This is fourth in a four part series concerning science and technology policy broadly construed. The first discussed how science is relevant to development; a second dealt with what sociotechnologies are and why they matter and the third dealt with S&T policy narrowly construed.
In this last of the series, I have written a Platonic-style dialogue between friends discussing the relationships between indigenous knowledge and science and technology policy. Discussed are many of the themes from the three previous papers as well as a discussion of how to evaluate experts, what the role of native communities is in technology, and much else. This dialogue was written because it is a neat break from the purely paper-style I have used until now, and dialogue is another writing form with a long tradition in philosophy. Even Galileo wrote dialogues.
The characters are Keith, a philosopher of science and logician; Raven, an Inuit artist and historian; Robin, a singer and masseuse; Harvey, an intellectual property lawyer originally trained as a physicist; Kathy, a neuroscientist; and Andrew, a computer engineer. (Note to the reader: like in the Platonic dialogues, these are all patterned after real people; unlike in the Platonic dialogues, there is no clear Socrates to hold the author's viewpoints, despite him appearing as a character.)
Scene: Keith's parents house, for a Labour Day weekend barbeque of sorts. Raven is in town because she wanted to consult some archives at the Hudson's Bay Company. The trip from Thunder Bay is a long one for her, as we shall see ... at present, all but Robin have arrived.
Andrew: I don't think we should go ahead. It would be rude, and besides, Keith did say we were here to meet both birds.
Kathy: Andrew is right, Harvey. Put that salad down.
Raven: I don't have any problem with him eating that now. I can't eat it at any time in any case.
Kathy: Sometime you are going to have to explain that to me, Raven. I'm interested in hearing how your illness actually "functions", if you don't mind me putting it that way.
Raven: Why should I?
At that moment, Robin enters, looking around. Her eyes fall on Keith, having never previously met any of the rest of the group. He gets up to hug her in friendship, and introduces the " younger bird" to the group.
Robin: Raven ... so you are my counterpart.
Raven laughs at this.
Raven: [still laughing] Keith, you said you had two ulterior motives for dragging us all out here today. I'd love to know what they are.
Keith: Well, in light of what Harvey brought up earlier, I'd like to first encourage everyone to have something to eat as we talk. [The group gets up and helps themselves to various food items, the details of which are not terribly important, except to notice that Robin does not take any meat and Raven any green vegetables.] You all know how much I value all your advice on things. This is particularly so in areas where I know almost nothing of any importance. I have brought you together not only to meet one another - particularly the birds meet the rest of you and conversely - but also to debate and discuss an important topic. I tried to do my usual shtick of turning it into a game, but I could not find a good approach. I've decided to go with letting everyone roleplay their selves.
Robin: How nice of you to recognize the different parts and aspects of us!
Keith: You're welcome. Enjoy your meals. Today's topic if I may be so bold as to announce it formally is the relationships between indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge. I realize it is a broad topic, and probably a very heated one, but it is one that we have all talked about in some respect or other at some time previously. But first, a toast. [raises glass of ginger ale] To friends. To birds who made it from far away, and other beasts that made it from closer at hand. Thank you for coming.
All: To friends![After a moments eating in relative silence.]
Raven: I question your description of the topic, if I may, Keith.
Keith: You know what I say: you can debate anything I say in particular, though not everything globally at once, and provided you do it rationally.
Raven: [laughs] I have no desire to live up to your standards of rationality.
Keith: I know, but most of the time you do anyway.
Raven: Anyway, the point is that I am not sure what you are suggesting by the topic. "Indigenous knowledge" and "science" - they sound in opposition, and I am not sure if I quite agree with that. [Raven pauses to attack a chicken wing.]
Andrew: Raven, it seems to me that you have forgotten the other part of how Keith described our subject. He said we are to discuss the relationships between the two. Now, I am not a logician like Keith is, but isn't identity a relation too? So even if there is some sort of correspondence of the strictest sort between the two categories there is still a relation.
Harvey: But Raven might be thinking from the perspective of rhetoric rather than logic. The hardest part of becoming a lawyer for me was remembering the difference. Well, that and those darn bar exams.
Kathy: [laughing, remembering Harvey's worry] Andrew has a point, though. Raven, what if we discuss and find that the relation is identity?
Raven: You three are all right. "Both!" as I would say, though I guess here it is all of that, not merely both halves of a dichotomy. I guess I would like to continue by remarking that without an understanding of indigenous our discussion may prove a bit fruitless. After all, I am as far as I know the only indigenous person here. Keith has told me about all of you, after all.
Robin: Well, you may be the only one who can claim to have ancestors amongst the original natives of North America, that's true, Raven, but there are other sorts of indigenous knowledge. Even if we ignore the fact that some of us have adopted such from traditions not our own, there is also indigenous - prescientific or nonscientific - knowledge from at least my background.
Harvey: I think I see that.
Robin: Well, I imagine you would, since we sort of share a background. But Keith, we should constrain this more. I don't think the Talmud is on topic today. Well, I at least don't feel like talking about it.
Keith: Feel free to ignore any aspect you wish to ignore. I am just a provoker, like Socrates. Except of course our true Socrates is in a miniskirt today.
Raven: Cut that out! [Laughs] But I wanted to say that I was interested in hearing why Keith brought this to our attention, perhaps that would tell us how to proceed.
Keith: Well, as you may all remember, I was volunteering at the Social Justice Committee this summer, and found myself interested in writing some pieces on science and technology policy. It struck me that one issue in the SJC's mandate is dealing with what some have called "epistemic imperialism". So, given that you all have very interesting opinions on things, I have brought you here to revisit what I wrote about several months ago.
Raven: Oh! Now I understand. My people have been "epistemically imperialized" as Keith puts it. Our knowledge has been undervalued and underappreciated.
Harvey: What knowledge did you have in mind?
Raven: Well, the one that I mentioned to Keith so long ago was how only recently you "white guys" have been listening to our elders on climate change.
Keith: That's a good example. Maybe we should start there. Though, Raven, Robin is hardly white at the moment!
Robin: [chuckles, over Raven's comment]
Raven: I am sick and tired of being patronized by saying that we members of First Nations do not know anything scientific or worthwhile. For years we were saying that the ice flows had changed, that the animals came at different times of the year. Now only recently have people woken up.
Kathy: Well, there are two separate claims there. One is about scientific, one is about worthwhile. The two are distinct but not separable.
Raven: I don't quite see what you mean.
Keith: Kathy seems to be pointing out that scientific knowledge is not identical with worthwhile knowledge.
Raven: Well, of course it isn't! [pause] Oh! I see. Yes, I see what the problem is with what I said. I have trouble speaking the way you science people speak.
Andrew: Tell us more about the problem.
Raven: Well, Keith might inadvertently say that there is some sort of difference between the elders and the climatologists.
Harvey: Isn't there? The climatologists have been trained - the elders not so.
Raven: That's just it! The elders have of course been trained - just not by books or Ph.D. examinations.
Harvey: My apologies, Raven. But perhaps that is the issue - the quality of training.
Robin: Or perhaps the relevance.
Raven: As Keith told you, I am very sick in a certain way. I am glad that "white guys" have brought medicine to my people and I. But I don't see how this suggests I should pay attention to all the so-called experts that go along with.
Andrew: I do not claim expertise.
Robin: I don't either, but I do claim knowledge. But I am also willing to try to explore the bounds of what I know.
Keith: We are all here for that. Raven, let me try to put it a different way. Let us try to distinguish between a claim, the warrant for it, and the acceptance of the warrant by this or that community.
Raven: More jargon! Arrg! [laughs] But I do respect why you introduce jargon, Keith, it is just that it is intimidating sometimes.
Robin: Well, I for one remember what Keith must mean, but I have studied philosophy too.
Harvey: Some of us haven't, but I think I can reconstruct it based on what I understand. A claim is just a proposition under debate or discussion. Warrant is the justification or reasons to accept a claim. And of course a community in this case is a community of knowers. Oh, and acceptance here is ... well, how do you understand acceptance?
Keith: For the purposes of this discussion, "prepared to act on as if provisionally true." The gist is that one ought to accept based only on sufficient (whatever that means exactly) warrant. I think that's universal. The justification or reasons invoked in warrant is where things get messy cross-culturally.
Raven: I think I understand. So, I guess I should say that the evidence was just not seen by the climatologists. They are more concerned with their thermometers than what the elders have to say about ice.
Keith: Well, just having the elders say so is not very good evidence by itself.
Raven: What? Are you calling them liars?
Keith: Not at all. People can be just misinformed, gather inappropriate data, etc.
We instead should pay attention to why the elders have been convinced themselves. And this is hard to articulate. One aspect of our problem is that knowledge possessed by indigenous populations is largely what we call tacit. Robin's biking trip provides me with the opportunity to explain that idea in non-question begging terms.
Robin: [laughs] My bike trip? I'm still sore, you know.
Keith: Well, that illustrates the point too, but I was going to mention how riding a bike is largely tacit. It is difficult to put into words how one rides a bike, but yet one does clearly know how, at least in Robin's case. One doesn't get across the continental US on a bike without knowing how to use it!
Kathy: Neurologically, there is probably a huge difference in the two forms of knowledge, though since we can talk somewhat about our tacit or knowledge by acquaintance the two parts of our brain may be connected.
Andrew: Not necessarily - we could just be "talking to ourselves" about it, as Dan Dennett might say.
Harvey: It doesn't really matter too much how we come to know how to describe what we know tacitly. I guess the point is that Keith is saying that the Inuit elders have tacit knowledge of ice and so on, which is difficult to justify to others.
Raven: But they can show you! Come feel how the ice is thin here.
Keith: The claim was not that the knowledge is indemonstrable or ineffable - that would be cause for alarm if it were, but merely that it is "held" in such a way that it is difficult to articulate.
Raven: I guess I will grant that. So how should we talk to scientists who want knowledge in propositional terms?
Keith: It seems to me that there are two steps needed, at least. One is that the elders should be prepared to try to put what they know into such terms. This is a break of tradition, perhaps, though I am not convinced that it is much of one. The other step is just the dual: to listen - critically! - and apply what the philosopher Donald Davidson called "the principle of charity".
Robin: You wrote a whole thesis on Donald Davidson. Fill us in, please, Keith.
Keith: [laughing] My work was on his metaphysics of events, not his philosophy of language, but be that as it may, I was getting to this. The principle of charity is the attempt to understand people as attempting to speak as truly as possible. It is a bit vague, but works reasonably okay most of the time. But one should also make sure that one is interpreting in a critical spirit. There is no sense, and no respect, in treating someone as some great guru that cannot go wrong.
Kathy: I seem to remember you attributing that to Karl Popper.
Keith: Oh, yes. Right. But ...
Raven: Critical? I want to understand this better.
Harvey: Well, what we are doing now, I guess. Don't you mean that we should avoid taking the elder's knowledge claims as being infallible?
Raven: Yes! Yes! Yes! I had hoped that was it.
Keith: There's the principle of charity - sort of. You're not to interpret me as being flattering to your position, you are to interpret me in such a way as to represent me as a critical inquirer, and one concerned with the way things are.
Raven: Yes!
Andrew: So do you intend this approach to work generally?
Keith: I'd like to think so.
Andrew: Well, there is another aspect to the problem, one you haven't quite talked about so far. As an engineer, I design plans and products and implement specifications and that sort of thing. There is another aspect to knowledge beyond understanding the world; there is also knowledge for action.
Keith: You've been remembering your required HPS course!
Andrew: And listening to you talk about such things for the 15 years or so we've known each other. But ...
Kathy: [gently] Go on.
Andrew: Thank you. I was going to say, is there a difference when it comes to action? Should we evaluate what the elders say about building or doing in the same way as when they make claims about the way the world is?
Robin: I wish Keith would pay attention to that more! He has a hard time separating the practice of shiatsu from one might call the theory of shiatsu. I regard the former as much more important - which is not to slight the latter.
Keith: [laugh] Well, I think we can look at that specific case some other time. But it does allow us to focus on Andrew's point. When we seek to change the world (or prevent change in it) in some way or other, we are most effective when we know something about the system we are intervening upon. This is a truism. But complicated systems require deep knowledge.
Raven: And the elders don't have deep knowledge?
Keith: Well, it also has to be relevant deep knowledge. This is the heart of the problem. Knowledge gathered for ordinary life, however remote it is from our life here, may not serve to solve the new questions posed by, say, climate change.
Raven: I'm in agreement with that, I think, provided you tell me what you mean by ordinary life.
Keith: Well, if you look at in terms of needs vs. wants ... No, that won't work. We've discussed what makes scientific knowledge on earlier occasions. Suffice is to say that the experimental, transphenomenalistic and other aspects of scientific research I am considering here. I haven't the foggiest idea how to hunt, really, but I do know that it involves considerable cognitive resources. They are just of a different kind than scientific research - scientific research is more deep and profound but it is not thereby more (or less) cognitively demanding. All this is to say that the elders can learn science - and scientists can pick projects that interest them, and that can be climate change because they come from Inuvik. But getting back to technology. Technology isn't necessary to solve all problems of action, but is useful for many.
Andrew: So when is technology useful?
Harvey: Is it possible to give a general answer to that question?
Kathy: Ditto.
Harvey: [laughs, glares at Kathy in humour.] It is an important one all the same.
Robin: I can tell you when technology isn't useful - technology isn't useful when what Keith would call a craft would do the job. But .../
Keith: But "privative characterizations are dangerous", as Aristotle might have said. I think that Robin's point has a sound root, though.
Raven: It seems to me that Robin has said what I would have said - if there is a problem that can be solved by local means, why import the big guns?
Keith: Now, that's a slightly different claim.
Raven: Is it?
Keith: Technology itself can be local. For example, here in Quebec a large proportion of our electricity is generated by means of hydroelectric dams on various rivers and so forth. This infrastructure was created because of local conditions - to compare, it makes no sense to set up hydroelectric projects to power, say, Riyadh - at least at first glance anyway.
Andrew: But a lot of technological decisions are not free from importing. At Ericsson, the microprocessors we use in cell phones are not always manufactured locally; we import them from the United States or Taiwan or something.
Raven: I guess one should distinguish between local decisions and local resources. Both are important for communities to decide and reach consensus about, but they are different topics. I see that now. And the question about technology versus craft is one of those.
Harvey: But people can be uninformed about ... well, virtually everything.
Raven: And yet we can give them the decisions anyway.
Keith: Not so fast. Raven is big on freedom, I know that. But we can't let that be our only guiding principle.
Raven: It is the only one that matters!
Keith: [laughing] I know you don't really believe that.
Raven: [laughs] Well, it is almost true.
Keith: Almost in this case makes a world of difference. Anyway, I was going to say that the issue is, to me, at least, that the responsibility to those acting is to attempt to learn as much as possible about the situation before making the decision. One need not adopt the expert consensus, if there is one, but there is certainly no harm in listening to them. Rejecting them out of hand seems unwise.
Raven: You call me Socrates-like, and yet I am very much unwise. I don't reject anyone out of hand, and that's where we differ most. You do. If that is wisdom, I am glad to be unwise! [laughs again]
Keith: No, I reject ideas as being without foundation and thus not needing tests. This is a matter of degree. Homeopathy is a lot more ungrounded than someone who lives near the ice telling me it is thinner this year than last. And so on for every claim in between.
Robin: Most of the interesting claims are in your gap, Keith.
Keith: True enough.
Kathy: Let me try an example. I have worked in providing diagnostic imaging and the interpretation of same to physicians ordering tests for their patients. When I tell them that the fMRI shows thus and so, I am acting as an expert for someone who probably forgot most of the 1 lecture in medical school they had on then current, now slightly obsolete, diagnostic imaging techniques. But then the physician has to interpret what I say about the results to her patient. So the patient then has to confront with not only an expert but also a filtered expert semianonymously in the background.
Raven: I for one would want to see my own fMRI results and come to a conclusion myself! I will decide if I have a serious hemorrhage or not.
Andrew: And what if you decide wrongly and you die?
Raven: Then I die, and Keith inherits my pastel drawings.
Andrew: Okay ...
Keith: I think I could put the point a slightly different way. Since you are not trained in neuropsychology or whatever else, at least as much as Kathy has been, you are not in a position to fully appreciate what that particular injury has done to you. You should rely on experts to tell you about it.
Raven: Rely?? I can't decide myself?!
Keith: You are reading too much into what I said. I meant only that you should use them as data as well. They have seen other people with similar conditions, they can tell you to look at certain aspects of how the brain works, they can refer you to literature you might find useful to read, and so on. The decision is more or less yours, but we are only asking that it be an informed one.
Raven: So what do you mean "more or less"? That sounds hedgy.
Harvey: Well, you might have legal responsibilities too, not just the ethical responsibility to take care of yourself as you see fit, which I agree is yours alone.
Keith: Actually, I wouldn't put it that way.
Raven: I have no legal responsibilities. I am not married, have no children or dependent parents or anything like that.
Keith: That's one reason. The other is that I think Raven would have an ethical responsibility to at least bring up the issue with her friends and lovers. Her decision may be hers, but it will affect her other friends and I. We function as second-tier experts, sort of. Sort of "social impact" experts. The same applies in the community case. While not every citizen will be impacted directly by a decision to do this or that, their opinions may help clarify matters for the rest, and are valuable for that reason.
Raven: I do like your logic, at least some of the time.
Keith: That is one example, sure.
Raven: I still say that the decision about my hypothetical brain injury is mine.
Keith: Yes, it is. Usually.
Raven: Well, I suppose you're going to say that there is some other weasel-case. That is why we are alike, old friend. We both think like Raven.
Robin: Do you mean your namesake?
Raven: I do.
Keith: The weasel-case, if you want to call it that, is that some injuries would prevent you from making decisions at all.
Kathy: Frontal lobe trauma, or global brain injury, of course.
Andrew: Coma.
Harvey: But there is a solution - of sorts.
Raven: Yes, a living will.
Harvey: Exactly.
Raven: Keith told me once that he would reserve the right to stop caring for me the way he does if I was sufficiently injured that the me was gone, and what was left wasn't me.
Robin: Oh, delightful. Philosophy of mind. [laughs]
Keith: After a fashion. But the point is correct. Just the grammar gets very awkward. I wonder if there are any natural languages where expressing change of personal identity is easier. Anyway, Raven has suggested that not all decisions be made "on the spot", which is the last thing I wanted to talk about today on this subject.
Robin: Then what will we do?
Keith: I for one want to hear about your trip.
Kathy: Yes, that would be entertaining.
Robin: I did bring some photos ...
Keith: I'm glad. But let's see. I was suggesting that sometimes decisions can be made in advance - as indeed much planning should be. But one aspect of the "local nature" of plans is that there are always unforeseen contingencies that arise as the plan is implemented.
Robin: And a self-referential problem that results.
Raven: I don't understand.
Kathy: I don't either.
Andrew: I think the point is - how do you plan for the unplanned?
Harvey: You don't.
Kathy: I don't think that's right, Harvey.
Andrew: Harvey, you worked a few years ago as an assistant to your uncle, an accountant, right?
Harvey: Yes ... ?
Kathy: Well, isn't putting away a "nest egg" one aspect of planning for the unplanned?
Robin: I wish I had one of those. Maybe Keith would consider me still birdier if I did.
Raven: I don't have much of one either. But I have never been concerned much with money. If I need some, I go and make some.
Keith: Kathy's illustration is correct, however. You can anticipate the broad features of some of the things that can go wrong in the implementation of a plan, and thus provide for those broad failure categories.
Kathy: Right. In this case, having insufficient income due to unemployment, illness, etc. But the paradox is later.
Raven: Paradox?
Keith: Not in your sense, older bird. The issue is then - how do you deal with whole categories unforeseen?
Andrew: As an engineer, my job has been to enumerate as many categories as possible. In some cases it is easy. If one is writing a program, sometimes one just knows what the cases are.
Keith: But it may not be that easy, even in a computer program. If my if statement depends on a call to, say, fopen, the call might not ever return - my disk could die on me during the open and so the usual error checking is useless.
Robin: I don't quite follow that, but it seems to be a good case. Andrew tells us that he can anticipate that the call can return - is that the right term - various values. But he can't anticipate if the call doesn't return. Some other higher order mechanism has to be put in place. But how does one know where to stop? Keith and I talked about this when it came to health care once. I know how to recognize if a client is pregnant, but it doesn't rule me out helping them. I just act differently. But if the pregnancy is of a special character, I have to deal with another matter, and so on.
Kathy: Well, it seems that one has to evaluate likelihoods. The information I give to physicians is very often statistical in nature. The same applies to various psychological conditions and the like.
Raven: Not everyone understands statistics. I for one consider myself unique, not part of a collective. And so my risk category? It is me, and not some other group.
Andrew: We can't treat everyone as an individual in every respect.
Keith: Nor should we. Raven is a unique "locus" of laws, as are the rest of us, but she is still lawful all the same.
Robin: You mean that she still partakes in objective patterns?
Keith: I'm glad you remember. Yes, the idea is that you understand the general by the specific, and conversely. That specific locus of objective patterns allows us to tailor our understanding of Raven as an individual; the patterns are what connect her to others. Other women; other Inuit; other people who have broken practically every bone in their body at least once. And so on.
Harvey: As a physicist I would suggest that there is another way of putting it - Raven determines the parameters of the general equations that describe her.
Raven: I am not sure I am describable by equations!
Keith: Not at the moment - there are very few quantitative biological laws known that are applicable to your case. But there may be in the future - in fact I hope so, because such are - when sufficiently true - deep and important. And in this case, a better hope for leading to Raven's treatment.
Raven: I have hope as it is.
Keith: I know. But this is of a different kind. I wanted to end by picking up on one last point in this subtopic.
Robin: I noticed it too. We still haven't resolved how we deal with the grossly unforeseen.
Keith: Frankly I don't know, other than to suggest the platitude that "anything that can go wrong will" has as optimistic corollary "anything that does go wrong, can be improved upon, in part, given inclination and a careful study, etc."
Andrew: I have never heard that corollary to Murphy's Law.
Keith: Nor had I, until now. But it seemed appropriate.
Raven: It is something I would approve of in general. I will think more for us.
Kathy: And I.
Harvey: Ditto. [Kathy and Harvey laugh again.]
Robin: Speaking of going wrong, this one day on the bike trip ...
[And so the friends of the philosopher returned to more mundane matters, and learned how Montana can be especially annoying when it rains ...]
- FIN -
To email the SJC to comment, mail sjc@web.ca.