Radical Uncertainty Research Articles

Technocratic reason in hard times: the mobilisation of economic knowledge and the discursive politics of Brexit

ABSTRACT In the context of the debate surrounding and following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, credentialed economic expertise did not enjoy a privileged position within the political and policy debate. Using the contrasting cases of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Economists for Brexit/Free Trade, this paper explores the mobilisation of economic expertise within the discursive politics of Brexit under conditions of pervasive radical uncertainty. It argues that politicisation is an important factor in side-lining technocratic influence over policy choice, but that the particular type of politicisation in play (plebiscitary) meant that the input of technocratic experts was downgraded. It is a politics conducted in another register to the reasoned, evidence-based vernacular of accredited experts and the policy discourses that they work with and through. We also argue that the basic unknowability of the post-Brexit economy further impaired expert input. These limitations were acknowledged by accredited experts themselves, reducing their traction within the policy debate. This unknowability was exploited by forms of counter-expertise mobilised by the Leave campaign. The radical uncertainties of Brexit allowed in heterodox assumptions and approaches to compete on a level playing field with an approximation of what could be presented as prudent best practice.

Assessing the validity of counter-authority knowledge: the case of Swedish women’s epistemic patchworking around the risks of copper IUD use

ABSTRACT The internet has given rise to an informational landscape that challenges epistemological hierarchies between experts and lay people. Tensions regarding how to address the growing flora of counter-authority claims are pertinent in the context of health, where warnings about misinformation co-exist with notions of patient empowerment. This context accentuates the importance of revitalizing conceptualizations of how to assess the validity of knowledge claims. In this article, we put critical realist discussions on judgemental rationality into conversation with the case of a group of women who claim that the contraceptive copper IUD may lead to side effects of a kind not recognized by medical authorities. Tracing our own path from radical uncertainty to regarding the women’s claims as a plausible hypothesis, we identify what we deem to be strengths and weaknesses of the women’s claims and pinpoint the judgementally rational grounds for this assessment.

Aesthetics as philosophy of art, or Hegel’s reconciliation of Kantian dualism

Abstract Despite the extraordinary influence of Hegel’s aesthetics, the very term “aesthetics” features very seldom in his body of work. Considering both ongoing radical uncertainty as to the status of aesthetics as well as Hegel’s profound and persistent influence on aesthetics, it is worth reflecting on the reasons for, and potential alternatives to, Hegel’s use of the term “aesthetics.” This is the goal of this paper, which combines a reconstruction of Hegel’s variations on the topic with a broader perspective on what they can still teach us today. I begin by discussing Hegel’s presentations of the topic of his lectures on aesthetics (Section II). In Section III, I argue that both Hegel’s ambivalence towards aesthetics and his eventual identification of the latter with a philosophy of art are rooted in his confrontation with Kant’s seminal, yet insufficient, attempt to surmount dualism through his theory of reflective judgment. The attempt to address Kant’s unresolved dualism ultimately leads to the equivalence, both conceptual and terminological, of aesthetics and philosophy of art, and to the autonomy of art as a form of the absolute spirit (Section IV). In the concluding section, I outline the fundamental tensions left open by this equivalence as open challenges in contemporary aesthetics (Section V).

New lessons from biology for economics and business: a systems approach to non-market environments.

Drawing on recent advances in biology, this paper describes a systems approach, 'Systems Public Affairs' (SPA), to integrate non-market strategies in corporate purposes and strategies. Just as the environment of organisms affects and is affected by their development and evolution, so individuals and businesses adjust to and can shape their non-market environment, which we define as 'a historically formed national and social sphere, including laws, regulations, and policies, which supports, maintains and restrains the operation and preservation of markets'. The paper uses cases from South Korea to illustrate this approach. Emergent ideas in biology have great relevance for micro-foundations of business. Traditionally, economic activities are outcomes of individualistic decision-makers, each promoting their distinct objectives within economic markets. In the SPA approach, decision makers in the domains of business, policy and civil society collaborate in shaping non-market environments to align business objectives with public interest. This requires agency to rise to higher levels than that of businesses, policymakers and civil society through collaboration and experimentation in the presence of stochasticity and radical uncertainty. Analogous to the advancement of organism evolution through emergence of nervous systems and learning, so alignment of organizations with their non-market environments accelerates economic and social development.

Transformative Institutions and Capabilities to Aspire in the Context of Radical Uncertainty: Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT The article addresses the issue of transformative institutions and capabilities to aspire by framing it in the context of the radical uncertainty arising from today's structural crises, which strongly challenge the very ways and possibility of prefiguring a desirable future. Following the reflections of Amartya Sen and Arjun Appadurai, capabilities to aspire are not just an individual matter, as the conditions that enable their development are deeply embedded in social and institutional contexts. The article explains why and in what sense current contexts of uncertainty require transformative institutional dynamics that strengthen the ways in which alternative futures can be imagined and pursued, and what this implies with respect to capabilities to aspire. The analysis refers to the empirical field of the Covid-19 pandemic and in particular to a research study on the community health programme called “Micro-areas” implemented in the north-east of Italy. The case is a paradigmatic example of the relationship between transformative institutional dynamics and capabilities to aspire in contexts of crisis. In the conclusions, the article highlights some institutional factors that emerge as important with respect to the development of capabilities to aspire.

Strategic foresight as a beacon for the new EU industrial policy

AbstractThis article assesses the impact of strategic foresight in shaping the European Commission’s new industrial policy. It argues that, since it was introduced by President von der Leyen as a political portfolio, foresight has contributed to mainstreaming the concepts of ‘resilience’ and ‘open strategic autonomy’ into the EU's industrial strategy, via the Strategic Foresight Reports and new participatory structures inside and outside the Commission. This responded to the need for building up preparedness in the face of ‘radical uncertainty’ on future supply chain disruptions. We conclude that strategic foresight—if supported by an effective governance—will play an increasingly large role in shaping the EU's future policymaking. In particular, the concepts of ‘competitive sustainability’ and people's wellbeing, advanced by the 2023 Strategic Foresight Report as pillars of open strategic autonomy, may help futureproof the EU's green industrial policy going forward.

Creolizing as an Antidote to the Allures of Parochialism

This article begins with critical discussion of why parochialism is so alluring, suggesting that we need to understand its tenacious seductions if we really aim to displace, uproot, or transcend it. Arguing that parochialism as a value is not primarily a question of ignorance, but an antipathetic orientation toward incompleteness, interdependency, and entanglement, it then turns briefly to explaining what is meant by creolizing theory. The article closes by offering creolizing’s central insights as a potential antidote to parochialism since they begin with the observation that for any lifeways to meaningfully continue, especially those to which we are most attached, they must be constantly resituated, refashioned, and made new. It ends with a brief meditation on ways to manage anxieties unleashed with radical uncertainty, affirming the depth of the challenges of turning from idolatry.

From reliability to pragmatism: Hospital management in the context of radical uncertainty

AbstractThe COVID‐19 pandemic presented a scenario of radical uncertainty that hospitals had to manage. Two strands of research can illuminate this management. The first puts forward the high‐reliability organization (HRO) principles that the hospital sector has applied for two decades. The second is based on pragmatism and underscores experimental, trial‐and‐error strategies appropriate for radical uncertainty. This strategy, utilized primarily in the political governance of crises, can be applied in hospital management as well. The results of our qualitative research into French hospitals (109 online interviews over 2020–2021) highlight the importance of pragmatic rationality in crisis management based on organizing collective inquiries. This concept of pragmatic rationality questions the notion of reliability, sticking to pre‐existing performance standards not applicable in such contexts. It invites to propose the concept of high pragmatic organization based on five principles that partially integrate those of an HRO.

The University As Infrastructure of Becoming: Re-Activating Academic Freedom Through Humility in Times of Radical Uncertainty

ABSTRACT Traditionally, the field of science and technology studies (STS) considered the scientific laboratory as the central site of knowledge production and technological development. While providing rich analyses of the social construction of scientific knowledge and the role of non-human actors, STS scholars have often neglected the university – the very context in which laboratories themselves are embedded – as a relevant object of research. In this paper, we argue for re-introducing the university as a relevant category and object of analysis by using the notion of epistemic virtues to link epistemic culture – traditionally the focus of STS – and epistemic structure – traditionally the focus of higher education studies. Advancing this line of argumentation, we make three analytical moves. First, we explore academic freedom as a specific version of negative liberty that extends beyond disciplinary boundaries. We suggest that academics continuously negotiate academic freedom considering culturally and socially situated epistemic virtues such as objectivity and neutrality. Second, we introduce the notion of humility to revisit scientific knowledge production more generally and academic freedom in particular. Finally, we argue that practicing humility leads to enacting the university as an infrastructure of becoming otherwise, thereby enriching our understanding of universities as distinct and highly complex social spaces with a logic of their own.

Is Public Ignorance a Problem? An Epistemic Defense of Really Existing Democracies

Does good governance require citizens to be knowledgeable of basic facts and best policy ideas? Some scholars suggest that it does, and propose disenfranchising the most ‘ignorant’ voters. In contrast, we argue, political systems are complex systems inevitably exhibiting incomplete, imperfect and asymmetric information that is dynamically generated in society from actors with diverse life experiences, antagonistic interests and often profoundly dissonant views and values, generating radical uncertainty among political elites over the consequences of their decisions. Radical uncertainty, radical dissonance and power asymmetry are inescapable properties of politics. Good performance significantly depends on how political elites navigate through radical uncertainty to handle radical dissonance. Democracy, by offering citizens equal rights to participate in politics and talk freely, both enables and compels political actors to track social feedback regarding the effects of their decisions on a diverse public, and consider it in ways that mitigate these three problems.

Truth is a “bird of prey”: interpreting the postcolonial dialectic in Agustí Villaronga’s El ventre del mar (2021) with Frantz Fanon

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that Agustí Villaronga’s 2021 film El ventre del mar (The Belly of the Sea) explores a post-Fanonian version of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic as a historical struggle between colonizer and colonized, and between the elite and the dispossessed in a limit situation. Villaronga’s cinematic vision of this historical struggle is neither progressive-linear nor simply non-linear, but iterative, as it casts light on uncanny analogies between necropolitical strategies (Mbembe 2019) marking different periods and political regimes: from the absolutist and colonial nineteenth-century France to the democratic European Union of the twenty-first century. To this end, Villaronga interweaves three hermeneutic layers into his filmic fable: the memory of a nineteenth-century historical event as mediated through pictorial and literary representations, a critique of the present marked by refugee crises and postcolonialism and an exploration of the human condition in its agonistic-tragic dimension. In Villaronga’s cinematic vision, the agon between master and slave ends neither in reciprocal recognition (as theorized by Hegel) nor in the emergence of the “new humanity” overcoming the Manichaean, “compartmentalized world” of colonialism (Fanon [1961] 2005. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Books), but in an open dialectic of resistance and radical uncertainty.

Expedience and experimentation: John Maynard Keynes and the politics of time

AbstractJohn Maynard Keynes is often seen as the quintessential thinker of the short run, calling on us to focus our intellectual and material resources on the present. This poses an intriguing puzzle in light of Keynes's own influential speculations about the future. I use this seeming tension as an opening into Keynes's politics of time, both as a crucial dimension of his political thought and a contribution to debates about political temporality and intertemporal choice. Keynes's insistence on radical uncertainty translated into a skepticism toward intertemporal calculus as not only morally objectionable but also at risk of undermining actual future possibilities. Instead of either myopic presentism or calculated futurity, Keynes advocated bold experimentation in the present to open up new possibilities for an uncertain future. This points to the need to grapple with how to align multiple overlapping time horizons while appreciating the performativity of competing conceptions of the future.

E-learning in Times of Radical Uncertainty

As teachers and teacher educators in the United States, we offer this editorial based on our lived experiences with the political, social, and environmental precarities where we live. Among these precarities are our looming U.S. presidential election after the last one included a plot by bad actors to abscond with our State’s electoral votes, our constant struggle for water in a desert state, and our weak overall internet connectivity. We call our wonderings about how we are living in and somehow surviving these times, <i>radical uncertainties</i>. In this editorial, we canvas radical uncertainties related to e-learning about digital literacies, generative text, datafication, and the camera gaze. Alongside these uncertainties, we offer alternative avenues for collective thinking based on Chicana Feminist epistemologies. We intend for readers to consider how local knowing can and should inform e-learning planning and practice.

Introducing a Conceptual Map of Political Elites’ Responses to Different Types of Uncertain Phenomena

Political elites—like ministers or members of parliament—face numerous phenomena that are characterized by uncertainty. Uncertainty ranges from resolvable to radical, whereby the former can be removed with more or better information, but radical uncertainty cannot. Remarkably, little is known about political elites’ responses to such phenomena, both theoretically (what responses are likely?) and empirically (which responses do political elites display?). This “New Ideas” contribution addresses the theoretical lacuna by presenting a multidisciplinary conceptual map of possible responses to radical and resolvable uncertainty. These responses influence political elites’ effectiveness in solving problems and, thus, how representative democracies function. The article also sketches how to identify the responses empirically.

Monetary Policy and Radical Uncertainty

Monetary Policy and Radical Uncertainty

Экзистенциальная неопределенность: проблема совладания

The article is devoted to the ways available in culture to cope with the radical uncertainty of people's social and personal lives, which receives a particularly vivid expression when looking into the future. The author develops the idea that uncertainty cannot be overcome by purely rational, in particular mathematical probabilistic methods, besides, none of the people living everyday life will resort to complex calculations based on huge information in a situation of an uncertain future. Practice has developed other ways to overcome fear and anxiety about the uncertainty of the future. The article shows that uncertainty is reduced by referring to various kinds of stable and recurring moments: stereotypes, norms, traditions, «reference narratives». But these external forms are complemented by a purely subjective, personal form – the construction of a project that forms a certain future, dismissing everything that does not correspond to the achievement of the goal.

Artificial intelligence and radical uncertainty

AbstractArtificial intelligence (AI) offers new possibilities to augment human decision‐making under radical uncertainty. This viewpoint commentary explores how AI can relax limits of bounded rationality. It offers a framework for analyzing how AI can support human decision‐makers confronted with deep uncertainty by bolstering key decision‐making sub‐processes. Specifically, AI can help set agendas by scanning environments, formulate problems by providing contextual insights, identify creative alternatives through combinatorial abilities, select options by modelling scenarios and enable rapid experimentation cycles. Connecting the role of AI with the contributions in this special issue, this viewpoint commentary concludes by outlining directions for future research regarding the function of AI and augmented human intelligence in decision‐making under conditions of radical uncertainty.

Judgment under radical uncertainty: Epistemic rational heuristics

AbstractThe special issue “Expanding the boundaries of rationality: Towards new models of decision making for radical uncertainty” addresses the challenge of developing logically sound models of decision making for conditions of uncertainty evading those manageable by established decision making approaches. This editorial characterizes the sought new models and approach as constructivist in nature but neither deductive nor Bayesian in logic: a set of epistemic rationality models for discovering new problems and solutions (“found” either in the real or the artificial world, i.e., either detected or designed) that extend the available bounded rationality models. This editorial offers a map of this territory, positioning the new heuristics identified in this collection of articles in a more general picture of heuristic methods qualifyable as fit to radical uncertainty.

Radical Uncertainty and Artificial Intelligence policy issues for Aotearoa New Zealand

This article explores the intricacies of policymaking in the 21st century, with a focus on Aotearoa New Zealand’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI). The analysis underscores the challenges presented by risk, uncertainty, and especially radical (fundamental) uncertainty, which complicates the formulation of robust AI policies. Using Aotearoa New Zealand as a case study, the article delves into the multifaceted policy challenges AI presents, emphasising the need for adaptive policymaking, stakeholder engagement, a precautionary approach and ethical considerations. In short, a balanced interplay of evidence, values and power in the policymaking process is required.

Bernard Shaw + Richard Rorty = Two Dialectical Peas in a Jesusian Pragmatist Pod

ABSTRACT This article argues that Shaw and Rorty are dialectical Jesusian pragmatists who share three significant and interrelated characteristics that could easily play decisive roles in determining the fate of the human species and the planet that sustains it: ethnocentrism, liberal ironism, and Jesusian pragmatism. Ethnocentrism, a synthesis of absolutism and nihilism, asserts that we necessarily make value judgments from parochial vantage points because we live in an inescapably pluralistic world. Liberal ironism, a dialectical synthesis of liberalism and contingency, asserts that humans can commit themselves to privileged causes even in the face of radical uncertainties in theory and practice. Jesusian pragmatism, a synthesis of Christian agape and pragmatist tenets, asserts that Jesusian social values compose the ethical core of a pragmatism dedicated to providing global wellness. The argument shows that Shaw and Rorty are not only congruent dialectical thinkers, but also kindred Jesusian pragmatists.