mullins: Get us started, are they…
mullins: Other than to say that, we're delighted that Stefan wrote this little paper,
mullins: On, a new book.
mullins: That, can be connected with Polanya, and he's gonna make a little presentation, and then Dick Moody's gonna follow, and then we'll open it up.
mullins: So, it's all yours, Stephan.
Stefan Kosak: Thanks, Phil.
Stefan Kosak: So, I prepared a few slides.
Stefan Kosak: Which I would like to share.
Stefan Kosak: Let me see… Whether it works.
Stefan Kosak: So, I think you can see them now.
Gus Breytspraak: Yes.
richard moodey: Yes.
Stefan Kosak: Okay.
Stefan Kosak: So, which view do you have now?
Gus Breytspraak: Well, we're seeing your slides, but then around the edge, or on the side, you know, we have our,
Gus Breytspraak: images in the little boxes, at least that's the way mine is working.
Stefan Kosak: Okay, I see.
Gus Breytspraak: Oh, we have a photo of the Munich School of Philosophy, introduction.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah.
Stefan Kosak: Okay, let me see…
Stefan Kosak: Is it full screen?
Gus Breytspraak: Well, it's large enough, I think. Is it okay with everyone?
Bruce Vojak: Full screen on, when you share the video, it's full screen in the shared area, so it looks appropriate, at least to me, Stefan.
Stefan Kosak: Okay, fine.
Stefan Kosak: So, yeah, first of all, I want to say thank you to Phil and Gus.
Stefan Kosak: and Yangil for organizing this meeting, and for giving me the opportunity to share some
Stefan Kosak: Part of my work on… on Polani.
Stefan Kosak: I think I… I've all…
Stefan Kosak: almost everyone met in person, actually, who is here today, but yeah, I will say a few words.
Stefan Kosak: about myself, so I'm, I'm a PhD candidate at Munich School of Philosophy.
Stefan Kosak: And I'm currently writing and about to finish my thesis on Polani's metaethics.
Stefan Kosak: And alongside that work, I have a broader interest in… In political liberalism.
Stefan Kosak: And this combination of interests drew my attention to this book, Offended Freedom, The Rise of Libertarian Authoritarianism, which I make use of in my short paper.
Stefan Kosak: So, since this is a German publication, I want to give you some background on the authors, and also on the publication itself.
Stefan Kosak: The book was published in 2022 by Carolyn Amlinger and Oliver Nachtway.
Stefan Kosak: With the prestigious, Azurekamp furlark.
Stefan Kosak: Carolyn Amlinger is a sociologist and research associate at the University of Basel.
Stefan Kosak: And, oliver Nachtberry is also a professor at the same university.
Stefan Kosak: Their book builds largely on an empirical study of the social milieu behind the protests against COVID-19 measures in Germany, a research which was conducted by Nachtwe in Basel.
Stefan Kosak: And I would say a little more about the social development in a moment.
Stefan Kosak: But beyond academia, the book received wide media attention in Germany and beyond, and sparked substantial public debate.
Stefan Kosak: And I think it's also because of that initial success that an English translation appeared earlier this year.
Stefan Kosak: So, when it comes to this, protest movement, which they analyze, yeah, I… let me briefly, outline,
Stefan Kosak: a little, and elaborate on what happened during the COVID crisis.
Stefan Kosak: Since this, this context is crucial for understanding, their, their thesis.
Stefan Kosak: So, the protest movement began in 2020, basically, with a group called Lateral Thinking.
Stefan Kosak: It initially rallied against the German government's COVID-19 measures, but quickly expanded into a broader rejection of state authority and major institutions of,
Stefan Kosak: What they call, mainstream society.
Stefan Kosak: Including, science.
Stefan Kosak: So, several aspects of this movement are particularly puzzling.
Stefan Kosak: First, its supporters became, from a very different social and political menus, ranging from progressive circles to the far right, which is quite puzzling.
Stefan Kosak: And second, the movement lacked a coherent agenda.
Stefan Kosak: While opposition to anti-COVID policies was the starting point, participants voiced a wide variety of grievances and perceived restrictions.
Stefan Kosak: So, over time, the protests become a melting pot for diverse and often contradictory demands.
Stefan Kosak: It is precisely these puzzling features that led Amelinger and Lottwei to look for a deeper common denominator
Stefan Kosak: Something underlying these otherwise disparate, groups, and, interests.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, and unsurprisingly, the authors argued that such a commonality exists, in fact.
Stefan Kosak: And actually, their central thesis is already hinted at in the book's title.
Stefan Kosak: So, they argue that the protesters share a condition of offended freedom.
Stefan Kosak: The protesters understand freedom primarily as self-realization, which Amelia Nagdwe see as the dominant ideal of late modern societies.
Stefan Kosak: And when this promise of self-fulfillment is disappointed.
Stefan Kosak: The protesters react with a libertarian impulse that resists all perceived constraints.
Stefan Kosak: Whether from, from the state or from, broader social institutions.
Stefan Kosak: So, and, this pursuit of absolute, self-determination easily turns authoritarian, according to Amling Actwee, since those individuals accept only themselves as orbiters of any guidelines to pursue their lives.
Stefan Kosak: And therefore, Ambling and Actwee argue that this movement is not an isolated phenomenon, but a particularly clear example of a broader social trend in late modernity.
Stefan Kosak: which can be studied, by looking at the specific COVID-19 protest movement.
Stefan Kosak: Which they analyze.
Stefan Kosak: So, having summarized, shortly there, their analysis, I want to,
Stefan Kosak: say a few words about the connections I see to Polani.
Stefan Kosak: I do not agree with all aspects of, the analysis of Amling and actwei,
Stefan Kosak: For example, there's a reliance on Marxist and critical theory frameworks, which do not fully convince me.
Stefan Kosak: But despite this, these reservations, their work raises, several issues, that are, highly interesting, from a Polandian perspective, I think.
Stefan Kosak: So the first is, the concept of offended freedom.
Stefan Kosak: As a defining characteristic of late modern… of the late modern mindset.
Stefan Kosak: The second is the treatment of scientific skepticism in the context of perceived emancipation from oppression.
Stefan Kosak: And the third is the claim that overcoming radical subjectivity as a source of liberation requires restoring the public realm as the proper sphere for exercising freedom.
Stefan Kosak: So, given these points of overlap,
Stefan Kosak: We can engage Polani, I think, in this debate in two ways.
Stefan Kosak: So first, we can use his work to reflect on Embeling and Lachtweil's diagnosis, and offended freedom in late modernity.
Stefan Kosak: And second, we can use Polani's ideas to consider solutions, to that, challenge.
Stefan Kosak: So my, my short paper…
Stefan Kosak: I think it's therefore a preliminary attempt to push this analysis a bit further by drawing on Polani's insights and conceptual tools.
Stefan Kosak: And so, I hope it's in our discussion to receive some critical feedback on my, attempt.
Stefan Kosak: And also to explore aspects I might not yet have considered.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, and finally, I'm also very interested in your thoughts on how these European developments compare to the situation in the…
Stefan Kosak: U.S.
Stefan Kosak: So, so much for my, introduction, and,
Stefan Kosak: I'm looking forward to the response and our discussion.
Young-il Choo: I have a quick question.
Stefan Kosak: Sure.
Young-il Choo: What kind of restrictions did the German government have imposed during the COVID?
Young-il Choo: I'm curious, compared to other countries.
Stefan Kosak: So the most important restriction, I think, was, we went through 3 or 4 lockdowns, I think.
Stefan Kosak: And, there was a, Rexign, campaign.
Stefan Kosak: Which also arised, significant, Yeah, protest.
Young-il Choo: Did they also impose vaccine mandate?
Young-il Choo: Requirement that you had to get the vaccine in order to
Young-il Choo: Continue in certain professions, like the military.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, there were certain, for certain professions, it was mandatory, but not for the whole population.
mullins: Dick Moody's got, some, I think, 3 points you're gonna make, Dick, to start us, get us started.
richard moodey: Yes, and I want to start out with
richard moodey: a couple of observations before I make those three points. One of them is, Stefan's statement about… the…
richard moodey: Comparison and contrast between
richard moodey: moral inversion and libertarian authoritarianism as being one of the major stimuluses for his writing the paper, and I think that's an interesting
richard moodey: an interesting fact that sort of is the background for the points that I want to make. The other point that I want to make is that when I use ideology.
richard moodey: I'm using it in a different way from the way that Polanyi and a lot of people in his circle used it.
richard moodey: I think for them, ideology was always a negative sort of thing, and I don't treat ideology as strictly a negative thing, but any kind of…
richard moodey: symbolic legitimation of some kind of political, economic, religious agenda, so that it's a symbolic legitimation of something that may be a kind of political or economic program that I favor, and I would still call that an ideological legitimation of that kind of activity.
richard moodey: So…
richard moodey: with that as kind of a background, let me start with the first point. Well, let me list the points first. The first point is that
richard moodey: Moral inversion and libertarian authoritarianism are anti-ideal types.
richard moodey: Second point, the Republic of Science is an ideal type.
richard moodey: And the third point that I want to make is theory can't replace politics.
richard moodey: So let me start with the first point. Moral inversion and libertarian authoritarianism are anti-ideal types.
richard moodey: I see them as anti-ideal types of two different kinds of things.
richard moodey: personal moral orientations, and ideologies.
richard moodey: The moral orientations are sets of acquired dispositions.
richard moodey: The ideologies are sets of cultural symbols of various kinds, and
richard moodey: cultural symbols are quite different from acquired dispositions, and so that's why I make that distinction.
richard moodey: I think that Stefan suggests the complex relations
richard moodey: Between personal moral orientations and ideologies in something he said on page 2.
richard moodey: Quote.
richard moodey: Furthermore, the ideology of endless self-fulfillment breeds chronic dissatisfaction with the status quo.
richard moodey: I wanna… Make a similar kind of statement that's in the same form as that.
richard moodey: But… Different. I add, the ideology that includes the Republic of science and public liberty as ideal types
richard moodey: Breeds chronic dissatisfaction with, and political resistance to, totalitarian government.
richard moodey: So, point two.
richard moodey: The Republic of Science is an ideal type.
richard moodey: I want to go to an essay by Stephen Turner.
richard moodey: The tragedy of the liberal Theory of Science.
richard moodey: Three points that he makes in that essay. These aren't the only three, but the three that I want to focus on.
richard moodey: First, Polani's image of the Republic of Science was always an idealization of a community dedicated to pure science.
richard moodey: an idealization, which Turner's term, ideal type, is…
richard moodey: My term. Well, it's not just mine.
richard moodey: This idealization of pure science has become less consistent, less useful in trying to describe the growth of big science.
richard moodey: Which has to prove itself to be useful to the sponsors who control the big money.
richard moodey: 3.
richard moodey: The liberal theory of science is still useful as a basis for critique.
richard moodey: So I say that the Republic of Science is an ideal type of social order, an ideal type of dynamic social order, a spontaneous social order, or,
richard moodey: What is it, multicentric or polycentric social order.
richard moodey: Big science is closer to the ideal type of corporate order.
richard moodey: Now, corporate order, in Polandy's work, isn't…
richard moodey: Is good for a military organization or for a for-profit corporation.
richard moodey: But it's not a good kind of order for pure science.
richard moodey: The dominance of big science, seems to me to create the kind of situation Polanyi criticized as…
richard moodey: the Soviet ideal of science. His conversation with Bucharin in 1935 was one of his major motivations for going into philosophy and social theory. And part of that motivation was objecting to the Soviet idea of all science must be applied science.
richard moodey: Big Science, because of its requirement for soliciting big money to support it, Has to justify
richard moodey: what it's doing in terms of applied science. So it…
richard moodey: big science tends to subordinate, if not eliminate, this ideal of a pure science community, the Republic of Science.
richard moodey: Third point.
richard moodey: Theory can't replace politics.
richard moodey: In the conquest of politics, liberal philosophy in democratic times, Benjamin Barber criticized several prominent political philosophers for suggesting that political theory can replace political action.
richard moodey: He focused on the political theories of Bertrand Russell, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Bruce Ackerman, and Alastair McIntyre. He also included Michael Oakeshott, but he said that he treated Oakeshott as an exemption to what those others were doing.
richard moodey: Barber argued that even the best theories can't replace the political process required to answer the political question.
richard moodey: which she… which I've modified a little bit. What shall we do?
richard moodey: What shall we do?
richard moodey: When we must do something, but face uncertainties and disagreements.
richard moodey: Barbara credits Oakshot with paying more attention to that question than the others.
richard moodey: I raise this point because of Stefan's final sentence in his introductory paragraph.
richard moodey: Quote.
richard moodey: A deeper engagement with these Polanian ideas is vital for confronting the intellectual and social challenges of the present.
richard moodey: I agree that it's vital.
richard moodey: But I add that it's incomplete.
richard moodey: Polandi's 1966 essay, The Message of the Hungarian Revolution, speaks to this point.
richard moodey: We need to have the courage to take political action in defense of ideals such as truth, love, and justice.
richard moodey: I interpret Polonian ideas as ideological justification for that kind of political action. Namely, taking action to support these ideals of truth, love, and justice. Those aren't the only ideals, of course.
richard moodey: I'm going to stop there.
mullins: Okay, thank you, Dick. Stefan, do you want to just pick up any one or two of those and comment, and then we'll just open it up. Don't feel like you have to cover the whole…
mullins: ballpark.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, thank you,
Stefan Kosak: Dick, for your response. There's a lot to think about, I think. I want to pick up your last point.
Stefan Kosak: Which I have some initial thoughts, about. So I, I think, I, I agree to, to the point you raised.
Stefan Kosak: That those, political theories, from political philosophy, are mainly, frameworks, large or broader frameworks.
Stefan Kosak: Which inform, political action, or give, political action a frame.
Stefan Kosak: But they do not determine the specific, political action we, we choose, so there is,
Stefan Kosak: having such a framework, there's still much to think about and to argue about.
Stefan Kosak: How to, to, to, act, politically.
Stefan Kosak: So, nevertheless, I think, that it is important to have, this frame… these frameworks. Actually, it's…
Stefan Kosak: it's not possible to not have such a framework guiding one's political actions, and therefore it's, I think, important to reflect about these frameworks.
Stefan Kosak: And becoming clear about them.
Stefan Kosak: And also to, yeah, to choose these frameworks wisely.
Stefan Kosak: Because they have a decisive influence on the political action.
richard moodey: I agree.
richard moodey: That's why… that's why I quoted it and agreed that it is vital to become engaged with Polanian thought.
richard moodey: But that's not enough.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, true.
richard moodey: Particularly in our current situation, it's not a…
Stefan Kosak: I agree.
richard moodey: There has to… and one of the virtues that's really called for, I think, in these days is courage.
Walt Gulick: Can I just make a quick comment on that, because I think Polani does very clearly talk about the importance of
Walt Gulick: Politics in the chapter on conviviality, personal knowledge.
Walt Gulick: Where he talks about,
Walt Gulick: You know, that ideals are based upon, some very self-centered things like, property and…
Walt Gulick: I forget all the things he mentions there, but he's very clear that politics is quite different than theory, and that theory needs to rely upon the basis for earning a living and all the other things that politics is about.
mullins: Let me, compliment that just a little bit.
mullins: I want to emphasize how much up to his neck in the Congress of
mullins: cultural freedom, Michael Polanyo was. Now that, that, for, for, from 1953 until 67, 68,
mullins: When he, when he, resigned, in the controversy. And in many ways, of course, that was a political effort, at least to address intellectuals, so I do think Polanya was somewhat aware of that. Another thing that I found extremely interesting that,
mullins: bears on this third point. There's discussion in the paper, particularly about public freedom. I think Polanya begins talking about public freedom about 1941, if not before. 41, I can… I'm sure he talked about it in The Growth of Thought in Society, which is a very important early essay, and…
mullins: Really, I think what he's trying to do is,
mullins: create a new… a broader rhetoric, so to speak, which, of course, is one thing that politicians do. However, he never managed to bring that off.
mullins: He continued to talk about public freedom, although, after the, after the, the, the 40s and, and much of the 50s, it was a less,
mullins: less loud note, but he never managed to redefine freedom in a broader way, and I think that is… was one of the problems.
mullins: I mean, I think public freedom is a great idea. It would be a great idea today, but I don't know if you could… you can, you can, make any, body pay any attention to that in, in our, at least in the United States.
Stefan Kosak: Would you say that, he, he failed somewhat to,
Stefan Kosak: To define it more clearly, what public liberty means.
Stefan Kosak: To give it more substance.
mullins: Well, yeah, I… I suppose he could… he could have done… he could have done more,
mullins: It seems to me it's rather clear, if one does read his material.
Stefan Kosak: Fair.
mullins: You know, in his account, people who take up science are, really exercising their public liberty, and, that, in some ways, that's true of, of, of any of the,
mullins: public endeavors that… that in some way contribute to the common wheel.
Walt Gulick: Gosh, a couple people have hands up.
mullins: well, I don't know who was first, I was talking.
mullins: The jogging.
richard moodey: Go ahead.
richard moodey: John, go ahead.
Jon Fennell: A sentence that attracted Dick's attention also attracted mine. Let me read it again. A deeper engagement with these Polonian ideas is vital for confronting the intellectual and social challenges of the present.
Jon Fennell: It strikes me that vital is ambiguous.
Jon Fennell: And, I think it would be useful for Stephan to be more… pointed here.
Jon Fennell: it's one thing… Well, vital can be interpreted to be… to denote a necessary condition.
Jon Fennell: That's a very strong claim, right? Then that sentence is going to be saying that this engagement with Polanyi is necessary
Jon Fennell: For the solution that you're talking about.
Jon Fennell: Or to say it differently, not to engage Polani means you cannot possibly solve the problem, okay? Now, for those of us who like Polani, you know, that's… that's…
Jon Fennell: you know, that's good. But I… as I read the paper.
Jon Fennell: I kept thinking of John Dewey.
Jon Fennell: I'm no Dewey fan.
Jon Fennell: But I think Dewey would be happy to take a flag and run with it here. The solutions that you find in Polanyi, to a considerable degree, are…
Jon Fennell: are prominent in Dewey's work.
Jon Fennell: Now, if that's true, then Polani's not a necessary condition, because there are other conditions that also could give rise to your solution.
Jon Fennell: So, I think what you're claiming is that the engagement with Polani is very valuable, very useful,
Jon Fennell: Perhaps not indispensable, though.
Jon Fennell: For the solution that you're envisioning.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, totally.
Stefan Kosak: So, there are some nuances, about terms, Which, yeah, may…
Stefan Kosak: which I may overlook, or which I'm not totally aware of, since English is not my native language, but I totally agree, and my point is to say that there are some interesting
Stefan Kosak: points in Polani, concepts, ideas, which can be
Stefan Kosak: Make a contribution to this debate.
Jon Fennell: No, he could be…
Stefan Kosak: stipulate.
Jon Fennell: I think we would all agree that he's especially fruitful, you know, especially valuable.
Stefan Kosak: Exactly, exactly.
Jon Fennell: And, and coming to terms with the issues that you raised.
Jon Fennell: But not… but not… not the only source.
Stefan Kosak: No, no, definitely not.
Jon Fennell: Not a necessary source.
Stefan Kosak: True.
mullins: Were you next?
Walt Gulick: Dwayne and Dick both had their hands up, and now Bruce, too.
Duane Lookingbill: Yeah, I'll go ahead and jump in.
Walt Gulick: You know, Gus, you're not speaking right now, you're muted.
Gus Breytspraak: Thanks.
Gus Breytspraak: Go ahead, Duane.
Duane Lookingbill: Yeah, respecting, both, Dick and Bruce,
Duane Lookingbill: In fact, I'm still formulating what I want to say. Why don't we… why don't we go to Bruce?
Gus Breytspraak: Okay.
Bruce Vojak: Dick had his hand up first.
Gus Breytspraak: Eric.
richard moodey: I can… I can be very brief.
richard moodey: I just wanted to comment on, Polanyi's failure to redefine liberty.
richard moodey: And I think that's connected to something that Harry Prosch says in his book on Polanyi.
richard moodey: Where, at the end of his life.
richard moodey: Polanyi was… felt that he had failed to cure the modern mind of what ailed it.
richard moodey: to cure the mind, basically, of moral inversion. And I think that that's…
richard moodey: that failure is also… you know, Polanyi realized that he had failed to do this, and that failure to…
richard moodey: Make… establish the ideal of public liberty was part of it.
Gus Breytspraak: Bruce.
Bruce Vojak: Thanks, and you know, I want to thank Stefan for bringing this to us, because this is…
Gus Breytspraak: These are things that I wrestle with, but out of context of conversation like this, so this is helpful.
Bruce Vojak: I, you know, I'm gonna throw a bunch of notes out that are maybe not in any particular order.
Bruce Vojak: Dick, I was taken in the best sense about your comments about,
Bruce Vojak: about big science and big money, because I see that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, add to that, or maybe, put some other ornamentation on it. Big reputation.
Bruce Vojak: I think that there's, that's the big science, big money, argument is very consistent with the… the replication crisis that we see in,
Bruce Vojak: some of the social sciences, and even in some of the physical sciences. And there was just an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal about an economics grad student that made a big splash about AI, and then they found out all of his data apparently was fabricated. So, you know, this stuff's going on in the background.
Bruce Vojak: And so… With that, kind of as the first statement I want to make.
Bruce Vojak: As I read what Stefan wrote, and I think about the… the rejection of science.
Bruce Vojak: I ask a couple of questions, and one is, is the science we talk about today.
Gus Breytspraak: the same science that Polanyi talks about.
Bruce Vojak: Because Plani talks about, I'm going to say, two types of science. There's science in the best sense that he's practicing and advocating, and then I'll just use the Soviet science model as what he's talking in opposition to. And so, what I see today
Bruce Vojak: very anecdotally, is that there are at least two sciences going on, and I'm gonna, for lack of a better language, I'm gonna call them Science 1 and Science 2, okay? And, Science 1 is… is truly…
Bruce Vojak: Polonian. It's, I… I'm always taken by, when I read,
Bruce Vojak: Wigner's Nobel Prize luncheon speech, he talks about how Polani taught him that science is having a collection of observations that begin to exhibit a pattern, and making sense of that pattern.
Bruce Vojak: And it's not necessarily things like thermodynamics or mechanics, but it's… it's that… it's that pattern recognition, and that's the gestalt that Polanyi always spoke about, and I think it's a… it's a wonderful framing of Polani's thinking in just, you know, a few sentences. And so.
Bruce Vojak: I'm… I'm gonna throw out there that I think, and this is not every time.
Bruce Vojak: But I think a lot of the rejection of science today
Bruce Vojak: is rejection of Science 2, and it may spill over into rejecting Science 1, And so, to me, I…
Bruce Vojak: I don't want to say I reject the book.
Bruce Vojak: But I… I say the… I… I feel that the framing of it,
Bruce Vojak: potentially is lacking. How's that for dancing around the topic a bit? And so, one of the things that I… I feel strongly about, and Polani did this, is going into the environment
Bruce Vojak: to understand it, and I remember, reading a story about how Polani went into, some, and I… guys, you're gonna have to help me on this, but he went into some facility, and he looked at how people were evaluating either fabrics, or textiles, or whatever, and
Bruce Vojak: And by going there and observing them in the act of doing, he realized that there were patterns that they exhibited that were just like the science that he was doing. And again, it's this… this tacit integration. And so.
Bruce Vojak: I would encourage, you know, Stefan, you know, I know this is not a thesis topic for… this is a thesis topic separately.
Bruce Vojak: But I'd encourage you to even at some point, go into the environment of the people who are practicing science. And by that, and guys, no disrespect intended, this is going to be a betrayal of my background.
Bruce Vojak: I'm not talking about the social sciences or humanities. I'm talking about the physical, the chemical, the biological, the life, and the information sciences.
Bruce Vojak: Because I say that that's the group that recognizes gravity, if you will. I mean, like, physical gravity. That they're very, experiential, they're very tangible, and… and that was the world that Polani worked in.
Bruce Vojak: And so, these are the people that are actually doing science, not talking about science.
Bruce Vojak: And so, you know, I think tethering to that reality, I think, is… is appropriate. And so.
Bruce Vojak: I look at state authority, now I'm going to get back to what I saw during COVID, at least in the U.S. I think that there were, at times, an overstepping of the state, an overstepping of even, the so-called scientists. I remember going for a COVID vaccination.
Bruce Vojak: And the way they had the room set up was that the people who were leaving had to wind their way through the line of the people who were waiting for the injections. And I went up to them, and I'm like, guys, you know, what do you do? Oh, this is the way we're set up to do it, you know? And so, to me, that's not science. I mean, that's just…
Bruce Vojak: That's… that's checking the box, but it's not really doing anything, and I know that's one data point, but I guess what I'm saying is I would…
Bruce Vojak: I would encourage drawing a distinction of these definitions, because in a way, it's what Polanyi was doing, and I don't want to say that Polani would come down on one side or the other. I think in what I'm saying, he would… he would come down against the false science.
Bruce Vojak: But I can't necessarily claim that I know how he would react to all of this. But I think there's a lot of false science going on, and the last point I'll just mention, I didn't write this down, but
Bruce Vojak: I'm a member of the American Physical Society, as well as the Institute of Electrical Engineers in the US, and I regularly get emails, especially from the American Physical Society.
Bruce Vojak: Where they're trying to engage people to be advocates for science. Go out and, you know, repair their reputation of science, make people know that science is good. And I think they're missing the mark. It's a very… it's very active on the
Bruce Vojak: We're gonna instruct people.
Bruce Vojak: And I really don't think they're really deeply understanding what the problem is. And so, from that perspective, I really applaud your asking these questions, because I think they have to be asked to get to anywhere in this. That's a lot of personal opinion, but I think, you know, something just to consider in all this. So, thanks.
mullins: Could you just say a little more about Science 2? I mean, you're clear about Science 1, but what is Science 2?
Bruce Vojak: Yeah, Sya, you know,
Bruce Vojak: There are a lot of people… my wife and I… my wife was a professor of computer science in Brazil for almost 4 decades. She didn't see as much of what I'm going to describe as I saw, but I saw a lot of this at the University of Illinois. There are people that are totally reputation-driven.
Bruce Vojak: And to the point of being brutal to others, it's a very difficult environment to work with these people.
Bruce Vojak: And and not all of them are fabricating data, I want to be really clear, but I don't recognize the science of the early 20th century, and maybe that's… those stories have been idealized.
Bruce Vojak: But I just don't recognize early quantum mechanics. I don't recognize what I read about Polanyi. I mean, Polanyi, everything I read is that he was a gentleman. I have a very good friend who I speak with every couple of weeks.
Bruce Vojak: He was a PhD graduate student in physics at Princeton. He took a class in thermodynamics from Wigner. Wigner was a gentleman.
Bruce Vojak: You know? And,
Bruce Vojak: And Paul can admit I can be rough around the edges sometimes, so I've got to be careful about that. But… but I'm talking about people that are really…
Bruce Vojak: using the act of science to develop their own reputation, and that's one model, because the other one is what Dick talked about, big science. A lot of money. So, big reputation, big money.
Bruce Vojak: These are things that drive a lot of people today, that I don't think those drivers were there. And so, I think applying Pilates thoughts, truly, I really, I really mean this, is a great thing, but I think contextualizing them in today's environment
Bruce Vojak: probably requires a little more nuance, not maybe more than you're doing for this chapter, but I think if somebody's really going to move forward in this, I think these are the questions that I would want to see answered.
Bruce Vojak: Does that… does that help, Phil?
Walt Gulick: Could I pick up on that just a little bit? Because this… what I want to say kind of relates to what Dick said earlier, and Dickly because of what Stephen Turner has written about all this.
Walt Gulick: There's the contrast between
Walt Gulick: earlier science you're talking about, where truth
Walt Gulick: And the satisfaction that was going with that was crucial.
Walt Gulick: But now, it comes to a different kind of funding.
Walt Gulick: Once Upon a Time was funded by universities for dissociated reasons, and it was more of a communal approach.
Walt Gulick: now you can actually earn a lot of money through patents and so forth, what you do with corporations and all that. So it's not just reputation, but it's also monetary.
Walt Gulick: And self-interest, no interest into it.
Walt Gulick: And, and what, basically what, Turner says.
Walt Gulick: is that what has happened is the changing in the funding formula. Now it's corporations that do a lot of the funding of science. Or in universities, again, it's a competitive thing that, again, goes through reputation and so forth.
Walt Gulick: But oftentimes, the funding to the universities is from corporations and governmental interests and so forth.
Walt Gulick: And so, they have a very different end now, and one thing that Turner says that I think is very interesting.
Walt Gulick: Is that, now a lot of the funding is in terms of competitions, for funding where modeling
Walt Gulick: Modeling is crucial.
Walt Gulick: And what does that mean? Well, with models, you have certain parameters of what you should be investigating. It's going back more to applied science, rather than any kind of pure science.
Walt Gulick: So, in this kind of applied notion, what's crucial is not truth, but rather satisfaction of what you're being funded for.
Walt Gulick: So, that's a very big difference. That's the difference that I see between what you're saying, Bruce.
Bruce Vojak: Yeah, in fact, I'm going to quickly add, as a benchmark, and Stefan, you may be familiar with her, but… oh, good grief, Hossenfelder, I can't think of her name, good grief. Sabine Hassenfelder, you familiar with her? Yeah, I mean, you know.
Bruce Vojak: take it for what it's worth, I think her commentary on science as it exists today, in terms of the funding model, and Walt, that's what you're talking about.
Bruce Vojak: Yeah, I agree. And so, I don't know if I've fully defined it in my thinking. I think there's a lot of room. Walt, I love the fact that you're saying it's not just corporate money, it's government money, it's big money, it's even small money that makes a big impact on an individual.
Bruce Vojak: But, a lot of people are alienated by this. And even though the common person on the street, or the person, you know, the general public isn't aware of these things, I think they're seeing manifestations of it.
Bruce Vojak: And so, you know, I think those are the things that have to be, reformed to really reform science, not just inform people. But yeah, Walt, I agree.
Gus Breytspraak: Could we hear a little more from Stefan about science in Germany now, and how… what these protesters… what kind of science they were, protesting? I think we're all speaking from
Gus Breytspraak: from, the, U.S. context, and I'm not sure it's the same. I mean, is… is science…
Gus Breytspraak: Respected at all by those…
Gus Breytspraak: Participating in these protests, or what sort of science are they reacting to?
mullins: Max may want to get in too, Gus. I can see Max's hand up. I don't know if you can.
Gus Breytspraak: Absolutely, yeah.
Max Molden: Yeah, thank you very much. I just wanted to follow up on what Bruce has said, because I found that very interesting. So, perhaps first point, I think, the distinction between, like, the two systems of science, I find that very interesting, but I would…
Max Molden: like, make a hunch that in practice we'll see, like, overlapping, or, like, yeah, these are perhaps, like, ideal types, like, to use the phrase that Richard brought in. And we'll have, like, a combination of the two of them.
Max Molden: And for this, I think it's interesting to look at the work of Gordon Taloch. I don't know whether some of you know him, he's a
Max Molden: public choice theorist, and he wrote, like, a book, The Organization of Inquiry, where he applies public choice reasoning from economics
Max Molden: Two sides, and he does…
Max Molden: explicitly, like, invoke Michael Polani, so I think that would be very interesting as a starting point, for you, Stefan, and also perhaps, like, in general, the question, there is, like, this research in economics on the market process, and what happens if there is an intervention into the market process.
Max Molden: And what kinds of effects does this have? And this may be similar in the scientific process, because those are, like, polycentric orders.
Max Molden: Yeah, thank you.
mullins: Stefan, did you want to say something?
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, I can add a few points about the situation of science in Germany and Europe. So, I think we see a lot of those points which Walt has mentioned. So, the system of funding has changed a lot.
Stefan Kosak: During the last, decade. So, actually, to, to get, funding for, for science, you have to apply for, for government, subsidies, and,
Stefan Kosak: Which make, certain, yeah, Restrictions, and,
Stefan Kosak: In order to get the funding, you have to, yeah, meet these, requirements from, from politics and industry.
Stefan Kosak: And, funding is actually,
Stefan Kosak: Restricted, to, those
Stefan Kosak: kinds of research which the… which politics and government sees as promising and beneficial
Stefan Kosak: To a society, which means… That those,
Stefan Kosak: That kind of research gets funding.
Stefan Kosak: Which has an, initial, or which… which government thinks has an initial social, and… monetary impact.
Stefan Kosak: So, I think that's a huge, issue also in Germany and Europe in general.
Gus Breytspraak: But would you say that science is, I'm just wondering, like,
Gus Breytspraak: In the general population from which these protesters emerged.
Gus Breytspraak: prior to the, restrictions from COVID, was science viewed negatively prior to that? Was the, or would you say, science is generally respected in the general population currently in Germany?
Stefan Kosak: I would say that prior to COVID, Science was generally, respected.
Stefan Kosak: And a wider population.
Stefan Kosak: But I have the impression that, the COVID, during COVID, there came something up to the surface, which was, there before, so…
Stefan Kosak: COVID, stipulated, or revealed the skepticism which people might, had, already had before. And I… I wonder whether
Stefan Kosak: the criticism of, the legitimate criticism of science, too, And, the way…
Stefan Kosak: Science is pursued in this, second way.
Stefan Kosak: drives the skepticism.
Stefan Kosak: about, about science.
Stefan Kosak: Because people, see that, Science is pursued to,
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, to, meet, monetary interests, And other interests.
Stefan Kosak: And,
Stefan Kosak: Therefore, have some, some worries about, the, the, the ideal that, ideals that are pursued.
Stefan Kosak: With signs, yeah.
mullins: Let's get Damon in. Damon, you're muted.
Damon Kutzin: Thank you.
Damon Kutzin: Yeah, I guess it's a somewhat related but distinct question. My question's about the scope of people's mistrust of science. It seems to me like most of the public's mistrust comes in with very applied science, like vaccines, COVID.
Damon Kutzin: But are these same people also then becoming skeptical of, like, research at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, or any sort of fundamental research? It seems to me not really, right? Maybe absinthe…
Damon Kutzin: a few extreme ones. And so if the problem of the mistrust is really just with the applied side.
Damon Kutzin: how does that affect using the, say, the Republic of Science model as a solution, since that seems to be more geared toward a more pure, truth-seeking, fundamental science?
mullins: Good morning.
Walt Gulick: Answer that?
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, thanks, Damon. I think that's a really good point.
Stefan Kosak: I think I have to think about it,
Stefan Kosak: I have to think about that a little further, yeah.
Stefan Kosak: But, yeah, I would agree that the Republic of Science,
Stefan Kosak: Mainly addresses, the, the belief in scientific, realism.
Stefan Kosak: In a fundamental way.
Stefan Kosak: And this is important, so… and the question is, whether people who are critical about applied science, really are skeptical in that fundamental way about scientific realism.
Damon Kutzin: Yeah, I suppose, for me, it's really… it's kind of an open question whether these two are going together, or if they're, if they will require separate solutions.
Stefan Kosak: Yep, yep.
mullins: We've got so many hands up. Dick Moody, you have your hand up?
richard moodey: Yes, am I muted?
Walt Gulick: No.
Gus Breytspraak: You're gonna be.
richard moodey: I wanted to add another factor to…
richard moodey: what I see as being a kind of a trivialization of science.
richard moodey: And that is, the structure of tenure proceedings in higher education.
richard moodey: one of the things that… The requirement of having
richard moodey: A number of publications and journals in order to get tenure.
richard moodey: Has fostered a proliferation of the number of journals that exist, and a greater difficulty in establishing peer review.
richard moodey: Because as you get more journals and more articles being submitted, the reviewers become overworked.
richard moodey: How many articles… how many articles does anybody
richard moodey: In a given discipline have to review in a given year.
richard moodey: to be able to keep up with the volume of submissions that exist today. And this volume of submissions, I would submit, is very much connected to the structure of tenure processes in higher education.
richard moodey: That may be changing, because tenure may be going down the drain, I don't know. But…
richard moodey: A whole lot of the things that are published in the social sciences, are pretty trivial.
richard moodey: they're… you know, Normal science, in a negative sense, of doing… Kind of correlational studies You know, where you…
richard moodey: Establish a couple of variables, and you establish some kind of measurements of those variables, and then try to correlate them statistically in one way or another.
richard moodey: You know, and you have better success if you use more fancier statistical tools than simple correlation or regression. But the thing is, is that these articles that get published in journals, and people subscribe to those journals, and almost never read them.
richard moodey: Because they don't… They're not very interesting.
richard moodey: That's…
Gus Breytspraak: You knew.
richard moodey: That, I think, is… that's not big science in the same sense, but it's, you know, it's… in a way why it's big education.
Bruce Vojak: It's, it's reputation.
Bruce Vojak: It's… it's… and again, I'm gonna just… if I may, just step back in briefly on the reputation side.
Bruce Vojak: Reputation to a university is the… kind of the equivalent of market share to a company.
Bruce Vojak: And as that reputation builds, you can attract more students, students can, more applicants, you can get more research dollars.
Bruce Vojak: everything accrues to reputation, high reputation, and so there's this… this, if you will, race for reputation that goes on on an individual, departmental, college, and campus-wide basis. They're all aligned, I think.
richard moodey: I do too, yeah.
mullins: Jungil has his hand up.
Young-il Choo: Yes, it seems like the tension in terms of the protesters rejecting science
Young-il Choo: to me, it seems like it ultimately comes down to their understanding of science in the, you know, the science one, science two dichotomy that Russo's mentioning. And that is that the education of what science is in the early years, like, up to high school.
Young-il Choo: Science is…
Young-il Choo: is taught in a very dogmatic manner, right? You are taught physics, you are taught chemistry, and, like, this is it, right? This is what physics is. Newtonian physics, and that's it. And so, the Republic of Science is kind of at a higher level.
Young-il Choo: where…
Young-il Choo: you know, you understand that science is an exploration, that we have certainties of some things, but there's a huge frontier that is not. Whereas in high school, you never get to that point, right?
Young-il Choo: And so, the perception of science, I think, that people are rejecting is this authoritarian, dogmatic.
Young-il Choo: you accept Newtonian gravity, and that's it, right? That is science. Accept it, and the authority is kind of, like, imposed on that. And it seems like that is what people are
Young-il Choo: Probably rejecting.
Young-il Choo: And that the… and therefore, I think your thesis that the Republic of Science may offer a way out, I think is applicable, because our understanding of science is too, restrictive, right? And that if we… if people got to the point of exploration.
Young-il Choo: and the joy of discovery, then maybe their appreciation of science will change. On the one hand, I think they can be critical of the existing science, too, the dogmatic aspect of
Young-il Choo: you know, like, the lockdowns, which are not based on science, but based on, sort of, I don't know what, you know, perception that we have to do something, and we have to justify it as scientific.
Young-il Choo: Though there would be a valid criticism of that approach, but at the same time recognizing maybe the
Young-il Choo: the more fluid approach. And then one comment about the self-actualization. I think that is also the thing where
Young-il Choo: when one confronts reality, right, you want to do something.
Young-il Choo: In terms of self-actualization, but then you run against… run into a reality that says you can't do this, right?
Young-il Choo: And yet, science kind of is that same thing. You run into a problem, and you cannot solve it, but with persistence, and with a community.
Young-il Choo: you know, in a sense, we do get beyond that. We do make progress. And so the self-actualization, if it's expanded into a community, in a sense, this Republic of Science is doing that, except in a more collective level, right? So, community.
Stefan Kosak: Thanks. Just a short comment. So, when it comes to this, to the point you mentioned that, the Republic of Science, might, refine our,
Stefan Kosak: picture, the idea we have of science. So, as an anecdote,
Stefan Kosak: we observed that people really got surprised during COVID that, in fact, virologists and other scientists had different opinions and disagreed with each other. So, this was really a surprise for some people, that there is the sense
Stefan Kosak: within science. So, just as a comment. And I would also agree that the Republic of Science can be a model in a broader way.
Stefan Kosak: For a certain kind of, of, of acting, in a fruitful way.
mullins: Sweet.
Duane Lookingbill: Go ahead, Phil.
mullins: Well, Dwayne and John both have hands up.
Duane Lookingbill: I don't know… Well, let me just briefly comment in here, then.
Duane Lookingbill: So, I, I think right, Steph, on what you just said, and Walt,
Duane Lookingbill: Pointed to that chapter in personal knowledge on conviviality.
Duane Lookingbill: Where, there's lots of other, places where Polani
Duane Lookingbill: published pieces that are incorporated, or that are integrated in that chapter. But the… what you're just saying is… is that dimension of conviviality, and…
Duane Lookingbill: I think…
Duane Lookingbill: When you talk about science versus politics, or you talk about scientific thought and doing pure science versus the issues of government or even public liberty.
Duane Lookingbill: Polani is vital, I think, in a sense, although I take John's comment, but I think John would agree. The practicing of skills is what he talks about more, in terms of public liberty and
Duane Lookingbill: And, like, the revolution, of, the sense of, unlimited, social improvement.
Duane Lookingbill: Which doesn't, necessarily,
Duane Lookingbill: give us what we need to go, with the… with the moral issues. And that, that, that sets up,
Duane Lookingbill: a problem that seems to be, sort of irresolvable and leads to the kind of downward spiral. And he tries to figure out where that is in terms of not just
Duane Lookingbill: Theory, but in how, how people are, actually acting, and, how, how these,
Duane Lookingbill: political forces come into play in terms of person-to-person relationships, or the thought that we can rely on human beings to be self-renewing in terms of the question of what, you know, government's for, what people and science and knowledge and
Duane Lookingbill: You know, what I guess I'm trying to get at is the way you present yourself, Stephan, as concerned with meta-ethics.
Duane Lookingbill: And I'm wondering if that doesn't imply that your problems are metaproblematical.
Duane Lookingbill: And the… the question is, how do we… how do we come together to, as you just
Duane Lookingbill: briefly said, meet and, work on, problems in a meta… metaprob… problems, metaproblematic, situations that… in which we encounter each other. And this is, a matter of reality, so it's like.
Duane Lookingbill: COVID-19 thing is also that this virus
Duane Lookingbill: is something that's gonna, has a reality. It's transforming in itself and it's gonna reappear. Are the same political problems gonna keep reappearing, that whether we solve them or don't solve them? And, this raises a question about life.
Duane Lookingbill: And I think that, I think that that's important.
Gus Breytspraak: Alright.
mullins: John, are you next? Did you have your hand up again, or is it still up from the last time?
Jon Fennell: I didn't put it up before, so this is my first time.
mullins: Okay.
Jon Fennell: I just wanted to comment. This goes back a few minutes, because I've been waiting a while.
Jon Fennell: My experience… both personally and through the various journals I read, is that the cynicism about
Jon Fennell: Science, the skepticism towards it.
Jon Fennell: maybe the disgust with it in this country, and perhaps it's true in Germany and elsewhere in the world.
Jon Fennell: Is attributable to the cynical citation of science for political purposes. For example.
Jon Fennell: You probably all know that that 6-foot distance between people
Jon Fennell: Which was said to be the result of a
Jon Fennell: rigorous scientific, you know, investigation. It turns out to be utterly arbitrary.
Jon Fennell: And yet, Every one of us was required
Jon Fennell: To stand 6 feet away from everybody else for months and months and months, and if you didn't do that.
Jon Fennell: There were sanctions against you.
Jon Fennell: Well, the public has learned this. They have learned that these,
Jon Fennell: Super scientists who got all the… Who got all the publicity.
Jon Fennell: who said that these practices were based on science. It turns out they were not based on science.
Jon Fennell: And so, I think people… have been… led to…
Jon Fennell: They've been led to suspect science generally because of the cynical use of science in the COVID epidemic.
Jon Fennell: And something parallel is happening in the climate change world.
Jon Fennell: There have been all kinds of allegations made, presumably on the basis of the best science, that people now are realizing are not true at all.
Jon Fennell: And so… the public… Is… is associating these cynical uses of science with science itself.
Jon Fennell: And it's not an appropriate response, but it's an understandable one.
Gus Breytspraak: Oh.
mullins: Eekman?
Gus Breytspraak: Booty.
richard moodey: I wanted to go back to the educational theme.
richard moodey: Again, And… I connect.
richard moodey: Lots of respect for science to the decline of liberal education.
Gus Breytspraak: And…
richard moodey: you know, what I think of as the goal of liberal education in a modern world is to one…
richard moodey: Teach people how to be good citizens.
richard moodey: But also to teach people to have an appreciation.
richard moodey: For the arts and the sciences.
richard moodey: Without necessarily being an artist, or being a scientist, but being able to be, appreciate them enough so that
richard moodey: you're willing to support them, and to see funds expended to support them. And I think that the…
richard moodey: Republic of Science depends upon an
richard moodey: A widespread appreciation, or appreciation among power holders anyway, for the use… not the usefulness, but for the inherent goodness of
richard moodey: Discovering truth for its own sake.
Gus Breytspraak: Right, and my understanding of these authors is that this book is not…
Gus Breytspraak: focused on science. It's a more general, cultural analysis, and the fallout for science is just part… is just part of it.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah.
Gus Breytspraak: And, sure, these,
Gus Breytspraak: these folks would not be interested in signing up for your liberal arts curriculum, Richard. They're… they're…
Gus Breytspraak: They're motivated, and oriented in other directions.
Gus Breytspraak: Walt's got his hand up, his real hand.
Walt Gulick: Yep, I can't even find the other hand right now.
Walt Gulick: Anyway, one of the things you asked about Stefan is.
Walt Gulick: How do you respond to the situation that you've described?
Walt Gulick: I'll tell you one way I responded to it when I was teaching. I haven't taught.
Walt Gulick: Since COVID. I didn't want to get online. I never have taught an online course, and I'm even sure now, with all the AI that I never will. But anyway,
Walt Gulick: what I would say in class about libertarianism, Is something like this.
Walt Gulick: Who benefits from this theory of radical freedom?
Walt Gulick: I used an illustration from the game of Monopoly.
Walt Gulick: If you start off with a lot of money, And you're free.
Walt Gulick: You're almost entitled to always win.
Walt Gulick: If you don't start off with much money.
Walt Gulick: And you're free, you're almost positive you're gonna lose.
Walt Gulick: And we've seen that in society right now, with increase in freedom. Who does it benefit most?
Walt Gulick: Those who have the money and the power.
Walt Gulick: And they're keeping on increasing them. We see the power of… of, well, the income, for instance, of CEOs compared to the regular workers is a result of this kind of idea of freedom.
Walt Gulick: Think through what… who benefits from this idea of freedom, and think about your own welfare.
Walt Gulick: And I think that feels some self-interest, and gets at some of the key issues.
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, I think this aspect of power is an important one, and it becomes even more so if you have this idea that freedom consists mainly
Stefan Kosak: Of pursuing your self-interest.
Stefan Kosak: So, what I was, thinking about is, That, libertarianism
Stefan Kosak: In the sense how, Amlinger and Nachtwey understand it is comparable, comparable to, some type of nihilism.
Stefan Kosak: Because if you think, that self-interest is the only goal to pursue,
Stefan Kosak: Then you do not recognize, other…
Stefan Kosak: Inherent standards, such as truth and beauty.
Stefan Kosak: So, I'm… there, I saw a connection to the diagnosis of Polani, of his time in the 20th century.
Walt Gulick: Yeah, absolutely, that…
Walt Gulick: so key for Pilani is that we're social animals, you know, and Dick is really good at talking all about that, that
Walt Gulick: Our being and excellence
Walt Gulick: is an inherited thing that we can reform as we go along, but it's socially embedded. And when you emphasize freedom too much, all of a sudden, you're no longer a socially embedded person, you're a self-interested person. So, yeah.
Gus Breytspraak: Bruce has got his hand up again.
Bruce Vojak: And just a quick, response to Walt on emphasizing freedom.
Bruce Vojak: I don't disagree with anything that you said, and then this is going to be my yes-but statement.
Bruce Vojak: I think when people feel that their toes have stepped on too much.
Bruce Vojak: They react, sometimes they overreact, but they react.
Bruce Vojak: And I would suggest, just given the example of… of what Stefan shared with COVID and the shutdowns and everything, I think that it… is it a… is it a… is it an inappropriate self-interest?
Bruce Vojak: Or is it a, self-protection activity going on? And it probably varies. I, you know, I think back to earlier when Max said, well, it's some admixture about, of these two, Science 1 and 2. And Max, I agree with you. And I think that there's also an admixture of this going on.
Bruce Vojak: But I think some number of people feel.
Gus Breytspraak: for lack of a better word, violated in all this. And… and so…
Bruce Vojak: Again, just a thought. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I'm saying, where are we in that spectrum? Is it selfish, or is it self-protection, and is it… or is it selfish self-protection? And I don't really know. I think it depends.
Walt Gulick: Good.
Gus Breytspraak: Richard, is your hands, still up, or is this…
richard moodey: It's, it's, it's duly up, yes.
Gus Breytspraak: I'm newly up.
richard moodey: I, I wanted to, talk about one of the things that I think contributes to distrust of science.
richard moodey: And that's the whole rhetoric about.
Gus Breytspraak: Fake news.
richard moodey: It seems to me that… and this connects to what Stefan said about nihilism.
richard moodey: You know, the rhetoric about fake news is
richard moodey: You know, to a certain extent, nihilistic.
richard moodey: There's… there's… Whatever is… whatever is fake news is what is, you know.
richard moodey: not palatable to somebody who is talking about things. And it's a loss of respect for
richard moodey: you know, the existence of facts, and the existence of facts is connected to what Stephan was talking about as scientific realism, as being right at the heart of a Polanian perspective. So there's a whole lot of things here that were
richard moodey: The reaffirmation of the legitimacy and importance of scientific research
richard moodey: Is something that fights against this whole notion of fake news.
richard moodey: And… I guess that that's… I'm trying to get at some of the roots for the
richard moodey: Disrespect that we have for science.
richard moodey: The other thing that I… I think, and this is a slightly different point.
richard moodey: I think we have to recognize that science and scientism R…
richard moodey: radial categories. They're subject to what Polanyi called semantic indeterminacy. Different people, you know, create and attribute different meanings to scientism and to science.
richard moodey: And for some people, what they believe in is science is what other people would call scientist, you know, and…
richard moodey: there's a variety of definitions for scientism, but nevertheless, in Polandi's description of moral inversion, scientism was one of the sources for the nihilism
richard moodey: Which was dynamically coupled with moral intensity.
richard moodey: And that… that I… we haven't talked much about moral passion and moral intensity today, but that's an… that's an aspect of this resistance
richard moodey: that…
richard moodey: Stefan was writing about, and it's an aspect of the resistance that maybe some of you have participated in, this whole… this whole no-kings resistance that I think is an important movement in the United States.
Gus Breytspraak: Max…
Max Molden: Yeah, just a quick follow-up on the discussion before. So, it's been a while ago since I last read, like, the Amlinger and Nachtweis stuff, but my impression has always been that when they speak of, like, libertarian authoritarianism.
Max Molden: they don't really have, like, a proper, like, libertarians as, like, politically committed people in their mind, so I think it's rather fitting to go into, like, this… interpret this, like, as a…
Max Molden: Perhaps a, yeah, non-political kind of attribution of, like, we're trying to, to, capture people who are really, like, yeah.
Max Molden: Offended, in the sense that they feel like their personal freedom is taken away, but they are not, like,
Max Molden: consistently taking a political position on this, and I think this would tie into what Stefan and what you've been emphasizing, like, the nihilism stuff,
Max Molden: I think it makes sense if they don't really have, like, a proper political, worldview at all, and they just want to feel like, yeah, you're not allowed to do that, you're not allowed to, like, impose these, I don't know, vaccine mandates or these lockdowns on me, while not
Max Molden: well, having a whatever kind of political position, but yeah, I mean, that's my point, I think that, yeah, thank you.
Gus Breytspraak: Could, could we talk a little bit about the, sort of, slide from this framework into,
Gus Breytspraak: totalitarianism or an authoritarianism. I don't think we have,
Gus Breytspraak: have… have discussed that very much, and Stefan, you do see…
Gus Breytspraak: parallel in Polanyi's work with their analysis? Can you, say a little more about how they see these people as being subject to… and we certainly see this in the, you know, in the States, their, you know, total loyalty to
Gus Breytspraak: To an authoritarian, but Is that… was… is that also characteristic of them?
Stefan Kosak: So, as, as the, the authors,
Stefan Kosak: portray, these, libertarian protesters, they portray them as, as solitary individuals who oppose, any
Stefan Kosak: Authority whatsoever.
Stefan Kosak: they…
Stefan Kosak: Also, say that they are authoritarian because they… they see themselves as the only legitimate instance, for… for any guideline.
Stefan Kosak: So, and… This made me think, whether this solitary, nihilistic, libertarian protester could also,
Stefan Kosak: Collapse into a adherent of totalitarianism, because
Stefan Kosak: Polani has this passage where he writes about the solitary bohemians in the late 19th and early 20th century, and that they cannot pursue
Stefan Kosak: Their, their solitary type of, protest, because… They lack community.
Stefan Kosak: And therefore, they joined this larger totalitarian movement. So, and this made me think about a potential parallel.
mullins: I think Stan's got his hand up.
Stan Scott: Hi, can you hear me okay?
Gus Breytspraak: Yes.
Stan Scott: Yes, I… I think…
Stan Scott: on the issue of science and the way it's been used or manipulated in the public, I…
Stan Scott: I think there's… there's honest science, there's a great deal of it going on out there, whether it's normal science or revolutionary science.
Stan Scott: there's… there's a great deal of honesty in the community of scientists. What happens in the public is
Stan Scott: This discussion reminds me of a… A book by,
Stan Scott: Noam Chomsky and a co-author called The Manufacturing of Consent.
Stan Scott: And, it… there… there is a… There's an assumption
Stan Scott: That's very widespread, and the self-interest is the only value.
Stan Scott: And it leads to… leads to nihilism, and it leads to moral inversion.
Stan Scott: But the escape from it is self-awareness, self-reflection.
Stan Scott: And what's going on in a lot of… a lot of these things, like the anti-vaccine movement, I think there is some honest
Stan Scott: opinion on that score, that the vaccines may not be
Stan Scott: Effective, and… and… and it's a… Form of totalitarian, imposition.
Stan Scott: On us to impose it.
Stan Scott: But… I… I… I think what's actually happening is there's, some…
Stan Scott: People detect… they detect in the media some flaw in the scientific community, some contradictions or disagreements in the scientific community about something like the effectiveness of vaccines.
Stan Scott: And then it gets twisted in a way to manipulate mass opinion.
Stan Scott: There's a… there's a form of mass hypnotism that's going on. That, in a sense, is the meta-problem
Stan Scott: that I see going on here, it's not so much about whether science, you know, about the validity of science.
Stan Scott: There's just lots of different levels of what we call science has done, and
Stan Scott: a vast amount of it, probably the majority of it, or vast majority, is… is honest. And, and, you know,
Stan Scott: But there's a lot of dishonesty out there in terms of manipulating the public.
Stan Scott: And public opinion about the value of science.
Stan Scott: For purposes of power. For purposes of gaining the, you know, the gains of the self-interested at the peak of… who are people at the top of the power pyramid in this…
Stan Scott: In this country, and I suspect in Germany, too.
Stan Scott: So it's a matter of the manufacturing of consent, a lot of these things, like.
Stan Scott: And people use libertarianism as a tool for manipulation, too.
Stan Scott: You know, I'm sure there are honest libertarians out there, but…
Stan Scott: There are manipulators out there that are really working overtime to control public opinion for purposes of accumulating power.
mullins: Bruce, your hand up again.
Bruce Vojak: Yeah, again, sorry. You know, as Stan was talking, I was reminded of,
Bruce Vojak: and I think it's connected… I'm not sure if I can connect it effectively, but Polanyi's emphasis of the… the aspect of faith in science and the fiduciary project, and and I think that,
Bruce Vojak: we've not necessarily explicitly talked about that today, but I think that that can kind of weave into some of what we've talked about with authoritarianism, because if, for example, you know, as John mentioned, the 6-foot distance, and others have talked about the imposition of
Bruce Vojak: of either, you know, certain types of shutdowns or vaccination projects. It… it… I think science… science, and I'll call it science too, maybe, very quickly moved past or just blew through
Bruce Vojak: the faith aspects of this, that I have a belief that the 6-foot distance is going to help, or I have a belief that this is going on. And, you know, earlier we also talked, too, about, you know, how science is educated in the school system. I'll tell you, I've…
Bruce Vojak: My experience back in, you know, whatever, the 1960s, my son's experience in, around the year 2000, science is taught in a very Paperian way.
Bruce Vojak: It's very much, you know, have an idea, and then see if you can falsify it. And nobody talks about where those ideas come from.
Bruce Vojak: nobody talks about that, at least in the school systems here, and I think that's a big problem, and so the faith aspects, the kind of discernment that Polanyi talks about.
Bruce Vojak: And I think people… people don't know how to articulate that, they don't necessarily recognize it explicitly, but I think there's a sense of, hey, there's something wrong here. So, I… I'll just throw that all out in the context of what's been discussed, you know, across the board today.
mullins: Damon?
Damon Kutzin: I think Max was first, if he wants to… Yeah?
Damon Kutzin: Okay, I guess my point is kind of related to what was just said as well. I want to kind of articulate a tension, I guess, between some of the, like, the criticisms of big science expressed here, and maybe Polanyi's view of science, which…
Damon Kutzin: has at times been called, like, an invitation to dogmatism, right? A, it's been… when it first was written, Lakatoche criticized it for being very elitist.
Damon Kutzin: And Polanyi basically entrusts this upper ring of scientists with having the right tacit know-how and, you know, contact with reality to direct research. And I wonder if that can't be used… it seems like Polanyi's Republic of Science depends on
Damon Kutzin: The public having trust in that elitism.
Damon Kutzin: And if the public doesn't have trust in that elitism, then the model doesn't work. And it just, and we need some sort of more democratic vision of science, so how…
Damon Kutzin: How is that tension reconciled in your minds?
mullins: Good question. Max, your hand is up.
Max Molden: Yeah, I just wanted to, just, like, short notice, I was thinking of, Eric Hoffa's The True Believer, and I was wondering whether anyone has, like, tried to connect, as we're talking about, like, Polani and the moral inversion and totalitarianism, and I was wondering whether there may be a connection, there may be some, I don't know, way to combine the thinkers. Perhaps I'm also completely wrong, but I just wanted to throw that in there, and perhaps
Max Molden: I don't know, some of you have already thought about that.
Jon Fennell: Sounds like a good paper for Nishoda.
Jon Fennell: Maybe Max wants to write a paper and come and present us the parallels between Eric Hoffer and Michael Polanyi.
Max Molden: I mean, that sounds interesting, but I have to see whether I find time for that, but yeah, I'll note that down.
Stan Scott: Anything.
mullins: Dick Moody, we're running toward the end now.
richard moodey: I wanted to follow up on this notion of science being elitist.
richard moodey: I think the Republic of Science is an elitist ideal.
richard moodey: In other words, not everybody
richard moodey: Is going to be a creative scientist.
richard moodey: That's… both the ability and the desire to, you know, devote your life to the pursuit of truth, that's going to be a relatively small group of people.
richard moodey: And so it's… the Republic of Science, I don't think, is being…
richard moodey: democratic or egalitarian in the full society sense. I think it's egalitarian in the idea of everybody in this community of scientists has a… has a voice.
richard moodey: And so that idea of, you know, of debate and controversy and open discussion within this community,
richard moodey: is elitist, because the rest of society is going to have to, trust the findings that these people come up with. And even within the scientific community, no scientist
richard moodey: has the time or the ability to replicate all of the experiments that have been… that have gone on that have established things that are accepted as scientific truths. We have to trust the community for what we take as being scientific truth.
Gus Breytspraak: One more quick comment, Duane. We're, right at our end point.
Duane Lookingbill: Well, the first slide you showed, Stefan, was the School of Philosophy.
Duane Lookingbill: Where you're a student.
Duane Lookingbill: And, are under the tutelage of, teachers. And my question, in terms of what you've been saying about libertarianism and how that comes about.
Duane Lookingbill: Is, does, does the approach of your school of philosophy start with,
Duane Lookingbill: a common humanity or a principle of… of some kind of, that we're… we're at root or at base, more similar than we are different, that there's a unity.
Duane Lookingbill: To our, common…
Duane Lookingbill: pursuit of the truth, that, before you get to specializations and disciplines and the, you know, aspectival, looking at knowledge or whatever your matter is.
Gus Breytspraak: A good question. Stefan, can you respond?
Stefan Kosak: Yeah, so I can say that, the Jesuits, run this Munich School of Philosophy, so… Well, I guess that question. So I guess there's…
Duane Lookingbill: I think… I think you're right to take, Polanyi, as vital.
Gus Breytspraak: Yeah. In, in, in…
Duane Lookingbill: Hmm.
Gus Breytspraak: Okay.
mullins: We are at the end of the hour. Thanks very much to Stefan and to Dick Moody for his, launching our discussion.
mullins: thanks to everybody who participated, and Gus's will send out, I think in the next day or two, the recording. The one thing that I wanted to mention is that at least a little bit of the ground that we covered today was also covered in the,
mullins: Zoom session we had with, Stephen Turner and one of his colleagues, and that is posted.
mullins: It's probably hard to find where it is. Maybe I'll find where it's posted and at least send you the link for that for anybody who wants to, to listen to that again, because it was a good, good session, too.
mullins: Also, I'll say that we're begin… Gus and I are beginning to work on some sessions for 2026. If you have any ideas, please let us know.
mullins: Anything else for the common good, Gus?
Gus Breytspraak: I know. Well, also a reminder about the Neshota conference this summer, so the call for papers is out, and registration, I guess, doesn't open yet, but we'll hope to see everyone there.
mullins: Yep, Paul, did you have anything you wanted to add on some of that?
Paul Lewis: No, other than just to say, send in some proposals, and, hope everybody can be there, because it's a wonderful conference.
mullins: Okay, well, thanks again, and don't forget, if you've got some ideas for some of these Zoom sessions, let us know, because we're going to try to put some together, and maybe even some that feed into Neshoda.
mullins: Right. Take care.
Bruce Vojak: Thank you, Stefan, Phil, Gus, and everybody else.
Stefan Kosak: Thank you.
Gus Breytspraak: Thanks to everyone. Good to see you.
mullins: here.