Away MAVE

The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Block 3: Marcuse, Habermas, and Science as Ideology

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	1 Ideology and science: an overview		2 Background Material on Marcuse and the Frankfurt School
	3 Marcuse and the non-neutrality of science		4 Problems with Marcuse's position
	5 Habermas’ Response to Marcuse		6 Habermas on Knowledge Constitutive Interests

Ideology and science: an overview

The readings for this Block give us an opportunity to look in more depth at the group of ideas about the science/nature question that, to a certain extent, have shaped many of the approaches that have been developed. If you have access to texts with general material on the Frankfurt School or critical theory you will find it helpful to look at those as well.

A Note on Ideology

Before embarking on the writings of Marcuse and Habermas let's take a moment to (re)aquaint ourselves with the term 'ideology'. Originally it meant the science of ideas, but the writers we will be looking at use the term as developed by Marx to describe a set of ideas that is in error, but accepted for specific reasons.
There are three features that make a set of beliefs or worldview an ideology:

it's false;
it's functional;
and it seems natural.

To be false it has to be the case that it is not true. To be functional it has to maintain a set of relations or class interests. To seem natural it usually fits with the way society has developed, so not any false idea can be ideological, it should seem reasonable to believe it and be misguided. Being 'natural' in this way helps to explain why the upholders of a particular ideology do not see themselves as, e.g., supporting an unfair status quo for their own benefit.

Exercise

I recently heard in conversation someone make the claim that they had, 'an ideological commitment to something'. Do you think they were misusing the term or openly embracing the idea that they believed in and supported something that they knew to be false?
Alternatively the term 'ideology' could have shifted again and in contemporary speech it means something different. Listen out for its use (friends, family, radio, TV etc) and try to interpret exactly how it is being used. If you spot some good examples that shed light on this problem put them on the discussion site.

Science as ideology

A standard complaint in green literature is that science is part of the ideology of "industrialism" and it is industrialism that needs to be rejected as a whole. This can be interpreted in many ways. We could defend the claim that science is and should be value neutral and defend it from commercialisation or legislate against the excesses of industrialisation, thus defending science from 'corruption' by these other forces. Alternatively we could identify the corrupting force as being somehow integral to the methods and approaches of science. Talk of the inherent 'non-neutrality' of science suggests this second more radical position. It is the view that 'science' is necessarily committed to an exploitative view of nature - that it is not simply put to 'ideological uses' but that its very concepts and methods entail a commitment to the domination of nature. Science is in that sense not neutral but necessarily committed to environmentally destructive ways. Hence, to overcome environmental problems we need a radically new science. The most sophisticated defenders of this position are to be found in the Frankfurt school.

Reading tip:
You might now find it helpful, as supplementary reading, to look at:
R. Pippin, ‘On the Notion of Technology as Ideology’, in Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, ed. A. Feenberg and A. Hannay (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1995).
This includes a useful overview of problems with Marcuse’s and Habermas’ arguments and their background in the broader Frankfurt School project of ideology-critique.

Exercise
If you carried out the exercise on ideology above, you may have hit upon a particular problem with the idea of science itself being an ideology. The interpretation of an ideology associated with Marx relies on there being a position outside of the dominant ideology from which to criticise it and for Marx this position was a scientific one. Marx could deny the truth claims of the bourgeois hegemony by revealing their roots in particular historical circumstances and not as a natural or universal way of organising society. He believed that Marxism was not itself an ideology because it was scientific. Take a few minutes to think about where we can stand in order to have the possibility of seeing science itself as an ideology?

Background Material on Marcuse and the Frankfurt School

Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979)

A member of the Frankfurt School whose early work attempted to combine Phenomenology and Marxism. His approach to technology was influenced by Husserl (as we have seen) and also by Heidegger (see Heidegger's 'The Question Concerning Technology'). Like Husserl the irrationalism of Nazism was a spur to action for Marcuse and the rest of the Frankfurt school.
Reason and Revolution 1941 an introduction to Hegel and Marx
Eros and Civilisation (1955) Develops Freud's ideas, e.g., about the formation of character, to explain the loyalty of the proletariat to an exploitative capitalist society. Society is seen as unconsciously repeating behaviour that may have been necessary for survival under oppressive regimes and thus the proletariat fails to take advantage of the possibilities of a non-repressive society.
Best known for his book One-Dimensional Man (1964) which was widely read throughout the 60s by a radical student body particularly in the U.S.A. and Germany. Here he argues for an interpretation of Western societies as one-dimensional: 'one' because they do not allow criticism either by suppression or, more covertly, by making life comfortable.

There is a web resource on Marcuse at http://herbertmarcuse.com/index2.htm

To give a taste of the whole book I quote from its opening paragraphs:

A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrialised civilisation, a token of technical progress. Indeed, what could be more rational than the suppression of individuality in the mechanisation of socially necessary but painful performances; the concentration of individual enterprises in more effective, more productive coroperations; the regulation of free competition among unequally equipped economic subjects; the curtailment of perogatives and national sovereignties which impede the international organisation of resources. [the protests at the World Trade Organisation meeting in Seattle 1999 were voicing the same disquiet in the current situation]....
The rights and liberties which were such vital factors in the origins of earlier stages of industrial society yield to a higher stage of this society: they are losing their traditional rationale and content. Freedom of thought, speech, and conscience were - just as free enterprise, which they served to promote and protect - essentially critical ideas, designed to replace an obsolescent material and intellectual culture by a more productive and rational one. Once institutionalised, these rights and liberties shared the fate of the society of which they had become a part. The achievement cancels the premises. ...
Independence of thought, autonomy, and the right to political opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function in a society which seems increasingly capable of satisfying the needs of the individuals through the way in which it is organised. Such a society must justly demand acceptance of its principles, and reduce opposition to the discussion of alternative policies within the status quo. In this respect it makes little difference whether the increasing satisfaction of needs is accomplished by an authoritarian or a non-authoritarian system.

Central to our concerns is Marcuse's claim that science has, built into its concepts and methods, an interest in instrumental action, in the technical manipulation and the control of nature.

The Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School was a critical Marxist school that centred on the Institute for Social Research, founded in 1923. Its first wave of philosophers were Marcuse, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin, and Fromm. And most influential in its second wave was Habermas.
Their approach, known as Critical Theory, aimed to rid Marxism of aspects of both positivism and materialism. Crucially influential was Hegel's idea of a dialectic.
One central theme was the critique of "instrumental reason" and the internal limitations of the enlightenment (Adorno and Horkheimer Dialectic of Enlightenment).
Three dimensions of this theme:

1. The increasing use of science in the process of production and a 'scientific/technical attitude to nature'.

2. The use of natural and social science in human affairs:
a. use of science in the production of arms and instruments of social control
b. Increasing rationalisation of society in Weber's sense: use of 'formally rational' methods of bureaucracy etc.; application of 'technical reason' to social ends - reason in the instrumental sense of best means to ends - efficiency.

3. The privileged status accorded to science and instrumental reason:
a. scientism: only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge
b. technical rationality is the only form of rationality that is applicable to actions: reason in relation to action is concerned only with the most efficient means to ends - ends themselves beyond reason.
a. and b. support the scientisation of society.
This ideology is often identified with 'positivism'. a. and b. are often seen as the basis for the internal failures of the enlightenment.

Marcuse and the non-neutrality of science

Exercise

After reading Marcuse can you think of a current response to an environmental problem that could be characterised as 'one-dimensional thinking?

Marcuse's Basic Position - Science is not value neutral

Science is necessarily committed to an exploitative view of nature and humans: Science has built into its concepts and methods an interest in instrumental action, in the technical manipulation and control of nature.
In his own words:

The science of nature develops under the technological a priori which projects nature as potential instrumentality, stuff of control and organization. And the apprehension of nature as (hypothetical) instrumentality precedes the development of all particular organization. One-Dimensional Man p.126
The point which I am trying to make is that science, by virtue of its own method and concepts, has projected and promoted a universe in which the domination of nature has remained linked to the domination of man - a link that tends to be fatal to this universe as a whole. Ibid. p.135

Marcuse rejects here the 'misuse model' of the application of science to the exploitation of humans and nature, i.e., the view that science is value free and has objective theories about the world that are subsequently used for independently defined ends. The technical manipulation of nature is itself held to be a form of domination, a domination that is linked with the technological domination of humans by others. The use of science in the destruction of the environment, in the development technology by the military and other forces of social control, in the rationalization of the political domain and so on are not 'abuses that arise at the level of their application'. Rather, the interest in domination enters their very construction, their methods and concepts.

The general outline of Marcuse's position can be stated as follows:

1. Modern natural science is necessarily committed to a view of nature as an object to be manipulated and controlled.
2. A science of humans based on the model of the natural sciences is thereby committed to the same view of humans.
3. Thus there is a necessary relation between the scientific domination of nature and the scientific domination of humans.
4. Modern natural science is historically specific and not the only form that science can take.
5. The liberation of both humans and nature requires a new science and technology grounded in a different interest, and with a different view of nature, not as an object to be manipulated but as "a totality of life to be protected and cultivated" (Counter-Revolution and Revolt p.61.). This change in the aims of science carries with it changes in its content:
Its hypotheses, without losing their rational character, would develop in an essentially different experimental context (that of a pacified world); consequently, science would arrive at essentially different concepts of nature and establish essentially different facts. One-Dimensional Man p.136

Marcuse's arguments for 1. and 4.

Central argument:
1. Historically there have been different conceptions of explanation associated with different ontologies of nature. Eg. Prior to the scientific revolution there was Aristotelian world-view in which teleological explanation was central and the cosmos was seen as a goal directed whole.

2. What we now regard as science is an historically and culturally specific phenomenon that emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries - Galilean science.
This science was not just a product of applying rational empirical methods to the study of nature , but rather defining nature in such a way that these methods could be applied. These methods are related to a 'technological a priori' - an interest in technical control.

3. Central to Galilean science is the distinction between (real) primary and (unreal) secondary qualities. However, this is not a 'discovery' about the way reality is, but rather a way of defining what is 'real'.
Basis of the distinction:
a. what is real is defined as that which can be measured and hence appear in mathematically specifiable laws of nature;
b. the reason one wants mathematically specifiable laws is that enables us to make predictions about properties in nature that can be manipulated and hence to control nature;
c thus, 'nature' is being defined so as to include only those properties that can be treated in this way - it is constituted by an interest in technical control.

4. Since science is constituted by an interest in technical control it is not an accident or 'misuse' of a value-neutral science that it is thus used when applied to nature and humans. Science is not value-neutral but constituted by certain values.

5. The liberation of nature and humans will be linked to the creation of a new science constituted by different interests - nature as a totality of life to be protected.
It is crucial to understanding Marcuse's position that we understand him to be using 'reason' in two ways: sometimes to describe the kind of positivist reason that he wishes to attack and sometimes to point to the necessary role of reason, used in freedom, to criticise social norms such as an instrumental science, and to show the means to reinstate questions of human values.

Modern science develops a view of human reason and knowledge that subverts the notion of Reason (capital R) according to which one can have rational discourse about ethical and political ends.

Problems with Marcuse's position

1. The appeal to Husserl:
a. Marcuse misinterprets Husserl - especially on the 'technisation' of science: for Husserl this concerns the formalisation of science not a commitment to technical control. Husserl is talking about mathematics as technique and Marcuse takes him to mean technology.
b. Husserl's arguments against Galilean realism have problems (see block 2)

2. Galileo was not just defining reality. They were making discoveries. Aristotelian physics, mechanics and astronomy were empirically inadequate. For example, claims that natural motion was circular (shared by Galileo), explanation of motion in terms of natural place in the universe, account of the motion of planets etc were empirically inadequate. Those failures were reasons for rejecting his ontology. Likewise the success of Newtonian mechanics are reasons for acceptance of a different scientific ontology.

3. Neither modern science nor an interest in technical control are historically specific:
a. Galilean science itself developed within a long tradition: Greek atomism, Archimedean mechanics and Neo-platonism were all influential
b. In interest in controlling and manipulating nature is part of the human condition - we are not angels. (this is a problem that Habermas' develops)

4. Some analytical points about 'prediction', 'control' 'domination' and 'manipulation'.
Marcuse assumes that there is a necessary connection between measurement and prediction and technical control, and between technical control and domination. The assumptions are false.
a. Prediction does not entail control:
One can measure and predict that which one cannot control - witness the history of astronomy on which the scientific revolution focused.
Moreover even if the power to predict does increase the power to control it does not follow that an interest in prediction is based upon an interest in control
b. Control does not entail domination.
'Control' and 'Manipulation' can be used in a minimal sense to refer to 'making things happen' without entailing the specific forms of control involved in domination as involving the unacceptable use of power to control autonomous beings.
Given that it makes sense to talk of dominating nature, one can control without domination: to reduce greenhouse gases is to try to control nature, but it is not to dominate it. Rather, it is to nurture it by attempting to stop conditions that would decrease, for example, biodiversity.
To 'protect' and 'cultivate' the natural world itself requires certain forms of intervention in the natural world.

See Secondary reading on Marcuse: ( * = especially recommended)

* H. Blanke, ‘Domination and Utopia: Marcuse’s Discourse on Nature, Psyche, and Culture’, in Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology, ed. D. Macauley (New York: Guilford Press, 1996). A very useful overview which brings out the influence of Marcuse’s earlier study of Freud and of the excessive repression exerted by capitalist societies.

* * W. Leiss, ‘Appendix’ to The Domination of Nature. Surveys debates about Marcuse’s idea of an alternative science.

W. Leiss, ‘Technological Rationality: Marcuse and his Critics’. In Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2 (1972), pp. 31-42.

J. O’Neill, ‘Marcuse, Husserl and the Crisis of the Sciences’. In Philosophy of Social Science 18 (1988), pp. 327-343.

J. O’Neill, Ecology, Policy and Politics (London: Routledge, 1993), ch. 9. A critical and usefully analytical account of Marcuse’s argument that scientific rationality embodies the ‘domination’ of nature.

S. Vogel, ‘New Science, New Nature: The Habermas-Marcuse Debate Revisited’, in Technology and the Politics of Knowledge, as cited above for the article by Pippin. Vogel traces Marcuse’s and Habermas’ views back to a tension within the Marxist tradition on whether science is essentially neutral or an aspect of the ideology of capitalist societies.

Habermas’ Response to Marcuse

Jürgen Habermas (1927- )

A social theorist and philosopher, Habermas is responsible for a renewal of critical theory. Influenced by Hegel, Marx and the earlier members of the Frankfurt School he extends and moderates their critique of logical positivism by incorporating aspsects of analytic philosophy: J.L. Austin, Searle and the later Wittgenstein.

His most influential work is the two volume Theory of Communicative Action (1981)

In response to Marcuse, Habermas accepts:
M1 (Modern natural science is necessarily committed to a view of nature as an object to be manipulated and controlled);
M2 (A science of humans based on the model of the natural sciences is thereby committed to the same view of humans);
and with qualifications M3 (Thus there is a necessary relations between the scientific domination of nature and the scientific domination of humans).

Habermas rejects:
M4 (Modern natural science is historically specific and not the only form that science can take); and
M5 (The liberation of both humans and nature requires a new science and technology grounded in a different interest).

He offers various arguments for his rejection of M4 and M5.
a. The interest in the instrumental manipulation of nature is not historically specific. Instrumental action on nature - work or labour - is part of the human condition. We are not angels but beings that must manipulate the natural world to satisfy our needs. Hence labour is universal.

b. Science is constituted by an interest in successful instrumental action (accepts M1 - that the methods and concepts of science reveal an interest in technological manipulation of nature). However, since this interest in technical control is a universal interest, there is no reason to assume there could be another new science associated with another interests.

c. Marcuse's new science, which involves treating nature as a subject in its own right, involves a confusion of instrumental action and communicative action.
To treat nature as a subject involves acting towards natural objects as one does towards people, as persons with whom communicative action is possible. However, that kind of action is only appropriate towards persons whose utterances and actions are open to interpretation. Nature is not a possible partner in communicative action. It does not talk back.
Communicative action, like work, is a universal feature of human life, but it cannot replace work and instrumental action.

d. Habermas assumes the following picture:

Marcuse, he thinks, conflates those two forms of action.

e. Habermas still accepts M1, M2 and M3
The problem in modern society is that instrumental action associated with science is extended beyond its appropriate domain. Reduction of political and ethical life to the application of instrumental reason for the realisation of 'non-rational ends' - scientisation of society founded upon an ideology of 'scientism' - that only science gives knowledge. This leads to a colonisation of the life-world by instrumental reason.

Habermas on Knowledge Constitutive Interests

Habermas' basic claim is that different forms of knowledge with different object domains and standards of validity are constituted by different interests that are founded in distinct forms of human activity. This is laid out in the table below:

The problem for Habermas is how to show that the sciences are constituted by different interests. In particular: how is science constituted by a technical interest? That is, in what sense does a technical interest in the control of nature entail a particular object domain and criteria of validity?

There is an accessible answer to this in B. Fay's Social Theory and Political Practice.

Fay in outline:
The nature of explanation in natural science entails that there is a conceptual link with an interest in technical control.
His argument appeals to deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation.
Explanation:
Laws: L1.....Ln
Initial conditions: C1.....Cm
Event to be explained: E
Implication of D-N model is that there is a structural identity of prediction and explanation.
Hence scientific explanations provide just the sort of knowledge needed to control events in the world.
Object of science = work of controllable objects and events.
Criteria of validity = given by success or failure of prediction.

A Possible Reply to Fay:
1. The claim that there is a necessary link between explanation and prediction fails:
a. some explanations do not give predictions eg. Darwin's explanation of the natural development of species;
b. some predictions are not explanations eg. Measles: Koplick spots always followed by fever.
2. There is no necessary link between prediction and technical control.

Problem for Habermas

There is an implicit realism in Habermas - He claims, and must claim, that nature isn't a subject. But if objects are constituted by an interest, how can we assert that nature isn't the sort of thing that can be interpreted as a communicative actor?
The answer that 'natural objects don't talk back', entails a claim about an object's independence of any 'constitution' claim.

Further reading on Habermas:

Really useful web site is http://www.helsinki.fi/~amkauppi/hablinks.html

R. Bernstein (ed.), Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985): see sections I-III of the ‘Introduction’ (which deal generally with Habermas and the broader epistemological theory within which his account of science and technology belongs) and the paper by A. Wellmer, ‘Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment’.

T. Bottomore, The Frankfurt School (London: Methuen, 1984), offers an overall introduction to Habermas.

J. Thompson and D. Held (eds.), Habermas: Critical Debates (London: Macmillan, 1982). See especially the opaper by H. Ottman, ‘Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection’, which again critically examines the epistemological background to Habermas’ view of science.

Bear in mind too that many of the readings on Marcuse consider Habermas, because they are assessing how effectively Habermas improves on Marcuse’s critique of technological rationality.