Welcome to the SJC's online web discussion concerning science and technology policies.

I'm Keith, the instigator and developer of this material and discussions. You will find within this discussion three papers and a dialogue, written by me as well as comments and follow ups by others. This page is the introductory page to this discussion and explains the background of what I wrote, why, and some hints and tips for navigating through the material.

List of Pages

Introduction and motivation

My intention in writing the three papers and the dialogue was five fold. First, I intended to discuss what in my view is an important methodological point: how should one go about approaching problems of human rights, development, etc? Second, some of what I have read in the literature is either dismissive of scientific research in this respect or inadequately understands it. (One particularly shocking thing I read was a piece advocating homeopathic "remedies" to the third world instead of pharmaceuticals.) Third, I wanted to address in what I view to be a proper fashion the claims in the aforementioned literature about "indigenous knowledge". Fourth, by writing the dialogue I wanted to illustrate how people of different interests and backgrounds can work together on some of these issues. Finally, I wanted to provoke a debate or at least some sort of "dialectic" (not in the Hegelian or Marxist sense!) on the issues.

Richard writes concerning the goals of the series (titling his entire response "Killing Jews and Building Canoes: The Science-Oriented Approach to Development"): Let me start at the outset with a brief comment from the outside. The 'Introduction to the series' says "I indent to discuss ... an important methodological point: how should one go about approaching problems of humans of human rights, development, etc?" The 'Introduction' to the the paper proper says "In this paper I defend a scientific approach to development ..." etc. Which is it to be? The first promises a prescriptive exposition. It could be instructions for doing such-and-such. The "methodological point" is the instructions. Or it could refer to principles or rules for doing such-and-such. In this event the methodological point refers back to some larger agreed-on goal: eliminating misery, opening new markets. By comparison a scientific approach and its defense of the second sentence promise something in tne way of description. The common understanding of words is enough to show that description and prescription are not the same. In sum, your paper starts off in obscurity. Nor do you get clear what your subject is. The Science-Oriented Approach (S-O Approach) is about "approaching problems of human rights, development, etc." And again it's "a scientific approach to development" and to human rights and so on. But how is "problems of human rights" to be understood? Is it that a body of recognized and enforceable claims of the kind called rights is being threatened by, say, pressing national security considerations? Or is rather human rights, not as a noun but as an adjective: Homelessness is a human rights problem. Not human rights and its problems but human beings with their human rights problems. (The same distinction holds, of course, for 'development': Hunger is a problem for economic development; hunger is a problem of economic development.) The distinction has a significance that this lightning history of homosexuality exposes. In historical order, homosexuality was a religious problem, a criminal problem, a mental health problem, a human rights problem (discrimination), acceptance and celebration (no problem) and is presently is a civil rights problem (equal protection under the law: same-sex marriage). Now, if the S-O Approach is design to address human rights as such, as a noun, then it has no work in this sequence. Homosexuality does not threaten human rights. But if the Approach addresses the adjectival human rights, homosexuality as a problem of a human rights kind, then the Approach is pertinent. But the Approach, claiming to be a particular approach to public problems in general, an approach with general applications, must then be able to say something about the historical changes of one type of problem into another. Why and how does a criminal problem become a health problem, a health problem a human rights problem? To ask the question is to notice something else. The history of problem identifications, of labels, does not run the same course as the concurrent history of the people whose lives, at one time and another fell and fall under the shadow of the labels. A history of lives is not the same as the story of the articulation and posing of problems. The point I am driving at is this. Is your analysis, are your abstractions, appropriate and complete? Are they up to the task? No answer is possible. You have not adequately defined and specified the task.

Keith responds concerning his goals: Richard starts by saying that my aims are unclear. He is quite right; I should have been clearer on this. What I intended to do is advocate for a specific "way of approaching" any question about matters of fact. Now, since the SJC is concerned with matters of social justice (obviously!), I intended my reflections to apply in specific to its concerns. Hence why I have stressed matters pertaining to social policy, internationalization, economics and so on within my musings. It should be clear then that the ambiguity Richard points out in his second paragraph should be answered quite easily as "both." Of course, we ought to focus on people, but I (as I will stress later) see the division as being people qua components of various social systems and qua individuals. Both are important and not in any direct opposition to each other. Richard is quite correct when says that the genesis and history of problems is quite important. There are many topics related to what I discussed that I could have but didn't. Popper called finding out about the world and working in whatever appropriate ways to maintain or change it an "endless quest" - we shall see that is quite true!

I have written a lot of material; I certainly don't expect a line-by-line response to everything. However, one thing that could be useful is people reading the whole piece loosely, to get a sense of what it all covers, then responding to a section or a part they feel is most interesting to them or most controversial and needs more support, and so on. A response to this on my part and a few back-and-forth exchanges would serve nicely, I think. Perhaps only one response, one response to response, and then one response to the response to the response would be needed. (This is the usual pattern in many debates.)

I encourage people to respond in any fashion they seem appropriate - so long as a minimum of rational discourse is maintained. Poems, more dialogues, essays, meditations, press releases, computer programs are all suitable ... This brings me to the question of the forum for the debate; Derek suggested at one point perhaps a series of web pages. This might prove interesting; we could hyperlink different parts of text together so people could follow the debate in different threads. It would also allow us to less obtrusively document some of what we have written and provide reading lists and such for those who might be interested. It would also allow people to more easily include non-textual components to their replies, something that might prove useful.

You may read through any of these by clicking on one of the links below.

During your read you may encounter words, phrases or sections in a bold font.

If you click on these you will expose commentary on a given section. In the case of the initial documents, commentary is provided by Richard R., and commentary on the commentary by Keith. You may then "roll up" either level of the commentary by clicking on the bold word etc. again.

Demonstration

To disclose the additional content, click here.

Here we go! Cool! Generally commentary on the original pieces will be in this font, colour and size. Note where it ends by noting where the font returns to normal. If you are using a browser that does not support font changes (e.g. a screen reader or a text-only-browser) pay attention to the <div> tags in the source to the page to determine where the boundaries are.

If we click here we can get yet more content.

Further information

All the pages include a link back to this first, in case you get lost reading. All the pages also include a link to mail the SJC to submit feedback to be included in a future version of these pages.

The dialogue also recapitulates several of the themes in the papers. For that reason some readers who are not used to academic style papers may well wish to start with this more familiar sort of writing. Keith has attempted to capture some of the spirit of talking between friends, and so much of the dialogue is vaguer in character than the papers.

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