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Engaging meaningfully with the irrational
Mapping Paralysis and Tokenism in the Face of Potential Global Disaster (Part #11)
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The introduction cited the frustrated editorial of the New Scientist (22 October 2011), under the heading What are we waiting for?, and noted its conclusion:
Perhaps the greatest unknown, then, is how to persuade people to act today to help protect their long-term future, not to mention future generations. One more thing is certain: only science can reveal how our plant can provide a decent home for billions of people without toppling over the precipice.
The comment above on that statement argued that:
The challenge for science is to come to grips with the nature of the pressures with which it is seemingly complicit in failing to name and describe the systemic behavioural dynamics through which sensitive issues are avoided... If it is indeed "time to act", there is a case for factoring into "research" why action is currently so effectively inhibited.... A degree of reflexivity, consistent with third order cybernetics, would seem to be called for.
The "scientific" question is why "science" is seemingly unable to apply its methodology to such matters. Why is it unable to articulate modalities enabling it to engage meaningfully with what it considers "irrational"? In the following issue, containing a Special Report: Unscientific America -- a dangerous retreat from reason (New Scientist, 29 October 2011), the lead editorial complained that:
...the tone and content of some recent political debate in the US is so disquieting. When candidates for the highest office in the land appear to spurn reason, embrace anecdote overscientific evidence, and even portray scientists as the perpetrators of a massive hoax, there is reason to worry. Fortunately, there is no reason to panic... If you look through the lens of history or apply a scientific approach, however, logical explanations for these apparently perverse positions emerge.... So let's do all we can to ensure that the nation's leaders embrace science -- whatever their political persuasion.
The concluding sentence is indicative of the degree to which "science" is unable to place itself self-reflexively in context, and -- as is typical of cricitism of religion -- places itself "above" the psychosocial process from which it seeks funding and adherents. It is effectively constituting itself as a religion seeking to proselytize and draw others into its faith. There is no systemic understanding of the variety of faiths, each claiming a unique insight into "truth".
At the time of a fundamental crisis of confidence in the financial system, there is a degree of recognition that, rather than the classic statement "it's the economy, stupid", it is now a case of "it's confidence, stupid" -- as argued previously (In Quest of Sustainability as Holy Grail of Global Governance, 2011). Many aspects of the scientific method also accord particular attention to degrees of "confidence" in interpreting evidence.
There is a case for applying such thinking to the debates in which scientists engage with others -- or in rendering explicit why this is not done when confidence in "science" is not what scientists would wish. The arguments of statistician V. V. Nalimov regarding the probabilistic theory of truth merit consideration, for example (Realms of the Unconscious: the enchanted frontier, 1982). The increasingly plaintive and defensive arguments by scientists are unworthy of the methodology, potentially heralding its demise (End of Science: the death knell as sounded by the Royal Society, 2008).
Given the fundamental role of confidence and belief, the challenge would seem to be the application of disciplined self-reflexivity to understanding the paralysis and tokenism associated with strategic challenges. This is consistent with the need for new styles of cognitive organization appropriate to the emerging context (Consciously Self-reflexive Global Initiatives: Renaissance zones, complex adaptive systems, and third order organizations, 2007). Preoccupation with confidence perceived as mistaken can be fruitfully challenged by generalizing the "theology" of which science complains. It could then be understood as the study and organization of belief, as separately argued (Mathematical Theology: Future Science of Confidence in Belief -- self-reflexive global reframing to enable faith-based governance, 2011). The reframing is consistent with the expectation that people should have faith in science.
The problematic "unscientific" quality of dialogue between disciplines, schools of thought and belief systems is indicative of the need to apply subtler relational insights, which mathematics and physics so readily explore, to the relationships between "zones of confidence" and "frames of reference". Is there a case for recognizing a degree of leigtimacy to the perspective of non-scientists that quantum mechanics is "irrational"?
As an example, is there then a need for a "periodic table" to organize the array of cognitive modalities (Tuning a Periodic Table of Religions, Epistemologies and Spirituality: including the sciences and other belief systems, 2007; Periodic Pattern of Human Knowing: implication of the Periodic Table as metaphor of elementary order, 2009)? Given the challenge of the relationships between distinct (and evolving) frames of reference, and in the spirit of technomimicry (as mentioned above), are there no insights to be derived from the theory of relativity (Einstein's Implicit Theory of Relativity -- of Cognitive Property? Unexamined influence of patent office procedures, 2007)?
It is curious that it is so readily assumed that the simpler modes of knowing are all that is appropriate to the strategic challenges of the future. The inequalities and inconsistencies so evident in current global organization -- currently highlighted by the Occupy movement -- call for engagement in new and paradoxical cognitive modalities. An excellent example is provided by the preoccupations of Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, 1979; Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: computer models of the fundamental mechanisms of thought, 1995; I Am a Strange Loop, 2007). These suggest new modes of psychosocial organization comnsistent with the need to engage the imagination in new ways (Sustaining a Community of Strange Loops: comprehension and engagement through aesthetic ring transformation, 2010).
With respect to the "poem" above, caricaturing the challenge of responsibility for "Everybody" in a global setting, the current annual question asked by The Edge World Question Center (What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?, 2011) then merits considerable attention -- in the light of the 159 responses.
World "dangerously unprepared" for future disasters The world is "dangerously unprepared" for future disasters because rich nations are not doing enough, warns the international development secretary. Andrew Mitchell blames the failure of several countries to pay into the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).
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