Peter Emmerson

  3.3 Resistance to the notion of ‘relative uncertainty’: idealistic cultural habits that foster a belief in dichotomies such as objectivity-subjectivity .

Sociologists as pure and applied scientists have now spent approximately 200 years at their trade. What is clear from all this enterprise is that nothing is certain/uncertain. This finding has led many to reject the right of sociology to be called a science; others have abandoned the scientific programme and returned, if not to theology, then to philosophy. Still others have moved into number crunching, regardless of the efficacy of the knowledge they produce, supplying data for various agencies. The comparative low status of sociologists and applied scientists generally, may well, as noted earlier, be reflected in these outcomes, because few people with influence want uncertain conclusions, they do not produce either personal or social control. However, one group of social scientists, the economists, have taken refuge in mathematics and have reaped the benefits and sit at the high table. Nevertheless, their status is fragile as real events plunder their over-idealised models: see Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan; although not immune to idealism himself as his worship of Popper suggests. In other words some degree of ‘relative uncertainty’ is I believe a fact, that has been gradually dawning on more and more people and inexorably spreading its influence on formal thinking since the 17^th century: if there really were any truths would the law rely on juries to convict people of serious crimes rather than eminent justices or princes; would politicians and others in established positions not demur to the demand for a democratic system?

This contradiction in our formally stated belief patterns that admits to both the idealism of certainty/uncertainty and the more realistic relative uncertainty, is one of the most interesting features of human experience, an aspect of which is the use and acceptance of idealistic concepts such as ‘objectivity’, or ‘subjectivity’ for that matter. Objectivity is used in relation to scientific practice to differentiate it from other non-objective (subjective) practices which are open to dispute and thus lacking in truth. Yet in reality the outcome of such so-called objective practice, scientific knowledge, can only produce wisdom that is inexact, with varying levels of probability, as the continuing debate in theoretical physics about the limitations of the models associated with Einstein and Heisenberg evidences. Objectivity as a feature of scientific practice is a philosophical intrusion derived from the idealistic assumption that the rules of logic or mathematics, which exclude the damaging effect of human judgement that is the cause of error, can be applied directly to reality. Thus, in this sense, objectivity as a concept derives from the philosophical study of science, not from its practice: it is a philological cousin of absolute truth and accordingly, gives status to those whose activities are deemed objective and the conclusions at which they arrive. Scientific figurations are attached to objectivity because it at least gives the impression that they are correct, cleansed from infection by human values and therefore error: they can offer control. This is a smokescreen! Objectivity is for many within scientific figurations a wish statement of self-delusion. However, it is also an ideological tool used by scientists to obtain authority and wider social influence. Ideals are useful as statements of intent, to impress those who are under-informed, or soothe those unable to face the facts that it is a relatively uncertain world.

Beliefs in ideals such as objectivity are related to the assumption that human beings can think or act morally as a separate, ring-fenced experience, with its own specific rules and subject matter. According to this view, problems of right and wrong can be analysed independently of personal values and politics: when scientists like Professor Wolpert are involved in professional science, they are not dealing with considerations of social influence or personal values. Such a perspective would seem misplaced. Recent neuropsychology, using brain scanning technology, has found strong evidence that the brain should be understood in terms of its interconnectedness, rather than areas of discrete activity: see Steven Pinker, a well known exponent of the computational model of psychology, and a covert idealist. Our experiences and beliefs have one thing in common; their existence is related to our socio-psycho-biological experience. Thus, I think it is reasonable to question the repeated statements of people who argue that moral issues are separate from scientific issues, which are in turn separate from political concerns. It is my argument that moral, political and scientific thinking and activities are inextricably bound together and that in believing they are not, leads to errors of judgement. Consequently, we should see the statements of all three brands of truth mongers, theologians, philosophers, mathematicians and by implication, scientists, as at best relatively certain and worthy of dispute. This would be progress.

The prominence of idealistic concepts such as objectivity offer further confirmation of the continued capacity of philosophers to define intellectual debate, contrary to the view of Hawking and Mlodinow, who in their recent book The Grand Design, state in over-confident manner that philosophy is ‘dead’. Certainly within western orientated cultures, philosophers still enjoy considerable status and influence: philosophers are constantly present as intellectual experts on serious BBC Radio 4 programmes such as The Moral Maze, In Our Time and Start the Week. Their position of authority is all the more remarkable when one considers their patent lack of success in answering the questions they have set themselves in over 2000 years of practice, with the notable exception of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose masterful denunciation of philosophical practice as verbal legerdemain, was revenged for quite some time by a thorough stigmatization of his ideas: the same tactic that was used against Comte. In using the concept of ‘objective’, Hawking & Mlodinow contradict themselves.

Philosophers suggest that objectivity is one half of a dialectic or dichotomy, which has as its counterpart, the concept of subjectivity. From this perspective, objectivity is in one respect a state of mind, achieved when we are being rational, when we put aside our prejudices in order to explore the possibilities of a logical or mathematical analysis so as to obtain the absolute truth of things. By contrast, subjectivity is a state of mind where our preferences flood through, a cerebral experience patterned by emotions that produces potentially dangerous relativist (not relative remember) truths, truths that are anarchic, forever disputable because they are the product of personal conviction. A good example concerns the truth of religious belief, which is largely a matter of trust or faith transmitted from generation to generation. The existence of the human soul has never, as far as I can see, been shown to exist as a palpable entity; neither is there any hard evidence that it survives death. Yet, guilty people in their multitudes have been dispatched to eternity in the belief that death is but a gateway to another existence where the process of judgement and punishment can, if necessary, be finished off. Part of the reason that human beings feel confident to carry out such sentences, in the face of little or no factual evidence in support their beliefs, is their capacity to hold personal truths based on nothing more than conviction, that is, subjective truths that are contestable and yet resistant to the facts.

At least part of the reason for the persistence of rational method and the concomitant belief in the importance of objectivity, is to act as a defence against our dangerous potential to think and act in this totally subjective fashion; what Durkheim might have described as this anomic, relatively unfettered by social rules. Yet it is clear from the evidence provided in the previous paragraph and the continued popularity of religious belief, that the campaign to resist the influence of subjective truths by countering it with an appeal to objectivity and its senior partner rationality, in which science nowadays takes a leading role, has enjoyed only limited success. Could this be related to a problem with rationality itself? Could it be that rationality is nothing more than a method for analysing a problem that is in fact contingent upon personal experience? Rational method is not a once for all system of analysis that allows you to arrive at a correct solution because it is objective and circumvents the influence of human values (subjectivism). Thus, there is not just one rationality but any number of rationalities to choose from, dependent on the context, that is, a function of what you are intending to achieve and the means available to achieve it, as pointed out by Max Weber. This contrasts starkly with the general understanding of rationality as a neutral method of calculating the correct answer, uncontaminated by human value. Rationality is contingent upon social perspective. It is therefore not surprising, as Weber showed, to find a belief in God to be rational, because it is highly dependent on social experience: if all around need the security of faith to live life happily, faith is a rational response to the problem of fear. The problem with rationality is that it has been theometaphysicalized from a method of solving everyday human difficulties with varying degrees of success depending on the circumstances, into a general problem solving tool (mathematics being the primary modern example) for the exploration of the truth of things. This, I would argue, is useful because it is crucial in the battle to control uncertainty: high levels of certainty lessen feelings of personal insecurity and increases the capacity of established figurations to defend their dominance.