Rekindling the humanistic soul of the academy pursuing knowledge for the good of humanity

Rekindling the Humanistic Soul of the Academy: Pursuing Knowledge for the Good of Humanity Michael F.. Given their common foundation, the sciences and humanities can be understood to fu

Rekindling the Humanistic Soul of the Academy:

Pursuing Knowledge for the Good of Humanity

Michael F Mascolo Merrimack College

To appear in J Trajtelová & M Zvarík (Eds.) The Idea of University and Phenomenology of Education , The Yearbook on History and Interpretation of Phenomenology 2017 , Vol 5: EPIMELEIA TĒS PSYCHĒS Peter Lang AG

Abstract

The contemporary academy is suffering from a crisis in meaning Its humanistic core has given way to disciplinary specialization Scholars pursue their agendas within local specializations, often unware of outside scholarship that has deep implications for their work Disciplines prepare career-minded students for individual professions or further localized study There is arguably no core ideas that structure the scholarly and teaching missions of the academy While

academic fragmentation has many sources, one involves the longstanding science-humanities antinomy From within this schism, the sciences produce reliable, useful and objective

knowledge, while the humanities produce speculative, inconsistent and subjective belief This divide, however, is based on a false premise, namely the objective-subjective dichotomy itself

Dra i g upo Husse l s concept of intersubjectivity within a shared lifeworld, I argue that the

sciences and humanities share a common intersubjective basis Neither alone can address the

crisis of meaning that infects academy and society alike Given their common foundation, the sciences and humanities can be understood to function with reference to a shared academic

purpose: the cultivation of knowledge for the good of humanity This idea a k o ledges the complementarity of disciplines in advancing a common objective – one that incorporates

descriptive and axiological dimensions of scholarly and social life

Keywords: Self-Cultivation, Intersubjectivity, Science-Humanities Antinomy, Higher Education, Fact-Value Distinction, Subjectivity, Objectivity

Rekindling the Humanistic Soul of the Academy:

Pursuing Knowledge for the Good of Humanity

The university exists only to the extent that it is institutionalized The idea becomes concrete in the institution The extent to which it does this determines the quality of the university Stripped of its ideals, the university loses all value.1– Karl Jaspers

Organizations no longer embody ideas.2 Jürgen Habermas

The contemporary academy is a fractionated one The 19th century ideal of unified knowledge has been superseded by the autonomy of individual disciplines Scholars pursue research agendas within particular specializations, often unware of outside advances that have important implications for their work Disciplines prepare career-minded students for individual professions or for more specialized education in local disciplines Beyond the academic major, general education curricula are typical organized around the distribution model: students select courses from categories corresponding to different disciplines3 While intended to provide breadth, such models typically fail to provide a coherent or integrated body of knowledge and skills

There is arguably no unifying set of unifying ideals that structure the 21st century

academy The fractionation of the academy has many sources One involves the longstanding

science-humanities antinomy.4 It its contemporary incarnation, this consists of the opposition of

1 Karl Jaspers The Idea of the University (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959), 83

2Jü ge Ha e as, The Idea of the U i e sit : Lea i g P o esses New German Critique, 41 (1987): 4

3 Steven Brint, Kristopher Proctor, Scott Patrick Murphy, Lori Turk-Bicakci, and Robert A Hanneman

"General Education Models: Continuity and Change in the U.S Undergraduate Curriculum, -2000." Journal of Higher Education 80 (2009): 605-642

1975-4 C P Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge, 1961)

o je ti e s ie tifi k o ledge ith the su je ti e k o ledge of the hu a ities The desire for scientific and technological advancement, coupled with pressure to prepare students for professions, has marginalized humanities in the academy.5 This marginalization, however, comes at a price The humanities are the primary means by which we prompt reflection on the values that structure private and public life Their marginalization creates a crisis of meaning

Persons are symbol using, self-conscious social agents.6 We are defined, in part, by our conceptions of who we are and who we should become.7 Our self-understandings are

cultivated over time through our relationships with others Without the capacity to reflect upon the systems of meaning and value that we use to construct ourselves and our lives, the

everyday life becomes an unexamined one Without a set of humanistic ideals, the academy becomes an institution without a soul It underserves its students, its faculties and the society

of which it is a part As a result, there is a need to revitalize the humanistic mission of the

academy around the integrative goal of promoting human flourishing and knowledge for good.8

In this paper, I offer three arguments First, any integrative conception of the academy must transcend the epistemological divide between the sciences and the humanities Drawing

on classic and contemporary phenomenological frameworks.9 I argue that while the sciences

5 Martha Nussbaum "Political Soul-Making and the Imminent Demise of Liberal Education." Journal of

Social Philosophy 37 (2006): 301-313

6 Michael F Mas olo a d Cathe i e ‘aeff U de sta di g pe so hood: Ca e get the e f o he e?

New Ideas in Psychology, 44 (2017): 49-53

7 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1989)

8 Alasdair MacIntyre, "Philosophical Education against Contemporary Culture." Proceedings of the

American Catholic Philosophical Association 87 (2013): 43-56; Martha Nussbaum,

Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge MA:

Harvard University Press, 1997)

9 George Heffe a The Co ept of Krisis i Husse l s The C isis of the Eu opea “ ie es a d

T a s e de tal Phe o e olog Husserl Studies, 2017; Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (Translated by David Carr, Evanston:

and humanities are distinct endeavors, they nonetheless draw upon common intersubjective foundations Intersubjectivity is the process by which experiences and meanings are

coordinated between people within a shared lifeworld.10 The capacity for intersubjectivity produces the shared backdrop against which so-called objective and subjective modes of understanding are possible This view raises the possibility, at least in principle, of genuine rapprochement between the sciences and the humanities

Second, if the sciences and humanities both operate within a common intersubjective base, they are neither autonomous nor antagonistic If this is so, it is possible to galvanize

academic life around a common purpose: the pursuit of knowledge for the good of humanity

Such a goal offers an opportunity to bring humanistic and scientific thinking together in

common cause: What is the good? How does scholarship across disciplines contribute to the good? How does my scholarship contribute to the good? How do shared and contested

conceptions of the good inform my scholarship?

Third, I suggest that an academy committed to the pursuit of knowledge for good would

be one founded upon a relational rather than individualist epistemology It would be organized around a hermeneutic spirit of collaborative reflection on how diverse forms of knowing

contribute to the human good The academy would encourage and reward not only disciplinary activity, but also interdisciplinary, reflexivity, collaborative scholarship and teaching, and a

Northwestern University Press, 1970); Dan Zahavi "Husserl's Intersubjective Transformation of

Transcendental Philosophy." In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 2003)

10 Husserl, Crisis; Michael F Mascolo, How objectivity undermines the study of personhood: Toward an

i te su je ti e episte olog fo ps hologi al s ie e New Ideas in Psychology, 33 (2017):

41-48; Zahavi, Husserl’s I tersu je tive Tra sfor ation

desire to foster self-cultivation with reference to images of the good The overall mission of such an academy is a humanistic one – one in which disciplines serve complementary rather than autonomous functions

Evolution of the Western Idea of the University

The form and functions of education are cultural and historical products organized by shared and contested beliefs and values It follo s that the ideas that have structured the university have changed with time, place and social conditions

Precursors of the Modern University

Western highe learning a e said to have early origins with Socrates, who sought to prompt philosophical reflection among the citizens of Athens Socrates, as represented in

Plato s Apology, makes it clear that philosophy serves nothing less than a means to care for the soul:

… are first, and with more energy, not about your bodies, nor about wealth, but about

ou soul, that it e as good as possi le, telli g ou: Arête does not come from wealth, but wealth and all other goods for human beings come from arête

In Ancient Greek, arête refers to good ess , e elle e o the good state of o e s soul (Christiansen 2000, 24).11 For Socrates, the cultivation of goodness of the soul was the highest goal of philosophy It was through philosophical reflection that a genuine sense of the good could be achieved Plato carried forward this philosophical task by initiating a series of informal

intellectual gatherings known as the Academy With no formal edifice, participants met in an

11 Michel Ch istia se "'Ca i g a out the “oul' i Plato's Apolog " Hermathena, 169 (2000): 24

open garden located on the outskirts of Athens A istotle, Plato s stude t, founded the Lyceum

as a school at which he lectured to interested intellectuals and philosophers Both institutions served the elites of Athens – men with means that allowed them devote time to intellectual pursuits

Formal institutions of higher learning emerged only with the ascendency of Christianity and the founding of monastic and cathedral schools These schools were aimed toward

preparing young men for the priesthood or monastic life While monastic schools tended to focus on literary studies, cathedral schools provided instruction in emerging philosophical and theological issues (Daly 1961).12 Monastic and cathedral schools remained the only available form of higher learning until the birth of the universities in Bologna and Paris during the 11thcentury These universities catered to young men from elite families who sought careers in the professions rather than the clergy The emergence of the European university was accompanied

by the rise of scholasticism and the Muslim reintroduction of Greek philosophy into European

consciousness.13

The medieval European universities were organized around the disciplines of theology, law and medicine.14 At this time, 15although distinct, the disciplines were nonetheless regarded

as branches of philosophy Although scientific advances (e.g., Copernicus, Galileo) would

threaten Church teachings, science and theology were not regarded as inherently antagonistic

12 Anya Daly "Primary Intersubjectivity: Empathy, Affective Reversibility, 'Self-Affection' and the

Primordial 'We'." Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy 33 (2014): 227-241

13 Geo ge Makdisi The Scholastic Method in Medieval Education: An Inquiry into Its Origins in Law and

Theology , Speculum, 49 (1974): 640-661

14 Julie Klein Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1990)

Indeed, major scientists from the Medieval and Enlightenment periods held deep religious beliefs (e.g., Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, Newton, Kepler, etc.) With the onset of the Enlightenment, the natural sciences increasingly established themselves as systematic disciplines with the academy

The Modern Research University

The emergence of the modern research university is generally identified with the

founding of the University of Berlin in 1811 Its originating ideals are commonly attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, a Prussian philosopher, government official and founder of the

University Drawing upon German idealism and Enlightenment values, the fundamental

p e ises of the Hu oldtia academic ideal include (a) fostering bildung – personal and cultural development through education; (b) academic freedom – both of the teacher and the

student; (c) the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake over specialized training; (d) the unity of

teaching, scholarship, and student.16

Bildung is the German term for self-cultivation, self-formation and self-determination

through education For Humboldt, the university provides an outlet for an i di idual s inherent creative energies, allowing students to actualize their potentials and cultivate their selves (Sorkin, 1983).17 Bildung, however, does not develop on its own; it arises through the social

bonds that are formed between people over the course of education Self-cultivation through

16 Marek Kwiek The Classical German Idea of the University Revisited Center for Public Policy Research

Papers Series, Poznan: CPP AMU 1 (2006): 1-44; Johan Östling, Peter Josephson, & Thomas

Ka lsoh , The Hu oldtia t aditio a d its t a sfo atio s I The Humboldtian Tradition: Origins and Legacies (Vol 12), edited by Peter Josephson, Thomas Karlsohn, & Johan Östling

(Brill Academic Publishers, 2014)

17 William “o ki Wilhel Vo Hu oldt: The Theo a d P a ti e of “elf-Formation, 1791-1810”

Journal of the History of Ideas, 44 (1983): 55-73

education not only fosters development in the self, it also provides a basis for the development and unification of culture:

It is the ultimate task of our existence to achieve as much substance as possible for the concept of humanity in our person, both during the span of our life and beyond it, through the traces we leave by means of our vital activity 18

Hu oldt s model advocated the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake For Humboldt, this goal could be attained only if universities operated independent of the political demands of

state and society This motivated the need for academic freedom.19 While the state should support and protect education, state control would stifle the pursuit of pure knowledge

Academic freedom embraced both the teachers f eedo to teach a d the stude t s f eedo

to learn In so doing, Humboldt called for the unity of teaching and research and of teacher and student in the process of producing and testing knowledge.20 This did not mean that good scholars are necessarily proficient teachers; instead, it affirmed the importance of the teachers and students as active contributors to the creation and dissemination of knowledge

The Humboldtian ideal was a holistic one While research in science, theology,

humanities should proceed without constraint, disciplinary activities were viewed as part of an

organized philosophical whole The faculty of philosophy assumed a central role in the

18 Vo Hu oldt, W Theo of Bildu g I Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German

Didaktik Tradition, translated by Gillian Horton-Krüger, edited by Ian Westbury, Stephan

Hopmann, and Kurt Riquarts (Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001), 58

19 Sorkin, Wilhelm Von Humboldt

20 Johan Östli g The ‘ege e atio of the U i e sit : Ka l Jaspe s a d the Hu oldtia t aditio i the

Wake of the “e o d Wo ld Wa I The Humboldtian Tradition: Origins and Legacies (Vol 12),

edited by Peter Josephson, Thomas Karlsohn, & Johan Östling, 111-126 (Brill Academic

Publishers, 2014)

Humboldtian conception It was through philosophy that the integration of knowledge could be achieved.21

Splintering Ideals

Even during Hu oldt s te u e, university life did not live up to its Humboldtian

ideals.22 Disciplines operated in a more-or-less independent.23 The Humboldtian model began

to influence European and American universities in the latter part of the 19th century Its

influence, however, was limited to (a) broadening the academic mission to include research instead of just teaching; (b) invoking the value of academic freedom; and (c) introducing

general education beyond disciplinary specialization.24 As this model began to take shape, its momentum was interrupted by the rise of Fascism in Europe After World War II, philosophers called for ways to renew the idea of the German university, which had become physically and

spiritually devastated Notable among these was Karl Jaspers, who, in The Idea of the

University, called for a university organized around the ideal of the unification of knowledge:

O e ess a d hole ess a e the e esse e of a s ill to k o In practice this oneness and wholeness is realized only in specialized fields, yet these very specialties are not alive except as members of a single body of learning Integration of the various

21 Kwiek, German Idea of the University

22 Mitchell G Ash Ba helo of What, Maste of Who ? The Hu oldt M th a d Histo i al

Transformations of Higher Education in German-“peaki g Eu ope a d the European Journal of

Education, 41 (2006): 245-267

23 Klein, Interdisicplinarity

24 Christopher L Lucas American higher education: A history (2nd edition) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006);

Östling, The Humboldtian Tradition

disciplines joints them into a cosmos which culminates in the vision of unified science, in theology and in philosophy (p 20).25

Jaspers call invoked a distinction between science in the narrow and broader senses In the

narrow sense, science refers to application of a certain set of methods in local research activity;

i the ide se se, it efe s to a lea u de sta di g o tai ed th ough ational and

o eptual ea s 26 Critical of the view that science operates as a value-free enterprise, Jaspers held that scientific in the narrow sense always operates with reference to philosophical and axiological presuppositions (e.g.; the value of the topic in question; self-criticism; avoiding contradiction; relevance to broader knowledge, etc.) Science in the narrow sense is thus

always responsive to science in the wider sense

Scholarship over the past half century has challenged the plausibility of the very idea of unification of knowledge.27 Academic disciplines and specializations has proliferated The sheer amount of information has exploded beyond the integrative grasp of any single conceptual framework.28 Postmodern scholars have argued against the plausi ilit of g a d a ati es or the capacity for science to produce certain knowledge.29 With increasingly fragmentation of knowledge, the concept of unification becomes dubious Habermas stated, emancipation of the empirical sciences sealed the destruction of all metaphysical world views In the midst of a pluralism of privatized religious beliefs, philosophy also lost its monopoly on interpreting

25 Karl Jaspers, Idea of the University, 20

26 Ibid, 29

27 Habermas, Idea of the University

28 Peder Olesen La se a d Ma kus o I s The ‘ate of G o th i “ ie tifi Pu li atio a d the De li e

i Co e age P o ided “ ie e Citatio I de Scientometrics 84.3 (2010): 575–603

29 George Ritzer and Douglas Goodman "Postmodern Social Theory." In Handbook of Sociological

Theory, edited by Jonathan H Turner, 151-169 Springer Science & Business Media B.V., 2001

ultu e as a hole 30A d so, [d]oes a thi g e ai upo hi h a i teg ati g

self-understanding of the u i e sities ould e fou ded? 31

Bridging Disciplinary Divides: The Intersubjective Foundations of Knowledge

If there is any possibility of organizing academic life around any sort of unifying ideals, it will have to provide a way to transcend the fragmentation of the disciplines, and particularly the

science-humanities antinomy This consists of the belief that sciences and the humanities

operate on fundamentally different and often opposing epistemological principles The current state of the science-humanities divide is not unlike that described by Husserl in the early part of the 20th century:

[Concerns about science involve] not the scientific character of the sciences, but rather what they, or what science in general, had meant and could mean for human existence The exclusiveness with which the total world- ie of ode a …let itself e

dete i ed the positi e s ie es a d a e li ded the p ospe it the p oduced, meant an indifferent turning away from the questions which are decisive for a genuine humanity.32

However, the antinomy between the sciences and humanities rests on a false premise, namely

the dualism between subjectivity and objectivity as alternate modes of knowing.33 In what follo s, d a i g o Husse l s34 phenomenological account of the human lifeworld, I argue that

30 Habermas, Idea of the University, 12

31 Ibid, 18

32 Husserl, Crisis, 6

33 Kenneth Howe "Isolating Science from the Humanities: The Third Dogma of Educational

Research." Qualitative Inquiry 15 (2009): 766-784

34 Husserl, Crisis; Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Mediations.Translated by Dorion Cairns (The Hague:

Martinus Nijhoff, 1960); Zahavi, Husserl’s I tersu je tive Tra sfor atio

concept of intersubjectivity provides a framework for dismantling the dualities that separate

scientific and humanistic thinking, setting the stage for the elaboration of a shared conception

of academic life

The Intersubjective Origins of Knowledge

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every day thinking It is for this reason that the critical thinking of the physicist cannot possibly be restricted to the examination of concepts of his own specific field He cannot proceed without

considering critically a much more difficult problem, the problem of analyzing the

nature of everyday thinking.35

Objectivity refers to the idea that scientific observations must be (a) founded upon

publicly observable phenomena; (b) unbiased in the sense that observers record only what is observed without adding or subtracting from the observation; and (c) able to describe what is observed as it actually is.36 Subjectivity, generally taken to be the opposite of objectivity, refers

to the putatively private nature of experience When a person describes a flower, it is common

to ega d the i di idual s e pe ie e of the s eet a o a as subjective and his observations of the physical as objective

This distinction follows directly from the traditional Cartesian approach that represents

subjective experience as something that is encased and hidden within individuals From this

view, an indi idual s e pe ie e is private only the individual herself has access to it Any

35 Albert Einstein, Out of my later years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1936/1950), 59

36 Reiss, J., & Sprenger, J Scientific Objectivity, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by

Edward N Zalta (2017), URL = objectivity/>

<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/scientific-individual looking at a flower (the object) can verify its presence, but only the <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/scientific-individual herself (the subject a e if the e pe ie e of a s eet a o a However, this traditional distinction raises epistemological problems: if ea h pe so s e pe ie e is genuinely private, how is it

possible for one person to know the experience of another?

In his argument against the possibility of a private language, Wittgenstein famously

showed that if experience were truly private, we could never be sure the words we use to refer

to experience were being used similarly by different people37 Without the availability of public criteria to corroborate a given experience, there could be no way to develop shared ways to

refer to it To solve this problem, Wittgenstein suggested that experiences are not inherently

private at all Instead, they are revealed by their bodily expressions Bodily expressions provide

the public criteria needed to corroborate the meaning of the words that refer to inner

experience For example, writhing is the public expression of pain; e k o a pe so s pai

through their writhing There is not first the pain and then also the writhing; the writhing is the public manifestation of pain Experience is thus not a priori private – it shi es th ough our bodily expressions and thus becomes available to others 38

People do not learn to describe experiences by looking inside a private inner world and then attaching a word to a private sensation; they do so by learning to use words whose

meanings arise in intersubjective exchanges that occur between people over time

Intersubjectivity is the process of sharing or coordinating experience and meaning between

people.39 The capacity for intersubjectivity is necessary for any form of communication to occur We do not enter interactions as self-contained individuals who must find ways to break through the opaque minds of others.40 We begin our interactions – as we begin life – able to interact with others through the medium of shared experience, however primordial or

implicit.41 While intersubjective frameworks change and develop as we communicate over time, communication nonetheless relies upon an already given intersubjective base

In his analysis of the origins of scientific knowledge, Husserl42 shows how

intersubjectivity provides the basis for the development of scientific objectivity From a

phenomenological approach, observation – scientific or otherwise is a form of experiencing It

is not possible to separate experiencing from the object experienced While we need not doubt the existence of a world beyond our experience, we are not able to engage that world

independent of our experience Phenomenologically, there is not first the world and then our experience of it; there is only our experiencing of the world We live ot o l i a natural

o ld ut i a lifeworld (lebenswelt) The lifeworld is a public world of shared experience and

symbolic meaning It functions as the implicit, taken-for-granted backdrop that defines the world as (universally) experienced by layperson and scientist alike.43

39 Daly, Primary Intersubjectivity; Michael F Mascolo, Be o d su je ti it a d o je ti it : The

intersubjective foundations of ps hologi al s ie e Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, 50 (2016): 185- ; )aha i, Husse l s T a sfo ati e I te su je ti it

40 Ter Hark, Beyond the Inner and Outer

41 Daly, Primary Intersubjectivity

42 Husserl, Crisis

43 Husserl, Crisis, Babette E Babich "Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science: Interpreting Nature, Reading

Laboratory Science." In The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics, edited by Niall Keene & Chris

Lawn, 492-504, Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2006

According to Husserl, in their work and everyday life, laypersons and scientists alike

te d to adopt the atu alisti attitude This is the hidde , take -for-granted belief that the world is real entity that exists independent of our consciousness, and that our everyday

perceptions bring us in direct contact with the reality of that world For Husserl, the natural

attitude is one that precedes philosophical reflection Unfortunately, philosophical reflection is

something that, in general, is often seen as irrelevant by scientists From the standpoint of the naturalistic attitude, if the world is filled with objects that can be known simply through

empirical observation, then philosophical analyses are speculative or superfluous at best and distorting at worst

However, philosophical reflection allows us to apprehend the world as not something

that can be experienced directly for itself, but can only be experienced for experiencing

subjects.44 As a esult, Husse l alls fo a etu to the thi gs the sel es as they appear to us

in phenomenal experience This is accomplished through the phenomenal moments that

Husserl calls the epoché – the a keti g of the atu alisti attitude – and the

phenomenological reduction –the process of reflecting upon and interrogating experience that has been set apart from the bracketed natural attitude Upon reflection on experience, one

sees that what one has taken to be an independently existing world is really an experienced world – a world experience by me As I reflect, I grasp the objects of my experience as things

that are constituted within my experience itself I investigate the correlative relationships between the process (noesis) and content (noema) of my experience In so doing, I become

44 “e astia Luft Husse l's Notio of the Natu al Attitude a d the “hift to T a s e de tal

Phe o e olog , Analecta Husserliana, 80 (2002): 114-119

aware of a transcendental ego that constitutes the objects and meanings of my experienced

world In this capacity, I recognize the transcendental ego as the condition that provides for the very possibility of experience

Against the backdrop of the bracketed world, become aware that all of this experiences

is my own – my ownness Simultaneously, through my awareness of my ownness, I am also aware of that is not me or mine, namely the external world and the people who populate it

Husse l ites: Withi a d ea s of this ownness the transcendental ego constitutes,

ho e e , the O je ti e o ld, as a u i e se of ei g that is othe tha hi [o he ]self and constitutes, at the first level, the othe i the ode: alte ego 45 Through my capacity to experience my own transcendent ego, I am able to recognize the existence of other people as

alter egos, othe s ho e ist as ge ui e a alogues to ego, a d ot e el as p oje tio s o

i fe e es As these othe s poi t to e as ut o e a o g a o u it of egos, I e ome am

aware of the world as something that is available to a community of egos united shared (albeit basic) modes of intersubjective and collective meanings

According to Husserl, although the atu al s ie es gi e the i p essio that [the ] a e based on the e pe ie e of o je ti e atu e ,46 objective nature is simply not something that can be experienced Experience occurs within the domain of lifeworld, the only world in which

scientists and laypersons can act An objective observation is not a matter of recording nature

as it is; it is a matter of building up, over time, shared categories that reflect regularities in the experienced world – however mediated by cultural or scientific tools Objectivity is a matter of

45 Husserl, Cartesian Mediations, 100

46 Husserl, Crisis, 128-129

creating – within an already shared lifeworld categories and meanings for everyone, rather than categories and meanings for just you or just me (subjectivity) It is a thus a scientific

accomplishment that occurs not by gaining access to an independently existing world, but

within and through intersubjectivity of the lifeworld

None of this suggests that science is unreliable It simply suggests that science achieves its success through a process of carefully coordinating experiences of the world If objective observations were mere recordings of an independent world, scientists would require no philosophical assumptions or expertise to identify and measure event that stood objectively before them They would not need to reflect upon how observations and methods are

mediated by meanings about which they may not be aware It would not be necessary to trace the historical origins of the concepts that structure their methods and assertions Each

discipline would be able study its subject matter autonomously, without a need to coordinate their activities and outcomes with other disciplines Howeve , if o je ti it elies upon

intersubjective processes, then the sciences are not autonomous; they operate as human processes within a larger interdisciplinary framework

Traversing the Fact-Value Distinction

The direction in intellectual history since the Enlightenment has been to grant to science the authority to pronounce what is real, true, objective, and rational, while relegating ethics and relation to the realm of subjective option and nonrational experience47

47 Nancy Pea e A Ne Fou datio fo Positi e Cultu al Cha ge: “ ie e a d God i the Pu li “ ua e

Human Events, 2000 URL= www.arn.org/docs/pearcey/np_hewedgereview091200.htm

The distinction between facts and values is one that is often used to discriminate the sciences from the humanities Science is often taken to occupy the province of unbiased fact, while philosophy, ethics, and other humanistic disciplines are thought to build upon unverifiable speculation and subjective values.48 The fact-value dichotomy raises important epistemological

questions Part of the appeal of science comes from the belief that it can describe what is in an

unbiased and objective way This statement places s ie e o the fa t side of the fact-value dichotomy If this is so, however, then science must necessarily be silent on questions of values,

that is, questions related to what should be To believe otherwise would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy of infe i g a ought f o a is For example, while it is true that rocking babies to sleep delays the age at which they can fall asleep on their own49 this fact says nothing about whether it is good to rock babies to sleep The goodness of rocking depends upon human

values (e.g., values related to interpersonal closeness, whether and when it is important for children put themselves to sleep, etc.) This does not mean that science is irrelevant to matters

of moral judgment Knowledge of what is often undergirds moral belief50 If science shows that

o ki g dela s a hild s apa it to sooth the sel es to sleep, any moral claim based on a belief

to the contrary would necessarily be false

48 Irina Davydova and Wes Sharrock "The rise and fall of the fact/value distinction." Sociological

Review 51 (2003): 357-375

49 Jennifer Cowie, Cara A Palmer, Hira Hussain, and Candice A Alfano "Parental involvement in infant

sleep routines predicts differential sleep patterns in children with and without anxiety

disorders." Child Psychiatry and Human Development 47 2016: 636-646

50 Arthur Danto, Mysticism and morality Oriental Thought and Moral Philosophy New York: Columbia

University Press, 1972

There are good reasons, however, to question the validity of the fact-value dichotomy.51

On its face, it would appear that some statements are simply factually true and contain no evaluative content However, even the most banal of descriptions of the world are typically structured by evaluative concepts According to Allen:

At the lo est le el of e e h o i le, e sa , The Battle of Wate loo as fought i He e, su el e ha e a holl o je ti e , u e aluati e state e t of e e fa t, a

pu e des iptio O the o t a , attle itself sig ifies the su essful esults of

i te tio al a tio s Usi g attle athe tha ollisio o assa e as i es a

intention to fight on both sides at the e o e t of e gage e t…All this is o pa tl conveyed by the term `battle', which therefore is employed as a tacit evaluation (p 19).52

Thus, what we call statements of fact typically have evaluative content Such values are often structured by the intentions of the scholarly activity at hand For example, it would be easy to think that biological taxonomies are simply veridical representations of the ways in which things are in nature However, there are many ways in which two entities can be regarded as similar

or different Their classification depends on the purpose of the investigator For example, if one

is interested in heredity, it makes sense to group dachshunds and setters together but to place horses and zebras apart However, given an interest in anatomy, it makes sense to group horses

51 Davydova, Rise and fall; Robert A Harris, A su a iti ue of the fa t/ alue di hoto

URL = www.virtualsalt.com/int/factvalue.pdf; Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and other Essays Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2002

52 Alle , ‘i ha d T Pola i s o e o i g of the di hoto of fa t a d alue Polanyiana, 5

(1996): 19

and zebras as the same kind of thing.53 On the other hand, statements of value often rely upon

– but are not determined by – scientific facts and concrete descriptions of what is The moral

judgment that abortion should be legal up to the point of fetal viability is directly affected by scientific (and technological) determinations of fetal viability

These examples show how what we called facts and values interpenetrate This does not imply that it is impossible to distinguish between descriptive (facts) and evaluative (values) aspects of statements It implies only that descriptive and evaluative content tend to

intertwine Sometimes, the evaluative content of a descriptive statement is noncontroversial For example, a teacher might draw a picture of a flower in order to represent its structure As

an idealization of a flower, the drawing is both descriptive and evaluative; it depicts a good example of the parts of flowers, even as it corresponds to no one flower in particular In this

case, the evaluative content of the drawing is uncontroversial An illustrator who seeks to draw

an idealized image of a person of a given race faces a similar task of representing common features within an evaluative framework I this ase, the illust ato s evaluative choices about how to represent race become more controversial

The question of the relations between facts and values orients us to the

interdependence of disciplinary activity If scientific facts are independent of values, then science has no special say in assessing the value of its findings Alternatively, if values are

inextricable from descriptions, it becomes necessary to become reflexive about the nature of

53 Cathe i e ) Elgi , The fusio of fa t a d alue I ide, : -101