I was a teenager
during the 1960s when in the
I was not impressed by the approach to philosophy advanced by Descartes (1637) in the infamous cogito, ergo sum[1]. Assuming a single thinking entity rather than a changing one, seemed to me a post-hoc rationalisation, using, by habit, the mental mechanism which, applied to external phenomena, helps to explain why things happen: “I think, therefore of course I think that I exist”. An intangible such as the self did not seem a promising starting-point for a method for discovering truth in the sciences: the thinking “I” is not simply reducible to the physical body or mental processes.[2]
From mathematics at
university, I became used to setting out definitions of concepts to be used in
later discussion, and only later discovered how strange this mode of thought
seems to many people. Working in the information
systems area in the early 1990s, I introduced some definitions in a draft paper
that I sent to a colleague who kindly offered comments. I was astonished that a
definitional sentence reading “Information is what we know.” was returned to me
with the word “is” circled. I expected the rest of that sentence to be of
interest – information theory in
Existence, real,
material, and universe clearly mean amazingly different things to
different people. For Plato’s nineteenth century translators, material things
were merely visible, whereas intelligible concepts were real[3]. For Bertrand Russell, things such as
numbers were real (see Irvine 2001); for his colleague Alfred North Whitehead, it was processes that constituted fundamental
reality (see Rescher 2002); for Kant (1783) ideas were
real; and for many religious people, the spiritual is real. Aristotle (325 BC)
observed correctly that sensations do not exist independently of our perceiving
of them[4];
Carnap (1928), a positivist, put it this way: “Two geographers, a realist and an idealist, who are sent out in order to find out if a mountain that is supposed to be somewhere in Africa is only legendary or if it really exists, will come to the same … result not only about the existence of the mountain, but also about its other characteristics, namely position, shape, height, etc. In all empirical questions there is unanimity. Hence the choice of a philosophical viewpoint has no influence upon the content of natural science; (this does not mean that it could not have some practical influence upon the activity of the scientist).”
However, there was for most of the twentieth century a profound disagreement between the Bohm and Bohr interpretations of quantum mechanics. David Bohm would say that Schrödinger’s cat, supposedly in a sealed box in company with a deadly mechanism, is really either alive or dead, whereas Nils Bohr wants some intermediate mixed state until the box is opened (Cushing 1994); most people now seem to use Bohm’s interpretation[6]. For an earlier generation there had been a persistent incompatibility between the wave and particle theories of light.
Analogously, every writer in the information systems field has, it seems, their concepts of information, business organisation, system, different from everyone else[7]. As with metaphysics, the persistence of so many different philosophical standpoints in business studies seems to suggest that these differences are of no practical consequence for business. It is unfair to scoff, nevertheless, since so many of us aspire to intellectual rigour in our writing but cannot find definitions in the literature that suit our purpose and standpoint. My own definition of business organisation is of a phenomenological sort that I find congenial: I speak of a business organisation when I want to distinguish between the separate legal persona of an enterprise and the actions of individuals on its behalf (cf. Crowe et al 1994). In particular organizations and other systems are not real in my terms[8].
Reality for me is a serious issue, since it is what keeps our feet on the ground: and separates facts from imagination and other lies. Consider the following metaphysical framework:
This world of reality may seem cold and denuded, but it is warmed up by human and other interactions, which we are all very good at from birth. What we see is conditioned by what we think; and what we think, and how we express it in language, is developed through our interactions with others. These interactions enable us to build relationships, concepts, language, ideas, culture, as we learn about the opinions of other people at the same time as we develop our own[9]. We infer such notions as causality and repeatability from our experience: they are still our opinions, not givens and do seem to be culturally dependent. To me the modernists seem to take us back where each individual (unaided, ‘heroic’) confronts the cosmos, pure logic, transcendence or other grandiose notions that one finds in the philosophy of Descartes, Kant, and others.
Shared investigations and discussions are thus essential to intellectual progress, so that we benefit from the work of others, and climb “on the shoulders of giants”[10]. Yet we have seen in many disciplines, including science, a lack of agreement on fundamental issues or concepts, even, one might say, in the absence of a common language. Now in fact analytical philosophers in the sterile English tradition often argued that a common language was difficult, if not impossible to establish (Wittgenstein, 1953). There used also to be a rather sterile debate about “incommensurability” in relation to historicist theories of knowledge. But here we find not just single disciplines, but, it would seem, all academic investigation, flourishing despite such apparent philosophical problems. It is reminiscent of the old Greek paradoxes, such as Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, which he is said to have claimed proved the impossibility of motion. Paradoxes generally cause intellectuals to think how to avoid such an impasse. Thus Zeno’s paradoxes led to a more careful mathematics of infinite series, as Russell’s led to a more rigorous formalism in mathematics.
In the academic
community, it is almost because of the need to explain our evidence in terms
that overcome these differences of individual point of view, that we establish a
common academic style of presenting our ideas. We behave in a manner reminiscent
of the
Looking back to the
This social construction of knowledge precludes the attainment of objectivity[11] or universal truth (except in the empty tautologies of formal mathematics) – this is “the world well lost”[12] (Stove, 1991). Everything new and much that is old is provisional and open to debate, not in the sense of being subject to imminent falsification, but in the sense of requiring first to be generally accepted and later to be improved or replaced. If we do not own up to our starting-points, opinions and bias, others will infer them for us. This pragmatic approach leads to objections from all sides (Rorty, 1989); both from those who (maybe justifiably) mistrust any academic establishment (“governmentality” is Michel Foucault’s term), and from those who, following Habermas, wish to prove the falsity of opinions they (maybe justifiably) dislike. The postmodern stands accused of relativisim, where anything goes[13], but no shortcuts in the process ever seem to work: even simple discoveries in the physical sciences routinely take forty years to be accepted[14]. Since everything hinges on discussion and debate the excitement it engenders is so much the greater:
The social construction of knowledge also precludes the popular and flattering image of the scientist as genius. For the scientist a good road is one open to all, and the scientific method demands the modesty of asserting that anyone else, with the same starting points, could have reached the same conclusions. This modesty is balanced by the homage that the community pays to the great contributors to knowledge. We strengthen this virtuous circle whenever we exhort students to give proper references and reviews of the literature, and by our anathema of plagiarism.
So when I consider why academics do research, I think of participation in the joy of discovery and debate, the creation of new knowledge, and the timeless academe.
Aristotle (325 BC) Metaphysics.
Bacon, F. (1620), Instauratio
Magna,
Berger, P., Luckman, T. (1966): The Social
Construction of Reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge,
Berkeley, G (1710)
A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge; publ Works, ed. A C Fraser,
Carnap, R. (1928): Der Logische Aufbau der Welt; English
version The Logical Structure of the World - Pseudoproblems in Philosophy
Checkland, P.B., Holwell, S. (1998): Information, Systems and Information
Systems: making sense of the field, Wiley,
Crowe, M. K., Beeby, R.B., Gammack, J. G. (1994): Construction Systems and Information: a process view, McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead.
Cushing, J. T.
(1994): Quantum Mechanics: historical contingency and the
Dennett, D. C.
(1991): Consciousness Explained, Penguin Books,
Descartes, R. (1637), Discours de la méthode
pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la verité dans les sciences,
Descartes, R. (1641), Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia
et animae immortalitas demonstrantur,
Gjertsen, D. (1989) Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
Hume, D. (1739), Treatise on Human Nature, John
Noon,
Kant,
Lonergan, B. (1957) Insight: A study of human
understanding, Longmans,
Merton, Robert K. (1965) On the shoulders of giants,
Plato (360-350 BC) Works
Rescher, N. (2002); "Process Philosophy", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2002 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2002/entries/process-philosophy/
Robinson, J. A. T. (1963): Honest to God, John
Knox Press,
Rorty, R. (1979): Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,
Rorty, R. (1982): Consequences of Pragmatism, Harvester
Wheatsheaf,
Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony, Solidartity,
Shannon, C. E, Weaver, W. (1949): The Mathematical
Theory of Communication,
Stove, D. (1991): The Plato Cult and
other Philosophical Follies, Blackwell,
Tillich, P. (1948), The
Shaking of the Foundations, Penguin Books,
Wittgenstein, L. (1953): Philosophical
Investigations, Blackwell,
[1] The phrase is not actually found in his works. The Discours is in French: “Mais, aussitôt après, je pris garde que, pendant que je voulais ainsi penser que tout était faux, il fallait nécessairement que moi, qui le pensais, fusse quelque chose. Et remarquant que cette vérité: je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus extravagantes suppositions des sceptiques n’étaient pas capables de l’ébranler, je jugeai que je pouvais la recevoir, sans scrupule, pour le premier principe de la philosophie, que je cherchais.” Descartes (1637) IV: 1, cf 3. The later Meditations on Metaphysics (Descartes 1641) are in Latin, and also cover this ground, but do not actually contain the cogito. The Meditations have an interesting subtitle about proving the existence of God and the immortal soul, which calls into question Descartes’ modern reputation as a rationalist, and recalls Socrates’ equally fallacious final arguments (Plato: Phaedo 64-105). For a modern example of the cogito starting-point used in pursuit of similar ends, consider Lonergan (1957), and see a list of similar philosophical crimes in Stove (1991).
[2] David Hume (1739) is sceptical (positivist): “He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself, though I am certain there is no such principle in me.” Positivists imposed strict limits to what can be discussed. For a convincing phenomenological account of consciousness, see Dennett (1991).
[3] Plato, Republic τούτοις μὲν ὡς εἰκόσιν αὐ̂ χρώμενοι, ζητου̂ντες [511a] δὲ αὐτὰ ἐκει̂να ἰδει̂ν ἃ οὐκ ἂν ἄλλως ἴδοι τις ἢ τῃ̂ διανοία. [My translation: these things they treat in their turn as only images, in order to visualise ideas which are entirely in the mind] Plato is clearly contrasting the sensible and intelligible worlds, but the standard translation of this passage mistranslates ἰδει̂ν as “realities”!
[4] οὔτε γὰρ ψυχρὸν οὔτε θερμὸν οὔτε γλυκὺ οὔτε ὅλως αἰσθητὸν οὐθὲν ἔσται μὴ αἰσθανομένων [Neither the cold nor the hot nor the sweet nor in general any sensation will exist unless we are perceiving it] Aristotle, Metaphysics Book ix, 1047a, my translation. The usual translation of αἰσθητὸν as “sensible thing” seems to me quite misleading.
[5] Rorty (1989) “The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.”
[6] The physicists who taught me seem to have favoured Bohm while mathematics lecturers followed Bohr and Dirac.
[7] See Checkland and Holwell (1998) for a survey of this phenomenon. For system, the only important idea for me is emergence, which seems very simple to me. For example a triangle is made up of three lines, but the area of the triangle is an emergent property of the triangle (not possessed by the lines). A car has a maximum speed and a fuel consumption in miles per gallon, but these properties are emergent since none of the parts has properties remotely like these. Such an idea seems familiar to Aristotle, cf. Metaphysics Book XIII (1078a) ὁ δ' ἔθετο ἓν ἀδιαίρετον, εἰ̂τ' ἐθεώρησεν εἴ τι τῳ̂ ἀνθρώπῳ συμβέβηκεν ᾑ̂ ἀδιαίρετος: assumes [man] to be an indivisible thing, and considers attributes of man as indivisible. (My translation.) He does not seem ever to have said that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, which seems to be a twentieth century coinage.
[8] This was a point of view which my co-authors were at pains to conceal in Crowe et al (1994).
[9] This viewpoint is that of constructivism (Berger and Luckman, 1966).
[10] This famous
aphorism is usually attributed to
[11] All disparagement of objectivity was edited out of (Crowe et al 1994) by my co-authors, who, probably rightly, felt that it would be easier for readers from a scientific background to accept a constructivist viewpoint than a subjective one. I did not see much practical difference, though one or two nice quotations were, sadly, lost in the change.
[12] Richard Rorty (1982) includes “The World Well Lost”, The Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972) p. 649-665. The title refers to the central thesis of (Rorty 1979), refuting Carnap’s “correspondence principle” (the mirror of nature).
[13] “No one holds this view… The philosophers who get called ‘relativists’ are those who say that the grounds for choosing between … opinions are less algorithmic than had been thought.” Rorty (1982), ‘Pragmatism, Relativism, Irrationalism’, his emphasis.
[14]