Paradigms gone wild (one from the archives)

I think it's worth considering this idea in connection with 'citizens' epistemology'. As a beginning, here are two simple points: First, people are influenced by their training, education, and experience (peer groups, role models, culture, etc, etc.) and, as a result, they come to see the world in particular ways. (These can be fairly specific -- people's ideas about marriage or war, for example -- or they can be more global -- the sorts of outlook we characterize as liberal or conservative, for example.) Second, these 'outlooks' or 'paradigms' or 'conceptual frameworks' (or whatever you want to call them) structure people's perceptions of the social world, so that people who confront (in some sense) the same information come to very different conclusions. (Of course, if we take Kuhn seriously, we will want to put that second point differently: since paradigms shape perception, it isn't really the same information.)

Some examples:

First, from the realm of 'expert' knowledge, an article, on the op-ed page of the 3/27/2004 New York Times, suggests that the Bush administration didn't see 9/11 coming because its key players were adherents of an outdated (or was it always wrong?) paradigm. According to that paradigm, terrorists can only do serious damage when they are sponsored by states, so Al Qaeda could not be seen as a serious threat, except insofar as it might be supported by a 'rogue state' like Iraq. Like one of Kuhn's anomalous cards, the threat from Al Qaeda didn't fit their expectations and couldn't be seen for what it was. If you want to read the whole article it's here. (The term 'paradigm' is used explicitly three times in the article. I've put those sentences in bold type.)

As I taught a classroom version of this class during spring semester of 2004, we discussed 'citizen's epistemology' in connection with some of the events that were unfolding then: the hearings held by the 9/11 commission (especially the dramatic testimony of Richard Clarke and Condoleeza Rice) and the developments in Iraq. I was struck then, as I am still, by the extent to which people perceived these events in ways that supported their preconceptions. Critics of the Bush administration found Clarke (who had been a leading counter-terrorism official under both Clinton and Bush) to be a very credible person who made cogent criticisms of the administration's policies and competence. Administration supporters saw him as a disgruntled former employee trying to get back at his old boss and sell his book. Bush's critics saw Rice's testimony as evasive, heavily scripted, and as "raising as many questions as it answered" (to use a stock phrase), whereas supporters of the President saw the same testimony as a masterful rebuttal of the administration's critics. When the administration finally released the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing, the critics saw it's references to possible airplane hijackings and to terrorist cells in the US as pretty clear evidence that the Bush administration was "asleep at the wheel" prior to 9/11, whereas Bush supporters saw it as a summary of vague and outdated intelligence that required no actions beyond those already underway. Finally the developments in Iraq (most notably: an increase in anti-US violence and in US casualties, the takeover of several towns by Shiite militias loyal to Moqtada Sadr, unexpected resistance to the efforts of US marines to enter Falluja and apprehend the people who desecrated the bodies of four Americans on March 31, the inability and/or unwillingness of Iraqi police and military personnel to assist the US forces, and signs of growing cooperation between Sunni and Shiite factions) -- these developments were seen by some as a major setback for the US, and often as a sign that US efforts to create a decent regime in Iraq were now so far off-track as to be virtually doomed. Bush supporters, again, had a drastically different view: most of Iraq is at peace, most Iraqi's support the American efforts, the insurgents are a small group of 'thugs' or 'terrorists' who will soon be defeated, and the big picture still looks good. Differences of this kind led one observer, Juan Cole, who is a Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Michigan, to talk about "two-party epistemology."

[Update, 2010:  We might add to these examples the divergent opinions people have about the current situation in Iraq.  Conservatives/Republicans tend to think that the troop build up undertaken by President Bush in 2007 (the so-called 'surge') "worked"  and that the US will soon be able to pull out of Iraq and leave a fairly stable and friendly regime behind.  People on the left (like me) see a dysfunctional Iraqi political system still torn by irreconcilable differences that will probably erupt into a bloody crisis as soon as the US troops are gone and think that the most likely outcome of the whole episode (invasion and aftermath) is an expansion of Iranian influence in the region, not anything like a 'win' for the US. (Here's a nice overview by Thomas Ricks.)  Some conservatives agree with the critics on this issue, by the way, for example: Diana West.]

It is tempting to say about these political differences what Kuhn says about scientists who have different paradigms: that people with different political paradigms (or is it just different political allegiances?) are "living in different worlds." If you stay, as most of us do most of the time, in just one of those worlds, then your world seems like the only real world (any sensible person would see it your way), and the partisans on the other side seem almost crazy. Is there any hope of rational discussion between the inhabitants of these different worlds? Can we even imagine what it would be like to be on the other side of the divide? Is there any hope of figuring out which view is closer to the truth? (Or should we follow Kuhn in giving up on the idea that we can get "closer to the truth"?)