Good afternoon. My name is Jim Collier. I'm
welcome to the Carol Newman Library at Virginia Tech.
The library holds a special place in the history of
social epistemology. In the 19 sixties, the noted
librarian Jesse Sheriff coined the term social epistemology and forwarding
a proposal for studying and developing construction environment information sharing
throughout society. Thank you for attending our future fundamentals
of social epistemology. The first conference held by the
Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective and thank you.
Especially participating in Steve Keynote address, Social epistemology.
The future of an unfulfilled promise. I have tapped
this event a D i Y Do it yourself Conference
. Given our limited resources, given our limited means
, the resources we enjoy are all the more significant
. Without the support of Skip Furman and Department of
Science and Technology and Society, this conference simply does
not happen. Thank you, Skip. I also
want to thank Carolyn Mayer, the first your experience
librarian at Newman and Joe s co chair of the
English Department for giving us a place to come to
and without the technical prowess of Trevor Croker and Adam
Smith, our conference would not exist beyond these walls
and without the time and effort of our wonderful STS
graduate students, some of you might still be lounging
in the Roanoke airport. Allow me to acknowledge the
immeasurable contributions of my partner we need before she baked
for us this morning to the collective, especially as
she completes and defends her dissertation within the month.
Finally, many of our conference Panelists have come here
on their own dime or with limited support. We
should and will remember. Sounds a bit like remunerated
, but not quite. Yeah. Steve Fuller launched
the journal Social Epistemology in 1987. He published the
first of his 20 books, entitled Social Epistemology,
in 1988. In a statement of purpose for the
journal, Steve opens. What is knowledge? Philosophers
have defined it as truths that are believed for the
right sort of reasons. In contrast, the more
energetic members of the sciences have taken knowledge to be
whatever allows us to control more of the world more
reliable. Despite this discrepancy, these accounts are nevertheless
about roughly the same thing. A set of texts
that are produced so that when read in the right
way, before human beings, greater understanding of their
world being as sure as they are about what knowledge
is. Both the philosophers and the scientists try to
come up with ways of increasing the production of these
knowledge bearing texts, usually under the rubric of methodology
. This part of the story is familiar to the
practitioners of many disciplines. Social epistemology is founded in
part on the idea that much of this story,
as has traditionally been told, seriously misrepresents the nature
of our knowledge enterprises. We in the Social Epistemology
Review reply Collective in part from the Journal are online
scholarship, and our new book series joined Steve and
telling truthfully the story of knowledge as a comprehensive,
vital, shared endeavor. Steve Fuller is the August
professor of social psychology at the University of Work because
a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and
the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, July 16th
saw the release of the paperback of Steve's most recent
book, co authored with Veronica Le Pen, SCCA
Pro Action Very Imperative and Foundation for Trans Humanism,
published by Cal Grave McMillan. Much like Steve's book
, today's keynote addresses the challenges for social epistemology as
we regard the future, the future of humanity two
point. Oh, the university two point. Oh
, and society two point. Oh, please welcome
Steve Fuller. Well, first of all, let
me think, Jim Collier, most of all here
, Um, in a sense, this whole,
the whole infrastructure that we see here that's responsible for
this conference, uh, is made possible by him
. Uh, and I think it is worth saying
that, uh, it was alluded to in the
introduction, but I was, uh, an assistant
associate professor here, Uh, 20 or more years
ago, Uh, and it was during this period
that a lot of the sort of germinal ideas of
social epistemology were, in fact, incubated very often
in graduate seminars. Uh, and this was a
very contested period in the history of Virginia Tech with
regard to the future of science and technology studies.
Um, and in a way, uh, one
of the lessons that I've taken from it is that
you actually need a certain amount of pressure to be
able to be clear about what it is you actually
believe and why you believe it. And for that
reason, if only for that reason alone, but
maybe for others, Virginia Tech has always been a
very important part of my career development. Yeah,
uh, so and I do think social epistemology just
before we get into the those of you who are
here in the audience and maybe watching online, uh
, there is actually a text that's available, uh
, in the social Epistemology Review and Reply collective website
. Um, Jim didn't require this of me.
He just required an abstract. But I felt I
felt so moved, Uh, by the whole idea
of thinking about future fundamentals of social epistemology that I
actually spent 5000 words on the topic. I'm not
going to repeat them to you today. You can
read them. I am going to go over things
that I think are kind of salient and maybe my
galvanized people in the room here. And I see
I see quite a few younger people in the room
. And there is a sense in which where we
are now is not exactly what I expected, where
we would be 25 years ago. And and so
I do think that some of that aspect of the
story needs to be articulated in terms of how social
epistemology relates to philosophy and sociology and and probably most
importantly in the context of Virginia Tech, which still
has one of the best science and technology studies programs
in the world. Uh, that field and and
I just wanna acknowledge right now that the president of
the major Society for Science Technology studies the four s
the Society for Social Studies Science is sitting in the
room, My former colleague Gary Downey, and perhaps
he will have a question at the end of this
session. I don't I don't I don't mean to
put you under any pressure, but I very appreciate
your your showing up. Uh, as far as
I know, he's the only faculty member from the
time I was here. That's actually in the audience
now, and it's not because they've all left.
Um, So, uh so, uh, so
I I just want and I do think that also
, um, with regard to the book series and
the online presence those of you who are interested in
social epistemology in general from a broad range of perspectives
basically addressing the question that that Jim when he was
citing my my first book from should actually look it
up and and and and check out the various things
that people are saying because this is not some kind
of fan club thing for me or anything like that
. But I do think that there are certain kinds
of general issues with regarding to the nature of knowledge
, especially where knowledge is going and understanding normative itty
in that way as a kind of future oriented project
. I mean, if I have to say that
, you know, in terms of because one of
the things that make social epistemology different from, let's
say, sociology of knowledge and sociology is the fact
that we're still concerned with normative issues. That is
to say what knowledge ought to be right, how
it ought to be produced, how it ought to
be distributed. All those original questions from 1988 are
still very much with us today. Okay, um
and and I do think that if we're thinking we
should be thinking about this is at multiple levels at
once. We should be thinking about this from the
standpoint of some kind of ideal world sort of classical
normative position that philosophers have addressed in the past,
you know, almost a platonic position. But we
also should be thinking about it from the standpoint of
where do we get from here to there? Right
from where we are now to where we ought to
be. And certainly in the early parts of my
work. And this was reflecting, I think,
uh, the way in which the term was understood
at the time. Um, I have thought of
myself as a naturalist, and this issue came up
, uh, this morning, this conference has now
been going on for a couple of days. Uh
, and this morning, part of the things one
of the things that was discussed was the idea of
the role of naturalism. And what does that mean
? Because typically, when you're in philosophy, you
think that there is a big gap between the is
and the ought and naturalism stands for the is in
that context, right? Naturalism describes how the world
is, how knowledge is normally, uh, pursued
right, you know, and and what? Maybe
even what are the empirical capacities that we have for
pursuing knowledge, but it doesn't by itself, address
where we ought to go with this. And social
epistemology from the very beginning had both of these elements
in it And so there is a question about how
do you square the is in the art? And
it's been one of the things that's made it difficult
for social epistemology to establish a clear identity because we
clearly have one field called Philosophy that is concerned about
knowledge under its ideal conditions. Justified true belief is
often the mantra that still used within an Alec epistemology
, which is the dominant school of thinking about knowledge
. Um, but in sociology, we also have
the sociology of knowledge and, to a large extent
, STS, which is mainly concerned with what people
regard as knowledge, you know, and as it
were, suspending any kind of further judgments with regard
to whether it's true or false or good or bad
or anything of that kind. Okay, and social
epistemology from the very beginning was designed to bridge that
gap. That's certainly how I came into the field
, because in the 19 eighties, um, both
, you know, everything that I've just laid out
already existed. Okay, Analytical epistemology had already been
a fairly recognized subject for at least a generation.
Okay, and STS was was grad was rather rapidly
making its presence felt for about 10, 15 years
or so. Okay, but what was clear was
that there was a kind of impasse between the two
, and this was very much manifested in whenever you
had programs like at Virginia Tech, where you tried
to get the philosophers and sociologists to be part of
a common curriculum. Okay, which was that?
You know, the there there would there, the
sociologists would say, But knowledge isn't as you guys
are pretending it to be, and all the stuff
you're talking about doesn't correspond to anything in the world
. So why should we take you seriously? But
the point was, of course, that the philosophers
were pointing to very important kinds of goals, aims
and even regulatory principles with regard to the pursuit of
knowledge that even if they were not realized in the
world in which we live, were nevertheless quite valuable
. And then the question becomes, How could you
realize them? Because the philosopher's clearly don't have a
clue about it. Okay. And that's kind of
how I entered into the subject was very much like
that, right? Where there was a sense in
which the philosophers were actually addressing the right questions.
There's no doubt about it. There is a question
of what's the point of knowledge, right? And
so there's this quick asking, fundamental questions is it
is fine, right? But then the issue is
, how do you answer them? How do you
answer that, Right. And what sort of constraints
do you put in? What counts as an appropriate
answer? And here I think both history and sociology
have a lot to contribute to this enterprise. Okay
, um, so what, you know, in
terms of my own intellectual development, a very important
, uh, kind of point is the response that
can't gave to David Human, Hume said. You
cannot derive an art. Furman is, Khan says
. Well, an art always implies a can.
Okay, and that's the sense of naturalism. That's
the sense of the history and sociology of science,
of the empirical disciplines that's relevant with regard to the
ends of knowledge. As far as I've always thought
about social epistemology, namely, that there are empirical
constraints on the conditions under which we can pursue knowledge
regardless of what the ends are, I mean,
if you want to be crashed, it's like living
within your means. It's a bit like that Okay
, Um and this is one reason, by the
way, and some people don't like this aspect of
my thinking that I have not been antagonistic to economists
because economists understand, I think this point constrained maximization
, optimization, all these kinds of notions. This
has also been very much part of the way I've
thought about social epistemology from the beginning as well.
Okay, so there's definitely an empirical and naturalistic component
, but it's in terms of giving you a realistic
sense of the conditions under which you're trying to pursue
the ends, which really believe ought to be realized
. I mean, it makes no sense to articulate
ends that nobody is going to be persuaded to do
. Nobody's going to want to do. Nobody has
the capacity physically to do like, no, all
the truths in your own mind. Okay, that
is off the table. But there's still a lot
on the table as a result. Now, if
I had to say how my thinking has changed in
the way I've interpreted this over the last 25 years
and and and this is where you know, Jim
alluded to the humanity two point oh, stuff which
I've been working on, um, is that if
you look at constant victim, what implies can,
um the normal way of reading that is in a
very straight, naturalistic way, which is to say
that you sort of look at what the creatures are
capable of doing, and then you decide what it
is you can you can demand of them. But
now I've got a sort of somewhat different view,
which is that you can actually mess with the can
, right? In other words, that can is
not necessarily a limited term. Just because it is
naturalistic, it doesn't mean you can't expand it or
you can't change it in some substantial way, right
? So if it turns out that you actually want
people to behave in a certain way or no certain
things that they're not normally capable of doing, given
what they've got, then you, of course,
have the option of expanding those capacities in some way
. Okay. And and and I and you know
, if there's been a shift in my thinking over
the last 25 years with regard to this point,
it's this right, and this is why I've been
open to a lot of the trans humanist stuff.
And I'm now even endorsing a certain kind of version
of trans humanism. Okay, because I actually see
, here's where I'm very much. Still a philosopher
actually think this idea of trying to under getting a
maximally comprehensive understanding of reality, what philosophers in the
past have called by shorthand. Truth is not a
bad thing, okay? It is not a bad
thing, right? But one has to be realistic
about the terms under which this kind of thing is
pursued, right? And that involves probably changing people
quite a lot. And the question is, what
kinds of changes are we willing to undergo and impose
on others and still retain our basic humanity? In
a sense, I think this is where the question
of social epistemology starts moving into what nowadays is fashionably
called the ontological dimension. Right? In other words
, who are the appropriate agents as no hours?
Okay. And that's kind of where I am at
the moment. I'm on that point. Um,
and and here we have to sort of, you
know, people will have many different views about how
far we should go and so forth. Um,
but I do think that that this is, You
know, if you want to understand my intellectual trajectory
, especially within the context of naturalism, Um,
this is kind of where I have gone on this
. It's come about that way. But let me
so people can ask questions about this in the future
. This is a This is an issue that is
about my personal intellectual trajectory. But now, with
regard to, uh, how social epistemology relates to
the development of science, technology studies and the various
issues coming from that in the 19 eighties and how
we've moved forward, I want to say a little
bit about the history of this because I think this
is kind of, in a way, a bit
of a didactic story. Um, I think the
first way to the first thing you have to keep
in mind here. For those of you, especially
those who who are too young to actually have experienced
this, uh, is that starting with, uh
, actually starting with Popper? But certainly by the
time we get to Thomas Kuhn, um, we
start to get a much more self critical understanding of
science within philosophy. Okay, Um, and that
and that self critical understanding uh, is very much
informed by historical knowledge and that historical knowledge is often
being presented at the time in the 19 sixties and
19 seventies and into the 19 eighties, as in
some way falsifying the philosophical ideals. Okay, so
my first visit to Virginia Tech in 1986 where I
wanna dance contest at the holiday on prices work Road
, Um, was run by Larry Loud, who
is, uh, illustrious, uh, professor here
in science and technology studies. Perhaps the first one
I maybe Gary knows. I mean, but but
but okay, but But what? Okay. Okay
, Well, Larry Loudon was a very important figure
. He was the main man. Okay. Okay
, Well, the thing about Larry Loudon was when
he convened this conference in 1986 right, Uh,
which was then subsequently published as a collection of papers
by, uh, by by what's now known as
Kluwer. I guess if if that's still around,
unless it's been eaten up by Springer, I always
forget. Um, it was called scrutinizing Science.
And Arthur Donovan, who was a historian of science
here, was also the co editor of this volume
. Um and and and the thing about this what
this conference was about that this volume was based on
were people coming up with case studies trying to show
whether philosophical norms about scientific rationality, uh, were
actually born out in the history of science. So
is this kind of mass kind of empirical test and
so loud himself had laid out all the all the
claims being made by all the normative philosophers from the
positiveness on cocoon LaTasha all the rest of them,
right. And then people would be volunteering their case
studies showing, Yes, this shows lack of Tosh
is right or this shows poppers or something like this
. And this was the book. Now the reason
why I bring this up is because there was already
within philosophy and there continues to be within philosophy,
right? A substantial amount of criticism, self criticism
, skepticism about whether the most high flown philosophical norms
about knowledge are really adequate to understanding the nature of
science. And so that kind of empirical, that
desire for empirical testing, right actually opened the door
for the sociology and history of science to be incorporated
within the philosophy of science, which I certainly think
with an institution like this help STS to flourish because
STS is a philosophy based thing. As far as
I understand, at least my understanding historically of it
is a philosophy was always kind of a strong player
. Um uh, and and this is this is
not a trivial point, because I sort of come
from that as well, right? I'm a kind
of philosopher who, you know, who said Well
, uh, you know, we're concerned about the
nature of knowledge and all the rest of it,
But, God, all these norms of these philosophers
are promoting, right? Like, you should know
all you should know that all the implications of all
the of all the beliefs that your theories say are
true this kind of stuff, right? This is
ridiculous. No human being can be like this.
We can't have our norm stated in this fashion.
Okay, um and and so I was part of
that as well. But my view was that the
historical and sociological corrective to the philosophy of science that
we were already seeing very much in the 19 seventies
and eighties would be, as it were, a
second moment of a dialectic right where the first moment
you might say was the philosopher's putting out these norms
of what science is about and then having a lot
of gullible sociologists like Robert Merton believing them, right
, Because, you know, Robert Merton, he
basically just swallows the whole thing. And if you
look at, you know, Robert Merton, not
, you know, obviously a very significant respect,
respectable kind of guy. But nevertheless, if you
look at the evidence for the so called norms of
science that he talks about their basically statements of philosophers
or scientists about how science is done, it is
not actually how science is done. It is not
actually reporting how science is done. What is what
various important scientific type people say about how science is
done. And that was the basis for Mertens Sociology
of science. This doesn't mean it's wrong, but
it means it does have a kind of evidence problem
. Okay, And so this See, this is
where it throws the normative question back at you,
right? Because if you're somewhat attracted, you know
, to what Merton was saying or what Popper was
saying or any of those big guys, the logical
positives were saying and he said, Yeah, you
know that is a kind of interesting model of rationality
. But now you've got all these other guys coming
in, these historians and sociologists saying this is not
how science is actually done. Then what do I
make of it? That's your normative problem, right
? And that's where the Soc Social epistemology enters the
scene because the social epistemology has to figure out.
Okay, what do I do about this? Is
it simply a matter that science is not living up
to its own hype? In which case, then
the norms might be worth pursuing. But we need
to find different social arrangements for them to be pursued
to enable them to be pursued. We might need
greater regulation, better pedagogy, something like that.
Or do we say those norms just shows we falsified
them? They're false. They're wrong. Get rid
of them. Science is no different than anything else
, right? And this is kind of the fork
on the road. I don't know how much you
younger people see this fork on the road, but
this was certainly the fork in the road. And
then in the late 19 eighties, okay, because
it's pretty clear what was going on. Okay,
Um and social epistemology was meant to address that kind
of issue and my own personal view about this.
And this has been very much the way I've thought
about things since, uh is that philosophy needs to
be needs to really take on board just about every
empirical thing that the history and sociology of science has
said. Take it on board, swallow it,
suck it in. But then still stay with the
project of normative itty right. Um, you know
, So in other words, there is nothing wrong
with the with the principle of shooting for the skies
with regard to trying to come up with a maximum
comprehensive view of the world. But it doesn't make
any sense from a practical standpoint or a theoretical standpoint
, if you are not fully armed, knowing all
of the things that are problematic about the way it
is currently pursued. And that's why I see the
second moment of a dialectic typically is the critical moment
. And what I saw Science and technology studies as
being primarily was a critical foil, but not a
thing unto itself. And this is the problem,
right? Um, because what you now have with
science and technology studies, which is, I think
, uh, in a way, in its own
kind of crazy way, I would say, uh
, sort of very well institutionalized in the neoliberal environment
, because the neoliberal environment is very anti institutional,
and science and technology studies kind of rolls with the
flow very well in this environment, right? But
what you end up having, um, is a
situation where the science technology studies person can always come
in and say where things are falling short, where
the norms and the claims aren't being met, right
, bringing in the other voices that demonstrate that fact
but never taking a position on their own part and
just sort of moving from client to client as a
kind of perennial troubleshooter. And God knows there are
so many people who are interested in controlling the flow
of knowledge in the world today, quite rightly.
But this kind of ability, this kind of skill
, is very valuable, right? It is a
very valuable skill, not denying this, But certainly
this is not why I thought the field was attractive
in the first place. I thought of it as
basically just a critical foil for a project where we
would come up with this kind of larger, more
comprehensive picture of knowledge which everybody would be involved in
would be kind of the ultimate kind of resolution of
the project of humanity. This is one of the
reasons why my professorship in Warrick is called bogus concept
, because I sort of believe this crazy stuff.
But I don't think I was the only one of
the Karl Marx sort of believe this. I think
a lot of people, certainly in the 19th century
, maybe that shows my age more than I would
like to. But But the point is that that
that I believe that that that is kind of what
I thought was going on there. And so then
, um, see, at the time I was
writing something like social epistemology and then a lot of
the early works, including philosophy rhetoric. In the
end of knowledge, which I wrote, I was
here, Um, the question there was, um
is science or knowledge production to limited because it has
this kind of false self understanding of itself, because
these scientists kind of buy into what all these,
you know, philosophers say that knowledge is justified.
True, belief and we've got the monopoly on it
. And then we have these disciplines that can endlessly
reproduce themselves in universities that therefore we are the Vanguards
of humanity. And I was, of course,
very critical of that. This But this was the
19 eighties and early 19 nineties. This was before
the end of the Cold War and the neoliberal experience
. Okay, And the point about the point to
make here is for me somebody like Thomas Kuhn,
who I'm sure you'll all know about, right.
He was always kind of the enemy because he had
this very insular view about knowledge, right? He
had this view about knowledge. That's only the knowledge
producers to determine what knowledge is, and and they're
kind of an elite club in a way, um
, and and then whatever impact they have on the
rest of society is determined once they've defined, once
they've decided that they have a mature kind of knowledge
base, right, a kind of normal science that
is pursued on a regular basis, but before then
, they don't act. So it was presuming a
very strong boundary between the academic knowledge production and the
larger society and from my standpoint, if we're talking
about something that's going to empower all of humanity,
that seemed incredibly limited. But again, that was
during a time when there was a clear boundary between
the university and the rest of society. Okay,
I mean, I think that's a very important point
here, right when we talk, you know,
those of you still study the history and philosophy of
science. I don't know if this is kind of
an antique subject or not, but the point is
that if you still study it there, there there
is in the in the literature, this distinction,
internal and external history of science. This, in
a way betrays the age of the of the issue
. Right, because that was a really clear distinction
to make when you actually had these relatively insulated,
self sustaining knowledge communities typically subsidized by the state without
question, being able to reproduce themselves indefinitely. And
so if they change their mind about something, they
would do it on their own terms and not from
anything from the outside. Okay, with the Cold
War, believe it or not, for you,
young people was the Golden Age. For this view
, you might think of a cold War as this
enormously politicized kind of worldview that we all lived through
. But that was actually a point where science was
most protected now when the Cold War ended. Now
what was the reason for that were largely because in
the Cold War, people were thinking in terms of
indefinite long term threats, and that then actually inspired
a lot of blue skies thinking problem is, once
that ended and nobody believed any longer that Russia was
going to throw a nuclear bomb at the United States
. Then people retreated and their imaginations retreated. And
then we had much more short term ist vision.
Uh, and this then kind of market ties the
science environment. In other words, unless you can
show over a relatively short period of time that your
your science is going to be able to produce results
that is a benefit to the client, then you
know, we you know we won't fund you.
And one of the things that you can see over
the last 25 years is marked decline in physics research
and the mark uprise in biomedical research. And that
reflects the kind of tendency I'm talking about here okay
. And the state has kind of retreated as a
major player. It's still a player, of course
, an important player. But But it's been opened
up to larger market forces and not only has been
opened up, the larger market forces a greater tolerance
for market forces. So the words people are complaining
as much as they might have 25 years ago.
Okay, so all of this is this ends up
then changing what social epistemology can be okay, because
back in 1988 I had this kind of view.
I was alluding to it this morning that, uh
, you know, if you got a social epistemology
ist whispering in the ear of the Minister of higher
Education in some developed country, that could sort it
out because knowledge production was pretty much a state monopoly
. Right? And even and even the private enterprises
that produce knowledge were very much oriented toward these kind
of state subsidized pure review panels and the National Science
Foundation. Because, of course, the National Science
Foundation has never had a monopoly on funding. But
nevertheless, it is always set a kind of gold
standard that people really respected. And so they would
be looking to that as a way to orient their
own activities. All this is gone. It seems
to me now, because the National Science Foundation is
not funding people, but I just don't think the
same levels of respect, deference, whatever you want
to call it, the normative structure. In other
words, of knowledge, production has changed very radically
, right? Even if the numbers on the ground
don't look so obviously changed. Okay, um,
and this then puts the social epistemology is in a
rather difficult, different kind of problem. Okay,
um, because there does then become a kind of
open question about all right, um, we are
now living in a world that, in a sense
, is much less centralist in terms of its political
focus than it had been in the past. Okay
, And I think that's a really important point because
all of these arguments about we should be pursuing a
maximally comprehensive view of reality and the truth and all
this, uh, really presupposed that there is a
way of ensuring that everyone can get on the same
page with this project. Right? So they all
have a kind of common sense of what's good and
bad knowledge and all the rest of that. I
think at the end of the Cold War, we
sort of lost that, Um and and so now
there's a sense in which, more than ever,
anyone who wants to practice social epistemology has has got
to be in the business of constructing those larger aims
. Those larger goals, those more comprehensive understandings of
reality that people who otherwise would have radically different interests
could mobilize around. Because in the past the state
kind of readily manufactured that through the maintenance of university
systems and and, you know, through maintenance of
by setting the standards for research and everybody respected right
. There was a sense in which it was easy
to think about heading toward the truth because because,
in a sense, all the power and the resources
were kind of being channeled in the same direction,
so that that, in fact, fueled that sort
of imagination. Right after all, the Cold War
was about competing aims for humanity. That was the
bottom line, right? It would either be a
capitalist future or a socialist future, and it was
about ultimate aims. And this is why the nuclear
thing was always such a vivid player in the imaginations
of anyone who talked about this stuff. Okay.
And for those of you who are too young to
remember, this is true. This is really true
. And it all sort of disappeared when the Soviet
Union collapsed. Okay, Um, and and so
what this means, then, is that anyone who
wants to have this kind of universal, comprehensive view
of, you know, humanity and knowledge and so
forth actually has to make the argument from scratching away
, right? In this sense, the kinds of
skills that science and technology studies are undoubted masters in
that is to say, social construction of reality.
Okay, to use Peter burgers term, right.
This is what's needed now. And what we need
to do is to manufacture this kind of larger global
vision because it's no longer always already available to us
. Okay, um, and this and this is
why I would say one of the constants in my
thinking has been that I've always been a very,
very strong social constructivist. But also I've been a
Universalist and that but But I've never had any illusions
that universalism was somehow a priority or something you can
take for granted or anything of that sort. It
has to be actively constructed now, the most natural
place for this act of construction to occur, right
? In terms of sociology, is the university okay
? The university being a place where you have an
institution that is actually explicitly dedicated to the pursuit of
all forms of knowledge that are worth pursuing right and
historically being subsidized by the state. So in a
sense, it's on behalf of all of humanity,
okay? And it's in this context, and this
is why I have always been very much a very
interested in the history of the university, has been
very, very much active in defending academic freedom and
and defending the integrity of the university as an institution
that is separable from other kinds of institutions that pursue
knowledge as well. I'm not saying it's wrong for
other institutions to pursue knowledge, but I do think
that the university really requires a privileged position. If
we're if, from a sociologically realistic standpoint, we're
going to have any kind of chance of thinking about
some kind of universal progressive standpoint that all of humanity
could line up behind. This doesn't necessarily require that
everyone be part of a university. That's, I
think, at a very important point. It doesn't
require that, but it does require that the university
is very well connected institutionally with the other sectors of
society, including secondary and primary school level. Okay
, I mean, I do think that there's a
sense in which one needs a very joined up education
policy in order to enable this to happen. And
one of the problems that I think we see today
with regard to the university, um, is first
of all, the distinctiveness of the university as a
corporate entity and one of the original corporate entities from
the Middle Ages has been this idea of teaching and
research as being integral to each other. Okay.
Research, of course, is always by definition,
a kind of elite activity in so far as one
does it privately and does it through one's own resources
and maybe with grants and so forth, but usually
at some imagined cutting edge. But the teaching function
actually brings the research back to the people and universities
, the great genius of the universities and one of
the reasons why universities are rightly seen as democratizing institutions
in the modern period is because by requiring that those
who do the research actually teach it to others who
have nothing to do with its production or will be
likely to actually contribute to its further production, right
is a very important moment in the general humanization of
society. And this was certainly the vision of Bill
Ham von Humboldt in the beginning of the 19th century
, with the ideal of the of the of the
modern university, as rector of the University of Berlin
and minister for higher Education and pressure, and I
think we're in the process of losing that and losing
it largely to what in In a In a book
? Uh, I, I wrote now about a
dozen years ago called Knowledge Management Foundations, is we're
getting the desegregation of functions from the university very similar
to the kind of desegregation that we see in business
generally, right? So, in other words,
if a business is going to run efficiently, you
can't have them doing too many things at once or
certainly not requiring that your staff do too many things
at once. You have to have people playing to
their strengths, which means in the case of a
university, you'll have a class of people doing research
and glass of people doing doing teaching, and there
is no special obligation or requirement that they combine the
two functions. And, of course, if you
take this logic to its conclusion, right, you
end up getting on the one hand universities of Phoenix
and all these kind of credentials mills as they've been
called diploma mills, which are basically in the teaching
business, aiming to certain kinds of demand niches.
Right. On the other hand, you get the
science parks right, which are often on university campuses
but are pretty much operating on the behest of corporate
investors and other people like that. And there's no
guarantee whatsoever that whatever is produced in that environment is
going to be made part of the public good of
knowledge. So this desegregation of the university that we're
seeing at an institutional level is one of the hallmarks
of this kind of post Cold War period that we
live in and is, in fact very much encouraged
and encouraged, not just by nefarious factors, but
I think actually encouraged by even some of the good
guys, I mean, so it's generally encouraged thing
. And so social epistemology, if it's really concerned
with knowledge, is a public good understood as some
kind of universal, comprehensive understanding of reality that is
, in principle, something that everyone who considers themselves
a human being ought to be entitled to. We
have our work cut out, okay, Because the
university is from our standpoint, if we're social epistemology
disintegrating before our eyes. Okay, um, and
I do think and and you know, so if
I if I may get a little bit practical here
, Uh, and I was talking to Adam,
the driver, Adam Smith. I'm not the Economist
. We haven't gotten that bad in our neoliberal era
where we've reduced, uh, great economist drivers.
But but the 0.1 of the things that I was
saying to him was that that the one thing that
we ought to keep you know, if we if
we want to reverse the situation, one of the
things that we should do is to actually encourage intelligent
, academically committed people who understand what the nature of
the university is to go into administration to become administrators
, the people responsible for the institution, because what
we're because the real problem that I see and I
think this is really a problem with the younger generation
, to be perfectly honest, because the younger generation
basically the people who've lived with Thatcher and Reagan and
neoliberalism and all the rest of it, you know
, and think that marks, you know, people
who think that Marxism is the Frankfurt school. I
laugh, right? I mean, you know,
because there's a sense in which, by the time
you get to the Frankfurt school has already failed.
I mean, right, Frankfurt school is Marxism for
losers. I mean, I think that's the way
to put it. Um, but the point is
that for people who have only lived right during this
period from the late night from the 19 eighties onward
, um, I think there is a sense in
which no one feels particular people. Younger people will
see this kind of neoliberal world, this free market
environment as a place where they can be very imaginative
, very creative. They can do lots of things
for themselves. They can hook up with all kinds
of interesting people they might not otherwise do. But
there is no kind of commitment to long term projects
, let alone institution building. Okay, but this
whole idea of knowledge that that social epistemology, at
least in my conception, has been defending and which
I share with the philosophical tradition, um, is
at risk is very much at risk under these circumstances
. Because where are you going to get the next
generation of people who are going to try to put
forward a vision of a university? That doesn't sound
just like 1/19 century version of the university. And
this is the problem, right? So all those
old fusty humanists who bemoan everything that I'm talking about
now, right? Those guys are lethal from a
public relations standpoint, no doubt about it, cause
you all know the English teachers, all these people
, right? I'm no disrespected, Jim. Of
course, But But you know, all these people
who you know who who sort of say, Matthew
Arnold. And, you know, they start conjuring
up all these kind of 19th century models of what
a real university ought to be like. And we're
not like that anymore. That's lethal, because we're
not going to go back to that period. Forget
about it. What we need is actually a university
that actually reinvents the Humboldt Ian spirit of the unity
of teaching and research. But for the 21st century
. Okay, now in, uh, in this
keynote address I gave, um wrote rather, the
one I'm giving is now, um I talked about
the idea I talked about Go to write the great
German polymath, right, who lived before Humboldt but
nevertheless was kind of the model of the sort of
person that humble thought the university ought to be producing
. And this was a guy who studied many different
subjects and integrated them into his own being. And
so he then made these very original distinctive contributions in
lots of areas, some regarded by history more,
more favorably than others, to be sure, but
never nevertheless, seeing that there was all this knowledge
, it was all part of the legacy of humanity
. And it was, in a sense, his
job, his duty, you might say to actually
bring it into his person and then come up with
something new. Okay? And I think this and
so the idea here and you know, the when
when universities were thought of as relatively elite institutions where
people didn't have to worry about jobs at the end
of the day because in some sense the job was
already there or they need to have a job.
This was kind of easy idea to realize. I
realize now people are thinking of universities as places to
get jobs from, and so this is kind of
a difficult story. And that's why there's always been
this struggle in the history of the modern university between
education and liberal arts, which would give you the
kind of girl to like figures and the more professional
, vocational Italian training right which might get you into
a job specifically. Okay, so clearly there was
a sense in which the elite that kind of elitism
is hanging over this idea. But the general principle
, it seems to me, is worth reinventing today
, especially in the current economic climate. Um,
and and the reason why I say that is because
, uh, we all know we live in this
capitalist culture and everybody's bemoaning it, you know,
And but this is a very distinctive kind of capitalist
culture. Uh, we are, you know,
any kind of, um, we're in a very
fluid capitalist culture. In other words, the issue
here is not simply that we are money or business
oriented. I think people who reduce the problem to
this are just being very unsophisticated about what's happening today
. This is not rather what we're living in a
period where, frankly, if you're smart, you
realize that there is no particular set of skills given
your capacities that can ensure you will get a job
at the end of your degree. That will last
until you retire. Okay, so in other words
, we are living in a period where the idea
of getting a degree to get a career so that
the job you begin in is the job you end
in at 65. That is history. We live
in a very fluid, fluctuating capitalism, So the
idea of having a specific set of skills can almost
give you five years. And then what happens?
You'll go on the treadmill of lifelong learning, continuing
education, right. And hopefully this will be turned
into some sort of, you know, genetic therapy
after a while, so we can eliminate a lot
of the middlemen from this. Okay, but that's
that's where that goes, right? And so what
you need if you actually want to survive in this
highly fluctuating capitalist culture is you need to develop more
substantial capacities that will remain relevant even as you go
through one job after another. And so, in
a sense, if we can, if we can
start thinking interestingly and get interesting people involved in stuff
like critical thinking, right, you know, or
even technical writing, Jim shouldn't be the only interesting
person involved in this, right? In other words
, those sorts of areas are the areas that are
likely to sustain you through your entire life in terms
of skills and so forth. Okay. And it's
through this that you can start to begin to develop
a new conception of liberal arts. Okay, taking
advantage of the fact that anyone who says, Hey
, I'm taking this degree because it will get me
a job and you say Yeah, and you'll be
unemployed in three years if you look at the statistics
. Okay, I think this is a very important
because and this is not an issue against business per
se. It is an issue about the nature of
the kind of capitalist culture that we live in now
. Okay, Um, and I think people often
, and so these old fashioned ideas that you know
, it's either we're talking about business or we're talking
about knowledge for its own sake. I don't think
this is really quite what's at play here. It's
a different ballgame, okay, But it's one where
I think people who want to reassert traditional academic values
can really play a very, very substantial role in
training the person. Okay, and let me just
say one more thing, because then I'll open it
up to questions, um, to go back to
this business of the trans humanism stuff that I've been
working on recently. Um, one of the things
that's very striking about all these people who talk about
the future and saying, You know, we're heading
into this humanity two point Oh, and all the
rest of it, uh, is that these people
have no conception of the unified person. There's no
sense of this kind of self that somebody like Humboldt
, eager to, would be very much concerned about
what the university's liberal arts curriculum was traditionally involved in
Right. Rather, what the trans humanists are primarily
concerned about is extending people's abilities along certain dimensions that
are considered to be valuable, for whatever reason,
right? So even if you look at somebody like
Ray Kurtz file with regard to the pursuit of the
singularity, what are we talking about? At the
end of the day, we're talking about computational powers
King, right? That basically, you know,
if we get to a you know, if we
develop machines that can out compute us in some way
, then we ought to become part of them.
And that's then the next stage of human evolution.
End of story. So in other words, we're
taking one dimension of the human being. And it's
not just that dimension. Trans humanists have their own
. Lots of them have different favorite dimensions, and
they project them indefinitely. And of course, there
are lots of ways of projecting these things indefinitely.
But what you don't get at the end of the
day is any kind of sense of a new,
unified person. Now, I think one of the
reasons why this has not been noticed more widely is
of course, we live in the postmodern condition.
And of course we don't believe in unified Selves and
all of this, and so this keeps the door
wide open for all of this trans humanist stuff to
kind of have fair play. Okay, because we
, in a sense, have not come back to
the idea which was very central to the idea of
modernity and very much central to what the modern university
about which was the training of the person Autonomous agent
, right, who is more than just the sum
of the jobs or some or some of the experiences
or the some of the relations that the person has
? Okay. And this is the thing that,
in a sense, that we really do need to
recover, and in a sense, social epistemology is
very much about that. And so while it is
very important to take on board all of the economic
and social and historical and whatever changes have taken place
over 25 years, there is still this basic point
that needs to be pursued. It seems to me
from the normative standpoint of social epistemology, and it
may really just boil down to getting people to be
able to come up with a kind of coherent notion
of the South that enables them to be autonomous in
a world that is subject to constant flux where there's
very little incentive for people to think that way.
Right? And I'll stop there and open it up
to discussion. Thank you. So how do you
want to or in terms of so people can be
heard? How? How does that work? You
have the microphone. Okay, So people want to
speak. Here's the microphone. Maybe you shouldn't.
People might not be able to see you say who
you are. I am very Downey. Um,
this is the president of Forest we're talking to here
. As always, it's joyful to listen to read
half a dozen questions, but I'm trying to sort
them out. I think reduce them to one has
to do with the because the linear model, a
dominant model of knowledge creation, diffusion utilization. I've
been frustrated myself in SCS with the fact that,
in a way, STS developed gain legitimacy by critiquing
linear model and knowledge production and then in its actual
practice, performing exactly that what's celebrated at annual meetings
we celebrate books and celebrate particles. We hide all
of these other practices that involved um, such things
as whispering in the year Minister a number of ways
you spoke toward alluded to describe practices, things that
we need to do beyond in a way formulating ideas
that we hope will scale up. So my first
question is about social epistemology and the linear model.
How can the the future future fundamentals of social technology
include practices that go beyond reproducing the linear model?
Or and this is already I just heard about a
book series. I'm curious about that. The second
question. Then I'll require it has to do with
the university as you presented it, and the call
for unity, unity, reinventing Hamilton Spirit of Unity
. Is it fair to claim that the university ever
was unified, even if it was the case that
in every sector of the university scholars were operating with
an image or a desire to achieve might have been
at the university has always been, in a way
, a collection the diverse collection of Let us Say
, the epistemological cultural and archaeological projects, each of
which having a constituency or constituencies outside the university in
which the competition can be about being conceptualized competition to
to articulate the kind of unity that you're calling for
are asking social technology to be you re imagined.
in the midst of that was the competition was actually
involved, maybe more importantly, or at least at
the same time, involved competitions to make a difference
beyond the boundaries of the universe. In other words
, the university always was disaggregated. And from that
point of view, then the challenges of the last
25 30 years or not about the challenges of disaggregated
per se but of a particular kind of are scaling
up of a new kind of dominance or a disproportionate
attention to, um, what's called New York Tokyo
literalist objectives. So two questions. One ambassador epistemology
and linear model. Exactly. One about one of
the university never works. All right? Okay.
Case and social epistemology and trying to re articulate and
an image of the unified human both kind of missing
the point and yet reproducing the linear model over.
Okay, I think the business about the university being
dis unified, um, in a sense, is
kind of been there certain. Well, maybe even
from the beginning of the university. I mean,
in fact, Humboldt's conception of the university as this
kind of unifying institution where philosophy would play the important
role as the unifier of all knowledge, right?
If you think about the idea of tradition, right
was largely made in response to, you know,
Kant wrote this famous essay towards, you know,
the contest of the faculties. Right? So if
you go back to the late 18th century, you
have theology and medicine, right? Uh, and
law all saying they're the top dogs. They're the
ones that should be running things. All the rest
of it. Um, and, you know,
cons view was that lost in this kind of internecine
strife was the potential power that the university could have
as a leader of society if it actually had some
kind of organizational principle behind it. And this,
then, is what inspired Humboldt to come up with
the idea of philosophy as the organizing principle. And
if you see the history of German idealism fixed a
shelling, Hagel all these people and well, not
just no, but but but But the point is
, I mean, even the logical positivism as well
, right? I mean, if you go into
the 20th century as well the whole idea of philosophy
as the unifier of knowledge, right? And what
was the value of that? Well, the value
was. Organization provides you a certain kind of strength
, a certain kind of power so that when academic
knowledge actually dealt with society and there was nobody saying
that academic knowledge should deal with society, it should
deal with it on its own terms, not just
as a servant, but it should be leading,
not just simply following. Okay, Um and and
because if you look at the kind of contest the
faculties that existed right in the period that count was
writing, these were all faculties that obviously had very
important kind of strongholds within the society at large legal
profession, the medical profession, the church, right
, and and And, you know, the point
of contact Humboldt was the university has to stand up
for itself. And what does it stand up for
? It stands up for knowledge, understood as some
kind of universal human empowering thing. But the only
way you can do that is if it organizes itself
and it retains its own sense of autonomy. And
the idea of academic freedom which comes from this tradition
, was built on the back of that. So
the point here was you're absolutely right. The university
has always been dis unified thing. That's why you
actually need to have movements to unify the university and
to enforce that. And that's one of the reasons
why I say that we continue to need to have
administrators with vision who are willing to push the project
forward. Please don't hear me. Are you rather
margin remote? Yeah. Order in a way.
Embedded in the question is, Are you for the
value? Has actual reforms that actually takes I'll tell
you the way. The best way to interpret what
you're saying childhood standpoint. Okay, So taking you
at face value what you're saying I do think it's
fair to say, especially in the United States,
which I would say for those of you who don't
realize that the Americans probably don't realize this. But
everybody else around the world probably realize that America has
the best track record of visionary academic leaders in terms
of university presidents who write books and big ideas,
influence society and so forth. It's been the United
States because the United States, in the way it
has really taken up the humble thing much more than
it was ever taken up in Europe, where became
very quickly dominated by state bureaucracies. Okay, so
I think that's an important point. Now, if
you look at a lot of these university president of
the United States and let's say, in the 20th
century, James Bryan coded, you know, at
Harvard, we have Robert Maynard Hutchins at the University
of Chicago. These are guys with very different normative
visions. Okay, very different normative visions, but
nevertheless defending a very coherent notion of university under those
different visions. So I'm agreeing with. So there
is an example. There is an example. There's
examples from history to justify what you're saying. I
do not think the present climate actually fosters this kind
of normative plurality, but you're absolutely right. In
20th century in the United States, you can find
visionary university presidents presenting alternative visions of the university all
about the autonomy of the university. That's all true
, but I don't think we're in a climate that
actually allows that to happen very easily. I'm arguing
that disciplines always happen. Mhm separate disciplines have justifying
themselves, have made qualitatively different kinds of claims and
have qualitatively different kinds of. This is where universities
are important, right, And this is where something
like liberal arts curriculum are very important because one of
the things that the idea of having a common curriculum
right that everybody, regardless of their major has to
pursue, is it forces you to think at a
very fundamental level about what knowledge worth having. Even
if you're not a specialist, right? What is
knowledge worth having just being a citizen or a human
being or something like this? And and so it
seems to be it's at the liberal. You know
, you look at the liberal arts curriculum at the
university that gives you a sense of the soul of
the university. Okay, of course, when we're
talking about majors, different disciplines will justify the fact
that you should be majoring in them in different ways
because they offer different skills and all that. But
the point is, if you have a common curriculum
and this is what the great thing about the United
States is again different from Europe is that people only
specialized right at the end of the second year,
right? People can change their majors in Europe.
You come in having taken exams, right? You
come in specialized. You don't actually have the liberal
arts moment that you have in the United States.
Okay, um and in a sense, what I'm
trying to do here is to get people to not
take this regretted. This is, in fact,
where the soul of the university is. Isn't this
kind of process? Okay, It's not about,
Of course, different disciplines justify themselves different. The
question is, what's the university's attitude toward that fact
? What does the university do with that fact?
And the whole idea of having a common curriculum is
to put those disciplines in the room and say,
Okay, how do we fit this all together?
Because we all believe you're producing valuable knowledge. But
how does it all fit into a curriculum that you'd
want anyone, even somebody not specialising in your field
to take forward? And that's where I think the
issue of the university life. Because if you just
talk about disciplines, disciplines, pursuing your own stuff
that don't really require university, a discipline could exist
by itself without a university, I don't agree,
but Syria. Hi. Uh, introduce yourself.
Yeah. My name is David Peterson. I'm from
University of Copenhagen. Actually, I guess one of
the rare socialist apologists that has been working for a
Danish government and also part of the European Commission for
now, more than eight years. So I'm quite
acquainted with the problems that you mentioned in your in
your timely and inspiring talk. Steve and I wanted
to push a little bit, I guess in the
same direction as the former question, but but probably
on a putting emphasis on another part of what you
said. So I was wondering and having observed myself
working in, Let's say, European science policy circles
that the kind of instrumentalists and constructed is stamps that
are so pavilion in in STS studies has actually spilled
over into policy making. So I would kind of
try to push a little bit on the idea that
the fact that we have such a, you know
, strong view about the social plasticity of scientific institutions
within STS has been a very timely kind of social
technology for a lot of policymakers. So the fact
that we go in deconstruct look at how things are
so fluid as they are and like say, we
can redesign these institutions without having to care much about
ontology or like disciplinary knowledge production, because basically,
in the end of the day, it's all just
ideology or interest or power struggles or networks. I
mean, those ideas are perfectly, you know,
fitting into the current Let's say, imagine areas of
techno scientific new liberalism. So in that sense,
I would say Yes. Of course, there is
some degree of social plasticity and social. Let's say
Constructivism, especially what returns to the social world.
But I think it it has become kind of a
perverse, you know, unintended consequence of Constructivism.
Instrumental is that it leads to those policy frameworks.
And then again, if you go into political science
and look where a lot of my colleagues and science
policy has been educated and what kind of theory they
read in political science that, you know they don't
recover anymore, they barely Rick Kuhn, you know
, they do read science and technology started no philosophy
, no theory of science anymore. So in that
sense, also had a very practical kind of textbooks
, and the kind of fluidity or plasticity of Constructivism
has kind of spilled over into policy. And I
think that's a real challenge also in what you're saying
starting out thinking, you know, Amazon constructive.
If I used to be one, so perhaps you
could expand a little bit of that. Well,
look, I don't think Constructivism is really the problem
here. I think it's Constructivism without a name,
Okay? I mean, I mean, one of
the things that makes, uh, one of the
things that that I think made Social Constructivism a kind
of radical position back in the sixties, seventies and
eighties, Uh, was the idea that you didn't
when you were studying the agents, you didn't presume
that they all had some ideal of truth or some
kind of common thing common epistemological norm that they were
all working toward, Uh, but rather you imagine
that each bunch of agents had kind of their own
designs, they were doing their own thing, and
and in a sense, that from an empirical standpoint
, that's fine. But then we and maybe this
is kind of the reflexive move that needs to be
taken. We need to be clear about what we're
about in doing this. Okay, Uh, and
and this morning, when we had the session this
morning, we talked about this emerging part of science
technology studies which I think actually has a lot in
common with social epistemology, which is the anticipatory governance
business. Okay, um, and I've been quite
critical of this largely because these people are just up
for higher. Right? And this is in case
you aren't familiar. Anticipatory governance is this form of
STS research where you have, let's say, the
National Science Foundation of European Union funding researchers to check
to see how ordinary people are responding to anticipated innovations
in science and technology. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, and
trying to figure out what kinds of things are you
looking forward toward, what sorts of things frighten them
. And then this would be fed in to the
way in which these techniques, sciences and technologies are
then marketed and presented once they actually come on stream
. Okay, and this is called anticipatory governance.
It's a big bloom area. Um, it's basically
public relations, I think, uh, in its
current form. But this is but but there's nothing
wrong, actually, with engaging with people about the
future and all the rest of it. So it's
not the activity itself. That's the problem. The
problem is the lack of personal responsibility for the outcome
. That's the problem in the way you were bringing
this up yourself, right? Namely that if signs
of technology, it's so if the social system ologists
were to say, Look, you know, um
, we actually think that in a sense, you
ought to be interested and concerned about these things that
are happening. Um, and we want to know
what you think, and we're in a way pushing
it, and we have to take some responsibility for
it. That wouldn't be a problem. Okay,
I think the problem My problem with STS social constructivist
type people on this matter is a refusal to take
responsibility and just acting as if there are tools,
right, Because the people who do this kind of
research will next. We do some other kind of
research, and they'll just say, You know,
I'm just revealing what the people think when we give
them these weak, immediate things or, you know
, consensus conferences or whatever, but I have nothing
to do with what you guys do with it or
anything like that. I'm just being paid to facilitate
, essentially right. And so the social Constructivist side
of STS then becomes very good in enabling voices that
would otherwise be suppressed to be voiced but they take
no responsibility for the consequences of that, right?
They just move onto the next project. My view
is, social epistemology actually should be interested in this
kind of activity, but should take some responsibility for
it. And in a sense, say, Well
, look, if we do endorse the stuff right
, you know, we should be more on board
with it. We should be actually using this material
to actually advocates. At least that's a little bit
more socially responsible, because I think at the moment
STS is kind of just like a wild card,
right that you can hire to get people to reveal
things about other people and then use it to however
you want. Now I realize this kind of view
it is a controversial one, but I think that
in a sense, this is what social epistemology demands
, that if your social Constructivist you have to make
your ends explicit, you have to make your aims
explicitly. You cannot just be a tool, and
I think that's the problem. You're pointing to its
social Constructivism social Constructivism. Basically, let's the people
you're looking at, the people you're studying, set
the aims and you yourself are just as it were
, the medium through which all of that is reflected
. And I think that's a real problem from the
standpoint of any kind of integrity, as far as
the skills. And that's why I compared it to
public relations this morning. Mhm. Yeah, right
. Come on. Hmm. Okay. We'll continue
the, uh You hear me? Yeah. We'll
continue the company. You can introduce yourself. Yes
. So I'm Thomas bastard, and I'm a writing
coach. Independent. Have been for a while.
I'll be starting at the Copenhagen Business School library.
Uh, next month. Um And, uh,
So I think my question is also that the university
of what you do and I want to get back
to this research and teaching thing is the essence of
the university. Because it seems to me that,
um if the university is some distinctive institution, that
tells us a little bit about what knowledge is and
especially ought to be, um Then the most interesting
thing about it might not be, uh, mhm
. Uh, actually, the most interesting about it
might be the way that we pass on knowledge through
the institution. So this whole story I have,
um there was a symposium method company in business school
a few years ago on engaged scholarship This whole idea
of how do we get, uh, scientists,
researchers, scholars to engage with and, of course
, business, school with business? How do we
get the knowledge from the university is being produced in
research out into practice? How do we get that
communication going? Um, and so one of the
Panelists and this discussion was from a consulting a large
major consulting house. And she said, Um,
she said, You have to understand your researchers that
we have certain needs in the way you package and
present this information, um, and and and so
first of all, we needed to go fast and
we don't need 110% solutions. We need 90% solutions
or whatever, she said. And then she said
, What you need, scholars is a product launch
, right? You need to find a way of
packaging your ideas and and and sell them to us
so that we know what you've got and we can
put it into a fact. And my response to
that was I said, Listen, we have a
product watch at the university it's called graduation. Alright
, we produce continuously knowledgeable people, and then you
are you know you're welcome to pay them. We
There's not even really any great mystery about what the
right fair just crisis because there's, you know,
starting salary, depending on which institution you come out
of. What kind of grades you got so forth
easy to determine. But but the difference between those
two kinds of knowledge is one of them says knowledge
is the thing we produce these ideas that we come
up with at the university, and then we have
to distribute the ideas. But if knowledge is this
other thing which goes into students and it takes four
or five years or more, um so the sense
of discipline gets this literal sense of it's actually a
training of bodies so forth. And that's where I
think this whole idea of of We need a notion
of personhood, a notion of self and I,
you know, frankly, and we've talked about this
before, I'm a little bit worried about the trans
humanist kind of two point oh mode because it seems
disembodied, the knowledge competence, the episode says we
can upload it to something back that we have Google
meets. We don't really need universities any more of
this kind of thing. So I think the idea
of a slow four year training program in composing yourself
as a intelligence, I think it's worth defending that
in a really old school almost 19th century. This
is where we disagree. But otherwise we agree.
I mean, I think where we disagree is simply
in the means. But I think in terms of
the ends and the concerns, you have exactly share
that with you. Okay, Um but, uh
, to be honest with you, I don't know
, I do think I mean one point. I
think take home point from what you're saying I think
is worth pointing out is if we want to talk
about whether degree programs are successful. Uh, we
shouldn't be looking in terms of what the job you
get Six months after graduation, we should be looking
at a longer time frame and asking people kind of
more probing questions. Okay, so So that's one
thing. Uh, and I certainly agree with you
, by the way, that the university's biggest product
is not the papers and publishers, but it's the
students I agree with you 100% on that, okay
? And what we need to do those of us
who are interested in the future of the university is
to figure out a kind of rhetorically acceptable and verifiable
way of saying we're doing a good job at this
. That's the challenge. It seems to me,
okay, I don't think we should take granted that
just because we like this idea. And we were
, you know, talking a lot about it for
hundreds of years means that we're any good at it
. And so we need to come up with some
kind of metrics on this point. Okay, So
this is where I think we need to be very
much in 21st century about this, But the values
that are being defended through these metrics should indeed be
the classical values. I don't think these things are
mutually exclusive. Okay, So I I just think
that the people who are on your side, you
know, on our side in this regard tend to
be so quanta phobic, right, that you end
up not wanting to really deal with the argument as
it presents itself to us. And so as a
result, you end up contributing to making the university
look like an old fashioned, obsolete institution. No
, Fitz. Mhm. Uh, I don't know
if you remember or aware of this, There's there
was a study came out a few years ago called
Academically Adrift. Harriman. Rogue. So, uh
, and which studied raised this question? Do students
get smarter by going to university? Do they actually
improve their? And I believe it was analytical reasoning
and critical thinking with the two categories they were looking
for separate from the question of, you know,
Are they becoming more knowledgeable and sort of fast dates
figures, that kind of thing. Um And so
they, of course, predictably found out that in
fact, after two years of college, nobody's smarter
. People don't appreciate get smarter by going to college
and there, which is a disturbing result in itself
. There was some. There was some. There's
something more they learned from this. One of them
was they discovered that group work had a negative effect
on critical thinking. So the way I always present
that to when I talk about this, especially not
as an argument for libertarianism. So when I talked
to when I talk to undergraduates and I tell them
about this study. Uh, I say, you
know, just keep this in mind. There are
good reasons to engage in group work because it teaches
you how to work in groups. Right? And
this is an important skill, and it will just
don't think it's going to make you smarter. The
opposite is true, right? It's going to make
you dumber, so you'll have to do something else
that's gonna make you smarter. They'll compensate for that
, right? Um and then, of course,
the study also identified exactly what that is, which
is regular reading and regular writings. They found that
the liberal arts programs that had a high reading component
and I writing component actually made people perform better on
these tests. And so what are people doing?
If they're reading and writing well, they're just interpreting
and composing prose. That's all they're doing, right
? And I mean, I guess we can quantify
in some sense, you know, how many paragraphs
will they write in the course of you know,
we can be much more clever than that. But
the worry is that any other kind of metric that
we could put on it. Uh, is likely
to forget about that. That sort of that really
old school kind of compositional that, um But look
, you've already begun to give a kind of metric
for what you want to get at. It's just
we need to get a little more involved in the
project of trying to come up with sophisticated metrics.
But you've already suggested direction with your example, right
? But that's what I'm saying. I'm saying,
um uh, we don't have to get into something
terribly new, right? So the idea of saying
people like me are old fashioned and afraid of metrics
, right? Okay, I'm I'm certainly very able
to say I know exactly what I want people to
be doing for exactly how many hours a day I
can set the whole training regimen. Right? But
that's the thing that's become unfashionable. See, this
is something for the professional society of social system.
Ology to address is actually this point we're talking about
right now. This is something where we can actually
say something significant. Collectively, I would have thought
exactly that's where knowledge actually happened. But the thing
that I'd like you to address that is Isn't it
true that it's kind of a spinning cystic? I
guess. Uh, ethics, Uh, that what
? We need to just figure out what the as
far as knowledge goes, we need to figure out
what the body can do, right? Not and
not how we can get rid of the body and
leave it. But this is right. But we
have actually trained the human body that we have.
That's what Intellectual person. Yes. Yes, I
understand. But this is why I said the very
beginning of the talk about the naturalism, right?
Ought implies, can write. And the way my
view about can has changed is the idea that can
is no longer just a fixed, natural thing.
But it's something that can, in fact be enhanced
, transformed. You want to say something more?
One more thing. So we know what we know
to a certain extent. What? The body is
capable of knowledge wise because of the humble fashion model
. Because we've had people through the old school way
of getting an education. We know also for the
fact that we're not training the body. Currently student
body, is it worth, uh, to do
? Everything is capable of already. And so I
think that the idea of augmenting or enhancing or extending
, uh is kind of. It's kind of a
bad excuse for the negative direction that university education has
taken over the last 20 or 30 years, as
if because Google was invented. Suddenly the university was
became irrelevant. Now we have to learn something new
, and it might be easier just to actually implant
something or whatever, right? So I think what
we should have done is said, No, look
, these new technologies, these new capacity is these
new possibilities. This new extension of can, if
you will right, is actually just forgetting everything that
we can do. So there's a really classical kind
of concept to the argument against the printing press,
right? This is the argument against the printing press
. I wouldn't exactly Yes, it would only if
it would only by a slower uptake of technology,
right? I think. I mean, I think
we really have to recognize that if it's true that
a four year degree program is kind of reasonable,
I mean, we can argue about whether it should
be longer shorter, but there's so many years in
Europe. But there's, but there's some temporal kind
of range that's kind of a reasonable for serious,
knowing to kind of get in cocaine. Um,
Then there is also and there's simply there's some there's
such a thing is going too fast. You can
you can simply go to friends. And so and
I think that that's the trends. The two point
oh, transform this kind of suggestion. The university
is just an attempt to go so fast, Uh
, that we don't really have to know you,
but yeah, okay. Okay. No. Okay
. This is a conference. This is actually a
very worthwhile conversation to have many occasions in the future
. Joan has her hands. Yeah. Introduce yourself
. I'm I'm connected. Gregory Sense from European Humanities
University. And with Wayne. I want to continue
that on this naturalism just back. But you also
brought up the topic of humanism, at least in
the humanists. And I could go a little humanist
. Super mon. The situation of the university.
Yeah, like Thomas, all those Matthew ardent fans
out there. You started by saying I have considered
myself a naturalist. And but yet over 25 years
, some things have changed, and I wonder if
or how you put together naturalism and humanism. Now
, um, such that we're We can no longer
have to bemoan the situation of the university. Have
you transformed into a non natural throughout that process?
Before it was on your It's not yours, but
the Wikipedia page is definitely not much, right?
Right. Uh, you were called by introduced Career
a secular humanist, but that seems to have changed
over the years as well. And I wonder if
you could address that the the naturalism. Humanism?
Because it does seem to come across this issue of
social. I wanted to address to the new extension
of Can that Thomas Brown. Wasn't that what Obama
was promising? Yes, we can extension of,
uh, there's a story currently on the BBC website
about how Obama is being blamed for every world problem
that's taken place over the last five years. So
I don't want to. That's what happens when you
get a Nobel Prize for peace. Uh, but
no, look, I am not secular humanism.
I mean, I think there's some terminal logical issues
here, and I just clarified when I was when
I was talking about humanism in that the moment sense
that Thomas is part of. I was actually talking
about people who still see a kind of classical humanities
as the foundation of university. That was what I
was talking about. Um, what I wasn't talking
about specifically was this other more general view about humanism
as a kind of human centered worldview. Okay.
And that's the sense in which I'm a secular humanist
. Now, naturalism has a very kind of,
uh, peculiar relationship to this because of people who
call themselves secular humanists. Um, part of what
they're trying to do is to distance themselves from any
kind of theological understanding of the human being. And
in that respect, I'm not. I'm not quite
a secular humanist in that sense, Okay? But
I do distinguish I'm not a churchgoer or a church
person, okay? But I do think that the
point about the naturalism is that, um that naturalism
in a way forces you to think about the human
being kind of the way that that that that Thomas
was saying right in the sense of, you know
, the human being as Homo SAPIENs as the biological
creature that has certain kind of capacities. Uh,
and obviously capacities I'm quite happy to grant are formed
as a product of evolution and social arrangements and all
the rest of it. And then the question becomes
, Is that all there is right And so that
when we talk about what a human being can be
, are we pretty much just limiting ourselves to that
kind of understanding of the human being which Thomas I
take it to be saying Yes, but I don't
. Okay, Um and so there is this possibility
for extensions, and we can have arguments about what
sorts of extensions are permissible or not. Is it
permissible to be able to take a drug to replace
reading a book? It's an interesting argument to have
, and I don't think it's I don't have a
I can see why you disagree. Okay? I'm
not gonna I'm not gonna completely deny that, um
, but I do think there's a further issue.
And maybe this is what you're getting at. As
why would one want to think about extending the can
, right? In other words, why would one
want to think about a human being as an extended
entity, right? Because human being as an extended
entity then causes all kinds of problems with regard to
the environment. I mean, all the attempts of
human extension from an environmental standpoint, right and lead
to all kinds of ecological dislocations and all the rest
of it. Okay. And this is where I
think that a more theological dimension comes in because naturalism
alone is not going to justify that. If you
were straight naturalist with regard to human capacities, right
, you'd stick with humanity. One point. Oh
, right. You stick with Homo SAPIENs and you
would say, have Homo SAPIENs live in their environments
, right? Compatible with other Homo SAPIENs and other
creatures in a way that is ecologically stable as possible
. Now, my view about this and this is
where I become a trans humanist is I think if
we actually took that advice seriously over the centuries,
we'd never be where we are today. We'll be
much more backward by by the standards that we have
today. We would be much for that. But
in fact, what has actually led us to be
where we are today to be as advanced as we
regard ourselves to be today is because we have not
believed this idea that were just limited to our physical
bodies that we have capacities that go beyond it.
And we just need to explore how to get there
. And this is where technology and medicine and and
, you know, social engineering. And all the
rest of it have played a very important pope role
in extending the human condition. And that's what you
mean by intelligent design. As I understand as well
, so that yeah, I mean, I have
some reservations in the audience about that, I think
. No, no, no, but but I
see that as all part of the people. We
could have a discussion about that if you want.
But it seems to me that that is all very
much part of peace. The people, people who
believe in intelligent, you know, it's that it
isn't simply intelligent design, but it's the idea that
the universe as a whole is intelligible, right?
In other words, because, look, if you're
if you're if you're a Darwinist or a strict naturalist
, right, What is the kind of knowledge that
is appropriate to you is the kind of knowledge that
enables you to survive in the environment in which you
normally live right? That's the story, right?
And so there we take into account, You know
, the way in which we came into existence.
We look at the, you know, we look
at the restrictions on the on the capacities of the
human body, as it's, you know, biologically
born, and we kind of limit ourselves to death
. But human beings are clearly much more than that
. And the question. And not only have we
tried to be much more than that, we succeeded
in being much more than that. And the question
is why, right? Why have we done this
? And what does this reflect? So, for
example, are most prestigious forms of knowledge on which
, on the basis of which we judge everything else
tend to be about knowledge about far away places to
which we have. No very little contact tends to
be mathematics, physics. Things of that kind were
talking about the cosmos and all the rest of it
. Why is this the most prestigious form of knowledge
has nothing to do with humans, right? In
fact, the people who are most concerned about knowledge
of human survival often they're regarded as not light rates
, Okay. And nevertheless, regardless of what we
think. This is a just situation. Not nevertheless
, we have succeeded this way. Okay, so
this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about
. And and this goes, I think, beyond
what naturalists normally are willing to contemplate. But,
you know, if you look at the degree to
which we have kind of really, you know,
shot out of our natural ecological niches over the past
40,000 years, right? You you kind of wonder
. Why is this just a lucky break? What's
going on here? And maybe it is just a
lucky break. Its global warming will share within a
couple of days. Yeah, I've already asked University
of Queensland in Australia. Yes, it again.
Alright. University of Queensland, Australia. I want
to come back to the question of knowledge, and
I want to come back to Gary Donnie's first question
that you kind of never returned to and that I
wasn't quite sure what Maybe you can tell me the
question. Um, so this the linear knowledge that
many, many of the disciplines points to reproduce themselves
. Um, and so there is alternative formulations of
this things like, uh, there's a problem in
the sense in your view of the university, so
medieval university did not exist to produce good citizens.
It is not a cicerone, ian sort of place
. It was much more of an elite sort of
place. The 20th century university, however, is
when we get mass education, etcetera, etcetera.
You start producing a population of people to go out
and do something else with knowledge. Um, now
I want to bring this back to our own turf
and what social festive ology should be doing in relation
to its own disciplinary formation. Or maybe in relation
to science and technology studies. Um, that seems
to me with my first got, the technology becomes
, But when I first got involved the President,
it just a social construct, anything. That's why
I had to run. Because one of the things
that was always very interesting to me is that,
um and why I do social epistemology occasionally teach it
. Um and I do have PhD students, but
the most the biggest thing that I do, um
, is I talked to groups that are not going
to be social system ologists. They are not going
to study science and technology studies. Now they're going
to be people who are talking with maybe David policy
format or they're going to be doing this. And
I think that is the most important. Um,
not necessarily reproducing kind of disciplinary formation or attitude about
Social Constructivism or even, you know, a strong
commitments about knowledge is true. Believer otherwise so.
I guess I'm calling you just a little bit on
your view of the university, and social epistemology is
placed within that university. And what the social what
the attitude the social epistemology should be running the university
should be a discipline in the universe. This is
the bottom line with what I'm saying, okay?
Because it's gonna be the social system ologists who is
going to have the dynamic vision right, which I
think Humboldt had about How should all these configuration of
knowledge is that otherwise we just reproduce themselves mindlessly elected
their own devices should in fact, be engaged with
each other in a way, they can actually empower
the citizenry of the future. That's what the social
system. This is why I made the point about
, you know, we need people in administration and
university administration. You know, it's a social epistemology
is not not having departments of social epistemology case you
want to know? Uh, there is a department
of social epistemology in the Russian Academy of Sciences I'm
very pleased to see, but the point is,
that's not where the action is. The action would
be but a social anthropologist to be running the university
. So it's not to reproduce the discipline, but
is to organize. And Dina Mayes, a bunch
of knowledge producers who left to their own devices would
just be reproducing themselves. So I agree with you
, I guess. Yeah. Okay, so is
that sort of the third moment of the dialectic?
Well, that's what I would say. Look,
you know, I'm in the same situation as you
are, frankly, in terms of what my students
do, Okay? It's not like I'm reproducing people
to do what I'm doing, but I do get
people who do go out and do interesting things.
Nevertheless, um, and it seems to me that
that's exactly the ideal student of social epistemology. Would
go into university administration, you know, and would
actually kind of think this is the thing. I
really I mean, this is where you know what
? No, no, that's Okay. Okay.
No, no, no. Okay, well,
you're a proud success story, but yeah. No
, no, no. But so I don't know
. I don't think you disagree. Yeah, bro
, I agree that social system ologists should be in
university administrations and pretty much everywhere else. That knowledge
is produced because it calls attention to normative dimensions that
so many others failed to address. I mean,
what I would like to come back is the where
question about linear. Can you explain what this linear
? I mean, I understand the model. How
does it relate to the social? But a few
minutes ago, you said we need new metrics,
right? Okay. Um, establishing and building metrics
involves a variety of practices that might be highly localized
, very much situated, involve all sorts of practical
judgments and may not be built necessarily from a starting
point that consists of a a well articulated model that
includes clear and distinct ideas. My point is that
it seems that what I'm hearing is, in a
way, you are reproducing the persona of the philosopher
of the of the Let's say, the early 20th
century analytical philosopher, uh, who has reinterpreted Cambodian
German model that once the philosophers just to occupy a
positions of authority by virtue of their abilities to articulate
, to clarify, to articulate the clear and distinct
ideas. This is Gary down again, by the
way of your, uh and, uh and so
in your talk here and in your work, you
know, you're calling for a new kind of articulation
, a new kind of articulation, and, you
know, and I get that and it's it's achievable
. Great. At the same time. I mean
, there's a journal called social epistemology that has him
at the word policy. Um, I mean,
would it be a fair set of practices for the
field of social epistemology to get down and dirty in
all kinds of arenas of knowledge, production and expression
? Um, include, building metrics happens all the
time. Well, the metric stuff, this is
the thing. Metrics is a kind of a taboo
subject with a lot of people, But but Francis
is part of that culture. I'm the metrics guy
. Uh, for the court 12 bird. I
know lots of metrics. I cognos the bill metrics
dashboard kpi dashboards. Look, I don't know.
I mean, I don't know what you would social
system ologists. Aren't these ivory tower philosophers? I
think you should, in terms of the people who've
been responding here who have been among the most kind
of energetic members of this field, none of them
are. Even though we all have philosophical trading,
none of us are conventionally philosophers at all. But
the way the rhetorical structure of your argument, in
a way was was philosophical in content. It was
a call for for reimagining, uh, the develop
a new conception of the local arts. Yes,
Um, and with the eye, with a kind
of pre supposition that once conceptualized, it will diffuse
. No, we don't. We don't consider that
is obvious at all. In fact, that this
is where SPS does make a difference, right?
I mean the question. Look again, Let's go
through the dialectic one more time, right? The
philosophers put forward all these kinds of pie in the
sky norms that might be very attractive, but nobody
actually enforces them. STS comes along and says nobody's
enforcing them. Their bullshit, right? What's our
response? Our response is well, we actually think
a lot of these norms are worth we're enforcing or
implementing in some way But now we have to think
about a clever way of doing it, okay?
And this is why, for example, a lot
of us who are in social epistemology and I think
this is true of most people in the room are
very keenly instant rhetoric, for example. Okay,
rhetoric, cause you got to persuade people, right
? It's not just I mean, I think it's
the abstraction, the abstract, this of your characterization
of social epistemology is the problem here. Okay,
Because in fact, if you look at what social
system ologists do in practice, right, we are
constantly in the business, dealing with multiple audiences,
trying to, as it were, sort of tailor
these larger visions to particular context. Right? And
we're doing and we're doing that right. What we're
not doing is we're not denying the possibility of doing
it. Okay, which is what S T.
S. I think it often does. Namely saying
that doesn't make any sense if you're dealing in a
local context, to bring in a big idea and
try to persuade people, but rather you should be
catering to what the people on the ground already think
. I'm going to argue that what you just said
is true for relatively small coterie, uh, elite
as T. S, um, theorists and their
followers. But it's not an accurate description of the
vast majority of STS practitioners take a poll. And
, uh, well, we're trying to make such
folks more visible and the work that they do more
visible. And in that sense, then there is
a much greater overlap between the actual work being done
by the vast majority of people who claim the label
of STS and those who claim the label of social
system. Well, that's how it started. I
mean, it did start that way. I mean
, nobody denies that STS was a very important formative
factor. In fact, this morning the presentation wasn't
yours. Your strength. I think it was yours
that that actually made this very explicit right? In
the beginning, we were sort of overlapping communities.
And then the great divide curd right? And you
guys went into the darkness way. Uh, it
was like an eclipse followed philosophers into the darkness or
No, no, no. I'm just saying that
there was a party of the ways in substance.
Let's put it that way. Nothing. Question.
That's good. Thanks. Um, well, talking
about exactly the same. Yeah, this is David
Peterson from coming again, Um, touching upon the
same discussion, I think, of course, we
can't blame, you know, all bad things in
the world, too. On STS scholarship, I
think I think we shouldn't anyway. And that was
very instructive to paint a couple of years back in
one of the last journals between Villanova me and Andrew
Webster brand win on but what they called entering the
policy room. And some of these people actually had
a quiet, reflective discussion that I think what what
he has been doing in Europe has been extremely instrumental
and actually pushing some of the bootstrapping exercises on really
understanding how to promote good basic size without actually buying
in at at all to the linear model. Because
health care was very instrumental at the beginning of the
nineties, actually of kind of deconstructing the linear bottle
but still going into the European Research Council and giving
voice to some of the extremely necessary kind of knowledge
generating, you know, exercises that needs to take
place even within a group of finance ministers or,
you know, research ministers. So that that discussion
was extremely helpful. But going to from that reflectivity
that they were able to display in in in that
discussion and that some of them also brand win and
others has done, I mean, yeah, I
can go on there. I mean, another good
friend is Alan Alan Irvine, who is now the
device you know, the D M. Actually in
in cognition of the research school who has also done
a tremendous job and kind of bootstrapping dynamiting What's your
word? Uh, like, you know, sustain
good good signs in a way, whatever. We
wanna whatever we mean with that. But so if
social epistemology is going to kind of have a voice
in a policy community, I think it's quite important
to be aware of where the funding is coming from
and kind of being also much aware of the kind
of conflict of interest that might be. I see
that that's one of the big problems about my young
colleagues and in some branches of STS that they go
into L C programs. They have a lot of
funding coming from the same programs that front biotic,
uh, you know, neurotic by do engineering and
When you are kind of a an auxiliary scholar to
a large scale technology program and you get your funding
from the same program, there is a tendency,
and I understand that of not biting the hand that
feeds to. And I think there's a real kind
of not only like a large scale new, liberal
kind of conspiracy, but that's just basic human nature
. And in that way it's It's quite important that
if you want to do like a good program in
science policy or, let's say, science organization of
science governance, it should be kind of set up
or decide in a way that makes it trust policy
, and that makes people keep that integrity. And
it should be also about setting up some ethical rules
. You just mentioned that some code of conduct of
disclosing interests of you know like we do like we
have recently begun to do when we publish articles like
where you can get your money from, How did
that money influence the research you have done? And
I think there's two STS could learn much more of
doing that, and I think I believe that social
epistemology could be the kind of exception that you know
. As you said earlier, this is a do
it yourself conference. It's crowd sourced by all ourselves
. That might be a bad thing in big science
today. Why don't we have a research brand of
$100,000 to put us all in a nice you know
, location in the Caribbean? Not to complain about
? Wait a minute, not from late about lodging
. So in that sense, I think it's quite
important to be aware of those constituencies and the way
we are also kind of material independent, another very
good insight from STS scholarship itself and that you can
spill over into the way. You would then design
the role of associative entomologist in the future, because
just going into government just going into the Dean's office
does not necessarily make a big difference because the world
is full of, uh, you know, uh
, power relations. I understand that, and I
think you're absolutely right. I do think, though
, that it really helps to come in with a
kind of vision of what you want to accomplish and
a kind of enough of a kind of, uh
, expansive rhetorical imagination to be able to understand multiple
ways in which that vision could be realized. Okay
, I think that's the kind of thing, in
a sense, that I actually think that those of
us here in this room who have been involved with
the rhetorical side of social epistemology, I think are
actually quite good in training people in, right.
So in other words, you don't It doesn't need
to be so either or, you know, you
know, if you have a big vision, stay
away from government because you won't be able to do
anything, but rather you gotta understand, you gotta
be rhetorically flexible, which means you have to be
really clear about what you think is absolutely important.
And what sorts of things do you think could be
subject to trade offs and negotiation? Right. And
we don't and you know that needs to be made
much more explicit as part of the training, it
seems to me. But at the end of the
day, because look, politicians do succeed at this
kind of stuff. The great ones do. I
don't see why this can happen in the knowledge business
. Mhm, Thomas Best Thomas desperately again, governing
. So I'd like to take up this idea of
progress that you have a favorable view of human progress
. Yeah, Sorry. I realized a very you're
very enthusiastic about the active, all the things we
can do in the activities, I think. I
mean, Pascal has a great, uh, that
great aphorism that all the evil in the world results
from people being able to sit still in a room
. Uh, which, uh, which, you
know, a culture person would be able to do
it just kind of enjoy being themselves. And,
uh, you know, if nothing important needs to
get done, then why rush off and do a
which is not right. And I think that's kind
of where this comes from. But wouldn't you agree
? I mean, hard enough of a Marxist to
agree that the history of industrial progress, right,
this is isn't just a wonderful story of success.
And it is the story of exploiting and where exactly
you look at why we got there and then and
then casting it into obsolescence. Right? You take
certain take, you take craft skill. You turn
it into labor, right? And then you wear
out the labor and then you replace it with automation
. And then and then the people involved after generations
of being formed in that way to simply become obsolete
. And then we don't worry too much about that
. Uh, now isn't the same thing. Are
we looking at the same kind of thing in the
intellectual world? Are we taking the mind of the
intellectual? And then first? And this is the
period. We're probably now we're coming to the end
of of completely destroying it, wearing it out over
over standing it within its own current capacity over standing
. It's actual brain capacity. So we have depression
. We have stress. We have, you know
, wide range of issues there. Exactly. And
then But then hey, great. It doesn't matter
, because at some point, we won't even need
those brains. Uh, we'll just, you know
, automate them out of and then cast all those
brain Having things often tops isn't that man speaks,
uh, mhm. Fuck. But this is you
have to defend. You kinda have to defend the
vision in those terms. You have to say no
. We're getting We've gotten smarter. So we're not
going to do the same thing. Yes, and
I don't think that's so unreasonable, actually. Okay
. Uh, in other words, I do believe
that it is possible to learn from the past,
right? And in fact, I think we're gonna
have a greater capacity in the future to learn from
the past, right? If we actually organize our
knowledge gathering systems in the right way, which is
a big if, but we're beginning to get them
so we can do this, Okay? I mean
, I think it's I mean, this issue is
really hard to kind of judge from a historical standpoint
, because it's something that I I talked about very
early on, even in my PhD about adaptive preference
formation in social psychology. It's been a theme kind
of undercurrent, a lot of my work. And
this is the idea from social psychology Leon testing or
people like this, right? It's the idea that
people end up seeing what is most likely to happen
as the thing that ought to happen, and so
they're quite happy when it happens. Okay, so
in other words, all of these prognostications that the
few people in the future will not be able to
live the same kind of vibes that we can live
today. Well, that's bullshit, because people in
the future will not even know who the hell we
are. And they'll be happy to live the lives
they already have, because that's the only ones they
know. Okay. And this happens over and over
again. So, for example, if you look
at the I mean, this is this is one
of this is one of the issues that comes out
very strong when you look at the history of technology
adoption. So the automobile, lots of complaints about
the environment being destroyed, pollution in the air.
We're gonna lose our touch to lose our contact with
nature. Of course, all those things were true
, right? But by nine by you know,
by 1960 when we actually started suffering those problems,
the advantages of the automobile had provided We seem to
outweigh these. And so we end up coming with
some technological fixes to deal with the matter. And
this is human history. Now, you might say
, Oh, my God, we shouldn't have introduced
the car. Well, I'm sorry, but in
a sense, you know, if you want to
talk, if we're talking about what it means to
be a human being, okay, then I'm afraid
I would say that being a human being is to
be a being of this kind of the one who
actually goes through this kind of success with adaptive preference
formation in a way that actually enables it to flourish
over the planet. Maybe even in the cosmos.
Mo generally. And And then you have to say
, Why is this why does this strategy work?
Because by your lights, it shouldn't work that we
don't We don't disagree about the the the accomplishments as
a war, right? Like I agree that there's
, you know, we re who has dominated what
has dominated. What is one hour what is lost
? Um, I mean, I would challenge you
. See, I just, uh I don't think
it's immediately apparent that world full of cars the way
it is now is aesthetically immediately pleasing, you know
, And and I think this is what we forgot
. I mean, I think we've led technology is
an old Norman Mailer point. We've led technology,
give us much more power and much less pleasure,
right? So I think I think we are,
and I think that's a question that freedom of the
roads, people a lot of people look, I
mean, one of the things from the standpoint of
selling cars was the idea of the freedom that one
had by being able to just go. I speak
as someone who never learned how to drive. I
have no particular actually right about bicycle. I never
learned how to ride a bicycle. You know,
I understand. I'm speaking from a touch I marking
start. But, I mean, we would also
, you know, we love watching movies, eating
ice cream with, you know, all this kind
of sugars pleasant, pleasant in that way. And
not in a rich, deep, long term humanistic
Pascal Ian kind of boy, right? And so
my point is, you begging the question, I
understand that, but But my point is just I
mean, wouldn't because I don't think I don't know
. My aesthetics obviously aren't the only ones account on
suggesting is could social epistemology and a university administered by
social system ologists not maybe slow down the process enough
to at least allow alternatives that aren't so, uh
, for a very small class of people, lucrative
. I mean, I think one of the reasons
to one of the reasons to sort of be suspicious
of the progress that you're celebrating is that it's all
progress that that is highly modified. And so there's
a lot of profit extraction. Whereas, uh,
you know, other pleasures which are much less,
um modifiable, are getting crowded out by, for
example, the pleasure of the freedom of the road
, which yeah, right. Maybe there's other things
that would make skill just as free and would be
so cheap or completely free, completely free. Uh
, that, uh, that there would be no
profit in. And so because as soon as you
have something that was profit and then you have interest
groups that will lobby for certain forms of patrol in
it and that's really what's pushing these certain kinds of
progress, this is look to the forefront. I
think this is true to a certain extent, but
the degree to which you can lay it all on
the doorstep of big business over the years diminishes as
more and more people quite voluntarily buy into it for
their own reasons. Okay. And this is where
I think you know, one has to be kind
of a little open minded about people's abilities to make
decisions for themselves. Okay? It may be true
that it was a very strong initial push from the
corporate sector that got the cars all on the road
and everything. Um, but after a while,
when it becomes normalized and people take it up for
their own reasons and things like this, I don't
think you can quite blame it on just the profit
motive of the corporation. Some other things that come
into play at that point where it's become kind of
integral to people's lives. Tobacco, right to bet
. Well, tobacco. Yeah, actually, that's
a controversial, but it might be a good example
. Yeah, I mean, and so now again
, you know your alternative views of where we should
be getting pleasure from It seems to me it's perfectly
you're perfectly free to try to promote these ideas and
organize people and try to get the corporate interests involved
that could actually destabilize whatever the automobile industry and tobacco
. Nobody's stopping that actually take tobacco and marijuana.
I mean, those are two related sets of sure
, obviously interests, corporate interests. And I don't
I don't I don't deny the initial causes. I'm
just saying I'm not quite sure what point you're making
other than just complaining, right? Because if you
really want to change the balance, if you really
want to change the balance, that it seems to
be there, you know? Look, one of
the things that you you know, one of the
things that they say the military is you can learn
from the winners, right? And so you look
and see how exactly did the automobile industry managed to
get to where it is? How did the tobacco
industry gets and where it is? And if you've
got some competitor that can compete on that front right
, then you should think about how you can organise
yourselves to actually deal with them at that level,
Not just to regret the fact that what you want
it to happen, I go, I get the
mic. I would argue, uh, I mean
, yeah, the reason the reason I brought up
as an example the tobacco marijuana kind of issue is
that obviously, um, in that case, we're
not talking about making a free choice. We're talking
about a radically uneven playing field between two sources of
pleasure, and most people look into this. You
realize that you know, one of them is really
easy to make yourself right, and it really it
? Yeah, yeah, you can have it in
their backyard. It's a It's a really simple weed
and so forth. So it's very hard to extract
profit from that pleasure right where there's this other pleasure
, which you have to have industrial production to give
to people. And so now why it was one
of them favored by the legal framework and the other
one not right. That's I mean, I give
, you know, leave aside all the other industries
that have profited off Prohibition, right? So I
would just say it's not just because it's not just
looking to see how they do, because the way
the winners did it was they took control of the
policy, right? Well, that's what it is
. That's true. Then that is what I'm suggesting
, right? So I'm looking at the winners and
how do they do? And what do we need
to do to make knowledge in the old school?
Kind of writing a paragraph a day kind of possible
again. And that is we have to take control
of the policy. Yes. There you go.
Thank you. Thank you. Can I make a
comment? Sure. I just wanted to make this
scary down again. I wanted to make a last
comment about anyway. Yes, here it is.
Um, there's in my judgment. There is social
epistemology building the practices of STS scholars of all strikes
and at all levels. It might not live in
the what gets published in leading journals or in prominent
books, but that is not the sum total of
what STS scholars do. You mentioned the production of
students being a key product. This STS scholars involved
in teaching have to figure out how to reach audiences
, just as you described earlier how you reach reach
audiences. And so I mean, I share a
similar dissatisfaction with some say, self characterizations that live
in in STS. But maintain that what is celebrated
, let's say, in the most common and professional
spaces, captures only a small portion of what STS
scholars actually do. And so this is now a
description of what I'm trying to accomplish this current president
of the forest to make more visible. Those practices
that include calling attention to our hearts are taking on
board um, facing an articulating normative question. Thank
you. I appreciate that. It's good that you
have it on tape. I'll be saying that.
Mhm. Yeah, so presses videos independent researcher.
I want to bring this this discussion back to the
issue of knowledge and knowledge production, Especially now in
the days of Google YouTube, everybody can learn all
sorts of things. Um, David Weinberger wrote a
book titled His book Is Too Big to Know.
Rethinking Knowledge. Now that the facts are the facts
, experts everywhere and as far as person in the
group is the That's Not like Google. Yeah,
So how does how does the social epistemology is Differentiate
him or herself from something like that? Right where
you have the road? That's the knowledge expert as
well. Thanks for coming guard. Appreciate you in
Buenos Aires. Um, look, I I think
look, I mean, I think the most the
most direct way. I mean, some of the
issues that we were talking about this morning with regard
to designing smart environments, which you you brought up
, I think, tries to give us kind of
social epistemology spin. And, uh, Laura Cabrera
, who's his name, was mentioned this morning with
regard to the vision hearing stuff. Her work actually
is about, you know, smart environments and trying
to set up situations where people can be made more
knowledgeable. But she has a much, uh,
this is where Thomas would have problems because she's willing
to contemplate all kinds of strategies for designing smart environments
, including things like smart dust. She's into smart
dust, right? Well, we'll dust is everywhere
, right? And we can actually pick up a
lot of data, potentially from dust, right on
people and things and what they use and so forth
. And if this were kind of organized and,
you know, I read in some sophisticated big data
kind of way, right, we might be able
to then provide adequate feedback, too, you know
, enable people to improve their behavior in certain environments
, right? So she's willing to go the whole
gamut right from the normal ways in which we design
smart environments to this kind of stuff. But I
think that's kind of weird, but But again,
it seems to be the social epistemology what, what
, what they will try to do. And this
is why there is an argument here for professionalization,
namely, that we will be much more explicit about
the ends to which this is done. Because,
of course, designing smart environments and all the things
that people fear about Silicon Valley has to do with
the fact that we just feel that they're manipulating us
, right? And if we get involved with any
of those kinds of projects that they're involved and we'll
just be one of the manipulators and this is the
fear about the anticipatory governance stuff in STS as well
. But I think this is where social system ologists
need to have as we're codes. You know,
where it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be a bad
idea. Codes of professional conduct, things like this
. I realize it's kind of a difficult thing to
kind of hammer out, but I would have thought
that we should be very much in this kind of
. So this book you're talking, we should be
very much in there. But we should be in
there as autonomous people, not as hired guns.
But that means we have to define ourselves more clearly
. And this is where you know the history of
professionalization does Give us some clues and you are alluding
to them this morning, Francis, about what we
need to do. Thank you all for him.
Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you.