So the choice is emphathy or science, eh?
and my my my Paul & Diane agree! (;-)
A brief reply to one of Paul's points:
>On a closing note you asked, "Is this our choice: science or empathy?" and
>I asked myself, "our choice for what?" If I'm looking to understand how
>someone feels empathy is the appropriate way to proceed. If i'm trying to
>construct a conceptual model of the effect of certain institutions on how
>individuals create their narratives I'd prefer to use scientific methods
>that bracket those feelings. Is there any way at all to construct a
>scientific model on the basis of empathetic observations? Are emotions you
>can't empathize with, e.g., uncontrollable rage, beyond the scope of
>conceptual models for that reason?
As I have said in my Sunday post, I find replicability fair and wise.
Yes, working as a scientist includes describing procedures that
others can follow, check, question, improve. I prefer not to be
reinventing the wheel constantly myself, so I'll try to return the
favor. But I find no clear line between emotion and rationality,
certainly not the rationality that involves motives & motivations.
Our models here are folk models, deeply influenced by earlier
human hierarchies of mind/body, reason/emotion, male/female.
I do think it's time to move beyond the whole neo-classic model
of the world with straight columns and neat order everywhere.
Human processes are more dynamic. Instead of bracketing
emotions and pretending to be a clear conduit to knowledge,
how about adopting Arne's/Eva's process of decentering &
recentering? Perhaps decentering is just another word for
bracketing -- so in this sense I would/do bracket, but the process
does not end there. After bracketing, I find it essential to
unbracket. To me, this is just as important, fair & wise, as
safegards like double-blind studies, for example. I also find
that rational. Simply to say I empty myself of emotion for
science -- that I find quite irrational, and incomplete.
One of my favorite passages from Vygotsky discusses the
need for an object of study that preserves the essential qualities
of the phenomenon of interest. Often, breaking interesting
phenomena into their constituent parts kills those qualities.
Many (most?) human activities strike me as precisely
synergetic and hence not decomposable except for very
precise, very limited purposes. For example, language can be
decomposed into its material units, phonemes, certain formal
properties, certain patterns of recurrence, and the study of these
material components can be (has been for me) very enlightening.
These units do not get me too far once I turn my attention to
meaning & meaning-making. For that I need very different units
of analysis. Does this mean I now throw away any insights I might
have gotten from a serious look at the linguistic equivalent of the
periodic table? Why?
More often then not, we seem to be squeezed into these stupid
either/or choices by the distribution of research resources --
conference time and research funding -- not by the exigencies
of our pursuit of knowledge. For me, part of re-centering involves
recognizing the impact of our fora on our work -- actually, I should
say more humbly, my fora on my work.
And then i recall Bakhtin. aaaaa ...
Genevieve
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