In conversation with

Exordium

The Strangeness of the Discipline

A Good Scientific Conversation

Responding to Hard-Nosed and Lazy-Dazy Ideas About Science

"How about the truth? Isn't that what science is all about? Enough of your talk about conversation, culture, attention ... it's truth I want to hear about!" The exasperation is audible when these outbursts come. And, invariably and inevitably, they do. When I rummage around, I usually encounter an opinion of science and scientific practice that the preceding three chapters have upset. After all, science has to be something stripped away from conversation to be tougher, more solid, and indeed, more truthful. A rocket launch to the moon is not a conversation, is it? It must be a product of truthful science.

Exasperation with the metaphor of conversation easily turns into indignation or even condemnation: "We [economists] do science and science can do without all this" and "When are you going to do some serious economics?" Translation: science is serious and conversation is not. "How about a serious conversation in a scientific setting?" I am tempted to retort. But I fear the cause is lost on these tough-minded economists. "Science is science, and not a conversation." In the philosophical literature, these economists would qualify as "positivists." Lest that term be confused with "optimists," call them "hard-nosed" scientists. For them science is a matter of logic, facts, hypotheses and empirical tests. Those who do not subscribe to these tenets may simply leave the conversation (read: they do not deserve tenure, will not get published in important journals, and will not be invited to conferences). That is why they deserve the label hard-nosed.

Another type of response to truth comes with sighs and concessions like, "Truth does not exist." "Science is a matter of belief." "It's all subjective." "Truth is just a construction, a fabrication." Students are especially susceptible to this. I suspect they learned in high school that one opinion (i.e., theirs) about a text is as good as any other and therefore one belief is as good as any other. (I contribute to this mindset myself. To convey deep philosophical insight, I taught my children that we do not know anything for certain. They cleverly took advantage: "You don't know vegetables are good for me, so please pass the chips," forcing me to fall back on, "That may be so, but eat your vegetables anyway.") I admit that by stressing the notion of the metaphor I appear to support the mindset that nothing can be known for sure and that all knowledge is subjective. That is not at all that I have in mind, as I hope to demonstrate. But people who do think this way parade in the philosophical literature under the flag of the relativists. (Relative to what is relative.) Call these people the "lazy-dazy" scientists: they take science as it comes.

I am not comfortable with either stance. The hard-nosed may consider how strange the practice of a science like economics looks from their perspective with its disagreements, inconclusive empirical tests, lack of hard facts and skirting of real laws. Maybe they want to entertain the possibility that science is not as hard-nosed as they make it out to be, that more is at stake than logic and facts. Maybe. But the abandonment of a belief in hard-nosed science based on Truth does not automatically lead to a lazy-dazy position. Even if strictly objective knowledge does not exist, knowledge does not necessarily become subjective. People cannot believe whatever they please. They cannot double prices and expect people to flock to their shops anyway. They can deny the laws of gravity, but they will most certainly tumble when they step off the balcony.

Similarly, in conversation, people cannot get away with saying whatever pops into their heads. If they think they have good reasons to deny the Holocaust, I suggest they be prepared to duck when introducing them in most conversations. When people subject themselves to the conversations of a certain discipline like economics, they cannot argue that freezing rents will help those looking for cheap rentals, or start talking about reincarnation. If they do, they will surely be out of the conversation and probably shown to the door. As must be clear by now, to share an insight with others you need to be in their conversation. And conversations — scientific conversations especially — constrain what you want to say and how you want to say it. Just as the Italians exclude me in the social conversations of their squares, economists will screen contributions to their scientific conversations and ban all sorts of talk. A practitioner buying in to the idea that all knowledge is subjective will quickly find out that it is, if nothing else, socially subjective. To share subjective knowledge with others, you have to subject yourself to the discipline of the conversation in which you want to be. Life is not as simple or lazy-dazy as some imagine it to be.