From all this one might conclude that our world is decaying to a state of featureless indifference because the authorities from which one would naturally expect articulation and orientation fail to provide them. But what we in fact witness about us is not the rise of homogeneity, the leveling down of all structures, but the most radical and forceful reshaping of the globe ever. Something is going on that needs to be illuminated and understood. Yet as we have seen, it will not be captured in the modes of explanation that are proper to the sciences and to the great focal powers of the past, i.e., through apodeictic or deictic explanations. But there is a third possibility of explaining, one where we try to comprehend the character of reality by discovering its predominant pattern. A pattern is more concrete and specific than a law and yet more general and abstract than a unique focal thing. To illuminate reality by disclosing its pattern is a quasi-deictic explanation. Let us call it paradeictic or paradigmatic explanation.
One cannot talk about paradigms today without talking about the work of Thomas Kuhn.4 I hope it clears the air when I acknowledge my debt to Kuhn but disclaim any attempt to have his sanction. The difficulties and ambiguities in Kuhn’s use of the term are legendary.5 They make it advisable to be as clear and modest as possible in one’s claims for paradigms. It is not merely a play on words to say that deictic and paradeictic explanations fail to be apodeictic, that they cannot exact assent in the manner of scientific explanations. The force of deictic explanations will occupy us in Chapter 21. As regards paradigmatic explanations, the first question is of course what counts as a pattern and how a pattern is established.
We use patterns straightforwardly in everyday life to appropriate our world. We use them to recognize things and to shape things to our purposes. To identify a bald eagle we look for a large hawk with a white head and tail and a flat-winged glide. To tell a mule deer from a whitetail deer we look for large ears, a white, ropelike, black-tipped tail, and for equally branching antlers if it is a buck. A pattern in this sense is the configuration of characteristic features we keep in mind as a guide to order and sort out the manifold appearances of the world. In similar ways we look for patterns in electrocardiograms and seismograms to ascertain the cardiac condition of a person or the geological structure of a valley. We impose rather than discover a pattern when we use a template to mount a ski binding or a pattern to cut the material for a dress. A pattern, then, is an array of crucial features, abstract and simple enough to serve as a handy device, concrete and detailed enough to pick out a certain kind of object effectively.
These unproblematic and pretheoretical uses of patterns help us to grasp in a tentative way what a paradigm is. Problems arise, however, when the use of paradigms is extended beyond the realm of common agreements and purposes in an effort to settle deeply controversial issues. To gain access to these problems we must, to begin with, remember that it is convenient to use “paradigm” both for a more or less abstract pattern and for a more or less concrete and clear phenomenon which exhibits the pattern in question particularly well. Let us begin the problematic discussion with a seemingly straightforward and innocent use of paradigms. To prove the existence of a certain kind of thing, say material objects, one may produce a clear instance or paradigm of the kind in question, pointing to chairs or tables. But to one who doubts or denies the existence of material objects a chair is not evidence for one side of the dispute but the very thing whose status is in question. As Anne C. Minas points out, paradigm case arguments are question begging or circular.6 If one does not already command or concede the notion of a material object, nothing can serve as an instance. What is vexing about paradigmatic explanation is the semblance of concreteness, of incontrovertible evidence. When we point to a paradigm in the sense of a clear example, it is usually granted that there is something to which we point. But what can always be and often is disputed in theoretical discussions is the claim that this something exhibits the pattern or instantiates the notion that is in question. Paradigms seem primitive or undemonstrable. You see them or you do not. But this stark all-or-nothing standing of paradigms is characteristic only of metaphysical discussions where the dispute concerns abstract notions or involves attempts to dislodge a skeptical objection. In the disputes of social science, patterns are more extended. They have a number of components and features and are therefore more open to discursive arguments. Moreover, paradigms in the sense of eminent and clear cases are usually granted. It is conceded that this is an example of a game, that of a bargaining situation, and similarly for a functional system, a free market, or a class struggle.7 A first set of difficulties arises when the pattern is spelled out explicitly and generally. The formulation must be general enough to have applicability beyond its initial examples and succinct enough so that it does not vacuously apply to all possible cases or, worse, lead to inconsistent findings. Assuming that a paradigm has met the criteria of consistency and precision, problems arise next when it is in fact applied. Through a convergence of unusual factors I may have encountered what seems like a clear instance of telekinesis and telepathy. I may then devise a telekinetic and telepathic paradigm of communication. If the paradigm is precise at all, however, it will fail to apply generally. Yet paradigms in the social sphere seldom fail clearly because what they are applied to, society, is so multifarious that there is always some positive evidence and enough complexity to disqualify negative evidence as likely due to disturbing and misleading factors of which we are ignorant. The more plausible and better known paradigms of social science all are matched by social reality to the extent where they can be said to meet the criterion of applicability.
Paradigms in social science can be taken as the characteristic ways in which theorists see reality. A paradigm in this sense is an entity in the world of science or theory and at one remove from social reality. The paradigm in this sense characterizes a group of scholars and their work and possibly little else. But for subscribers to a paradigm, social reality itself exhibits the features of the paradigm. The paradigm has taught them what to look for, and they see nothing else. In fact they may deny that they are beholden to any guiding pattern; they simply report, so they say, what is the case. But allegiance to a paradigm does not require that one be blind to it. One may be conscious of it and also claim a privileged appropriateness for it. Finally, it is possible that one professes allegiance to one paradigm, say social Darwinism, but is held by others to propagate quite another, say racism. We can restate an earlier point along these lines. The professed paradigm of many mainstream social scientists in this country is a set of laws that would rival the laws of natural science in precision and predictive power. Why has this paradigm in spite of its clear if not conclusive failures of precision or applicability not been abandoned? We may conjecture that the work of its adherents is sustained by another, implicit paradigm, that of getting social reality under technological control. But how would one substantiate such a charge? One who is committed to the paradigm of the technological device will obviously see it dominate everything, other paradigms and their proponents included.
Social paradigms, then, exhibit in a more diffuse way the circularity and lack of demonstrability that we have found in metaphysical paradigms. This mootness may be concealed because it is often thought that, in order to establish a paradigm as disclosing a society’s essential features, it is sufficient to show that the paradigm is consistent, precise, and applies to the social realm. But given the complexity of society, there are indefinitely many patterns that can be highlighted, and by the criteria of consistency, precision, and applicability alone we cannot decide which are essential. Another factor that conceals the circularity of social paradigms is the semblance of one paradigm’s victory over another. One may claim superior precision or applicability for one’s paradigm or try to show that one’s paradigm comprises all others and constitutes their underlying pattern. But such victories are empty or dubious. I can delineate precise patterns of heat exchange and show that all societies are heat exch
ange systems. I can argue that whatever is called bargaining, allocation of resources, or political action is at bottom nothing but a mode of exchanging heat. But is it so essentially?8
None of these skeptical considerations contests the claim that contemporary reality is neither indifferently homogeneous nor structured around unique and abiding focal things and practices. Social reality seems to be patterned. Theories of society with all their diversity are best understood as attempts to discover the dominant pattern.9 This persistent and widespread search is reasonably understood as a response to something that in fact exists. One must rest one’s case somewhere; that should cause no embarrassment as long as the final move is not made in a facile or premature manner. If there is no way of reaching forever behind the givenness of reality and if reality is given in a pattern, then it would likewise be impossible to get back of the paradigm in which the pattern becomes explicit. And any attempt to get beneath the paradigm by grounding it in some way would then fail and find the paradigm circular and undemonstrable. A paradigm as a theoretical entity will prevail, however, if enough people acknowledge its efficacy in clarifying their vision; and the paradigm will sharpen their perception if what it teaches people to see is admittedly what they essentially do and what essentially moves them. That a paradigm provides essential clarification can be taken in different ways. When the pattern of my world and my commerce with it come clearly into view, I may rejoice in the discovery and be encouraged in my endeavors; on the other hand I may be dismayed to find that my best interests are imperiled and that I have been an accomplice in their jeopardy; or, finally, I may be divided in my allegiance and feel challenged to resolve my predicament. It is only in the first kind of discovery that a paradigm is ontologically and epistemologically not only unsurpassable but also dominant. In the second case, the paradigm as a pattern or tendency in reality vies with other forces of equal or greater significance; epistemologically, the paradigm becomes a device to delineate and restrain developments on behalf of things that truly matter.
It is obvious that the device paradigm that has been delineated on these pages is designed to locate the crucial force that more and more detaches us from the persons, things, and practices that used to engage and grace us in their own right. One talks about the latter in deictic discourse. Paradeictic explanation, when it comes to the device paradigm, is tied to deictic explanation. But the converse is true also. Assuming the prevalence of the device paradigm, deictic discourse and explanation cannot simply be nostalgic but must rethink and reopen the grounds of engagement. This is a matter for the third part of this book.
In conclusion of this chapter it may be well to summarize the features of the device paradigm. From what has been said so far, it is clear that such a presentation will not be a cogent demonstration. It provides pointers and reminders. It delineates a pattern from various sides. One can, first of all, take the historical approach and sketch the pattern by presenting the closer historical background from and against which it emerges. It first comes into relief when past and present are seen as times of toil, poverty, and suffering and when at the same moment a new natural science emerges from which great transformative power can be derived. On the basis of this power, a promise of liberation, enrichment, and of conquering the scourges of humanity is issued. The promise leads to the irony of technology when liberation by way of disburdenment yields to disengagement, enrichment by way of diversion is overtaken by distraction, and conquest makes way first to domination and then to loneliness.10 One can, second, proceed paradigmatically or illustratively and provide a paradigm, in the sense of a clear example, which illustrates this development and its result; one can, for instance, trace the development that leads from a fireplace to a central heating plant, from a horse-drawn wagon to an automobile, or from a pretechnological meal to a T.V. dinner.
Third, one can explicate paradeictically or abstractly the pattern that is embodied in clear examples. Central heating plants, cars, and T.V. dinners are technological devices that have the function of procuring or making available a commodity such as warmth, transportation, or food. A commodity is available when it is at our disposal without burdening us in any way, i.e., when it is commodiously present, instantaneously, ubiquitously, safely, and easily. Availability in this sense requires that the machinery of a device be unobtrusive, i.e., concealed, dependable, and foolproof.11 The ensemble of commodities constitutes the foreground of technology in which we move by way of consumption. The machinery of devices constitutes the background of technology. We take it up in labor by constructing and maintaining the devices of technology. This is the original procurement of devices and thereby of commodities. Derivative procurement takes place when devices are activated in consumption.
Finally, one can provide an ontological account of the paradigm by showing how the device paradigm is serving as an implicit guiding pattern for the transformation of human existence and the world. Things in their depth yield to shallow commodities, and our once profound and manifold engagement with the world is reduced to narrow points of contact in labor and consumption.12 Here paradigmatic explanation returns to and receives direction from the fundamental concerns which can be illuminated in deictic discourse. In most concrete phenomena of the technological universe, the cut between commodity and machinery, foreground and background can be made in more than one way. What should guide the incisions is our concern to shed light on changes that imperil things, practices, and engaging human relations, and the desire to make room for such phenomena when they are struggling to assert themselves against the dominant pattern of availability. Such a guiding concern is a response to the claim of things in their own right. The real point of the technological paradigm is its critical office. It is exercised through the demonstration that, if we are concerned about the loss of engagement, the device paradigm reveals more clearly than any other just how and to what extent people move away from engagement. If that concern is granted, the demonstration can attain at least a measure of cogency.
The illuminating force of the device paradigm is most striking when it is compared with social and political theories that also advance claims and criticisms about the way in which we take up with our world, how we orient ourselves in it, and about the salient features and problems of society. The following chapters, read by themselves, may seem like the very competition among paradigms that in this chapter was shown to be forever inconclusive. Thus the ultimate substantive concern that has here been adumbrated must be kept in view. That concern, as agreed before, requires more development. But it must also be noted that the paradigm of availability delineates from without and ex negativo a substantive position and can begin to trace its general contours.
13
Technology and the Social Order
The following is the first in a group of four chapters that deal with the relation of technology to society and politics. Any extended discussion of technology has to take up this problem, and, in most discussions of technology, its connection with social and political issues is in fact tackled first and head-on. I have taken a less direct approach. The first part of this study has been a kind of brush clearing to obtain an open view of the problem and pattern of technology. Part 2 has so far been devoted to the articulation of that pattern. We can now turn to the further and deeper question of how we have worked out our relationship to technology and its ruling paradigm. So far I have mainly argued that there is a deeply consequential pattern to our lives of which we are at best fleetingly and uneasily aware. Such an argument implies of course that we should bring this pattern to the surface and to our attention.
In turning to the social and political realm, we enter the foremost arena of public awareness and concern, an arena whose dimensions and rules determine what gets attention and what not. If the rise of technology has been, as I have claimed, the most significant event of the modern period, then the kind of public attention it has received must tell us something important about the quality of our social and political li
fe. That we should judge society and politics in light of technology is indeed the working hypothesis of this part of our essay. But the force of the hypothesis needs qualification. The judgment, first of all, to which it leads is tentative, for so is the procedure by which the verdict is arrived at. Paradigmatic explanation finally needs to be grounded in deictic considerations, and these are not provided until we come to Part 3. Moreover, the common understanding of society and politics has its own weight and dignity. Hence, for the time being, the confrontation of technology and society is as much a test of the present theory of technology as it is of the quality of our common aspirations and accomplishments.
Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry Page 12