Philosophy and empirical research have a somewhat uneasy relationship. To proceed, scientific research doesn’t need philosophy. It sets its own rules, designs its experiments and studies, refines its methods, interprets its results, and secures its continuation. Philosophers of science trying to formulate rules or laws and to prescribe methods are routinely ignored and sometimes met with scorn. They are simply not needed.
Philosophy itself, on the other hand, doesn’t really engage in research (I know that a lot of colleagues would disagree). Its job is not to find out how things stand but to critically assess concepts and ways of thinking about them and suggest new ones. Of course it cannot do this without paying heed to what others say and do, how other disciplines deal with the world and what they find out about it. But concepts are not discovered. In guiding our relation to the world from basic perception to systematic research, they are presupposed and usually resistant to change. If the philosophical proposal of a new or modified concept does succeed, it can radically transform our perception of the world and how we deal with it.
Usually philosophical interventions aren’t quite as radical. At an institute dedicated to empirical research, the philosopher is well advised to be modest. His task will mainly be to ask questions, not assuming a superior point of view in order to judge right or wrong but infiltrating practices and discussions, as it were, looking at them from the inside and confronting this inside with other perspectives.
The problem is that philosophical questioning runs counter to everything the everyday practice of research takes for granted. It interrupts standard procedures and delays them. It questions presuppositions, methods, and interpretations. And what is worst, it doesn’t do so in order to improve, refine or alleviate research procedures – at least not primarily. In a way, the philosopher has a similar position to an artist in residence but without the playful attitude that presents interesting ways of looking at things or produces weird stuff that might inspire the scientists and can be safely ignored if it doesn’t.
Luckily this particular professional disrupter is a human being with his own agenda that is open to discussion just like everybody else’s. Unlike the philosopher of science he engages in the field himself because aesthetics is not an exclusively or even primarily empirical endeavor but also a philosophical one. So the philosopher may have a bone to pick with some of the research questions, theses and convictions of his colleagues – and vice versa.
Why not start with what the institute’s website propagates as its central question? In addition to asking who likes what and why I’d like to propose a different set of questions that can be posed to the listeners as well as to the researchers themselves: How does your practice work? Why do you engage in it? What are its contexts and consequences? And what does all this mean?
6 Comments
„It (Scientific research?) sets its own rules, designs its experiments and studies, refines its methods, interprets its results, and secures its continuation.“
I heard that scientists/researchers (who could also be called professional disrupters, what a nice label!) learn from others, develop theories, question presuppositions/methods/interpretations, reflect on research questions, propose hypotheses, test them, and discuss findings in the light of a larger context.
I didn’t mean to suggest that researchers aren’t open to learning from others or are unaware of their context – just that they usually don’t need philosophers to tell them what to do and how to do it. But even if it is a caricature to characterize „normal science“, i.e. scientific practice within a paradigm in Thomas Kuhn’s sense, as a kind of unreflective continuation of what was there before, would you really adopt the term of the „professional disrupter“ for yourself as a researcher?
If disruption has the objective to extend knowledge and comes from questioning what has been established, thinking out of the box, proposing alternatives, and preferring quality/meaning to societal expectations, yes, i would adopt the term of „professional disrupter“. [At least, i try to be one :)]
If disruption is limited to enjoying oneself and comes from deliberate provocation or systematic opposition to an established system, i would not adopt this term.
As a philosopher, what is the goal of being a disrupter and where does the disruption come from?
I wouldn’t define the role of the philosopher as such as that of a disrupter, but at the MPIAE this must at least be an aspect of his (i.e. my) work. And you’re right, neither provocation for its own sake nor fundamental opposition are particularly productive. Funnily enough, I found a description of this role in the first report by our scientific advisory board where they said a philosopher at the institute should make people „uncomfortable, but in a productive way“. I would only add that it might take some time to see whether the discomfort is productive or not.
Denken Sie, dass in der Zukunft eine Kooperation zwischen dem sogenannten Philosophen und dem sogenannten Empiriker, in der Erforschung ästhetischer Phänomene, unabdingbar sein wird? Die philosophische Ästhetik, könnte behauptet werden, nimmt einen Platz zwischen theoretischer und praktischer Philosophie ein. Dementsprechend verwirklicht sich die philosophische Ästhetik nicht ausschließlich in der Theoriebildung. Doch wie kann die philosophische Ästhetik praktisch werden? Bedürfen die Daten, die der Psychologe erhebt, der philosophischen Reflexion (einer rationalen Kritik, die weitaus mehr ist, denke ich, als eine Rekonstruktion von Argumenten)? Adorno erkannte in “Ästhetische Theorie“, dass ästhetische Erfahrungen in eine diskursive, philosophisch-kritische Realität einbezogen werden müssen, um in ihrer Unbegreiflichkeit begriffen werden zu können (s. Adorno 2019, S. 151).
Die Frage ist für mich weniger, ob die philosophische Ästhetik praktisch werden kann, sondern wie sie für sich selbst Sachhaltigkeit gewährleisten kann. Auch wenn sie sich intensiv mit konkreten Arbeiten auseinandersetzt, gilt das nicht als Empirie im wissenschaftlichen Sinne, aber es ist auch nicht eigentlich Theorie. Gerade im Bezug auf diese Sachhaltigkeit tun beide Seiten gut daran, aufeinander aufmerksam zu sein. Wo genau Berührungspunkte sind, wo Ergebnisse der empirischen Forschung für die philosophische Ästhetik relevant sind, sei es als Herausforderung, sei es als Anregung, sei es als nicht mehr hintergehbare Fakten, muss im Einzelnen beantwortet werden.