this presents an epistemological dilemma for social science: it can either have the experimenter, in trying to fulfill his intentionality for anticipating qualia for his subjects and himself and the rest of society, limit the scope of his research based on these expectations and increase the odds that the experiment's results will result in the qualia of his subjects, himself, and other people all being compatible with his initial intentionality, *or* the experimenter can ignore possible expectations for the effects of the experiment's results on his and other people's qualia and only focus on the possible qualia of his subjects.
ok, so you're probably asking yourself, "what does this mean?" first, i will try to parse the meaning of the above, followed by an example. based on what i have previously explained, the unintentional goals of social science aren't the establishment of universal truths, they are optimization of quaila, which is a subjective entity and cannot be objectively measured. this doesn't result in the epistemological scope of social science being narrower, but "compromised/less scientific" if universal truths -- if there are such things in social science, being most likely in the form of a behavior -- established are associated with quaila that is subjective, thus rendering the universal truth, being considered holistically in conjunction with qualia, epistemically subjective. however, the epistemological scope of social science is narrower because the experimenter has to consider the quaila of himself/herself, other people, and the subjects. the goal of hard science is not the optimization of quaila -- qualia simply must be compatible with the results of the experiment -- but even if it were, if only the experimenter and subjects were involved in the experiment and the experimenter's interest in science optimized his/her quaila, then hard science would not have an epistemologically narrower scope. if you want to expand this further to include people outside of the experiment, then if the overall intentions of science were to improve technology, which would in turn optimize the qualia of the outside people, one could still maintain the the epistemological scope of science is unaffected by qualia. of course, if the goal is simply to make qualia compatible with the results of the experiment, then hard science's epistemological scope remains fully entact.
let's review what i have just written using a quote from philosopher john searle. searle maintains that epistemic objectivity does not preclude ontological subjectivity. this is true for hard science, although usually ontology is objective, which does not affect its epistemological scope. on the other hand, in social science, epistemic objectivity does preclude ontological subjectivity because universal truths cannot be isolated independently of subjects' quaila, which are subjective, thus making associated universal truths subjective, which in turn rendering the universal truths invalid. so in order to run experiments in social science, there must be epistemic subjectivity. the debate is whether the experimenter wants to recognize the subjectivity before the experiment starts and therefore have the epistemological scope be more likely to be compatible with the results or if the experimenter wants to ignore the subjectivity before the experiment starts and therefore have the epistemological scope be less likely to be compatible with the results.
ok, finally an example to demonstrate my philosophy. imagine that you are a social scientist and want to prove, or at least gain further insight into whether human nature is good or bad. in this position, it is your responsibility to account for the expected qualia of yourself, your subjects, and outside people following the results of the experiment. let's assume that the optimization of qualia for everyone is predicated on the results indicating that human nature is good. remember the statement from the previous paragraph: the debate is whether the experimenter wants to recognize the subjectivity before the experiment starts and therefore have the epistemological scope be more likely to be compatible with the results. so, let's imagine that this experiment is about giving one subject a certain amount of money to spend freely, and when faced with a situation in which a customer in line is a dollar short of being able to purchase all necessary items (say, household items at a store), the customer can choose to either spend all of his/her money on his/her own items, or give a dollar to the customer in need. as the experimenter, you must decide which amount of money most optimizes the qualia of everyone. for example, at first you consider giving the subject $100, but then realize that most people wouldn't find a person giving one dollar to a person in need -- 1% of his/her spending allowance -- wouldn't go very far to establishing that human nature was good. upon much contemplating, you finally decide that giving the subject $20 is the best way to optimize qualia for everyone and you run the experiment this way. it turns out that in your experiment, the subject with the $20 is generous enough to give the needy customer a dollar to buy his/her necessary items. from this experiment, people infer that human nature is genuinely good, thus optimizing the qualia of the experimenter, the subjects, and outside people. now, consider the other option: the experimenter wants to ignore the subjectivity before the experiment starts and therefore have the epistemological scope be less likely to be compatible with the results. in this case, say the experimenter believes that the truest test of altruism is 80/20 selfish/selfless, thus meaning that the tipping point of determining whether human nature is good (altruistic/selfless) or bad (selfish). to represent this accurately in the experiment, the amount required for donation must be 20% of a person's free spending money -- $1 being 20% of $5. however, the experimenter disregards possible and expected qualia of everyone following the results of the experiment. let's assume that the experiment is run 10 times, and 8 out of 10 times, the subject with $5 spending money does not offer a dollar to the needy customer. this would seem to provide pretty firm support for the theory that human nature is more bad than good. now, upon learning of this result, everyone in academia and people learning about the experiment's results from the media are devastated by the ramifications of the experiment for human nature, thus not optimizing their qualia. in turn, by having sub-optimal qualia, most people go to work the next day feeling slightly depressed, and the gross gdp of the country declines in the following days and weeks because of this. this cannot be considered "progress"; in fact, in this case, social science would seem to have caused society to "regress". furthermore, returning to the original premises, by ignoring the subjectivity before starting the experiment, the epistemological scope, inherently subjective in social science, has proven to be incompatible with the results. compare this to hard science: the results of the experiments do not compromise the epistemological scope because the establishment of universal truths is not associated with anyone's qualia. it is only when you bring up science's effects on society through technology that the issue of subjectivity emerges (or the case of the experimenter's qualia), but this subjectivity is ontological, not epistemic.
(btw, if you are concerned with the issue of qualia, simply replace qualia with "qualitative aspects of consciousness" and my argument works just as well without getting stuck in the debate over whether or not qualia actually exists.)
so, what, if anything, does all of this mean? practically speaking, absolutely nothing. for example, consider the discovery of a universal truth, like e = mc^2. most certainly, this being one of the world's most famous equations, had a monumental impact not only on twentieth century physics, but on the world and people's schemas of the world in general (fwiw, time magazine named einstein the most important person of the twentieth century). so, it is obvious that universal truths can have a far-reaching effect on society, certainly as much as, if not more, than social science experiments, with an extreme example being the one i gave about have a country's gdp negatively affected due to widespread mild depression induced by learning about the experiment's results. however, the difference is that the change induced by a universal truth in people's mental states is ontological -- consciousness being ontologically subjective but epistemologically objective -- whereas the change induced by a social science experiment, resulting in changes in people's qualia, is epistemological -- consciousness being epistemologically *and* ontologically subjective. yes, i know this is really nitpicking, but what did you expect? after science has been so brutally attacked by some postmodernists, classifying science as an historical, social, and cultural phenomenon -- a definition that, while not completely untrue, is certainly lazy and can lead to dangerous inferences -- i figured i'd engage in the gamesmanship by throwing their nonsense right back in their faces using similar sneaky, but legal tactics. i rest my case.
No comments:
Post a Comment