Newsletter No. 2: January 2024
SOCIETY, IDEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
My purpose in this note is to take up some issues of which the
observant reader may have become all too aware in previous notes: shoddy
figures, possible excess of polemic and skimped analysis for instance. For all the faults I can only apologise. But it all began on an experimental basis and
both text and media were for me at the developmental stage. My early focus in the website was on
computers and indeed publicising my skills in IT. But no-one took any notice and so I widened
the scope. However, these remain
occasional pieces not academic or other research reports.
It was not my intention to produce an academic treatise, nor to
address an academic, administrative or other specialist audience. My
purpose has been merely to explore a new media with an array of comments whose
methodology has some bearing on discussions of this media itself. (Note here the singular of media, medium,
does not sound at all right in this context and indeed ‘media’ is widely
accepted as a singular noun in this context.)
Beyond that I wished to challenge some of the hypocrisies, pretensions
and deceptions of modern British politics.
But there remain some further considerations to explore. It is only too true to say that, in public
discourse about society, numbers cited as evidence, in matters of social facts,
are only too often erratic or faulty or can be contradicted by equally
plausible alternative data. This was
very evident in one of the last Question Times with Boris Johnston as PM. This is not a satisfactory state of affairs
and demands comment. A statement of
numbers is not thereby a fact, however much it may be intended to convey fact.
Watching PMQ on parliamentary TV, I quite often hear an MP basing
a generalisation on a single instance. I do not recall now any
particular instance, but the following illustrates my point. “A constituent came into my surgery last week
and said…” and hence to a generalisation. The instance might be one
of a multitude but “he said he had to wait three hours in A & E or wait
days for an appointment with a GP surgery…” leads to the generalisation
“waiting times are too long in NHS hospitals or surgeries”. A
generalisation of this form is one of the most frequent statements made in the
House of Commons Question Time.
Firstly an initial point.
This is an interested remark. It
shows the MP responding to his constituents’ needs. In contrast it is noteworthy that no MP has
raised a comparable question either in relation to a student’s complaint about
university matters whether fees or degradation of courses under the
pandemic. Nor for instance about the
failure of public transport in rural areas, even though transport failures in
the North of England have drawn much criticism, and this strengthens the point
that the cited generalisation may be interested (to show the MP’s constituency
his concerns) rather than objective.
I mention these cases because what we are dealing here with are
single instances. This it must be
acknowledged is a valid process. If the
case is representative of a broad social circumstance then it may be worthwhile. The ancient Greeks had a term for this usage
– enthymeme. It is defined as a
rhetorical device using a syllogism with a suppressed premise. It is often found in discourse. The suppressed premise usually defines the
conditions under which the generalisation is true. But the particular instance can be true and
that is important; it may be said to epitomise the situation. However the generalisation of the instance is
much more difficult and its truth value may vary according to the wider
circumstances to which it is applied.
Thus such particulars are seldom a
good basis for making generalisations about society. They are selective in their content and
limited in the circumstances they represent.
Social processes are hard to prove. Each individual generalises from personal
experience, but the models used to form these generalisations are drawn from
ideology. Experience may only confirm
belief and beliefs too are drawn from ideology.
But even if a generalisation based on my experience is true within that
context, when aggregated with other people’s experience it may get lost in that
broader sum.
Yet an MP may have a much larger range of
acquaintances over a life time than most.
However this range is only related to a given area and the UK is much
larger than a constituency. Moreover the
population of the UK alone, a small country, is now at 67 million, far beyond
that which can be known by acquaintance or experience.
The complexity of fact in society needs emphasis. Social facts are difficult to establish –
much more so than one normally recognises.
Part of the reason may be that a statement that is true in one area may
be false in another. Most people only
see the facts adjacent to themselves that bear on their own lives. Truth, myth and falsehood mingle interminably
in social discussions and there are those who take advantage of this to press
ideology, either through its distortions or in determined falsehoods.
There is a current circumstance that makes these issues
particularly worth exploring and that is the growth of data collection systems
viz. databases. Data does not have a
sturdy or reliable value like cash in a bank account. It needs to be viewed with a sceptical and
critical eye lest it should not be all that it seems.
Karl Popper in the Open Society and Its Enemies said that
generalisations stood until they were falsified; verification was not
enough. But this is problematic. I use simple models containing few
generalisations. Any one such, if stated
without conditions relating to circumstance, may be both verified and falsified,
depending on the precise circumstances that are introduced. And this is particularly the case when one is
considering circumstances on a global rather than national scale, as with the
spread of a pandemic. The complexity
involved in the establishment of truth in human and social affairs must be
recognised; otherwise fraud and deception will continue to hold their
unchallenged sway in public life.
So how does one make satisfactory
generalisations about society? Firstly
one should note that generalisations involving numerical data vaguely of an
economic character, are often not satisfactory because the categories are not
well clarified. But further one should
remember that much is said that is false, and many of these falsities are known
by the speaker to be false; they are deceptions. There are well known examples of such speakers
already in the public domain so I shall name no names. Figures are often cited because they look
factual; but they ae not necessarily so.
This matter is worth exploring in depth
because the difficulty in establishing social facts is much greater than most
realise. Experience alone is not
enough. Polls are often used to
investigate opinions. But these are
based on samples, and from a necessarily small sample broad generalisations
about the entire society may be drawn, regardless of sectional or local
differences. Almost all social facts are
based on surveys and surveys are limited in scale and therefore unreliable as a
basis for generalisation.
Moreover, the selection of the sample may
create scope for bias, to the effect that the poll produces a desired opinion,
not the truth. There is as a result a
major industry engaged in producing social statistics. Here we get into very deep water indeed;
unemployment statistics are a well-recognised case of data manipulation, with
changes in criteria resulting in changes in figures. Change the model and the facts change.
On a broad social front, the National
Statistics Office (NSO) produces many statistics, thorough and extensive. But they are very difficult to understand
because in part the underlying conditions are complex and obscure. Aggregated figures may obscure important
detailed trends. Average wages may be a
mean or a median and the mean which includes high earners is much higher than
the median which points to the maximum earnings of the lower 50% only. But average earnings may be full-time or
part-time and male or female only.
Average full-time male earnings are not reached by a large majority of a
working population. From a different
perspective, the exigencies of the secret state may force deceptions upon the
public including undisclosed earnings.
These matters are worth exploring if by doing so we can foster a better
understanding of our society.
So let me start by considering further the matter of truth, a
subject much in the public eye currently.
It traditionally has attracted the attention of philosophers more than
scientists, while all others generally steer clear of it. But
scientists should pay more attention to it. Today it is not only
fraud that is widespread in the present world; fraud is accompanied by a widely
spreading general denigration of truth.
Trump complains about fake news but perpetuates falsehoods more than
many. Disregard for truth is a widespread
problem – not just in the newspapers but throughout the public sphere. And
by that I mean public administration – whether government administration or
public services including the system of education, not to mention anything else
like organised crime. But beyond the deceit there is also an
increasing denigration of the value or need for truth. “Everyone has
their own truth” is not a healthy attitude.
Failure to use a clear model has the result that an unscrupulous
official or other person can change the meaning of the categories he uses for
corrupt purposes. Definitions of
unemployed and of cost of living indices are very flexible indeed.
De Jouvenel quotes Montesquieu to the effect that “the
generalisation of lying would, by itself, dissolve human society”. I have met in my lifetime many people who lie
with deliberation, determination and force and I should say this is not a
desirable trend. In the following
remarks my aim is simply to draw attention to the difficulty of stating the
truth when generalisations about society are in question. A better understanding of the social sciences
I hope will lead to a better understanding of the social necessity of truth and
also of the difficulty in ascertaining or stating the truth. A seemingly objective report or a simple
quantitative statement may be no more than a vehicle of deception, a whitewash.
I have heard so many times the demand for evidence when a
criticism or a comment on a social matter is made. Yet the fact is that the public evidence
needed is not available and those who make this demand are frequently those who
conceal the evidence. Such is the extent
of the secret state. I return to this
matter below.
The problem is exacerbated however by the nature of the social
sciences. Since many still do not recognise the value of the social
sciences, scientific posturing is prevalent and it is worth investigating this
in more detail. All public relations
activity including marketing and advertising depends on questionable practices
that are not adequate as social science.
This is unavoidable but it needs understanding. The reason is clear: marketing and PR are
interested and therefore will seek out facts and evidence that supports that
interest and disregard other data. But
underlying this issue is the fact that social generalisations are founded on
models and parties with an interest use their preferred models. Models contained in ideology are often too
simple to bear any worthwhile content.
Sociology has not been a well-regarded discipline but it gives us some
much better clues as to how to investigate this issue than anything else. So I shall start at this vantage point and
pursue my enquiry from that place. Let
us look at its methods.
The social and political sciences are complex. Three
points may be made. Firstly, they cannot
be founded on simplistic models drawn from the physical or biological
sciences. For this reason, some, often historians, claim that the
study of society, whether historically or contemporaneously, is not a science
at all. But nor is this correct; the social and political sciences
are properly speaking scientific forms of enquiry.
The model of the physical sciences elides into another model
making a distinction between the ‘hard’ facts of the natural world and the
emotions, utterances and actions of human beings in their social intercourse. This might be called the positivist view of
science. It has the consequence of
implying a degraded interpretation of all the social sciences except economics. The science of economics follows the example
of physics most clearly and facilitates the proliferation of generalisations
about society as economy. But its
numerical emphasis is harmful, recycling generalisations about growth,
inflation, etc. and fostering cliché-ridden controversies about money supply,
deflation and productivity. Growth is
not the only legitimate goal for society and technological advance is
over-weighted and hollow when separated from accompanying social
responsibilities.
Economists amongst others never seem to stop making assertions
about the importance of ‘facts’ and an ‘empirical’ approach to society. Two ‘buts’ are in order: firstly economics is
laden with ideology; not only of the ‘free’ market but also for instance the
‘wage-price’ spiral or the specious ‘natural’ level of unemployment. Secondly the ‘facts’ they cite are much more
problematic than they acknowledge. In
public discussion, fatuous generalisations beyond number are made about society
and people; they very often include one numerical ‘fact’ with no explanation of
the conditions under which that ‘fact’ might be true or even the source of the
fact. That tax cuts for the rich
generate economic growth is a currently fashionable generalisation from tory
circles. Likewise one may hear that
income cuts for the poor make them work harder.
This is far right bigotry not science, for these comments are not based
on any rational analysis. Here the
economist’s model breaks down; for it disregards the human motive, a necessary
element in the analysis. Cost-benefit
studies may be useful for justifying capital expenditure but may not be
relevant when considering purely social concerns such as need for exercise or
the value of leisure; and as for quantifying happiness, that is ridiculous.
Economic facts as with all social facts are not simple like the
facts of the biological or physical sciences.
It is true you can count the number of objects produced on a production
line or packets of powder from a process plant.
It is also true that you can measure pollution along a main urban road;
or delays and cancellations of train or air services or number of containers on
a ship. But these are facts grounded in
the physical sciences that have a direct and important bearing on society. Social facts are usually more complex. Certainly you can count numbers of schools,
or exam passes; but if you look on the Internet you will find different
accounts of the number of hospitals in India, or indeed number of languages
spoken there. Even within economics,
money supply has been broken down into several measures, each relating to a
different aspect, whether cash or bank balance or other form. Financial transfers cannot be understood
without more knowledge beyond the fact of transfer: payment for goods, payment
of a bribe, payment of a demand for ransom, payment to another private account
for purposes of concealment. Sum totals
of transfers without further knowledge are incomprehensible. As I have mentioned before there are at least
two measures of unemployment in use today; and cost of living indices abound,
varying as to the inclusion of housing costs or other consumables.
The second broad point is that generalisations about organisations
and other social objects cannot simply be classified with statements about the
physical world. For statements about an
organisation or other social object may be verifiable only on the basis of
complex procedures and have a truth value that is variable according to the
definition of the terms used. Further,
certain rates such as crime rates or mortality rates suffer from difficulties
in the assembly of such data. Returns of
a statistical character from branches of an organisation or from many small
organisations to a central authority, have an inbuilt tendency to
unreliability. They are generated by
people who may complain about the excesses of bureaucracy and do not wish to be
troubled by such demands. Mortality
rates may be sourced by many different officials each acting according to his
own organisation’s procedures. Covid
returns were made primarily by hospital intensive care wards, but also might be
made by any official with mortality responsibilities, whether coroner, police,
GP or other. A national health database
may collect returns from multiple sources, every GP surgery and hospital
official completing the information according to their own lights. This inevitably leads to data unreliability
or degradation.
Moreover an organisation may be much less identifiable than one
commonly assumes, when its branches, subsidiaries, overseas units and websites
are all taken into account and this may make accounting and auditing
difficult. An organisation may also
contain many rules and principles as to how its members conduct themselves with
complex implications. From these rules,
conclusions, indeed instructions, are routinely drawn as to what a member may
or may not do. The structure of social
organisation needs to be very precise and in the failure of this requirement it
may be very problematic. The consequence
of this is that arguments in politics have real substance and are not simply
the trivial product of emotions and feelings.
Negotiations about wages, salaries and working conditions concern rules
and principles of considerable substance.
The opening and closing of plant, redundancy and on the sales side
strictures or their absence about concessions including bribes to purchasers
are of major significance. Health and
safety requirements are often abbreviated putting employees in danger. These types of issue have significant
consequences for our ‘facts’. A saw mill
with high productivity returns is no use if all the safety rails and guards
have been removed to speed up production.
So social science is much more troublesome than positivism
acknowledges. Keynes is reputed to have
said ‘when the facts change I change my mind’.
Whether it was he who said this or someone else, and whether these are his
exact words, if it were he, I do not know.
But this is an interesting remark and it is consistent with the common
guideline – study the facts and draw your conclusions on the basis of this
evidence. In the social sciences this is
not useful because when the model changes the facts change. It is very difficult especially in social
sciences to get from a few certain facts to a generalisation about a large
society. Moreover facts can mislead and
the selection of facts by a historian is often misleading. Very few history books through school and
university do anything but select the facts that glorify or celebrate national
history.
That is why we use models.
Models require that assumptions be made clear. They also enable us to see the limits set on
the validity of the ensuing generalisations.
When a trained statistician creates a generalisation he may include a
reference to its truth value. A clear
example may be found in a statement of a correlation between two factors. The added statement gives the ‘confidence limits’;
in broad terms, the confidence, expressed as a percentage, one can have in the
truth of the generalisation. Strict use
of statistics in this form is seldom practised.
But there is a further point.
Generalisations about organisations and other social objects cannot
simply be classified with statements about the physical world. As a result statements about an organisation
or other social object may be verifiable only on the basis of complex
procedures and have a truth value that is variable according to the definition
of the terms used. This to my mind is
the frequent experience of data used in financial reports and audits.
However there is another reason perhaps why social science is
disparaged: it enquires into areas of society which would prefer not to be
opened to public scrutiny. Charles Beard
remarked in 1913 on the lack of research into the structure of the legal
system. The same comment could well be
made more widely. Both the financial
system and the health services need analysis based on a sounder methodology
than mere journalistic accounts yield.
My third point lies with something more fundamental. So
far I have only touched on the fact that the object of study in the social
sciences is not an inanimate object but a living human being, or a social
institution such as a school that is amongst other things a collectivity of
human beings. There are clues in the
above. Keynes divided human motivation
into two categories, animal spirits and rational or economic man. Now consider rational or economic man in
relation to the above-mentioned circumstance of man in an organisation –
organisation man. He is not be ridiculed
as ‘one-dimensional’ man as Herbert Marcuse suggested. His motivation has become far more complex.
Between the animal spirits of man in his social relations not
least family, and economic or rational man (they are not synonymous terms)
there may be found a major range of interested motivations – increasing your
earnings, keeping your job, getting on with your boss, keeping up to date with
your knowledge, skills or craft, and no doubt much else besides. These are not just manipulable bargaining
chips; there are principles of high commitment involved when unsafe pit props,
dangerous car tyres, hygiene in the operating theatre and hospital ward are in
question.
It is an issue as to how you understand social science if you are
to give a valid account of its handling of such factors in human
motivation. But here I want to take forward one single matter. It is implied in the foregoing considerations
that an object of study interacts with the observer, and this does not rule out
science, as so many think, but shapes its definition. The
objectivity of science belongs in a context and outside that context it is less
transferable no matter how much it is still needed. The model is clear. Science is a matter of observation; there is
no room for intervention by the observer.
This model has limits when the object of study is in the social rather
than natural world.
Psychology, the subject of my first degree, seems scarcely to exist in
the public mind; even less present than sociology, it has been dispatched from
contemporary discourse. It is important
because as a science it must have a method to handle human motivation. Moreover people are very ready to find
descriptions of each other and when these comments are not abusive or otherwise
emotive, they are likely to involve seeming concepts of psychology, e.g.
‘paranoia’ without understanding. I
leave it to readers to explore these matters as they see fit. But I
must give a warning. Everyone believes
they understand psychology – for, after all it is just a matter of knowing
one’s own mind. No. What one learns in psychology is that
theories of personality are far removed from science as science is
conventionally understood. These
theories concern motive and this does not lie within the normal concept of
fact. Besides the religious
interpretations of the spirit, and the Freudian and other psycho-analytic
interpretations of the mind, beside the various theories of the behaviourists,
the professional psychologists and the medical ones, the psychiatrists, there
are the countless phrases of everyday life used to explain or describe how
other people are. This is a fraught
subject and one needs to tread with care.
False psychology and false social science abound, just as false
practices are to be found in all the professions. And there are also some very strange, if not
plain evil, applications of psychology:
brain-washing, thought-games, ‘conversion experiences’, Facebook
strategies, Pavlovian dog training.
These all indicate the variety of approaches and strategies for
analysing the motivation underlying behaviour.
This can also take us crucially into the issue of origins of religion
and myth.
But that is not the end of the matter. There have been two major abuses of
psychology. The first is the dubious
area known as eugenics. I say abuse
because it is closely tied to racism which has no foundation in science, and
has little or nothing to do with the science of psychology. The second is false psychiatry. Here one sees the misuse of technology to
cause harm or, if not that, fear. ECT
(Electroconvulsive Therapy) is claimed to be harmless but the associated area
of brain surgery is far more dubious and may be intended to cause harm as in
the case with lobotomy. This is an area
where a constitution may well be justified in establishing a ban. But bans on ‘cruel and unusual punishments’
are already in constitutional documents and nevertheless given short shrift in
certain areas of society. Progress will
be difficult.
It is worth bearing these considerations in mind when you look at the
economist’s discussion of motivation. I
have discussed the problem of analysing financial transfers above; here I need
add no more than that it is closely analogous to the problem of knowing another
person’s motive or intention. It has to
be inferred. For, immediately, the
extent to which economics uses unclear models becomes visible. Models involving an assumption of the
economically rational man, or containing conclusions such as ‘greed is good’
can be seen to be of small value when looking at human behaviour in the market
or board room. Adam Smith had a
view about greed leading to common good; but greed is not necessarily the same
as self-interest or rationality. Maynard
Keynes used a concept of animal spirits when things go wrong and a man does not
act rationally, but this is not good psychology. Almost all human beings need to make judgments
about other people’s motives, and this is an important requirement in all
administrative and professional positions.
In courts of law it is necessary consideration in the process of
reaching a verdict.
The economist’s assumption of rational man mostly boils down to
self-interest. But self-interest is
highly subjective. Banks and other
organisations are assumed to act on a rational or self-interested basis. But this can vary on a huge scale. Maximisation of shareholders profit is one
current interpretation; but the long-term interests of a firm may be very
different and involve product development, and support for effectiveness of
organisation (low levels of churn for instance).
In the
contemporary world also, realities are unclear for another reason. Much data about society is secret. There is simply no way of obtaining the data
for an enquiring social scientist.
Sometimes this is purely a result of certain types of research not being
encouraged. For instance failure rates
of businesses are not widely known beyond simple bankruptcy rates. But medical statistics are not publicly
available. Public statistics relating to
society are not reliable.
The best approach to this question may be made by taking a case
from the advanced physical sciences, namely quantum theory and the Heisenberg
Principle. One must distinguish the physicist’s understanding of
Heisenberg from the layman’s. This principle states, to put it in
untechnical language, that measuring the velocity of an elementary particle alters
its velocity; the principle is expressed by the physicist in terms of position
and momentum. In short, measurement
disturbs that which is being measured, in this case making it impossible to
determine both position and momentum of a particle. This principle
specifies the limits of physical science. It is a consequence of the
fact that, in quantum physics, you are dealing with sub-atomic particles and
these cannot be satisfactorily be regarded as like ordinary small
objects. They are not objects: your measurement uses one particle to
measure another say an electron and herein lies the difficulty. The
same principle or a variation of it defines the starting point of social
sciences.
If you start to inquire into a financial system, assume:
1 your enquiries may influence the
behaviour of participants in the system;
2 further you may or may not obtain
true answers (in contrast to a meter or other measure which ought not to lie);
3 the data you seek may be private
and confidential;
4 in short even
though scientist and observer, you are now a participant in the system.
There is much participants in the financial system may wish to
hide, even if it cannot be described as criminal. But beyond the personal aspect of this
protectionism, the secret state may be at work.
Yet here we have only a glimpse of the truth. For the secret state must conceal its
activities and it follows from this that those outside it not party to its secrets
will be denied access to the truth and fed deceit to protect the secrecy. Research is indeed problematic in these
circumstances.
Alfred Sloan in his memoirs remarks that if you are buying small
parcels of land to build up a large plot and this becomes known, then prices
will go up. The same phenomenon on the stock market is the reason
for the emergence of ‘dark pools’ in which trades of large quantities of a
stock take place outside the market and are only reported on completion; for
the comparable reason that otherwise the prices would go up or down to one’s
disadvantage.
In a very different field, Jean Rouche on ethno-cinematography has
a somewhat comparable point. He suggests that the photographer or
cameraman is never merely an observer; at some point he becomes a participant
in the scene and thereby influences what he is trying to observe and film.
On the most widely accepted model, the photographer or cameraman
merely observes; he records what he sees, just like the scientist. The cameramen at a football match do not
intervene, they merely record. But the
film director instructs his actors and in the documentary the film maker also
intervenes in the actions of his subjects.
Today television production has moved beyond this as instanced by
‘Reality TV’. It is no longer a matter of filming an event in which
the director or camera man plays no part. Instead the director is
trying to engineer situations which lead to unpredictable results, at least for
participants. The director is actively attempting to influence the
behaviour of the participants.
There is a particular point in these considerations. The model of science has dominated public
thought for at least two hundred years.
But while this remains a foundation, our concepts must be expanded. Social websites and indeed other aspects of
the web have built upon and radically extended ideas emerging as television
developed its interactive side. They are
social structures but of an unusual kind.
They may be easily manipulated by back-office or other influence. In these new circumstances we need firstly to
develop our idea of science especially social science; and then secondly
develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of social interaction, whether
in everyday life, interactive TV or indeed multi-participant web activities.
The point is persuasion and expression of emotions are part of
social intercourse and ideology in politics is part of this. Yet it is intimately bound up with
generalisations about society. Models
cannot be separated out from ideology. I
myself write in these notes to persuade and to change views and opinions. But my analysis rests on science. Considerations of ideology, belief and value
bear inevitably on the generalisations I make in social science.
In the final analysis this goes right to the heart of the
state. The foundations of the state lie
in necessity, but this alone does not take us far enough and the contingent,
whether interest or ideology or emotion, takes over thereafter. The model of objective science is challenging
to implement in the social sciences as I have tried to show. But it must remain an ideal to be
pursued. Reality is complex. Knowledge is contained within social and
political structures; it is organised, formed and shaped by social structures;
and while knowledge is driven by objectivity, it may also be permeated by the
subjective, whether ideology or other personal beliefs, and contained within
structures such as organisations that shape attitudes, or indeed the state. We need to be much more aware of this
foundation in discussing social and political affairs; the present excess of
deceit is damaging to the state as well as to society.
PJC
1 January 2024