Knowing Humanity in the Social World

The Path of Steve Fuller's Social Epistemology

Francis X Remedios, Val Dusek

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781137374905
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

This book examines Fuller's pioneering vision of social epistemology. It focuses specifically on his work post-2000, which is founded in the changing conception of humanity and project into a 'post-' or 'trans-' human future. Chapters treat especially Fuller's provocative response to the changing boundary conditions of the knower due to anticipated changes in humanity coming from the nanosciences, neuroscience, synthetic biology and computer technology and end on an interview with Fuller himself.
While Fuller's turn in this direction has invited at least as much criticism as his earlier work, to him the result is an extended sense of the knower, or 'humanity 2.0', which Fuller himself identifies with transhumanism. The authors assess Fuller's work on the following issues: Science and Technology Studies (STS), the university and intellectual life, neo-liberal political economy, intelligent design, Cosmism, Gnosticism, agent-oriented epistemology, proactionary vs precautionary principles and Welfare State 2.0.

© The Author(s) 2018

Francis X Remedios and Val DusekKnowing Humanity in the Social Worldhttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-37490-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Francis X Remedios¹ and Val Dusek²

(1)

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

(2)

University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, USA

Abstract

The introduction discusses the need for a book on Fuller’s later work since 2000. It characterizes Fuller’s work on social epistemology, science studies, evolution controversies, the university, the proactionary approach to technology, and nature. It summarizes the content of the book’s chapters.

Keywords

Social epistemologyScience studies

End Abstract

Other than Steve Fuller’s work, there is no other discussion in current literature of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), science and technology studies (STS), sociology of science, philosophy of science, epistemology of science, and analytic social epistemology on the impact of scientific knowledge on humanity. Exploration of the impact is important because scientific knowledge is one of the most powerful forces for improvement of the world and humanity. Scientific knowledge based on nanosciences, synthetic biology, and computer technology is changing humanity to humanity 2.0, which is an emerging object of social science and science policy. Humanity here is used to designate the quality that makes humans distinct from non-humans. Fuller’s social epistemology explores the changing social dimensions of both scientific knowledge and humanity as well as the impact on each other. Fuller’s social epistemology takes seriously that knowledge is produced by agents who may be individually embodied but also collectively embedded in certain specifiable relationships that extend over large chunks of space and time. The need for social epistemology arises from an interdisciplinary gap between philosophy and sociology: philosophical theories of knowledge stress normativity without considering their empirical realizability or political and economic consequences. Philosophers are much better at providing definitions of knowledge (e.g. “justified true belief”). Social theories of knowledge describe empirical conditions, but they do not offer normative considerations.

This book is on the uniqueness of Fuller’s social epistemology as described above. This book adds to the discussion in Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller’s Social Epistemology (2003), which focuses on normative issues of how scientific knowledge should be organized and legitimized compared to philosophy of science and SSK and is on Fuller’s work up to 2000. The change in Fuller’s work from 2000 is the move from epistemology to metaphysics in which Fuller is asking the question: what type of being should the knower be? Our explanation of why Fuller moved from the normative organization of knowledge to ontology of the knower is that Fuller is a social constructivist in which the epistemic agent makes knowledge to act in the world. With the impact of the technosciences such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and computer technology on the knower, Fuller’s view is that the knower can be enhanced toward transhumanism in which the knower can be disembodied. The transhumanist knower has exceeded the boundaries of human knower, who for the analytic social epistemologist has propositional knowledge and does not make knowledge to act in the world. Fuller views the epistemic agent as a legal person, which includes corporate agency such as the university. With the university as a corporate agent, this book covers Fuller’s more recent focus on the university traditionally as the premier site of knowledge production in its struggle with the forces of neoliberalism, which are forces of commercialization.

As an intellectual provocateur, Fuller has taken on Darwinism and defended Intelligent Design (ID). Fuller has taken on Kuhn , upset sociologists and philosophers of science, and defended his version of normative social epistemology. Fuller has taken on science and technology studies (STS) on several issues including post-truth and defended his version of normative social epistemology.

STS is a discipline with which Fuller is most associated. Through the Science Wars in 1990s and 2000s, Fuller defended STS and began the line in his thinking on how science should be best organized compared to how scientists organize science. Though Fuller agrees with STS on social construction of science, Fuller asks how will science be legitimated. In this way, Fuller’ social epistemology has been a meta-theory for STS. Fuller’s criticism of STS is that STS provides only a descriptive account of science and not a normative account. STS, especially as manifested in the Edinburgh School, demystified the account of scientific knowledge given by philosophers of science. However, Fuller criticizes STS as being a discipline without knowledge policy and as relativistic. In “Is STS all Talk and no Walk?” (2017), which is a recent controversy on post-truth, Fuller challenges STS to see that though STS has unmasked how science is conducted by scientists, STSers do not see that science is a power game (Baker and Oreskes 2017).

Fuller argues that STS as a discipline has failed to develop its own goals and is increasingly client driven in these neoliberal times. With the impact of neoliberalism, a period when clients can strongly influence how academic knowledge is produced, Fuller defends the university, which is a corporate agent, as the premier site for knowledge production for the public good.

It was in New Frontiers of Science and Technology Studies (2007) that Fuller defends humanity as a response to STS’s discussions initiated by Haraway and Latour , who argue for removal of the distinction of humans and non-humans both in matters of research and of policy with the introduction of humanity 2.0 and amplification of human qualities. With humanity 2.0, Fuller continues his exploration of human enhancement by providing theological arguments of humanity being created in the image and likeness of God and doing science is to participate in the mind of God.

This book’s major focus on the changing boundaries conditions as limits of the epistemic agent, the knower, due to the impact of the technosciences. The question is: what kind of being should the knower be? The epistemic agent now is not the same as the knower of the future in which humans can be enhanced through biotechnology, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology (Humanity 2.0 2011). Humanity 2.0 can be considered a milestone in Fuller’s later work since it brings together his discussions in other works on the foundation of the social sciences (New Sociological Imagination 2006) and the Intelligent Design debate (Dissent over Descent 2008). As Fuller’s social epistemology is concerned with social transformation of knowledge on humanity’s search for transcendence, the exploration of the changing boundary conditions of the epistemic agent is critical. With the enhancement of humanity through biotechnology, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology, the epistemic agent’s identity and social epistemic status can change. With advancement of computer and digital technology, avatars can be created and the identity of the epistemic agent is thereby extended. The interface between the epistemic agent and the world has changed because the epistemic agent can be changed through either human enhancement or enhancement to avatars.

With biotechnology, genetic engineering, and synthetic biology that are changing humanity, what does it mean to be human? What is the distinctiveness of humanity? As humanity is the locus of the social sciences, this book focuses on the changing boundary conditions of biology (race) and ideology (religion) for humanity. With the welfare state as the location of the battle between biology and ideology on humanity, Fuller defends the distinctiveness of humanity. Fuller diagnoses the problem of humanity to be a bipolar disorder between our animal nature (biology) and our search for transcendence of nature (ideology). Are we closer to animals as indicated by Darwinism or are we closer to God as indicated by Christianity? In today’s terms, the positions can be portrayed to be between the poles of Peter Singer’s animal liberation or Ray Kurzweil’s spiritual machines.

For Fuller, humanity, which is moral, is the central project of the social sciences that consists of socially organized resistance to the natural selection and natural forces through collective projects such as Christianity, the university, and the state. Participation in large-scale projects allows humans to control or even reverse the effects of natural selection. For Fuller, the classical sociologists Durkheim , Marx , and Weber all concur with his characterization of the project of humanity. Essential to Fuller’s concept of the project of humanity is the redistribution of wealth through the state. Fuller recognizes Foucault’s notion that the human sciences as a body of knowledge was created in the nineteenth century, and by the twentieth century, man has died—human sciences as a body of knowledge are in question. Fuller connects humanity to transhumanism, which is the view that humanity can be enhanced or redesigned through technology. With converging technologies, which are biotechnology, nanotechnology, and computer technology, humanity can be transformed to an enhanced version of humanity—humanity 2.0.

How did the project of humanity start? Fuller avers that John Duns Scotus started the project of humanity with a univocal theory of predication of God’s attributes to man, while Thomas Aquinas has an equivocal or analogical theory of predication of God’s attributes to man. Fuller’s view is that for Scotus , man’s difference to God is by degree, while for Aquinas , man’s difference to God is by kind. Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God. For scientists, Bacon , Newton , and Mendel , who are Christians, doing science is participating in the mind of God. With the advance of the nanosciences, biotechechnology, and genetic engineering with which the future of life can be engineered, there have been many voices that science is playing God. From Fuller’s perspective, doing science such as nanosciences, biotechechnology, and genetic engineering is to participate of God’s mind.

Fuller takes on Darwinianism with Intelligent Design theory. For Fuller, ID is the view of the role of divine design in Western science. In 2005, Fuller was an expert witness to defend ID to be taught in schools at the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial. The judge disagreed that ID is science. Controversially, Fuller, who views humans created in the image and likeness of God, recommends the promotion of theology to motivate students to become scientists in the USA because of theology’s view that humans are privileged to understand and control nature. With humanity to participate in the mind of God, humanity as the epistemic agent is imbued with the divine.

The reader may wonder what Intelligent Design and abstract discussions of ancient theology have to do with social epistemology and our place in the world. This makes sense if you see Fuller as a public intellectual as challenging a view of humanity as decentered by the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, heroically arguing that humans are central to creation because of their ability to construct the world in imitation of the creator. In this Fuller follows the maker’s knowledge tradition going back to Bacon and Hobbes and counters Latour’s view that we are just another node in networks of things and people. As a public intellectual, Fuller continues to defend humanity with arguments for Intelligent Design in spite of criticisms of his motivations. Fuller’s explanation is that though position is unpopular, he has a responsibility as a public intellectual to do so.

Chapter 2 is on Fuller’s relation to STS. This chapter starts with a contrast and comparison of Fuller and Latour is included, surveying Fuller’s criticisms of Latour (as the leading competitor in science studies), on the human and non-human distinction in which Fuller defends that humans have agency against Latour’s view that agency is deflated to actor-network theory. Next is Fuller’s treatment of Kuhn and Popper since Fuller views Kuhn as setting the stage for STS’s ascendancy through STS criticism of normativity in philosophy of science. Fuller’s relation to STS to which Fuller is most closely associated is described. Fuller considers STS to provide a descriptive account of science as opposed to his own normative account. Fuller is critical of STS’s lack of knowledge policy and of its relativism. STS’s version of social constructivism is contrasted to Fuller’s realism on the social sciences and social constructivism on the natural sciences.

With the contrast to Latour’s actor-network theory which deflates agency to the networks and actants, Chap. 3 is on agent-oriented social epistemology, which emphasizes epistemic agency or the knower as ontologically open. This is from Fuller’s move to transhumanist in which to knower is enhanced to become disembodied. Fuller views the epistemic agent to make knowledge to act in the world as contrasted to analytic social epistemology’s epistemic agent, who is a human knower with beliefs that do not make knowledge through construction of reality. Agent-oriented social epistemology, which is about the epistemic agent organizing inquiry, is contrasted to object-oriented social epistemology, which is about the knower believing in objects of knowledge, which represent reality, and not having to construct knowledge to act in the world. There is also a discussion of cognitive economics in which the epistemic agent makes knowledge and leverages beliefs to action instead of the epistemic agent having beliefs to access knowledge.

Chapter 4 is on Fuller’s view that the university as a corporate agent is the premier site of knowledge production for the public good. Fuller defends the university against the impact of neoliberalism in which clients influence how academic knowledge is produced. In this context “interdiscip...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Fuller on Science and Technology Studies
• 3. Fuller’s Social Epistemology and Epistemic Agency
• 4. The University and Interdisciplinarity
• 5. Fuller’s Intelligent Design
• 6. Fuller, Cosmism, and Gnosticism
• 7. Proactionary and Precautionary Principles and Welfare State 2.0
• 8. Conclusion
• 9. Postscript
• Back Matter