Academic Research By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari & A PARADIGM OF PHILOSOPHY

"Contemplating deeply for one hour (with sincerity) is better than 70 years of (mechanical) worship."

·       Research is only academic if its implications do not go beyond the thesis itself.

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” ---Antoine de Saint-Exupery

JANICE MOULTON A PARADIGM OF PHILOSOPHY: THE ADVERSARY METHOD THE UNHAPPY CONFLATION OF AGGRESSION WITH SUCCESS

It is frequently thought that there are attributes, or kinds of behavior, that it is good for one sex to have and bad for the other sex to have. Aggression is a particularly interesting example of such an attribute. This paper investigates and criticizes a model of philosophic methodology that accepts a positive view of aggressive behavior and uses it as a paradigm of philosophic reasoning. But before I turn to this paradigm, I want to challenge the broader view of aggression that permits it positive connotations. Defined as “an offensive action or procedure, especially a culpable unprovoked overt hostile attack,” aggression normally has well deserved negative connotations. Perhaps a standard image of aggression is that of an animal in the wild trying to take over some other animal’s territory or attacking it to eat it. In human contexts, aggression often invokes anger, uncontrolled range, and belligerence. However, this negative concept, when it is specifically connected to males qua males or to workers in certain professions (sales, management, law, philosophy, politics) often takes on positive associations. In a civilized society, physical aggression is likely to land one in a jail or a mental institution. But males and workers in certain professions are not required to physically attack or eat their customers and coworkers to be considered aggressive. In these contexts, aggression is thought to be related to more positive concepts such as power, activity, ambition, authority, competence, and effectiveness – concepts that are related to success in these professions. And exhibition of these positive concepts is considered evidence that one is, or has been, aggressive. Aggression may have no causal bearing on competence, superiority, power, etc., but if many people believe aggressive behavior is a sign of these properties, then one may have to learn to behave aggressively in order to appear competent, to seem superior, and to gain or maintain power. This poses a dilemma for anyone who wants to have those positive qualities, but does not wish to engage in “culpable unprovoked overt hostile attacks.” Of reluctant aggressors, males have an advantage over females members of the masculine gender, their aggression is thought to be “natural.” Even if they do not engage in aggressive behavior, they can still be perceived as possessing that trait, inherently, as a disposition. And if they do behave aggressively, their behavior can be excused – after all, it’s natural. Since women are not perceived as being dispositionally aggressive, it looks like they would have to behave aggressively in order to be thought aggressive. On the other hand, since women are not expected to be aggressive, we are much more likely to notice the slightest aggressive behavior on the part of a woman while ignoring more blatant examples by men just because they are not thought unusual. But when done by a female, it may be considered all the more unpleasant because it seems unnatural. Alternatively, it may be that a woman who exhibits competence, energy, ambition, etc. may be thought aggressive and therefore unnatural even without behaving aggressively. Since, as I shall argue, aggressive behavior is unlikely to win friends and influence people in the way that one would like, this presents a special problem for women. Some feminists dismiss the sex distinction that views aggression in a female as a negative quality and then encourage females to behave aggressively in order to further their careers. I am going to, instead, question the assumption that aggression deserves association with more positive qualities. I think it is a mistake to suppose that an aggressive person is more likely to be energetic, effective, competent, powerful or successful and also a mistake to suppose that an energetic, effective, etc. person is therefore aggressive. Even those who object to sex-roles stereotyping seldom balk specifically at the assumption that more aggressive people are better suited to “be the breadwinners and play the active role in the production of commodities of society”, but only at the assumption that aggression is more natural to one sex than the other.

1 Robin Lakoff assumes that more aggressive speech is both more effective and typical of males, and objects to the socialization that forbids direct questions and assertions, devoid of polite phrases, in women’s speech.

2 Lakoff recognizes that the speech she characterizes as women’s speech is frequently used by male academics, but she still assumes that aggressive speech is more powerful and more effective. She does not see that polite, nonabrupt speech, full of hesitations and qualifiers can be a sign of great power and very effective in giving the impression of great thought and deliberation, or in getting one’s listeners on one’s side. Although polite, nonabrupt speech can be more effective and have more power than aggressive speech, the conceptual conflation of aggression with positive concepts has made this hard to remember.

THE ADVERSARY METHOD

Consider some professional occasions where aggression might be thought an asset. Aggression is often equated with energy, but one can be energetic and work hard without being hostile. It may seem that aggression is essential where there is competition, but people who just try to do their best, without deliberately trying to do in the other guy may do equally well or even better. Feelings of hostility may be distracting, and a goal of defeating another may sidetrack one to the advantage of a third party. Even those who think it is a dog-eat-dog world can see that there is a difference between acting to defeat or undermine competition and acting aggressively towards that competition. Especially if one’s success depends on other parties, it is likely to be far wiser to appear friendly than to engage in aggressive behavior. And in professions where mobility is a sign of success, today’s competitors may be tomorrow’s colleagues. So if aggression is likely to make enemies, as it seems designed to do, it is a bad strategy in these professions. What about other professional activities? A friendly, warm, nonadversarial manner surely does not interfere with persuading customers to buy, getting employees to carry out directions conscientiously, convincing juries, teaching students, getting help and cooperation from coworkers, and promotions from the boss. An aggressive manner is more likely to be a hindrance in these activities. If these considerations make us more able to distinguish aggression from professional competence, then they will have served as a useful introduction to the main object of this essay: an inquiry into a paradigm of philosophy that, perhaps tricked by the conflation of aggression and competence, incorporates aggression into its methodology.

SCIENTIFIC REASONING Once upon a time it was thought that scientific claims were, or ought to be, objective and value-free; that expressions of value were distinguishable from expressions of fact, and that science ought to confine itself to the latter. This view was forsaken, reluctantly by some, when it was recognized that theories incorporate values, because they advocate one way of describing the world over others, and that even observations of facts are made from some viewpoint or theory about the world already presupposed.

3 Still devoted to a fact-value distinction, Popper recognized that scientific statements invoked values, but believed that the reasoning in science was objective and value-free.

4 Popper argued that the primary reasoning in science is deductive.Theories in science propose laws of the form “All A’s are B’s” and the job of scientific research is to find, or set up, instances of 152 JANICE MOULTON A and see if they fail to produce or correlate with instances of B. The test of a theory was that it could withstand attempts to falsify it. A good theory encouraged such attempts by making unexpected and broad claims rather than narrow and expected claims. If instances of B failed to occur given instances of A, then the theory was falsified. A new theory that could account for the failure of B to occur in the same deductive manner would replace the old theory. The reasoning used to discover theories, the way a theory related to physical or mathematical models or other beliefs, was not considered essential to the scientific enterprise. On this view, only the thinking that was exact and certain, objective and value-free was essential to science. However, Kuhn then argued that even the reasoning used in science is not value free or certain.

Science involves more than a set of independent generalizations about the world waiting to be falsified by a single counterinstance. It involves a system, or “paradigm,” of not only generalizations and concepts, but beliefs about the methodology and evaluation of research: about what are good questions to ask, what are proper developments of the theory, what are acceptable research methods. One theory replaces another, not because it functions successfully as a major premise in a greater number of deductions, but because it answers some questions that the other theory does not – even though it may not answer some questions the other theory does. Theory changes occur because one theory is more satsifying than the other, because the questions it answers are considered more important. Research under a paradigm is not done to falsify the theory, but to fill in and develop the knowledge that the paradigm provides a framework for. The reasoning involved in developing or replacing a paradigm is not simply deductive, and there is probably no adequate single characterization of how it proceeds. This does not mean that it is irrational or not worth studying, but that there is no simple universal characterization of good scientific reasoning. This view of science, or one like it, is widely held by philosophers now. It has been suggested that philosophy too is governed by paradigms.

PHILOSOPHY REASONING –

THE ADVERSARY PARADIGM

 I am going to criticize a paradigm or part of a paradigm in philosophy. It is the view that applies the now-rejected view of value-free reasoning in science to reasoning in philosophy. On this view all philosophic reasoning is, or ought to be, deductive. General claims are made and the job of philosophic research is to find counterexamples to the claims. And most important, THE ADVERSARY METHOD the philosophic enterprise is seen as an unimpassioned debate between adversaries who try to defend their own views against counterexamples and produce counterexamples to opposing views. The reasoning used to discover the claims, and the way the claims relate to other beliefs and systems of ideas are not considered relevant to philosophic reasoning if they are not deductive. I will call this the Adversary Paradigm.

Under the Adversary Paradigm, it is assumed that the only, or at any rate, the best, way of evaluating work in philosophy is to subject it to the strongest or most extreme opposition. And it is assumed that the best way of presenting work in philosophy is to address it to an imagined opponent and muster all the evidence one can to support it. The justification for this method is that a position ought to be defended from, and subjected to, the criticism of the strongest opposition; that this method is the only way to get the best of both sides; that a thesis which survives this method of evaluation is more likely to be correct than one that has not; and that a thesis subjected to the Adversary Method will have passed an “objective” test, the most extreme test possible, whereas any weaker criticism or evaluation will, by comparison, give an advantage to the claim to be evaluated and therefore not be as objective as it could be. Of course, it will be admitted that the Adversary Method does not guarantee that all and only sound philosophical claims will survive, but that is only because even an adversary does not always think of all the things which ought to be criticized about a position, and even a proponent does not always think of all the possible responses to criticism. However, since there is no way to determine with certainty what is good and what is bad philosophy, the Adversary Method is the best there is. If one wants philosophy to be objective, one should prefer the Adversary Method to other, more subjective, forms of evaluation which would give preferential treatment to some claims by not submitting them to extreme adversarial tests. Philosophers who accept the Adversary Paradigm in philosophy may recognize that scientific reasoning is different, but think “So much the worse for science. At least philosophy can be objective and value free.” Used to suggest that an unfortunate event or situation is the fault of the person specified and that the speaker does not feel any great concern about it.

‘if they were daft enough to believe it, so much the worse for them’

I am going to criticize this paradigm in philosophy. My objection to the Adversary Method is to its role as a paradigm. If it were merely one procedure among many for philosophers to employ, there might be nothing worth objecting to except that conditions of hostility are not likely to elicit the best reasoning. But when it dominates the methodology and evaluation of philosophy, it restricts and misrepresents what philosophic reasoning is.

 JANICE MOULTON It has been said about science that criticism of a paradigm, however warranted, will not be successful unless there is an alternative paradigm available to replace it.

 But the situation in philosophy is different. It is not that we have to wait for an alternative form of reasoning to be developed. Nonadversarial reasoning exists both outside and within philosophy but our present paradigm does not recognize it.

DEFECTS OF THE ADVERSARY PARADIGM

The defense of the Adversary Method identified adversary criticism with severe evaluation. If the evaluation is not adversarial it is assumed it must be weaker and less effective. I am going to argue that this picture is mistaken. As far back as Plato it was recognized that in order for a debate or discussion to take place, assumptions must be shared by the parties involved.

A debate is not possible among people who disagree about everything. Not only must they agree about what counts as a good argument, what will be acceptable as relevant data, and how to decide on the winner, but they must share some premises in order for the debate to get started. The Adversary Method works best if the disagreements are isolated ones, about a particular claim or argument. But claims and arguments about particular things rarely exist in isolation. They are usually part of an interrelated system of ideas. Under the Adversary Paradigm we find ourselves trying to disagree with a system of ideas by taking each claim or argument, one at a time. Premises which might otherwise be rejected must be accepted, if only temporarily, for the sake of the argument. We have to fight our opponents on their terms. And in order to criticize each claim individually, one at a time, we would have to provisionally accept most of the ideas we disagree with most of the time. Such a method can distort the presentation of an opponent’s position, and produce an artificially slow development of thought. Moreover, when a whole system of ideas is involved, as it frequently is, a debate that ends in defeat for one argument, without changing the whole system of ideas of which that argument was a part, will only provoke stronger support for other arguments with the same conclusion, or inspire attempts to amend the argument to avoid the objections. Even if the entire system of ideas is challenged, it is unlikely to be abandoned without an alternative system to take its place. A conclusion that is supported by the argument in question may remain undaunted by the defeat of that argument. In order to alter a conclusion, it could be more effective to ignore confrontation on the particular points, not provide counterexamples, however easy THE ADVERSARY METHOD they may be to find, and instead show how other premises and other data support an alternative system of ideas. If we are restricted to the Adversary Method we may have to withhold evaluation for a system of ideas in order to find a common ground for debate. And the adversarial criticism of some arguments may merely strengthen support for other ideas in the system, or inspire makeshift revisions and adjustments. Moreover, the Adversary Paradigm allows exemptions from criticism of claims in philosophy that are not well worked out, that are “programmatic”.

KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS. A knowledge claim something that the claimant believes to be true, but is open to fact-checking, discussion and debate.

Now any thesis in philosophy worth its salt will be programmatic in that there will be implications which go beyond the thesis itself. But the claims that have become popular in philosophy are particularly sketchy, and secure their immunity from criticism under the Adversary Paradigm because their details are not worked out. A programmatic claim will offer a few examples which fit the claim along with a prediction that, with some modification (of course), a theory can be developed along these lines to cover all cases. Counterexamples cannot refute these claims because objections will be routinely dismissed as merely things to be considered later, when all the details are worked out. Programmatic claims have burgeoned in philosophy, particular in epistemology and philosophy of language. It has become a pattern for many philosophy papers to spend most of the paper explaining and arguing against other claims and then to offer a programmatic claim or conjecture of one’s own as an alternative at the end without any support or elaboration. (Perhaps this is the beginning of a new paradigm that is growing out of a shortcoming in the evaluation procedures of the Adversary Paradigm.) Some programmatic claims that were once quite popular are now in disrepute, such as sense-data theories, but not because they were disproved, perhaps more because they failed to succeed – no one ever worked out the details and/or people gave up hope of ever doing so. The Adversary Method allows programmatic claims to remain viable in philosophy, however sketchy or implausible, as long as they are unrefuted.