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Part Six
Democracy Must Be Earned
6.1) Introduction
Art. 1.: |
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. |
Art.21.: |
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1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives |
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2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country |
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3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. |
These are the founding articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Not with the principles themselves. What is wrong is what they are hiding from view by the words I put in italics.
What they are hiding is that people are born without any notion of freedom, dignity and rights, without reason and conscience, and certainly not equal. They can develop such notions and enjoy these rights in their development from baby to adult, but there is no law of nature that they will. On the contrary, all these attributes will not materialise without a constant effort of the society in which they grow up. The wording suggests a ‘natural’ paradise and in any case natural rights, a notion which is incompatible with our whole culture and civilisation and is rejected by most philosophers of law. They are pure demagoguery intended to hide the inescapable fact that for every right there must be a duty.
As stated in Part One, the will of the people is a romantic notion which has been discarded by political science, and correctly so because it is an abstraction and by that very fact does not have an observer-independent existence. Only the wills of individuals exist, and these are never the same for all individuals. The declaration thus obfuscates the major problem of society: how to aggregate these individual wills and how to safeguard the rights of all kinds of minorities, namely all those who were not in favour of a decision which is supported by the majority. What if these decisions gained their support through blatant demagoguery? Recent history is full of examples of undemocratic objectives and totalitarian regimes which, sometimes with justification, claim to execute the will of the people. The only ‘will of the people’ which is not a prelude to a totalitarian society is the democratic principle.
The Declaration is a political document, an attempt by the representatives of western democracies to promote the ideals (and usually the interests) of their constituencies to the rest of the world without imposing on their constituencies the obligations which would follow from creating in the
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rest of the world the conditions necessary to the realisation of democracy and leaving some room for accommodating the internal political problems and interests of other representatives. These representatives do not represent any abstract entity like humanity. At best they represent the citizens of their country. Who then represents humanity? By definition that cannot be an organisation like the UN whose staffing represents particular interest. That is not intended to belittle the Declaration or the UN. They were the best we could do under the circumstances and certainly an improvement over the previous situation. But we cannot even talk sensibly about world democracy until we have reasonable conceptual control over our own current democracies, which is the subject of this book.
The conclusion of the part about justice was that agreeing on its principles is the easy - if as yet unaccomplished - part. Applying these principles in social decision-making, translating them into laws, procedures and judgments, aggregating individual interests etc. is a daily and complex task. Once the basic principles and procedures have been established, the bone of contention in applying them usually centres around matters of fact. We must establish more specific decision-making procedures which satisfy these basic principles and procedures; whether they do or not also is a matter of facts. Suppose that we have democratically aggregated all individual interests and thus defined a social objective. We must then ensure that the means we propose to engage are indeed appropriate to meet that objective. That again is a matter of facts, in today's world mostly based on scientific theories and data.
At the level of a country, the question of authority is: who represents the citizen? In today's democracies the answer is: the politicians. But politicians represent parties, creating a problem of party loyalty to which as yet no solution has been found. Its damage can be limited by improving the establishment of facts as proposed in this book. Whose duty is it to implement that improvement, who represents the citizen in the establishment of facts? Not the current intermediate organisations (political parties, trade-unions, churches, Greenpeace etc., ‘het middenveld in Dutch). They represent particular ideals and interests, amongst which their own survival, and thus do not qualify. Both by their self-proclaimed competence and by vocation, the institutions which are best equipped for doing the job of determining the above duties and conditions deriving from the Declaration and in monitoring the establishment of facts in current decision making are the universities, especially the faculties of social science. But social science has not even acknowledged the problem and by its compartmentalised structure and mentality it is unable to assume that responsibility. The inescapable conclusion is that today there is no organisation to represent the citizen, let alone humanity.
As I have repeatedly mentioned, this book does not attempt to establish a social philosophy. It is dedicated to the clarification of the most essential concepts required for establishing such a philosophy and for implementing the resulting conclusions. Establishing such a philosophy, as well as translating into more detailed recommendations and monitoring its implementation must be a cooperative venture of appropriate groups. The necessity of creating such groups is the conclusion of this book. For reasons explained in the part about justice, p. 159, the basic principles for such cooperation should be established before and independently of applying them. (I have expanded on the above in another, smaller, Dutch book aimed at a more general public: ‘Democratie als Uitdaging’.)
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6.2) The Institutionalisation of the Establishment of Facts.
6.2.1) Some evidence about the necessity of institutions to establish facts. Underlying most of our important decisions about facts are scientific theories. The choice of the ‘best’ theory in a certain field is supposed to be made by the scientific community which however has no institution specifically entrusted with that task. Scientists to whom I presented the problem answered that self-regulation worked quite well, pointing to the large number of publications and evaluations of innovations and theories.
We succumb to the illusion of the success of self-regulation because we mainly see the successes, while the failures, except for a few exceptions making the headlines, are doomed to oblivion. Recently we had a number of scandals in Holland about scientific publications, ranging from plagiary to unwarranted interpretation of data to falsification of them. These are the unavoidable incidents of any human venture, and their significance - if any - lies in what happened to the whistle blowers: they got punished.
Getting a new theory evaluated on its own merits is even more of a problem. Today as in the past, that is almost impossible if it cannot be directly integrated into the prevalent body or programmes of science or cannot arouse the interest of a well-healed, well-connected or famous sponsor. Those who could have profited from (an earlier acceptance of) the theory will never know their loss. Whatever the merit of Kuhn's theory, his statement that science is readily accepted in the large majority of cases only if it falls within the standard programme is substantiated by history. If you think that the problem does not exist today or that it is exclusive to ‘soft’ science, read some books about the history of science, for instance the recent book of James Gleick, ‘Chaos’, (which - quoting from the cover - ‘records the birth of a new science’ and besides chaos theory includes the history of Mandelbrot's fractals.)
Philosophy is in no better shape. We might expect prejudice and various sins against the rules of logic in the case of ideological or literary philosophies. But in more ‘exact’ branches of philosophy the situation may not be much better: Frege, the father of the philosophy of language, had to wait 25 years to have his work even summarily acknowledged (two years after his suicide), and never made it to more than an assistant professor. Fashion, currently postmodernism, still reigns over a large academic constituency.
The failures of the selection process which attracted the attention of writers mainly concern the creation of science. They may cost the community a wealth in slower development, lost resources and wasted talents. But these costs are peanuts compared to the damage to social-decision making caused by the inadequacy of that selection process when establishing the facts required by society for a decision. What really should shatter complacency is to study the - often implicit - use of science in decisions of justice and politics. Our newspapers are full of examples showing that politicians, interest and ideological groups can find scientists and scientific theories to support just about any statement of facts in favour of their contradictory points of view, leaving the uninitiated with the overwhelming feeling that they are taken for a ride but unable to decide by whom.
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A typical example comes from my own experience. The reader will not be surprised that it concerns incomes policy. Around the end of 1975, a well known professor gave a lecture in which he asserted that the net effect of taxes and social security does not (as intended) result in a net income distribution which is substantially more equal than that of the gross, pre-tax and pre-social-security income.
That assertion was, on the authority of its author, widely and publicly accepted as a fact and used in discussions about economic and fiscal policy, specifically in the (in my view unholy) proposition to amalgamate income tax and the contributions for social security. Having by then ample experience in calculating the relation between gross and disposable income, I felt sure that the assertion could not be true. I asked for and got a transcript of the lecture plus the calculations and proceeded to analyse the calculations and make my own, with the following results.
a) | In calculating the effect of social security on income, the professor took only the contribution into account. That contribution is a percentage of gross income and is tied to a maximum, which is a fixed amount. As gross income increases, it therefore decreases as a percentage of that gross income. He totally ignored the claims which social security generated, which any economist should consider a grave error. This claim also is tied to a maximum The premium is not a gift, but is collected to finance a claim to a benefit, and both are limited by the maximum threshold value. The conclusion is that above the subsistence level, the effect of social security on income inequality is negligible. Below the minimum income it reduces inequality because for the lowest incomes the claims to benefits exceed the contribution paid. |
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b) | The brunt of equalisation is expected to be borne by our very progressive income tax rate. At the time the articles were written, income tax on minimum wage was almost zero at and increased up to 70% at an income of 50 000 in 1975 dollars. Such high marginal rates are only possible in combination with many tax deductions. Specifically, Holland allows deduction of interest on mortgages for a person's main residence. Obviously, these deductions profit mainly people with higher incomes and reduce the equalising effect of the progressive tax rate. The question is: by how much?
The calculations of the professor showed that the deduction of interest on mortgages almost totally annulled the equalisation effect of the tax rate. That to me seemed highly unlikely. Studying the calculations, it turned out that they did not rest on analysis of actual deductions, but on an imaginary and extreme example of a tax-payer purchasing the most expensive dwelling he could afford to finance without impinging on the barest necessities of life, and mortgaging it to the hilt Such individuals do exist. But, certainly in 1975, they were not representative. They are also very foolish, as they will be bankrupt any time their income decreases or if the housing prices fall - as did indeed happened shortly thereafter - and they have to sell it before the prices have recovered. Anyway, basing an assertion about reality on an imaginary and extreme case is not good scientific practice and is especially reprehensible in a country having a Central Bureau of Statistics as good as the Dutch one which readily provided full cooperation when I asked them for the data about the actual tax deduction for mortgages. |
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Calculating net income as gross income less premiums for social security less taxes after actual average deduction of interest on mortgages plus estimated claims for benefits of social security yielded the following percentages of net income in terms of gross income is, all in 1975 dollars: average deduction of interest on mortgages plus estimated claims for benefits of social security yielded the following percentages of net income in terms of gross income is, all in 1975 dollars:
102% at a gross income of 7 000 1975 $ (minimum wage) |
91% at a gross income of 9 750 1975 $ (modal wage) |
58 at a gross income of 50 000.- and above |
At minimum wage income, the claim value was higher than the contribution plus taxes. In making these calculation, all assumptions which I inevitably had to make were on the ‘safe’ side. Therefore, equalisation might in reality even have been higher.
These figures, including the basis of their calculation, were published in a widely read paper (Intermediair, may 1976, ‘Nivellering, Feit of Fictie’) and a copy to sent to the professor. The point of this example is that happened thereafter: exactly nothing! I never got a reply from the professor. Nine months later I had the opportunity to send a copy of my article to all members of the committee on income policy of our Social and Economic Council of which I was a member and which included half a dozen prominent economists. No reaction. The myth that social security plus income tax did not promote equalisation continued to be told - without being contradicted - by the labour party (of which the professor is a prominent member) and the trade unions. Five years later it still was official truth in many policy-making quarters. Even today most, if not all calculations about the equalising effect of income policies do not take account of the claims to social security. The scientific community did show no more interest in facts and objectivity than politicians. Whatever one's opinion on that matter, either the income distribution is unimportant and we should stop fussing about it, or it is an important consideration in our income policies, in which case the above controversy should be settled. The problem is: by whom? I have nowhere to go to defend my point of view and to obtain an impartial and well-founded judgement. Being everybody's business, it is nobody's business, and no scientist seems to care.
6.2.2) Why the structure of decision-aking about facts is inadequate. We have institutions whose job it is to establish facts: our courts of law. We tend to think of them primarily in terms of justice, of dealing with the legal consequences of facts. But the legal consequences of facts are spelled out in our laws. The primary problem which a court of law usually faces is to establish the exact nature of the facts of the event on which to pass judgement. A parliament is another such institution: while its function is, in the words of Madison, primarily to balance the interests of the various citizens, more often than not the disputes in a parliament centre around matters of fact, usually masking differences of interest.
Institutions to establish facts therefore do exist. But most of today's problems are beyond their competence in the field concerned. They must and do engage experts, usually scientists, and they rely on them. While the problem thus seems to be solved, it is not. For the competence of these experts consists in being knowledgeable in a certain field of science, not in its application to decision-making, because:
1) | Most scientists are not trained to establish facts for decision-making. Their answers often leave more room for a biased interpretation than necessary or mention only what science
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| has to say on a particular subject, without regard to the nature, implications and requirements of the decision to be taken. |
2) | The way the problem is put to them influences their answer. ‘What the questioner wants to hear’ is a well-known phenomenon to market researchers. And there are plenty of other ways to steer an expert towards the desired answer or away from a dreaded one without him knowing it. Some scientists fail to notice this because of lack of training or aptitude. Others see no reason for refusing such a commission: they simply put their proficiency at the service of a customer, as any business does. They correctly presume that safeguarding the public interest is not what they are paid to do. And for many a scientist, refusing the job is a luxury which he cannot afford, certainly in today's climate. |
3) | Academic science does not provide scientists with the tools required for that function (See 6.3, ‘The Social Responsibility of Science, p. 237) |
The common cause for that deficiency, and the main problem of democracy, has been explained in the chapter about Holarchy (2b.7, p. 74): the insertion of intermediate levels of decision making between the individual and the society, a problem which we cannot eliminate because of the complexity of a modern society. The existence of that problem has been recognised and exposed a century ago by Max Weber, who called it bureaucratisation. Presenting - as I do - the problem as inherent to all multi-levelled decision-making has one advantage over Weber's: it cuts off the current route for avoiding the obligation and effort of dealing with it. That escape route is to present the problem as originating in a particular if elusive race, bureaucrats. They are never the person using the term. The blame is always put on somebody else. Skirting responsibility is furthered by the prevalent but erroneous implication (not made by Weber) that the abstract concepts which Weber uses, functional rationality (aimed at maintaining the organisation) and substantial rationality (what the organisation is supposed to achieve), have a real, observer independent existence, and that society has an existence of its own, independently from its individual members. (See Part 4a.7.2., ‘Autonomy’, p. 144).
Abstract concepts and theories are useless for finding a solution unless we can translate them into: ‘who has to do what and when,’ and get them to do it. No theory, no moral incantation, can ever make the problem go away by itself. In spite of its persistent hammering on the mischief done by bureaucratization, a whole century of Weberian sociology has not yielded much progress towards a solution, partly because it has been impotent to do much about it even in its own ranks, which provides a good illustration of the necessity of integration (see below) of social science.
If we remain within Weber's concepts, any attempt to reduce bureaucratisation runs into a paradox. The job cannot be done by one individual working in isolation. If an organisation is created to solve it, this would run into the very problem it is intended to solve. To integrate the Weberian theory into the general problem of multi-levelled decision-making, the first step is to acknowledge the human individual as the highest level of autonomous decision-making. Any solution must involve only elements at this level. Higher level elements (organisations) lack the basic function of a subject in an information process. The concept of rationality can only be applied to people, and the rationality of an organisation can never be more than some form of aggregation of individual rationalities. The coherence of the higher system is ensured by
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self-assertive tendencies (through common objectives) and - where these fail - by the integrative tendencies of the elements of the system, which have to be (at least in part) directed at this system. These are the concepts applicable to the problem of bureaucracy, as they refer to properties of individuals or their decisions and therefore have ‘operational significance’. Weber's functional rationality as well as the substantial rationality can both result from the self-assertive and/or integrative tendencies, depending on whether or not the individual is both a member of the organisation involved and also belongs to those who provide its resources because they benefit from its substantial rationality. The problem of multi-levelled decision-making arises whenever these are not the same person. The cause of the problem is not the self-assertive tendency, but the organisational relationships of the individuals. The organisations to which he belongs are the objects of an individual's integrative tendencies which are ranked in order of the loyalties which they can command. Loyalty is a psychological concept.
This is not the place for an extensive discussion of the subject. Experience and common sense will tell us that a major factor directing loyalty is the closeness of contact between members. If so, the country can be expected to score poorly as compared to a party, an enterprise or a football club etc. Humanity scores worst of all. Bolstering integrative tendencies through appeal to our emotions is notoriously dangerous. Anyway, democracy must rely on reason and ensure that the intermediate decision-making levels in a democracy have, as directing objective, the interests of the country (or in case of international organisations, of humanity). The general and obvious conclusion is that the substantional rationality must be defended by those who profit from it. The interests of these higher levels must be cared for by a group of people whose loyalty is not directed by any intermediate organisation. It therefore cannot coalesce through a formal organisation and cannot receive its orders from anybody else. Their integrative tendencies must be mobilised by the democratic virtues, of which one stands out: responsibility. Democracy cannot be bought, it must be earned by those who have the capability to do so, namely scientists, for most decisions hinge on matters of fact and - whether deserved or not - science is the most respected and trusted source of factual information.
The market is often presented as the obvious and proven antidote to bureaucratisation. In the classic theory of the market, bureaucratisation is punished by disappearance of the organisation afflicted by that scourge. That is why the market seems so successful, both in terms of apparent economic results and of political expediency. I am convinced that if we apply the principles of democratic argumentation to economics, we will find that the market is not a panacea for all ills and is no antidote for most cases of bureaucratisation.
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6.3) The Social Responsibility of Science.
6.3.1) Democratic science is ‘good’ science. Marxists have popularised the notion that science, being a social venture, can only be understood in the context of the society in which it is practised. Although the justifications they have produced (such as historical materialism) leave much to be desired, the basic assertion also follows directly from what has been said about information in Part Two, especially about the holistic nature of social systems, such as science.
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The notion that science and the selection of scientific theories are subjugated to the prevailing social philosophy or power is repugnant to most scientists and to some it is pure anathema. Yet it is inescapable. Historically, scientists have tried two escape routes. The most common one is simply to ignore it. Others, like Popper, have attempted to immunise science from contamination by beliefs, myths, interests and power plays, by appealing to higher principles such as a truth above human authority, in Popper's case based on the concept of Objective Knowledge justified by a presumed observer-independent existence of world 3 objects (see Volume Two, ‘Against the Autonomous Existence of Popper's World Three Objects’, p. 296). Both are dead end issues.
Like any human achievement, science is constantly in danger of being abused. No abstract concept, no truth above human authority, will keep that abuse in check. Only the concerted efforts and power of scientists can do so. To coordinate and focus their efforts, they must have a common and well-defined objective, a conception not only of what science should not be, but also what it should be. A democrat will require that it be democratic.
Most scientists will just want science to be, well... ‘scientific’ and they have an intuitive (if often diverging) notion about what is ‘good’ science. In the chapters about knowledge and science I have presented criteria for ‘good’ knowledge: relevance (in science: telling us something we did not yet know) and reliability. Objectivity played a major role in meeting these criteria. A few rules were presented to help us to improve scientific knowledge in that direction by eliminating statements and theories that do not meet those criteria. I think these criteria will be acceptable to most scientists as a reasonable approximation of the core of their notion of good science. The contribution of science to the viability of society is the help it provides in establishing the de factii. If they are democrats, scientists want science to further a viable society (which requires that the decisions it takes are - as far as possible - conducive to the attainment of its objectives) in a way which respects the autonomy of its members as expressed by the rule of subjective equality in decision making. The criteria proposed in this book are the minimal methodological principles deduced from this objective and thus guarantee a maximum of freedom of scientific inquiry, without falling into the trap of Feyerabend's total anarchy. They should be acceptable to democratic scientists.
But are the criteria sufficient? They are, in the sense that no rules can be added which are not deducible from these criteria. But rules alone are insufficient because by themselves they can achieve nothing, only their application can. The democratic (and qualitative) deficit of today's science lies in the application of these principles. The scientific community, especially social science, has never really acknowledged such a function nor understood its implications; consequently its organisation is not geared to that task
6.3.2) The social virtues of science: integrity and integration. The use of science instead of scientist was intentional because it refers to science as an institution. Its responsibility is - as I have said - to produce ‘good’ science, a normative qualification which is subjective. Who are the people whose criteria are relevant? Not the producers of science: one must assume that the science they produce will always be good in their eyes. Responsibility and its criteria are not defined by those who are responsible; they are defined by those to whom one is responsible.
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The major function of knowledge is to establish the de facto in decision-making. The responsibility of science in a democracy is primarily to those who use its product for that function. They want science to be relevant and reliable, ‘true’, and they want to be able to ascertain that it meets these criteria. The social responsibility of the producers of science to its users translates into two properties, two virtues:
INTEGRITY needs little explanation: it is related to objectivity, to freedom from interest-generated bias, to the truthfulness of reports of experiments etc. The scandals which grab headlines are incidents. The fuss about falsification of test results etc. follows mainly from the misconception that scientists are a special breed immune to the temptations of deceit and power. Scientists are human, period. And academic institutions are subject to the same pressures of group loyalty and bureaucratization as any other, and the sooner we acknowledge the evident, the better the chance for improvement. As the causes are built into human nature, we cannot expect to totally eliminate abuses. As stated, perfection is not of this world. People who use these scandals to give science a bad name hold it up against an ideal beyond human reach. What can be required of scientists is to at least acknowledge the problem and to take those measures which are possible. The first one is to provide a workable avenue for criticism and for the evaluation of scientific work, also work originating outside the current academic programmes.
The theories themselves should also be subject to scrutiny in terms of integrity, meaning that they meet - as far as possible - the requirements for empirical scientific theories presented in PART THREE B. At the very least, they must be axiomatisable and contain no basic logical flaws. As nobody is charged with controlling that requirement, it is not surprising that this condition - which can be met in practice - is not monitored and is often sinned against. The claim to excellence of a free capitalistic market economy derives mainly from the assumption of a perfect market which is rarely checked against the actual market conditions or internal consistency. The assumptions of diminishing returns of size and of adequate information are incompatible with today's economic experience, which is why monopoly profits are inevitable (as briefly explained in the paragraph about acquisition by transfer, 4b.2.2, p. 171). The theory of consumer behaviour presumes that he always wants to act rationally and defines rational in terms suitable for the theory, not on basis of human psychology. Economists implicitly assume that any failure to act according to their theory is due to practical difficulties. It has not investigated whether the divergence between theory and practice is caused by contradictions between the various assumptions, which in fact is the case, as shown for instance by Mark Blaug already in 1980. Checking theories on these aspects can be done without much expense, preferably together with the internal integration mentioned below. It should be the job of a special discipline of the department of philosophy. Objectivity and concomitant independence can be enhanced if its subjects are dealt with by groups formed specifically for that purpose from academicians of different universities. To ensure the integration - see below - of their findings, the group should contain representatives from all ‘related’ faculties.
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INTEGRATION is a far more urgent problem, and as yet almost totally ignored.
It has two aspects: internal and external.
1) | Internal integration concerns the interrelation between various branches of science. |
2) | External integration concerns the integration of specific scientific knowledge into the rest of society, especially users who need it to solve their problems. |
1) | Integration within social science is mandated by the unity of scientific knowledge, by its holistic nature (see 2b.5, p. 67 and 3b.3.3, p. 106). Dividing science into disciplines, sub-disciplines and further specialised fields is a practical necessity. In sciences dealing with the inert world that does not have grave consequences. Provided a minimum of communication exists between the different fields, each can pursue its own research without bothering about the others. The results can be put together like the parts of an automobile.
The same practice in social science is bound to lead to failure because it neglects the interdependency of its elements in space and time. A consequence for social science is already implied in the paragraph about the ceteris paribus clause (3b.4.3, p. 112), namely that if one does not at the same time provide for integration, the isolation of one element for analysis and experiment, however interesting, useful, even mandatory, reduces the results to an inconclusive thought experiment. Each aspect of the social life of human beings is profoundly affected by other aspects which - if the theory is to have any empirical basis - must figure at least as axioms in the theory, while this theory in turn will often take the role of axiom in theories dealing with these other aspects.
A first step in the required integration is a framework, a primitive model just mentioning the variables and possibly an rough sketch of their relationships of all aspects (in terms of fields of inquiry) of man. For economics, a relevant general aspect would be his needs, all needs, for it is generally accepted that the relative urgency of needs varies with the degree to which they are satisfied. The most problematic needs belong to the field of psychology. But some physical needs, such as fresh air, have also long been ignored and still are not adequately integrated into economics. The lack of such a framework has enabled economists to concentrate on one type of needs for which it is easy to develop a consistent and workable theory and a successful institution, namely goods having a market price, thus creating the myth of the excellence and social justice of the market economy. The other needs are left to whichever field of science cares to deal with them. None volunteered.
The problem of interdependence has gradually been acknowledged and multi-disciplinary research has become a modern slogan. But in academic practice it is mainly paid lip service: the various aspects of a problem are simply parcelled out to specialists and the only common work is the final report. Really integrated research is done by a group in which every member is informed of and understands each other's activities well enough to question them and to grasp what they mean for the problem, cooperating every step along the way until they are able to produce a report to which all can agree. That does not necessarily imply consensus about the solution of the problem, but it mandates consensus on the causes of dissent which ideally should be a disagreement about axioms, usually a perception of reality. Such a multi- disciplinary effort is hardly practicable unless the basic framework for it has
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| been laid in the process of developing scientific knowledge. A conditio sine qua non is the axiomatisation required by the demarcation criterion. It also implies a change of habits, especially in communication: besides the basic work addressed to his colleagues, scientific findings must also be presented in a form readily accessible to all other academic disciplines in terminology as well as in presentation (see below). |
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2) | External integration is mandated by the use of scientific knowledge in decision-making. Science has fulfilled its function if the user can:
- | understand it |
- | assess its reliability and its relevance for his problem |
- | determine how to use it. |
Obviously that requires intelligence and effort on the part of the user. But we can and must require from science that its findings be presented in a way which furthers that objective. Without any claim of completeness here are some properties which that presentation should have:
- | the terms and concepts of empirical science should be translatable into concrete items, in social science mainly the attitudes and actions of individuals or groups of individuals. |
- | as far as possible, it should be understandable to all citizens of say college level If that cannot be achieved, it should be clear what additional knowledge is required and where that can be obtained at a reasonable effort |
- | obviously it should meet the requirements of democratic argumentation. If several theories or statements about facts vie for priority in the field concerned, the academic community must provide the information necessary for making an adequate choice. |
As stated, the knowledge and professional proficiency to fulfil the job of overseeing the execution of these tasks are (or should be) available at all universities, especially in the department of philosophy (epistemology, methodology and rhetoric). |
6.3.3) The social responsibility of scientists. The individual scientist is responsible to two groups:
1) | the community which provides him with his job and day to day social environment from which he derives his essential needs for recognition and ‘belonging’, usually the organisation in which he earns his living: the faculty/university. Man is well equipped to deal with the problem of functioning within a group of fellow men. |
2) | societies at a higher level of which he is also a member, his country and (more and more) larger entities such as Europe and, finally, all of humanity. The contribution and responsibility of science to those higher-level societies lie in the establishment of facts for their decision-making. The responsibility of the scientist here is to (the users of) science. |
The main obstacle to fulfilment of his second responsibility has already been mentioned, as well as the means to overcome it. Substantial rationality must be furthered by those whose rationality it is by making the necessary effort and by obtaining and exerting the required power by coalescing into a group. The ‘self-policing’ capability of organisations against bureaucratization is very limited. Cases usually are not ‘open and shut’, and to its members the loyalty to the organisation is more evident and compelling than that of an anonymous society or abstract concept such as science.
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I want to emphasise that the shortcomings of the institutes of science signalled here are not particular to them and do not follow from any tendency to bureaucracy specific to scientists. But the power of a scientific or moral proposition resides in the number and power of the individuals holding it. In clashes with individuals, the balance of power will usually be in the favour of the institution, which is necessary for its viability. In a society dominated by mass communication and a deluge of information, the honest individual is mostly condemned to anonymity and ineffectiveness unless he bows to the requirements of modern society and loses his integrity. At the same time the issues have become so complex that they are not amenable to the current organisation of mass communication. Most individuals are unable to evaluate with any degree of confidence the merit of competing policy (or scientific) positions. The resulting state of confusion is exploited by demagogues who - by playing on sentiments - reduce this complexity to simple single-issue non-solutions, while actual legislation is decided in opaque backroom negotiations.
The interests of the users of science (Weber's substantial rationality) and the propositions of scientists working outside of institutionalised programmes can only be given their due if at least some individuals make the required effort and obtain the necessary power by forming a group as mentioned above. To that end they must be presented with a framework of cooperation and find sufficient allies to obtain the required authority. A difficult task, beyond the power of an individual scientist if done on an ad hoc basis. Some kind of institution should be ready at the moment a problem emerges and therefore has to be established before the necessity to use it in a specific case has arisen. Another reason is that - to fulfil its role of deciding in a democratic way about controversial facts - such an institution must be independent from the interests engaged in the controversy, a condition can best be met if the institution existed before the controversy arose. And to prevent the group from becoming entangled in its own functional rationality, its members must not depend on it for their income or status. It should be a loose association of democrats willing to sacrifice some time and effort at the service of democratic science, staffed on the basis of co-optation and relying for its authority on its reputation of integrity and competence, a reputation which it has to earn by the quality of its ‘products’.
Obviously much of the as yet inadequately fulfilled tasks which follow from the responsibility of science can only be fulfilled by the established scientific organisations, for instance the department of philosophy mentioned earlier. The role of the above groups is marginal. But as every economist knows, that is not synonymous with negligible. It is sufficient if - by producing knowledge and judgements which should have been produced by the existing institutions - it puts them to shame and induces them - and those charged with supervising or financing them - to improve their ways. And it can, by recruiting its members from many institutions and countries, provide the individual scientist who appeals to them with the necessary countervailing power to that of a single institution. That institutional cross-membership is also a prerequisite for getting the internal integration under way.
It should provide, or stimulate other institutions to provide, the minimum of cultural and moral leadership which the market and the current political organisations do not. It should promote, mainly by example, the democratic virtues like truth, justice, democratic argumentation, and
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their offsprings: principles such as reciprocity, the complementarity of authority with responsibility and accountability, the inseparability of right and duty etc. Except in very special circumstances, today's democratic political process is incompatible with that kind of leadership. History has produced such leaders: philosophers, scientists, Pericles, Socrates, Thomas Moore, Copernicus, Kant etc.. Their common denominator is that they all operated as individuals. Julian Benda (‘La Trahison des Clercs’) calls them ‘clercs’ and laments that from the nineteenth century on they betrayed their calling by putting their talents at the remunerating service of special groups, sought admiration and status, indulged in emotionally satisfying destructive criticism in preference to tedious constructive work, and succumbed to the siren song of highfaluting verbiage immune to the scrutiny of reason.
Benda's honest ‘clercs’ never were numerous, and our modern capitalistic society with its accent on public success certainly has not been a fertile breeding ground for intellectual integrity. On the other hand that same society has bred a large number of individuals who have the intellectual capacity to fulfil the function of ‘clerc’. I know of quite a number of them. They did not become extinct, just ineffective. In face of the complexity of a modern society and the power at the disposition of vested interests to find ‘experts’ to invalidate any position, however justifiable, the integer individual may be powerless; a respected and knowledgeable group may make a real difference.
SUMMING UP: Two centuries ago it was still possible for an individual to have a comprehensive overview of human knowledge, there could be ‘universal’ intellects conversing amongst themselves at a level of equal authority in all fields. That is no longer an option. To serve their calling in today's world, self-appointed guardians of democracy must unite, must coalesce into a group to engage the necessary knowledge and competence, and to obtain the minimum of authority required to provide a counterweight to the tendency towards chaos so evident today. The internet has reduced the practical obstacles to such a venture for which this book attempts to provide a starting point. Therefore I opened two web-sites. One (www.democratic-princi-ple.nl) is intended for discussing the subjects of this book: foundational principles. The other (www.project-democracy.nl) intends to provide a first rallying point for getting discussions on specific fields of science and political problems under way.
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