Abstract
In recent analytic philosophy, there is a growing interest in the project of conceptual engineering. This paper examines two ways this project might be applied to scientific research, specifically anthropological research. It argues that both of them are harmful to this research. Specifically, it argues that a reliance on the axiological standards of analytic philosophy conflicts with the goal of empirical adequacy. Section one proffers two forms that the engineering project might take when applied to the science. Section two proffers a case study drawn from anthropology. Specifically, it lays out Evans-Pritchard’s Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande, paying particular attention to the inconsistency he discovered in Azande witchcraft. Sections three and four argue that attempting to remove this inconsistency via the two forms of engineering disable critical features of emic research and discard empirical findings. Finally, I close by noting how the conflict between axiological standards and empirical adequacy might generalize beyond anthropology.
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Notes
I would like to thank the TINT Centre for Philosophy of the Social Sciences for a visiting research stay that allowed me to do the initial research for this paper. I would also like to thank the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St. Olaf College for allowing me to finish it. Finally, I would like to thank Amber Bowen and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions, comments, and so on.
This paper relies on a terms-based account. It does so to avoid needless issues concerning what concepts are, how they work, and so on (see, e.g., Cappelen 2018, pp. 141–147, for similar worries about concepts). However, especially if one assumes that concepts are individuated by terms, my account also applies to concepts, mutandis mutatis.
The sentiment that normative engineering can and should be applied to the special sciences seems increasingly held by engineers. For example, at a recent workshop, Concept Formation in the Natural and the Social Sciences, at the University of Zurich (October 18–20, 2019), both James Justus and Georg Burn advocated using normative engineering in the special sciences (see their abstracts at https://conceptformation2018.weebly.com/program-306394.html).
The “road test” metaphor is taken from an anonymous reviewer. I thank them for it.
The reader may be puzzled by my lack of references to anthropology. This lack is due to the fact that many contemporary anthropologists are deeply skeptical of attempts to abstract from specific ethnographic cases any general lessons (cf. e.g., Asad (2003, pp. 16–17), for a brief discussion and anthropological critique of this view). Simply put, this is because culture is not a ‘thing.’ Given this, anthropologists are unsure if and how to quantify over ‘it’ as well as how and what can be generalized from ‘it.’ Though see, e.g., Doulas (1980, p. 108) for one notable exception to this tendency that we return to in Sect. 4.
Transcript of this talk, given at New York University workshop Foundations of Conceptual Engineering (Sep. 14, 2018) found at http://consc.net/papers/engineering.pdf.
For the record, I am not a naturalist but an empiricist (see van Fraassen 2002, pp. 1–63, for an apt discussion of the difference). However, for this paper, the distinction strikes me as unimportant and so I use “naturalism.”.
Given some interpretation of ameliorative analysis as found in Haslanger’s work, illumination and amelioration are very close (e.g., Haslanger 2012, passim; Cappelen 2018, p. 62, fn 2, suggests such a reading). The key difference is that illumination is not interested in social justice and so jettisons the political aspects of Haslanger’s project.
The devil, of course, is specifying how. Since I am doing my best to remain agnostic about if normative engineering should focus on intensions, extensions, or uses, I bracket this.
Interestingly, Davidson (1974) also begins to have problems at the local level, it seems to me.
People seem to do just fine, most of the time, with such ambiguous natural languages. Indeed, prima facie, certain social practices like flirting often partly depend on these ambiguities to function at all.
Lest we think this is a problem with ‘primitive’ cultures and anthropology, see van Fraassen (2002, pp. 111–117), for an enlightening discussion of how an ambiguity in “mass” in classical mechanics enables a host of conceptual-practical interconnections that vanish if we are too precise.
All a Zande witch has to do is blow water over wings and all is forgiven. However, someone who contradicts herself is taken to have fallen outside of rationality and, given our discussion of Davidson in Sect. 2, humanity. Needless to say, falling outside of humanity invites far worse than insisting that the person blows water.
One might contend that these philosophers are still engaged in a form of normative engineering (cf. Cappelen 2018, pp. 21–22). The issue with this is, simply, that I lose my grip on precisely what makes normative engineering a unique project.
Incidentally, Priest (2002, pp. 209–248), convincingly argues that people like Derrida and later Heidegger seem so ‘mad’ or seem to ‘talk nonsense’ in part because they’ve jettisoned standard logic and are trying to think through the implications. Somewhat ironically, this reading would recast Derrida and later Heidegger as naturalists (cf. Braver 2007), not means-end focused normative engineers.
Sadly, this apriorism strikes me as a historical bad habit of normative engineering, even when deployed only in philosophy. For example, Carnap dismissed all of Heidegger as ‘meaningless’ because one sentence from him cannot be forced into first-order predicate calculus or verified (Carnap 1959; for contemporary discussions of how ham-fisted this was, see, e.g., Conant 2001; Hacker 2001, pp. 324–344). And it is precisely this apriorism that worries me about normative engineering, even when used exclusively in philosophy (cf. Cappelen 2013, pp. 33–452 for an updated version of the charge of nonsensicality in philosophy). One might dislike how Deleuze writes, but Moore (2011, pp. 524–584), contends he is one of the greatest metaphysicians of the last century. And one might find Foucault’s texts ‘unclear’ but engineers like Haslanger have certainly learned a lot from him (Haslanger 2012, passim). It is a big world and I would rather have ‘nonsense’ and insights than clarity purchased at the price of a priori dogmatic ideals.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the TINT Centre for a Visiting Research stay that enabled me to write a draft of this work, St. Olaf’s college for allowing me to finish it, and Amber Bowen and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.
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Djordjevic, C.M. When clarity and consistency conflicts with empirical adequacy: conceptual engineering, anthropology, and Evans-Pritchard’s ethnography. Synthese 198, 9611–9637 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02666-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02666-4