Validity from within (II)
‘Even if there is no truth, man can be truthful, and even if there is no reliable certainty, man can be reliable’. Hannah Arendt (1958: 254)
Systemic epistemology is different from modern – positivist – scientific epistemology. The systemic theorist Maturana (1989) defines three stages in systemic research. (1) We experience ‘something’ that we distinguish; (2) We perceive that ‘something’ in a connecting pattern; and (3) We embed these various patterns in a matrix. Since we are both observers and participants in the matrix, we cannot step outside it, see it as it is. ‘We explain our experiences with our
experiences’ (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008). We cannot objectively compare our measurements to any external independent parameters, since no such external parameters exist. Every parameter is part of what may be called a language game, and can only be understood within the rules of that particular language game. What we can do in systemic research, however, is to create ‘validity from within’, to create coherent explanations of different experiences that make a difference that matters – explanations that ‘fit’ within the communities involved.
The concept of ‘validity from within’ is at odds with the dominant discourses of science, in which ‘truth is a matter of the accuracy of representation of an independently existing reality and not of subjectivist interpretation’ (Braidotti, 2013:175); in which validity is based on value-free rationality in research; and in which objectivity is the condition of research and distance the condition of objectivity. An example of ‘validly from within’ is illustrated in an interview with Karen Barad.
‘Another example that may be helpful here is an example that Haraway (2008) talks about. It is an example that is raised by Barbara Smuts, who is an American
bioanthropologist who went to Tanzania to investigate baboons in the wild for her doctoral research. She is told as a scientific investigator of non-human primates to keep her distance, so that her presence would not influence the behavior of the
that she found herself unable to do any observations since the baboons were
constantly attentive to what she was doing. She finally realized that this was because Smuts was behaving so strangely to them, they just could not get over her. She was being a bad social subject in their circles. The only way to carry on and to do research objectively was to be responsible; that is, that objectivity, a theme that feminist science studies has been emphasizing all along, is the fact that objectivity is a matter of responsibility and not a matter of distancing at all. What ultimately did work was that she learned to be completely responsive to the non-human primates, and in that way she became a good baboon citizen. They could understand, at least intelligibly to the non-human primates, and as a result they left her alone and went about their business, making it possible for her to conduct her research’ (Dolphijn, van der Tuin, 2012).
Establishing ‘validity from within’ means finding a way of explaining the experience (something we distinguish, perceive as part of a pattern within a matrix) in a
reliable, accurate way. In arriving at this explanation, we use the coherence of our experiences to explain our experiences: ‘if this and this happens, then the result is such and such’ (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008:14). An explanation, according to Maturana is:
(1) We use our experiential coherences.
(2) We propose a generative mechanism. This generative mechanism (if this, then that) is the formal explanation.
‘A generative mechanism consists of a process that if it were to take place, the result would be experience to be explained’ (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008:15).
(3) This formal explanation should be accepted as such by an observer. This condition is the informal part of the explanation:
‘It must also satisfy some condition that the observer adds from his or her own choice, or preference as he or she listens’ (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008:15).
In Maturana’s criterion for a scientific explanation, there is no independent reality. Prediction and control do not play any role. An explanation is scientific, according to Maturana, contingent on both formal conditions (experiences are coherent and generative) and informal conditions (the experiences are accepted as coherent and generative by an observer). The informal part of the explanation is subjective.
Acceptance depends on the observer’s preferences, discussions between observers, their various understandings in the language games that exist within the specific social communities. It follows that validity, as acceptance, results from discussion. But how do observers distinguish perception from illusion? When is an explanation seen as valid or invalid? Observers experience their experience in relation to other experiences. When observers devalue one experience in relation to another they experience illusion. When observers value one experience through another experience, they consider it to be valid, or even more valid. Validity is a result of valuation, and valuation takes place occurs in culturally-informed exchanges. Cultures are closed networks of exchanges, a result of the systemic conservation of manners of living, manners of seeing, reacting, reflecting, and valuing (Maturana & Verden-Zoller, 2008).
Systemic practice and research
‘The ordinary processes of scientific advance in a lineal world, a world of lineal thought, are, after all, experiment, quantification, and, if you are anywhere within the realm of medicine, you will be expected to take a “clinical posture”. And I want to suggest to you that experiment is sometimes a method of torturing nature to give an answer in terms of your epistemology already immanent in nature. Quantification will always be a device for avoiding the perception of pattern. And clinical posture will always be a means of
avoiding the openness of mind or perception which would bring before you the totality of the circumstances surrounding that which you are interested in.’ (Bateson, 1978:42)
Over the past three decades, systemic research has generated a growing body of evidence for the effectiveness of systemic/couple and family therapy (CFT) treatments and methodologies for studying them (Heatherington et al., 2015).
‘Many reviews and meta-analyses of CFT since 1990 have established that, compared to no-treatment or waitlist controls, these treatments are efficacious for a variety of problems, and indeed more efficacious than individual treatments’ (Heatherington et al., 2015).
(randomized controlled trial), it should never be done’ (Swisher, 2010). It has led to debate, and continues to do so, in the field of systemic therapy. One might say that family therapy differs from other sciences because ‘we are all, in some way, experts about families’ (Cecchin et al., 1992). It is hard to adopt a distance from what, in many ways, is so familiar to us. Social life is complex. Can the complexity of social life be captured in cause-and-effect measurement? How can we conduct research that does justice to the familiarity and complexity of social life?
Traditionally positivist, evidence-based and systemic, postmodern orientations have been presented in opposition to one another. Authors writing in the 1980s (Allman, 1982, Tomm, 1983) argued that quantitative models were inadequate for systemic research because they took no account of context and employ linear, reductionist paradigms. Quantitative researchers focus on development outcomes and pursue goals defined in terms of symptom relief. From a systemic perspective this ‘lineal causality’ is an ‘epistemological error’ (Bateson, 1972).
‘From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world. This … makes complex tasks manageable, but we pay a hidden, enormous price. We can no longer see the consequences of our actions; we lose our intrinsic sense of connection to a larger whole’ (Senge, 2006:3).
Integrating quantitative and systemic research presents certain conceptual difficulties. Thinking in systemic concepts like circularity and recursiveness is difficult to reconcile with the linearity of time, for example when considering developmental outcomes. In quantitative outcome research, reproduction should be the operationalisation of the independent variable. This implies that reliable outcome research requires a manual, a precise description of the precise, time-framed steps that the therapist has taken. The therapist is only part of the procedure and the therapeutic relationship is a ‘confounding variable’ (Escudero, 2012). This clashes with the core values of systemic, constructionist family therapy. Relational communication between therapist and family members during therapy sessions is fundamental when explaining the therapeutic process.
From a postmodern perspective we believe that language constructs rather than mirrors reality. Adopting this perspective, researchers will ask questions such as: What are we
doing when we ‘mix up the rules of one language game with the rules of another’ (Caputo, 2013: 199)? What are we doing when we overrule personal expressions in ‘living moments’ (Shotter, 2011) that present an objectified truth claim; build upon reduced information as data? Does reducing personal experiences to data, to numbers in a diagram, make sense at all? The concept of ‘data’ as ‘collected facts and statistics for reference or analysis’ is difficult to use when are taking a systemic, postmodern
perspective as our point of departure. Researchers, using induction and deduction as a basis for scientific explanation, share a belief that they can separate data from the researcher’s subjective experience and his or her theoretical frames of reference (Alvesson & Karreman, 2011).
‘What (possibly) exists out there is complex and ambiguous and can never simply be captured… Any claim of truth claim then says as much or more about the researcher’s convictions and language use than about the object of study’. (Alvesson & Karreman, 2011:7).
It is impossible to separate the observation from the observer. All data is theory-laden and embedded in language (Alvesson & Karreman, 2011). Our measurements are not identical to what we have measured. R.D. Laing used ‘capta’ instead of ‘data’. Denzin (2003) prefers to speak of ‘empirical material’.
‘Not getting it’
‘Something is happening and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones?’ (Bob Dylan, 1965)
In 2011 John Shotter published his book Getting Itl, about ‘thinking in the moment’ when encountering unique, ‘first-time’ events. In spite of its title, the book opens up space for what we can’t get – the ineffable. Shotter refers to ‘a third realm’ of mysterious events that subsist in between those that we are completely unable to describe in words – the ineffable – and those we believe can be addressed through rational thought. More precisely, he distinguishes: (1) the Ineffable; (2) problems that can be solved through the application of reason; and (3) relational difficulties in between, difficulties of
in-between realm, the process of ‘getting it’ – even without ever being able to fully comprehend it.
‘With the help of Wittgenstein’s (1953) methods, we can begin to find our “way around” within the realm of the mysterious, to “find our feet” within it, so to speak, even though it may never be wholly comprehensible to us’ (Shotter, 2011:3).
Although Shotter’s focus in Getting It is on ‘the third realm’, I want to look a little more closely here at the ineffable, or the imperceptible. The ineffable, imperceptible, aion occurs when we experience bewilderment and feel perplexed and confused. Although this sensation influences our everyday lives, science has nothing to say about it (Barad, 2007). Opening up to the imperceptible requires us to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there (Wittgenstein, 1953). It requires ‘negative capability’ (Keats), the capacity to sustain uncertainty and instability, to live with the unforeseeable and unpredictable’ (Caputo, 2013:92) and to ‘trust in spite of not knowing’ (Han, 2014).
We need to learn how to open up space for the ineffable, the imperceptible, without trying to ‘get it’, because the effort to ‘get it’ means losing it. Water provides a good metaphor: it can buoy up a ship but slips through our fingers if we try to grasp and hold it. In research in the social sciences, we are obliged to accept that ‘social reality is not fully understood’ (Alvesson & Karreman, 2011: 115). What does awareness of the ineffable look like? The book The Feeling of What Happens (1999) by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio introduces a three-layered scale of consciousness (1) the proto-self; (2) core consciousness; and (3) extended consciousness.
Damasio’s ‘protoself’ is a coherent collection of neural patterns, which map the state of an organism’s physical structure from one moment to the next (Damasio 1999). Core consciousness is born when the organism becomes aware of its bodily state (protoself) as affected by its (emotional) experiences and responses to those experiences. The brain continues to present a non-verbal narrative sequence of images in the mind of the
organism, based on its relationship to objects, such as a person, a melody, or a neural image. Core consciousness is concerned only with the present moment, the here and now. It has no need of language or memory, nor can it reflect on past experiences or project itself into the future (Damasio 1999).
The psychologist William James (1842–1910) discussed ways of experiencing our lives through a stream of consciousness, embedded within a flow of living. Opening up space for the ineffable, the imperceptible, and the core consciousness implies getting a sense of life within the stream of consciousness, within the flow of life.
‘Yet, as James emphasizes, vague and unnameable though they may be, such tendencies are central in ‘shaping’ our everyday activities. “It is, in short”, he says, “the re-
instatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention”’ (p. 254) (Shotter, 2011:26).
‘Indeed, as James shows, within our experience of the stream of our subjective lives, as he calls it, there is a tendency for every moment to be “infected”, so to speak, with aspects of not only previous moments but also with anticipations of what next might occur.’ (Shotter, 2011:25).
‘Getting it’
‘Getting it’, in Shotter’s book (2011) is about dealing with what he calls ‘its’ (living moments in unique circumstances), sensing and doing detailed justice to those ‘its’, without ‘stripping them down’ to fit them into already well-known categories or
frameworks (Shotter, 2011). Instead of thinking about difficulties as if they were objects ‘over there’ in the world outside us, Shotter argues that we can ‘relate to’ and ‘enter into’ our difficulties in an exploratory fashion. Shotter calls this exploratory fashion ‘withness thinking’. ‘Withness thinking’ means ‘to know what we are doing while we are doing it, but which we didn’t plan in detail before we embarked on it’ (Shotter, 2011:2).
‘I have called this alternative approach to imaginative, exploratory thought, withness- thinking, to contrast it with our much more usual style of exploratory thought in which we think about things in terms of some kind of representation, that is, picture, of them. It involves imaginatively thinking from within a moment of acting, with the voice of another or with a detailed concrete circumstance in mind. For, as we shall find, such events can provide us with action-guiding anticipations as to how we might act next in relation to the particular difficulties we might face, in each unfolding-moment by unfolding-moment, in such a circumstance’ (Shotter, 2011:2).
express’ (Shotter, 2011:36). Shotter describes the tension inherent to finding a way to go on inside this ‘in-between space’. He illustrates it with an example from a therapy session described by Tom Andersen. Andersen, talking with a man that has beaten his wife and son, feels an invitation to say:’ ‘Stop doing what you are doing’. He realises that corrective instructions often don’t work. Andersen then asks the man whether his hand is open or closed when he hits. He asks: ‘if your hand, on its way to hit, stopped and talked, what might the words be?’ (Shotter, 2011:14) The client has difficulty
understanding the question, and, noticing this, Andersen thinks about to himself that this is not surprising: for some people (maybe mostly men), in some situations, hitting out may be easier than finding words. Andersen asks: ‘Do you have another side that wants something differently’? ‘Sure’ the man replies and together they explore this other voice. Andersen asks: ‘where in your body will that voice be’. ‘In my heart’ the man said. Shotter comments:
‘Here, clearly, Tom’s task was not an intellectual one. He did not face a problem that could be solved by the use of reason. The difficulty he faced with the man was a difficulty of orientation, a relational difficulty, a struggle to do with how best to “go on” with such a troubled man’. (Shotter, 2011:15).
In section A, I used the earth-territory-map diagram to describe processes of navigating life. I expanded it by including ‘not getting it’, ‘getting it’ and ‘withness thinking’ in the diagram. The earth is our potential, a materialized reality, dynamic and unknowable. We can’t ‘get it’, parts of it are beyond our powers of perception, but nonetheless exert influence over our lives. In between the earth and the territory we can sense what unfolds without actually knowing what it is. Our body responds spontaneously (Shotter, 2011) within ‘the feeling of what happens’ (Damasio, 1999). From within we navigate life through ‘withness thinking’. The territory refers to the experience we have
perceived and the stories we have lived. In between the territory and the map we are trying to express what we have perceived in language. The map refers to frames of reference, stories told, discourses, constructs, narratives, and storylines that shape, permit and limit our response space.
Earth Difference in between
The Territory Difference in between
The Map
Reality, dynamic and unknown
Life and stories lived (How we perceive and shape life) Stories told (Discourses, constructs, narratives, storylines) Aion, a natural drift
‘Not getting it’ Navigating ‘Getting it’ Orientation
Response- ability Spontaneously responsiveness Withness thinking
Reflexivity Response space
Fig. 1 Earth-territory-map (repeated p.37)
Navigating complexity (II)
‘Not getting’ it, ‘knowing from within’ and ‘getting it’ are ways of navigating complexity. Living systems anticipate in response to unpredictable conditions, looking for a fit that makes a difference that matters. We navigate complexity when we try to control a situation (try to find a solution by exploratory thought) or when we orient ourselves within the flow of life (reacting to, or reflecting on, the feeling of what happens – finding ways to go on). I distinguish four ways of navigating complexity based on control, flux, and reflection: they are reactive, directive, spontaneously responsive, and reflexive responses to complexity.
Navigating complexity Non-reflected Reflected (in action)
In control Reactive Directive, strategic
In flux Spontaneously responsive Reflexivity
Fig 2. Navigating complexity
Systemic Inquiry
‘A further methodological issue arises as a result: the advanced, biogenetic structure of capitalism as schizophrenic global economy does not function in a linear manner, but is weblike, scattered, and polycentered. It is not monolithic, but an internally contradictory process, the effects of which are differentiated geopolitically and along gender and ethnicity lines, to name only the main ones. This creates a few methodological difficulties for the social critic, because it translates into a heteroglossia of data that makes both classical and modernist social theories inadequate to cope with the complexities. We need to adopt nonlinearity as a major principle and to develop cartographies of power that account for the paradoxes and contradictions of the era of globalization and do not
Gail Simon (2014) argues that ‘Systemic Inquiry is a form of Qualitative Inquiry, in which methodology is treated as an emergent and ethical activity’ (2014:3). Simon invites systemic practitioner-researchers to choose or develop their research
methodology by adopting a systemic approach, a social constructionist critique, and a