{"id":7435,"date":"2010-12-10T08:42:44","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T12:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=7435"},"modified":"2010-12-10T08:42:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T12:42:44","slug":"decision-risk-and-values-the-philosophy-of-churchman-and-ackoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2010\/12\/10\/decision-risk-and-values-the-philosophy-of-churchman-and-ackoff\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision, Risk, and Values: The Philosophy of Churchman and Ackoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A couple of months ago, I suggested<\/a> a possible conflict of interest between STS and the history of science.\u00a0 Effectively, the aspirations of STS to contemporary relevance is at least partially dependent on potential contributions arising from new research results.\u00a0 For these results to have impetus, conclusions should be novel<\/em>.\u00a0 Historians of science usually see their own opportunities in confirming STS results by mining examples from history, which, as illustrative examples, are treated as effectively “lost” to the present.<\/p>\n

However, novelty can be augmented by conveniently forgetting the history of the ideas underlying the conclusions on offer.\u00a0 By mining deep history for ideas that are, in some sense, to be considered “lost” (or by seeking evidence that the ideas have never existed at all), historians can inadvertently create an “anti-history” of the subsequent history of those ideas.\u00a0 A better opportunity, I would argue, is to be found in placing the claims of STS and philosophical peers within their historical traditions.\u00a0 Historians could keep track of who else <\/em>is currently espousing these ideas based upon much fuller accounts of their history extending to the present.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, historians’ bookkeeping methodologies<\/a> are woefully inadequate to this task.\u00a0 But it is still possible to fill in pieces of the history where the opportunity arises.\u00a0 This particular post is prompted by a\u00a0recent post<\/a> at The Bubble Chamber, which posits a recent <\/em>move in the philosophy of science, which takes efficacy <\/em>as a key criterion of knowledge.\u00a0 However, my own historical work on the figures of philosophers West Churchman and Russell Ackoff (who just died last year<\/a>) suggests that the tradition is neither new nor lost — perhaps just misplaced by philosophers (though I trust philosophers can clarify this point).\u00a0 Neither was obscure: Churchman was actually editor of Philosophy of Science <\/em>from 1948 to 1958.\u00a0 However, both turned from philosophy of science to operations research before ultimately winding up in the eclectic realm of “systems thinking”.<\/p>\n

To make this point in a timely fashion I am going to break informal blog policy to present a short extract from my forthcoming book, presently titled In Pursuit of Rationality: Science and the Rise of Policy Analysis<\/em>.\u00a0 This is very much part of my professional output, so if you wish to use any of the material, please cite either the book or my 2007 dissertation (ProQuest link<\/a>) in which the material also appears.\u00a0 Also, since this is a manuscript in progress, please feel free to offer suggestions in the comment space.\u00a0 Although I don’t think he has published anything on the topic, also note that Alan Richardson<\/a>, a philosopher of science at the University of British Columbia, has done some work on this specific topic as well.\u00a0 Finally, the images of Churchman and Ackoff are not being used in the book.\u00a0 I encourage you to click on them to go to the original pages on which they appear.<\/p>\n

–Will<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to recall how and why I moved my intellectual dwelling some half century ago from epistemology to management.\u00a0 The two questions, \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with logical positivism\u2019s theory of knowledge?\u201d and \u201cHow many 15\u00bd-33 men\u2019s shirts should be kept in a retail store\u2019s shelves?\u201d do seem a bit different, don\u2019t they?<\/em><\/p>\n

C. WEST CHURCHMAN, 1994[1]<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Virtually all support of the early professionalization of operations research was based on the desire to replicate the successes of wartime OR in a peacetime context.\u00a0 The most important exception was the establishment of an OR research and education program at the Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland by two transplants from the philosophy department at the University of Pennsylvania, West Churchman and Russell Ackoff.\u00a0 Although Churchman had been impressed by Abraham Wald\u2019s work on sequential analysis while working at the Frankford Arsenal during the war, neither Churchman nor Ackoff had had any contact with the wartime OR groups.\u00a0 Instead, they were attracted to OR as a means of putting into practice the \u201cexperimentalist\u201d ideas of Churchman\u2019s mentor, Edgar Singer, Jr., a philosopher of science from the pragmatist tradition who had been a student of William James.[2]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Russell Ackoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singer, Churchman, and Ackoff all eschewed the idea embraced by logical positivists that the idea of science could be defined in terms of a cumulative and constantly expanding body of knowledge founded upon basic empirical truths.\u00a0 Instead, they preferred to define science around its methodology and its ability to achieve goals.\u00a0 From their perspective, science was something that occurred when a goal was explicitly stated, various means of achieving the goal were hypothesized, and these means were explored by means of experimentation in order to find the best possible option.\u00a0 They understood \u201cscientific\u201d method to differ from non-scientific acts of problem solving only insofar as science actively sought out a \u201cbest\u201d or most efficient solution, rather than suffice with a less-than-optimal solution.\u00a0 They defined sufficing with a less-than-optimal solution as \u201clag\u201d and the movement from a better to a worse solution for the sake of change as \u201canti-lag\u201d.[3] Thus, the conduct of \u201cscience\u201d required a record of stated problems and a record of attempted solutions.\u00a0 To practice science meant to adhere to the best attempted solution; to do otherwise was to lag behind science.<\/p>\n

Statistical inference was at the heart of Churchman and Ackoff\u2019s vision of science.\u00a0 In certain simple scenarios one hypothesis out of many might prove obviously superior, but advances in statistical methodology promised to revolutionize scientific method by sharpening humans\u2019 ability to judge between competing hypotheses, even if the impossibility of arriving at absolute certainty persisted.\u00a0 To demonstrate the point Churchman offered a simple example at the beginning of his 1948 book, Theory of Experimental Inference<\/em>.\u00a0 He pointed out that the industrial problem of deciding whether a new and improved material is stronger than an existing material is ultimately resolved by performing a series of tests yielding results that might or might not appear to offer a resolution to the question.\u00a0 A simple side-by-side comparison of test results might show the new material to be consistently stronger than the older one, but a large variance in the strength measurements of the new material might hint at some inconclusiveness in the test.\u00a0 Fortunately, he observed, advanced statistical methodology offered ways of distinguishing between the sets of data in a rigorous way by determining just how likely it was that the new material was actually stronger.[4]<\/p>\n

One of the points that statistical analysis\u2014and especially the wartime development of sequential analysis\u2014made apparent was that the act of deciding whether or not any given inference was true ultimately became a value judgment about just how certain the experimenter wanted to be that the statement was, in fact, true.\u00a0 For instance, because the only way to determine absolutely that the new material was in fact stronger was to conduct an infinite series of tests, experimenters were forced to define their tolerance of the risk that their conclusion was in error.\u00a0 Defining such tolerances is always to an extent arbitrary, but Churchman and Ackoff hastened to point out that the definition of tolerance was also a function of values.\u00a0 One had to ask oneself just how important<\/em> it was that the correct conclusion had been reached.\u00a0 Because these decisions could have a clear ethical dimension\u2014for instance, in determining the lethal dosage of a chemical\u2014declarations of correctness and ethics could not be separated.\u00a0 Defining how confident one can be in determining a lethal dosage, and, likewise, whether it is better to overestimate or underestimate that value, becomes a measure of the value one places on preventing fatalities.[5]<\/p>\n

In positing the interconnectedness of knowledge and values, Churchman and Ackoff acknowledged a certain debt to the relativist resolution of the conflict between rationalism and empiricism, which held that truth was contingent upon one\u2019s willingness to believe it.\u00a0 However, they were intent on not falling into the trap of simple skepticism that relativism implied.\u00a0 By building on pragmatist foundations, their experimentalism admitted that it had no guaranteed basis for knowledge.\u00a0 They did not see this admission as a weakness: by acknowledging the arbitrary assumptions and values that sustained visions of truth, one could confront these assumptions and values head-on.[6] In fact, this acknowledgement presented philosophers with an opportunity to apply scientific method all at once to problems in the natural sciences, the social sciences, policymaking, and even ethics.\u00a0 Because scientific inquiry simply involved the testing of competing solutions to problems, it followed that issues such as the just allocation of resources were as amenable to research as the properties of the natural world.\u00a0 In fact, Churchman and Ackoff were especially exercised by the possibility of including the problems of an ethical society within their vision of empirical science.\u00a0 To them, a scientific ethics rejected the notion that ethical rules followed from an understanding of the natural world.[7] Instead, experimental science could be used to study the values that people held and the means they used to come to agreements that they judged to be fair.[8]<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, Churchman and Ackoff would become early adherents to decision theory.[9] Yet, even prior to their acceptance of the conceptual language of decision theory, they emphasized the need to find valid means of observing values and their manifestation in decisions, which involved establishing a firm logical relationship between the design of experiments and the hypotheses to be evaluated.\u00a0 If this most basic problem were not solved, the entire activity of experimentation would be severely weakened and rendered stagnant.\u00a0 Some hypotheses, of course, simply could not be tested, because limitations in prior knowledge prevented the design of an experiment capable of correlating the result with the hypothesis.\u00a0 To decide which hypotheses could be reliably tested and how, it would be necessary to situate the hypothesis and the experiment within the entire system of experimental knowledge assembled to that point.[10]<\/p>\n

The clear problem preventing the design of valid scientific experiments was the need to correlate all prior knowledge into a single provisional system.\u00a0 With a rapidly expanding and diversifying scientific enterprise in the middle of the 20th<\/sup> century, Churchman and Ackoff identified the fracturing of knowledge through specialization as the most pressing problem facing experimental science.\u00a0 To confront the problem, they advocated a \u201cunification\u201d of scientific work distinct from the unification of knowledge still being advocated by some logical positivists in the postwar years.[11] Their view of unification stressed the interrelation of disparate viewpoints in the art of experimental design, pointing out, for instance that biology, psychology, and sociology could all be related to the act of observation, deploying as a case in point Friedrich Bessel\u2019s famous development of the \u201cpersonal equation\u201d in precise astronomical observation.[12] By Churchman and Ackoff\u2019s reckoning, because science was a method rather than a body of knowledge, no science was more fundamental than any other science.\u00a0 Rather, each science leaned on the others in the search for more effective knowledge.\u00a0 The question was how these sciences could continue to do so in the face of the mounting complexity of information.<\/p>\n

Churchman and Ackoff looked to an institutional solution, proposing the establishment of a series of \u201cInstitutes of Experimental Method\u201d.\u00a0 These institutes, divided into four sections, would train methodologists\u2014specialists in the issues of scientific methodology\u2014who would serve as consultants to scientists.\u00a0 Members of a \u201cgeneral methodology\u201d section would keep track of scientific knowledge so as to criticize and improve scientists\u2019 methods of experimentation and the criteria used to evaluate the results of those experiments.\u00a0 A mathematical statistics section would develop the insights of statistical theory and ensure that statistical theories were properly employed.\u00a0 Experts in a separate sampling techniques section would scrutinize and help formulate the \u201cpresuppositions\u201d behind experimental samples.\u00a0 Finally, in recognition of the fact that scientific work does not always remember why it has taken the paths that it has, a history of science section would investigate the ways scientific investigations of the past influenced the ways current scientific inquiries were framed and would help determine what aspects of past scientific work could be revived most fruitfully in the present.[13]<\/p>\n

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[1] C. West Churchman, \u201cManagement Science: Science of Managing and Managing of Science,\u201d Interfaces <\/strong><\/em>24<\/strong> (1994): 99-110, p. 99.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[2] On Churchman\u2019s wartime experience and its impact on his thinking, see Churchman, \u201cManagement Science,\u201d pp. 99-101, on the link to Singer and James, see p. 107.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3] See, for instance, C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff, \u201cVarieties of Unification,\u201d Philosophy of Science <\/em>13<\/strong> (1946): 287-300, esp. 287-290; and C. West Churchman, Theory of Experimental Inference<\/em> (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), pp. 58-59; and, later, Russell L. Ackoff, Scientific Method: Optimizing Applied Research Decisions<\/em> (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4] Churchman, Experimental Inference<\/em>, chapter 1.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5] Churchman, Theory\u00a0 of Experimental Inference<\/em>, pp. 22-23, 247-251.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[6] Ibid<\/em>., chapter 9.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[7] Churchman later became quite explicit about this point; see C. West Churchman, Prediction and Optimal Decision: Philosophical Issues of a Science of Values<\/em> (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961), pp. 26-27.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[8] See Russell L. Ackoff, \u201cOn a Science of Ethics,\u201d Philosophical and Phenomenological Research <\/em>9<\/strong> (1949): 663-672; and also C. West Churchman and Russell L. Ackoff, \u201cAn Experimental Definition of Personality,\u201d Philosophy of Science<\/em> 14<\/strong> (1947): 304-332; and Churchman, Experimental Inference<\/em>, pp. 236-247, wherein he discusses personality traits in terms of \u201clag\u201d and \u201canti-lag\u201d in efficiency to group or individual goals as operative definitions of personality traits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[9] Beginning in the 1950s, Churchman and Ackoff began to cite regularly in their writings decision theorists such as Kenneth Arrow, R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[10] See, for instance, Churchman, Experimental Inference<\/em>, chapter 13, for a discussion of \u201capplications of experimentalism\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[11] Churchman and Ackoff, \u201cVarieties of Unification\u201d.\u00a0 Contrast this vision of the relationship between operations research and the philosophy of science to that supposed in\u00a0 Philip Mirowski, \u201cThe scientific dimensions of social knowledge and their distant echoes in 20th<\/sup>-century American philosophy of science,\u201d Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science <\/strong><\/em>35<\/strong> (2004): 283-326, where he explicitly links OR to logical positivism, and describes OR as actively working against the pragmatist philosophy of John Dewey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[12] In their teleological definition of science, Churchman and Ackoff dismissed the idea that one science was more fundamental than another in the construction of new experiments; see Churchman and Ackoff, \u201cVarieties of Unification,\u201d p. 297.\u00a0 On the common use of the personal equation\u00a0 to demonstrate a contribution of \u201cpsychology\u201d to astronomy rather than simply as an innovation within disciplined astronomy, see Simon Schaffer, \u201cAstronomers Mark Time: Discipline and the Personal Equation,\u201d<\/a> Science in Context<\/em> 2 (1988): 115-145.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[13] C. West Churchman, Russel L. Ackoff, and Murray Wax, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d in Measurement of Consumer Interest<\/em>, edited by Churchman, Ackoff and Wax, 1-7 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947), pp. 4-6.\u00a0 A discussion of these institutes in Churchman, Experimental Inference<\/em>, p. 234, does not mention the history of science section.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of months ago, I suggested a possible conflict of interest between STS and the history of science.\u00a0 Effectively, the aspirations of STS to contemporary relevance is at least partially dependent on potential contributions arising from new research results.\u00a0 For these results to have impetus, conclusions should be novel.\u00a0 Historians of science usually see<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Decision, Risk, and Values: The Philosophy of Churchman and Ackoff<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[63,358,1326,1498,1528],"class_list":["post-7435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-operations-research","tag-alan-richardson","tag-edgar-singer","tag-russell-ackoff","tag-west-churchman","tag-william-james"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}