ICQI 2015 Day 3: Are We Post-Human?

I went to alot of different talks today..I worked out that in terms of clinical psychology USA is no further ahead than we are and made alot of new buddies, particularly community based researchers from Canada. We had a sharing circle of sorts, telling stories about where we come from, our work, the challenges of being an academic and lots of laughs.

In terms of content what struck me the most was a long workshop on what is being described as the new philosophical paradigm after post-modernism...Post-Humanism also called the New Empiricism or New Materialism, This is not a fad I hasten to add after some researching, but a growing movement in philosophy. It goes something like this.

So post-modernism challenged Logical Positivism, focussing on language and discourse, or diversity and the marginalised, rather than grand theories, determinism, colonisation.

Now the Post-Humanists are coming to see that we must re-engage with the material world, not just focus on discourse. We are embodied we also have relationships with inanimate objects as part of our process of meaning-making: technology, but also through hyper-consumerism and objects that give us meaning in our lives. In addition to this materialism as the breaking down of dualisms..between mind and body, animate and inanimate, self and other. Our "identities' are fluid, change and emerge as different all the time in relation to this assemblage described earlier.

So ontologically the focus used to be on reason, then on stories and language..now ..help! Im not sure

So lets have a practical example to make sense of it a little more

See this article  
excerpt...We argue, yes, in our new pamphlet The New Materialism: How our relationship with the material world can change for the better, published to coincide with Buy Nothing Day, if you embrace ‘stuff’ in a different way. Instead of rejecting the material world, which ‘hair shirt’ environmentalists are often accused of (ironically so, as they spend their days trying to protect it), the new materialism represents a more deeply pleasurable and respectful relationship to the material things that surround us. Having more stuff stopped making people in Britain happier decades ago

Here is another example..take a client i have whose depression is caught up inextricably with the internet.....he is in this sense experiencing a post-human dilemma,,who is he? Is his identity within him anymore? is his 'self' a product of the conglomeration of the net, his network online..the human-inanimate divide is no possible?

Lets see if really does become the next turn in road....certainly it related directly to a number of other things I been reading, particularly Lakoff's book on Embodiment, which argue for the dissolution of mind-body dualism and you can also see how it has affiliations with Bahktin's concepts relating to the 'self'.

Is it possible, however, that philosophers have just arrived  at an ancient place, non-dualism, visited by Taoism and Buddhism many centuries ago?

Po-Po-Mo? WTF? Philosophy for Qual Researchers1

 

While psychology has historically been linked to philosophy (or is actually simply applied-philosophy) many contemporary psychologists have only a limited awareness of contemporary philosophical debates.

If you are a qualitative researcher, however, a lack of understanding of philosophy and the philosophical underpinnings of your methods will have serious implications for your research. You can be accused of studying blind, not seeing the paradigm in which you work and unable to be transparent about the match between your own values and those implied in your research. Qual researchers need to locate themselves philosophically before they start...

I thought Id write a few posts on philosophy for this reason, starting with contemporary debates and then perhaps moving backwards to explore some historical issues. I warn you...I only know enough to get myself in trouble...

One of the difficulties we have in psychology is that many of us haven't moved beyond research methods that are closely rooted in the empirical tradition. Grounded theory, for example, at least the original version, is built on the idea that the theory that emerges during the cycle of data collection and analysis is somehow REAL....that it truly represents what the participants experience. This is fundamentally flawed, given that the researcher is the tool by which data is analyzed....the results are CO-CONSTRUCTED and therefore grounded theory has been reconceptualised (see here for Adele Clarke).....

This reconfiguration of grounded theory was a post-modern development...based on the recognition that truth is socially constructed, local and based on a rejection of massive meta-narratives that dominate academic and cultural space.

What about now though? Is Post-modernism dead yet? what comes after it? what are the implications for qual researchers? po-po-mo?

If you read this long article from The Current there are so many options for what comes next...

Pseudo-modernism
Digimodernism
Automodernism
Complexism
Hypermodernism

...enough 'isms to make you go mental..

Im going to stick to METAMODERNISM because it makes the most sense to me and perhaps has some direct application to psychological research...Im going to try in my own words...go HERE for more, a great blog NOTES on METAMODERNISM

Postmodernism was essentially deconstructive, criticizing the quantitative/empirical tradition and hoping to dismantle it by revealing its agenda as one of social and cultural control.....it's not going to make us many friends and goes against the Ethic of Hospitality (Derrida)... Meta-modernism, however, leaves room for reconstruction and hope...it is based on the assumption that post-modernism was right, but makes room for new and exciting things to be built from the ruins...we can even go back and pick up a few modernist fragments

Paradoxically these new things can include both the products of modernism and post-modernism....we can design studies that rely on both qualitative and quantitative methods, but to develop quirky, innovative, nimble, locally relevant solutions to community problems...FREAK FOLK is metamodern...NEW SINCERITY is metamodern...small communities making things happen without pretending they are part of big movements are metamodern..

Meta- does not refer to one particular system of thought or specific structure of feeling. It infers a plurality of them, and repositions itself with and between them. It is many, but also one. Encompassing, yet fragmented. Now, yet then. Here, but also there.

Episto-WTF? An Introduction to Epistomology

An engineer, an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher were hiking together through the hills of Scotland. They reached a hilltop. Looking over to the nexthilltop, they saw a black sheep. 

In delight, the engineer cried, “What do you know? The sheep in Scotland are black!” 

“Well, some of the sheep in Scotland are black,” replied the experimental physicist. 

The theoretical physicist considered this a minute, then said, “Well, at least one of the sheep in Scotland is black.” 

The philosopher thought for a second, then responded, “Well, it’s black on one side, anyway.”

What is epistomology? is a question that comes up a lot in my lectures so I thought id try for a brief introduction...it is a philosophical concept that is fundamental to doing research...


Essentially it is the branch of philosophy that looks at notions of knowledge, particularly tackling the question of whether something can ever be considered true or not.....if your a determinist you believe truth is out there (and in many cases quantitative researcher you are more likely to seek generalisable truths)... although in reality many scientists might shy away from the idea that scientific method can find truth rather than approximations...

....if you are a social contructionist you are more likely to see truth as a somewhat ridiculous concept given that "truths" are constructed socially, through dominant narratives that can keep us from living 'preferred' lives...

Of course, it all lies on a continuum..grounded theory is more likely to be modernist, unless you go round the post-modern turn by using situational analysis... interpretative phenomenology is somewhere in the middle (contructivist?)...discourse analysis looks directly at deconstructing language and revealing how notions of truth can be nothing more than power plays..

....below excellent slides re: psychology

Epistemologies for qualitative research

View more documents from marilini1ili

...a brilliant article HERE
Making connections: The relationship between epistemology and  research methods

The Australian Community Psychologist                                                                                                                     Volume 19  No 1 May 2007
Dawn Darlaston-Jones
University of Notre Dame, Australia
The ability to identify the relationship between the epistemological foundation of research and the methods employed in conducting it is critical in order for research to be truly meaningful. Unfortunately this connection is  often not taught in the research methods classes that most psychology students experience. Indeed the very names of these units emphasises the focus on methods and consequently the epistemology, theoretical frameworks and methodologies that influence the choice of  methods remain ‘hidden’ from view. This paper brings into focus these hidden (or often overlooked and ignored) elements of research and illustrates the importance and relevance  by drawing on example from the author’s research into the student experience of higher education.  

Do We Need to Know Philosophy?

A long time ago I remember enrolling in a few philosophy courses, covering Greek right up to social constructionism, I also tackled Foulcault's Birth of the Clinic and unsuccessfully read Derrida like every good liberal academic should but I am finding that many of my students aren't conversant in this field even though Psychology is essentially applied philosophy at it's core.

I would argue that clinicians need to understand basic philosophy is they are to learn more than technique and understand the paradigm and approach of the models they work by. See Burnham J. (1992). Approach - Method - Technique, Creating distinctions and creating connections. Human Systems , 3, 3-27 for more on this topic.

But what about researchers? Is there also a risk here that be are in danger of becoming technicians if we dont understand the epistomological basis of the methods we use? Can we simply pick from methods like a tool box? Is it possible to do a RCT one year and then a Discourse analysis piece of work the next? Can you do a mixed methods study employing methods from disparate epistomologies? 

Reminds me of a joke... "A scientist and his wife are out for a drive in the country. The wife says, 'Oh, look! Those sheep have been shorn.' "'Yes,' says the scientist. 'On this side.'" Get it?

Here's another philosophy joke: "A blind man, a lesbian, and a frog walk into a bar. The barkeep looks up at them and says, 'What is this — a joke?'"

If you get these your safe!

Paper Alert! Breen & Darlaston-Jones (2008) Moving Beyond the Enduring Dominance of Positivism in Psychological Research: An Australian Perspective

I highly reccommend this, from 4 years ago but very pertinent .....

Breen, L., and Darlaston-Jones, D. (2008). Moving Beyond the Enduring Dominance of Positivism in Psychological Research: An

Australian Perspective. Paper presented at the 43rd Australian Psychological Society Annual Conference.

Abstract

Almost since its inception, the dominant narrative of modern psychology has embraced

positivism through its insistence that psychological science is objective, generalisable,

and value free (or neutral). Consequently, quantitative research and in particular,

experimental designs, are privileged over other forms of enquiry and other

epistemologies, methodologies, and methods remain marginalised within the discipline.

Alternative epistemologies and methodologies remain predominantly at the margins

within psychological research yet have resulted from the growing dissatisfaction with

the dominance of positivism. We argue that the enduring hegemony of positivism needs

to be opposed to enable psychology to genuinely understand the antecedents of, and

provides meaningful sustainable solutions for, complex human issues without being

constrained by a narrow focus on method. We discuss how psychology in Australia can

move towards embracing methodological and epistemological pluralism and provide a

number of suggestions for change across the interrelated areas of accreditation,

curriculum, the Australian Psychological Society, and research.

Full version here: