Preface
Wittgenstein (1980: 9e).
Introduction
Regarding the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, see Cook (2016). Market research, however, shows that many voters “believe that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community” (Luntz, 2002, quoted in Cook, 2016).
Concerns over vaccines causing autism were legitimized by a 1998 study by Dr Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet medical journal, but that article was retracted on February 2, 2010, due to accusations of unethical and irresponsible research (see Hadhazy, 2010). Recently, there are concerns, likely unjustified, about the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines (see McLaughlin and Dzhanova, 2020).
In the filter bubble, there’s less room for the chance encounters that bring insight and learning. ... By definition, a world constructed from the familiar is a world in which there’s nothing to learn. If personalization [via filters] is too acute, it could prevent us from coming into contact with the … preconception-shattering experiences and ideas that change how we think about the world and ourselves. (Pariser, 2011: 13)
Moreover, when a filter-bubble occupant does confront an opposing perspective, logical arguments may not sound compelling due to identity politics: “[P]olitics is not just about making the most logical argument. It also needs to be appealing to the imagination and identity of the people it concerns, and is often a case of trying to convince people ‘who we are’ in terms of shared identity and values” (Gilroy-Ware, 2020: 19).
See Richard (2020). The idea that those who differ politically are living in different universes, or “alternative worlds,” is common in contemporary
See, for example, Gilroy-Ware (2020: 5): “[T]echnology platforms [enable] misinformation and disinformation.” See also Hsu (2021: 456): “Social media certainly feeds oxygen to crackpot science.”
If different actors, in the same debate, cognize differently (that is, if they see things differently and know things differently), then they will inevitably be operating with different definitions of what is there. The debate, therefore, will entail the clash of differently drawn boundaries and the contention of incompatible rules of closure.
See Schwartz and Thompson (1990: 4–11), who cite Holling (1982) and Douglas (1982), and include an explanatory quadrant analysis.
Schwartz and Thompson (1990: 6; emphasis in original).
Schwarz and Thompson (1990: 18–19). The authors argue that “impact assessments, far from reflecting conflicting evaluations of the facts, involve rival interpretive frames in which facts and values are all bound up together” (Schwartz and Thompson, 1990: 23).
The term “crisis of expertise” was popularized by Gil Eyal (2019).
Other common examples of the politicization of science include the controversy over perceived dangers of COVID-19 vaccinations or the concern that the Trump administration downplayed or did not take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously.
Kofman (2018), quoting Bruno Latour in an interview with him.
See, for example, Groppe (2021).
See Stelter (2021).
See Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) 590 U.S. 579.
Regarding the idealization of scientific expertise in the Daubert opinion and its aftermath, see, generally, Caudill and LaRue (2006).
See Caudill (2019).
Raymond Geuss has suggested a useful distinction between “descriptive”, “pejorative” and “positive” definitions of the term ideology. In the descriptive or “anthropological” sense, ideologies are belief-systems characteristic of certain social groups or classes, composed of both discursive and non-discursive elements. We have seen already how this politically innocuous meaning of ideology comes close to the notion of a “world view”, in the sense of a relatively well-systematized set of categories which provide a “frame” for the belief, perception and conduct of a body of individuals. (Eagleton, 1991: 43 [citing Guess, 1981: ch 1])
In the middle of the twentieth century, [as] sociologist Robert Wuthnow observed, where Christians had once distinguished themselves according to denominational identity, following the Second World War, institutional affiliation began to be overshadowed by political inclination. ...
Fast-forward to the chaos of 2020, when political leanings have hardened into battle lines across American society, and the major Christian traditions have fragmented accordingly. Denominational identity is a forgotten relic, of interest primarily to veteran pastors and seminarians seeking ordination. The real question is whether you love Trump or despise him, whether you vote on abortion and religious liberty or racial justice and climate change.
Castronuovo (2022). “The vague” guidelines were issued by The National Institutes of Health’s COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration.
Horst (2022: 461).
Mihelj, Kondor, and Štětka (2022:293), citing Gustafson and Rice (2019). In more recent studies as well, “the perceived lack of expert consensus had a detrimental impact on perceived expertise” (Mihelj et al, 2022: 297).
See Satta and Davidson (2019). For example, it is “the bad past actions of the medical profession, which in many places in the United States … allowed and encouraged coerced sterilization of poor women of color, that is the source of … distrust” (Satta and Davidson, 2019).
Ceccarelli (2011: 196).
These are Ceccarelli’s examples of manufactured controversies (see Ceccarelli, 2011). The AIDS dissent in South Africa is also the primary example given by Weinel (2019).
See, for example, Moreno and Holmgren (2014).
See Ceccarelli (2011).
See, generally, Weinel (2019).
I am grateful to Dr Martin Weinel, Cardiff University, for sharing and discussing this schema with me.
Email discussion with Dr Martin Weinel after my presentation (of the arguments in this book) at Cardiff University on February 21, 2021 (on file with the author).
Gobo and Sena (2022: 25).
Boulware et al (2022): “These errors, taken together, thoroughly discredit the … claim that standard medical care for transgender children and adolescents constitutes child abuse.”
Boulware et al (2022): the drafters’ findings “ignore established medical authorities and repeat discredited, outdated, and poor-quality information.”
Harambam (2020: 64), quoting Knight (2000: 95).
Harambam (2020: 64), quoting Melley (2000: 20).
See Harambam (2020: 5, 18).
Harambam (2020: 18).
Harambam (2020: 2).
Pasquale (forthcoming).
Pasquale (forthcoming).
Pasquale (forthcoming).
See, for example, Coglianese and Lai (2022: 1287): human “algorithms” undeniably fail due to memory limitations, cognitive biases, and groupthink.
Pasquale (forthcoming).
Pasquale (forthcoming).
See, for example, Tavernise (2020: A14). In response to a question by a reader whether she should stop speaking to Trump-supporting friends, the New York Times ethicist replied: “[P]eople can be epistemically disadvantaged by gaining their beliefs from social networks that are radically unreliable. We get many of our false beliefs … by listening to the views of people we trust” (Appiah, 2020: 20).
Halbfinger (2020: A16). Representing the views of Nissim Mizrachi, Halbfinger (2020: A16) argues that both the working-class voters in Israel and the Trump voters “see themselves as their countries’ most patriotic citizens, and demonize the left and its allies in the news media, academia and other liberal redoubts as traitorous enemies. Both … feel disdained by those elites, who dismiss their views as racist, ignorant or unwittingly self-defeating.”
Gilroy-Ware (2020: 63).
Gilroy-Ware (2020: 209).
Douthat (2020: SR9).
See The Scientist (2020). With respect to COVID-19, a research article claiming that the virus was transmitted through surface contact (see Riddell et al, 2020) was found to be “a greatest-hits compilation of research errors” (Thompson, 2021) (grimy surfaces are not the problem; cleaning subways and buses every night is a waste of money).
Latour (2018: 1).
Latour, 2018: 2. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord “was a declaration of war authorizing the occupation of all the other countries, if not with troops, at least with CO2, which America retains the right to emit.” Latour, 2018: 84. In doing so, Trump withdrew not only from the Paris Climate Accord, but from the earth, in order for the U.S. to occupy another imagined earth, and another imagined history in which “modernization” continues. Latour, 2018: 3–5. The actual earth, however, will react to that “action in such a way that [the U.S. will] no longer have a stable and indifferent framework in which to lodge [its] desires for modernization.” Latour, 2018: 84.
Latour (2018: 65).
Latour (2018: 23).
Latour (2018: 22, 25).
Latour was struck when he heard [a climatologist recently] defend his results not on the basis of the unimpeachable authority of science but by laying out … “the large number of researchers involved in climate analysis, the complex system for verifying data, the articles and reports, the principle of peer evaluation, the vast network of weather stations, floating weather buoys, satellites and computers that ensure the flow of information.” The climate denialists, by contrast … had none of this institutional architecture. Latour realized he was witnessing [a] shift: from scientists appealing to transcendent, capital-T Truth to touting the robust networks through which truth is, and has always been, established. (Kofman, 2018)
See: www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/2020 (Accessed June 22, 2022).
See Tavernise (2020: A14). When medical student Tho Nguyen used the word “brainwashed” to “describe her parents, her father said it applied to her … her parents did not believe Mr. Biden could have won, and it was hard to convince them otherwise, because that is not what they were hearing … on Facebook” (Tavernise, 2020: A14). Similarly, Danielle Ackley “got angry when she heard her mother criticize Mr. Biden’s character. ... ‘This is not even a political divide, it’s a reality divide,’ said Ms. Ackley, who [saw] her mother comment approvingly on a Facebook post questioning mail-in ballots” (Tavernise, 2020: A14).
See Mellon Seminar (2020).
Eyal (2019: 4).
Eyal (2019: 5–6).
Eyal (2019: 143–4).
Eyal (2019: 148–9). Regarding Breyer’s proposal, see Breyer (1993).
See Daubert v Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (1993) 590 U.S. 579, creating a new regime for admissibility of expert testimony and establishing judges as gatekeepers in that regime.
See Caudill and LaRue (2006).
See Eyal (2019: 149): “The republic of trans-science would need to be one where ‘bringing the bad news,’ teaching others how to recognize ‘inconvenient facts,’ is established as a routine, yet honorable and well-regarded, vocation.”
See Latour (2018: 23).
See Collins and Evans (2017: 4–9).
See, generally, Collins et al (2020).
See the opening remarks by Gil Eyal in Mellon Seminar (2020: 00:00–07:00).
See the comments by Brubaker in Mellon Seminar (2020).
Now people are so confused about what science can give you—whether hydroxychloroquine works, it doesn’t work, it’s fake, it’s not fake—that it’s going to be very difficult for us scientists then to use any type of article or publication. Now that they know scientists can lie, who will believe us again?
See the comments by Brubaker in Mellon Seminar (2020).
Gilroy-Ware, 2020: 47.
See the comments by Brubaker in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See Durant (2019).
Leonhardt (2022b). Public health officials “worry that people will misunderstand the details and behave dangerously” (Leonhardt, 2022b).
See the comments by Tufekci in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Tufekci in Mellon Seminar (2020). See also Tufekci (2020): “interventions by authorities can backfire if they fuel mistrust or treat the public as an adversary rather than people who will step up if treated with respect.”
See the comments by Tufekci in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Lakoff in Mellon Seminar (2020). Brian Wynne (1989), for example, sees a need for citizen participation in scientific decision making, based on his famous study of Cumbrian sheep farmers whose sheep suffered due to fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. The sheep farmers knew more about how sheep walk around the pasture than the scientific experts studying the fallout and issuing a report, while the “experts” made mistakes because they did not know enough about the behaviors of sheep—hence Wynne’s argument for citizen
See the comments by Hilgartner in Mellon Seminar (2020).
See the comments by Brubaker in Mellon Seminar (2020). This is similar to the concept of “epistemic humility”: “Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue. It is grounded in the realization that our knowledge is always provisional and incomplete—and that it might require revision in light of new evidence” (Angner, 2020).
Jacobson v Commonwealth (1905), 197 U.S. 11.
Jacobson v Commonwealth (1905), 197 U.S. 11, p 26.
Burris (2021), discussing Wisconsin Legislature v Palm [2020] 942 N.W.2d 900., overturning Wisconsin’s COVID-19 emergency measures, and County of Butler v. Wolf (2020) 486 F.Supp.3d 883, overturning the Pennsylvania governor’s pandemic restrictions.
See Klaasen v Trustees of Indiana University (2021), 7 F.4th 592. The president of neighboring Purdue University said he would not institute a vaccine mandate, believing that it is up to each individual to decide whether to be vaccinated and, in any event, a mandate would be impractical and difficult to enforce (see MSNBC, 2021). Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an order on June 15, 2021, mandating that universities cannot require COVID-19 vaccinations, in which he also emphasized that despite his encouragement to get the vaccine, “it is a choice and we need to keep it that way.” ABC.com (2021).
See Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Ltd. et al v Scott Rivkees, M.D. (2021) 553 F.Supp 1143. The plaintiff is the holding company of Norwegian Cruise Line, Regent Seven Seas Cruises and Oceania Cruises; the defendant, Rivkees, is Florida’s Surgeon General, who leads the Florida Department of Health.
The states that do offer philosophical, or personal belief exemptions, employ a variety of procedures for parents to obtain the exemption. Exemption rates are significantly higher in the states where the exemption is more challenging to obtain. Some states require minimal effort—a parent may simply sign a form to exempt the child. In these states, exemption rates are high.
Finally, the experiences with immunizations of children indicate that “parents are using religious exemptions without really having a religious objection to vaccines. Religious exemptions are becoming a loophole” (Tomsick, 2020: 138).
See Hanson (2022).
See Cheng (2022).
Fischer (2021: 1).
Fischer (2021: 2).
Gilroy-Ware (2020: 225).
two Worldviews as “Religious” Frameworks
I recognize, of course, that the opposing sides in the Protestant Reformation—Catholics and Protestants—do not capture the entire population of Europe or even Holland; there were also Jews and Muslims, and other religious and non-religious people, not involved in the Reformation as it swept across Europe.
Vanhaelen (2005: 251).
Emanuel de Witte, “Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft,” probably 1650, Metropolitan Museum of Art, color image available at: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438490 (the painting is reproduced on the cover of this book).
Calvinism stresses the isolation of each individual: “Each … must travel [their] way of life alone. No preacher, no sacrament, no church can alter the inevitable destiny ordained of God” (Harkness, 1958: 182). The authority of the Church of Rome has here given way to individuals, who have direct interpretational access to the scriptures, the final authority (for the Reformers) on all issues. Witte (2008: 77) identifies in the Reformation a “fight for freedom” on the part of the individual against ecclesiastical powers.
In Abraham Kuyper’s (1998 [1880]: 488) words: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”
That is the reason that “Dutch Calvinism did consider the possibility that a Christian merchant might not be a contradiction in terms” (Schama, 1987: 330). One does not enter the spiritual realm of church, prayer, and worship only to return to the “real” world of work and family, or even art—Christians can be “lovers of art and good Calvinists” (Vanhaelen, 2005: 259).
I am not arguing for disguised, moralizing messages that need to be deciphered—there is an open grave, likely symbolic, but that is not my focus. See Metropolitan Museum of Art (nd) (“a newly dug grave in the foreground provides a sobering reminder of mortality”). In my view, the description of the effects of Calvinist ideology is itself the “moralizing.”
De Jongh (2000:16), notwithstanding his influential iconological approach, concedes that “certain objects or motifs in seventeenth-century paintings often serve a dual function. They operate as concrete, observable things while at the same time doing something totally different, namely expressing an idea, a moral, an intention, a joke or a situation.”
Vanhaelen (2005: 253). In his magnum opus, the four-volume Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin: (1) quoted the fourth-century Council of Elvira (“It is decreed that there shall be no pictures in churches, that what is reverenced or adored be not depicted on the walls”); (2) referred to Augustine’s declaration that it is wrong to worship images; and (3) scolded the papists for their monstrous idols (“brothels show harlots clad more virtuously and modestly than the churches show these objects which they wish to be thought images of virgins”) (Calvin, 2006 [1559]: Book 1, ch XI, §§ 5–6).
See Skillen (2014: 92). Hence, the “differences between Calvinism and Lutheranism can be accounted for in no small measure by the fact that Calvin began his career as a lawyer and Luther as a monk” (Harkness, 1958: 5).
Kuyper (1943: 7–8).
For example, Aquinas’s definition of natural law, “which allows human reason a certain amount of autonomy in the moral realm, is absent from Calvin’s work” (Backus, 2003: 12).
After studying and practicing law, Groen became active in politics—he was a member of the Second Chamber of Parliament for years (1849–57, 1862–66) (see Van Prinsterer, 1989 [1868]: 14; Schutte, 2005: 38).
Van Dijk (1975: vii).
See Kuyper (1943: 8).
As Bacote (2011: 24) writes: “Sphere sovereignty is Kuyper’s idea that from God’s sovereignty there derives more discrete sovereign ‘spheres’ such as the state, business, the family, and the church.”
See Dooyeweerd (1969) and (1935–1936).
Zylstra (1975: 15–16).
Dooyeweerd (1948: v).
Dooyeweerd used the term “science” (Wetenschap) in the broad Continental sense of any knowledge and learning, including legal science.
Dooyeweerd (1948: v).
This view prefigured Polanyi’s “framework of commitment” in which scientists work, Radnitsky’s “steering fields” internal to science, and Kuhn’s paradigm theory in the natural sciences (see Hart, 1985: 145, 150).
Latour (1993: 6).
See de Vries (2016: 15).
Latour (2018: 24).
See Latour (2016): “Aesthetics” is “defined as what makes us sensitive to hitherto unknown phenomena.”
Latour (2016). Latour refers elsewhere to the importance of novelists in 18th- and 19th-century “inventions” of democracy, class, and citizenship (see Latour, 2017).
Latour (2018: 26).
See National Research Council Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Sciences Community (2009: 183–91).
[O]ur current post-truth moment is less a product of Latour’s ideas than a validation of them. In the way that a person notices her body only once something goes wrong with it, we are becoming conscious of the role that Latourian networks play in producing and sustaining knowledge only now that those networks are under assault.
Do you see why I am worried? I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show “the lack of scientific certainty” inherent in the construction of facts. ... But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the certainty of a closed argument. … I’d like to believe that, on the contrary, I intended to emancipate the public from prematurely naturalized objectified facts. … The question was never to get away from facts but closer to them, not fighting empiricism but, on the contrary, renewing empiricism.
Taylor (2020: 317).
three The Quasi-Religious Aspect of the Crisis
Finkel et al (2020: 533).
See Finkel et al (2020)
Finkel et al (2020: 533).
The parties also have sorted along racial, religious, educational, and geographic lines. Although far from absolute, such alignment of ideological identities and demography transforms political orientation into a mega-identity that renders opposing partisans different from, even incomprehensible to, one another.
Finkel et al (2020: 535).
Finkel et al (2020: 535). As Finkel et al (2020: 535) writes: “[T]hree trends—identity alignment, the rise of partisan media, and elite ideological polarization—have contributed to” these different narratives. As to identity alignment: “alignment of ideological identities and demography transforms political orientation into a mega-identity that renders opposing partisans different from, even incomprehensible to, one another” (Finkel et al, 2020: 534). Regarding elite ideological polarization: “[I]n contrast to the equivocal ideological-polarization trends among the public, politicians and other political elites have unambiguously polarized recently on ideological grounds, with Republican politicians moving further to the right than Democratic politicians have moved to the left” (Finkel et al, 2020: 534).
Finkel et al (2020: 534). People “who are already sectarian selectively seek out congenial news, but consuming such content also amplifies their sectarianism” (Finkel et al, 2020: 534).
Finkel et al (2020: 536).
Finkel et al (2020: 533).
Hsu (2021: 410; emphasis in original). Hsu concedes that not all Republicans, and not all of those on the Right belonging to organized religions, have joined Trump in holding views hostile to science (see Hsu, 2021: 414).
Hsu (2021: 411). Hsu (2021: 411) also states that “directing animus towards scientific experts and science is grotesquely misguided.”
The Green New Deal is a very broad and ambitious program created by the political left (some would say far left) to deal simultaneously with climate change and a variety of social and economic issues, and at times seems to be a basis for a Democratic Party litmus test. … [I]ts proponents seem defiantly tone-deaf with respect to its fiscal implications, suggestive of resistance to or ignorance of economic science. [The idea that] “… the plan will pay for itself through economic growth” is similar to speculative
claims by the Trump Administration that federal government revenue lost by the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act would be recaptured through economic growth.
This is my seventh administration … and I’ve been advising administrations and presidents on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, people with different ideologies, and even with differences in ideology, there never was this real affront on science. So it really was an aberrancy that I haven’t seen in almost 40 years that I’ve been doing this. So it’s just one of those things that is chilling when you see it happen.
Hsu (2021: 443). As Hsu (2021: 444) argues (citing Moffitt [2016], who states: “[P]opulists across the world have made headlines by setting ‘the people’ against the ‘elite’ in the name of popular sovereignty and ‘defending democracy’”): “It is easy to portray scientists as part of a privileged ‘elite,’ a time-tested political epithet that has often been deployed to great effect in American political campaigns.” See also Winberg (2017: 4).
Hsu (2021: 448), citing Chua (2019: 137–64).
Sharfstein (2017), quoting Atul Gawande’s graduation address at the California Institute of Technology in 2016.
four Belief as a Form of Expertise
O’Connor (2020: 292).
See Luhrmann (2020).
Luhrmann (2020: 2). As Luhrmann (2020: 44) states: “Christians expect that prayer does not come easily and naturally. It is a skill that must be learned, as a relationship with God must also be learned.”
Luhrmann (2020: 17–18).
Luhrmann (2020: 18), quoting Mair (2013: 449).
Luhrmann (2020: 21). As Luhrmann (2020: 24) states: “People of faith live, in effect, on two levels … attending to two different ways of making sense of the world.”
Luhrmann (2020: 58, 68, 70, 73, 84; emphasis in original). The ontological turn in anthropology recognized that “if we focus on belief, we tend to miss the experience” (Luhrmann, 2020: 183). There is faith, but there is also “the way the feeling of realness is kindled through practices, orientations, and the training of attention” (Luhrmann, 2020: 183).
Luhrmann (2020: 183).
Wood (2020: 64).
Wood (2020: 66).
Wood (2020: 67).
Wood (2020: 67).
As Collins (2018: 68) states: “I can be an expert in astrology just as much as I can be an expert in astronomy.”
See Caudill et al (2019) and Collins and Evans (2002), suggesting that the future of STS would be to engage in “studies of expertise and experience.”
See Winch (1990).
[T]o understand the nature of social phenomena in general, to elucidate … the concept of a “form of life,” has been shown to be precisely the aim of epistemology. [T]he epistemologist’s starting point is rather different from that of the sociologist but, if Wittgenstein’s arguments are sound, that is what he must sooner or later concern himself with. That means the relations between sociology and epistemology must be … very much closer than … what is usually imagined to be the case.
Here, Winch is disagreeing with analytic philosophers A.J. Ayer and P.F. Strawson, whose reading of Wittgenstein does not fully appreciate that a “single use of language does not stand alone; it is intelligible only within the general context in which language is used” (Winch, 1990: 39). For another account of the importance of Wittgenstein for social studies of science, see Bloor (1983), proposing that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy should be interpreted as a social theory of knowledge.
Collins (2018: 68).
Collins (2018: 68).
[A]n expertise was something you were good at … but the thing you were good at could be anything, as long as members of the domain believed it was worth being good at it: it didn’t have to
be anything true or have useful consequences. What you were good at could be reading tea leaves or econometric modeling of economics and it was still an expertise.
Eyal (2019: 131), quoting Edwards (2010: 407). As Eyal (2019: 135) states: “When activists complained about ‘industry bias’ [at the FDA], they reinforced the FDA’s image as protector of the public. When industry complained of ‘over caution,’ it reinforced the perception of the agency as composed of careful medical specialists.”
Eyal (2019: 136–7). One strategy of industries trying to avoid governmental regulation based on the potential harm to the public of their operations is to claim that the scientific evidence is not sufficient; this gave rise to the “sound science” movement on the political Right, demanding more science in order justify new regulations.
is evidently meant to refer to the stories that are behind the words, and which illuminate the rules by which the words acquire their meaning. ... The forms of life are … the manner of action shared by people of a particular time and culture. Wittgenstein … firmly rejects the idea that it is a question merely of what people agree on. He distinguishes here between agreement of opinions and agreement in form of life. It becomes clear … that he is really concerned with fundamental attitudes … [particularly] to our attitude towards other people. (Van Peursen, 1969: 108–9)
Human beings agreeing on the language they use is not, Wittgenstein (1958: § 241) says, “agreements in opinion, but in form of life.”
Hacker (2015: 1–4). As to the controversy over the implications of Wittgenstein’s use of the term “Lebensform,” it bears mention that interpretations of Wittgenstein’s work vary. Offering the varied interpretations of Hegel as an example, Bloor (1992: 281) writes: “The time is clearly past when it was useful to speak of a position being simple ‘Wittgensteinian’ or ‘non-Wittgensteinian.’ There are different and opposed readings of Wittgenstein, and different and opposed lessons drawn from his work. Such a situation is not surprising, and there are well-known precedents.”
[T]he view that forms of life are synonymous, or quasi-synonymous, with language or language-games … is due, I believe, to a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein’s remark that “to imagine
a language means to imagine a form of life” [Wittgenstein, 1958: §19]. The view is discredited by most commentators, but not all ...
When Wittgenstein writes that “to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life,” he does not mean to equate both, but to suggest that language is logically connected to a form of life: there can be no language without a form of life from which it can spring, and which provides the necessary context for expressing meaning. (Moyal-Sharrock, 2016: 37)
For example, being religious “is a form of life, but speaking religiously is not; speaking religiously is speaking from the perspective of a religious form of life” (Moyal-Sharrock, 2016: 38).
Hunter (1968: 234).
Hunter (1968: 234).
Hunter (1968: 235).
Moyal-Sharrock (2016: 28–32).
Moyal-Sharrock (2016: 28–32), discussing (1) the organic or biological account of Garver (1994) and (2) the historico-cultural view of Baker and Hacker (2009a, 2009b).
Baker and Hacker (2009a: 74). A form of life “includes shared natural and linguistic responses, broad agreement in definitions and judgements, and corresponding behaviour” (Baker and Hacker, 2009a: 74).
Moyal-Sharrock (2016: 27).
As Cavell (1969: 172) writes: “The religious … should be thought of as a Wittgensteinian form of life.”
Cavell (1969: 172).
Moyal-Sharrock (2016: 38; emphasis added).
five Communicating across Worldviews
Nunez (2020: 183).
Collins (2020: 933).
Toner (2017: 15).
Toner (2017: 16–17).
Wittgenstein (1969: 34e).
Toner (2017: 17).
Toner (2017: 17).
See Malcolm (1976: 72), opining that Wittgenstein saw religion as a form of life.
Keightley (1976: 50–1).
Keightley (1976: 53). As Keightley (1976: 52) writes: “The kind of disagreement between believer and unbeliever is so fundamental that their disagreement cannot be located within any mode of discourse.”
Wittgenstein (1966: 55).
Keightley (1976: 52).
Keightley (1976: 71–2).
[T]o understand the activities of an individual scientific investigator we must take into account two sets of relations: first, his relation to the phenomenon which he investigates; second, his relation to his fellow-scientists. Both of these are essential to the sense of saying that he is … “discovering uniformities”; but writers on scientific “methodology” too often concentrate on the first and overlook the importance of the second. ... [When the scientist] on the basis of his observations of the phenomenon (in the course of his experiments) … develops his concepts … he is able to do this only in virtue of his participation in an established form of activity with his fellow-scientists. ... [T]hey are all taking part in the same general kind of activity, which they have all learned in similar ways … they are, therefore, capable of communicating with each other about what they are doing.
Winch (1970: 53; emphasis in original).
Keightley (1976: 104), discussing Kuhn (1973).
Collins (2016: 68).
As Collins (2016: 72) argues, someone who does not practice in a domain “but acquires only the spoken discourse of the domain … is an interactional expert.”
We use imitation games, that is, Turing tests with humans, to test for the possession of interactional expertise. ... The original gravitational wave imitation game test was run over email, with a gravitational wave physicist setting seven questions that were answered by me along with another gravitational wave physicist. The completed dialogues were sent to nine other gravitational wave physicists who were asked: “Which is the real gravitational wave physicist and which is Harry Collins?” Seven of these said they could not tell the difference, and two said Collins was the real [one]. (Collins, 2017: 374)
See Davies (2021: 116–33).
Horst (2022: 461).
As Hochschild (2016: xii) writes: “I felt like I was in a foreign country, only this time it was my own.”
See Hochschild (2016: 166–7, 176–7, 183–4).
Hochschild (2016: 6).
Hochschild (2016: 7).
Hochschild (2016: xi–xii).
As Douglas (2005: 15) writes: “a clear demarcation between the realm of science and the realm of policy as understood in this way is not desirable (even if it were achievable).”
Collins and Evans (2017: 124).
Kofman (2018), quoting Latour. The traditional conception of nature cannot be politicized, Latour observes, since it was “invented precisely to limit human action thanks to an appeal to the laws of objective nature that cannot be questioned” (Latour, 2018: 65).
Kofman (2018), paraphrasing Latour.
National Research Council Committee on the Science of Science, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (2017: 64), citing Lewandowsky et al (2012).
Fischer and Gottweis (2012: 1–2).
Fischer (2013: 100).
Fischer and Gottweis (2012: 6). I am, that is, slower to reject “simplified academic models of explanation” (Fischer and Gottweis, 2012: 6) if those models include consensus science.
Oreskes (2019: 4).
See Oreskes (2019: 142, 247).
See Richards (2010).
See Oreskes (2019: 144).
Oreskes (2019: 137).
Conclusion
Foster (2012), citing Latour (2004).
Latour (2004: 241).
Collins (2017: 376).
Reverend Stephen W. Planning, SJ, “Message from President of Gonzaga College High School, Washington D.C., January 7, 2021” (on file with author), continuing: “When we encounter a person who thinks differently than us, St. Ignatius would encourage us to choose to believe that a person who, on the surface seems so different from me, usually desires many of the same things I do.”
Collins (2019: 65, 70).
My own view has always been that a post-truth world is the inevitable outcome of greater epistemic democracy. In other words, once the instruments of knowledge production are made generally available—and they have been shown to work—they
will end up working for anyone with access to them. ... [W]e should finally embrace our responsibility for the post-truth world.
See Caudill and LaRue (2003).
Kristof (2021: A13).
Kristof (2021: A13).
Spivak (1990: 41).
