense purposes of husbandry and agriculture to scientific astronomy and horology. Dewey suggests we might tell a similar story moving from medicine and the practical needs of healing to the development of physiology and anatomy.
We might consider the mark of science to be its systematicity,[4] then, and its major aim as achieving coherence and consistency in providing resources for the resolution of problems of more specific, concrete situations.
While something like the story of Rob may be helpful in justifying the practices of higher-level science, it should not be the only story about how scientific problems can be counted as genuine. Once we recognize that science is an relatively autonomous practice, we can see that a wide variety of problems might arise in the course of its pursuit. A working physicist may encounter a variety of perplexities that are not tied to specific problems of application, such as the ones that Rob dealt with, and yet they might be quite genuine. For example, a practitioner may disturbed by the lack of consistency between two fundamental theories in physics, or the lack of a comprehensive theory of measurement in quantum physics, or the inchoate and inconsistent uses of the concept "species" in biology, and this may lead them to investigate these problems, though nothing is immediately at stake in terms of everyday practices of use. This is, in part, because for applicability to be both wide and consistent, the theory must be both internally coherent and consistent and clear in its application.
There is some reason to think that the bottom-up story I've told, from "application" (i.e., use) up to theory and back down again, has some plausibility. Frequently, technology has progressed independently of any science that might explain how or justify that it works, for example, prior to the existence of systematic and applicable theory in the area, and it would seem that even in areas where the science is quite mature, related technology might progress largely independent of specific reference to the theory, especially the cutting edge.
For example, consider Steven Gulie's account of how he was treated for Parkinson's using implanted electrodes ("A Shock to the System," WIRED Magazine vol 15.03, March 2007). The surgery implants two sets of electrodes near the subthalamic nucleus, an small cluster of neurons near the center of the brain. The electrodes are hooked up to a kind of pacemaker-like computer than is implanted under the collarbone, and delivers a constant flow of electricity to the electrodes. A variety of options on voltage and number of contact points activated can control the exact area stimulated. This stimulation counteracts the disease, which is caused by the death of cells in substantia nigra, where the neurotransmitter dopamine is produced.
The FDA approved this procedure for treatment of Parkinson's in 2002, which meant that it met the government standards for being an effective treatment, though long-term side-effects are unknown. What is certain is that it is far more effective, with fewer side effeccts, than the older chemical treatment, which is taking high doses of a L-dopa, a building block of dopamine, in attempts to spur dopamine production. On the effectiveness of his own implant, Gulie writes,
[M]y body is almost free of symptoms. With the stimulator turned off, a Parkinson's test shows 20 significant impairments. With the stimulator on, it drops to two. Add just a touch of L-dopa and it drops to zero.
... It's been five months since the surgery, but it has finally all come together: It works. I forget that I even have Parkinson's most of the time. And last November, I went back to work full time. It's a miracle. A second chance at life.
And while Parkinson's is a degenerative disease (the dopamine-producing cells keep dying), patients four years after the surgery still required an average of fifty percept less L-dopa than they did prior to it.
And yet, in terms of the science behind the treatment, there are more questions than answers. Anyone familiar with the neuroscience knows that our knowledge is largely incomplete. Even those philosophers who tell us to look to neuroscience when worrying about philosophical problems do so with a bevy of warnings about the tentativeness and incompleteness of the science, and a litany of promissory notes about future developments. What systematic treatments we have are highly idealized and largely unrelated to specific application and fine-grained detail, and what we do know at a more fine-grained level is very narrow to specific neuronal and sub-neuronal structures and low-level systems.
In terms of his procedure, Guiles writes,
No one really knows precisely why deep brain stimulation works. Some things about deep brain structures, like the thalamus, are understood well enough for stimulators to be routinely successful. But the high-level brain structures in the neocortex, where all the evolutionary action has ben for the past 100,000 years or so, are still largely a mystery. How does shocking the thalamus in the deep brain help the cortex in the upper-level brain control fine motor movement? Is this suppressing electrical activity or enhancing it?
In terms of programming the stimulator to effectively control the symptoms, Guiles at first speaks charitably: "Getting the settings right is midway between an art and a science." But his further descriptions show a mounting frustration, "Ultimately, getting the system to work comes down to trial and error," and "Finally, after three months of tinkering..." Guiles goes back and forth between neurologists, goes through months of trial and error, and has many frustrations along the way. Clearly, no sorts of systematic knowledge yet guide this part of the process. There are, according to Guiles, 1,200 permutations of the settings of the device, and the hope is that one of them will work out. And yet, in the end, for Guiles, and for many other patients, it does!
This modern example is complemented by a variety of examples employed by Feyerabend to call into question the view that development of science is univocally beneficial and progressive. On the one hand, Feyerabend points to the variety of specific knowledge of materials, how to manipulate them and use them, that was possessed by common people and alchemists prior to the rise of Chemistry, which was originally quite impoverished in terms of specific knowledge about how to manipulate various materials, relative to those traditions it purported to overthrow. Likewise, folk or traditional medicine in various parts of the world was able to do much that scientific medicine could not do, and some things that it still has yet to reproduce.
One might likewise point to the relative success of local, subsistence agriculture in poorer cultures, in terms of meeting basic needs of the populace, as compared to what happens when entities like the World Bank come in to attempt to develop these countries. Charlie, environmental advisor to the President in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, Sixty Days and Counting, says, in an angry diatribe at a meeting between the World Bank and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
You go into poor countries and force them to sell their assets to foreign investors and to switch from subsistence agriculture to cash crops, then when the prices of those crops collapse you call this nicely competitive on the world market. The local populations starve and you then insist on austerity measures even though your actions have shattered their economy. (p. 204)
In all these cases---cutting edge neurosurgery, the knowledge of materials and medicine in traditional culture, and subsistence agriculture---able use is made prior to, or independent of, systematic knowledge in the relevant science, whether that be as-yet-unrealized neuroscience, early chemistry, scientific medicine, or modern agricultural science and capitalist/neoclassical economic theory.
Compare discussions in philosophy of science of applications or use. The traditional answer is Euclidean: applications are deduced from a combination of general principles and specific conditions of the situation. To launch a rocket to the moon, one plugs the weight of the payload and the various properties of the Earth, Moon, and other relevant planetary bodies into Newton's laws, to determine the force necessary to launch the rocket (and further such derivations are necessary when seeking a source of the force, such as chemistry for burning fuel, and so on).
Or consider what happens in "science lab" classes in college, where one follows directions from a manual or instructor to set up an "experiment,"[Though it should be clear from the discussion of the necessity of experiments, that such demonstrations lack the force and function of real experiments.] then derives an expected result from the relevant theory. Finally, one checks the results against the expectations, and does it over again if one doesn't get the "right" answer!
The traditional answer presumes that the lab demonstration generalizes to all of science application. We know that this is problematic for a number of reasons. First, for purely logical reasons, the straighforward deductive schema for confirmation/falsification has given way to confirmation holism, so that even those who would give something like the traditional answer must admit that a variety of auxiliary assumptions play a role in such deductions. In the context of justification, this means that no evidence by itself can clearly confirm or refute a general principle, and in the context of use, it means that there is a certain slippage already between principle and application.
But more recent developments have caused further reasons to doubt the standard story. For one, there are many reasons to doubt the picture of scientific theory as a system of statements from which consequences can be deductively derived. This has led to an explosion of alternatives, from models and modeling (Suppes, Giere, van Frassen), to a mangle of practices (Pickering), to cognitive maps (Churchland). Given the complexity of the current field as compared with the traditional picture, it is not at all clear that the present thesis, which involves a significant independence of specific use from general theory, given that they occur in different kinds of inquiries, is so implausible.
A very contemporary discussion which the present picture might be revealingly contrasted with has been spear-headed by Nancy Cartwright. Cartwright asks us to look beyond the traditional questions of how is a general claim in science justified or confirmed by evidence, and how do we have evidence for a particular use of that claim. The question takes on board certain developments from recent work, and so assumes a slippage between theory and application. But it also assumes a certain temporal development that I'm trying to deny: first, a theory is justified by evidence, then we try to apply it in the various fields.
Evidence
<---> Theory ---> ApplicationOn the view discussed here, no such simple story is available. There are many options available. There could be a history of more or less unsystematic inquiries into matters of use, which eventually lead to a systematization of theory, which then helps guide further inquiries of application. Or, in the process of inquiring into general questions, we may discover a range of potential applications which we mark as future tests of the theory. What is clear is that, in an inquiry into some potential matter of use, a theory can never wear its usability on its sleeve; it is a matter to be decided by inquiry, not one decided ahead of time. If it is decided ahead of time, then there is no inquiry; but there is also no question about whether there is evidence for its usability. It is simply used unreflectively.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Cold hands and 19th Century Americana
I was looking at this photo of Lincoln and noticed that the two guys he's with have their hands in their jackets. Then I started to think about this pose a bit and wondered why it shows up so much in old photos and paintings. I suppose I could just google it and find out, but I thought it'd be more fun to ask the grad-student useless trivia/nonsense postulation machine. Two questions:
(1) Why do guys in old photos pose this way?
(2) Should I start posing this way in pictures taken of me?
(1) Why do guys in old photos pose this way?
(2) Should I start posing this way in pictures taken of me?
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
a relatively naive gripe about brain research
First, look at this article on what happened to some people who got fMRI'd and received politics-related stimuli. Or maybe just read this quotation, which gives the tenor of the piece:
Or this one:
Granted, there is some hedging in these claims. But I think it's clear that the intended interpretation of the data is: Activity in the insula indicates that men are disgusted by the Republican party. And likewise, mutatis mutandis, for the other trials.
Drawing conclusions about people's mental states from brain imaging is tricky for a lot of reasons, but isn't there a very basic confusion going on here? I mean that what (say) fMRI studies give us is information about brain activity given some emotional state (or whatever), where the emotional state is identified independently by subject report or reasonable assumption. So the studies tell us that the probability of B given E is very high. But the claims above are of the reverse form: that the probability of E given B is high, enough so for us to be confident that the subjects really are anxious, disgusted, etc., based upon their patterns of brain activity. And absent background assumptions, P(B|E) and P(E|B) are completely independent, so the one tells us nothing about the other.
Is it possible that these scientists are making such a basic confusion of reasoning? Are there important and reasonable assumptions that I don't know about? Because to my eye, articles like this are really just embarrassing exercises in stamping the imprimatur of brain-scanning techniques onto the messy phenomena of human choice.
When we showed subjects the words “Democrat,” “Republican” and “independent,” they exhibited high levels of activity in the part of the brain called the amygdala, indicating anxiety. The two areas in the brain associated with anxiety and disgust — the amygdala and the insula — were especially active when men viewed “Republican.” But all three labels also elicited some activity in the brain area associated with reward, the ventral striatum, as well as other regions related to desire and feeling connected.
Or this one:
Voters who rated Mrs. Clinton unfavorably on their questionnaire appeared not entirely comfortable with their assessment. When viewing images of her, these voters exhibited significant activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, an emotional center of the brain that is aroused when a person feels compelled to act in two different ways but must choose one. It looked as if they were battling unacknowledged impulses to like Mrs. Clinton.
Granted, there is some hedging in these claims. But I think it's clear that the intended interpretation of the data is: Activity in the insula indicates that men are disgusted by the Republican party. And likewise, mutatis mutandis, for the other trials.
Drawing conclusions about people's mental states from brain imaging is tricky for a lot of reasons, but isn't there a very basic confusion going on here? I mean that what (say) fMRI studies give us is information about brain activity given some emotional state (or whatever), where the emotional state is identified independently by subject report or reasonable assumption. So the studies tell us that the probability of B given E is very high. But the claims above are of the reverse form: that the probability of E given B is high, enough so for us to be confident that the subjects really are anxious, disgusted, etc., based upon their patterns of brain activity. And absent background assumptions, P(B|E) and P(E|B) are completely independent, so the one tells us nothing about the other.
Is it possible that these scientists are making such a basic confusion of reasoning? Are there important and reasonable assumptions that I don't know about? Because to my eye, articles like this are really just embarrassing exercises in stamping the imprimatur of brain-scanning techniques onto the messy phenomena of human choice.
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