Marketable methods
Education as psychology’s primary market
The fact is that from the beginning of the 20th c. psychology moved away from being a
“pure science” to marketing its products. This meant that the market was able to
influence the direction of the discipline’s investigatory practices. Practices that were
useful in the construction of specific marketable products were more likely to receive a
boost than those which did not produce such products.
Of course, the fact is that the discipline also had the resources to produce marketable
products. Most notably,
(1) the Galtonian approach to individual differences and
(2) the use of experimental treatment groups.
Both methodologies made psychology into a socially relevant discipline.
Of course, the availability of these two resources for socially relevant research also
depended on the historical availability of institutions that would in fact avail themselves
of these resources because they found them to be useful. One such institution was the
field of education. It was the Herbartians of the 19th c. who laid the groundwork for this
relationship between psychology and education (even though the Herbartians had little
direct effect on the development of psychology). Charles Judd who was to have a
prominent place in American educational psychology recalls, in1989 when he returned
from Wundt’s lab and had been appointed professor at the School of Pedagogy at New
York University, lecturing enthusiastically on Weber’s law to a class of teachers when he
was interrupted by one gray-haired teacher auditor who asked “Professor, will you tell us
how this law can in principle help us to improve my teaching of children”. Judd had no
answer!
What was it that educationists (and the institution of public education) required?
Given the enormous differences in educational institutions and the social demands placed
on schools in different countries, there was considerable national divergence in
schooling. However, in the US the alliance between education and psychology was
especially prominent even though what teachers required and what school administrators
required was very different. Yet this link between psychology and education made
psychology socially relevant. It should be noted of course that in the 1890s when
psychologists like G. Stanley Hall became interested in child development, psychology’s
contribution was fairly crude, restricted to a kind of psychological census taking, given
the limited scientific background of teachers. Yet the important point was that there was
established a conceptual link, even if very vaguely between psychology and education.
After the turn of the century, psychologists’ relationship with teachers became
increasingly overshadowed by a new generation of professional educational
administrators. This group took control of the educational systems adapting education to
suit the changing order of corporate industrialism. The expansion of the American public
educational system was nothing short of astonishing. Between 1890 and 1920 there was
one public high school built each and every day and enrollment increases were of the
order of 1000%. Between 1902 and 1913 public expenditure on education more than
doubled and between 1913 and 1922 it tripled. In fact, professional educational
administrators had little in common with classroom teachers. Indeed, this profession of
educational administrators distanced itself from frontline classroom teachers (teaching
was deemed to be a transient, unrewarding, unprofessional and female task) and
established their own university curricula, journals, etc., and by 1914 became what we
might call CEOs of educational systems. It was this profession rather than teachers which
was psychology’s first market.
Of course, professional educational administrators were not interested in psychology’s
traditional experimental laboratory practices. Research for these professional
administrators had to be relevant to their managerial concerns. This meant that research
had to yield comparable quantitative data on the performance of large numbers of
individuals (students) under restricted conditions (i.e., in schools). Occasionally, these
professional administrators simply needed to justify the managerial decisions which they
judged expedient for enhancing and maintaining the institution of public education. In
fact, early educational administrators very frequently made use of an industrial metaphor:
“education is a shaping process as much as the manufacture of steel rails”. Elaborate
analogies were drawn between stockholders and parents, general managers of factories
and superintendents of schools, foremen and principles, and industrial workers and
teachers. Within that framework there was a natural carry-over from industry to
education – both could be scientifically managed, which included:
1. measurement and comparison of comparable results,
2. analysis and comparison of the conditions under which the results were secured –
especially the means and time it took to get the results,
3. the consistent adoption and use of those means to justify themselves most fully by
their results, abandoning those that fail.
Obviously, this scheme assigned a very important role to research, especially points 1 and
2, above, in order that appropriate action might be taken and justified in point 3 above.
Today we call this “outcome-driven research”.
Psychologists quickly responded to this scheme which required the kind of research that
was very different from laboratory experimental studies or even the simply census-taking
that characterized developmental psychology of child study by way of questionnaire. By
1910 a new Journal of Educational Psychology was established by Thorndike at
Columbia Teachers College which saw a few traditional experimentalists like Carl
Seashore and Edmund Sanford join the psychology devoted to “administration”. Sanford
writes: “so long as the science must be financed by appropriations and endowments, the
new psychology is called upon to furnish an effective defense against ignorant and hostile
criticism and provide a tangible excuse for investment of institutional capital”.
What Sanford did not anticipate was that this alliance between psychology and
educational administration would have consequences for psychology more profound than
any contribution that psychology was likely to make to education. Thus
1. In the first place it broke with the kind of educational psychology that had been
envisioned by the pioneering giants of American psychology such as William
James, Baldwin, Hall and Dewey. These psychologists had envisioned a
psychology of child study (of the child “mind”) but the new educational
psychology demanded the management of (passive) children on the basis of
performance measures so as to justify the allocation of financial resources.
2. But the new educational psychology proved popular because it could be extended
to other domains as well, most notably the military administration during WWI.
The methods of “mental” (test) measurement could be extended readily to the
military. The entire field of applied psychology was now devoted to usefulness in
administrative contexts. During the 1920 and 1930s large numbers of
psychologist sought to produce psychological knowledge in service of practical
contexts so much so that one prominent psychologist Woodworth spoke of
psychology changing affiliation from philosophy to education. What this shift in
allegiance came down to was that if knowledge is to be practically useful it was
so in marketable administrative contexts.
3. The links between social (economic-political) administration and psychology
affected both. Psychological practices had social repercussions but the demands
of administration also affected psychological investigation. Thorndike for
example held that the science of education (administration) will contribute
abundantly to psychology! The demands of the market profoundly affected the
research practices of psychology such that research could produce the kind of
knowledge that was useful to the administration and education, military, business
and industry.
4. This kind of knowledge was obviously statistical. Thus it was not the individual
(mind) that was of interest but rather the individual’s performance relative to the
performances of groups of individuals (i.e., “statistically constituted collective
subjects”). Dealing with individual in terms of categories was the essence of
administrative practices.
5. But the demand of administration was more specific than this. It also wanted
methods for comparison of conditions and the measurement of results. E. C.
Sanford, President of Clark University and a distinguished psychologist
researcher, identified three methods that psychology could contribute to education
and any rationalized social practice:
(a) the standard laboratory study exemplified in German investigations of say
memory by Ebbinghaus (a generation after Wundt),
(b). the work on individual differences as exemplified by the method of mental
testing (Galton), and
(c) the classroom experiment (pioneered by W. H. Winch in England, see below)
in which school children matched in mental ability would be exposed to different
method of instruction (conditions/interventions) and their performance would be
assessed before and after the intervention (say, different instruction formats). So
that children were assed prior to the introduction of the intervention and then a
again after the introduction of the intervention – pre and post intervention design.
The first (laboratory) and third methods (classroom experiment) compared the
efficiency of different techniques of learning and instruction, the second method
could be used to select individuals for certain programs (rather than the other way
around).
6. If we examine these methods, we can begin with the second (individual
differences – Galton) and third (classroom) methods: both individual differences
and classroom experiments which depended heavily and directly on the
educational market. I will examine the first experimental method later.
Mental testing (individual differences)
The too-ready marketability of mental tests profoundly affected the shape of
psychological research (and the discipline of Psychology). After WWI there was an
enormous expansion in the use of mental tests. This work had so little relation to the
more traditional forms of psychological experimentation that eventually it seemed as if
there were two distinct disciplines of psychology: one experimental and the other based
on correlational statistics used in mental testing. (the “experimental” versus the
“psychometric” or correlational traditions).
Mental testing flourished because of interest in individual differences. However it should
be obvious that the phrase “individual differences” is vague (it can refer to novelist’s
work as readily as the psychologist’s) and indeed interest in individual differences
preceded the work on mental testing (e.g., reaction time studies, somato-typing,
physiognomy of the face, anthropomorphic measurements, and phrenology). What
distinguished mental testing was not its interest in individual differences or its preference
for quantitative methods, but rather the fact that the medium of mental tests severed the
ancient link between psyche and soma and proposed to assess individual differences
entire by measuring function. In practice this meant measuring performances in
restricted situations. (Note no longer an interest in mind but in functional performances
meaning performances in restricted situations to restricted response categories.)
This amounted to a redefinition of the object of investigation; thus, psychological
differences were now defined in terms of differences in measures of individual
performance. It was performance at uniform set tasks that counted psychologically
(and not for example facial expression or artistic style). On this somewhat restricted basis
a broadly conceived study of individual differences was entirely possible.
In fact, during the earlier periods prior to the quantitative study of individual differences
(i.e., early in the 19th c.), most investigators were not interested in comparing individual
performances as such, but in characterizing psychological types and human
individuality. Thus, before Alfred Binet developed IQ tests, Binet worked on “individual
psychology” where psychological performance measures were used to assess an
individual’s style of functioning. William Stern distinguished between the study of
human variety and the study of individuality and accorded the latter a much higher status.
James Mark Baldwin had criticized Wundt’s experimental psychology for ignoring
individual style which Baldwin too conceived of in typological terms.
What the development of mental testing did was to redefine the problem of individual
differences (not in terms of typology or types but in terms of comparison of individual
performances. Thus, the quality of a performance was no longer used to characterize the
individual in terms of some universal type instead an individual’s performances measure
was used to specify an individual’s position relative to an aggregate of individual
performances. But in comparing an individual score to a group norm (mean) implies that
characterizing an individual depends as much on the individual as it does on the group.
The whole idea was that whatever individual characteristics were being measured these
characteristics belonged to all individuals albeit in different quantities. Here is where we
have the notion of a variable (as a universal characteristic that can be quantified in terms
of different people’s values on the variable) and, ironically, rather than measuring the
individual as different from other individuals, this method of mental testing actually
eliminated individuals by reducing them to the abstraction of a collection of points in a
set of aggregates.
So that the statistical measurement of individual differences really constituted the very
antithesis of psychological individuality, even as it also served to express directly a very
different concern namely the problem of conformity. The practice of setting up norms in
terms of which individuals could be assessed was however only “psychological” by
inference since the norms were those of social performances and therefore carried
powerful evaluative significance. Thus it was not an interest in the mental capacities that
motivated the study of individual differences in performance but rather a way of
assessing the individual who would most effectively conform to socially established
criteria – ranging from “general intelligence” of the eugenicists to qualities needed to
become a good salesman – all this was blatantly ideological and very practical.
Throughout the 19th c. individual differences were of interest because (1) individuals in
liberal democracies could advance themselves in competition with others, and (2)
industrial and administrative institutions depended on categories of individuals to manage
their businesses. With enormous rise of industrialization and bureaucratically
managed/administered institutions in the19th c. there were two phenomena of particular
interest to psychological practice: education and the management of social deviance. To
way to deal with these there were two corresponding forms of “examination”: medical
and academic. The latter was dealt with the selection of senior administrators, the former
with dealt with psychiatric patients or criminals who were assessed for moral fitness
(mental hygiene). Later in the 19th c. this distinction became blurred (the social category
of “fitness” became a psychological category of “ability”), and given the Darwinian
influence the entire population was thought of as biologically fixed members of one class
(everyone could be assessed/tested in terms of ability or some other psychological trait).
Psychology exploited and was exploited to contribute the scientific classification of these
“examinations” and did so through the expanded use of the “collective subject” involving
large scale natural (e.g., “age” and “sex”) and psychometrically (e.g., “IQ” or “good
learners”) defined groups. Individuals were of interest only as representatives of
aggregates. In “psychological clinics” there still remained some interests in individuals
(as in Binet’s original effort to determine individual children who needed special
educational opportunities to succeed) but insofar as this practice was to have a scientific
basis it required statistical norms (of the collective subject). The gap between
understanding the individual mind and understanding the individual in terms of statistical
norms seemed unbridgeable.
Marketable mental testing ensured the dominant place in psychological research for a
style of investigative practice that had been pioneered by Galton. This applied to the
social construction of the investigative situation where some features of Galtonian
anthropometry were exaggerated to the point of bizarre caricature in mass testing
methods developed in the military and school systems (today this practice continues in
university psychology departments). It also applied to the way in which statistical
techniques were used to create the “objects” (collective subjects) that where in fact the
real focus of the research (i.e., statistical distributions of scores contributed by a mass of
individuals).
The ready adoption of the Galtonian model by a significant section of American
psychology is not surprising if one considers the parallels between the situation faced by
Galton and by early 20th c. American psychologists. Galton wanted to establish a social
science of human heredity (which one could never do so through controlled experiments
and so used statistical comparison of group attributes). American psychologists were
interested in promoting socially relevant science involving aspects of human conduct and
performance that was also not accessible to precise experimental study under controlled
laboratory conditions. The emerging psychometrics (biometrics) offered a statistical
technique (initiated by Galton and Pearson) which promised a way around the problem
(of not being able to experiment). Something that looked like a science could apparently
be created through statistical rather than experimental means.
Obviously, there is a problem about trying to establish knowledge claims on the basis of
the Galtonian model. In the classical experiment the aim was to establish functional
relationships between a (stimulus) variable under the experimenter’s control and the
observers report (or later, when introspection was abandoned, the animal or human
“response”), and therefore there was a fundamental asymmetry in evaluating functional
relations was essential for making causal attributions (whether to the subject, stimulus
effect, or both).
However, the situation is very different in the Galtonian model. Here the experimenter
must make attributions in a situation over which he has no control. That is, the
experimenter does not attempt to influence (intervene in) the situation and hence
whatever functional relations there are (between different tests and test scores) are
symmetrical in the sense that no cause can be attributed to any of the variables that are
being tested. All that can be managed is to get a “covariance” (concomitant) measure
(two things go together –a co-relation). The descriptive statistics of the Galton-Pearson
school provide such measures. Thus, the co-relation constituted the functional
relationship between variables. In contrast, in the traditional experimental model,
statistics were only used to ensure reliability of observations.
Hence, American psychology became bifurcated in the kinds of knowledge claims it
offered. At first this produced a great deal of confusion. Only gradually there emerged a
kind of official doctrine: the ideal of research practice is one that combined the
manipulative aspects of the experimental model with statistically constituted objects of
investigation.
What was not noticed until much later that this “mix” deprived the experimental
manipulation of its original rationale which was the production of some causal process
in the individual psychophysical system. Interest had shifted to the statistical outcome of
experimental trials as manifested in differences between individuals.
This was quite acceptable to many psychologists who saw their research as developing
methods of social control of individuals (control enabled prediction and vice versa). Such
a psychology had to use measurements in order to make predictions about future effects
that could be taken into account by administrators, etc. In principle such predictions
(reliably expected on the basis of previous measurements) could of course be made on a
purely statistical basis. But that would require large-scale research consuming extended
time. Psychology would have to be far better established as a discipline before it could
muster the resources for such research. Even then the social organization of research
especially individual professional academic career patterns favored small studies in brief
time.
It is therefore not surprising that the Galtonian method did not establish its claim to social
relevance on the basis of sophisticated long-term statistical studies. Of course, there was
a highly effective short-cut available – namely to hitch the wagon to the prevailing
preconceptions regarding causation in human affairs. Those preconceptions prescribed
that human interaction was to be interpreted as an effect of stable, inherently causal
factors characterizing each and every separate individual. The most important of these
were defined as psychological in nature, intelligence and temperament to begin with.
Such factors were causal in the sense that they set rigid limits for individual action and
were themselves unalterable. We see here the link between hereditarian dogma and the
whole motivation for the eugenics program.
We see this in the reliance on the normal distribution which was thought to be the
distribution of biological traits - the same in everyone except that everyone has slightly
different values of the biological variables. Even where the hereditarian preconception
was dropped in favor of the environment (e.g, with Watson’s behaviorist declaration), the
distribution of psychological characteristics commitment remained in place.
The transformation of the old psychology of group differences by Galton resulted in an
important development in the nature of groups that were carriers of psychological
attributes. Originally, psychology had simply adopted the social categories (age and sex),
but Galtonian use of statistics greatly facilitated the artificial creation of new groups
whose defining characteristic (usually IQ performance) was based on the performance on
some psychological test. A score on a mental test (these tests could be based on any
category whatever from IQ to self-esteem to extroversion etc. etc.)) conferred
membership in an abstract collectivity created for the purposes of psychological
research. This opened up untold vistas for such research because psychologists could
create these kinds of collectivities ad infinitum and then explore the statistical
relationships between them.
Origins of the treatment group
I noted in the first half of the 20th c. psychology came to rely increasingly on the
construction of “collective subjects” for generating knowledge claims. Such constructed
collectivities were not found outside psychological practice but depended on the
intervention of the investigator. Three types of artificial collectivities were distinguished.
1. Those that were the result of averaging the performance of individuals subjected
to similar experimental conditions. This first type represented an outgrowth of the
traditional experiment procedures (Wundt etc.).
2. Those that were constituted from scores obtained by some use of psychometric
testing. This type owes its existence to the demands placed on psychological
practice by the market place education and industry).
3. Those that were produced by subjecting groups of individuals to different
treatment conditions – and this type also appear to have been produced by the
market.
We have seen that for example educational administrators (efficiency experts)
expected that (a) psychological research could provide methods of measurement that
would permit the comparison of results (comparing the performance of the individual
to that of the group). This was fulfilled in “mental tests”. But they also expected that
(b) psychology could evaluate the effects of various kind so intervention (say
different teaching strategies or programs). To evaluate the efficiency of these
different interventions, what was needed was a way of comparing the individuals who
were the recipients of these different interventions. Traditional experimental
psychology was of little help here because it focused on the individual mind alone.
Here the pioneering work of W. H. Winch in England was important. Winch was a
school inspector and he was interested in assessing the effectiveness of various
classroom conditions on such factors of mental fatigue and transfer of training in
students. To do this, he subjected equivalent groups of children to different
conditions, and taking relevant measures before and after the intervention (pre-post
test design or quasi-experimental designs). There was nothing surprising about this
method. Schools were under great pressure and individual students were not
important compared to the overall effective functioning of the classrooms.
What is interesting about these early classroom studies is that they took place in an
institutional environment that allowed for the easy manipulation of intervention
conditions. Thus, studies of work efficiency (in industry) readily took on
experimental form. This work assessing the effects of varying work conditions on
outcome productivity provided strong incentive for combining the use of group data
with the experimental method. Treatment group approaches to research (the group
defined by the treatment or intervention it was given) quickly became popular in the
research journals. But unlike the educational classroom studies (which were restricted
to the classroom and work at school), the work efficiency studies were concerned not
just fatigue in the particular situation of the classroom but with fatigue and learning
in general or in the abstract (in any situation).
The history of the treatment group methodology ran somewhat differently in applied
psychology than it did laboratory research. By the 1920s the treatment group
procedure was being sold in the US as the “control experiment” and as the best way
to evaluate the effects of various conditions of work efficiency. It also became the
textbook method of educational psychology: “experimentation pays in terms of cash”.
Technically the treatment method of defining groups became quite sophisticated
expounding on randomization and complex experimental designs some two years
before R. A. Fisher (1925) published his well-known text on the topic.
Yet in spite of these promising beginnings, the history of the treatment group
methodology was not exactly a success (as judged by the number of studies reported
in J of Educational Psychology or the J of Applied Psychology between 1915 and
1936). For one thing there was almost no demand for this kind of methodology
outside the educational context, for another the research occurred in institutional
setting that allowed for little variation conditions of intervention. There was also
disappointment with the results, and the claims made for the quantitative and
experimental method had been wildly optimistic. Moreover, the shape of this kind of
research was always at the mercy of bureaucracies and institutional requirements, and
once the “cult of efficiency” was over, the expansion of this kind of research
declined.
More generally there were always limits on the use of the experimental approach in
institutions that were geared to practical goals and interests. Not only can
measurement be a practical nuisance in these contexts but it also can be seen as a
threat to vested interests and traditional practices of the established power groups.
Although psychologists could help in selecting individuals for pre-established
programs, and could also help in the selection of different programs, the former was
clearly the safer bet (or else risk upsetting the power that be).
Obviously this situation is very different in the laboratory where experimentation
could be safely used as the preferred method. Thus, in the safety of the university
laboratory, the kind of experimentation that had emerged in the applied setting could
evolve into a vehicle for the fantasy of an omnipotent science of human control (as
some saw psychology). Moreover, in its eagerness to become an autonomous science,
American psychology was not inclined to humbly serve the educational or industrial
work settings as so serve as “psychological technicians”; rather, they saw what
children or workers did in school or factory as merely an instance of the operation of
“generalized laws of learning” etc. that manifested themselves in all of human
behavior. Thus, the treatment group methodology became, in the hands of an
ambitious science, a methodology for providing the basis for universal laws of
human behavior. By 1936, 35% of the J of Experimental Psychology used this
methodology.
Thus, academic psychology was not interested in assessing the effect of specific
interventions in specific institutional contexts (what we today might refer to as
“quality control research”); rather, academic psychologists were interested in
interventions or treatments that affected all human behavior in all conceivable
contexts. Here we have the pretentious claim that practical efforts to enhance
performance was like “engineering” whereas the science of psychology sought the
universal effects of intervention/treatment on all behavior and as such was like
“physics”. The abstract laws of learning (during the heyday of behaviorism in
the1920-1950s) were deemed to be like the laws of physics. Of course physics had to
solve the problem of the variability of observations and the uniformity of laws but
this was done by showing that errors (individual differences) in observation obeyed
statistical regularities (relegated to “error variance”). This assumption allowed
psychologists to retain their faith in the existence of abstract universal laws even as
they were daily confronted by human and animal variability.
The faith in universal laws produced an interpretation of variability in observations in
terms of an assumption that individual behavior varied continuously on a common set
of dimensions (a common “human nature”). This gave rise to a distinction between
genuine laws of behavior and mere generalizations based on statistical observations.
If this distinction could be avoided – and it certainly was – then the variability in
observations could be turned into an advantage. Groups could be assessed in terms of
the mean and standard deviation which made it terribly easy to produce
generalizations (every experiment finds some “effects”!) which could then be
expressed as “laws” (provided one lived in an academic culture that did not
distinguish between statistical and psychological laws, of course). This accounted for
the popularity of group experiments in “pure” (versus applied) psychology….
This pure psychology was really an abstract form of the practice of controlling the
performance of large numbers of individuals by way of environmental intervention.
Thus, the fundamental laws were relationships between these environmental
interventions and changes in response to such interventions. Obviously for a science
that aspired to laws between environment and response, treatment group methodology
in practical contexts served very well indeed. In transferring this kind methodology to
the laboratory one can construct a model of the kind of world that is presupposed by
the laws of the new science (bells of scientific materialism!). It is a world wherein
individuals are stripped of their identity (their historical existence as individuals) and
then become vehicles of the operation of totally abstract laws of
behavior/environment defined over abstract collective subjects.
Thus, the treatment group method was ideally suited for establishing knowledge
claims about the relationship between abstract external influences and equally
abstract organisms.
Taking the same group of subjects through the same set of environmental variations
could be used for this purpose (and was) but this approach provided subjects with a
bit of history (even though it was only specially constructed experimental history)
and this meant that the results could not be unambiguous interpreted. Only the
treatment group could provide a practical construction that the so-called pure science
of behavior required. As the use of treatment groups increased, the empirical basis for
questioning the prevailing shape of psychological theory became narrower. That is,
treatment group gave the kind of results that the theory of universal laws
presupposed, namely that there are lawful relations between treatment intervention
(environment) and behavior/response.
To say or not to say
The problem with “perception/cognition” language is that words like “know”, “aware
of”, and “conscious of” are all linked to the metaphor of seeing (or in more contemporary
terms ‘representation”) which is essentially a passive (“re-presenting”) taking in of the
world (in perceiving, believing, and knowing). But as I pointed out the phenomenon of
“becoming conscious…” (in seeing that, believing that) remains a very puzzling one (one
that is usually by-passed in cognitive discourse).
Instead, I proposed that “becoming conscious of…” is inherent in, or the result of, the
exercise of a skill, namely the skill of “saying” (articulation/expression in language) how
we are engaged (see, experience, act, etc.) in the world. Thus, I rejected the notion that
consciousness is a mirror that “re-presents” the world; rather, “becoming conscious of…”
is a “spelling out” of the way we find ourselves engaged in the world.
“Spelling out” is to make explicit, to say something in a fully elaborate manner, to make
clear (to give “shape” to) what one is doing, seeing, knowing, experiencing (i.e., how one
is engaged). This making explicit is not necessarily to speak/write (but it is analogous to
speaking or writing) but using language is one way “of becoming conscious of…” There
is much to be said here, but one thing is clear that much of how we are engaged in the
world (find ourselves in the world) need not be spelled out and hence we need not
become explicitly conscious of….we may be conscious of how we live but we need not
be explicitly conscious of how we live. So minimally we require at least two conceptions
of “consciousness”: (1) at the level of “lived experience” (reflexive awareness), and (2) at
the level of explicit consciousness (articulation) where we have spelled out our lived
experience.
Why would we spell-out our lived experience; why not simply live it? Obviously we
could not, even if we tried, to spell out every detail of our lived experience (how would
we know that or when we had in fact done so?), and when we do, we presumably have
some reason or interest in doing so, for we do so very selectively. In other words, explicit
consciousness is not something we should take for granted; rather, we should take its
absence for granted and then understand “becoming explicitly conscious of…” as
something we achieve (consciousness is something to be achieved) in spelling out as a
specific skill that we exercise only selectively on specific occasions. Moreover, we
exercise this skill of spelling out once we have appraised/evaluated our engagement in
the world and find reasons for (not) spelling out our engagement. The notion of prior
appraisal here is a difficult one since obviously in a way appraisal itself depends on our
capacity for language. By appraisal I mean a “pre-conceptual understanding” that is
reflexively part of lived experience/understanding. Thus, we have a pre-conceptual
understanding of the way we find ourselves in the world (intuitively, if you like) and at
some level this obviously involves our being aware of the way we live, but then we have
to exercise the skill (learned/acquired) of spelling out this intuitive (reflexive) awareness
so that we become explicitly conscious (on which we can then reflect).
The exercise of this skill of spelling out is itself a way of being engaged in the world; that
is, a way of being in the world reflectively. Thus, becoming explicitly conscious that we
are (more or less) explicitly conscious (in having spelled out some of our engagements) is
to be in the world reflectively/consciously. Evidently, the transition between the reflexive
understandings of lived experience to the reflection (or “thinking”) on how one lives is
mediated by the exercise of the skill of spelling out. Moreover if this transition is not
disjunctive and it is neither clear just when we are explicitly conscious or if explicit
consciousness is ever complete/finished (to what end?). If we consider that life “pushes”
us ever forward, the task of becoming explicitly conscious of how we live (are lived,
social-culturally or historically) is never complete. [For presumably to have spelled out
on a particular occasion changes us enough such that we will have to do so again as life
relentlessly pushes us forward.]
Thus, the phenomenon of self-deception must be understood within this volition-action
framework (i.e., wherein I may or may not – volition – spell-out my engagements action/practice). A first description of self-deception is as follows.
The person who is self-deceived is someone who on the basis of his appraisal of
his engagements has overriding reasons not to explicitly spell-out the way he is
engaged in the world. That is, on the basis of his reflexive understanding that is
implicit in his lived experience such a person skillfully or systematically avoids
spelling out how he lives in the world. Or he refuses (for whatever reason – hence
“intentionally”) to spell out (refuses to become explicitly conscious of) how he
lives.
Now in so refusing to become explicitly conscious of how one is engaged, the person also
avoids reflecting on his refusal to spell-out his engagement (since presumable to do so
would require that he be explicitly conscious of how he is engaged).
In tying consciousness to spelling out (and so to language) we must take note of two
caveats.
(1) Not all uses of language, all speaking, is spelling out and hence becoming
conscious. In fact most of our speaking/writing does not lead us to become
explicitly conscious (most speaking I phatic or else fails to spell out our
relationship to the world as we are engaged in it), and in understanding what the
other person says we usually do not spell out our understanding of the other (in
fact, most often we do not) and so we avoid becoming explicitly conscious of the
other’s sense/origin of meaning (or, of the significance of what the other says in
relation to ourselves). Thus, using language is not necessarily to spell out and so
becoming conscious of. (Here is the example of the actor who is speaking but not
explicitly spelling out his engagement in the world but we might just as well take
as an example anyone who uses language to distance him/herself from others or
the implications of his/her words.)
(2) One might spell out how one finds oneself in the world in ways other than
language, or better in the context of language but in forms of social practices that
are embedded in language but are themselves not speck practices. Thus, one
might well spell out how one is engaged in the languages of art, ritual,
incantations, meditations, celebration, etc. The question that rises in this context is
whether these forms of spelling out in fact lead to becoming explicitly conscious
of…I want to allow that they do
Tying spelling out to explicitly consciousness is minimally a claim that this is something
only a person can do for him/herself. Thus, while I can describe your engagement in the
world (e.g., I can describe what “subjects’” in experiments are doing) I am only
describing what I take to be another’s consciousness in being in the world (I am only
spelling out what I take to be my engagement in the world in relation to the other) but I
cannot spell out another’s engagement as s/he is engaged – the other must do so for
him/herself. This claim aligns well with Charles Taylor’s notion of “agency” (being a
person) which the latter defines in terms of “what matters” to me. Or what is fundamental
to being a human agent is that “things matter” to me and that I can spell out “what so
matters” to me in an original way.
We can then hazard a second description of self-deception as follows.
In general, someone who is self-deceived is someone of whom it is patently
characteristic that even when normally appropriate, s/he persistently avoids
spelling out some aspect of the way s/he is engaged. This avoidance may be
understood by others as a person’s inability to admit the truth to him/herself even
thought s/he must know in his heart it is so. This implies a kind of genuineness is
his/her ignoring (how s/he lives), and hence s/he is not merely hypocritical or
lying to others. Yet we also fell that in some sense the person could admit the
truth (i.e., spell out and become explicitly conscious) if only s/he would. It is a
kind of “willful (intentional) ignorance” as Soren Kierkegaard calls it.
Now this kind of avoidance in spelling out (i.e., willful ignorance) is not due to an
inability or lack of will-power but rather it is due to the self-deceiver’s tacitly “adopted”
policy. Thus, when the person does not spell out this means he will not spell out where
this “will not” refers to a general policy commitment (and not to some ad hoc decision
not to spell out). What is here at issue is the distinction between what we might call the
motive for self-deception and the intention to self-deception. No doubt self-deception has
motives (such as fear or anxiety) but the self-deceiver avoids spelling out his/her
engagement (and along with it the motives for his/her engagement) as a matter of
adherence to a policy of saying nothing about how he lives.
Therefore the self-deceiver:
1. says nothing (does not spell out his/her engagement) or remains silent,
2. yet gives the impression to others that he could spell out his/her engagement, if
only s/he would,
3. but also gives the impression to others that she has rendered him/herself incapable
of spelling out his/her engagement.
We then asked “why would the self-deceiver commit him/herself to a policy of not
spelling out (of not becoming explicitly conscious about how s/he is engaged and so
admit the truth of how s/he is engaged)?” Obviously, this is not because we do not
ordinarily spell out our engagements since, as noted above, this is common enough.
Rather, whatever reasons for not spelling out his/her engagements, these reasons also
serve for not spelling out our prior appraisal and adoption of a commitment to a policy of
not spelling out. For it is obvious that if the self-deceiver were to spell out his policy of
not spelling out, he would also have to spell out his engagement. But the self-deceiver
has committed himself not to spell out his engagement. Hence the reason for not spelling
out his adherence to a policy of not spelling out is also the same reason for not spelling
out his implicit appraisal of his engagement.
Example: I have good reason for not spelling out even to myself that I have failed in
realizing my ambition. Consequently I adopt a policy of not spelling out my failure of
ambition. This policy now obligates me to not spell out the appraisal of my failure in
realizing my ambition and also of adopting the tactic of not spelling out this policy. For it
should be obvious that if I were to spell out the tactic of adopting a policy of not spelling
out, I would have to spell out my failure in achieving my ambition (and there presumably
good reasons for not doing so –what are they?). The policy is that I not even spell out this
policy to myself and hence the policy is a “self-covering policy”, the adoption of which is
never to make the policy explicit.
Now evidently such a self-covering policy is very different from not spelling out
something on a particular occasion for one or other reason (presumable something very
common - and I can always spell out when I am demanded or cared to do so at some
future time). The self-covering policy is not something we can spell out even when it is
demanded of us say by others who note that we are seemingly always silent about some
engagement and then demand to know why).
In other words, the self-covering policy (which I adopt “automatically” based on
reflexive appraisal, and hence not intentionally and so is not open to explicit
consciousness) in our normal course of living life and spelling out our engagements in the
world, leaves “gaps” or “breaks” in our living as we approach the hidden area in
question. Thus, certain memories, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, desires, actions, etc.,
which may otherwise be readily spelled out are now not spelled out (avoided) even when,
and especially when, the occasion is appropriate for spelling out.
Thus, the self-covering policy generates “cover stories” or attempts to fill-in the gaps or
breaks in explicit consciousness. We create cover stories in order to mask/disguise,
rationalize/intellectualize our not spelling out our engagements. These cover stories are at
variance with how in fact we are engaged and so require ever greater ingenuity to make
them plausible and protect us from having our silence detected by other, and especially
ourselves. In other words, we confabulate in sense of self by building a façade of
integrity, on risk that otherwise we lose our integrity or sense of self. In a way we create
personal myths – myths that are rationalizations of our absence of integrity in the eyes of
others – even as we are no not explicitly conscious of this lack of integrity we may be
reminded of our lack of integrity (our silences) by others.
In this context of cover stories, or what I have called personal myths, we can raise the
distinction between “merely saying” (confabulations/myths) and “sincerely saying”.
Thus, the paradox of self-deceiver’s sincere insincerity is generated by the ambiguity in
the notion of sincerity. When are we sincere? Fingarette suggest that we can explicate the
ambiguity of this notion of sincerity now that we have in place the concept of becoming
explicitly conscious in terms of the skill of spelling out.
But first we must get rid of the common notion that sincerity requires that a person’s
behavior/conduct conforms to his explicit declarations of his conduct/behavior
(consistency of action and words). This is the notion of sincerity that cognitive
dissonance theories have in mind. I want to resist this notion that if a person’s behavior
does not match his words we have an instance of self-deception (e.g., while John declares
his loyalty in friendship on every occasion he is so easily swept up in his emotions that
his declaration of friendship does not demonstrate itself in action – this is reason to
question John’s sincerity in what he says but it does not indicate that John is selfdeceived – he is simply “flighty” and John is merely mistaken in taking his declarations
of loyalty for enduring commitment in action).
What we do always mean when using the word sincerity is conformity between what a
person tells himself and what he tells others. Formally the criteria for this “deeper sense
of sincerity” are as follows.
1. It is not the case that there is an intentional difference in the way a person spells
out his engagement to others and how he spells out his engagement to himself.
2. The way a person spells out his engagement to himself reflects that engagement
correctly.
3. The person is not intentionally wrong in the way he expresses his engagement.
If (1) does not hold there seems to be an intentional difference between the way a person
spells out his engagement to himself and how he spells out his engagement to others.
Such a person is not sincere (he does not tell us what he tells himself – or his public
declarations are at variance with his private ones).
If (1) does not hold but (2) does (he spells out his engagement correctly to himself but he
does not tell others the same thing). In this case we have someone who lies/deceives (he
tells himself what is the case but he tells others something differently).
If (1) and (2) hold but (3) does not, the person is intentionally wrong in the way he spells
out his engagement), and we have a kind of shallow sincerity (characteristic of someone
who is irresponsible, impetuous, erratic etc.). Such a person tells others what he tells
himself and what he tells himself is the way things are for him but he nevertheless gives
the impression that he is in some sense unskillful in how he spells out his
engagements…he does not spell them out accurately.
If (1) and (3) hold, then the person is sincere for if (1) and (3) hold then normally (2) also
holds. To say that (2) normally holds is to say that normally a person tells himself the
truth about the way he is engaged.
Now the odd but not so rare case is when (2) does not hold but (1) and (3) do hold. The
person tells himself what he tells others, and he is not intentionally wrong in the way he
spells out his engagements, but he does not spell out his engagements as he is really
engaged (or, as we would spell out his engagements if we were him). Such a person is
sincere at first glance for he tells others what he tells himself about his engagements, and
he is not intentionally wrong about how he spells out his engagements, but the more we
observe him in time, the more we are convinced that something is awry. Thus, we see
that the story he tells others is the same as the story he tells himself, and he is not
intentionally wrong about how he spells out the story, rather he seems purposefully
wrong in that the story is not accurate about he is in fact engaged. This then is the deeper
sense of insincerity.
Thus, we say that this person seems to believe what he says (and he says to himself what
he says to us) yet he seems to be fooling himself. This is puzzling precisely because we
are not used to thinking of explicit consciousness as a form of spelling out but are still
stuck in the old perception/cognition way of thinking about consciousness as just
mirroring the world as it is. In focusing on this perception/cognition conception of
consciousness, we fail to appreciate the consequences of the banal truth that what a
person tells himself (spells out) is highly selective, purposeful or intentional and therefore
a person may tell himself what is not so.
The more we come to appreciate that (2) does not hold in particular circumstances (i.e.,
the more a person seems to be inaccurate in spelling out his engagement), the more deem
the person to be self-deceived. Similarly, the more we overlook the importance of (2)
(accuracy in saying how we are engaged) in favor of (1) (consistency in telling himself
what he tells others), the more we insist on his sincerity. Thus, we argue that the person
must be sincere since he tells us what he tells himself, but what is troublesome is he is not
accurate in what he says about how he is engaged. [We note here the social
circumstances of evaluating of another person’s self-deception (lack of sincerity), we
spell out and compare what we would experience where we in his shoes compared to how
he spells out his engagement.]
All this is very much more complicated by the fact that we, including the self-deceiver,
take very seriously what we tell ourselves (surely I am sincere if I tell myself what I tell
others!). For when we take ourselves (too?) seriously we tend to act in a way that reflects
our understanding (our spelling out) and so increases the potential for self-deception in
that we fail to spell out our engagement correctly as in (2) above, and in trying to be
consistent with what we have already spelled out before. That is, we take great pride in
consistency (as “sincerity”) as to what we tell ourselves over time….often at the neglect
or merely selectively as to how we are in fact engaged. In this way we built our personal
identity (myth) by very selectively spelling out our engagements even as we are
increasingly removed from how we are really engaged in the world. This is self-deception
as it forms over/in time or as we live (are lived with others).
Here follow examples from Moliere’s Le Misanthrope and O’Neil’s The Iceman cometh.
Summary
Because we take sincerity to be consistency (in what we say about our engagements over
time), we consider another person to be sincere if he tells himself what he tells others.
Yet in time the person’s actions may be such that our descriptions of them are at variance
with what he spells out for himself and us. This leads us to conclude that the person must
know what he is doing (truth) yet we are placed in doubt/conflict because he does not
spell out his engagements the way we might. Thus, in a way the person is sincere, yet he
must know in his heart he knows the truth; in a way he believes what he says, yet at
bottom he couldn’t possibly believe it.
But rather than asking “does he really know” or ”how can he act this way and not really
know it is at variance with what he tells himself and us?” we should ask “How is he
engaged in the world?” and “does he express that engagement accurately?” Note here
once again the social (communal) aspect of evaluating self-deception in others – and also
note how difficult it is because, remember, spelling out is only something a person can do
for himself.
However, when we discern in time that there is an intentional/purposeful discrepancy
between how a person is engaged and the story he tells himself and others about how he
is engaged, we have a person who is self-deceived. Note that the crux of this
understanding of self-deception resides in the phrase “becoming explicitly conscious
of…” as the skill of spelling out rather than in resorting to the language of
perceiving/cognizing which inevitable leads us back to the paradoxes of self-deception.
2).
Of course, none of this is the complete story about self-deception/consciousness. Thus,
why does a person not spell out his engagements even when it is appropriate to do so? Or
why would a person keep himself from becoming conscious of the way he is engaged in
the world?
Obviously it may well be advantageous to lie (telling others what is not so). But what
advantage is thereto not spelling out one’s engagements to oneself? What reasons could
we possible have for skillfully avoiding spelling out our engagements in the world?
Finally, note that my characterization essentially involves others. The self-deceiver alone
would never come to the conclusion that s/he is self-deceived. Perhaps this is what is at
the root of the notion that one comes to self-knowledge only in the context of
conversation/dialogue with others, and this in turn invokes the language of
tradition/history (MacIntyre and Taylor and in a more tangentially way Kohut and Lacan
whom we will examine later).
Taylor
Taylor shifts gears in this chapter. Having put in place his expressivist thesis in chapters 9
and 10, he now will explore expressivist concepts to examine the notion of what it is to
be a “responsible human agent” or what is it to be a “person”. Taylor begins with
Frankfurt’s claim that human agents are different from other agents in that human agents
are able to form “second-order desires”, namely that human agents, unlike say infrahuman agents, are able to evaluate their desires; able, that is, to engage in self-reflection
in rejecting some and accepting others of their desires. Thus, Frankfurt suggests that
human agents’ capacity to evaluate their desires is bound up with selfreflection/evaluation, and Taylor agrees.
However, Taylor suggests a further distinction with a view of clarifying this capacity we
posses to evaluate our desires (by way of self-reflection). Taylor proposes that we
distinguish between two broad kinds of evaluation. Taylor claims that what is missing in
Frankfurt’s “second order desires” is the notion that evaluation is “qualitative”. That is,
not only can we reject or accept some or other desire that is ours but we can also do so
either (1) in terms of the outcome of our desires, or (2) in terms of the qualitative
conditions of worth of our desires. These are two very different ways of evaluating our
desires: weak and strong evaluation. Thus, in accepting or rejecting one or other of our
desires, we make a choice in terms of their respective outcomes, but in evaluating our
desires in terms of conditions of worth we make no choice at all, one desire is simply
higher, more virtuous, more fulfilling, more refined, more profound, more noble than
another desire, and hence it clearly is the preferred desire.
Now Taylor warns us that “weak’ evaluation does not necessarily mean that the desires
between which we must choose are “homogeneous” (that the two desires that can be
characterized in the same manner as to their desirability) or that our evaluation of the two
desires can be quantified (the rational aim of utilitarianism to be able to calculate the
respective “desirability” of our desires). Utilitarianism in ethics has tried to do away with
qualitative distinctions of worth on the grounds that such conditions of worth are an
illusion hiding the real bases of our preferences which can be quantified. Thus, the
utilitarian hopes that once we do away with strong evaluation (in terms of conditions of
worth) we can calculate which desire is preferable (which results in the most pleasure or
avoids the most pain). But as Taylor points out this is mythical quantification in terms of
which the fulfillment of one desire is “more fun” or “less fun”. Utilitarianism is certainly
right in rejecting evaluation in terms of conditions of worth at least if utilitarianism
aspires to reduce practical reason in strongly evaluating desires to mere calculation.
More importantly, weak evaluation is not just concerned with the outcomes of our desires
either for we can choose between desires (as Frankfurt claims, we can have “second
order” desires) but, as Taylor points out, these need not be strong evaluations or choices.
Thus, one can desire not to have a desire, or one can desire a desire one does not yet have
and still not engage in strong evaluation. Rather, Taylor’s distinction between two kind of
evaluation, weak and strong, does not depend on the quantitative-qualitative evaluation
nor on the presence or absence of second order desires (as Frankfurt claims), rather the
distinction between weak and strong desires depend on conditions of worth and this
includes two interlocking criteria.
(1) In weak evaluation a desire is good if it is desired, whereas in strong evaluation the
desire must be evaluated in terms of conditions of worth.
(2) Hence, in case of weak evaluation the choice between desires is simply their
contingent incompatibility, but in case of strong evaluation the choice between desires is
all about their worth (note the “moral” or normative implications).
Now Taylor claims that this notion of worth turns on what I deem to be worthy as a mode
of life, as the kind of person I am or aspire to be. Note that here the incompatibility of
desires is no longer contingent (a matter of circumstances) rather it has to do with what I
deem to be a worthy life.
The reason is that in case of strong evaluation the language of the conditions of worth is
deployed contrastively (this harks back to the notion of language as “web”). Thus, the
characterization of my desires in strong evaluation is expressed in a contrastive language.
This fact marks strong evaluation as very different from weak evaluation. [As Taylor
notes in a footnote, it might be objected that the utilitarian also uses such qualitatively
contrastive words such as “pleasure” and “pain” but in fact the utilitarian does not use
these words contrastively holding that it is only pleasure that is desired. If in reply the
utilitarian claims that the desire of pleasure is here contrasted with the desire to “avoid
pain”, Taylor notes that it is precisely this contrast that utilitarianism has failed to make.
Taylor also notes that “time” per se is not contrastive rather time is used circumstantially.
In fact, there are many ways to describe my desire that are seemingly contrastive but in
fact are not. What distinguishes weak from strong evaluation is the contrastive
characterization of desire in case of strong evaluation, for in strong evaluation of our
desires we employ the language of evaluative distinctions (and not merely
circumstantially conflicting or contingently conflicting) wherein which the contrast
between desires is “deeper”.]
Strong evaluations (characterizing my desires, interests, attitudes, aspirations, etc. in a
contrastive language of worth), leads inevitably to a conflict of interpretations. Which
characterization of my desires I adopt will shape (realize and clarify) the meaning
“things” have for us. Note here, not just the desires as “objects” themselves (subjective)
but the desires of…something, meaning also the objects to which our desires are directed.
Here we have Taylor using the notion of “expression” (of desires) to overcome the
subject-object distinction. That is, the characterization of desires includes the
characterization of the things/actions we desire.
Taylor then immediately raises the question of which characterization (of desire) is more
faithful, valid, to reality? But note here that in asking this question Taylor is in some
sense backtracking for the characterization of desires in terms of conditions of worth also
characterizes the object towards which the desires are directed in terms of the conditions
of worth. In other words, to ask about a “reality” outside of our strong evaluation returns
us to a subject-object bifurcation which expressivism rejected.
The strong evaluator in envisioning the alternatives in terms of conditions of worth
possesses a richer language wherein to reflect on the alternatives. Thus, unlike the weak
evaluator who merely weighs the alternatives and then calculates the consequences of
each, the strong evaluator is able by way of his contrastive language to reflect on the
alternatives terms of their worth (to life, his/her life) and the kind of person s/he is.
Hence, the strong evaluator when confronted by alternative desires can articulate the
alternative desires in terms of conditions of worth (and therefore as we have seen in Ch. 9
and 10 understands the “reality” of these desires very differently) and hence can reflect in
choice in articulating a very different “reality”. Reflection is here not calculation of
consequences of desires as “objectively” given, but reflection (and choice) on very
different (deeper) experiences (realities) that are constituted in our articulations of
conditions of worth. We are now, in strong evaluation, reflecting on the alternatives of
desires in terms of the kind of person I am and the kind of life I live.
The kind of articulacy and depth the strong evaluator possesses also raises the possibility
of a plurality of visions that a weak evaluator lacks. That is, the kind of predicament (in a
conflict of desires) the strong evaluator confronts results in a struggle of selfinterpretations (interpretations that profoundly affect the kind of self I am) as to which
characterization (of desire and choice) is more authentic, illusion-free, genuine, authentic,
and so resolves the apparently incommensurability of my desires through articulacy.
Taylor makes the strong point that without this capacity to strongly evaluate our desires,
we would lack the minimum degree of reflection (note reflection here depends on
articulacy) that we associate with human agency and its capacity for choice (exercise of
the will). Thus, freedom of will depends on reflection and reflection depends on
articulacy (exactly the reverse of the weak evaluator – the designator!).
Taylor then shifts perspective in his examination of the self by turning towards the
question of responsibility within the context of evaluating desires, for the notion of
responsibility is bound up with this capacity to evaluate desires. We might have
anticipated this of course, given that freedom depends on articulacy and so responsibility
insofar at it relies on freedom must also be tied to articulacy.
There is one sense of responsibility that is already implicit in the notion of “will”. If we
are capable of evaluating (weak or strong) our desires we may find that these are in
conflict such that one presses more than another (or we will one against the other which
presses more strongly: here the notion of “ought” emerges). That is, evaluation of desire
already presupposes a sense of will and with it an elementary sense of responsibility (in
willing/evaluating one over the other – as Frankfurt points out in case of second order
desires).
But this is not the sense of responsibility that Taylor wants. Not only are we agents
because we can evaluate and be held responsible for choosing one, acting on one, over
another desire, but we are responsible for the evaluations of the desires themselves. This
is a much stronger sense of evaluation, and hence of responsibility, for here evaluation is
itself an activity we are engaged in [on the analogy of speech being activity we are
engaged in when using language]. Thus, reflection on desires (evaluating them) already
invokes our responsibility. Taylor asks how are we understands this stronger sense of
responsibility?
One way to understand it (a way that is characteristic of our modern era) is as “choice”.
Thus, the notion of “value” suggests that we create values (“evaluation”). But Taylor
objects that this way of understanding responsibility of evaluations as choice suggest that
we merely choose (“radical choice”) without reason (since our values are our own
creations). Or if we do base our evaluations on reasons, then these reasons are taken as
simply valid (and not themselves chosen). This is the view that Taylor attributes to JeanPaul Sartre.
The problem with this view (of radical choice or that we are radically free) is that if this
is true then we can no longer see ourselves as strong evaluators, agents with depth. For as
Taylor comments, while we can conceive of radical choice among strong evaluations, we
cannot view our choice of evaluations as radical (on risk that otherwise our evaluations
are not strong evaluations). The crux of the issue there is that Sartre sees responsibility as
a matter of radical choice and radical choice is entirely a matter of the individual selfassertion. But of course this view runs counter to Taylor’s entire expressivist project
(which, recall, was to overcome this bifurcation of individual and the world); the agent of
radical choice is a simple “weigher”, a weak evaluator). But the theory of radical choice
is even worse off than that for, as Taylor comments, it is incoherent (see pp. 31-32) for it
wants to maintain both strong evaluation and radical choice (as Sartre seems to in his
example). But strong evaluations, as we have seen, are “judgments” (not choices) in the
sense that they involve contrastive articulations of desires-actions complexes and invoke
our aspirations to a certain kind of life, being a certain kind of person and this may well,
of course, involve a plurality of visions which can be very difficult to adjudicate (choose
among). Now both in our articulations/judgments (strong evaluations) as well as in our
efforts to adjudicate these we bear responsibility.
Taylor then proceeds to examine this issue of responsibility from another angle. Strong
evaluators, he writes, have depth because their articulations/evaluations are bound up
with the kind of person they aspire to be/the kind of life they aspire to live; that is, these
are bound up with our “personal identity”. Our identity is formed not only in our choices,
but especially in our articulations/evaluations. Thus, in answer to the question “who am I
as a person”? or “what is my identity?” we don’t point to our choices but to our
evaluations which are inseparable from our being “agents”. Without our fundamental
evaluations we cease being who we are.
To ask of someone their identity as a person we are referred to their evaluations. Here
Taylor writes of a horizon of evaluations (the traditions out of which we articulate our
desires) without which we are lost as to our identity. This is also what is so puzzling
about Sartre’s notion of radical freedom/choice for such freedom or choice is without the
context/horizon of evaluations. This is the autonomy self-defining subjectivity of the
Enlightenment/modernity that is radically separated from context (social-cultural order of
traditions) and it is what expressivism was intended to overcome. For this autonomy is
really a fragmentation of identity, an alienation from the human historical world, from
those strong evaluations which identify me as a person.
The pressing question arises how do we come to our evaluations/articulations? Are these
not a matter of radical choice? Are we not at all responsible for our evaluations?
Taylor replies that evaluations are not so much chosen as they are an articulation of what
is “higher/lower” and more integrated/fulfilling or not. Such articulation while not a
matter of choice (in the usual sense) does invoke our responsibility and here is where
Taylor resumes his expressivist thesis.
That is, articulation (in this chapter, the articulation of desires, aspirations, etc.) is not of
the simply “given”, rather it is our articulations/interpretations that give “them” (desires)
“reality”, “shape” “embodiment”. That is, articulations are not simply descriptions of
what is already objectively (out/in) there/here (not like the table which is then described
by the word “table”, according to Taylor); on the contrary, articulation is a form-ulation
which does not leave the “object” (desire, aspiration, etc.) unchanged but gives it “shape”
in a way that we hold to be important/value. Thus, the manner in which we
articulate/interpret our desires also (“in part”, here Taylor hesitates) constitutes those
desires (our experience of our desires). If we change the articulation/interpretation of the
desire, we also change (the shape) of the experience of desire.
As Taylor notes, this is not a causal claim; rather, it is the claim that what we experience
depends on, is given shape by, our articulations/interpretations (of our feeling,
aspirations, etc.). Thus, the very nature of experience is formed (constituted) by our
articulations/interpretations (and these are of course to be understood on the model of
expression).
How do we come to change our articulations of our desires/etc.? [Another way of asking
this question is to ask “what makes change in personal identity possible?”] Taylor
suggests in two ways. (1) We do in living with others; that is, as we are engaged in the
world or as we find ourselves embedded in the world. (2) We do so because we find that
our articulations clash with the articulations of others (either now in the present, or on
reading with those in the past) or else we find ourselves unable to understand others or
just unable to understand the way we live and so search for alternate articulations.
Yet these articulation/interpretations are not totally arbitrary or relative to others’
articulations/interpretations; they are instead more or less adequate, truthful, insightful,
distorting, delusional, etc. Thus, our evaluations strive to be faithful not to an
independent object but rather to what inchoately and inarticulately makes “sense” (in the
broad sense of “meaningful”) in living. At the same time, our articulations do not leave
the object as it is. In “shaping” it, it makes the object more accessible; it places the object
(desire) in the context of our lives. Precisely because these articulations are evaluations
they also limit the nature of experience (and subsequent expression of experience). In this
sense our evaluations are a judgment on our person. That is, the limits of our experience
(as well as expression) are also a judgment on us – that is, we are judged by our moral
insight (articulation/interpretations as evaluations). This has nothing to do with radical
choice/freedom; it has to do with the manner in which our articulations in fact shape our
experience.
Obviously our experience (our articulations and evaluations) are always open to
challenge(is not all understanding): always open to elaboration, explication, analysis, and
further interpretation. Indeed, I have a responsibility to continue the process of evaluation
as long as I live/act and encounter the “world” in everything I do. This is especially so
when it comes to what Taylor called our fundamental evaluations – the ones central
(deepest) to our identity. For it is often our deepest evaluations that are least well
articulated (these are often least clear) even to ourselves. But since this is so, if I do reevaluating my deepest evaluations it is not a matter of choice but of reformulation,
reinterpretation, and re-understanding.
Usually these fundamental evaluations are not articulated because we share (live) them
with/in the community/tradition. Since they are “lived”, they need not be articulated. We
have here then a tension between “living” and “saying/expressing”. Moreover, note that
these deep evaluations cannot be evaluated/reinterpreted in some kind of meta-language
(there is no such) nor is there an empirical inquiry (as designativist would claim) hat
might help us to decide (obviously, since that inquiry, in turn, would also be articulated in
the language of our evaluations). All we can do is converse and reflect on our deepest
evaluations and try again and again to articulate them in a manner that would give us
insight and understanding into ourselves and the world in which we live. Note that there
is no yardstick, as Taylor comments, except to appreciate that any such reevaluation
engages my very personal identity, an identity I have always in relationship to others who
similarly engage in such re-evaluations.
It is in this context Taylor writes about “radical evaluation” which the self reflecting on
the self, on the self’s most fundamental issues (the “deepest” evaluations), and because
this self-evaluation is something that we do we are also responsible (even if we fail to do
so) for doing so and for the manner in which we do so. Radical evaluation we do in
articulating (expressing) what we desire/feel/aspire to etc., always in the context of the
world in which we live. Such expression reposes then on the contrastive web of language
and hence is part of community and tradition.
Taylor ends his paper with some brief comments on psychology. But these might easily
apply to linguistics as well. Thus, any notion of “grammar” that is part of some theory of
the brain, or some abstract mental mechanism, is misguided for these
accounts/explanations cannot participate in the human agent as a self-interpreting subject
– cannot account in principle for the expressivist conception of strong evaluation wherein
articulacy is constitutive of, in this chapter, the inner self, our desires, aspirations, etc.
This does not mean that linguistics cannot proceed in accord with a formal analysis of
language; it does mean this abstractive endeavor must itself be seen as constituted
communally in our speech practices, in the formulation and reformulation, in the
understanding/interpretation of the meaning (strong evaluations) of these speech practices
which inevitably bear our responsibility because it is something we do.
Finally, note here that Taylor relies in this chapter on chapters 9, 10. Thus, he does not
explicitly mention the role of language and the question of meaning and the broader
question of sense in this chapter. Moreover, he seems only concerned with the expression
of “inner life” (desires, aspirations, interests, etc). But, of course, we recall that the
expressivist thesis ties this inner life in expression to the world.