tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post928154052646558955..comments2023-11-03T08:02:25.369-04:00Comments on AmericanScience: A Team Blog: David Brooks and American ScienceDavid Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-83274839112266567812011-03-22T21:52:23.166-04:002011-03-22T21:52:23.166-04:00Hi Lukas: My last effort at responding got zapped ...Hi Lukas: My last effort at responding got zapped by Blogger, so I'll just reiterate it really quickly here. <br /><br />I had three responses to your query. They were: <br /><br />1. Doesn't matter. What interests me is not whether Brooks summarizes and amalgamates the findings correctly, but that he does so at all. In particular, I'm intrigued that he shares his diagnosis of a current malaise with a lot of people who *wouldn't* reach to the social sciences in response. <br /><br />2. Not sure. He's been accused of cherry-picking, gullibility, and mis-interpretation, but what really gets me is the presentation. Especially in his "Palooza" post, it's all just a laundry list! Granting that he might be right, I still don't see what the point is: is he arguing that we're seeing a new paradigm (as he does in TED), or something else?<br /><br />3. Let's not "leave aside" your first question (or at least not in the way you propose). Rather than move beyond it to ask if he's correct, let's move beyond it (with Nagel) to ask, "So what?" That is, assuming *someone* could do something similar to this and do it well, where does that get us? <br /><br />Brooks still needs to import assumptions about where we should be heading - about the sort of results we should let guide our behavior - and also needs to defend against results that seem to reinforce generally-agreed-upon faults and sins of character. This is similar to the issue Dreyfus and Kelly raise at the end of their book - in celebrating "whooshing up," they need to distinguish a "good" whoosh (MLK rally, Wimbledon) from a "bad" one (Hitler rally, dog-fight). <br /><br />How do they do it? Well, they kind of punt on it, and I think Brooks might well do the same when confronted with Nagel's challenge. Or he might not - I guess I'll see what he does at Harvard in a few weeks.Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-60501148981569646832011-03-19T20:12:11.071-04:002011-03-19T20:12:11.071-04:00Hank:
leaving aside the question of whether cogni...Hank:<br /><br />leaving aside the question of whether cognitive psychology, neuroscience, etc. can be trusted to tell us what's *really* going on inside of our heads, does Brooks even get it right? <br /><br />I am no expert on these fields (as opposed to, er. Dinosaurs!), but having watched his TED talk and read his NY Times piece I am not sure I recognize what he is talking about as being representative of what most psychologists and neuroscientists think. Am I wrong or is Brooks way out in left field?Lukashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05686764806913124506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-45760752657470509432011-03-19T18:38:16.235-04:002011-03-19T18:38:16.235-04:00Hi Will: Thanks for the comment. I was going to ho...Hi Will: Thanks for the comment. I was going to hold off on discussing this until a later post (and I probably still will, for the most part), but I *am* intending to be at the Brooks/STS event, which is following up on a huge STS summit -- also convened by Jasanoff's Program -- the previous week. The proximity and shared audience of the two events should provide enough fodder for a post reflecting on their connections.<br /><br />As to the anti-rationalist-fallacy argument being a canard: while I agree that (perhaps especially in Brooks' case) it provides a template for simple answers to complex (or nuanced) questions, I still think there's something to the claim that it can provide an important corrective to our conscious, rational selves to assign themselves the starring role in historical episodes. There's a big gap between musing about this and finding a way to work it into our scholarship - given the reflexivity problem I mentioned and that Nagel obliquely raises - but it's something worth exploring (I think)..Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-8860832398359919672011-03-19T04:38:56.411-04:002011-03-19T04:38:56.411-04:00The thing I find interesting about Brooks is that ...The thing I find interesting about Brooks is that he proceeds from the same assumption as STS and much HoS that a dominant strain of thought is tainted by a kind of rationalist fallacy.<br /><br />As a conservative, Brooks is closer to the origins of this line of argument in the reaction to the French Revolution, and later in the anti-totalitarian thought of people like Hayek and Popper (which finds its way to the present mainly I gather via Brooks's hero, William Buckley).<br /><br />It seems to me that the key difference in the current manifestation of this argument (is it an argument?) is that Brooks grounds his solution in a cognitive realism derived from experimental social science, while STS grounds its solutions in an intellectual realism derived from cultural anthropology, and some strands of philosophy (Wittgenstein, Mannheim, Kuhn, SSK...). <br /><br />I wonder if Brooks would be more inclined to view the STS view as akin to his, or whether he would view its emphasis on the prospect of people hashing things out among themselves once they've been alerted to the diversity of their ways of thinking as simply a variation of the rationalist fallacy? <br /><br />Since the politics of the Brooks and STS positions are divergent, I'm guessing he'd go with the latter. Maybe someone attending the <a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/events-calendar/%22politics,-the-brain-and-human-nature%22-with-david-brooks,-new-york-times/%28year%29/2011/%28month%29/4" rel="nofollow">Brooks session at the Harvard Kennedy school</a> (moderated by Sheila Jasanoff!) could do a little prodding on this point?<br /><br />Also of interest: are STS people drawn in by Brooks's anti-rationalist-fallacy line of thought, or are they put off by his resort to social science as a basis for an alternative?<br /><br />Anyway, I tend to think of the anti-rationalist-fallacy argument as a bit of a canard, which steamrolls the nuanced thinking in policy history to make way for the rote application of "template" commentary on whatever issue happens to be on the agenda.Will Thomashttp://etherwave.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com