Pragmatism and Planning

Theories of Science and Research Methods lecture, 6-7 October 2011 Patrick Driscoll [email protected]

Sorry about starting like this but…

• It is necessary. You may or may not thank me later.

Deduction

• • • • The inference of particulars from general laws, principles or theories All premises must be true in order for the conclusion to be true.

Example: All A is B, all B is C, therefore all A is C. (and all means all, no exceptions). A big challenge in social science is that mathematical precision is difficult to come by, forcing us to rely upon induction and abduction to a large extent in order to generate knowledge about observed and hidden events

Induction

• • The inference of general laws from specific instances, what Aristotle called the assault on the generals by the particulars.

The conclusion may still be true even if some of the premises are false. Example: Some A is B, some B is C, therefore some A is C. If all A is B (i.e. the premise is wrong), the conclusion “some A is C” still holds. Note that is this situation, it is difficult to say what precise part of A is C, but more about that later.

Abduction

• • Charles Sanders Peirce wrestled with Kant and “The Critique of Pure Reason” for some time, and over the course of his working life came to see abduction as a special category of induction. How exactly is it different? In a word: guessing The surprising fact, C, is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course, Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. (Notice there is no “B”. That’s what makes abduction so interesting, it can leap over things easily).

What is the seduction of abduction?

• • • Humans are theory-generating machines. It takes more energy and effort to NOT theorize than to theorize, but in the absence of perfect knowledge we often rely on abduction to fill in the gaps.

Abductive reasoning relies upon lots of different faculties, including experience, belief, emotion (gut instinct) and most importantly, guessing. In Pragmatism, theories themselves can be empirical facts.

If you don’t understand induction (or abduction), it is not necessarily your fault

• • Cognitive and behavioral psychologists have found a few interesting things about induction: One, only a small percentage (10-15%) of the population natively possess the skills to reason inductively (PC Wason did a series of experiments in the 60s and 70s that are fascinating). Two, the human ability to reason inductively does not fully mature until around 35 years of age (reminds me of an expression, that experience is a comb that nature gives you when you are bald).

But isn’t pragmatism just a fancy way of saying “Do whatever works?”

• • Short answer: No Long answer: Yes, but…

Here is the but…

• • • Empirically driven-no theory should stand by itself on first principles (how things ought to be) but should be tested (how things are).

Admits of the possibility of mind-independent reality, but assumes that it would be impossible to ever prove such an existence, so quit talking about it and get back to work.

Pragmatism is highly pluralistic theory of science and has been heavily modified over the past 130+ years, so saying “Pragmatism is…” can be a sketchy proposition. This includes whatever I am telling you today.

A historical aside

• • Pragmatism arose in the 1870’s in Cambridge, Massachussetts, from “The Meta-physical Club” It’s primary progenitors were William James (one of the founders of modern psychology), Oliver Wendell Holmes (future Supreme Court justice and a towering figure in American legal theory and practice) and Charles Sanders Peirce (founder of semiotics, logical topology, and a creator of significant advances in mathematics).

The obligatory quotes from my master

• • On why we reason: “The object of reasoning is to find out, from the consideration of what we already know, something else that we do not know”, Charles Sanders Peirce , The Fixation of

Belief

On reality: “Thus we may define the real as that whose characters are independent of what anybody may think them to be.” Charles Sanders Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear

To converge or not to converge, that is the question

• • Is there an absolute truth that exists independent of our perceptions, or are all truths historically, culturally and temporally contingent?

The absence of a coherent moral and ethical post-structuralist framework has always been the most troublesome aspect of the theory for me.

How to apply this in practice

• • Like any good Pragmatist, I will attempt show you the theory applied to real world conditions (drawn from my MSc thesis).

Please feel free to ask questions. That is a validity check in itself.

Five Principles of Research Design

Theory-driven expectations (hypothetic abduction) Work Plan Clarity and Concision Transparency Methodological Precision

Primary research considerations

• • • • Reliability (or consistency). Can we be sure that what we know now will also hold true in the past and future? Natural scientists use repeatability of experiments to establish reliability, but due to the lack of strong system regularities in the life world, social scientists resort to other means. Validity (from the Latin valere, to be strong). Is the truth expression in the research supported by the facts of the case?

Generalization (the bug bear of case studies). How universal are the findings? Causality. What is the chain of events or effects that led from one thing to another. Perhaps the most difficult part.

Logic Linking Research Questions

Research Questions Theoretical Knowledge Type of Empirical Data Data Sources

How this looks in practice

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Why try to link your research questions to your data PRIOR to the analysis?

It forces you to become very focused on what exactly it is that you are interested in In a group process, it makes many of the initial scoping conversations of a research project more grounded and less abstract It is also a good method to check your own biases and belief structures, since the kinds of questions we ask ourselves can also be leading ones. We have a natural urge to confirm-bias what we already know and this helps to confront that.

It helps to build a reading list, by screening out irrelevant literature and previous studies that are linked to your research area.

It also helps to build an analytic/interpretive framework early in the project BUT, it needs to be flexible in order to adapt to surprising, interesting, and unexpected findings.

What are the down sides

1. It sucks. It takes a long time to work through the research questions, hypothetical reasoning, data and sources. Make sure to give yourselves plenty of time to do it. 2. It sucks, because you have to be ruthless in discarding beliefs or knowledge that do not fit the scheme. Often times that means having to learn new things (horror of horrors)

What makes good research (IMO)

• • Doubt, skepticism, willingness and ability to challenge your own belief structures Good research is a form of structured psychosis. What I mean by that is staring so intently at one thing for so long is not normal and it takes many years of training to master the discipline and the skill set to do it well (and to maintain your sanity along the way).

If you wish to know more about Pragmatic (critical or otherwise) thought

• • • • • • • • • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (a wiki, really, but a really good one) http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/bycsp.htm

Goodman, ed. (2005) Pragmatism: Critical concepts in philosophy, Routledge: Oxon If you really, really want to go deep: Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton University Press: Princeton Nicholas Rescher’s Realistic Pragmatism: An Introduction to Pragmatic Philosophy. SUNY Press: New York John McDowell’s Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality Harvard University Press: Cambridge