In this chapter we have examined ways in which ideas, interpretations and methodological assumptions can be presented to advocate acceptance of an arguwent; and conversely, how we can analyse such techniques and prac tices. Underpinning this chapter has been an implicit prompt to employ
phil osophical scrutiny when reviewing a literature. We need to think about an d question the plausibility of what is being proposed as an interpretation of a state of affairs. What we are doing when we analyse the works of o thersis to dissect and reorganize all ideas and arguments, many of which are very complex and difficult to grasp.
It is often the case that what makes an argument difficult to understand
is
the way in which it has been constructed. The author of an argument mavhave committed, quite unknowingly, a number of methodological fallacies and mistakes in the use of language, and these create a confusing and misplaced position on a matter or question. Through philosophical scrutiny we can usually make visible these kinds of errors in logic and fallacies. There are two philosophers whose work is particularly relevant here: one is Gilbert Ryle (1900–76) and the other is Ludwig Wittgenstein 11889-1951).Both Ryle and Wittgenstein had, amongst other concerns, reservations about the ways in which language and concepts were used to construct explanations and arguments about the nature of reality. In their separate .ways each came to the conclusion that many problems in science were the result of a widespread and inappropriate use of concepts; and it was this that usually led to confusion. Ryle focused his attention upon the use of misleading expressions and mistakes made with inappropriate use of categories, while Wittgenstein had serious reservations about the attitude of science, in particular, the attitude towards generality and truth.
If we look first at Ryle we can see something of the nature of philo-sophical scrutiny. Ryle (1949) was interested in the details of how a conclusion was made. He was therefore interested in the routes by which an argument was put together. Through analysis he showed that the ways in which we tend to think about the world are based on long-standing mistakes. The first set of mistakes Ryle identified was what he called systematically misleading expressions. Here is an example: a robin is a bird; Stephen Hawking is a man. What is it, Ryle would ask, about these statements that makes them factual and able to be understood (i.e.
meaningful)? Ryle was not interested in the particular facts in such statements; his interest is in what scientists and philosophers take to be the formal properties of such statements. That is, factual statements have
138 Doing a literature review
syntactical similarities that can lead to confusions. One confusion is to tree facts as if alike: a bird is a thing just as a man is a thing, therefore both are
objects. If this is the case then both can be studied in the same way.
This kind of logic might lead down a number of routes, all of which
compound and continue the confusion. First, it might be assumed the birds and humankind are the same (a reductionist argument) which would , be incorrect, if not meaningless. A similar assumption can be applied t some analogies. Defining society by comparing it to an organism might
give it a quasi-ontological character leading us to believe that society is real object rather than an abstract term, or, to take another analog defining the mind as if it were a computer might lead us to believe that the
mind is a physical (i.e. material) object.
A similar misplacement can be seen in the use of words like beauty justice, equality, intelligence, creativity, knowledge, wisdom and the ilk(
The expression 'one is born beautiful' is a generalization; it assumes some
universal understanding about the concept of beauty, as well as implicitly
assuming some causal link based on the inheritance of physical features.
fails to ask a number of relevant questions, such as the following. What meant by beauty? Who defined beauty? When was the definition given What comparisons were made or what comparisons could we make t establish criteria? Beauty therefore is a concept not a fact: it is not an object
in the world, and is not therefore something we could collect information
and thereby eventually arrive at some stipulate definition. Like the
concepts of justice and equality, beauty is a characterization of actions an conventions in social relations that are relative and context dependent. A such, movement from the universal to the particular can, at best, be
misleading and, at worst, meaningless.
Secondly, treating facts or interpretations as if alike might lead us to l confused about the alternative ways of thinking about the world. Take,for example, the statement that I might make: the chair I am sitting on is soli(
My colleagues in the Department of Physics, however, tell me that m chair is nothing more than particles held together by forces I cannot se, How can my chair be two things at the same time? I cannot choose between
the two seemingly alternative views on reality. This is because what see' to be contradictory positions are different positions; they cannot
therefore
be subjected to a comparative evaluation to assess relative accuracy and determine which position is the more truthful or better.
What we have here, according to Ryle, is a muddling of the technic.
with the non-technical (i.e. commonsense) attitude. The muddle has its
origins in trying to say that one kind of reality is superior to another, rather
than saying it is different. The point here is that great care needs to be
taken when attempting to compare things; judgements of relative wort cannot always be settled through a comparative exercise. The usefulness ( one social theory cannot easily be compared with that of another, or or society shown to be superior to another, by subjecting each to a con parative evaluation. When such exercises are attempted they often have :
Organizing and expressing ideas 139 leave out residual elements or make claims of a moral superiority in order argue for one position over another. Recourse to morality or politics is,
±en, due to mistakenly attempting to compare things which are different and which cannot be judged in terms of universal logic.
We might go on to apply research methodologies and techniques that are incongruent with the phenomena we are studying. A classic example here comes from the body/mind debate. It is commonly assumed that the mind is different from the physical body, that it is resident somewhere in the brain of the body, and that it is the mind of a person which causes the person to act rather than merely respond. It is therefore assumed that the presence of a mind is what distinguishes humans from other forms of life. In particular, scientists have wanted to treat mental phenomena, such as attitudes, emotions and intellect, as if they were physical things. The motivation for this is the belief that events in the world can be explained in terms of causal relationships. Categorizing the mind as separate from the body is, according to Ryle, a major category mistake.
The nature of this category mistake resides in treating the mind as if it were a physical object rather than a process. For example, events in the physical world tend to be episodic: one thing happens and then another thing; such happenings occur in space and time. Mental events, however, do not have the same kind of episodic character as objects: they do not exist in a space nor as a distinct entity. Ryle suggests that in making assump-tions about a mind/body dualism we can commit a number of misplaced descriptions due to the inappropriate use of the categories we use. He gives numerous examples of the category mistake, such as assuming that a university is something distinct from the buildings that we can see around it, or that team spirit is something that can be observed along with the
activity of the sporting event itself.
Ryle is therefore drawing attention to the variety of ways in which categories (i.e. concepts we associate with the mind) are used to relate different things and thereby produce descriptions of those things. He is suggesting that we need to reflect on the categories we use, especially when using the appropriate 'mental' verbs to describe dispositions; that is, tendencies to act in certain ways. This is because many actions are not easily described using dispositional verbs. For example, we can describe the physical activity of someone mowing their lawn but find it more difficult to describe the process involved when someone is doing mental arithmetic. We cannot, according to Ryle, reduce the latter kind of activity to the former, because they are different. Added to this, Ryle observes, we do not need to reflect on the intricate rules or propositions of arithmetic in order to do arithmetic. The ways in which people do arithmetic can be very different; they might use a pen and paper, or employ objects to count with or do it in silent contemplation. Ryle therefore warns against assuming that such activities as arithmetic are somehow mysterious, as hidden away
somewhere in an entity called the mind. What Ryle recommends is the use of thick description. He believed that it is only through a detailed, thick
140 Doing a literature review
description that we can show the variety of processes people use to do what they do. This leads us to the work of Wittgenstein.
In his later work Wittgenstein (1953) had a great deal to say about the nature of making comparisons through the use of language and the benefits to be had from a thick description of phenomena. Although he did not deal with these as separate issues, for the sake of clarity we will consider them separately. The first point that needs to be made when looking at the work of Wittgenstein is that one of his main interests was with the attitude of science. Wittgenstein was not interested in saying anything about the findings of science but, like Ryle, was interested in, and had some serious reservations about, the ways in which scientific argument was constructed. Also like Ryle, Wittgenstein's ideas are difficult to trans-late into the social sciences, but we can get an idea of their usefulness with
a simple example. When looking at something like witchcraft we might say that its outcomes are false. We might add, through a comparative assump-tion, that the deductions of science are true. But to some people the outcomes of witchcraft are true.
Therefore, as social researchers, we have a difficulty concerning the status of truth and falsity. Wittgenstein's interest was in such difficulties.
He was not interested in establishing criteria for determining what is and what is not true. His interest was in what makes something either true or false and what kinds of statements are inappropriate for even trying to determine their truth or falsity.
Wittgenstein was therefore not assuming that everything that has syntactical similarities based on logical form is capable of being empirically proven to be true or false. His interest was in investigating the boundaries
of factual discourse. The problem is, of course, that factual statements can look very similar to non-factual statements. It is easy to mistake a statement for a statement of truth. It is because people tend to think within certain institutional frameworks that some things are accepted as true and other things, that are outside that way of thinking, are regarded as false. Science which dominates Westernized culture, and the witchcraft beliefs, which `.
dominate life in Azande culture, are both institutionalized. Therefore according to Wittgenstein, it only makes sense to talk about the truth c:
science within the theoretical basis of the institution of science, just as it only makes sense to talk about the use of witchcraft within theeveryday
life of Azande people.
Therefore Wittgenstein had reservations about the goal of
generality in science.He was not critical of science or of the emphasis it placed general explanatory frameworks. He was, however, concerned with degree of emphasis placed on generality to the exclusion of other ways understanding the world around us. His basic contention was that not puzzles and problems require generality in order to be explainable. This,: he thought, was especially the case with conceptual puzzles often associ-ated with debates over methodology and theory: such things as
clarification, analysis and even an understanding of how a phenomenon happens:
Organizing and expressing ideas 141 cannot wholly be had from a generalizing approach. This is because, according to Wittgenstein, the ways in which a problem is stated can often lead to an inappropriate strategy for its investigation.
CONCLUSION
We stay with Wittgenstein to conclude this chapter. Wittgenstein makes a simple but useful distinction between puzzles which require information (i.e. more facts) and those that require clarification (i.e. sorting out). Many of the things we have said throughout this chapter are to do with clarification, about sorting out confusing and diverse ideas in order to recast them to make them clearer. Once we have collected sufficient literature we can begin to tackle our problem of understanding. But in collating the literature we are tackling the problem of information.
Wittgenstein's distinction therefore informs much of what we have been advocating. He maintained that there are two main kinds of problem:
problems of ignorance (there are things existing that we do not know enough about and therefore we require more information), and problems of confusion (we have the information but we do not understand what it amounts to). We therefore need to seek clarity in the information we have, rather than acquire more. The consequences of this distinction are many, but for us there is one that we specifically need to acknowledge. If we emphasize description, use core texts and subject them to careful analysis, we can be more assured that we will clarify our understanding and be
saved from endlessly searching for more information and thereby com-pounding our confusion.