309. Being
involved, in knowledge, nature, and organization
It is an
old idea and ideal of knowledge, starting with the ancient Greeks and continuing
into modern Western philosophy, with René Descartes, to see knowledge as
contemplation of an eternal truth. That contemplation is also the root meaning
of the word ‘theory’. The knowing subject is a spectator, standing outside the object
that is contemplated.
This
spectator theory of knowledge has had far ranging implications, spilling over
beyond theory of knowledge and science, into views of nature, and of
organizations, in management.
In Western philosophy
of knowledge it yielded the claim of objective knowledge, and the Cartesian
duality of mind and body, and in theory of meaning, with meaning seen as reference
to something. Concerning knowledge, the
problem then was how cognition is able to grasp reality without being part of
it, immersed in it. That yielded the split between idealism, where reality is seen
as conceived mentally, and realism, where mind is seen as an inscription in the
brain of reality by means of elementary perception.
A better
position, in my view, arose in American pragmatist philosophy, some 100 years
ago (with Peirce, James, and Dewey), adopted in different ways by continental
philosophers such as Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Its view, which I
adopt, is the constructivist one that cognitive structures guide action but are
also formed in it. Not a static view of
contemplation but a process view of involvement. One tries to assimilate
perception and experience in existing mental structures, but when fit fails, the
mind accommodates to the misfits, in some way, elaborated earlier in this blog.
In this way, the knowing subject is involved in the object, and vice versa.
This
creates a problem of truth, since knowledge now is a mental construction. In
pragmatist philosophy, objective truth is replaced by the notion of ‘warranted
assertibility’, where ‘working’ in practice is an important criterion of
‘truth’ or ‘warrant’. Meanings of words depend on use, in ‘language games’, as
Wittgenstein proposed. Truth is not a given outcome but a process of dialogue.
The
implication is that while scientists should to their utmost to be objective and
detached, they cannot fully succeed, and they should recognize that even their
thought is involved in premises, disciplinary perspectives and methods, and
value judgements, implicit or explicit, in choices and the framing of research
questions. To mend this, scientists need to be involved in application of their
results, and the ‘stakeholders’ associated with it need to be involved in the
formulation of goals and the application of research.
Concerning
nature, the outside view, separating man from his environment, has led to an
instrumental, manipulative practice, increasingly destructive of the environment.
This is connected with the dominant value and virtue of utility in liberal,
Western thought, which neglects the intrinsic value of nature, and virtues of
care. Instead, dealing with nature should be based on a feeling of being involved
in nature.
In
management theory and practice, the outside view sees people as instruments, neglecting
the intrinsic value of human relationships, and virtues of justice. Economic
theory of organization has been governed by the idea that a ‘principal’ (a nicer
word than ‘boss’) governs an ‘agent’ (a nicer word than ‘labourer’), sets the
goals and targets that the agent must achieve. Supervision is seen as control,
measuring performance against pre-set standards.
The absurd
situation then arises that people are employed, as professionals, in present
‘knowledge society’, because they have
knowledge and skills that management does not have and yet management, as the ‘principal’,
has the pretence of being able to judge what the professionals do.
In the
neo-liberal drive of privatization and liberalization of public services (such
as health care), and market-like incentives in services that are still run publicly,
this idea of control has also proliferated, in top-down ‘accounting for
performance’, according to set protocols. This is done in spite of the
scientific literature on ‘communities of practice’, which shows that
professional practice is too complex and variable, because context-dependent,
to be caught in such protocols.
This type
of control turned out to be needed because markets don’t really work when users
cannot judge quality of the ‘product’ (as in health care). So what was started
from a market ideology of freedom from interference, laissez faire, ended up in
a baroque rigmarole of control.
There is an
alternative form of ‘horizontal’ form of control that entails involvement of the
control agency in the object of control, which is involved in the specification
and application of controls (see item 75 of this blog).
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