Truth, Objectivity, and Agreement - Earl Babbie

节选出处：Observing Ourselves: Essays in Social Research (Earl Babbie) --Truth, Objectivity, and Agreement Science is often portrayed as a search for the truth about reality. That sounds good, but what is truth? What is reality? Look those words up in a good dictionary, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, and you'll find definitions like “the quality of being true” and “the quality of being real.” Beyond these basic tautologies are some additional definitions (from the OED):

Truth:

• Conformity with fact; agreement with reality ¢ Agreement with a standard or rule; accuracy, correctness ¢ Genuineness, reality, actual existence ¢ That which is in accordance with fact ¢ That which is true, real, or actual; reality Reality:

• The quality of... having an actual existence

• Correspondence to fact; truth ¢ Real existence Definitions of the words true and real are similar:

True:

• Consistent with fact; agreeing with reality; representing the thing as it is

• Agreeing with a standard, pattern, or rule; exact, accurate, precise, correct, right

• Consistent with, exactly agreeing with

• Conformable to reality; natural ¢ In accordance with reality Real:

• Having an objective existence; actually existing as a thing

• Actually present or existing as a state or quality of things; having a foundation in fact; actually occurring or happening

• Consisting of actual things These definitions point to the inherent circularity of language, which is inevitable as long as we use words to define words. In this case, things are true if they’re real and real if they’re true. The relationship between truth and reality can also be seen in the preponderance of words dealing with agreement: conformity, accordance, correspondence, consistent with, representing.

Here’s a useful way of seeing the relationship between truth and reality: it is possible to make statements about reality; those that agree with (conform to, are consistent with, represent) reality are true. None of this tells us what truth or reality is, however. It only tells us about their relationship to one another. Other words in the definitions we’ve seen may clarify the meanings of truth and reality—words such as actual, existence, and fact.

Actuality:

• The state of being actual or real; reality, existing objective fact Actual:

• Existing in act or fact; really acted or acting; carried out; real Factual:

• Pertaining to or concerned with facts; of the nature of fact, actual, real Fact:

• Something that has really occurred or is actually the case

• Truth attested by direct observation or authentic testimony; reality Existence:

• Actuality; reality

• Being; the fact or state of existing Exist:

• To have place in the domain of reality, have objective being By now, the incestuous circularity of language is getting a little annoying. Consider this abbreviated search for truth:

Truth is “that which is real; reality.”

Reality is “having an actual existence.”

Existence is “actuality; reality.”

Actuality is “existing objective fact.”

Fact is “truth attested by direct observation.”

In addition to the circularity of these relatively few words defining each other, let’s take a cue from the definitions of exist and existence and add the term being.

Being:

¢ Existence ¢ That which exists or is conceived as existing Be:

• To have or take place in the world of fact; to exist, occur, happen

• To have place in the objective universe or realm of fact, to exist

• To come into existence

• To be the case or the fact For the most part, these new words simply add to the circularity of definitions that is becoming very familiar in this exercise. Figure 2.1 on the following page illustrates this.

From time to time throughout these definitions, and now in the definition of be, the quality of objectivity has appeared as part of the background of a definition. In these cases, real does not just have existence, it has “objective existence”; actuality is not just a matter of fact but of “objective fact.” Now, to be is to have a place in the “objective universe.” Implicit in these uses is the contrast between objectivity and subjectivity.

Subjectivity:

¢ The quality or condition of viewing things exclusively through the medium of one’s own mind or individuality

• The character of existing in the mind only Consistent with fact Agreeing with reality ewan Ee Fact =| Reality Actually the case Having an objective existence Truth Having a foundation in fact Reality Consisting of actual things ]

State of being real Existing objective fact Existence Realm of fact Actuality In the domain of reality Having objective being Figure 2.1 The Circular Meaning of Words Subjective:

• Relating to the thinking subject, proceeding from or taking place within the subject; having its source in the mind In stark contrast, objective is defined this way:

Objective:

¢ That which is external to the mind The truth about truth eventually comes down to the recognition that we know most of the world through our minds. Moreover, we recognize that our individual minds are not altogether reliable. We have colloquial phrases such as “a figment of your imagination,” and we realize that people often “see what they want to see.” Simply put, the subjective realm refers to the possibly inaccurate perceptions and thoughts we have through the medium of our minds, yours and mine, whereas the objective realm refers to that which lies outside and is independent of our minds. We often term that objective realm reality, and term true a statement that accurately describes reality.

A couple of snags lie hidden in this construction of objectivity. First, neither you nor I, perceiving reality through our subjective minds, can know whether or not we perceive it accurately. The following scene should make the matter painfully clear.

Imagine that you are sitting in a room that has a small window with a view into another room. A light located in the other room can be turned on or off. Reality in this illustration is simply whether the light is on or off in the other room. Truth is a function of your ability to say accurately whether the light is on or off.

At first impression, nothing could be simpler. I turn the light on in the other room, and you say, “The light is on.” I turn it off, and you say, “The light is off.” This would be a model of objectivity.

The defect in this model is that your mind and its subjectivity have not been taken into account. But imagine that the small window before you has two shutters. The first shutter has a picture of the other room with the light on, and the second has a picture of the room with the light off. Sometimes the first shutter will close your view of the other room, sometimes the second shutter will, and sometimes there won't be any shutter—but you'll never know.

Now when I ask you whether the light is on in the other room, you will answer based on what you see, but what you see may be the open window or it may be one of the shutters. If you see one of the shutters, the scene you see may correspond with the real condition of the room or it may not.

Relating this illustration to real life, however, you would not be conscious of the possibility that you were looking at a shutter; instead, you would think that what you perceived was reality. You would feel sure that you knew the truth about whether the light was on or off because you saw it with your own eyes. And even if you became aware of the existence of the shutters, you couldn't be sure of reality because you still wouldn't know if what you were seeing was the other room or one of the shutters. The point of this illustration is that you have no way out. In the normal course of life, you cannot be sure that what you see is really there. But there’s a bigger problem than this. Given the subjectivity of your mind, you can’t be sure there is anything out there at all. In the two-room illustration, maybe there is no window and no other room—only two shutters. Maybe it’s all in your mind. How could you ever know?

The answer to both of these dilemmas is the same. If you can’t be sure that what your mind tells you is true, you can at least gain some confidence in that regard if you find that my mind has told me the same thing. You say the light is on, and I say the light is on: case closed. Now you may feel doubly stire you know the light is on, not to mention that there’s a window, a room, and a light.

Ultimately, our only proof of objectivity is intersubjectivity, and some dictionaries even define objectivity that way. When different subjects—with their individual, error-prone subjectivities— report the same thing, we conclude that what they report is objective, existing, actual, factual, real, and true.

Thus, the basis of truth is agreement. Basically, things are true if we agree they are. When Copernicus first said that the earth revolved around the sun, few people agreed; today, most people agree. We say that this view is not only true today but was true when Copernicus first expressed it, and it was even true before Copernicus. But we say all that today when virtually everyone agrees with the view. Moreover, if all the world’s astronomers were to announce a new discovery showing the sun revolved around the earth, we'd soon be saying that Copernicus was wrong and that the sun had always revolved around the earth, even before Copernicus.

When you think about the past history of agreements that were eventually overturned, you won't find much basis for confidence in what you and I now agree to be so. As discussed in Chapter 1, most of what we “know” today will be thrown out as inaccurate tomorrow.

Where does science figure in all this? What about social science? Doesn't it offer an exception to this? Isn't it a dependable channel to the truth?

Ultimately, science—social or otherwise—also operates on the basis of agreement: in this case, agreement among fellow scientists. But there are some differences. Scientists recognize that knowledge is continually changing. They realize that what they know today may be replaced tomorrow. In fact, the goal of science is to keep changing the truth. Scientists are aware of the power of subjective biases and are explicitly committed to avoiding them in their research. Social researchers have an advantage in this respect, since bias itself is subject matter for social science. On the other hand, social researchers have a disadvantage in that their subject matter—religion and politics, for example—is more likely to provoke personal biases than is the subject matter of the natural sciences.

For scientists, observation is a conscious and deliberate activity, whereas it is generally casual and semiconscious for most people in normal life. Thus, you might mistakenly recall that your best friend wore a blue dress yesterday, when it was really green.

If you had been recording dress colors as part of a research project, however, you wouldn't have made that mistake.

Moreover, scientists have developed procedures and equipment to aid them in making observations. This also avoids some of the mistakes we make in casual observations. For example, scientists are explicit about the basis for their agreements. Rules of proof are contained within the system of logic prevailing at the time.

More important, perhaps, in the context of this essay, scientists are explicit about the intersubjective nature of truth. Peer review is an established principle: scientists review each other’s work to guard against errors of method or reasoning. Scientific journals perform what is called a gatekeeper function in this regard. Articles submitted for publication are typically circulated among independent reviewers—other scientists knowledgeable in the area covered by the article. Unless the reviewers agree that the article represents a sound and worthwhile contribution to the field, it will not be published.

Scientists are by no means above error, however. Being human, they are susceptible to all the human foibles that afflict non-scientists. Though the scientific enterprise commits them to keeping an open mind with regard to truth, individual scientists can grow attached to particular views. We'll examine this issue in some detail in Chapter 13.

To understand the nature of science, it is essential to recognize that scientific knowledge at any given time is what scientists agree it is. Because scientific proof is fundamentally based on agreement among scientists, scientific knowledge keeps changing over time. It is probably unavoidable that we see this evolution of scientific knowledge over time as a process through which we get closer and closer to the truth. This view cannot be verified, however. All we can know for sure is that what we know keeps changing. We can’t even bank on views that haven't changed for a long time. Bear in mind, for example, that the idea that the earth was stationary and the sun moved was accepted much longer than our current view has been. Years ago, when I was living in a house on the slopes of a volcano in Hawaii, I took comfort in knowing that the volcano hadn’t erupted for 25,000 years and hence probably wouldn't ever erupt again. Then I learned that its previous period of dormancy had been longer than that.

In the case of scientific knowledge, changes are generally occurring faster, not slower, than in the past. And finally, as we saw in Chapter 1, what we learn about social life is often changed just by having the knowledge we’ve gained. On the whole, then, we'd do better simply to settle for the thrill of discovery than to worry about whether what we've discovered is the ultimate truth or simply a new and currently useful way of viewing things.

Ultimately, what we hold to be true is a matter of agreement. In 1977 I published an introductory sociology textbook, Society by Agreement. As far as textbook publishing is concerned, it was a success. However, it did not transform the teaching of sociology, as I had intended.

As I was getting ready to revise the book for the second edition, I received a call from Wadsworth’s national sales meeting, presenting a request from the field representatives (the salespeople who visit campuses, meet with faculty, and promote their textbooks). Would I please change the title to something like, well, Sociology, or maybe Introducing Sociology. The current title sounded as though it was based on a conscious consensus among the members of a society, they said. At the least, it sounded like a book with a special point of view rather than offering a comprehensive view of sociology and society.

At first I was annoyed, since I really liked Society by Agreement. Then I did a little personal reflection as a professor. From time to time, I taught a course in social problems, and I had not written a textbook for that course. As a result, I would typically receive 15-20 textbooks from publishers seeking an adoption for my course. Being honest with myself, I had to admit that my first step usually involved culling out all the books that looked different from the standard. Some focused on a subset of social problems. Others espoused a particular theoretical paradigm. I tended to set these books aside right away, since I wanted to offer a comprehensive coverage of the field. I couldn't honestly blame either the field reps or the instructors if SBA was getting passed over early in the selection process. So I changed the title to Sociology. In three editions, the book sold about 100,000 copies, which is very good for a textbook, but each edition became more and more like all other textbooks with that title. When I stared into the yawning maw (whatever that is) of the fourth edition, I called it a day and let the book die. Mostly, I have regretted my failure to communicate the agreement theme effectively. So here’s one final attempt to do so.

When I speak of “agreement,” I mean it in more of a mathematical sense than in the sense of “coming to an agreement” or “reaching an agreement.” In mathematics, we say that the two sides of an equation agree in the sense that they are the same or equal. So, a society by agreement is one in which our views about things are the same. And 99% of the time, those agreements are not the result of conscious debates, conversations, or negotiations.

If you and I agree that people need to wear clothes in public, that’s because we were taught, early on, that people need to wear clothes in public. This is a process sociologists call socialization, which I defined as teaching/learning the agreements. This is the process by which a given society stays more or less the same over time.

While we agree on many, many things, we also disagree on some things. The greater the agreement, the more stable a society is; with less agreement, it is more unstable. And, of course, societies change over time. We call it social change: the changing of agreements prevailing in a society. Some of the fundamental aspects of social structure can be reframed in terms of agreements.

¢ Norms are agreements about what is expected of us.

¢ Values are agreements about what's better than something else.

• Beliefs are agreements about what’s real.

Most fundamental sociological concepts can be expressed in the language of agreements. Social control is the enforcement of the agreements, and deviance is a matter of breaking the agreements. Culture is the collection of agreements generally shared among a society or sub-set of society.

One of the problems I think people have with using the metaphor of agreement for organizing the study of society was mentioned at the outset: the assumption that agreements are the result of voluntary consent. You say, “Let’s go the movies Monday night,” and I agree. Actually, most of the agreements that make up a society were here long before you and I arrived on the scene. Nobody asked me what language I would prefer to use. The agreement on English predated my birth, and I was initiated into it at an early age. In my use of the term, agreement, I entered into the pre-existing agreement on English as the predominant language where I was growing up, even though I never thought I had a choice. Presumably, I could have chosen to speak French or make up my own language, but I agreed to go along with the crowd.

To complicate matters, however, there is some value in regarding social agreements as a matter of consent. Here’s an example I use with students. I point out that our society has an agreement that we must wear clothes in public. That’s an agreement made well before any of my students were born. And yet, I suggest, that agreement can also be seen as the result of a public opinion poll—one they participated in! I point out that each of them voted in favor of clothes in public when they left home for school this morning. And look how it turned out: 100% in favor of clothes—again.

That’s how societies survive: by members’ willingness to vote repeatedly to keep things the same, day after day, generation after generation. And it has always been my feeling that there was a special power in this view. If you regard the established elements of society as agreements rather than “the way things are,” the possibility of breaking and/or changing those agreements is enhanced.

For generations, first slavery and then blacks sitting in the back of the bus were regarded as the way things were, had always been, and would always be; there was no space for social change. You may have trouble understanding the certainty with which people believed such things to be inevitable. However, I’m sure there are things you believe with that degree of certainty. Perhaps you have firm religious beliefs or unshakable beliefs about social issues such as abortion or homosexuality.

Or, consider something really outrageous. We humans agree that we are unable to swim underwater, breathing in water and extracting the oxygen as fish do. Everybody believes that. You could ask around. So how do you feel about the possibility of violating that limitation? Not likely.

That's how people have felt about such things as slavery and segregation. And if you regard them as immutable, you are not likely to do anything to change matters. Once you recognize them as agreements, you are empowered to create different agreements.

I conclude this chapter by pursuing a little further the matter of how agreements are created. Autopoiesis is typically defined as “self-creating.” I’ve always found some linguistic examples useful in seeing what this means. Suppose some fellow tells you he is sorry for something he said or did. How do you interpret that communication? Depending on your experiences with and understanding of the speaker, you might say to yourself, “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.” Certainly as a logical possibility, someone can say he is sorry without actually being sorry.

But suppose the same person said, “I apologize.” This is a powerfully different communication. You can't logically say, “No, he didn’t really apologize.” Maybe he’s not sorry, but he undeniably apologized. Saying “I apologize” brings the act of apologizing into existence. The statement creates its own truth. It creates itself.

Similarly, when a member of the clergy, a judge, or a justice of the peace says, “I pronounce you husband and wife,” that pronouncement is automatically true (assuming they were certified to marry people). The same is true when the jury declares, “We find the defendant guilty.” Notice that a member of the jury might say, “We found the defendant guilty” and be lying if the jury didn’t actually reach a guilty verdict. However, when that jury member announces the verdict in court, it becomes true by saying it.

This chapter is not about a linguistic oddity, however. It goes deeper than that. Let me begin by acknowledging the Chilean biologist, Humberto Maturana, who introduced the term autopoesis as a defining characteristic of “life.” When I had the opportunity of hearing Maturana lecture on the subject in the 1980s, I confess that I wasn’t really able to follow his main arguments about life, but it was immediately clear to me that society was clearly autopoietic, and I felt that conceptualization might be useful in our understanding how society functions.

Let’s return to an example mentioned earlier in this chapter, one I have used with sociology students over the years. I begin by pointing out that in our society we have an agreement (a norm) that people must wear clothes when they go out in public. No matter how hot it may be, we operate under a no-nudity rule. I’ve always thought I was doing my students a service by pointing out a rule that they need to obey or suffer the consequences, but most of them seem to have known that already.

“When was that rule enacted?” I ask. “And who did it?” This sometimes causes confusion in the class. Well, it always does, actually. Nobody knows. There are probably lots of local ordinances about “indecent exposure,” but none of my students (nor I) have actually read any of those ordinances. I have yet to have a student who would admit to having tested the rule and paid the price.

After some discussion of when anti-nudity rules were enacted, I suggested they were actually created the morning of our discussion. “There was a plebiscite this morning. We all voted, and this is how it turned out: 100% for clothes again. So, actually, YOU are the ones who created the rule and you did it this morning. All of you did it; nobody is exempted. Me, too, by the way.”

I ask students to imagine what it would have been like if the vote had gone differently. Suppose it was a hot, muggy day, and we all voted against wearing clothes. Everyone would have voted by showing up naked, and that would have been the agreement for today. If everybody did it, of course, it’s unlikely that anyone would have been punished, because nobody would be breaking the new rule. But since it’s unlikely that everyone would have suddenly decided to go naked on the same day, let’s imagine 10 people voted that way. They would have been punished, no doubt, and that would mean the rest of us, by voting for clothes and by punishing the dissenters, were re-creating the rule of wearing clothes.

But how about if 10 percent voted in the minority? Though it may look like a small percentage, that’s a lot of naked people. The police don’t constitute 10 percent of the population, so they would be outnumbered by naked people. In New York City, for example, the police force is equal to about half a percent of the eight million population. That would amount to about 20 naked people per police officer. Not a pretty sight. Or maybe it is, depending on your point of view. In any event, the police would be overwhelmed by 10 percent of the population breaking a law all at once.

On the other hand, the naked people would be outnumbered 9 to 1 by people wearing clothes: a powerful social-control force. Those clothed civilians wouldn’t even have to make citizen arrests; pointing and giggling would probably work in many cases. Righteous indignation might get some of the nudists back into the fold. Or the threat of violence; naked = vulnerable. It could have turned out differently, however. Depending on how hot and humid it was, the people who initially voted for clothes might reconsider. And the more who shed their clothes, the more pressure and/or permission the rest would feel. Could happen.

In either event, it should be clear that the rules by which we live are enacted every day by those of us who feel bound by those rules. To be sure, such rules sometimes get codified and enacted into law, so it would be possible to say who did it and when. But the central point here is that society is an entity which creates itself; it is an autopoietic phenomenon.

While this view violates our implicit, unexamined ideas about the nature of society, it also directly violates some other articulated views—particularly some religious views. There are those who believe society was ordained by one or more supreme beings to turn out the way it has. These religiously deterministic views allow no room for human choices. Of course, there are other religious views holding that supreme beings have laid down principles humans should follow, but these latter views tend to give humans an agency by which to follow those principles or stray from them. This allows for periodic warnings that humans are going to hell in a hand basket. The autopoietic view of society requires no position for or against the idea of supremely ordained rules of life.

Here’s a somewhat more limited example of autopoiesis in society: The World Wide Web. The Internet is a global network of computer servers that make a variety of communications possible. The web is what we have done with that possibility. Take a minute to reflect on the variety of content you are probably familiar with: e-mail, Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Twitter, Wikipedia, university websites, online banking, porno sites (well, you're probably not familiar with those), etc. The point is: nobody planned all that. The web is a self-creating entity, and it’s an ongoing process. Every time some innovation appears on the web, it redefines what the web is and does. And that innovation changes the potential for future innovations. The web is clearly an autopoietic entity.

Potentially, the notion of autopoiesis can be a fundamental organizing principle for the study of society. However, at this writing, it is not seen as such. More's the pity.