Conclusion of conversation between Dr. John Robinson and Dr. Kai Chan, who both weigh in with their final reflections below.
KC: How did two amicable colleagues resort to raised
voices discussing sustainability and the imaginary? In part 1 of
this exchange between Sustainability thinker John Robinson and myself (Kai Chan), John introduced a fascinating new research
project/exhibit on sustainability as an imaginary problem, and I responded with
concerns that science was not parallel to religion. In parts two, three, four, and five we debated the
extent to which science is religious, ideological, or morally prescriptive, and
decided finally that what John was calling 'science' was actually better termed
'materialist metaphysics'. At that point, I think we both felt a happy
near-complete resolution. Little did we realize what tension lay ahead....
KC: Walking briskly out of a faculty meeting where we met with President Arvind Gupta as a department, John and I commented on the weekend's extended email
exchange. Just like what students seem to imagine of university professors,
John joked, spending weekends writing long philosophical emails to one another.
I laughed and noted just how rare it is for me to email about work at all on
the weekend.
As we reached the base of the stairs in the beautiful new Earth Sciences
Building, in the heart of the wide-open lobby (five floors of open space
above), we stumbled upon one remaining point of difference. If I remember
correctly, John noted that he was glad that the substitution of 'materialist
metaphysics' for 'science' allowed me to see that this philosophical
perspective on which science is founded is indeed prescriptive.
Taken aback, I blurted out, surely too adamantly, "Well, I don't
agree with that."
"What do you mean?? Of course it's prescriptive!!" John
exclaimed, surely exhausted by the five rounds of emails and the notion that
they did not--after all--come to resolution.
And that was the beginning of a tense few minutes. While we reconciled
what we meant by 'prescriptive', I also weighed in on my concerns about how the
planned Sustainability in an Imaginary World exhibit might send
dangerous signals about the nature of science--even if the choice presented to
participants was between 'Religion', 'Literature', and 'Materialist
Metaphysics' (but noted as the foundation for science). (Note: partly as a
result of our exchange, the names of two of the three perspectives have been
changed, as discussed in John’s concluding remarks below). After agreeing that
by one interpretation, the latter is certainly prescriptive (more on this
below), I expressed my worry that other folks would interpret the choice as I
did (clearly making logical leaps based on my sample size of one), and John
pointed out appropriately that I'm not the first person they had explained the
planned exhibit to, but the only one to have such a reaction (I
interpreted John's body language as seeing my reaction to be clearly mistaken). At that point, it
seemed clear that John no longer believed me that I was not deeply immersed in
the materialist metaphysics perspective; I was just trying to play devil's
advocate.
And that's when steam rose from my collar, and our voices escalated as
we gesticulated, to the point that I glanced up and wondered whether President
Gupta and Dean of Science Simon Peacock were watching this animated display of
academic zeal. A friend on sabbatical, David Earn, punctured the tension. With
hugely self-conscious awkwardness, I said hi and apologized that I really could
not leave this conversation at that juncture.
Looking back on this moment, it's all so laughable. And fortunately,
John and I both realized that and reflected on which implicit assumptions
brought us to that bizarrely escalated moment.
As a practicing scientist, I certainly see the great value in the
scientific perspective, which I see as accepting the materialist metaphysics
position temporarily for the sake of applying the scientific method to better
understand cause and effect. I agree that we cannot know 'truth', but that
doesn't trouble me much. Science helps us get closer to making sense of how much
of the world appears to operate, and that's good enough for me 99.9% of the
time.
As someone who studied and publishes in philosophy, I was shocked to
find myself so strongly at odds on these issues with a humanities scholar. But
my primary philosophy education was logic and ethics, much more than
epistemology and metaphysics. So for me, 'prescriptive' meant a complete and
logical moral argument about what one should do.
John's training is obviously much broader across the humanities, and
from his perspective, worldviews are prescriptive in the sense that they colour
what we view as right. Of course they do! I argued that the scientific method
(including peer review) is an imperfect but intentional and somewhat effective
tool for critiquing such implicit assumptions, and for rebuking inappropriately
value-laden conclusions. John held the position that the scientific community
openly embraced deeply consequential value-laden assumptions.
Thinking then about John's own background, I realized that since we were
using 'science' inclusively (both natural and social), when John said 'science'
he also imagined economics. (I remembered that John has often critiqued the
implicit assumptions in economics, and John was Tom
Green's
supervisor for an excellent PhD dissertation on the limitations of undergraduate
teaching in economics.) Much more than chemistry, physics, and biology, I
certainly agree that economics makes broad and substantial assumptions about
value, which are clearly prescriptive in the sense John intends. Think of the
distorting power of GDP measures and economic growth in discussions about the
health of a nation. Everyone can agree to beat up on economics, can't we? ;)
Twice (with 'prescriptive' and 'science'), we used the same words in
substantially different ways without knowing it. Ah, the challenges of
interdisciplinarity!
Reflecting on the Sustainability in an Imaginary World Project, my concern lingers that it may inadvertently result in further
confusion about the role and utility of science. In this time when science is
so badly being distorted, maligned, and ignored in official circles in both
Canada and the USA, I dread anything that lends credence to the arguments of
those anti-science interests. Perhaps irrationally, I fear climate skeptics
using this exhibit--which seeks to make sustainability more imaginary (with
less emphasis on fact)--to justify ignoring climate science, choosing instead
to 'imagine' what human actions will incur for our climate.
That said, the planned exhibit also makes superb points, so I'm looking
forward to experiencing it!
JR: I felt
exactly the same as Kai: an apparent happy resolution to our disagreements in
our email exchanges seemed to dissolve into thin air and here we were at
loggerheads again. As he so well describes, we discovered, yet again, that
different implicit assumptions each of us had about both our own position and
that of each other, were in play. I think our experience in this exchange reinforces
the argument that deep forms of interdisciplinarity require actual immersion in
each other’s world: there is no substitute for lots of time spent together in
discussion.
Directly as a result of our
exchange, I have decided that we need to change the name of the three
perspectives/worlds we are exploring in the Sustainability in an Imaginary
World project. They are derived from Richard Rorty’s brilliant article
“Philosophy as a Transitional Genre” (in Philosophy as Cultural Politics,
Philosophical Papers, Vol 4, Cambridge University Press, 2007), where he says
that “that the intellectuals of the West have, since the Renaissance,
progressed through three stages: they have hoped for redemption first from God,
then from philosophy, and now from literature.” He goes on to say that the last
gasp of the philosophical stage is a belief in materialist metaphysics. Rorty
describes it this way: “This was the attempt to put natural science in the
place of both religion and Socratic reflection, to see empirical inquiry as
providing exactly what Socrates thought it could never give us—redemptive
truth.”
In my exchanges with Kai, I used the
shorthand of “religious, scientific and literary perspectives/worlds” to
describe the three positions. Based on our discussion, I think it would be
better to say “spiritual, materialist, and literary perspectives/worlds”. That
allows a separation in principle between science and materialism. Many
scientists are of course deeply religious, though I would guess that
materialist metaphysics is by far the most prevalent philosophical position of
most practicing scientists. This change of language also allows us to include,
in the spiritual category, those that see redemptive truth in the non-material
realm, but perhaps don’t belong to any organized religion.
I think this issue underlies the
question of the role and status of scientific understanding. Kai says “Science
helps us get closer to making sense of how much of the world appears to operate”,
and I agree with that. But, from a literary perspective point of view, much turns
on what we mean when we use terms like “world” (not to mention “making sense”
and “appears”). Does this world exist independent of our beliefs, values and
understandings? Both the spiritual and materialist perspectives/world would say
that it does. We may have only partial understanding of that world (we see
through a glass darkly in one famous religious statement) but it exists
independently of us. The literary perspective/world challenges this view. In
Rorty’s language “we only have each other”. There is no external reality or
divine plan that exists outside us.
I hope this helps to explain why I
have used the awkward term “perceptive/world” in this brief comment. In both the
spiritual and materialist worlds, these questions are matters of perspective or
world-view: a view we have of the world, which exists independently of those
views. But in the literary world, it is not a question of a perspective but of
the nature of the world itself. Put in somewhat literary terms, the world is
fictional all the way down.
The purpose of the Sustainability in
an Imaginary World project is to explore the question of whether the difference
among these three perspectives is important for addressing sustainability
concerns. In particular, what would it mean for sustainability to adopt a
literary view (the other two are much better understood, and practiced, I
think). What worlds do these three approaches give rise to?
From this point of view, it is not
just economics that is prescriptive (though I certainly agree with Kai that economics
is prescriptive in particular ways that physical and natural science are not).
But science itself, as a way of thinking, almost always posits the existence of
an external world that exists, and operates, independently of human existence. (Indeed,
explicitly championing that point is a central argument of much of
environmental science. We have to escape from anthropocentrism, it is claimed,
and recognize the existence, and value, of a world independent of us if we are
to save or preserve nature.) It is in this ontological sense that the
materialist perspective/world is prescriptive, and such ontological
prescriptions have very large practical consequences. I think Kai and I agree
on this. [KC: Indeed, we do!]
As Kai says, he comes at these
questions from the point of view of logic and ethics, while I am more focussed
on epistemological and metaphysical questions. As a result I have a lot of
trouble with the fact-value distinction, and therefore with the view that
prescription applies only to a moral realm.
As to Kai’s final point about the Sustainability
in an Imaginary World project potentially undermining public perceptions
of science, I prefer to think
that it instead offers at least the possibility of suggesting a different kind
of science than is usually provided. As Rorty is at pains to argue, the
literary approach does not deny that science is the best social process we currently
have for predicting phenomena (as opposed for example to saying objectively
true things about some reality that exists external to us). But science is
itself of course a human endeavor (as a century or so of science studies has
exhaustively shown). The challenge here is to articulate what a literary
approach to science would mean. My suspicion is that it would be both very
different from, and perhaps more useful for sustainability, (and maybe even
less “distorted, maligned, and ignored”, despite having “less emphasis on
fact”) than the kind of science that is usually on offer. But even to raise
this question means trying to articulate what this different approach might
look like, and how it compares to more conventional approaches. That is a major
purpose of the Sustainability in an Imaginary World project.
