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Political epistemology

4 years ago babelfish

I am reminded of the study of a young Italian researcher who appeared in a British magazine in which an analysis and a systematic analysis of the "public epistemologies" that accompany the political debate in our country is proposed. The study (available here ) has the important merit of raising a question so far little or not considered at all, of how today the dialectic between citizens and authorities increasingly includes the questioning of the technical-scientific information disclosed to the public to support the opportunity or necessity of decisions that concern him. Instead, it is urgent to speak about these aspects. In my very small one, I have often treated them on this blog, in the book Immunity of law , in the Manifesto for science and in the context of other initiatives promoted by the Eunoè association , which I have helped to found.

According to the author of the study, two opposing fronts would confront each other today in the Italian debate: that of those who seek to stem the popular aversion to science ( science aversion ) and that of those who denounce the exploitation by some groups of power ( science perversion ). The two approaches, respectively labeled "technocratic" and "populist", would be well exemplified by the ideas and communicative style of two figures equally known to the readers of this blog: Roberto Burioni and Alberto Bagnai . The characteristic features of the epistemologies in question are summarized in a table in the study text, which I paste:

While admitting the constraints imposed by the need to contrast by simplifying, the proposed scheme introduces some rather surprising conclusions. For example, I read that according to the "populists" the purpose of science (line 1) would be to "question the dogmas", but frankly I do not find this idea in Bagnai or in other Italian authors, nor do I think worldwide. In any case, there may be the rejection of an impossible dogmatic science, which however would be at least nominally common to both sides. Nor do I find that the "truth" (line 5) would be revealed to someone by "informed activists" and not precisely by "accredited scientists", to whom the former would turn in a critical spirit to evaluate different positions. Nor above all do I find that trust in scientific data would be played between the dialectical poles of the "right credentials" and the "charism" (line 6) and no longer simply, as it is in the definition of the method of science, on the verifiability and reproducibility of the results .

My impression is that the author forced his hand to take the examined positions to the extreme (even granting much more than necessary to the particular cases of the two intellectuals hired as a sample) to carve out a space of equidistance from which to launch the appeal contained in the conclusions , that is, to elaborate a "third way" that overcomes the rigid opposition postulated by himself, albeit on the basis of other authors, between "authority of experts and democratic participation". This synthesis, he writes, could come from the ranks of "far left" thinkers, recognizing, however, that "there is no such thing at the moment". Why not then from the far right or from the center? From Catholics, atheists or from the scientific community itself? It does not explain it. Nor does it explain why, in a Marxist perspective where science can also contribute to the superstructural masking of the conflict between social forces (see Gramsci's reflections, in Notebook 11), the goal should be set to overcome a definition of politics such as "Struggle between the people and the elites" (line 7), that is, as a class struggle .

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The study of dr. Brandmayr contains many useful ideas and an extensive bibliography. What, however, in my opinion lacks it is an attempt to outline the social determinants of the phenomena it analyzes. This omission is already evident in the abstract, where it is anticipated that "the rise of populism in Italy" would have contributed to determining "an unusual alignment between political and epistemic positions". I find it very problematic that a term so contaminated by contemporary political struggle occurs at the root for forty times in the article without the author taking care to give it its own, clear and unambiguous definition. What populism are we talking about? Since when did your "rise" in our country begin? And from what point does it cease to be a constitutionally legitimate aspiration to "reaffirm democratic control over politics" to become (note 11) "crass fanaticism"? And again, how would it be a cause and not instead an effect or a periphrasis of the same social changes that produced the phenomena examined in the study?

The use of such a problematic category produces misunderstandings and misleading, the most evident of which consists in assuming that the aversion to science against which the "technocratic" front is a prerogative of the simple population, that is, of those who would like to be involved in the processes of production and validation of scientific knowledge but do not have the titles to do it. It would be enough, however, to look a little more carefully at the debate to realize that instead the attacks on certain positions considered prevalent or official often also come from members of the scientific community who are perfectly "accredited". To remain in the case of Burioni, for example, there are few doctors who question the scientific reasons behind the decision to have made certain vaccinations for children mandatory, or to practice other recommended ones (a brief anthology of these positions is in the first chapter of Immunity of law ). In his latest book, the academician from the Marches launches a severe attack against homeopathic treatments, which, however, according to a recent survey, would prescribe in our country by about a fifth of doctors in possession of the "right credentials", while only a little more than a tenth of them would question their effectiveness. Similar dynamics are also encountered in the areas of economics (as is the case with Bagnai and other scholars who preceded or followed him) and the climate .

A due account of this not negligible transversality would have put in crisis the apparent symmetry of the dialectic outlined by the author, returning on the other hand a much more realistic picture of the situation. For example, it would have been discovered that the insinuation of "perverting" science to serve non-confessable interests comes from both fronts, implicitly or even explicitly, as when the aforementioned Burioni accused some doctors of "doubting the vaccine … for for profit "or his colleague and fellow-worker Alberto Villani warned that" very strong economic interests revolve around unvaccinated children ". Above all, a phenomenon of which it is serious to remain silent, that is today's use of delegitimizing, recalling or even sanctioning specialists who do not comply with a scientific message accredited by the political authority, would emerge above all. If you omit to consider this threat – very serious and unworthy of a society that claims to be liberal – it is impossible to grasp the disproportion of the power relationships between the positions illustrated and create a false perception of balance in the reader, thus depriving him of a fundamental element for understand the reasons for a conflict that sees one of the parties crushed, discredited and silenced. The acknowledgment of the phenomenon would also help to understand more than a thousand "populisms", why public opinion believes less and less in the independence and sincerity of those who formulate, spread or even simply accept the positions advocated by the authority.

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Having made this long critical premise, if I were what I am not – a social scientist – I would develop the argument as follows:

  1. Citizens do not question science and scientists, but much more modestly the scientific messages given by the authority to justify the political decisions that penalize them , materially (income, heritage) or immaterially (rights, freedoms);
  2. The criticisms referred to in the previous point are also shared by accredited representatives of the reference scientific communities. This suggests that the contrast is not between science and anti-science , but between models of coexistence (political axis), interests of individuals and class (social axis) and interpretations of available data (scientific axis). The debate is polarized by political decisions and their effects, not by epistemic orientations.
  3. The criticisms referred to in point 1 make use of arguments and analyzes elaborated by a part of the accredited exponents of the reference scientific communities, even though they are usually a minority (see next point). This suggests that citizens rely on expert advice and recognize in them the bearers not of a "science" but of a plurality of positions often in mutual conflict. This last aspect, rather than integrating a complete epistemology, derives from a simple acknowledgment.
  4. To protect its messages from criticism from some accredited members of the scientific community (points 2 and 3), the political authority has inaugurated the practice of recalling or sanctioning experts who do not comply with those messages, for example through professional orders of belonging. This practice makes the free and necessary comparison between specialists impossible to validate and improve the notions on which political decisions rest, does not allow the public to measure the actual positions in the field and suspects a forced politicization of science .
  5. Wherever possible, in sifting through the messages referred to in point 1 and in orienting themselves among the various positions of experts, citizens adopt the criterion of empirical validation. They note, for example, that according to their experience and available statistical data, fiscal austerity policies did not bring the promised benefits to their material well-being, the quantity and quality of employment, the growth of the economy and the offer of services, without even meeting the minimum declared objective of improving public finance indicators. Failure to satisfy the empirical criterion is the main, if not the only, reason for citizens' lack of trust in the authority and scientific messages accredited by it.
  6. The novelty that should be investigated is not the attitude of the population towards science (if it is truly new), but the use by politics of scientific notions to assert the necessity or even the inevitability of their decisions. We should ask ourselves if this actually unprecedented practice is the sign of a transformation in a neo-positivistic sense of society or rather – as I believe – a way to justify unpopular measures, pernicious for the majority of citizens and therefore incompatible with the method and purpose of democracy. The hypothesis that the discourse on science should translate a discourse on government in which the desire, even of a part of the population, of a hierarchical authoritarianism that would not otherwise be explicitly expressed with the vocabulary of politics, should be considered . In my opinion our society has no need for a new public epistemology, nor for a public epistemology in general, but to accept the uncertainty and incompleteness of a confrontation aimed at reconciling the legitimate interests of each one, none of which it can boast a "scientifically proven" primacy over others if not at the (very high) cost of putting science under protection . How unfortunately it is happening.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Il Pedante at the URL http://ilpedante.org/post/epistemologia-sive-politica on Mon, 13 Jan 2020 08:27:44 PST.