Category Archives: philosophy

Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and blogging about roughly half of the 18 topics on our syllabus. Last Friday morning, we discussed Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis. The readings were:

  • Bent Flyvbjerg, “Social Science that Matters” (2006)
  • Bent Flyvbjerg, “Making Organization Research Matter: Power, Values and Phronesis” (2006)
  • Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, Chapter 10, pp. 141-65
  • David Garvin, “Making the Case,” Harvard Magazine, September-October 2003

Flyvbjerg started as a planning professor in Denmark who uncovered and successfully addressed corruption in the city of Aalborg by finding specific information and using it to challenge power. The key moment was when he discovered five lines of a specific memo which guaranteed that “The Chamber of Industry and Commerce” (a private interest) would be included in all official meetings about redesigning the city center. He asked why they would be there, and that revealed a whole scandal. The Chamber was actually pro-car and had been the most powerful force in city planning.

Flyvbjerg has since developed a broader theory of social science as “phronesis,” the Greek word for practical wisdom. His theory has been highly influential; for example, it provided one inspiration for the Perestroika movement in political science.

In Latin, the word phronesis was translated as prudentia. The English derivative word “prudence” is too narrow, but it reminds us that phronesis is a virtue, not just a cognitive skill. Aristotle distinguishes phronesis from:

  • Sophia (wisdom about abstractions, often spiritual in nature)
  • Techne (art), which is knowledge about how to make things or make things work
  • Episteme (knowledge that consists of general propositions, connected logically, and therefore teachable)

Flyvbjerg asserts that social science tries to be an episteme, but as such, it does not work. “No predictive theories have been arrived at in social science, despite centuries of trying. This approach is a wasteful dead-end.”

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a John Dewey primer

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies  and blogging about roughly half of the 18 topics on our syllabus. Today, I focus my blog notes on John Dewey’s book, The Public and its Problems (1927). In the same session, we also discussed Philip Selznick’s The Moral Commonwealth, on which I posted notes in 2009. (Selznick developed his own views but acknowledged a pervasive debt to Dewey; you might call him Dewey 2.0.)

The John Dewey/Walter Lippmann debate in the 1920s

These two major American intellectuals rejected the classic (“civics class”) view of democracy, which holds that masses of people know what’s going on, vote according to their principles and interests, and thus steer the ship of state. They agreed that this was impossible in a complex and huge society.

Lippmann was particularly acute in diagnosing the problem, which he first recognized as he worked on propaganda during World War I. He coined the term “stereotype” (in its modern use) and explored other cognitive biases and limitations as he argued that the “phantom public” could not know what is going on, did not have coherent values or interests, was very easily manipulated, and never seriously affected the government. He concluded that the only role of the public was to use the blunt force of popular voting to unseat extremely incompetent or tyrannical leaders.

Dewey’s theory of democracy and the public

Dewey basically shared the diagnosis but couldn’t accept the outcome because of his core normative premises, which were what? (p. 147-8)

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Habermas and critical theory (a primer)

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I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and using this blog to share my notes for roughly half of the 18 topics we cover. Yesterday morning’s discussion focused on Jürgen Habermas. The readings for that module were:

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Israel/West Bank trip, day 4

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(Tel Aviv) Since I last blogged, we have met with Vice Prime Minister (and Lieutenant General) Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon,* Ethiopian Israeli politician Shlomo Molla (who’s very talented, by the way), human rights attorney Hanny Ben Israel (who painted a fairly horrifying picture of Israeli treatment of African refugees), an entrepreneur named Amir Peleg, at his startup’s office, and two vintners, at their vineyard.

The number of people we have interviewed is now approaching 20. One way in which they vary is their ability to articulate the perspective of opponents or enemies. Some Israelis like to talk about the Israeli and Palestinian “narratives,” and they preface their remarks with empathetic summaries of both sides’ stories. On the other hand, some people just speak for their side and may take pains to dismiss the other perspective. Dr. Abdallah Abdallah of the Palestinian Authority, for example, said that Israelis’ security concerns were “imaginary.” Settler leader Israel Harel said that Palestinians are just Jordanians.

Normally, I would argue that being able to articulate the other side’s views is both a moral and intellectual achievement. It broadens your mind and can constrain your own interests. Once you have explained the beliefs and hopes of your historical enemy with reasonable accuracy and justice, it becomes harder to dismiss their interests. Even if you don’t sincerely care about their “narrative,” expressing it constrains you in the way that la Rouchefoucauld meant when he said that “hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue.”

But let me complicate that a bit. Being able to articulate your opponent’s deepest beliefs and values is also a source of power and influence. In bilateral discussions, it makes you more effective, because you know what to offer and what buttons you can push. In dealing with third parties (such as my colleagues and me, on this trip), it makes you far more persuasive. Compared to a person who dismisses his opponents completely, one who begins with a thoughtful and respectful version of their “narrative” comes across as much more reliable and decent. An example would be Colonel Danny Tirzah, the man who designed and built Israel’s security barrier with the West Bank. He expressed great sensitivity for Palestinian concerns and identity, and he ended with a devout wish that the wall may be torn down so that both peoples can live in peace. By the way, he is good-looking, funny, confident, and completely fluent in English. But what if the wall has been placed–as the Palestinians claim–in locations designed to maximize the amount of territory the Israelis can settle before they cede portions of the West Bank in negotiations? Then all Tirzah’s sensitivity and breadth of understanding is irrelevant, and we should be critics of the wall. In advocating for his side, he is far more effective than a Palestinian or an Israeli who comes across as a hard-liner lacking empathy. But that doesn’t mean that he is right. I see variation in sophistication on both sides, but my limited sample suggests that Israel’s official representatives and negotiators are generally more effective communicators than their Palestinian counterparts. Whether that reflects greater moral maturity or sheer PR superiority would be a matter for debate.

By the way, is that thing that Danny Tirzah built a wall, a fence, or a security barrier? Almost every descriptive word in this place is controversial, starting with what to call the place itself. Is the region to my east right now Erez Israel, Judea and Samaria, Zone C of the Palestinian National Authority, a part of Palestine, the Holy Land, the West Bank, or the Occupied Territories? Examples like this are legion. To name one more, are the people moving into Israeli territory from Eritrea migrants, refugees, or infiltrators?

These words combine facts and values in way that Bernard Williams (developing an idea from J. L. Austin) called “thick.” A classic example would be murder. In order for that word to apply, someone has to be killed and the killing must be unjustifiable and deliberate. So moral and empirical considerations combine. We often try to separate the two, but I have long been convinced that they interpenetrate–or, to put it another way, reality is best described by thick terms; propositions that include thick terms most closely approximate the truth. What is true is both accurate/valid and good/just.

To a large extent, the rhetorical contest in this region is about incompatible “thick” concepts. But there are also disagreements about basic facts. I am keeping a list of purely factual claims that are disputed among respectable groups, e.g., between centrist Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Example: Was the wall/security fence the main or sole reason for the decline in suicide bombings? Answering that question would hardly resolve the larger issues, but I would like to know.

*Actually canceled. I composed this before I that last meeting occurred.

the tree and the rock

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One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

… and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind

                — Wallace Stevens

(Chicago) Imagine a seashore, where a high, wind-sculpted rock is admired for its beauty. Next to it, a pine tree clings to the same cliff, having grown there to a gnarled and twisted shape because of the salty winds. One day, you visit this familiar shoreline and find one of these objects gone, washed away by a storm. Which one’s loss would you regret more?

Perhaps you should miss the rock more, for it is irreplaceable and beautiful. Pine trees are common; new ones grow. But I would miss the tree more, moved by its struggle to survive.

It is not clear this is reasonable. Perhaps I adopt the following argument, which is an example of the “pathetic fallacy“:

  • I will things.
  • When I achieve what I wish, I feel happiness; and when I fail, I suffer.
  • It is right to broaden my concern from my own happiness to others’ happiness or suffering.
  • Therefore, I ought to care about the achievement of others’ wills.
  • Therefore, I ought to care for the tree’s survival and success.

Stevens suggests that it would be a lonely universe if we did not sympathize with nature. But the tree actually feels nothing, and the beauty that we attribute to it because of its struggle is no different (morally) from the beauty we assign to the passive rock.

The tree struggles, and we could call that “will” in the sense of organized striving. But it’s not clear that will without subjective awareness is a matter of concern. An amoeba demonstrates will by engulfing prey, but the amoeba feels nothing more than a drop of water feels as it slides down a window. The amoeba is more complex than the water-drop, but that is not the difference. An elaborate machine is more complex than the amoeba or the tree and yet it makes no claim on us morally.

It’s also not clear that will is a property of organisms alone. I am made up of cells and I belong to several larger entities, such as the Greater Boston area and the United States. My cells seem to want things: consider the blood cells that hunt down and kill bacteria. Greater Boston has operated rather like an organism for three centuries, drawing resources, expanding, absorbing wounds and recovering. I am more complicated than my own leukocytes, but Greater Boston is more complicated than I.

Maybe:

  • Anything that lives has will, and we are right to care morally about life. (But does that include the anthill as well as the ant, the forest as well as the tree, a people as well as a person?)

Or:

  • We should care only about subjective happiness and suffering, which arise when will is connected to inward experience. It is rational to care for the tree in the same way as the rock (both are unusual and attractive), but it is unreasonable to endow the tree with value because it lives.