Some Narrative Conventions of Scientific Discourse
Rom Harré, 1990
"The academic ‘we’ might seem at first glance to be just a version of the editorial ‘we’. Like the latter it is mutedly egocentric but it is not mainly used to imply teamwork. Rather, it is used to draw the listener into complicity, to participate as something more than an audience. "
"The moral status of persons determines the epistemic status of their results. This becomes entirely intelligible if we think in terms of trust rather than truth. Trust in someone’s results depends very much on our faith in that person, whereas truth, so it seems to me, ought to be tied to trust in a methodology, regardless of who uses it, provided they use it competently. " - Harré p 93.
"Trust, then, is a relation, but can be grounded in the faith of only one of its terminal members. Trust belongs to the same category of personal attributes as beliefs, though trust is more like implicit belief than like opinions which are overtly expressed. It is what is taken for granted in a relationship, whether between people or between people and things. It is usually called into question only when it is violated."
"The moral order of the scientific community is or appears to be élitist, at least in one sense of that term. The valuation of an opinion concerning some matter taken to be scientific is determined by resort to expertise, which is itself guaranteed by a combination of communal certification and personal demonstrations of mastery."
Who counts as an expert? We are left with appeals to experts, who are deemed experts by appeals to other experts, and so on, a ladder of induction toward "expertise".
Add comment