'Often Forgotten': Uncomfortable and Approximate Truths*

‘…anosognosia, a useful psychiatric term for a lack of awareness of one’s own condition’ (McEwan, 2005: 74)

This blog post assists in the treatment of a malady threatening social and cultural anthropology: epistemic anosognosia. If you got it, watch out!  It’s debilitating. The essay proposes that certain anthropologists suffer from it and suggests that the search for approximate truths based upon practices that improve observability, objectivity, and reliability can provide something of an antidote to it. Consider anosognosia.

Epistemic Anosognosia

Anosognosia is an unfamiliar term for a familiar medical condition –obliviousness.  It can include being forgetful and walking across a street into oncoming traffic; or having hallucinations about being able to fly, and flying off a roof into oblivion. I give the term an epistemological interpretation.  ‘Epistemic anosognosia’ is a condition referring not to an individual’s psychological deficits, but to an empirical discipline’s epistemological limitations with regard to truth-making practices, so that it struggles to distinguish what is truly known and from what is not.  Anthropology is the study of the human condition, which cannot be studied without observing it; qualifying it as an empirical field of study. Certain anthropologists –at least in those parts of the discipline called social or cultural anthropology- exhibit epistemic anosognosia. For these thinkers, it is as if they step out into the highway of human being, without knowing what traffic is hallucinatory and what is not. Reasoning behind this judgment is presented below.

Anthropological practitioners, from the late 19^th century through the end of the 1960s, for the most part understood their discipline to be a science. Then in 1986, reflecting a postmodern turn, encouraged by Clifford Geertz’s (1973) hermeneutic turn, Writing Culture (WC) was written.  This has been, and remains, a key text defining the nature of anthropology.  WC stressed that ‘literary procedures pervade’ (Clifford, 1986:4) anthropology, which in turn released its practitioners from any liaison with scientific practice.  Consider next WC’s treatment of truth seeking.

The nine contributors to WC did not agree on all matters, and James Clifford in his introduction specified that the volume’s essays did ‘not represent a tendency or perspective’ (1986: 4).  Untrue!  The key ‘perspective’ of the volume, as Clifford actually expressed it in WC’s introduction, was a declaration of ‘crisis in anthropology’ (1986: 3); posing the question, what is this crisis?  George Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, in Anthropology as Cultural Critique (1986), an amplifier of WC’s opinions, appeared to answer this question when they stated, ‘The crisis arises from uncertainty about adequate means of describing social reality’ (1986: 8), identifying the crisis as epistemological.

A second ‘perspective’ WC’s contributors’ shared was that ethnography -the ‘heart’ of anthropology (Marcus, 1994: 42)- would resolve this crisis. Steven Tyler, however, made clear that salvation would not come from science, because ‘… the world that made science, and that science made, has disappeared, and scientific thought is now an archaic mode of consciousness surviving yet in a degraded form…’  (1986: 123).

A third shared WC ‘perspective’ was the application of literary approaches in anthropology.  As Marcus explained it, the task of WC’s authors was ‘…to introduce a literary consciousness to ethnographic practice’ (1986: 262). Clifford called ethnographies ‘fictions’ (1986: 6). This meant, according to Tyler, that ethnography was, ‘Evocation …–the discourse of the post-modern world’ (Ibid.: 123).  What was evoked, according to Tyler, was ‘an emergent fantasy of a possible world’ (Ibid.: 125). So –caricaturing a bit- just as the poet might say, ‘My love is like a red, red rose’; the Tylerian ethnographer might declaim, ‘My ethnography is like a fantasy, fantasy of a possibility’.

A cost of establishing a ‘literary consciousness’ was the neglect of ethnographic truth-seeking practices.  WC’s index indicates that ‘truths’ were mentioned seven times (1986: 304).  These citations reveal WC’s contributors’ opinions about truth.  The first of these, articulated by Tyler, proclaims ethnography to be ‘beyond truth’ (1986: 123).  Tyler simply asserts his position.  Arguing without argument commits the fallacy of saying it is so, makes it so.

The second of the WC’s contributors’ attitudes towards truth was advocated by Paul Rabinow who advanced a Foucault/Hacking line; that ‘…the production of truth is epiphenomenal to something else’ (Rabinow, 1986: 240).  The something else is a Foucauldian regime of truth. Foucault’s notion of a regime of truth is important.  A regime of truth is the way a population constructs opinion that it believes to be truth. For example, due to the regime of truth in Nazi Germany, opinion had it that ‘the Jews were an inferior race’. Regime of truth analyses, may tell you something about what people believe to be true, but they tell you nothing about whether what people believe to be true, is true. Furthermore, it is certainly not an epiphenomenon to know that Jewish people are not inferior.

A third attitude towards truth exhibited by WC authors was articulated by Clifford and Vincent Crapanzano who asserted truths to not be ‘the whole truth’ (Crapanzano, 1986: 53) but, rather, ‘inherently partial’ (Clifford, 1986: 7).  Certainly, truths can be partial –or, as I would prefer to term it, approximate- but the problem with Clifford and Crapanzano’s position is that though they assert truth’s partiality, they do not warrant it.  They provide no consideration of what a partial truth might be or how to construct one. Hence, there was indifference in WC of the need to make truths.

WC became a ‘watershed’ volume in the years that followed publication (James et. al., 1997: 1; on this point see Hüwelmeier, 2000: 45). Throughout literary ethnography there has been little interest in knowing what the truth might be and what practices to institute to better achieve it (Reyna, 2004). The discipline took an ontological turn starting in the 1990s.  Martin Holbraad and Morten Pedersen’s The Ontological Turn [TOT] is a key text in this approach (2017).  WCmentioned ‘truths’, as earlier noted, seven times.  Readers will find no mention of truths in TOT’s index.  It is just not something they are interested in.

A ‘crisis in anthropology’ was signaled in WC but it was not the one of which its authors’ were aware.  Nearly two decades after the publication of WC, Marcus discovered something disturbing.  Ethnographies were ‘…objects of aestheticism and often summary judgment and evaluation’ – ‘judged quickly,’ used ‘to establish reputation, and, then…often forgotten.’  (2002: 3).  An intellectual discipline whose chief contribution is ‘often forgotten’ is in crisis. Now epistemic anosognosia enters the discussion.

Ethnographies were ‘fictions’. What gets made in these fictions is knowledge about social and cultural being, what is.  This knowledge untethered from scientific truth-making is ‘emergent fantasy of a possible world’ and so, like an object lost in space, floats into undecidability.  Maybe the knowledge is accurate; maybe not.  Who knows? Nobody.  Because lacking scientific validation processes, there is no way to know. WC inspired ethnography its epistemic anosognosia -unawareness of what is and what isn’t. No wonder, ethnographers producing such ethnographies are ‘often forgotten’.  This, then, is a serious illness of WC-infused ethnography.  Its ethnographers literally [pun intended] are oblivious to what they are talking about.

Approximate Truths

The remainder of this essay seeks to resolves the crisis.  It does so by suggesting approximate truths. The approach to approximate truth discussed below is, broadly speaking, pragmatic.  The concern is not with the question ‘what is truth’ but with, ‘what do you have to do to formulate more accurate, objective, and reliable statements about being; because, practically speaking, such statements are approximately truer than less accurate, objective, and reliable ones.  ‘Approximate truths’ in this optic are judgements of observers that certain statements are more accurate, objective, and reliable reports of a space and time of what is than other statements about that same space and time.

Actually, two sorts of ‘actuality’ and ‘explanatory’ truths are possible; with the former being truths about what is (reality) and the latter being truths about why, and how, what is is.  Life forms evolving is an actuality truth. They evolve through natural selection and genetic drift is an explanatory truth.  What follows in this blog post largely concerns explanatory truth-making.  Generalizations do the explaining. They are conceptual structures whose parts are concepts and whose relations are relationships between those concepts. ‘Capitalism causes climate change’, is an important generalization. ‘Capitalism’ and ‘climate change’ are the concepts; causality is the relationship between them. Generalizations are approximately true if they can confront reality and be shown to accurately, objectively and reliably depict it, even though the exact truth of that reality remains elusive.

Approximate truths are partial in the sense that they are not attempts to know in Comtean positivist terms, the absolute truth.  They are only as true in so far as their accuracy and reliability is known.  Such a view of truth is post (19^thcentury) positivist.  Essential to understanding this approach is comprehension of what is meant by confrontation, accuracy, objectivity, and reliability.

Confrontation

Confrontation is about confronting generalizations with reality. Generalizations explain, or understand, why and how certain things go on in reality. Confrontation occurs when observation produces perceptions of reality that may, or may not be, what the generalizations state should go on.  A confrontation is said to show the truth of a generalization if what is perceived to go on is what the generalization states will go on. Consider, for example, the generalization, ‘military occupation of a people frequently leads to resistance by that people.’  There are two concepts in this generalization – ‘occupation’ and ‘resistance’ which exhibit one relationship; the former concept leads to the latter. If it is perceived that the U.S. occupies Iraq and that there is both Sunni and Shiite resistance to this, then it can be said that the generalization has confronted perceptions of the world, and what is perceived to occur is what the generalization states will occur.  If this is the case, then it is said that the generalization has been validated, and is approximately true for this one instance of confrontation.

Let us make clear what happens during confrontation. This involves recognizing a difference between observational and theoretical concepts. Observational concepts are those that can be immediately apprehended following brain processes that produce perception. A distinction between sensation and perception is important here. The brain’s sensory systems create visual, auditory, etc. representations of things. These are ‘sensations’. Cognitive systems in the brain assign sematic meaning to the sensations. These are ‘perceptions’.  Sense a couple whose lips are touching.  Perceive they are kissing.  ‘Kissing’ is an observational concept.  Theoretical concepts are apprehended as a result of the application of cognitive rules to the observational concepts which raise the abstraction and generality of these latter concepts.  Sense the couple kissing; apply the rule ‘people kissing are intimate,’ and discover that the kissing couple is exhibiting intimacy. ‘Intimacy’ is a more theoretical concept than kissing.

The key to confrontations is observation of whether what is, is what is said to be. The results of such observations are the ‘findings’. To illustrate, consider the generalization, ‘the closer the kinship between persons, the greater their altruism’.  ‘Kinship’ and ‘altruism’ are more abstract concepts.  ‘Father’ and ‘son’ are more observational terms of close kinship. ‘Cousins’ are observational terms of more distant kinship. While ‘giving food’ and ‘not giving food’ are observational terms pertaining to altruism. The theoretical picture here is of ‘a positive relationship between close kinship and altruism’. If it is detected that fathers and sons exchange more food than do cousins, then the findings validate the generalization; because what is theorized to go on, in reality is perceived to go on there. If such a confrontation can be established, the generalization is said for that set of observations validated and is approximately true for that confrontation, and that confrontation alone.

Observability, Objectivity and Reliability

Not all approximate truths are equal.  Some are truer than others, because of the quality of observations. Observations vary in their observability, objectivity and reliability.

Observability: ‘Observability’ is the ability of concepts to be usable by observers making observations. Blur is the enemy of observability. ‘Blur’ epistemically is a situation either: 1. where there are no clear instructions tying theoretical to observational concepts or 2. where theoretical as well as observational concepts are in some way obscure. Vagueness and ambiguity are major factors in blur.

Objectivity: ‘Objectivity’ is the ability to observe being as it exists independent of biases concerning its existence. Fierce debates roil conversations of objectivity. Debates over whether complete, i.e., absolute, objectivity is possible are fine, but they miss the point that it is possible to make some observations more objective than others by establishing bias control practices.

Two major sorts of bias control practices exist; the first seeking to establish representativeness and the second intersubjectivity. The practice of seeking representativeness is doing things which insure what is observed is as much as possible characteristic of what is the subject of observation. Intersubjectivity is a very general concept, featured in phenomenology, psychology, neuroscience and the philosophy of science. The discussion that follows concerns epistemic intersubjectivity, because it is this which concerns bias control. ‘Epistemic intersubjectivity’ refers to situations where different observers, regardless of their biases, can make the same observations studying the same something

The key practices that lead to intersubjectivity are ones that clearly formulate instructions of how to classify sensations as particular states of observational concepts; and rules of how to derive states of theoretical concepts from observation ones.

Reliability: The ‘reliability’ of a generalization is the likelihood that different sets of observations in different confrontations validating it provide the same findings. The more the findings are the same from confrontation to confrontation, the greater its reliability. A generalization’s reliability is assessed by practices creating its validation history, i.e., the results of its confrontations with reality. This is an inventory of researchers’ confrontations of a generalization with reality. Such a history is based upon ‘validation episodes’, particular instances of the confrontation of a generalization with the reality to which it pertains. A validation episode is information about, i.e., evidence bearing upon, a particular confrontation.  The evidence may be positive or negative. ‘Positive’ evidence is consistent with what the generalization says goes on in reality.  ‘Negative’ evidence is inconsistent with what the generalization says goes on in reality.

An Uncomfortable Truth

‘…there is no hotter topic of conversation than post-truth…’ (McIntyre, 2018: i)

‘Scientia potestas est’ (Francis Bacon, 1597)

Lee McIntyre has voiced that there is ‘no hotter topic … than post-truth’. This blog post explored one nook of the post-truthers. George Marcus revealed that social and cultural anthropology’s chief intellectual creation -ethnographic fictions- were ‘often forgotten.’ The essay’s first section explicated why this was the case. Ethnographers, wallowing in epistemic agnosognosia, oblivious to validation processes, were, and are, the producers of ‘emergent fantasy’ that might be, or might, not be true. Such ethnographers are so post truth!

The essay’s second section offered the possibility of another anthropology, one that worked to formulate approximately truer knowledge. Such knowledge is only produced through validation. Validating takes work. The work involves validation processes that happen during, and after, confrontation of a generalization with its reality. The processes consist of practices that strengthen accuracy, objectivity, and reliability. Accuracy is increased by formulation of concepts with clear and explicit sensational hooks. The objectivity sought is not of the absolute variety, but of an approximate sort based upon practices that seek representativeness through bias control and intersubjectivity. Reliability emerges from practices concerning validation histories that create step scores, total ladder scores, positivity ratios, and validation universes.

Finally, let us step back and contemplate the broader picture. Truly, the crisis that menaced a few anthropologists in the 1980s pales in comparison with the one facing today’s world. It is the time of the great ruination. There is a whirring, buzzing global complexity threatened with destruction through climate change, ecosystemic collapse, species extinction, global pandemics, economic failure, and/or nuclear war. It is a time of austerity, precarity, plus the old threesome –exploitation, oppression, and repression; when institutions from the family to the state move towards dysfunction. A babel of voices spew fictions in this ruination –some fictions are those of liars, some are of prevaricators, some telling true fictions, others apparently telling true fictions, but maybe not.

Having contemplated the big picture, consider two truths -one simple, another uncomfortable. Simply put, the wily old philosopher, Francis Bacon, had it right: ‘Knowledge is power’; if we do not know what is truly occurring during the great ruination, then we cannot know how to address it. So, it is an uncomfortable truth that George Marcus got it wrong. It is not the case if ethnographers, and everybody else, are indifferent to the truth of their fictions, that then their fictions will be ‘often forgotten’.  Rather it is an uncomfortable truth if there is indifference to truth that the forgetters will no longer exist to do any forgetting.

 * Originally presented at the IUAES INTER-CONGRESS, August 2019, Poznan, Poland.

References

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Cite As

Stephen Reyna (2020) 'Often Forgotten': Uncomfortable and Approximate Truths. Anthropological Theory Commons. Url: http://www.at-commons.com/2020/11/18/often-forgotten-uncomfortable-and-approximate-truths/