Evaluation, interpretation, mimesis, excellence, rationality itself; all of these are under attack these days.  It is a scandal.  In part the groundwork of this attack comes out of philosophical skepticism which attempts to build a theory of knowledge on the claim that nothing can be known.  In the resulting subjectivist world of phenomenology those things which can be known are supposed to be our own precepts, or our own feelings.  If only we introspect long enough or with the help of our therapists seek the invisible we will have a better sense of I-self.  You can see straightaway that if the skeptic claims that nothing can be known then she can not even get her theory of knowledge started since, by her own claim, she can not know that nothing can be known!  I claim against the skeptic that we can know all kinds of things about the world, ourselves, and about all sorts of objective conditions or states of being.  Knowledge of this sort, public, verifiable, accessible, is a necessary condition for interpretation and evaluation.  Value depends upon understanding; it is not something of a different logical category that is added on to a set of facts.  The facts of a situation or a work of art do not march by our consciousness followed by a valuation any more than the platoons and companies march by followed by the regiment.  There can be no description of experience without some conceptualization, interpretation, and commentary.  To the extent that works of art or works of science are descriptions of experience (or guesses at that description) they too depend upon conceptualization, interpretation, commentary, and evaluation.  Concerns like these immediately throw us into the current crisis in epistemology.

  Is philosophy a Form or a fashion?  Does it provide a firm foundation for knowledge or is it a constructed tower of Babel?  What is it, after all, here in the twenty-first century, to claim to know something or other?  As Pilate asked two thousand years ago: "What is truth?"  These questions and ones like them may be the starting point for this readable, interesting and sometimes angry book.  Or, perhaps Professor Smith was stimulated to action by a thought such as this: "It is manifestly unfair to my discipline and to the work of postmodern constructivists to be blamed by news media, open-mouth talk shows, religious leaders, and some ignorant male academics for 9/11, the decay of the modern family, Intelligent Design nonsense, Islamic terrorism, magic crystals and all irrational actions"

It is easy to imagine such a thought as the one above spurring one to the defense of one's discipline, for postmodern relativism has been blamed for at least the above list of weird practices in our culture.  We do hear and read claims of that sort in many forms.  Lunacy and mutual suspicion abound.  And a part of that lunacy is indeed the claim that postmodern thought and theory, everything in the right hand column below, has eroded our culture and left it sinking in a sea of relativistic sewage.  Skepticism, nihilism, "anything goes-ism", and "all claims are equally valid-ism" are ripping us apart at the seams.  These sorts of claims provide ample motive for a book like this one.

Let us chart our course:

20^th Century Reconceptions of Knowledge and Science (12)

Classic Realist, Rationalist, Logical Positivist Concepts	Distinctive Constructionist, Pragmatist, Interactionalist Concepts
Individual	Communal, social, institutional
Interior, intellectual, mental	Exhibited, embodied, enacted
Propositions, laws, models	Activities, skills, practice
Representation, correspondence	Interaction, coordination
Discovery	Construction
Reason, logic, experiment	Negotiation, rhetoric, performance
Unity, progress	Multiplicity, transformation
Truth	Effectivity
Autonomy	Connection, interdependence
Objectivity	Interests
Transhistorical, universal	Historical, situated

Even a cursory look at the chart reveals a head-on collision of claims.  Choosing some from column A and some from column B is not an open option for in Chapter 4 Smith argues that "'middle ways' tend to be rightward-leaning, fundamentally unstable assemblies of contradictory views."

Smith presents her work in seven chapters.  The introduction called "Scandals of Knowledge" sets up the conflict between classical epistemology (pi in the sky) with its urge for foundations, and constructivist epistemology and social studies of science with their urge for defining by investigating social-cultural practices and human constructs.  Smith writes, …the term 'constructivism' indicates a particular way of understanding the relation between what we call knowledge and what we experience as reality.  In contrast to the understanding of that relation generally referred to as 'realism', constructivist accounts of cognition, truth, science and related matters conceive the specific features of what we experience, think of and talk about as 'the world"… not as prior to and independent of our sensory, perceptual, motor, manipulative and conceptual-discursive activities but, rather, as emerging from or … constructed by those activities.

While traditionalists may talk of knowledge as justified true belief, Smith claims that what we call knowledge (everyday, expert, or scientific) is to be understood not in opposition to mere belief but as beliefs that have become relatively well established.

She links modern philosophy's skeptical origins to its more contemporary form: the critique of representational theories of knowledge and of realistic theories of objectivity.

Smith does not draw the naive conclusion that everything is relative, or that everything is illusion or mirage or social construction.  In fact, she works hard to show that the above charges leveled against the anti-foundational, post-modern constructionist are largely rhetorical and often straw-like in nature.

Chapter 2 "Pre-Post-Modern Relativism" is a review of 20^th century attacks on "postmodern relativism" presented with several examples and analysis of those examples from literature, criticism and science and ending with a passionate call for rethinking the knee-jerk responses to relativism and pragmatism.  Smith writes:

Accordingly, I suggest that, insofar as we see ourselves as intellectually responsible scholars and teachers, we banish the phantom "postmodern relativist' from our dreams and nightmares, excise the scapegoat label from our lexicons, expose the straw 'claims' and 'theses' as what they are, and take on the task of engaging actually existing ideas, relativistic and other.  …  I suggest that we accept the task of operating in the world in accord with our most profound convictions and values, and with all the consciousness we can muster of the limits of our knowledge, our sagacity and our righteousness.  (39)

Chapter 3 "Netting Truth: Ludwik Fleck's Constructivist Genealogy" is the heart of the book.  Here Smith attacks the idea of truth as correspondence to the "autonomously determinate features of an external reality" by pointing to the many difficulties such a theory runs into as soon as the issues under discussion become complicated.  She is right to point to problems with the correspondence theory of truth.  There is a vast difference between say, pub correspondence (there are two pints on the table) and global warming correspondence when scientists are attempting to make predictions for the real world based upon computer models of 100,000 years of climate change.  Her discussion of Fleck versus Popper is central to her thesis and well worth thinking about.

However, in an everyday context we do have to compare beliefs with the world, and the world does require descriptions of us: I can confront my pre-existent belief that there is some beer in the fridge with the thirsty reality of there being none; and once the question is raised, then the fridge does require the description of being beer-free.

"Disciplinary Cultures and Tribal Warfare: The Sciences and the Humanities Today" steps into C. P. Snow's legendary "two cultures" dichotomy.  There Smith finds in the science community an over-confidence in its facts and an underestimation of meaning's complexity.  In the remaining chapters Professor Smith defends constructionist theory, attacks evolutionary psychology with a vengeance, and concludes with a chapter on animal relatives.

Smith's book would be useful in any liberal studies course to present the various tensions faced by epistemology in the 21^st century and to provide for many a spirited argument about reality and constructed reality.  It is readable and interesting for the general reader and also could be an effective foil for discussion in graduate classes when paired with Yemima Ben-Menahem's Conventionalism: From Poincaré to Quine.

In closing let me quote from Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, in which Rorty spells out his view of a good "ironist":

(1)   She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;

(2)   she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;

(3)   insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

 

© 2007 Bob Lane

 

Bob Lane is a retired teacher of English and Philosophy who is currently an Honourary Research Associate in Philosophy at Malaspina University-College in British Columbia, Canada.  He is the author of "Deconstructing Pretense" available on line at http://www.mala.bc.ca/www/ipp/pdf/decon.pdf

Categories: Philosophical