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Human Economists and Abstract Methodology

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View the page of Ralph Bailey

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Ralph Bailey discusses how the very abstractness of abstract methodology (AM) betrays it into either authoritarianism or vapidity.

Image courtesy of interviewee. January 15, 2024

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This video video is a detailed exploration of methodology in research, highlighting its logical aspects and distinguishing it from content-related discussions that can complicate scientific progress. The speaker emphasizes the importance of methodology as the study of methods, focusing on the logical structure behind research rather than the specific content studied. They argue that abstract methodology can help navigate the logical pitfalls encountered in various research fields, particularly when engaging with theories that may be refuted by counterexamples.

The speaker critiques the common perception of methodologists as domineering figures who impose rules on researchers, suggesting instead that methodology should be understood as a mental framework individuals carry while conducting research. They further differentiate between personal and impersonal perspectives in research, arguing for a more nuanced approach that respects individual researchers' values and experiences.

This video video also touches on the philosophical implications of methodology, connecting it with moral philosophy and the need for logical analysis in ethical theories. The speaker believes that individual researchers and the research community should foster environments conducive to open debate and personal engagement rather than adhering strictly to impersonal academic standards.

Finally, the speaker advocates for a vision of research that values individual input and community aspects, likening their methodological approach to Socratic interrogation to highlight the importance of consistency in beliefs and theories. They call for an ideal research environment that nurtures human characteristics crucial for flourishing in academic settings, emphasizing the potential for logical coherence and progress in research methodologies.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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What I mean is that it's the study

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of the logical aspects of research.

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Um, this is a, a fairly traditional sort of definition.

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In fact, you almost say it's old fashioned, except

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that methodology has often been stated in terms of science,

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the, the logical aspects of science.

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So for the word science, I've substituted research

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because I want, I don't want to emphasize the content,

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so much as the, it's the logical form I'm interested in.

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Um, once we start talking about content,

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we generate difficulties for ourselves.

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People say, well, what sort of content do you mean truth or,

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or knowledge and this sort of thing?

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And these sort of questions have proved really obstructive

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to the, the project of making progress in science.

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So if I could break down methodology a little bit, you start

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with, you're trying to solve a problem.

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You're trying to get from A to B,

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discover something perhaps, and you have

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a method for doing that.

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The methodology is the study of methods

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and abstract methodology is the study of the,

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the logical aspects of doing that.

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So, for example, if I'm trying to,

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if I have a theory that all swans are

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white, my method for attacking that problem might be to go

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and look at lots of swans and work out what their color is.

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Uh, a methodologist might arrive

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and say, well, that's not going

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to deliver the result you want.

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Because it doesn't matter

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how many white swans you obs observe.

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There might be black swans you haven't observed.

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At that point is actually, I would say an abstract one.

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It's, it's, it's relying on a logical point

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that a general theory can be blown up

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by a single counter example.

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That's what makes it abstract.

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So abstraction,

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looks at the logical aspects of a subject.

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We don't say to the researcher, well,

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you are wrong about such and such.

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We, we start from where they are and try

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and interrogate them about the coherence

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of their own beliefs.

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And to me, that's got the advantage

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that we don't sideline subjects just

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because we don't like the content.

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We don't like, we don't introduce demarcation criteria

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to say, well, you shouldn't be discussing that subject.

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It's nonsense. Perhaps.

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Perhaps you're studying a subject I

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don't like, like astrology.

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Um, I, I'm, I'm as an abstract methodologist,

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I'm happy to go along with that.

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I'll say that, that's fine. You study that if you like.

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But I, I'm just going to discuss the method

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by which you, you do that.

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If I could just add one point about methodology.

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Um, the debates often conducted in terms

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that there's a, there's a hardworking practitioner,

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and then some ignorant

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and arrogant meth methodologist arrives

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and starts laying down the law.

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Whereas to me, a methodologist is someone I carry

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around inside my head.

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So they're just two different, aspects

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of the process of research.

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There's this, there's this aspect where I,

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I think about my own methodology

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and another aspect perhaps where I go and collect data.

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So, the, the division isn't between people.

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It's between fields of activity, methodology in the sense.

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I mean, it's got a very, very long history.

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Um, and if it's the methods

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of conducting research

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or inquiry at one time, these were just oriented to

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establishing truths, which everyone thought they knew,

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you know, truths in Aristotle or in the Bible,

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or perhaps, Euclidean geometry.

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People thought, these are true.

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We're just going to, establish that they're true.

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And so Plato had this phrase about distinguishing truth from

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mere opinion, and that was

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what people tried to do for a long time.

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So, in the 20th century,

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I would say it was realized that this was, was wrong.

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We don't have these established theories.

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So we're going to, we are going

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to adopt a different, more fallible list approach

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where we realize that our theories might be wrong

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and we'll perhaps try to refute the theories.

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That's an alternative line of approach.

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And this has led to the idea that methodologists were really

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overbearing people, that they ignored the perspective

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of individual researchers we just crashed in.

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Um, so I don't care about your own, your own way

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of conducting the subject.

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What you should be doing is this.

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So that methodologists,

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they're often called big m methodologists,

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arrogant philosophers.

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They're overbearing.

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Um, that a further accusation is that

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what they do is designed on

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what happens in the natural sciences.

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So where you've got a, set of observations,

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which are more or less uncontroversial

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and they're public information,

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and we just do what we can with those.

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Whereas in the social sciences

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or certainly in moral philosophy, we don't get,

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we don't have this un uncontroversial observational base.

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Um, we're dealing with people.

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So human judgments become much more important.

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So your methodology

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of falsification reputation is not really going

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to work for, for us.

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Um, so if I'm working in a field like,

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ethics or economics or theology,

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or perhaps even if I'm an astrologer, I'm going

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to have no time really for this, for these,

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overbearing methods of conducting, abstract methodology.

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And so that, those are the, accusations against

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abstract methodology that I,

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I think are actually largely correct,

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and we should modify the subject accordingly.

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Could I start with impersonal re very related

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to it's objective?

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Um, again, in the natural sciences, it's thought to be great

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to be objective that what, what, what I say doesn't,

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is not affected by my own personal opinion.

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Um, so I might say

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a serious researchers should correct collect data.

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That's an impersonal statement.

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It doesn't speak to me directly

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until I make the personal judgment that I'm a, I want

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to be a serious researcher.

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And then your statement does impact on me.

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It, it starts to trigger action,

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but we need that personal premise.

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Um, so the argument goes serious researchers

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should collect data.

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I am a serious researcher. That's my personal judgment.

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Therefore, I should collect data.

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And, and that, that form the argument is,

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is an entirely logical one.

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It's, from premise to to conclusions.

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It's what's called a valid argument,

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but it's still personal.

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It affects me particularly

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because of the way I've characterized myself.

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Um, I think in this context of Socrates,

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whose like the unsung hero of the paper

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who always individual, interrogated individuals

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and about whether their beliefs were consistent

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and it did that through the logical form of their arguments,

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that would be how I characterize the difference

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between abstractness

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and impersonalism attention to natural logic.

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So if you go back to this methodology of falsification,

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the black swan example, I have a theory

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that all swans are white.

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Um, I observe a black swan, and

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therefore my theory is blown out of the water.

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That's a really very simp simple, logical situation

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because we, we have,

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a single observation about a black swan, which we take

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to be true, and

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therefore, logically my original premise can't survive.

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But in the social sciences, it's always going

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to be debatable whether we've really

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observed a black swan or not.

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So we're, we can't use this simple form of logic

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relying on just two truth values, true or false.

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Um, in research, every, this is almost

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by definition the area where things are debatable.

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We're going to need subjective judgments, like likely

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and promising, or this is more promising than that.

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Um, and that's, so we, we,

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we can't use the simple forms of logic that are appropriate

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to maths and maybe science,

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but we are going to use all the sophisticated resources

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of natural language, which they're still amenable

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to logical analysis,

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but it can't be reduced just to true, true or false.

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And that's, that's why I think we need to pay attention

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to the fact that researchers working in diff difficult areas

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need to use the resources of natural language

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and not just a sort of calculus of, of, of true

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and false, first of all, theories, right?

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So the similarity is that,

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both methodology

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and moral philosophy are amenable to logical analysis.

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I think at one time this wasn't realized.

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People thought that there's, there's a theory of,

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morality called eism, which says,

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if I say you should do such

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and such, I'm really just expressing an emotion.

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I'm saying hurrah for, for such and such,

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and you can't make sense of it.

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This breaks down because if you look at, a set

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of moral beliefs, you'll find there's a logical

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connection between them.

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So although you could say morality's entirely subjective,

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I can nonetheless,

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assail your ethical beliefs by showing

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that they're inconsistent.

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That's, that's an argument.

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You, if you're a rational sort of person, you're going

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to have to pay attention to.

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Um, so theories of ethics are amenable to logical analysis.

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Um, and in the same way that,

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research questions are, but the, the logic,

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of research, I think in some, some ways hasn't gone

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as far as the discussion has gone in,

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in moral philosophy, where there is this contrast between

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impersonal theories of justice, which say that, you know,

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for instance, it is wrong to do such and such.

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It is wrong to do, it is wrong to steal.

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And, or,

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or in economics, one

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that's very influential is the impersonal theory

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of util utilitarianism, which says that everyone should act

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so as to maximize the good consequences, the that in terms

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of happiness and minimize the bad consequences.

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Um, but that doesn't necessarily impinge on me

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till I hook into it in some way.

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And for this reason, it's been really hard

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for these impersonal theories to have, have influence,

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whereas you can get a much more direct

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impact on people if you work out

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what their theories of virtue are.

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So there's this contrast of justice versus virtue.

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So, you might say to me, well, what,

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what do you think admiral qual qualities are?

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And I say, well, I don't know, moral courage.

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And so that's clearly that something

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that I'm saying should apply to me as well.

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It's not just launched into the void.

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Um, and if, if I say I believe in moral courage,

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then you have a way of getting at me

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and trying to influence my behavior.

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Um, and you could say that's a, perhaps a, a virtue

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of research as well.

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Um, if you're going to,

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impact on individual researchers, you don't just launch,

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impersonal commands at them, collect data

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or refute your theories.

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You, you, you, you work out what their own values are

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and try and speak, speak to those.

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Um, but the, the, to take it a stage further,

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do we go in in, do we go for justice or do we go for virtue?

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Then the virtues are only going to thrive

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in the right environment.

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So from my reading of moral philosophy, I would say

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if we want a good research community, then we have

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to think about the community in relation to the individuals.

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And that's not what's, of course, what's done in a,

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an entirely impersonal theory.

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So that, that would be the way I would characterize

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the similarities between, methodology

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and, moral philosophy.

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People have sometimes been struck in

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when they look at morals that

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between the different religions, they're, the codes

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of morals are actually rather similar, whereas

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the reasons they give are rather different.

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I think it's a bit the same with methodologists.

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They, they, a lot of them say

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what they want from researchers.

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There's a large degree of, agreement between them.

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They want people to be independent, knowledgeable, open,

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open-minded and so on.

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No, no one really disputes that.

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But when we come to look at the research world,

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it's not clear that this, these values are delivered.

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Um, there's, as, as you know, there's an enormous

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emphasis on publication, publication in particular journals.

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And that's not necessarily inconsistent

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with the healthy research community.

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But, it's open

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to question whether we do get enough debate.

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I mean, I, I attend stacks of seminars.

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I very rarely attend a debate

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or hear someone interrogated about their own beliefs.

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So, what we want for individual researchers,

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I think is fairly uncontroversial,

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but it's really how we, how we get there.

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That, that's more the question.

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What, what sort of research community should we foster and,

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and how should we do that?

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I'd like methodology to study processes and,

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and not be based on bodies of supposed knowledge.

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Um, I'm not saying that knowledge is a bad thing,

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I'm just saying that lo logically the two

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things should be kept separate.

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Um, so there's a place for methodology, in other words

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that is abstract.

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Um, I'm here, I'm really defending even the subject

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of philosophy, which is another subject

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that's sometimes the thought to be irrelevant

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or overbearing.

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Um, so if I could come out as a someone who's,

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who's in favor of philosophy

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and believes it has something to offer by directing people

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to logical analyses.

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Um, second thing, I think, we shouldn't regard progress

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as a dirty word.

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Uh, I think it's in the spirit of the times to say, well,

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we shouldn't judge between this theory and that.

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Um, so I'm not necessarily disputing that,

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but I'm saying in some circumstances

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we can say I've improved my theory

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because I've made it, more consistent.

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I've removed inconsistencies, I've expanded its scope,

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I've become less agnostic about it.

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I'm not simply saying I don't know about everything,

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but I'm, I'm firming up my judgments.

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Um, I think we should be careful about doing anything

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that introduces demarcation criteria between subjects,

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to say they're good subjects and bad.

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I think it's better to say that there are good arguments,

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and bad arguments.

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Um, so I would emphasize this distinction

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between the logical form of an argument and its content.

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I think we should always be absolutely clear what, what's

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what, the

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research virtue ideas,

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I would say methodologists should engage

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with individuals.

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And the way to do this was shown long ago by Socrates,

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and he engaged in the most compelling sort of

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research interrogations you can imagine.

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He didn't dispute what people said, not directly anyway,

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but he showed them the consequences of what they thought

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and of course, press them into areas where they were going

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to become inconsistent.

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So this was his gadfly method.

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He also described himself as a midwife.

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He, these gadfly activities would give birth

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to new theories, new and better theories.

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And the final one is that I think we should think about

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what we mean by research utopia based on,

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Um, the characteristics of individual

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and human researchers.

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That was the, that was the reason for the, name human

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in the title of the, of the paper.

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So you think about not just what research you want,

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but what, how you would like researchers

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to be under communi communities.

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They would like to, which they would, flourish in.

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So I think those would be my main

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conclusions from the paper.

00:00 - What I mean is that it's the study of the logical aspects of research. this is a, a fairly traditional sort of definition. In fact, you almost say it's old fashioned, except that methodology has often been stated in terms of science, the, the logical aspects of science.

00:21 - So for the word science, I've substituted research because I want, I don't want to emphasize the content, so much as the, it's the logical form I'm interested in. once we start talking about content, we generate difficulties for ourselves. People say, well, what sort of content do you mean truth or, or knowledge and this sort of thing? And these sort of questions have proved really obstructive to the, the project of making progress in science. So if I could break down methodology a little bit, you start

00:57 - with, you're trying to solve a problem. You're trying to get from A to B, discover something perhaps, and you have a method for doing that. The methodology is the study of methods and abstract methodology is the study of the, the logical aspects of doing that. So, for example, if I'm trying to, if I have a theory that all swans are white, my method for attacking that problem might be to go

01:30 - and look at lots of swans and work out what their color is. a methodologist might arrive and say, well, that's not going to deliver the result you want. Because it doesn't matter how many white swans you obs observe. There might be black swans you haven't observed. At that point is actually, I would say an abstract one. It's, it's, it's relying on a logical point that a general theory can be blown up

01:56 - by a single counter example. That's what makes it abstract. So abstraction, looks at the logical aspects of a subject. We don't say to the researcher, well, you are wrong about such and such. We, we start from where they are and try and interrogate them about the coherence of their own beliefs. And to me, that's got the advantage

02:20 - that we don't sideline subjects just because we don't like the content. We don't like, we don't introduce demarcation criteria to say, well, you shouldn't be discussing that subject. It's nonsense. Perhaps. Perhaps you're studying a subject I don't like, like astrology. I, I'm, I'm as an abstract methodologist, I'm happy to go along with that. I'll say that, that's fine. You study that if you like.

02:45 - But I, I'm just going to discuss the method by which you, you do that. If I could just add one point about methodology. the debates often conducted in terms that there's a, there's a hardworking practitioner, and then some ignorant and arrogant meth methodologist arrives and starts laying down the law. Whereas to me, a methodologist is someone I carry around inside my head.

03:13 - So they're just two different, aspects of the process of research. There's this, there's this aspect where I, I think about my own methodology and another aspect perhaps where I go and collect data. So, the, the division isn't between people. It's between fields of activity, methodology in the sense. I mean, it's got a very, very long history. and if it's the methods of conducting research

03:42 - or inquiry at one time, these were just oriented to establishing truths, which everyone thought they knew, you know, truths in Aristotle or in the Bible, or perhaps, Euclidean geometry. People thought, these are true. We're just going to, establish that they're true. And so Plato had this phrase about distinguishing truth from mere opinion, and that was what people tried to do for a long time. So, in the 20th century,

04:12 - I would say it was realized that this was, was wrong. We don't have these established theories. So we're going to, we are going to adopt a different, more fallible list approach where we realize that our theories might be wrong and we'll perhaps try to refute the theories. That's an alternative line of approach. And this has led to the idea that methodologists were really overbearing people, that they ignored the perspective of individual researchers we just crashed in.

04:47 - so I don't care about your own, your own way of conducting the subject. What you should be doing is this. So that methodologists, they're often called big m methodologists, arrogant philosophers. They're overbearing. that a further accusation is that what they do is designed on what happens in the natural sciences.

05:13 - So where you've got a, set of observations, which are more or less uncontroversial and they're public information, and we just do what we can with those. Whereas in the social sciences or certainly in moral philosophy, we don't get, we don't have this un uncontroversial observational base. we're dealing with people. So human judgments become much more important. So your methodology

05:43 - of falsification reputation is not really going to work for, for us. so if I'm working in a field like, ethics or economics or theology, or perhaps even if I'm an astrologer, I'm going to have no time really for this, for these, overbearing methods of conducting, abstract methodology. And so that, those are the, accusations against abstract methodology that I, I think are actually largely correct,

06:18 - and we should modify the subject accordingly. Could I start with impersonal re very related to it's objective? again, in the natural sciences, it's thought to be great to be objective that what, what, what I say doesn't, is not affected by my own personal opinion. so I might say a serious researchers should correct collect data. That's an impersonal statement. It doesn't speak to me directly

06:55 - until I make the personal judgment that I'm a, I want to be a serious researcher. And then your statement does impact on me. It, it starts to trigger action, but we need that personal premise. so the argument goes serious researchers should collect data. I am a serious researcher. That's my personal judgment. Therefore, I should collect data. And, and that, that form the argument is,

07:23 - is an entirely logical one. It's, from premise to to conclusions. It's what's called a valid argument, but it's still personal. It affects me particularly because of the way I've characterized myself. I think in this context of Socrates, whose like the unsung hero of the paper who always individual, interrogated individuals and about whether their beliefs were consistent

07:50 - and it did that through the logical form of their arguments, that would be how I characterize the difference between abstractness and impersonalism attention to natural logic. So if you go back to this methodology of falsification, the black swan example, I have a theory that all swans are white. I observe a black swan, and therefore my theory is blown out of the water. That's a really very simp simple, logical situation

08:20 - because we, we have, a single observation about a black swan, which we take to be true, and therefore, logically my original premise can't survive. But in the social sciences, it's always going to be debatable whether we've really observed a black swan or not. So we're, we can't use this simple form of logic relying on just two truth values, true or false. in research, every, this is almost

08:54 - by definition the area where things are debatable. We're going to need subjective judgments, like likely and promising, or this is more promising than that. and that's, so we, we, we can't use the simple forms of logic that are appropriate to maths and maybe science, but we are going to use all the sophisticated resources of natural language, which they're still amenable to logical analysis, but it can't be reduced just to true, true or false.

09:27 - And that's, that's why I think we need to pay attention to the fact that researchers working in diff difficult areas need to use the resources of natural language and not just a sort of calculus of, of, of true and false, first of all, theories, right? So the similarity is that, both methodology and moral philosophy are amenable to logical analysis. I think at one time this wasn't realized. People thought that there's, there's a theory of,

10:01 - morality called eism, which says, if I say you should do such and such, I'm really just expressing an emotion. I'm saying hurrah for, for such and such, and you can't make sense of it. This breaks down because if you look at, a set of moral beliefs, you'll find there's a logical connection between them. So although you could say morality's entirely subjective, I can nonetheless,

10:31 - assail your ethical beliefs by showing that they're inconsistent. That's, that's an argument. You, if you're a rational sort of person, you're going to have to pay attention to. so theories of ethics are amenable to logical analysis. and in the same way that, research questions are, but the, the logic, of research, I think in some, some ways hasn't gone as far as the discussion has gone in,

11:05 - in moral philosophy, where there is this contrast between impersonal theories of justice, which say that, you know, for instance, it is wrong to do such and such. It is wrong to do, it is wrong to steal. And, or, or in economics, one that's very influential is the impersonal theory of util utilitarianism, which says that everyone should act so as to maximize the good consequences, the that in terms of happiness and minimize the bad consequences.

11:42 - but that doesn't necessarily impinge on me till I hook into it in some way. And for this reason, it's been really hard for these impersonal theories to have, have influence, whereas you can get a much more direct impact on people if you work out what their theories of virtue are. So there's this contrast of justice versus virtue. So, you might say to me, well, what, what do you think admiral qual qualities are?

12:13 - And I say, well, I don't know, moral courage. And so that's clearly that something that I'm saying should apply to me as well. It's not just launched into the void. and if, if I say I believe in moral courage, then you have a way of getting at me and trying to influence my behavior. and you could say that's a, perhaps a, a virtue of research as well. if you're going to,

12:38 - impact on individual researchers, you don't just launch, impersonal commands at them, collect data or refute your theories. You, you, you, you work out what their own values are and try and speak, speak to those. but the, the, to take it a stage further, do we go in in, do we go for justice or do we go for virtue? Then the virtues are only going to thrive in the right environment. So from my reading of moral philosophy, I would say

13:16 - if we want a good research community, then we have to think about the community in relation to the individuals. And that's not what's, of course, what's done in a, an entirely impersonal theory. So that, that would be the way I would characterize the similarities between, methodology and, moral philosophy. People have sometimes been struck in when they look at morals that between the different religions, they're, the codes

13:45 - of morals are actually rather similar, whereas the reasons they give are rather different. I think it's a bit the same with methodologists. They, they, a lot of them say what they want from researchers. There's a large degree of, agreement between them. They want people to be independent, knowledgeable, open, open-minded and so on. No, no one really disputes that. But when we come to look at the research world,

14:12 - it's not clear that this, these values are delivered. there's, as, as you know, there's an enormous emphasis on publication, publication in particular journals. And that's not necessarily inconsistent with the healthy research community. But, it's open to question whether we do get enough debate. I mean, I, I attend stacks of seminars. I very rarely attend a debate or hear someone interrogated about their own beliefs.

14:45 - So, what we want for individual researchers, I think is fairly uncontroversial, but it's really how we, how we get there. That, that's more the question. What, what sort of research community should we foster and, and how should we do that? I'd like methodology to study processes and, and not be based on bodies of supposed knowledge. I'm not saying that knowledge is a bad thing, I'm just saying that lo logically the two

15:14 - things should be kept separate. so there's a place for methodology, in other words that is abstract. I'm here, I'm really defending even the subject of philosophy, which is another subject that's sometimes the thought to be irrelevant or overbearing. so if I could come out as a someone who's, who's in favor of philosophy and believes it has something to offer by directing people

15:39 - to logical analyses. second thing, I think, we shouldn't regard progress as a dirty word. I think it's in the spirit of the times to say, well, we shouldn't judge between this theory and that. so I'm not necessarily disputing that, but I'm saying in some circumstances we can say I've improved my theory because I've made it, more consistent. I've removed inconsistencies, I've expanded its scope,

16:11 - I've become less agnostic about it. I'm not simply saying I don't know about everything, but I'm, I'm firming up my judgments. I think we should be careful about doing anything that introduces demarcation criteria between subjects, to say they're good subjects and bad. I think it's better to say that there are good arguments, and bad arguments. so I would emphasize this distinction between the logical form of an argument and its content.

16:45 - I think we should always be absolutely clear what, what's what, the research virtue ideas, I would say methodologists should engage with individuals. And the way to do this was shown long ago by Socrates, and he engaged in the most compelling sort of research interrogations you can imagine. He didn't dispute what people said, not directly anyway, but he showed them the consequences of what they thought

17:20 - and of course, press them into areas where they were going to become inconsistent. So this was his gadfly method. He also described himself as a midwife. He, these gadfly activities would give birth to new theories, new and better theories. And the final one is that I think we should think about what we mean by research utopia based on, the characteristics of individual and human researchers.

17:53 - That was the, that was the reason for the, name human in the title of the, of the paper. So you think about not just what research you want, but what, how you would like researchers to be under communi communities. They would like to, which they would, flourish in. So I think those would be my main conclusions from the paper.

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