Critical Analysis Paper

Wurm 5








Critical Analysis Paper:
Logic for Research that Changes the World
Greg Wurm
SOC 610: Dr. Stan Knapp
11 December 2014



Introduction:
This paper will examine the complete research process in the social sciences from the human subject who researches, to the effect their research has on the object, or social phenomena, they research. It will look at how the researcher effects the research, how the research effects the researcher, and how the interplay of these two effects relate to the pragmatic approach to not just study the world, but change it too. It will draw heavily upon Friedrich Nietzsche as a classical source for how a good social science would look and Patrick Baert as a contemporary voice for the same thing, specifically from his pragmatist perspective. The paper will be structured according to this logic: If the research process can be used to positively change the researcher, and the quality of the researcher is related to the quality of the research, then the effect of the research process on the researcher can determine the quality of the research or the pragmatic effect it has on society. If this is so, as will be argued, it would change the way and reason why we research the social world.
Part One: Effect of the Research Process on the Researcher
The first question that will be examined is whether or not the research process can be used to positively change the researcher. The effect the researcher has on the research in scientific studies is often only thought about negatively, as something to be avoided. The values or beliefs of the researcher, we are told, should not subjectively, intentionally or unintentionally, imbue themselves into the research. The normal way to confront this issue is to set up standardized procedures and methods to help make the research process as "objective" as possible. Thus, the research is protected from the personal or subjective values of the researcher. In this paper, and specifically in this section, the direction of influence being considered is in the opposite direction, from the research to the researcher. It is the effect the research, or the research process itself, has on the researcher, and moreover the effect or value it can have as something wanted or something intentional.
Speaking against the traditional use in science of the word objective, Nietzsche argued, "According to this interpretation, the word means a condition in the historian which permits him to observe an event in all its motivations and consequences so purely that it has no effect at all on his own subjectivity…" (Nietzsche 1997:90). Notwithstanding Nietzsche's critique of objectivity in general, calling it the "mysterious misty vapour of deception," (96) he argues in the above quote that research also has an effect on the researcher's own subjectivity, no matter how objective or disinterested they try to be. All subjectivity in the research process that objectivists "object" to is the subjectivity of the researcher on the research. Research having an effect on the researcher is research having an effect on the subject, or human being that is conducting the research. This type of subjectivity is less objectionable and is hardly considered in the traditional arguments against subjectivity in general. Subjectivity in this direction, from research to researcher, is not only not bad, but is also good and could even be something to be sought after. Maybe it is not why we usually do research, but maybe it is why we should, to be affected, to learn, to be changed.
Baert would agree with this. He stated, "Whereas most social research wants to ignore the subjective (because it gets in the way of the research process), self-referential knowledge deliberately confronts us with our selves, our presuppositions and practices" (Baert 2005(a):166). It does this by forcing us to look outside of ourselves. By looking outside ourselves we can better understand ourselves and all the "taken-for-granted" assumptions inside of us. Baert, this time quoting Glenn Bowman, says, "The encounter with radically different notions of selfhood enables us to reconsider our own taken-for-granted concepts, to make them explicit and to realize that they are not necessarily universal" (Baert 2005(b):197). This experience of seeing something or someone different is what allows the researcher to become something or someone different. A researcher who goes into their study to simply prove their hypothesis and not learn from testing it, should not even bother with the research at all, for the primary purpose of research should be to learn.
This is the critique that is usually given to subjectivism. It is when the researcher tries to impose their worldview onto the world through their research that they are being subjective and dishonest. Durkheim talked about this problem and offered an alternative. He stated, "One cannot construct an ethic in its entirety and impose it on reality later; one must rather observe reality to infer morality from it" ( McCarthy 2008:145). This is the correct order of subjectivity (from research to researcher not researcher to research) and is the type of subjectivity for which is being argued.
Though the first purpose of social research might be to learn, this is not just learning for learning's sake, but learning as a means to change ourselves or change the world, though only the latter is usually considered in the pragmatist perspective. Baert has described this view and purpose for knowledge. He says, "knowledge is seen as a tool that makes possible the continuation of a previously inhibited course of action." (Baert 2003: 93). This purpose for knowledge is compatible with Nietzsche's perspective on knowledge as long as it does not become an atemporal rule to control the world, but stays merely as a temporary tool to overcome it (Nietzsche 2001:167-168).
Michael Foucault gave a similar though more poignant suggestion for the use of knowledge. Commenting on Nietzsche's Untimely Meditations on doing history for life he said, "For genealogists (of knowledge), historical research has little value unless it feeds into 'life and action', unless it helps us to rid ourselves of our own constructions and to see through our own imprisonment: '…knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting'" (Foucault, 1971:154). Knowledge gained through the research process has its purpose first to change the "life and actions" of the researcher, for Foucault has also said, "man is both knowing subject and the object of his own study" (1971). It changes their own mental constructs which inevitably guide them in their personal conduct and the formation of social constructs, or the morality which they first inferred from the world for themselves and now impose on the world for itself.
The researcher is not, as Nietzsche put it, a "purely passive medium," (Nietzsche 1997: 91) but a participant, both in its output and in its input. They, the researchers, are the mediators of the ideas. Mediating between what is gained from their personal research and what is shared to the community at large through its being published (BUT ALSO MEDIATORS BETWEEN THE PHENOMENA ITSELF, IF IT IS A SOCIAL ONE—REQUIRING TWO PEOPLE). Whatever medium they choose to use in publishing their research can be thought of as merely the visible manifestation of their own inner medium or their own minds, minds that have not been "passive mediums" but actively engaged—minds that have been changed and constructed, published and republished, before and throughout the research process.
Regarding the research process itself, a typical question asked of research methodologists is, "What are you doing to research the social world?" Instead of this question, for this section's purposes, it is better rephrased as, "What is researching the social world doing to you?" This latter question is a pre-consideration in terms of the pragmatic agenda that is often overlooked. The pragmatist asks, "How can this truth, gained from the research process, be used to change the world?" But first, as we are asking here and rephrasing yet again, "How does this truth about the world, gained from the research process, change us?" Or more specifically, change the researcher. And, what does that even mean, to change the researcher, and what assumptions are imbedded within this statement?
Baert summarized what Hans Georg Gadamer once said about assumptions, "First, theoretical assumptions are not an impediment to knowledge acquisition – they are a precondition for its possibility. Second, the very act of understanding or making sense of what is being investigated potentially affects the very same presuppositions that made possible the investigation in the first place" (Baert 2003:100). The assumptions that are held about how change can happen both from the outside-in (from the research process to the researcher), and from the inside-out (from the researcher, to his research, to the social world), are open to being changed. Not only are they open to being changed, but they are necessary to hold or to make before any change can be made anywhere. You must always start somewhere to get anywhere and that which is being assumed, is the somewhere that is being started, or at least the "somewhere" that is assumed that is being started.
As one continues their study, or their research process, these assumptions might change, and this is, what this paper would argue, is the whole point of the research process. Though, how they change is not merely by knowledge acquisition alone, but by the way the researcher or assumer changes themselves and how they relate to the world and respond to it through their research. It is first and foremost a process of personal transformation before it can or should be used to transform the social. If it does not move the researcher positively, it will not move the society in a positive direction.
As Leo Tolstoy said of art, "The test of art is infection" (Tolstoy 1924:10). How much the research infects, affects, or changes the researcher could be a good measure of how much it could potentially infect, affect, or change the social world. Change in this regard and on both accounts (both the researcher and the social world) would change the focus of social research from being mainly concerned with the epistemology of the entire discipline to being more concerned with the individual morality of the "disciples" or researchers of the discipline. Sometimes the first change to be made is to change the way change is made.
Whatever qualitative difference there is between where one started and where they ended is the difference the research process has made for them. A difference has not only been made in their assumptions, but they the assumer have been made different. They, the researcher, is of a higher quality, and, as will be shown in the next section, who the researcher is (or the quality of the researcher) must always have an effect on what the research is (or the quality of the research) or, how assumptions are usually only as good as the assumer.
Part Two: Effect of the Researcher on the Research
Part two will build upon the foundation of the first part and examine how a better researcher leads to better research. Going back to the original question that was flipped in the last section, this section will ask 'what are you doing to research the social world?' This is the research process that is assumed to be better now that the researcher is better. This assumption, as well as what is meant by the word better, will be explained further and justified relying on ideas from other scholars and ultimately faith in the strength of the logic.
Asking what is being done to research the social world leads one to think about the methods they are using to do their actual research. Though these methods are important to consider, they will not be the focus. The question, however, will be looked at more in terms of ethics than epistemology. For example; instead of describing or prescribing what method should be used to study the social world, the argument is that whatever method a researcher uses will be better if the researcher is better. In other words, if the method is only as good as the methodologist, then a discussion on what is meant by a "good methodologist" would be more fruitful than merely discussing what "good method" is.
Nietzsche has commented on this relationship between method and methodologist, research and researcher, and, in the following quote specifically, history and historian. He said, "To sum up: history is written by the experienced and superior man. He who has not experienced greater and more exalted things than others will not know how to interpret the great and exalted things of the past" (Nietzsche 1997:94). This quote seems to suggest the logic that how one goes about studying a given topic and what knowledge they gain from it is dependent upon who the studier is and from what banks of knowledge and experience they draw. From the methods they use, the perspective or lens they view through, to the places they look for background information to guide the formation of their research question, this is all based on the background and experiences of the researcher, and ultimately and inevitably effects their research.
History would look bland to the bland, but to the "superior man," the past is filled with "great and exalted things." It is in their power to interpret that distinguishes them from their peers and this power comes from who they are as moral beings and not from what method they use. This is why Nietzsche also said, "It is the task of history to be the mediator between them (the great spirits of all ages) and thus again and again to inspire and lend the strength for the production of the great man. No, the goal of humanity cannot lie in its end but only in its highest exemplars" (Nietzsche 1997:111). Thus, the researcher does not only mediate between the world they learn from and the world they teach to, as was talked about in the first section, but also between researchers and research from all times and places who have learned and taught and as a result have become different, better, or great, and exemplars for the human race. Nietzsche calls this the "exalted spirit-dialogue" (111). It is only the exalted spirits of the present that can communicate with the exalted spirits of the past, in terms of historical research, and could be argued that this is the same for any sort of social research conducted in the present as well.
The idea of the goal of humanity lying in its highest exemplars is an important point in Nietzsche's perspective and in understanding the implications this has to the way the social sciences go about social research. In the introduction to Nietzsche's work "On the Genealogy of Morals" the writer states that "Nietzsche is committed to the enhancement of man and this enhancement does not consist in improving the conditions of existence for the majority of human beings, but in the generation of a few, striking and superlatively vital 'highest exemplars' of the species" (Pippin 2012:213). These highest exemplars could, should, and would be the researchers who change and become better by and throughout the research process through interacting with other great minds of their time and of times past. Only then could they lead the way for the rest of the "majority of human beings."
Eleanor Roosevelt is known for having once commented that, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people" (Roosevelt). The great men of history and of sociology, as Nietzsche referred to, are not great because of their research, or their ideas. Their research, or ideas, and the impact they make with them are great because of them. The ideas are only as good as the ideologues. They excel at them, because they excel at life, which includes the ideas that they form and let guide them through all parts of the research process. They only know what goodness is, because it is in them. Their interpretations are good, or elevated above the common or herd morality, because they are better, higher, and more noble and exalted interpreters. Or, as Nietzsche said and was here before referenced, though this time rephrased in a positive sentence structure, only he who has experienced greater and more exalted things than others will know how to interpret the great and exalted things of the past.
Carl Jung, talked about the idea of interpreting or pulling out meaning from "outer" phenomena and gives another condition for the exemplars of a culture. He wrote: "He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you find manifold meaning only in yourself, not in things, since the manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the same time, but is a succession of meanings. The meanings that follow on another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life" (Jung 2009:273). Jung asserts the need for the actor who is trying to assign meaning to take part in life, which includes taking part in the research process from start to end, from learning to applying and teaching, from seeing examples of a certain quality of living to exemplifying it themselves. In a subtitle of one of Nietzsche's works (Untimely Meditations), from which has been quoted, the same sort of admonition can be ascertained. The title is, "History for Life" and Nietzsche's main point can be summarized both from this title alone and in a quote he borrows from Goethe who says, "As for the rest, I hate everything that merely instructs me without increasing or indirectly rousing my activity" (Goethe 1879:182). For Nietzsche, this included the study of history, and for social scientists, includes the study of the social world.
Objectivist research directly prohibits and tries to decrease if not diminish entirely the researchers activity in the research, or their "taking part" in it. If they did, this would be "subjective" and that is "bad." By the researcher not being able to play an active part in the research, how could the research ever play an active part in the researcher? How could it ever affect him and how could he ever affect the world with it? Going back to Tolstoy's quote on art, before the before mentioned line, he says, "Without adequate expression there is no art, for there is no infection, no transference to others of the author's feeling" (Tolstoy 1924:10) By denying the researcher the ability to express themselves adequately through their research, the research can have "no transference to others" and no truly pragmatic impact on society. It seems that subjectivity is only bad if the subject, or researcher, is bad, or in morally bad relations to any part of their research or the social world they are studying. Hypothetically, if all researchers were good, then there wouldn't need to be procedures to ensure their objectivity, objectivity which is equally as hypothetically possible as a world where all researchers are good.
Carl Jung continues, "Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself"( Jung 2009:273). This is where self-referential knowledge, as has been described by Baert, gained before and during the research process is so key. As the researcher changes, the "countenance of the world alters." Jung calls it useless to fathom solely in things and not let them change you. As Nietzsche has critiqued again on objectivism, "One goes so far, indeed, as to believe that he to whom a moment of the past means nothing at all is the proper man to describe it" (Nietzsche 1997:93) Those for who it means nothing are nihilistic in this regard and, according to the proposed relationship between researcher and research, would produce research that ultimately creates a nihilistic world.
To Nietzsche, this nihilistic world is a result of an ascetic ideal, to which science was its "best ally" (Nietzsche 2006:114). Nietzsche says "That the ascetic ideal has meant so much to man reveals a basic fact of human will, its horror vacui; it needs an aim –, and it prefers to will nothingness rather than not will" (68). If something is to come from the research, something must come from the researcher. Maybe a dose more of subjectivity on the part of the researcher, or at least an acknowledgement of the dose that is already there? At least that would be a little more honest (117).
The researcher plays a role in the research process, not only in its construction, but also in its conclusions. The better the researcher, the better the research will be constructed and the better conclusions that will be drawn. In the next and final section, we will look at how these conclusions can change the world, maybe even proportionately to the change they made in the world, or life, of the researcher?
Part Three: Effect of the Researcher and Research on the Social World
The third and last part of this paper will show how both of the previous two parts, or the quality of the researcher and research, are connected and interplay to make the world a more quality place to live. As was talked about in the first part, the idea of "researcher as mediator," the social scientist is to mediate with and for the world. Learning from it through their research and then teaching to it with their research. Here will be discussed the "teaching the world" part of the process, moving from mediator to medium, and how social research is or should be pragmatic in helping to change the world.
"Teaching the world" can literally take the form of publishing one's research in whatever medium they choose. To publish comes from the Latin word publicare which means "to make public." That is what teaching or sharing what has been learned from the research process means. Even if you never share what you have learned, but you really did learn, the world has been made a better place, because you are part of the world and by your learning you will have hopefully been made better.
William James, one of the fathers of pragmatism, put it like this: "... there can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere" (James 1907:46) If the logic detailed out in the first and second parts of this paper are true, then the bigger difference that happens anywhere, the bigger difference that would happen elsewhere. In the terms of this paper, this relationship or phenomena has been described by using the word quality in the way a pragmatist would use it. Not how well it corresponds to reality, but the difference it can make. Baert synthesized what two American pragmatists have suggested. "Dewey and Rorty pointed out that language and knowledge, rather than representing a "reality-out-there", enable people to increase the range of human possibilities (Baert 2003:102-103). This is partly what quality research would do, "increase the range of human possibilities," but it would also do more, from Nietzsche's perspective.
Nietzsche has said that "The eros or 'love' bestowed by culture cannot be taught, but rather it is imparted in our encounter with exemplary human beings, such that we gain a 'clear, discriminating, and self-contemptuous' view of' ourselves, and we 'hate [our] own narrowness and shriveled nature' in our 'feeling of sympathy for the genius'" (Nietzsche:1997:162). As well as increasing the range of human possibilities, there is also a yearning or an erotic aspiration to be something higher, or to follow the exemplar and be exemplary oneself. This is what Nietzsche would add to Baert's conception of pragmatic knowledge and gives an explanation as to why the pragmatist would even want to make a difference anyway.
Speaking of making a difference, Durkheim, in his book on Pragmatism and Sociology, said, "Thought thus comes into existence not in order to copy reality, but to change it." (Durkheim 1983:38). The difference thought or knowledge makes is both in how it changes the researcher and how the researcher uses the research to change the world. This is again what quality research is, research that has no absolute end, but has a direction that is higher and more exalted than the norm and is led by the exemplars of a society, exemplars that have been changed and are continuing to change as they continue to strive for something higher.
If research is only meant to copy reality by being objective and absent of values, then it will ultimately produce research that fails in the pragmatic objective to change reality in that it is equally absent of value to society. William James, affirmed the use of the pragmatic method to change existing realities. He said, "...the Pragmatic method... appears as an indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed" (Baert 2005(b):195). It is as Marx said of the purpose of philosophy. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it" (Marx 1845:XI).
With this arsenal of scholars united as to the purpose of social research, why is it so often that we see so little of what they wish it to be? Is it our fascination with atemporal platonic truths that blinds us the temporal implications of said truths? Is it our delusion that there is a reality "out there" that can be known? For the pragmatist, what good is it if we know it if it doesn't serve us by knowing it. Knowledge of this manner is like a cart before the horse. It has either no context or the wrong context, and we wonder why? Because we have de-contextualized it from the beginning with our objective scientific method. Durkheim has said, "Although we set out primarily to study reality, it does not follow that we do not wish to improve it; we should judge our researches to have no worth at all if they were to have only a speculative interest" (Durkheim 1964:33). Just a "speculative interest" is the same as a researcher being disinterested and this is what Durkheim and we would judge as to have "no worth".
Conclusion:
If we are to have research that is of worth, then I would suggest that we go about social research in the way that has been proposed. A way in which we focus on and allow the research to have an effect on us and then share with the world what has moved us or what has changed us. Only this type of research can be moving enough to change anything, which is at the heart of the pragmatist approach. Baert does a good job at describing what the pragmatist approach is and could do for the world while Nietzsche does a good job at describing why there are pragmatists in the world and why we need them in the right way. Nietzsche would suggest that the best pragmatist is not just the discoverer of truth, which is based on epistemology and is more of what Baert emphasizes, but would be an exemplar of the truth not only teaching it, but embodying it too. Research and what we publish should be thought of more as an art, and researchers as artists. We should seek to do as Tolstoy admonished and infect the viewers of our research with our art. And this is by who we are more than what we say. But, we can only be infectious if we have been infected ourselves by the possibilities or implications of what we have learned from our own research and from "encounters with the exemplars."
Jeffery Church, commenting on Nietzsche's view of moving from personal change to social change, said, "First, our encounter with culture and the exemplars who engage in it brings with it 'self-knowledge and dissatisfaction' with oneself… Second, the 'more difficult' task is to move from this inner shame and longing to outward action on behalf of culture" (Church 2011:340). The infection we catch from the research process isn't something that wasn't there before, it is merely something that has now become conscious and even erotically desired for. This is what learning, action, and not resenting the world or your suffering is all about. It is exemplary. And, now that you are more conscious of it and have a healthier perspective on it, you can do something about it. And, doing something about it is what the pragmatic approach to the social sciences is, to use the same expression again, all about.


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