<div class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><TT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black">Hi All!<br>
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Congratulations to Patrick for such a splendid statement of his case against my examples of Polanyian social science (PSS).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>I will try to explain my position in relation to what I see as his most salient points. These are: 1) the relationship of explanation and ethical evaluation.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>2)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>My two illustrative sketches for social science studies.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>3)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Interpreting the meanings and mental states in the minds of other people.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In the hope of avoiding confusion, I will send these as three different posts.<br>
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Before one can explain human behavior, one must make numerous personal judgments. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
<div class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><TT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black">Out of all of what William James calls the "blooming, buzzing confusion" in the world, one must first focus on that behavior which one regards as human.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Out of all the human behavior going on, one must focus on a particular event, or instance of behavior.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Already, one is deeply involved in discriminating between the relevant and the irrelevant.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But how is this discrimination done?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One must have a <EM>conception</EM> in mind by which to sort the "wheat" from the "chaff."<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That is how a person knows one from the other.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>No one can prepare a research proposal without first making all these, and other, personal judgments.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is done everyday in social science.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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One of the problems Polanyi calls attention to is that social scientists are making all these judgments either without being aware of it, or actually denying that they are doing so.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Hence, they are either intellectually dishonest, or they fail to fulfill their responsibility as scientists to be as fully rational as they can be.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Part of being rational, in Polanyi’s sense, is to be aware of what you are doing.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Personal Knowledge</I> he criticized natural scientists, in large part, both for their lack of self-awareness and for their false self-understandings.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>That approach also applies to social scientists.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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Suppose that the primary aim of social science is to explain "how and why" human behavior, or human events, happened the way it did.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This already presupposes a conception of what is human.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But social scientists rarely, if ever, justify that presupposition.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But skipping, or dodging, or denying the necessity of this justification has huge consequences.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The most distinctive dimension of human behavior, indeed, that which makes it human, is treated as if it does not exist.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Talk about ignoring the elephant in the room!<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>So, in effect Polanyi is challenging social scientists to acknowledge what they are actually doing, and to do it in a fully rational manner.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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Because the dimension of rationality is not examined, one effect is that human behavior is equated with all the activities of people – no matter how rational or irrational these may be.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Simply by questioning this established practice, Polanyi threatens a revolutionary change in social science.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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As I have said in prior postings, Polanyi has no problem with Aristotle’s time-honored maxim, in my words, “persons are rational animals.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But Polanyi broadens the conception of rational far beyond the logical, to include the whole of human intelligence.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thus, besides our language skills and the capacity for logical consistency, human rationality includes a resourceful problem solving ability, and a gift for astute means-ends practical thinking.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>These qualities are all emergent properties of evolution, with their roots in animal intelligence.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>While we excel in these, our most distinctive quality is our capacity to recognize the intrinsic value of other humans.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In short, to be rational is to be respectful of others.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Polanyi defends this thesis in many ways (see my paper, Respect and Empathy as Method…, at <o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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<div class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3> </FONT><A href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalBrowse&journal_id=998969"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/JELJOUR_Results.cfm?form_name=journalBrowse&journal_id=998969</FONT></A><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"> .)<TT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></FONT></FONT></div>
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While distinctively human behavior is rational, not all human behavior is equally rational.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This is true for logical reasoning, practical thinking, and for the gradients of respect the behavior manifests.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Because distinctively human behavior is rational, it can be explained by reference to the reasons the actors acted upon.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>These reasons can be criticized for their degree of rationality under the circumstances.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Some behavior, like Hitler’s, has pathological causes.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Hence, it is not within the realm of the rational, and its reasons have no ranking in rationality.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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Ancient Greek democracy was based on a slave economy.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>If slavery shows a lack of respect for human dignity, then those Greeks acted in a less than fully rational manner.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But their behavior was not so irrational as to manifest pathological causes.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
<div class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><TT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black">This judgment of the Ancient Greeks gauges the degree of rationality in their behavior.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thus, the existence of Greek democracy can be explained, in part, by their insensitivity to the dignity and intrinsic worth of those people they forced into slavery.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In this, they failed to fulfill their full potential for human rationality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A society of fully rational folks would not reduce their fellows to chattels. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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This is a judgment.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But it is not the sort of judgment that a priest makes when he condemns lovers for having sex out of wedlock.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Nor is it like the judgment of an abolitionist when he condemns all slavery as an abomination.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It is far more like the judgment a doctor makes about the state of a patient’s health after a thorough examination.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>All judgments of this sort are normative, or norm-based, but not all judgments are moral/ethical judgments.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>A judgment of the degree of rationality in human behavior is like the judgment of an Olympic diver’s performance; it is an appraisal of an achievement.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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In short, one reality of human behavior is that it manifests varying grades of rationality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Therefore, an explanation of human behavior cannot be complete without accounting for its gradient of rationality.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Indeed, to ignore this range of rationality is itself a less than rational act.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For social scientists to ignore it, as if all rationality was equal, is professionally irresponsible.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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More later.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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Bill Kelleher<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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PS<o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
<div class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><TT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black">Half of <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">The Study of Man</I> is meant to show why thinking in natural science is not separated by a logical gap from the thinking that would go on in a Polanyian social science.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Polanyi specifically distances himself from Weber’s theory of value neutral explanation, at SM 101.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></TT></div>
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