Epistemic Settlements: ‘mitigated objectivism’

In terms of influential epistemic settlements, a final consideration must be given to Wylie’s ‘mitigated objectivism’ as she has consistently developed it as a ‘middle-ground’ solution since her early work on positivism and structuralist archaeology (Wylie 1982). Wylie may be broadly grouped amongst a coterie of archaeologists and philosophers (or ‘meta-archaeologists’) who all, in varying aspects, critiqued or amended the logico-positivism/empiricism of the new archaeology (eg. Embree 1992, Gibbon 1989, Kelley 1988, Kosso 1991, 2001, Salmon 1982, 1993). In no exaggerated sense, these interfield scholars, aware of the larger trends in philosophy and the philosophy of science, advocated alternatives to Binford’s explicit importation of positivism from the philosophy of science in an attempt to bring archaeology current in its usage and contribution to philosophical discussions. Wylie, forming part of this emerging group, drew from the historical critiques, both internal and external, of logico-positivism/empiricism. By the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when these authors were writing, Hempel and Carnap’s platform for positivism (whether in its early or revised form) had largely been abandoned by philosophers of science. One influential successor was a realism based upon the writings of Bhaskar (1975, 1979) and Harré (1970, 1972). Realism as a general attitude towards what can be known and how we may know goes back at least to Aristotle. The specifics of Bhaskar’s and Harré’s approach may be better termed ‘scientific realism’ or, as Bhaskar has sometimes termed it, ‘transcendental realism’ (Bhaskar 1979), or a ‘realist theory of science’ (Bhaskar 1975).

For archaeology, the distinctiveness of this scientific realism comes to light in its contrast to the more generally familiar tenets of positivism. As Gibbon (1989:142-66) has most amply summarized, a scientific realism holds with its earlier cognate several basic, orienting assumptions: science is a rational activity; external reality is subject and theory independent (rejection of idealism and Kuhn’s strong contextualism); science aims at explaining and/or predicting this external reality; science operates according to a general logic which assesses explanations of this external reality by reference to empirical evidence. Basic as they are, these assumptions form the ‘common sense core’ of scientific realism and, as they are shared with positivism, may be said to resonate with most archaeologists as part of our intellectual tradition. It is with the differences from positivism that a realist approach makes its impact felt with scholars such as Wylie. Undone by some of its most indefensible declarations, most importantly its criterion of ‘cognitive significance’ tied to its stringent principle of verificationism, positivism relinquished such hyper-empirical requirements to its successor. Instead, realism does not reject ‘theoretical realism’ out of hand, and so accepts the reality of theoretical objects (Bhaskar 1975:113). Therefore, accommodating the advances in fields such as physics and molecular biology, realism argues that initially ‘unobservables’ such as quarks, electrons, or DNA strands produce real physical effects and will eventually be disclosed by scientific advancement. Accepting the unobservable as both part of the proper domain of scientific investigation and ultimately knowable forms a key departure point for the scientific realists. Credence is given to underlying ‘objects’, processes, and structures, which, while not necessarily empirically verifiable, nonetheless are accorded ‘real’ status as they are capable of producing material effects among observable phenomena. These underlying ‘generative mechanisms’ or ‘powers’ open scientific realism to consideration of the interrelation of processes and structures with actual or non-theoretical observables which collectively create the ‘flux’ of our limited capacity of experience (Harré 1970:270). Hacking (1983:23) has popularized the ‘cash value’ of scientific realism as ‘practical effects’ with his realist-instrumentalist acceptance of the reality of quarks with the felicitous phrase: “if you can spray them they are real”.

Tandem with the formulation of scientific realism as a viable, and indeed, more informed theory for the contemporary, technologically savvy physical and social sciences, was the look to actual disciplinary practices. Appeals for ‘applied philosophy’ came initially on the heals of Kuhn and Popper’s (and more radically Feyerabend’s 1993) re-focusing of the philosophy of science on the ‘contexts of discovery’, which had been relatively neglected by the former emphasis upon the ‘context of justification’ (Kelly and Hanen 1988:82-9). While Kuhn and Popper reached differing conclusions with respect to the influences contributing to the context of discovery, their collective and influential push propelled subsequent work to look at how scientists actually operate in ‘the laboratories’. A program of ‘applied philosophy’ grew up around the particularly fertile ‘social constructivism’ accounts of the socio-political and historical factors held to be partially responsible for how scientists actually reason and practice. Sometimes termed the ‘neo-Kantian challenge’ to scientific realism, these studies gave rise to the budding fields of sociology of scientific knowledge (eg. Bloor 1976, Fuller 1993, Knorr-Cetina 1981, Woolgar 1988) and science studies and science and technology studies (eg. Biagioli 1999, Callon 1986, Haraway 2003, Latour 1987, 1979, Law 1999, Pickering 1995, Shapin 1985). Feminist thought and the debate concerning multiculturalism linked in to these social and contextual accounts of how science is actually practiced to produce cogent arguments for androcentrism in the conceptual and practical rigging of scientific practice (eg. Haraway 1989, Harding 1998, 1991, Longino 1990). These collective ‘neo-Kantian’ and ‘postmodern’ challenges to scientific practice was to fracture any pre-Kuhnian sense of a monolithic Science, united by a singular method and logic, into sciences practiced in real-time at the local level of scientific communities and institutions and focused upon particular problems identified within particular paradigms (Dupre 1993, Galison 1996, Wylie 2000b). Viewed from broad strokes, this new post-Kuhnian emphasis on ‘applied philosophy’ within the particular context of practicing scientists, coupled with the eclipse of positivism by scientific realism as the guiding framework for reasoning, characterizes what is broadly conceived of as ‘Post-positivist’ philosophy of science. The varying, contributing strands to such a general rubric are, of course, often at odds with each other (for instance the ‘strong objectivity’ of Harding and the ‘strong programme’ of Bloor), but it is within such a background that Wylie distinguishes herself from the earlier meta-archaeology commentators of the previous, processual era.

Approaching archaeology as an ‘amphibious philosopher’ (Wylie 2002:7), Wylie weaves together two broad strategies for proposing her ‘mitigated objectivism’ as a solution to the epistemic anxiety of the discipline. One, which may be termed her analytical diagnosis, operates at the micro-scale of epistemological practice in the discipline. These analyses track the reasoning employed by archaeologists and assesses the overall ability to maintain epistemically secure explanations of the past. Relations of independence and dependence in evidential reasoning, including the role of theory and data, are discussed in terms familiar to the previously mentioned epistemic settlements. A second strategy, which may be termed her standpoint thesis, follows from the influential work of feminist scholars such as Harding and operates at the macro-scale of the epistemological community of inquirers. Applying standpoint theory and arguments in the disunity of the sciences to archaeology, this strategy looks to the overall epistemological robustness that a community of inquirers drawing from divergent background (theoretical) assumptions effects by fostering more extensive self- and disciplinarian criticism in interpretation and evaluation.

In a series of publications (Wylie 1993, 2002:ch.11) Wylie details the first strategy. Accepting, as a post-positivist, the theory-ladeness of data, Wylie draws explicitly upon the pragmatist-hermeneuticist Richard Bernstein (esp. 1983:1-49) and anthropologist Clifford Geertz (esp. 1979) to overcome the underlying opposition of the subject-object poles in accounts of interpretation. If the context or situatedness of an inquirer informs theory and so data selection and evaluation (viz. Hodder’s hermeneutic spiral), how can archaeologists ensure any measure of truth or objectivity in their claims? That is, to restate the running them of this chapter, in light of the fact that there is no foundational (cross-culturally universal) basis for evaluation of archaeological claims (objectivism), how are archaeologist going to avoid those charges of relativism and ‘anything goes’ which the Lampeter Workshop and the Norwegian Archaeological Review forum on Shanks and Tilley’s works articulated? Wylie (1993:23-5, 2002:162-7) proposes (after Geertz) a ‘dialectical tacking’ or ‘tacking back-and-forth’ between the source-side and domain-side of archaeology Figure 3.4. On the source-side, archaeologists draw upon their “background knowledge of contemporary contexts” (for eg. evolutionary theory or ethnoarchaeological studies) to produce possible models for both “experience-distant concepts” (for eg. general theoretical postulates of cultural evolution or use-wear patterns) and “experience-near concepts” (such as particular past practices) (Wylie: 1993:24). While Wylie admits that such source-side modeling works best with biophysical data (viz. Binford’s transformation of data), hypothetically the tacking or cross-comparison between these two levels of concepts should produce a ‘fit’ between the two type of possible models. So for example, the ramifications of a social-evolutionary (distant) ‘concept’ for the Classic period of Mesoamerica’s altiplano ought to constrain the possibilities of what likely happened at a site such as Teotihuacan during its rise to regional dominance (for instance, an increasing elaboration of social hierarchy manifested in the differentiation of elite and common apartment compounds). ‘Tacking’ then continues along this vertical axis as evidence is brought to light which instantiates/makes unlikely the experience-near ‘predictions’, and ipso facto the generating experience-distant concepts or theories.

Figure 3.4: Wylie's mitigated objectivism of archaeological interpretation

‘Vertical tacking’, in Wylie’s schema, complements the on-going set of ‘horizontal’ and ‘diagonal tacking’ which fords the separation of subject-side and source-side. While Wylie does not develop the inter-relationships of these ‘tacks’ as thoroughly as her ‘vertical tacking’, the implication is that the subject-side ‘experience-near’ theoretical models as well as the ‘experience-distant’, more general theoretical assumptions are cross-checked with the available evidence in a fitting procedure akin to Hodder’s question-and-answer process. The specific models (‘experience-near’) posited as being responsible for prehistoric events, informed as they are by the presupposed, general theoretical models (‘experience-distant’), direct the archaeologist to examine the available evidence which may or may not support such interpretive hypotheses. Wyle explains: “. . . work on the source side of the interpretive equation cannot stand alone; it is properly a guide to investigation of the subject, initiating a diagonal tack in which archaeological evidence is brought to bear on the question of whether, or with what degree of likelihood, a particular past context instantiates one or another of the reconstructive models that archaeologists have devised” (2002:166-7).

These ‘instantiations’ create a crisscross pattern of ‘tackings’, whereby comparisons are made between general assumptions (such as cultural evolution) and the available evidence and between the probable past practices responsible for the observable material, as well as between the specific models (such as increasing social differentiation) and the evidence and the posited, causal practices. Together, these crisscrossing ‘tackings’ (Figure 3.4) follow something akin to Peirce’s (cf. 1955:229) cable metaphor, mutually enabling and constraining each constituent on both the subject-side (theoretical) and source-side (empirical) (Wylie 1993:24, 2002:167). For Wylie’s argument, then, the separation of subject-side and source-side (the old split of theory and data) may be seen as a source of strength for making objective statements of the past, as the split, combined with a bi-lateral split between ‘levels’ on both sides, allows empirical constraints to intervene regularly at two junctures. Interventions occurs with the formulation (and re-formulation) of specific theoretical models, and with the ‘testing’ of these models on the archaeological evidence. “My thesis . . . depend(s) on two loci of empirical constraint on the formulation of interpretive models that operate within source contexts, and constraints deployed in the process of testing the applicability of a model to subject contexts. . . “ (Wylie 20o2:167).

Wylie’s account of archaeological reasoning aims at a middle-ground between the criticisms (both internal to archaeology and against positivism more generally) of theory-ladeness in processual accounts of hypothesis testing and an affirmation of strong contextualism in postprocessual approaches. She answers her own criticism of Binford’s platform (above) that theory and background assumptions (such as Binford’s presumption of a materially adaptive function of culture) do laden data, by responding that this contemporary context-informed ‘bias’ may nonetheless be “tested” in her tacking schema (cf. Wylie 2002:68). Additionally, against postprocessual indictments of the ability to test hypotheses against an objective, material record, Wylie retains an emphasis upon “testing the applicability” of theoretical constructs. Indeed, as she claims for the insights of ‘mitigated objectivism’, it “has a great deal to offer in rebalancing the debate over objectivism and relativism . . .” (ibid:167). Similar to Hodder’s most recent portrayal of the interpretive exercise, Wylie develops a quite complex and all-embracing account of how archaeologists incorporate subjectivity (in the form of background assumptions and theory) and objectivity (through the empirical constraints of the archaeological material). In fact, the two explications can be seen to be hermeneutic/analytic sides of a coin. Moreover, extending the overall similarities of the ‘fitting’ and ‘tacking’ metaphors in the two approaches, Wyle echoes Hodder in her emphasis upon the negative capacity of empirical constraints. Like Hodder’s resistance of fit of the data, or its capacity to ‘speak back’, Wylie underscores in her examples that “the data resist any interpretation that will make them consistent with our expectations . . .” (1993:25). Given the special nature of the archaeological record as inherently under-determining, an alignment with Popperian falsification seems the most prudent. Wylie does, however, optimistically focus more attention on the capacity for supporting interpretive claims through convergence of different lines of argument (subject-side) and a diversity of evidence (subject-side) (ibid:24, 2002:166-7). But decisive examples of the positive capacity of this convergence, are, as she admits, in the minority as “. . .the negative examples are often most compelling. . .” (1993:24).

Overall, then, Wylie’s ‘mitigated objectivism’, like Hodder’s ‘guarded objectivity’, with their emphasis on the negative role of evidence in disconfirming interpretations, offer ‘common sense’ accounts of how we may be objectively certain in refutation. Most archaeologists, as Hodder claims and as Wylie presents in her case studies, already operate according to such a fitting or tacking in their reasoning procedures (the exceptional counter example for both being Binford’s explicit deductive-hypothetico adherence). Their arguments for holding a fallibilism, or a certainty when it comes only to rejecting interpretive claims, strike a resonant chord. To be sure, the supposed, radical ‘hyper-relativist’ who would hold an interpretive claim as ‘true’ in spite of obvious counter-evidence turns out to be a straw-man (the lack of such an empirically out-of-touch ‘hyper-relativist’ comes out in the debates of the Lampeter Workshop on relativism and the Norwegian Archaeology Review of Shanks and Tilley’s ‘red and black books’). Wylie and Hodder’s descriptions of reasoning give us reassurance that archaeological knowledge is not based upon fraudulent, ‘just so’ stories. Names have been given for the reasoning process and a credibility established for resultant explanations. Yet what the concern with relativism demands in order to ease the current epistemological anxiety is a positive account of why we should hold certain claims as more objectively true than others.

Wylie reminds us that the greater the convergence of evidence, the more we may confirm our claim. But this plea for ‘more data’ falls within ‘common archaeological sense’. More critically for her ‘mitigated objectivism’, is that the convergence of the evidence ought to come from independent sources, “. . . from the use made by the constituent strands of different ranges of background knowledge to interpret different dimensions of the archaeological record” (2002:167). As a general principle, such a position ties in to her second strategy for ‘mitigated objectivism’, one that describes archaeological reasoning on the macro-scale of the archaeological community of inquirers. Taken on its own, this advocacy for a plurality of standpoints with which to calibrate contemporary ‘biases’ by presenting contrasting or alternate assumptions represents sage advice, particularly in the current era of a racially expanding academy and a global, heterogeneous interest in archaeological heritage Chapter 1.

In the next section, as ‘democratic inquiry’ derives most directly from pragmatist thought, especially Dewey, I hope to build upon Wylie’s keen recommendations. It is, however, in attempting to link up her advocacy of standpoint theory, or the inclusion of diverse positionalities (particularly those needed to fill a lucane created by western male, androcentricism) with the crucial maintenance of theoretical (source-side) independence which her ‘micro-scale’ analysis depends upon that difficulties emerge. Unfortunately, not dissimilar to Hodder’s (above) tension of context-dependence and epistemic independence, Wylie grafts an important, progressive admonition for inclusion onto a restrictive and inimical framework – namely a modernist epistemology built from subjectivity-objectivity irresolution.

Wylie develops her standpoint thesis for archaeology through a series of publications (Wylie 1992, 2002:ch.14, 1996, 1999) which draw from feminist work in science studies and the philosophy of science (esp. Haraway 1991, Harding 1998, Harding 1991, Hartsock 1983, Longino 1990). Wylie argues that in archaeology, as in the wider fields of science, ethnocentrism and androcentrism have inhibited the range of background assumptions brought to bear in formulating general theories and specific reconstructive models (her ‘source side’ of the equation). Instead, “the feminist analysts typically make effective use of quite conventional appeals to evidential constraints to demonstrate the need for substantially rethinking explanatory and reconstructive models that leave women and gender out altogether or that depend on ethnocentric and androcentric presuppositions about gender relations” (2002:185). So archaeology stands to benefit epistemologically, that is in the security of its knowledge claims, via the incorporation of an ‘alterity’ or an alternative (non-androcentric) set of assumptions which stands to challenge taken-for-granteds. Whether the end-result is an enlarged set of presuppositions, originating in alternate, contextual positionalities (such as male and female perspectives on archaeological material), mutually-constraining any single, or dominant perspective from formulating explanatory models, or a heightened, more critical focus in general upon informing background assumptions and effecting a ‘presuppositionless’ perspective remains somewhat ambiguous in Wylie’s treatment. Notwithstanding, though, Wylie grounds a productive legacy of feminist scholarship in archaeology (for a summary Conkey 1997, eg. Gero 1991, Gero 1996, Gilchrist 1999), which has very often served as a corrective to previous interpretations, in the epistemological arguments of Standpoint Theory and its call for a ‘strong objectivity’ (cf. Harding 1991:138-63). Beginning as early as the postprocessual critique, feminists pointed out the theoretical assumptions of processual archaeologists. An important distinction, one which Wylie articulates based upon her training, is an alignment with Harding and other feminist students of science in insisting upon a non-skeptical, and so non-undermining, epistemological platform. By pointing out the androcentric biases and wrong (or gender-specific) assumptions of archaeology, Wylie believes that archaeological explanations will be more secure due to the more thorough-going self-scrutiny. In a sense, it took feminist academics to push the scientific credo of impartiality toward realization.

Except there is disagreement amongst feminist scholars and their critiques as to whether a science, such as archaeology, will then operate from fewer erroneous biases, or whether each standpoint, with its inherent and unique perspectives, needs to maintain its unique positionality in order to be an effective counter-foil and force to other equally positioned and unique perspectives (for an archaeological critique see Fotiadis 1994, for a general, systematic critique see Pinnick 2003). Wylie appears to side with the latter position:

“Values and interests of various kinds do play a crucial role not just in setting the agenda of archaeological inquiry – determining what questions will be asked – but in determining what range of interpretive and explanatory options will be considered fruitful or plausible. . . It is significant, however, that the impetus of reassessing a discipline’s ‘taken-for-granteds,’ at all levels (i.e., at the level of specific interpretations and linking principles, as well as at that of broad framework assumptions), very often comes from those who bring to bear a standpoint, a socially and politically defined ‘angle of vision,’ that differs from that typical of the established status quo in a field” (1992:29).

So in line with Harding’s influential call for a ‘strong objectivity’ fostered by the inclusion of socially and politically defined standpoints, Wylie views the explicit bias of feminist scholars as irreducible and indeed necessary to expose previous, dominant bias and assumptions and effect a more objective in that it is “more rigorous, self-critical, and responsive to the facts . . . “ (ibid:30). Wylie strives to describe such an affirmation of explicitly political perspectives (in this case feminist) as, nonetheless, fostering a more objective archaeology (see Fotiadis 1994 on this point). There is, of course, the obvious contradiction. Yet more critically for her position, an opening of archaeology to ideological convictions, concomitant with her erasure of the fact-value and theory-data distinctions, brings in a troubling ambiguity and a series of related and (infinitely regressing) begging questions. How are we to define ‘marginal’ or ‘underprivileged’? How are we to distinguish what is underprivileged from privileged? By what criteria is this to be assessed? Are only ‘underprivileged positions’ capable of rectifying dominant biases? If so, when/does such a position become (through integration in the disciplinarian process and recognition of their ‘epistemic work’) no longer marginal? Are ‘marginal’ standpoints only feminist informed? Or may it include indigenous peoples and stakeholders more generally? Is marginal better thought of along Marxist lines as related to class, not gender or race? Or will we just know when we consider things “locally” (Wylie 1992:30). Pace: “They seem to have recognized that, insofar as they mean to expose systematic error and explain it (eg. by appeal to the conditions that shape knowledge production), their own practice poses a dilemma: they bring social contingencies into view by exploiting precisely the evidential constraints and other epistemic considerations they mean to destabilize” (1999:557); I would suggest that Wylie’s own reasoning poses a dilemma: she destabilizes her epistemic considerations (‘mitigated objectivism’) by exploiting precisely the social contingencies which she would hope to overcome.

I believe the premises of a standpoint theory are coherent and it is desirable to integrate such a platform into archaeological practice and reasoning. However, it would have to expand its inclusiveness so as not to depend upon a murky criteria of whose standpoint may be valued. In other words, the external exigencies of contemporary global heritage (Chapter 1) require an accommodation of not just those ‘marginalized’ participants who hold an esteem and common currency for epistemology as defined by modern, western academics. Standpoint theory and Wylie’s exposition of it as it relates to her ‘mitigated objectivism’ have gone far in collapsing the indefensible fact/value distinction in archaeological reasoning, and has championed (rightly I believe) a more democratic archaeology. But more must be done to make its position salient to both the internal epistemology crisis in archaeology and to the external contemporary circumstances within which the discipline finds itself. To do this, standpoint theory, Wylie’s ‘mitigated objectivism’ and the other ‘epistemic settlements’ I have considered would have to disinvest themselves of a modernist epistemology.

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