Abstract
Interdisciplinary scientific and scholarly work, in particular when it is occasioned by transdisciplinary goals, is largely aimed at advisory services: When technical or social developments are not just passively tolerated, not simply accepted as ‘the way things go’, rather when they should be actively shaped so that the desired consequences are most likely to occur, and the unwelcome consequences most likely avoided, then the need for professional and interdisciplinary advice increasingly arises in the question of the means that are to be taken. Thereby, it is a basic topos that advice-receiving clients emphasize as well as advice providers when they deal with their advisory services that good advising is a service that as smoothly as possible supports the client in the achievement of the goals he has set—according to his own preferences.
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- 1.
Cf. as one and possibly the most well-known example Pielke’s characterisation of the scientific advisor as an “honest broker” (2007, p. 2): “The defining characteristic of the honest broker of policy alternatives is an effort to expand (or at least clarify) the scope of choice for decision-making in a way that allows for the decision-maker to reduce choice based on his or her own preferences and values.” (italics G. K.).
- 2.
That is e.g. how it is determined in the German Act on the formation of economic expert councils for the assessment of the economic situation: “The group of experts is to illustrate mistakes and ways to avoid or eliminate them, but not to make any recommendations for certain economic or social policy measures.” (Gesetz über die Bildung eines Sachverständigenrates zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Lage, Sect. 2; own translation).
- 3.
This also corresponds to the position of Max Weber that is often misunderstood and presented in an oversimplified manner: “[Scientific] criticism is not to be suspended in the presence of value-judgments” (Weber 1949, p. 52), but its sources do not allow for the determination of “binding norms and ideals from which directives for immediate practical activity can be derived” (ibid.). Stated more pointedly, that means: ‘An empirical science cannot tell anyone what he should do—but rather what he can do—and under certain circumstances—what he wishes to do.’ (ibid.: 54).
- 4.
The current behavioural-economics research knows and confirms numerous examples and differentiates types of such domain-specific purpose absolutising. Cf. Kahneman (2003), Ariely (2008) and other texts that address the phenomena of ‘bounded rationality’ (e.g. tunnel vision, framing, binding of cognitive resources to an issue, methodism, group-think, etc.).
- 5.
Cf., here and in the following, the considerations about the “opacity of our need structure” in Tenbruck 1972, p. 24ff.
- 6.
H.L.A. Hart's concept of ‘Ascription’ (Hart 1948/1949) shows that positive criteria are not always required for the attribution of non-manifest properties, but rather a practice of mutual attribution is functionable and maybe even more functionable when the attribution is handled temporarily according to certain evidence and virtually until the opposite has been proved. The practice described by him in the example of the attribution of ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility’ is more similar to the objection proceedings in court than the scientific justification model. Cf. Kamp (2005).
- 7.
Especially Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the philosophy of Epicurus and the Stoa are famous for this approach.
- 8.
Cf. the so-called “private language argument” in L. Wittgenstein (1953/2001, pp. 244–271).
- 9.
By no means should ontological dualism in the sense of an immaterial beside the material world be assumed with regard to the non-causal consequences of technological developments. It is only assumed that one can reconstruct the cause-effect relationships in relation to the changes in the balance of power, economic risks, communication behaviour or worldview, but such designated objects do not belong to the object areas of the empirical sciences.
- 10.
See detailed description in Grunwald (1994).
- 11.
Within certain limits, this regularity can be tested in systematic, laboratory conditions. Since a rule applier stands in a fundamentally different relationship to the situational conditions than an object subject to the laws of nature, these limits are restrictive (Dörner 1994).
- 12.
This is not the place to quarrel about words, though some of us might be tempted to add that what goes under “positivism” here is a far cry from what it’s supposed inventors, the “neo-positivists” had in mind.
- 13.
Here based on Langsted (1973).
- 14.
The case presented in the following is extracted from a Master Thesis by Rakkestad (1996), supervised by Matthias Kaiser.
- 15.
The selection of the site among three possible sites was widely discussed at the time and afterwards. All agree that the decision was a politically motivated decision, not one based on the technical and scientific studies available at the time which were not unanimous or unequivovally providing a clear recommendation. But by extension it involved a technological decision in the sense of Ronald Giere: “… a decision to develop or employ a specified technology in a given context for a stated purpose” (Giere in Caplan & Engelhardt (1987), p. 142).
- 16.
For an update see his publications: www.jvds.nl or www.nusap.net.
- 17.
The following is in part extracted from Kaiser (2006), and some parts are extracted from Kaiser (2013).
- 18.
An analogy can be found in the question of the relationship between the brain and the body: the brain is a part of the body, after all.
- 19.
However, these remarks should not be misunderstood as questioning any scientific pluralism.
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Gethmann, C.F. et al. (2015). Trans-Disciplinary Deliberation. In: Interdisciplinary Research and Trans-disciplinary Validity Claims. Ethics of Science and Technology Assessment, vol 43. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11400-2_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11400-2_4
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