Untestable theories
April 6th 2007 13:17
Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)
An analogy might be fashion, where a colour or cut means something one day, and something else tomorrow, according to the play of fashion symbols, which appear to have their own life. Or consider the stock market, where shares seem, at times, to float free of any real-world company value, and to vary arbitrarily, pushed to and fro by ambiguous market currents.
And thus when Baudrillard writes, 20 years later, regarding 9/11: "It is almost they who did it, but we who wanted it", the claim should be understood, I think, as more semiotic than psychological; and as referring especially to some alleged deep logic of gift and counter-gift.
-- A grand God's-eye view of history, glossing over human agency and the detailed causality of particular events. Signs and laws of signs as either a metaphysical claim, or as something like a sociological or even evolutionary claim.
What does one make of this nonsense?
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"What is a theory", answered properly, is a matter for lexicographers. But I'd claim at least two common criteria:
-- (1) that theories have theory-objects (like "electrons", "genes", "auras", "signs"); and
-- (2) that theories assert relations between these objects. The relations might be laws or might be generalisations, and might be cause-and-effect ("repression causes transference") or might be correlations ("a rise in interest rates means a decrease in property values").
'There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body. Now you stick to that, and everything else is cream cheese.' -- Coach Bobby Finstock, Teen Wolf (1985)
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String theory's notoriety stems from its alleged lack of testability (which is a replay of old Kantian concerns -- the knots reason ties herself in when she reaches beyond experience). Sociology and economics have had to fight for their status. Psychoanalysis and Marxism were assailed by Popper.
Hilary Putnam seems to take up Feyerabend's skepticism in the form of the claims: (i) that there is no strict fact/value distinction; and (2) that rules like parsimony are more matters of 'value' than 'fact'.
But assume that none of these replies applies to Baudrillard, and that testing theories is itself unproblematic, and that Baudrillard is not and never will be testable.
In this case, would there be any baby left in the bathwater? Should Baudrillard simply be drained?
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Here's some last-ditch arguments as to why he shouldn't.
1. A theory might well be true, even if it could never be established. Most of "metaphysics" is of this ilk. We don't know whether we exist in four-dimensional space-time, but presumably we do or we don't -- presumably there is a fact.
Some folk find knowledge pleasurable, because it satisfies curiosity; others fancy that knowledge and truth are in themselves valuable, regardless of pleasure or any other use. But many metaphysical beliefs can have practical consequences. After all, any belief makes ripples.
Consider, for instance, the belief that there is a Christian God, or the belief that there isn't. Either will influence your day-to-day life.
And if you think of beliefs as embodied, then having a position on the God question might be unescapable.
2. A theory might well be useful, even if it's untestable or false. There are various ways of putting this claim.
Milton Friedman's instrumentalism: if it does what it was designed to do, you needn't look under the hood.
And another is to say that theories are unavoidable, and bad theories are better than worse theories, and having some theory is often better than having none.
We all generalize, we all engage in simplification -- for operating-efficiency reasons. There are perceptual generalizations -- countless ways in which the mind fills in the blanks, and sees what it expects to see. There are kneejerk empirical generalizations -- smoke means fire, a raised gun is a threat. And, relatedly, there are ethical generalizations -- rules of thumb about how to operate, and what we should do.
These generalizations, these theories, are the order into which one attempts to squish the chaos of the universe. Most of us will likely never know shit about shit. But we still have to use, and can't avoid using, our limited socially conditioned brains to draw conclusions from our limited experience. And we still have to make decisions. -- Though if I asked you which theories you believe in... well, there's a sense in which nobody believes in any theories, because that's what makes them "theories" and not "facts" -- because all theories have tentativeness built in.
At worst, Baudrillard is very tentative, and is no better than women and tattoos. But even women and tattoos ain't useless -- the coach gets a lot of tranquillity out of them. And with Baudrillard there's at least some sort of argument, some step up from random madness. -- He just might come in handy one day if you've got nothing better, so why not leave him rusting in the toolshed?
3. The point of a theory isn't always its predictive power, or its practical implications, or even its explanatory power and the way, like God and science, that it might satisfy a desire for sense.
Baudrillard's theory of signs might be better understood as a bundle of ideas -- as the excuse on which to hang countless particular insights.
Compare the way that children's stories and oral poetry are vehicles for knowledge, or the way that, sometimes, when the themes and the plot in a movie are worthless, the particular moments remain.
4. And then there are more direct arguments from literature. Art has multiple uses. And even among that which doesn't identify as art... -- Taoist slogans are about effect, not content; and the effort one puts into decyphering Nietzsche is part of the trip -- the way you have to examine your assumptions to make him make sense; and Plato can be lived with instead of used -- he needn't be read in doctrinal fashion.
An enso by Hakuin (1685-1765)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia articles Jean Baudrillard, Hilary Putnam and Milton Friedman. The image of Bobby Finstock came from this site. The zen art is from this site.
For more information about Milton Friedman's instrumentalism, check out "The methodology of positive economics" from Essays in positive economics, 1953. And see the replies in Daniel M Hausman (ed), The philosophy of economics, 2nd edition, 1994.
For some of Putnam's reflections on fact/value, see the recent lecture delivered at University College Dublin on Monday 5 March 2007. An MP3 can be downloaded here.
If I knew the first thing about sociology, I could comment more intelligibly. But, apparently, Emile Durkheim, one of sociology's founders, was already asking questions like "What is the function of the poor?", "What is the function of crime?" -- almost as if society were being approached through a bodily metaphor. And Georg Simmel was already talking about reciprocity in relationships -- how in a family relationship, for instance, there is an ongoing bargaining, a cost-benefit calculus, a negotiation between what we put in and what we expect to get back, without the process necessarily being clear or conscious. -- And if this is true, then perhaps it's less than a hop, skip, and a jump to Baudrillard.
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Notes
-- Tuesday 16 October 2007: William Ramsey in the Stanford entry on eliminative materialism provides a slightly better definition of what a theory is: "Folk psychology is assumed to consist of both generalizations (or laws) and specific theoretical posits, denoted by our everyday psychological terms like ‘belief’ or ‘pain’. The generalizations are assumed to describe the various causal or counterfactual relations and regularities of the posits."
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Comment by Damo
Now I sound like a dead crock hunter.
How there is much in this post that is true. So long as we can agree that something can be true.
Much of the world population live off theories as if they are facts and make critical life decision based upon those theories. Some people may call it faith.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
I think I was a thoerist extrondinaire... I used to develop theories on everything in order to make sense of things... I even kept a theory journal at one time. *lol* So true. I still think up theories here and there, but what i hate about them as I get older, is their way to trap me into half shadows... when what I seek is not only understanding of phenomenology itself :::: but the experience of it as well, perhaps?
I'll stop there before I become a living Kantian example of a 'reason pretzel' *chuckle*
A really interesting post, as always.
...truly appreciated the workout..
Lilla ...
Comment by JoshZ
I know that what I just said opens several cans of worms without really closing any of them.
There's alot of scientists that say that the theories that they have, while untestable, do lead them to other areas which ARE testable (granted, things like string theory and dark matter are still in the status of having an open jury as far as I know).
I can remember talking to a christian doctor that I know that had gone through university and had been mocked for his beliefs and told me "There are scientists out there that are even more dogmatic than any christian you will find and some fo them have more faith in what they do not see." Interesting thought.
JZ
Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
This is really interesting stuff. I was going to make a comment, but realised that Damo pretty much said it in his comment.
So faith, is a theory that can't be explained or proven I guess.
Hmm....I'm a former science student....I like a theory that can be proven.
Great post....this must have been such a lot of work!
Kylie
Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
Take care,
Nick
Comment by Paul
Surreal Short Stories
Comment by Uula Limanski
Thinking The World
What do you think about this problem in the differentiation between what is a cause and what is a correlation?
In terms of finality, it can work pretty well, but in terms of taking conclusions over other conclusions you can fall into contradiction quickly..
"Don't trust the arabs. They are thieves." Correlation, taken as cause. But most people don't see the difference....
cheers. Uula
Comment by Anonymous
It's been over a week now since your last post. Could you please put a new one up thanks as soon as you can, and if it's about chocolate that would be great. If not a post on light pollution would suffice. I have also heard you have been sick, so if you are I hope you get well soon.
Mr Y Not.
Comment by Fredda
My theory is that Western ideology and philosophy are extremely useful only in Western societies and it is bad for Eastern and traditional societies.
Western philosophy and Christianity works for a society where man is cut off from the world and where man does not live with nature. In traditional societies where people FLOW with time these ideas (which do not have significance to their daily life or their whole lifetime) are just a lot of hogwash.
You said "3. The point of a theory isn't always its predictive power, or its practical implications, or even its explanatory power and the way, like God and science, that it might satisfy a desire for sense." I agree.
I think many theorists and thinkers, as long as they recognize the absurdity of Western materialism and dominance, are extremely brilliant and useful. (I am saying this as a Filipina who loved and appreciated Western philosophy.) Other than those, I'd say Western philosophy is useful only for INDIVIDUALS (for individual perfection) and not to society as a whole. ^^
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here
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Philosophy Blog
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