Today, I was once again yelling at the Tribune over my bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (the only cereal I'll actuallly put up with). There was a little gem of a story about right-wing, pro-lifers being up in arms again. It seems, a recent study suggests that fetuses do not feel pain, as they lack the neurological wiring to experience it. Any reaction that fetuses *do* show to objects, then, is just a spinal cord reflex. Now, pro-lifers are pissed because two of the doctors (out of five) had ties to abortion clinics - one currently, and one in the past. Some pro-lifers are arguing that this challenges the validity of the report, and that these kind of "political" ties should be reported as part of the science. [A thought: if the issue of "pain" decides where you come down on the abortion topic, you might be missing the point .... Though, it could be useful in some compromise situation, over when "life" begins and when termination is more/less acceptable. It's like a side dish - not the meat of it.]
This claim is *not* without some grounding in logic. Researchers are already required to disclose things like research affiliation or private employment, so that readers can be aware of possible biases vis-a-vis economic conflicts of interest (re: funding issues). However, this is pretty much crap. It is, essentially, controlling scientific discourse through a political agenda - and it stinks of trying to use power to shut down inquiry and free thought. The article appearned in a peer reviewed journal, the cites and data are out there. If there is a problem in the article, people can go after the data, not the private ideas of those involved.
In a lot of ways, this is the dark side of Karl Mannheimn's sociology of knowledge, Lyotard's language games, Foucault's power/knowledge analysis, and Kuhnian paradigms. Now, I am not such a cheery positivist or rationalist that I think the argument that personal bias, the demands of "power," or overarching disciplinary assumptions do not interfere with "objective" endeavors. Presumably, there is "interference" all through the scientfic process - from the questions we ask, the methods we employ, to the conclusions we draw. It is important to realize that, to understand the *limits* of our knowledge.
*But,* it is equally important to remember that most folks dedicated to looking at the world really *try* to be objective. Their peers, who oversee their work, are doing their best to make others work objective. Plus, there *is* a world out there - real and material, where causes (albeit, often complex, indirect, and opaque) are at work [most of the time]. We may never be able to figure everything out, or have perfect predictive power - particularly in cases of human choice, where ideas and agency will (thankfully) always muck things up. But, we can still figure out a LOT about the world that is, essentially, *objectively true.*
The reality of a material outside makes the notion that having a "political" and "private" self somehow destroys and distorts any data beyond any use simply ludicrous. The risk is that we head down a road of subjective knowledge (Marxist evolution vs. bourgeoise science anyone?). This just holds us/science back, and leads to debate over who is doing what, not what was actually found in a study. In essence, without blowing it out of proportion, this is one of those events that shows just how precarious our hold on "rationality" or "the Enlightenment project" actually is.
[Side note: If THIS is what we have to do - disclose all our biases - I sure hope this applies to politicians, Supreme Court justice nominees, and economics professrs. I feel I need to know all of their private affiliations, beliefs and so on in order to judge their work.]
Last night, I was reading Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty." Berlin, famously, distinguishes between "negative liberty" (the capacity to not be interfered with) and "positive liberty" (the right to self-mastery). He admits that both aspects of freedom have the potential to acheive great things, such as (respectively) carving out a space for personal growth/autonomy or empowering movements to demand equality and recognition. He also, importantly, remembers that both aspects of liberty are dangerous, (respectively again) reminding readers that cutting yourself off from society is the same as being imprisoned and that self-mastery can quickly turn into mastery over others, imposing an "absolute ideal" (which is of questionable validity, givin human fallibility) onto others.
However, while Berlin admires and fears aspects of both, he obviously prefers negative liberty. He tries to carve some kind of a third way in the sense that he sees a need for both. But it is really negative liberty that he sees as truly fundamental - for protecting the dignity of human beings and the diversity of ends that we have the right to pursue. Last night, this sort of annoyed me. It's a quite individualist analysis of human nature. Further, he seems to suggest that "negative individuals" are politically savvy, able to carve out an autonmous space without becoming frothing libertarians in a compound (an alienation that would equally destroy soceity, by the way). Yet, despite his own belief in human capacity for reason, Berlin does not give "positive individuals" the same political savvy. Instead, they inherently seem to turn into raving fascists.
This seemed like cheating to me, especially since Berlin does *not* think that context fully determines our actions (see his "Historical Inevitability" essay; contex may influence us to a great deal, but we are still choosing agents with reason as our aide). Berlin falls back on a weak argument of history: positive liberty tends to turn out this way, while negative liberty is stable. This is a somewhat false dichtomoy, as positive liberty is an old idea (back to the Greeks) while (by his own admission) negative liberty is new.
In the end, Berlin (as he does on occasion) rests his argument on "common sense" - a feeling that this [a preference for negative lilberty] is what's *correct.* This can be a cop out. Common sense, that gut feeling, is valuable - too often, when we ignore that, political theorists end up in hyper-abstract realms that do not apply to any real world scenario. That said, common sense is often wrong. I mean, folks thought the Earth was flat and voters were informed. This was all hooey. So, there is a place for careful reasoning. It's a balancing act right?
However, after reading this story about pro-lifers being anti-science, I understand Berlin's point now. Negative liberty is, almost inherently, *conservative.* It is careful, erring on the side of going slow in order to protect what we have rather than risking with the "big win." That can be a problem at times - by, say, allowing human suffering to continue longer than it should before implenting a new policy. Yet, Berlin understand just how much reason fails us and how incomplete our knowledge is; he perceives just how powerful forces like affect, superstition, and public opinion are. In fact, a lot more damage and back tracking (in terms of social progress) would occur if "policy" or "the state" was radically shifted every time a new idea swept the public - which is what democratic self-mastery (at its most banal) could lead to. [We could all become Deweyean citizens I suppose. But that does not seem likely right now. Anyway, even in a perfect Deweyean world, there could still be fuck-ups. Berlin would not want that to happen.] In that light, the careful, slowness of negative liberty - with protected rights and spaces - makes sense. In the long run, negative liberty gets you more progress, b/c it makes fewer mistakes with its plodding forward momentum. Berlin liked animal metaphors ("The Fox and the Hedgehog"); so it seems that a tortoise and hare analogy would be perfect here....
[To note: the positive/negative liberty problem is not insoluble. Folks like Philip Petit have made a good stab at it. They stress things like democracy and self-mastery, while at the same time arguing that the right to contest decisions or rule of law/constitutionalism still matter. Similarly, Robert Dahl argues that certain political rights are inherent inside the democratic process. Too often, these writers are still picking sides on the individualist/communitarian debate, rather than accepting that *both* sides are right - both are elements of human nature. However, it does seem possible to imagine a way to balance self-mastery with autonomy, something Berlin hints at but does not pick up.]
This claim is *not* without some grounding in logic. Researchers are already required to disclose things like research affiliation or private employment, so that readers can be aware of possible biases vis-a-vis economic conflicts of interest (re: funding issues). However, this is pretty much crap. It is, essentially, controlling scientific discourse through a political agenda - and it stinks of trying to use power to shut down inquiry and free thought. The article appearned in a peer reviewed journal, the cites and data are out there. If there is a problem in the article, people can go after the data, not the private ideas of those involved.
In a lot of ways, this is the dark side of Karl Mannheimn's sociology of knowledge, Lyotard's language games, Foucault's power/knowledge analysis, and Kuhnian paradigms. Now, I am not such a cheery positivist or rationalist that I think the argument that personal bias, the demands of "power," or overarching disciplinary assumptions do not interfere with "objective" endeavors. Presumably, there is "interference" all through the scientfic process - from the questions we ask, the methods we employ, to the conclusions we draw. It is important to realize that, to understand the *limits* of our knowledge.
*But,* it is equally important to remember that most folks dedicated to looking at the world really *try* to be objective. Their peers, who oversee their work, are doing their best to make others work objective. Plus, there *is* a world out there - real and material, where causes (albeit, often complex, indirect, and opaque) are at work [most of the time]. We may never be able to figure everything out, or have perfect predictive power - particularly in cases of human choice, where ideas and agency will (thankfully) always muck things up. But, we can still figure out a LOT about the world that is, essentially, *objectively true.*
The reality of a material outside makes the notion that having a "political" and "private" self somehow destroys and distorts any data beyond any use simply ludicrous. The risk is that we head down a road of subjective knowledge (Marxist evolution vs. bourgeoise science anyone?). This just holds us/science back, and leads to debate over who is doing what, not what was actually found in a study. In essence, without blowing it out of proportion, this is one of those events that shows just how precarious our hold on "rationality" or "the Enlightenment project" actually is.
[Side note: If THIS is what we have to do - disclose all our biases - I sure hope this applies to politicians, Supreme Court justice nominees, and economics professrs. I feel I need to know all of their private affiliations, beliefs and so on in order to judge their work.]
Last night, I was reading Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty." Berlin, famously, distinguishes between "negative liberty" (the capacity to not be interfered with) and "positive liberty" (the right to self-mastery). He admits that both aspects of freedom have the potential to acheive great things, such as (respectively) carving out a space for personal growth/autonomy or empowering movements to demand equality and recognition. He also, importantly, remembers that both aspects of liberty are dangerous, (respectively again) reminding readers that cutting yourself off from society is the same as being imprisoned and that self-mastery can quickly turn into mastery over others, imposing an "absolute ideal" (which is of questionable validity, givin human fallibility) onto others.
However, while Berlin admires and fears aspects of both, he obviously prefers negative liberty. He tries to carve some kind of a third way in the sense that he sees a need for both. But it is really negative liberty that he sees as truly fundamental - for protecting the dignity of human beings and the diversity of ends that we have the right to pursue. Last night, this sort of annoyed me. It's a quite individualist analysis of human nature. Further, he seems to suggest that "negative individuals" are politically savvy, able to carve out an autonmous space without becoming frothing libertarians in a compound (an alienation that would equally destroy soceity, by the way). Yet, despite his own belief in human capacity for reason, Berlin does not give "positive individuals" the same political savvy. Instead, they inherently seem to turn into raving fascists.
This seemed like cheating to me, especially since Berlin does *not* think that context fully determines our actions (see his "Historical Inevitability" essay; contex may influence us to a great deal, but we are still choosing agents with reason as our aide). Berlin falls back on a weak argument of history: positive liberty tends to turn out this way, while negative liberty is stable. This is a somewhat false dichtomoy, as positive liberty is an old idea (back to the Greeks) while (by his own admission) negative liberty is new.
In the end, Berlin (as he does on occasion) rests his argument on "common sense" - a feeling that this [a preference for negative lilberty] is what's *correct.* This can be a cop out. Common sense, that gut feeling, is valuable - too often, when we ignore that, political theorists end up in hyper-abstract realms that do not apply to any real world scenario. That said, common sense is often wrong. I mean, folks thought the Earth was flat and voters were informed. This was all hooey. So, there is a place for careful reasoning. It's a balancing act right?
However, after reading this story about pro-lifers being anti-science, I understand Berlin's point now. Negative liberty is, almost inherently, *conservative.* It is careful, erring on the side of going slow in order to protect what we have rather than risking with the "big win." That can be a problem at times - by, say, allowing human suffering to continue longer than it should before implenting a new policy. Yet, Berlin understand just how much reason fails us and how incomplete our knowledge is; he perceives just how powerful forces like affect, superstition, and public opinion are. In fact, a lot more damage and back tracking (in terms of social progress) would occur if "policy" or "the state" was radically shifted every time a new idea swept the public - which is what democratic self-mastery (at its most banal) could lead to. [We could all become Deweyean citizens I suppose. But that does not seem likely right now. Anyway, even in a perfect Deweyean world, there could still be fuck-ups. Berlin would not want that to happen.] In that light, the careful, slowness of negative liberty - with protected rights and spaces - makes sense. In the long run, negative liberty gets you more progress, b/c it makes fewer mistakes with its plodding forward momentum. Berlin liked animal metaphors ("The Fox and the Hedgehog"); so it seems that a tortoise and hare analogy would be perfect here....
[To note: the positive/negative liberty problem is not insoluble. Folks like Philip Petit have made a good stab at it. They stress things like democracy and self-mastery, while at the same time arguing that the right to contest decisions or rule of law/constitutionalism still matter. Similarly, Robert Dahl argues that certain political rights are inherent inside the democratic process. Too often, these writers are still picking sides on the individualist/communitarian debate, rather than accepting that *both* sides are right - both are elements of human nature. However, it does seem possible to imagine a way to balance self-mastery with autonomy, something Berlin hints at but does not pick up.]
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Making it out to the SGB in Chicago this year? Missy and I'll be there! And maybe Kira again!