By Tom Kando
I tried to post this as a comment. Too long. Won’t accept it. Hence, a separate post:
We are honored to post Prof. Ten Have’s excellent article. It raises the level of scholarship and the quality of our blog.
The piece is called 'On the use of collectivity nouns.' I take this to mean that it is essentially a critique of certain kinds of “generalizations,”- and their moral or judgmental usage. Sorry, I now generalize about Ten Have’s article.
Ten Have ‘deconstructs’ a recent exchange between Johnny and me, triggered by events in Egypt. (In the old days, we used the word ‘analysis,’ but ‘deconstruct’ sounds nicer and more post-modern).
Regarding the use of collectivity nouns, I am now going to comment about generalizations. This is not a straw man, but an attempt to grapple with Ten Have’s argument.
Obviously, generalizations can be bad. We all know about the evils of stereotyping, racism, nationalism. Furthermore, many generalizations, even when containing some truth, are shallow and do not do justice to reality.
BUT: Isn’t Sociology foremost in the business of generalizing? Without generalizations, there is no Sociology.
The first thing freshmen are told is that Sociology is about group patterns, not individuals. For example, the instructor asks the students in Sociology One: “Who are you likely to marry?”
They reply: “Whoever I fall in love with; it all depends on the individual.”
And then the instructor lectures about assortative mating, that tall people are more likely to marry tall people, etc. Patterns; generalizations.
Surely we can agree that the question is not whether to use generalizations, but which ones, and for what purpose. A generalization can be good or bad. I can think of at least 3 criteria:
1) is it true or false?
2) is it shallow, does it do violence to important details?
3) Is it used for a nefarious purpose, when combined with moral judgment? This last point is central to Ten Have’s argument.
Examples of generalizations:
A.“Jews are miserly.”
B. “American children are more overweight than Japanese children.”
C. “The US has a high crime rate.”
D. “Americans are more optimistic than Frenchmen.”
Generalization #A fails all three tests. It is false and it is malicious.
Generalization #B passes the first test, maybe not the second, but it does pass the third test: Moral judgment embedded in a generalization does not automatically disqualify the generalization. For example, this generalization could be a call for positive social action.
Generalization #C: same as Generalization #B. Someone might say:
“Don’t generalize; Where I live, in Iowa, we have very little crime.” True.
Generalization #D: This is the sort of generalization which has become problematic - generalizations about the psychological characteristics of groups and nationalities.
Years ago, the Adorno group, Kurt Lewin, the study of national character, the “authoritarian personality,” the Culture and Personality school in Anthropology - these all made the study of such things respectable.
But because of the horrors of nationalism and racism, we now agree that one should tread very carefully in this area of research - if going there at all...
Still, what are we to do with the social sciences’ central concept - culture?
If I say, “Americans are more optimistic than Frenchmen.” (Generalization #D), and this is based on surveys, and it is NOT meant to force Frenchmen to become more optimistic, does it not pass my 3 tests?
There IS such a thing as “American Culture,” and maybe even a European Culture, or at least a Western European Culture. In statistical parlance, maybe “between-group” variations are greater than within-group variations...
Granted, the great weakness of most generalizations is criterion #2 - shallowness. To this, I plead guilty. This is a blog. Our average post has 600 words.
Finally: Prof. Ten Have is defensive about my discussion of possible European anti-Semitism. After all, it’s been over 60 years since the Holocaust.
I am only preaching caution. Nothing dies harder than Culture (remember Ogburn?). A century and a half after the abolition of slavery and after decades of Civil Rights enforcement, the South remains America’s most racist region.
I have no evidence that Europe is more anti-Semitic than America. But 60 years is historically not very long. Caution in criticizing Israel is still a good idea for Europeans, who should be as aware as possible of their motives.
Is the criticism rooted in anti-Zionism, and the fact that the creation of Israel has caused a great deal of Palestinian suffering, or in a general feeling that Jews are still a problem? (As in the not uncommon allegation that US foreign policy, Hollywood, etc. have been hijacked by Jews).
How anti-Semitic Europeans are, is an empirical question. I am just saying: make sure you continue to be vigilant about its potential reoccurrence. leave comment here
15 comments:
Professor ten Have raised an important point, as the use of collectivity nouns like "America" implies that all Americans think the same way, that Tom speaks for me as another American, as well as the State Department and the Defense Department. It is even somewhat offensive that Tom would presume to speak on my behalf of all Americans regarding Israel, Palestine, or the Holocaust.
Yet, Tom is right that generalizations are part of human nature. Our language is based on systems of classification in which adjectives (which are generalizations) modify nouns (which are other generalizations).
The longer the string of adjectives used in describing someone or something, the closer to the truth of the thing we get. Yet, you would need an infinite number of adjectives to know someone (say Tom) completely and transparently. Even Anita, after living with him many years, is not completely aware of everything that makes Tom what he is.
When you bump into someone on a blog and say "Americans think," you don't know if it is the view of Obama, the state department, the defense department, academics, liberals, conservatives, Jewish Americans, influential Americans, Tea Party people, or what. And when Tom uses such a generalization, Europeans may think he speaks on my behalf (another American). But, really he only speaks for himself.
Yet you have to start with generalizations. The problem with the Tom/Johnny dialogue is that it just scratched the surface of crudest generalizations--so thin as to convey only vague senses about what was in Tom's mind or Johnny's mind.
There are collectivities, and Wittgenstein was right to see them as overlapping circles. My membership in the United States is as a citizen, my rearing as a Lutheran gave me cultural forms different from an Islamic American. However, I share with my Islamic neighbor a common Old Testament that views God differently than our secular government. If I say I am "white" you might guess something about me, but if I say my father was a "white slave" you may wonder more about who I am.
Nevertheless, for the sake of peace and understanding, dialogue must go on. Free speech is necessary to make the dialogue work or people will be shut down for "hate speech" before they are even understood.
So Tom, let the dialogue continue.
I don’t know whether I presumed to speak on behalf of Gordon and all other Americans.
But I understand well how offensive it is when others claim to speak for you, when they absolutely don’t. The most offensive recent example of this is when people like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Sara Palin and other recently successful conservatives claim to speak for “the American people.” Yes, the latest election produced a house majority, and the Tea Party is very vociferous. However, it would be ludicrous to accept that this trend represents “the American people.” Half the people don’t vote, and half of those who did vote, went the other way. These politicians may speak for largely white, relatively well-off American conservatives who live largely in Red States - maybe 25% of the population. They certainly do not speak for me, or for “the American people.”
This is an interesting discussion, and the participants seem very well-informed to me. Tom's detailed comments on the nature and proper use of generalizations are especially good. I certainly agree that generalizations are essential to many of the social sciences such as sociology, and that they need to be used with considerable care. As a physical scientist, I feel more comfortable generalizing the behavior of a species (such as Homo sapiens) rather than than that of political or social groups such as Americans or teenagers. For example, the generalization that most people don't reason very well when they are angry or frightened seems capable of being experimentally verified--and is useful. However, generalizations about how people think are quite difficult to verify because, as T.S. Elliot said, "between the thought and the action falls the shadow." Interpreting other people's thoughts or moral considerations is often a slippery slope.
Tom is right about Michelle Bachmann not speaking on behalf of "the American people." Politicians engage in the art of rhetoric and confuse their own views with the reasons they got elected.They claim to represent the American people in order to garner support for something they want to get voted through.
I think that a sociologist is required to begin with a generalization as a proposition and then subject it to some type of controlled statistical study that will either confirm or disconfirm his hypothesis.
This also differentiates the sociologist from historians who make rational judgments about history by making an educated guess at what factor led to some social consequence.
Good sociologists do the required footwork for a sound study, while others tend to try to adopt the art of rhetoric or historical interpretation and call it sociology. I don't really consider the latter to be real sociology--which should be the scientific study of society. Good sociology can serve to confirm or disconfirm the rhetoric of the politicians and historians.
Please think critically about the common sensical notion that facts are substantively different from generalizations.
The forest is no less real than the trees that constitute it, nor are the woody parts that make up the tree more real than the trees, or the the cellular structures that make up the wood more real. To bend the Latin phrase to my purpose, such thinking invites reducio ad absurdum. This has become the central problem of physics, which has traditionally sought after ultimate facts. Stephan Hawking wrestles with this problem in his latest book, The Grand Design.
So too, a community of human beings is no less nor more real than the individuals that make it up.
The problem is a practical one and Tom's point regarding the nature of variation is very much to the point. If variation in terms of some measurable characteristics gives statistical evidence of control, a system can be said to exist for practical purposes. For our intents and purposes, I can reasonably believe that it will behave predictably within some probabilistically knowable limits. When the variation observed does not give evidence of such control, there is no system. What passes for knowledge but fails the test of prediction, is false.
It follows from this that there are no facts independent of the generalized abstractions we call systems, systems being theoretic constructs that form the crux of human knowing. A fact is differentiated from a generalization only because it is a concept that we have operationalized in terms of a set of measures of interest, but these measures are not, and cannot, be complete. They are merely the characteristics of the systems we conceptualize in order to facilitate prediction in terms of some intention.
Hawking calls this our "model dependent reality" and his case, which is very compelling, makes sociological sense and sociology sensible.
Marc
I'm responding to Marc's comments concerning the reality of facts and generalizations. As a physicist, I believe that the only data we can obtain directly comes from our sense perceptions. It seems reasonable to me to define such data as "factual," even though there is no assurance that it is true--having been filtered through our senses. Thus, I say that it is a fact that objects--such as apples--that are close to the earth and unsupported will fall towards the earth. In order to further understand this process, we create theories such as Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation or Einstein's General Relativity. But such creations of human thought are not "facts" but representations or models which attempt to explain the observed "facts." I believe that Hawking means this by the phrase "model dependent reality."
Gene,
Very good! I agree with you that " It seems reasonable to me to define such data as "factual," even though there is no assurance that it is true"
The key phrase is "define as factual", which is a social process grounded in pragmatic action. In other words, to be consciously aware of the world requires that we be "definers" of the world.
So our raw sensate experience is bounded by the character of our sensual faculties (which we can and have extended by means of technology). But our conscious knowing of the world (that accounts for those technological achievements) is bounded by our definitions, which are theoretic predictive constructs, (e.g. generalizations).
This principally linguistic process of social construction is grounded in pattern recognition and theoretic generalization (predictive modeling). This means that there are no facts and no "data" without generalization.
If the patterns we recognize, and about which we generalize, were permanent and unchanging, (e.g. laws of nature), then truth would be accessible, but Hawking claims, and I agree, that this is not the case. Modern physics supports the generalization that in the final analysis, randomness rules, and in randomness, patterns will appear and be perpetuated for some time.
By recognizing patterns, generalizing, and defining, we construct from our sensory experience, intelligible causal models that explain and predict. Newton's generalizations--"apples" and "the law of gravity" are a case-in-point. As we know, given the limits of Newton's sensory faculties in his time, his generalizations were quite useful, but in today's technological environment, his theoretic model fails the tests of prediction.
There is much to be debated on this subject, but the take-away is that all of our knowing of the world is based in generalization. Common sense tells us that there is a world of facts about which we generalize, but modern physics and some sociological theory (SI) strongly suggests that the defined "facts" follow the generalization (theory) and not the other way around. (Contrary to today's common sense, Symbolic Interactionism suggests for example, that the factual individual is a product of a generalizable social process rather than the generalizable social process being a product of the cumulative behavior of factual individuals.)
So the world of facts is not quite what it appears to be. This is not to say that the reality behind our definitions is inconsequential. Reality really is out there. It's just that our means of knowing it and dealing with it relies upon our language-based ability to generalize, define and predict. It also means that the predictable reality we construct in generalization depends upon our pragmatic intentionality. Intentionality forms the basis of the questions we ask and the answers we find.
So what are we human beings trying to accomplish? Darwin suggested that the will to survive and reproduce our kind---to continue as a species--is inbuilt. But observation of human behavior in today's world does not seem to lend much support to Darwin's generalization.
Marc
Gene,
I have this terrible habit of bringing the whole thing to every conversation. In reply to your central assertion about the nature of a "fact"...
An "apple" is first a foremost a theory (i.e. a predictive construct). In some theoretic contexts, we assign it as an operationally defined "fact" (i.e. a class of objects meeting a set of measurable criteria.)
What is assigned as a "fact" depends on the question you are asking and the model you are asserting.
The "facts" experienced in knowing are model dependent. Is it a wave or a particle? It depends.
Marc
Marc,
I agree with everything that you are saying. I'm simply responding to clarify my notion of a "fact." Perhaps the longer phrase "sense observation" would have been a better term. In communicating such observations to others, we must use language, and language requires the use of "concepts," such as the concept of an apple. As you understand, concepts are generalizations based on both observations and theoretical constructs. Often our initial concepts are insufficient as was the case that led to wave-particle duality. (I now prefer to use the word "wavicle.) Simply stated, we cannot separate our thought processes from the things that they attempt to describe.
Gene:
Could you view the wave-particle duality as a continuum? As, for example,someone starting to grind down a boulder into a rock into pebbles into gravel into sand into dust? Somewhere in the middle one must find the 'wavicle'.
Maybe the whole notion of 'facts' versus 'generalizations' is the way language forces us to think about reality in a dualistic manner, i.e. things you can count versus a goo of things. As Steven Pinker likes to say: 'A man who combs his hair has more hair than the a man who combs his hairs'.
Gordon makes good distinctions: Sociology vs. History; Good Sociology vs. Bad Sociology.
I feel a bit under the gun - am I seen as the bad sociologist, who engages in “rhetoric and historical interpretation,” instead of empirical hypothesis testing?
At the risk of seeming defensive: This blog does not differ from 99% of the discourse in society about social issues. It does not differ from what syndicated columnists do on the left and on the right, from Paul Krugman to George Will. This is the business of opinion and journalism, not science.
You could even use the nastier word “propaganda” for this business, although I prefer to call it the “persuasion” business. Trying to persuade others of the correctness of our views.
The requirements for our business are: (1) be as well informed as possible; (2) reason as intelligently as possible; (3) possess a good perspective, and (4) do not base your arguments on blatant self-interest.
I believe that we meet the requirements of the opinion business.
In general, people’s opinions and arguments are NOT based on first-hand confirmation. People generally don’t have the resources to test every one of their “hypotheses.” In the overwhelming majority of cases, we accept our facts from SECONDARY SOURCES.
I KNOW that the US has been waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade. Have I been there and seen the wars with my own eyes? No. I BELIEVE these facts, on the basis of what I have read and heard. Secondary sources.
I KNOW that it’s been a miserably snowy winter back East. Have I experienced it? No. My sister told me.
I KNOW that the US has the most inequitable income distribution in the Western world. I have read it in innumerable sources.
This is how the world operates. Life would be impossible otherwise.
But maybe Gordon didn’t mean his comment to be a personal ad hominem. As he said, “let the dialogue continue...”
I just want to thank Marc, Gene and anonymous for their fascinating exchange about reductionism, language and other issues related to generalizations.
Tom,
I like your characterization of the business of blogging. I will think about your criteria as I spew way forward.
A thought comes to mind when you say...
"I prefer to call it the “persuasion” business. Trying to persuade others of the correctness of our views."
I wish it were that easy for me! Much of my blogging devolves into me trying to sort out what my views are. I am mostly surprised each time I round the next bend in the road. I suspect that my readers, bless their weary minds, do a lot of head scratching.
Come to think of it, I don't think that my aim is convince others of my views, which I haven't figured out for myself, but rather to get them scratching their heads like I've been doing for decades.
Uncertainty craves company?
Anonyomous:
You raise an interesting point. In the case of waves and particles, it happened that each of the two concepts was precisely defined, but neither turned out to be completely suitable to explain the behavior of things like light or electrons. And, as you may know, there are several mathematically equivalent ways of representing wavicles--which is why Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and Dirac all received the Nobel Prize for quantum mechanics. Usually, however, the initial concepts are not that clear, so we may not even know the right questions to ask. Wrong questions lead to "fuzzy" answers, in turn. The Harvard philosopher Charles Peirce once said that "Truth is that opinion to which all opinion would tend, if opinion tended infinitely." I suppose that the steps in such an infinite process would decrease, eventually producing a continuum. However, in physics, because the uncertainty principle provides a limit to our ability to measure quantities precisely, we cannot ever reach such a final continuum.
Marc,
I totaly agree with you about uncertainty. I am 100% in favor of doubt and undertainty.
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