Ideological Paradigms
“Lens” is a Metaphor, but
“Paradigm” is an Explanation.
My favorite metaphor for a priori categories
is the viewing lens. The lens metaphor explains everything: a limited, but
filtered way of looking at phenomena. Another lens could bring to light other
characteristics not seen in the previous lens. But the lens metaphor does not
really explain anything. *The concept of “paradigm” not only has
accidental benefits as a learning tool, but paradigms can actually
explain how ideology influences our perception.
The Neo-Kantian understanding of absolute a
priori categories, and relative a priori epistemological
categories is important since paradigms function in the same way as a
priori categories. How paradigms function like Neo-Kantian
relative a priori categories will be shown point by point.
The absolute category is the original
Kantian concept used to describe how consciousness shapes, or organizes sense
data from perception to create experience. Consciousness use the transcendental
ideals (meaning a priori) of space and time to comprehend
the world as experience. In Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” space and
time are not named categories, but rather “pure a priori forms
of intuition” meaning any object is known in advance of experience, and not
because of experience. We cannot even think of an object not in time, or not in
space because they are universal forms of sensibility which are the necessary
conditions for the possibility of experience. But what the understanding cannot
intuit a priori, it judges and synthesizes by logical types and
constructs an structure of unifying logical concepts. Kant called these "Analytic of Concepts" which are made up
of Judgments and Categories.
The Kantian school understands these categories as
“absolute,” or the necessary conditions for the possible of experience. The
Neo-Kantians hold that these necessary a priori concepts are
functionally indistinguishable from a priori "relative"
categories. Relative categories are unnecessary for
experience, but they change the way perception is organized. Relative
categories are not just formal static logical concepts, but are changing
socio-historical-anthropological concepts by which cultures are organized by
constructing a meaningful Lifeworld.
Conceptualizations can become "symbolized" to
represent the relationship between concept and the particular in experience.
Symbolization connects a perceptual sign with meaning. So uniting a sign and
its meaning allows for distinctions in thought that are not found in fact: for
example, thinking can distinguish the color and extension of an object, but the
separation in not possible in fact.
The three elements necessary to critical phenomenological
description is to 1.) identify relative a priori categories;
2.) distinguishing semblence and sign; and 3.)
selecting a phenomenon for analysis.
Dr. Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (The
University of Chicago Press, 1962, referred to as“SSR”), explores
the evolution and revolutions of scientific paradigms and provides us with
examples of how paradigms organize sense experience. Dr. Kuhn develops the term
“paradigm” extensively in his work, and is
worth a word study:
"The word paradigm has been used in
science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα"
(paradeigma), "pattern, example, sample"- from the verb
"παραδείκνυμι" (paradeiknumi), "exhibit, represent,
expose," and that from "παρά" (para), "beside,
by" + "δείκνυμι" (deiknumi), "to show, to point
out". The original Greek term παραδείγματι (paradeigma) was
used in Greek texts such as Plato's dialogue Timaeus (28A) as
the model, or the pattern that the Demiurge (god) used to create the cosmos.(Wikipedia)."
The concept of paradigm is an important concept for
demonstrating the principles that meaning is not external to consciousness, but
is instead inter-subjective. We examined Kant's transcendental
analysis of consciousness, or the Subject. Kant’s meaning of “transcendental”
is knowledge that is “a priori” to experience and is the necessary
logical conditions for the possibility of experience.
The Functions of Paradigms
Dr. Thomas Kuhn does not provide a formal definition of
paradigms; the concept is given definition by historical examples. He employs
the concept of “paradigm” much like the term “hypothesis” is used in the
physical sciences. A hypothesis postulates objective, or independently external
entities that account for our experience of the world. Atoms, electrons,
substance, and the classic laws of physics are hypotheses that give form and
significance to phenomena. Kuhn names those commonly shared hypotheses
“paradigms”(SSR, pp. 10-11).
" It has since become widely applied to many other
realms of human experience as well even though Kuhn himself restricted the use
of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what
members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.” (The Essential
Tension, 1997). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, “a student in the
humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable
solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for
himself.” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). A scientist,
however, once a paradigm shift is complete, is not allowed the luxury, for
example, of positing the possibility that miasma causes the flu or that ether
carries light in the same way that a critic in the Humanities can choose to
adopt a 19th century theory of poetics, for instance, or select Marxism as an
explanation of economic behaviour. Thus, paradigms, in the sense that Kuhn used
them, do not exist in Humanities or social sciences. Nonetheless, the term has
been adopted since the 1960s and applied in non-scientific contexts. (Wikia) "
The scope of a paradigm can be a single proposition,
theory, hypotheses, conceptual model, a picture, or axiomatic postulates—all
these terms refer to relative ideological categories which organize and give
significance to the otherwise chaotic world of sense impressions. Kuhn explored
the characteristics of “paradigms” in his selected historical examples of
scientific paradigmatic revolutions: “In its established usage, a paradigm
is a accepted model, or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me,
lacking a better word, to appropriate ‘paradigm here”(SSR, p. 23).
Optics
One of Kuhn’s historical examples of how paradigms
function in science and sometime conflict with one another can be found in the
history of physical optics. There were primarily two theories, or “paradigms” which
seems to account for the phenomenon of light. The way physical sciences are
taught often leaves out the history of explanations of light.
”Today’s physics textbooks tell the student that
light is photons, i.e., quantum-mechanical entities that exhibit some
characteristics of waves and some of particles. Re-search proceeds
accordingly, of rather according to the more elaborate and mathematical
characterization from which this usual verbalization is derived. That
characteristic of light is, however, scarcely half a century old. Before it was
developed by Planck, Einstein, and other early in this century, physics texts
taught that light was transverse wave motion, a conception rooted in writings
of Young and Fresnal in the early nineteenth century. Nor was the wave theory
the first to be embraced by almost all practitioners of optical science. During
the eighteenth century the paradigm of this field…taught that light was
material corpuscles"(SSR, pp. 11-12).
However, a closer look showed that light, or the photon
did not act like a material corpuscle. In fact, light spreads out in all
directions like a wave, but also light behaves like a particle moving in only
one direction.
From the optics research example, two characteristics of a
paradigm can be stated. 1.) Paradigms are models which attempt to explain a
range of phenomena. As in the case of light, a sense impression is related to a
frame of reference, i.e., light behaves as a wave, to give such sense
impressions order and context. Paradigms explain things, or events in
experience. 2.) Although paradigms can explain experience, other
independently formulated paradigms can account coherently for the same range of
experience. More than one paradigm can explain the same set of experiences,
even when such paradigms may be incompatible with one another.
Electricity
Dr. Kuhn describes the variety of theories of electricity
in the seventh and eighteenth century. One group thought of electricity as
behaving like a fluid. Other scientists classified electricity according to
primary a secondary properties such as attractive and repulsive effects of
differently charged bodies. Both schools of thought continued their
research of electricity, but with differing paradigms, or models of how
electricity behaved:
“If that body of belief is not implicit in the
collection of facts—in which case more that “mere facts” are at hand—it must be
externally supplied, perhaps by a current metaphysic, by another science, or by
personal and historical accident. No wonder, then, that in the early stages of
the development of any science different men confronting the same range of
phenomena, but not, usually all the same particular phenomena, describe and
interpret them in different ways”(SSR, pp. 16-17).
Each school of scientists approached the same range of
phenomena with a, “body of intertwined theoretical and methodological” beliefs.
And each group described and interpreted the same range of phenomena with
differing results. One school of scientists held that electricity behaved as a
fluid:
"Led by this belief, which could scarcely cope with
the known multiplicity of attractive and repulsive effects, several of them
conceived the idea of bottling the electrical fluid. The immediate fruit of
their effort was the Leyden jar, a device which never have been discovered by a
man exploring nature casually or at random"(SSR, page,17).
The fluid paradigm interpreted the behavior of electricity to allow for developing the capacitor. The fluid paradigm determined what phenomena were relevant to research, and so research was more than merely collecting facts, but organizing facts into a certain pattern which fit the fluid paradigm. This organizing, or structuring is basically what paradigms do.
From these examples we can list additional characteristics
of paradigms.
1.) Paradigms are in principle not factual, but are
interpretations of facts. A range of phenomena will appear differently
according to the paradigm through which the world is viewed.
2.) Paradigms set up, or organize phenomena
according to a pattern unique to itself and supply a context to an otherwise
chaotic mass of facts. Paradigms form patterns within experience.
3.) Paradigms are attention directing by emphasizing
a certain range, or domain of phenomena while other phenomena are viewed as
less relevant, or irrelevant all together.
Oxygen
Next, Kuhn directs our attention to three scientists in
the 1770s who isolated the gas oxygen, but were not able to give it proper
significance within the scientific theories of chemistry in their era (SSR,
p. 53-56). Swedish scientist C. W. Scheele was first to claim discovery of oxygen, but last to publish his findings. J. Priestley isolated and studied the gas in 1774 -1775 only claim to
described it as “dephlogisticated air.” The theory of thermodynamics during
Priestley’s time postulated a hypothetical substance (pholgiston: Ancient Greek φλογιστόν phlŏgistón for
"burning up") thought to be present in all things and released as
flames during the process of combustion. This theory accounted for the phenomenon
of mass loss when something such as wood was consumed by fire. However, this
explanation could not account for the increase in weight by certain metals
after exposure to heat. Only later did this phenomenon have significance for
the scientist and rejected the pholgistic theory.
Lavoisier, the third scientist, questioned the pholgistic theory in 1775. Kuhn points out that Lavoisier’s rejection of this older theory of thermodynamics enabled Lavoisier to recognize its importance. Priestley never really understood the meaning of finding this gas, oxygen. Kuhn writes,
"What the work on oxygen did was give much
additional form and structure to Lavoisier’s earlier sense that something was
amiss. It told him a thing he was already prepared to discover—the nature of
the substance that combustion removes from the atmosphere…. The fact that a
major paradigm revision was needed to see what Lavoisier saw must be the
principal reason why Priestley was, to the end of his long life, unable to see
it"(SSR,p. 56).
We can summarize some important characteristics of
paradigms in this example:
1.) What is considered a “fact” is relative to the
paradigm from which one operates. A “fact” is paradigmatically defined. Any
phenomenon that does not fit coherently in a paradigm is simply overlooked, or
not given relevant importance. Paradigms determine facticity. We have already
discussed this extensively in other terminology.
2.) Paradigms are applied a priori to
facts by interpreting and structuring information.
3.) And this is the most important characteristic of
paradigms: paradigms are themselves non-factual. The “logical
status” of paradigms seems to be non-factual. This non-factual aspect of
paradigms makes them enigmatic when a scientist must choose between competing
paradigms. The epistemological question of paradigm choice cannot be resolved
by appealing to experience alone.
(My bold emphasis).
"Like the choice between competing political institutions,
that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between
incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that
character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative
procedures characteristic of normal science, of these depend in part upon a
particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms
enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is
necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in
that paradigm’s defense"(SSR, p. 94).
Any debate about which paradigm should be incorporated into one’s thinking cannot be settled by appealing to facts alone since what is considered a “fact” depend upon the paradigm itself. Paradigms make available a range of “perceptual possibilities” (SSR, p. 120). By the use of paradigms there is a “transformation in the range of vision” in which new objects appear and new phenomena are discovered. Kuhn wrote, “ What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experiences has taught him to see”(SSR, p. 113).
Summary of Paradigm
Characteristics:
·Universal: Paradigms attempt to form a
transcendental (a prior) universal whole to give meaning to the world of
singular sensible impressions. Paradigms relate particulars to a universal
frame of reference so that a particular sensible impression (using our five
senses) is related to a universal frame of reference to give order, unity,
structure, and context to experience.
·Non-Empirical: Since singular sensible
impressions are understood through a conceptual principle, paradigms define the
factual by providing a medium, or concept through which experiential datum can
be interpreted as fact. A paradigm relates facts to concepts to form a
unified picture of the whole experience.
·Interpretative: Sensible information is not
given without first being filtered through a medium, or concept. This
information is organized or structured according to some point of reference.
Sensory information is modified by exclusion of experience and inclusion of
unconscious meanings. Henri Bergson wrote,
“...concepts, laid side by
side, never actually give us more that artificial reconstruction of the object,
of which they can only symbolize certain general, in a way, impersonal aspects;
it is therefore useless to believe that with them we can seize a reality of
which they present to us the shadow alone” (Henri Bergson, An Introduction
to Metaphysics, trans, T. E. Hulme, Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill,1978, p.29).
·Totalities: Ernst Cassirer speaks of this same process as the mind, “weaving the particulars into a system.” Paradigms attempts to form this totality which we call the “world,” or better yet Husserl’s “Lifeworld.” Cassirer described this activity of consciousness as...
“The
aim of theoretical thinking as we have seen, is primarily to deliver the
contents of sensory or intuitive experience from the isolation in which they
originally occur. It causes these contents to transcend their narrow limits,
combines them in a definite order, in an all-inclusive context. It proceeds
‘discursively,’ in that it treats the immediate content only as a point of
departure, from which it can run the whole gamut of impressions in various
directions, until these impressions are fitted together into one unified
conception, one closed system. In this system, there are no more isolated
points; all its members are reciprocally related, refer to one another;
illumine and explain each other. Thus every separate event is ensnared, as it
were by invisible threads of thought, that bind it to the whole. The
theoretical significance which it receives lies in the fact that it is stamped
with the character of this totality” (Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth,
trans, S.K. Langer, New York: Dover Pub., 1946, p. 32).
·Categorical: Paradigms reduces the world of objects and events to
generalized notions of which any individual event, or object can belong.
Categories are classes, or types, through which experience is organized and
known. “Category” is understood here in a Kantian sense: categories are the
fundamental a priori forms through which the phenomenal world
is perceived. (The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1967 ed., “Categories,” by M.
Thompson.).
·Ontological: Paradigms are concerned only with the particular object,
or entity. Intellectual reflection is directed toward the factors which give
the world of particular experience meaning, and context. Reflection in this
case seeks to examine those categorical factors which make the empirical possible—to
examine those, “invisible threats of thought” that unites the whole. Paradigms
provides a foundation for empirical concreteness by going beyond the facts to
the “factors which make facts recognizable" (One-Dimensional
Man, Herbert Marcuse,1964, p. 106).
·Paradigms are Circular.
*Thinking with Epistemological Paradigms
A paradigm is a good organizational tool to learn philosophical systems (Hegel, Kant, Kierkegaard) faster, and make impromptu contrasts/comparisons on the fly between different philosophies. Paradigms distances you from philosophies much like the “epoche” was meant to. Thinking in terms of paradigms will also help with your writing style by providing a coherent narrative voice.
Most importantly, use paradigms as a heuristic device to understand the elements
and relational dynamics of a selected topic. There is no need to proclaim
eternal faith in paradigms--just use them as an intellectual tool. Also,
the Hegelian dialectical method of
viewing historical elements as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is also a
useful analytical tool that can be used purely heuristically to construct a
powerful philosophical analysis.
Lastly, understanding and using paradigmatic thinking
is also helpful for understanding Martin Heidegger’s theology and philosophy.
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