Empiricism(, radical)
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 12:00 PM Empiricism is, roughly, a belief that experience and observation are the most reliable sources of knowledge. (Normally this is contrasted with “rationalism”…) It might also be described as the tendency in Western philosophy to recognize the limits of a priori beliefs, theories, or assumptions, in understanding our present experience—a kind of humility about how we already think about things: it is a resistence to (but not a rejection of!) established categorical ways of thinking or comprehending. When we say we are doing an “empirical” study of x, it means that we resist theory as a basis for understanding x … and instead, we embark on observation. The observation/theory distinction actually plays a more complex role in empirical philosophy, but it can be simplified by saying that for empiricists, the production of knowledge is a process, maybe even a kind of dance, between these two types of mental activity.
Observations consist of limited perspectives, but in empirical philosophy they are never “flawed” per se, because they are always temporary and contingent.^1 [See comments for footnotes.] As long as we recognize that a perspective is bounded, an observation has stability as such, it can’t be disputed as an observation. This is important because as limited as an observation might be, it can be construed as a part of a series of observations whose specific boundaries form a pattern of evolving limits from which broader predictability (sometimes called “projectability”) can be inferred. When a series of observations from different perspectives yield some consistency of result, they establish incrementally more reliable foundations for thinking. Scientific methods are systematic ways of expanding the utility of observation, through the controlled comparison of observations repeating across time and space.
Theories are attempts to explain such a series of observations, in a way that lets them all relate to some common explanation or premise. By establishing a way of connecting a large number of experiences to a small number of ideas, our thoughts about those experiences are economized. (Theory in that sense, functions in Lacan’s symbolic domain: theory individuates a complex reality with a simpler series of statements; it replaces something chaotic with something invocative and orderly.) When Robert Mapplethorpe says “my theory about creativity is that the more money one has, the more creative one can be,” he is representing creativity, by establishing a common idea (money facilitating freedom) as a stand-in (a standing-for) for a more elusive one (creativity).
The question left wide open by the empirical dance of theory and observation — even in some presumably “empirical” scientific discourse — is the degree to which the status and organization of the knowledge left behind, so to speak, in the wake of the method, is itself empirical. (Again, we know that the facts were gained empirically, but what of their status? Their organization?) Say we are trying to determine some differences between women’s brains and men’s brains, and we observe that women tend to have denser, more abundant dendrite-networks connecting the brain hemispheres. We also observe that patients with severed dentrites have difficulty recognizing emotions in the faces of others. Then we theorize that women are more sensitive to the emotional determinants of facial expressions. If we can confirm the theory in a series of observations, and we’re careful in recording the circustances of those observations, then the theory becomes a kind of knowledge.
But if instead, we find that women tend to fall on either end of the spectrum of sensitivity, while men cluster in a moderate level of sensitivity, and if we also find that the ends of the spectrum are populated by men in rare cases, where in fact men are even more extreme. Then we return to observation, a little disatisfied with what seems like a messy relationship between gender and sensitivity. Say we notice that the location of women on the spectrum is sometimes radically affected by whether the face is a stranger’s or a relative’s, and sometimes not…but men never produce that effect. And then in one group of women, there is a much higher standard deviation, except where the faces are elderly men or androgynous. But the results of the Boston experiment can’t be duplicated in Denmark.
Is this knowledge? Certainly—at the very least, we can say that we have knowledge that the situation is complex or ambiguous. However, this isn’t the kind of knowledge (yet) that qualifies as what we call “scientific knowledge”: the paper isn’t ready for publication, or if it is published, the journalist does not feel that the scientist is ready to be interviewed, or if the journalist finds it newsworthy, the managing editors do not find room for it this week, or if they do, perhaps the news-consuming public tunes out the story.
“Knowledge” is very different from “experience” or “reality.” Like “theory,” knowledge is a semiotic entity, consisting of clear, simple signs that stand in for a chaotic abundance experience and reality. What determines the signifier? When does a scientist declare the emergence of knowledge? No matter how empirical her process, the declaration of success in the process is an aesthetic declaration. The aesthetics isn’t merely a problem at the level of journalists and magazines and the public who read them; it begins with the scientists’ statement “it is time for the next experiment” or “it is not yet time for the next experiment.”
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William James thought-through these issues in the early 1900s, and recognized that sound science requires not only what I am calling a dance between observation and theory, but a willingness to reject the aesthetics, or the narrativity, of “clarity” in knowledge, as it is spiritually and culturally defined. And replace that aesethetics with an embrace of ambiguity and the inherent fluctuation of its subjectivity, its becoming. In order to embrace that—a key element of “radical empiricism” requires us to give the same status of “reality” to the relations between things, as to things themselves. If physical objects are real, and shapes and letters are real, then the ways that shapes and signs refer to other things are also real, and so are the processes and developments of our narratives about those references.
Implicitly or not, the best scientists today have embraced James’ outlook, not presuming that clarity = grand truth, & ambiguity = ask again, something must be wrong. When I speak casually with a neurobiologist studying sex differences in the cerebral cortex, and ask her about her research, she normally does not say “I am learning about the mental essence of man and woman”. Instead, she’ll say something like “I am testing whether female cats with elevated levels of potassium enjoy hunting more than their male counterparts.” And if you ask her what she has learned, she will always say “well the cats I have studied exhibit…”, always being certain to profess the limitedness of observation, never saying that what she has learned is the truth in any broad sense.
However, this project, what turns out to be quite humble at its core, doesn’t begin or end that way. A sense of knowledge in the inquiry, and a sense of choice about the nature of question and answer, unfolds simultaneously on different planes, and in relation to different criteria. The lab she is working in discovers something useful, the utility is put forward in a grant application, the institution produces a name for itself and projects it to a journalist. The empirical ideal doesn’t disappear, but at some point it has to make a transition from the base/systemic labor of methodology, to the superstructural domain of utility or meaning…the dance of observation has to be cut, into a shape, something that looks like knowledge (or doesn’t look like it), before we can interrupt one barrage of tests and begin another, searching once again for that aesthetic. Flash forward six months, and the scientist finds herself “humanized”, she is inspiring us about the wonders of knowledge, musing the implications of what she has found, she is laughing approvingly at a joke about why women like to shop. This mediating process does not float freely, or independently, apart from scientific inquiry; it is an integrated part of scientific method.
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The legacy of empiricism, defined radically, also extends from Bergson’s Matter and Memory (partially read in DANM 201), which in turn informs familiar Deleuzian/Guattarian concepts of the “Nomadic”, and “Rhizome,” developed in Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Rhizomes.net’s resource on rhizomes and becoming is excellent, and is more practical for our purposes than direct engagement of the whole Deleuzian project.
Reader Comments (8)
^1. For example, "I saw the bird fly west" is, for an empiricist, only incorrect if it is a lie. I may have seen something that didn't happen, I may have misidentified a bug as a bird, I can mistake jumping for flying, and I can mistake west for east. But regardless of what 'actually' happened when those mistakes were made, the observation itself (if not a lie) is irrefutable; that is what I saw. (One can debate the semantic point here: "did you see it, or only think that you saw it?" But for our purposes here, seeing is always tantamount to "thinking that you see." For empiricists, there is no perfect certainty about the senses, except one: we can be certain that we sensed.)
In response to Ben's intro for the week:
In addition to "seeing", this relates to my work with the issue of memory. A statement about the past, then for an empiricist, is always correct unless it is a lie. But what about memory? or faulting memory? And what if a statement was known to be a lie then, and with time came to be accepted as memory in the present. So in the present, this person believes they are saying the truth. Is there a factor for memory in empiricism?
The definition of "knowledge" becomes relevant here. "'Knowledge' is very different from 'experience' or 'reality.'" Success of knowledge is when someone is satisfied with the amount of knowledge they have, an aesthetic declaration. Who or what defines the satisfaction or the amount?
"Becoming" knowledge is what William James thought to be the true scientific reasoning, brought about by the willingness to reject the aesthetics, or the narrativity, of knowledge, as it is spiritually and culturally defined, in addition to the dance between observation and theory. How do you represent becoming, I think, is an interesting question.
I liked this glossary for Plateaus terms: rhizomes.net glossary. Their journal seems great too...
Thanks Fabiola. It isn't that all statements about the past are true unless they are lies. The "truth" to which I referred above is nothing to do with the past, but to do with the statement "I observe" -- for an empiricist, observation is always a kind of belief. What matters is not so much whether the belief is correct, as whether it is replicable.
So, to take your example about the past: if I say, without lying, that I observed, 5 minutes ago, the lighting-up of a room in response to the flipping of a switch, it is indeed possible that I am mistaken. But I still have an observation about what happened 5 minutes ago; my observation is that I observed the light switch working.
1. Empirical knowledge about the light switch is easy: we acquire it by turning it off and on again, noting each time that the result is the same. (We do this all the time when we move in to a new house, and we don't know which switches correspond to which lights. We use an empirical method to determine the functions of the switches.)
2. But how does an empiricist gain knowledge about the reliability of one's (possibly faulty) memory about light switches? In the same way. Observe a relationship between a switch and a light, and try to remember it five minutes later. Record your memory. Determine if the same relationship that occurs in your recorded memory is the one that occurs in the present. Repeat the process. By this method you will surely learn that your memory is sometimes accurate and sometimes not; you could also study your gift for remembering long strings of numbers, versus short ones...you will probably find that your memory for short ones is more reliable. You will also find that when you have 5 people independently remembering a string of numbers one way, and 1 remembering it another way, the 5 are more likely to be correct than the 1.
What do I do when the results occasionally contradict the hypothesis? The rationalist in us finds it satisfying to note that these contradictions are statistically unlikely...we do not need to show that 5 memories are always better than 1, we just need to show that they are more reliable. If 6 independent medieval scribes have produced copies from one (prior) account of Paul's journey to Macedonia, and 5 copies are identical, but one produces a variant copy, then we can bet the 5 are correct and 1 is incorrect. We have a rational basis in this guess, even though it isn't a proof of anything.
3. Now what about radical empiricism? (Read William James' "A World of Pure Experience" for more on this.) For the radical empiricist, the resolution of ambiguity is a human narrative, not a natural one. It is, you might say, a struggle between the clear and the unclear, and clarity needn't be given any particular advantage in the struggle, if some things in nature aren't inherently clear. To take the prior example -- if the 5 scribes write Paul's words in 2 Corinthians as follows:
"Do I make my plans according to ordinary human standards, ready to say 'Yes, yes' and 'No, no' at different times?"
An the lone dissenter writes
"Do I make my plans according to ordinary human standards, ready to say 'Yes, yes' and 'No, no' at the same time?"
Common sense tells us that the likelihood of a stray mistake (in the words of the dissenter) is much more likely than 5 scribes all making an identical mistake. Common sense also prefers the version of the 5 scribes, which contains no requirement to think illogically about saying yes and no at the same time. But a radically empirical approach requires us to consider that the 5 scribes have not only agreed with each other, but with common sense. Their agreement, in other words, might be derived not from the original version they were meant to copy, but from some ideology of what we should suppose is the most likely thing for the original version to say. Suddenly the meaning of 5 against 1 has shifted, and we are allowed to recognize the possibility of ambiguity, the possibility of process, of narrative, as an unstable truth.
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