Journal of Constructivist Psychology ISSN: 1072-0537 (Print) 1521-0650 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/upcy20 Who Stole My Banana? Social Science as Intersubjective Corroboration Michael F Mascolo & Eeva Kallio To cite this article: Michael F Mascolo & Eeva Kallio (2020) Who Stole My Banana? Social Science as Intersubjective Corroboration, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 33:1, 49-57, DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2019.1635928 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2019.1635928 Published online: 27 Dec 2019 Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=upcy20 JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVIST PSYCHOLOGY, 33(1), 49–57, 2020 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1072-0537 print / 1521-0650 online DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2019.1635928 Who Stole My Banana? Social Science as Intersubjective Corroboration Michael F Mascolo Department of Psychology, Merrimack College, North Andover, MA, USA; Eeva Kallio Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER), University of Jyv€askyl€a, Jyv€askyl€a, Finland We are honored at the opportunity to exchange ideas with three scholars for whom we have deep respect and admiration In what follows, we clarify our thinking in response to a series of erudite and penetrating comments produced by Gabriel Chiari, Lisa Osbeck, and Tom Strong In so doing, we attempt to move beyond the practice of merely defending our arguments Instead, in the spirit of what we have called intersubjective corroboration, we seek to clarify our arguments in relation to the issues raised by the reviewers, and to identify how their insights can foster further development in our conception of the psychological sciences We have proposed an intersubjective epistemology for the psychological sciences (Mascolo & Kallio, this issue) Our approach is motivated by a desire to transcend tensions between modernist and postmodernist conceptions of scientific inquiry (Alvesson & Sk€oldberg, 2009; Bernstein, 1983) Modernist approaches are founded on the positivist and postpositivist conception of objectivity (Phillips, 1990; Popper, 1976) In contrast, postmodern conceptions are founded on the idea that the knower participates in the known Knowledge is socially constructed by virtue of the ways in which scholars use language to represent and account for experience in the world (Gergen, 2009; Rorty, 1978) As the line that separates the knower from the known blurs, the concept of objectivity is called into question (Bernstein, 1983) As a result, postmodern positions are often (fairly and unfairly) dismissed as unable to escape the limits of subjectivism, relativism, and ideology, and are thus deemed unable to provide reliable foundations for the verification of knowledge (Haslanger, 2012; Turiel, 1989) Our approach is founded on a rejection of traditional subjective–objective divides in scientific thought Instead of understanding scientific observation in terms of the need to eliminate the preunderstandings (and biases) of the observer, it is better to acknowledge that it is only through such preunderstandings that observation is possible From this view, although scientific observations not provide a “mirror of nature” (Rorty, 1978), neither are they Received 30 May 2019; accepted 21 June 2019 Address correspondence to Michael F Mascolo, Merrimack College, North Andover, MA, USA E-mail: mascolom@merrimack.edu 50 M F MASCOLO AND E KALLIO mere projections of private subjectivities or fixed ideologies Through intersubjective corroboration, researchers construct and verify knowledge claims through the process of coordinating and corroborating experiences of the world The process involves three overlapping forms of activity Because we often use the same terms to express different meanings, (a) conceptual coordination refers to the process of clarifying the particular meanings of theoretical constructs by identifying their relations to other possible uses within the intellectual community Having done so, in the sociopsychological sciences, the process of inquiry proceeds as a form of (b) intersubjective engagement with other people (research participants) Psychological assessments (e.g., observations, test scores, interviews) not operate as a process of recording objective behavior Instead, they consist of intersubjective encounters, which require researchers to understand and represent the meaning of their participants’ actions and experiences against the (pluralistic) backdrop of already-existing systems of meaning distributed throughout the scientific and lay community Finally, the data that accrue from this process are verified through a process of (c) intersubjective corroboration—that is, acts of comparing and coordinating representations of different experiences of the world against each other Verification is therefore not a form of comparing hypotheses to an objective world but is, instead, a process of corroborating outcomes between and among different acts of experiencing the world As such, knowledge claims are not so much true or false as they are increasingly corroborated by multiple forms of evidence IS OBJECTIVITY SO BAD? In our analysis of postpositivist approaches to science, we use the term objectivity to refer to three basic values: that data (a) are based on publicly observable events; (b) that data are framed in a neutral observation language, one that eliminates the biases of the observer as best as possible; and (c) that data reflect the observed object accurately or as it really is Osbeck (this issue) questions whether objectivity implies certainty: I not share the authors’ views that “objectivity” requires or implies certainty The position widely held among contemporary philosophers of (natural) science, at least, is that all empirical knowledge is “fallible,” subject to disconfirmation with further experience and therefore impossible to regard as indubitably true In this regard, our comments about objectivity speak not to scientific theory but to the data meant to test theoretical claims Standard discussions of scientific process typically make a sharp distinction between theory and data The value of objective data comes from their autonomy If data and theory are not different types of entities, how is it possible that one can serve as a test of the other? Of course, one could also ask: If theory and data are different types of entities, how is it possible that one can have any bearing on the other? One requires an organizational framework in order to make an observation in the first place Invalidation of theoretical claims does not require theoretical neutrality; it only requires a capacity to judge the difference between theoretical anticipations and experienced outcomes SOCIAL SCIENCE AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION 51 PHENOMENOLOGY, HERMENEUTICS AND SCIENCE What are the philosophical underpinnings of an intersubjective epistemology? Chiari (this issue) suggests that our framework might best be considered as part of the “broader movement sometimes referred to as ‘postmodern psychology’” (p 4) Similarly, Strong suggests that the process described approximates what has been referred to as the “social construction of validity.” There is indeed similarity between our approach and postmodern conceptions based on principles of social construction However, acknowledging the influence of postmodernism, our approach nonetheless seeks to provide an alternative to what we take to be the limits of social constructionism—namely, the relativistic implication that what we call knowledge is primarily a constructed outcome of discursive activity Our approach, founded on the assumption that our experience is always experience of the world, seeks to include the experienced world as a central constraint in the process of constructing and verifying knowledge In our view, the error of positivist and postpositivist approaches is the belief that if knowers participate in the known, then what counts as knowledge is mere subjectivity This is not so Chiari (this issue) complains that our identification with “phenomenological, constructivist, and sociolinguistic” traditions paints the intellectual roots of our arguments with too broad a brush He is, of course, correct He is also correct in identifying the basis of our thinking in the works of Husserl (1937/1970), Heidegger (1926/1996), and hermeneutic philosophy (Chiari & Nuzzo, 2004; Gadamer, 2004) Husserl (1937/1970) identified the central role of intersubjectivity in the scientific process For Husserl, the scientific worldview reflects an invocation of a “naturalistic attitude”—the view that our perceptions correspond to the reality of an objective world Although this attitude gives the impression that observations make contact with objective nature, the process of observing is nonetheless a form of experiencing, in which experiencing and world cannot be separated It follows that objective nature is simply not the type of thing that can be experienced Instead, experiencing occurs not in the natural world but within an intersubjective life world (Lebenswelt)—the public, implicit, takenfor-granted medium of shared meanings that allow us to make experiences of the world intelligible For Husserl (and Osbeck), it is possible to speak of the subjective and objective, but only in a special sense; what we call “objective” is a matter of building up, over time, shared categories and meanings that reflect regularities in our coexperiencing of the world Scientific inquiry becomes a matter of creating shared categories and meanings for everyone (objectivity), and not merely for you or for me (subjectivity) It is only a few steps from Husserl’s Lebenswelt to the hermeneutic conception of knowledge (Gadamer, 2004) From a hermeneutic perspective, novel events are always interpreted with reference to some form of preunderstanding—systems of shared and contested knowledge spanning from everyday meanings through formal theory to a full range of pluralistic background assumptions Without some already-existing way to organize experienced events, understanding simply cannot occur However, in experiential encounters, preunderstandings typically come up short; there will always be a discrepancy between our preunderstandings and the richness of ongoing experience, whether that experience is of the world or one’s own phenomenality Development of understanding therefore involves revising preunderstandings in light of novel experience As knowledge develops, we never become free from the need to invoke preunderstandings; progress consists of the process of continuously revising and replacing our preunderstandings to form more powerful explanatory concepts 52 M F MASCOLO AND E KALLIO From these standpoints, we believe Osbeck is correct when she suggests that both the natural and social sciences fall within the range of convenience of an intersubjective epistemology There are two reasons we did not extend the range of our analysis to the natural sciences The first consists of our own limited understandings about the actual processes of knowledge construction in the natural sciences As such, we chose to withhold judgment about the applicability of intersubjective epistemology to natural science, preferring to hide behind the confidence of scholars like Osbeck who are more willing to so The second reason arises from what we take to be a fundamental difference between natural and social science: whereas social sciences build on a capacity for intersubjective engagement with the objects of our inquiries (persons), the natural sciences not INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE Given the epistemological trichotomy described above—(a) clarifying a priori concepts by sharpening and coordinating one’s own use of particular constructs with other uses in a field of study, (b) constructing understandings through intersubjective engagement, and (c) verifying knowledge through intersubjective corroboration—we are confident that the first and third describe the processes common to both the natural and social sciences It is in the second process in which a deep fissure exists between the natural and social sciences A physicist does not need to establish intersubjectivity with a rock in order to understand it; there is no way that a social or psychological scientist can understand the psychological states of persons in the absence of some form of intersubjective engagement Chiari cheekily calls on us to practice what we preach: If you are going to use the concept of intersubjectivity, it is best that you clarify what you mean by the concept To what we refer when we speak of intersubjectivity? First, we treat intersubjectivity as a concept, and not necessarily as something to be identified in the world Different theorists use the term in different ways, so it becomes necessary to identify our particular form of use so that it can be discussed within the larger matrix of intersubjective meanings of which it is a part Chiari notes that Stern (2005, p 78) defined intersubjectivity as, “the capacity to share, know, understand, empathize with, feel, participate in, resonate with, and enter into the lived subjective experience of another.” Maturana (2005, p 67) held that intersubjectivity consists of, “the consensual co-ordinations of emotions and doings that such [a mother–child] relation entails.” In working toward a definition, it is important to identify how the concept of intersubjectivity differs from notions like perspective taking, empathy, sociality, construing the construings of others, and so forth Our approach to the concept of intersubjectivity stresses the “inter” aspect of the concept We have defined intersubjectivity as the process of sharing and coordinating experience and meaning between people In so doing, intersubjectivity becomes a process located not in individuals but in the relational coordination of action and experience itself Intersubjectivity is interpersonal rather than personal and coregulated rather than individually controlled It is not a mere matter of sharing, as what is shared at any given exchange is both partial and dynamically fluctuating over time It is certainly not a matter of mere mirroring, as your contribution to our intersubjectivity is different from mine Intersubjectivity can be likened to the dynamic mutuality experienced by a seasoned band of musicians Although each member has a part to play, each part is coordinated—in the very SOCIAL SCIENCE AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION 53 FIGURE Intersubjective detective work moments of hearing and playing—with those of the other members The parts are not mere productions of sound; each part is a combination of structured and spontaneous feeling, thinking, and acting that arises as players relate to each other and to their audience Each player’s expression of musical feeling is part of the process of each other player’s musical expression In this way, intersubjectivity involves the mutual coordination and incorporation of ongoing experience between persons Thus, our conception of intersubjectivity is closer to Maturana’s than Stern’s, and is eloquently expressed by Osbeck (this issue): [T]he earliest experience of coordinated joint activity provides the basis for later inferential or comparative acts informative of social meanings, provides the basis for language development, which in turn makes various forms of symbolic representation and communication and corroboration possible SCIENTIFIC VERIFICATION AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION Strong and Osbeck raise important questions about the idea that verification involves the corroboration of experience between people Strong (this issue) objects to our use of the concept of corroboration, writing, “The word ‘corroboration’ seemed too strong, invoking a kind of realist empiricism to which constructivist psychology provides an important alternative.” Strong’s objection provides an opportunity to clarify our use of corroboration In our formulation, we define corroboration in contradistinction to correspondence In so doing, we invoke corroboration in ways that are similar to how a police detective might use the term When a detective seeks evidence to implicate someone in a crime, he or she seeks corroborating evidence—mutually supporting experiences of the world — however mediated those experiences 54 M F MASCOLO AND E KALLIO are by means of measurement Each new piece of corroborating evidence places constraints on the plausibility of different interpretations of the case A recent incident illustrates the process of intersubjective detective work Tom, a faculty member, left a “perfect banana” on his desk as he and his students left the classroom for a group photo When he returned, he saw not only that the banana was gone but that John, a student, was eating a banana When asked, John denied taking the banana and indicated that he purchased the banana at the campus store Knowing that John was reprimanded for dishonesty at a previous school, Tom feared that John was being less than truthful He and another faculty member, Abby, set out to the campus store to inspect the bananas There, instead of finding perfect, firm, yellow bananas with stickers affixed to their centers, the bananas were old, blotchy, and lacked the trademark stickers Did John steal the banana? Figure illustrates the process of intersubjective corroboration as detective work First, (a) through conceptual coordination (that is, assuming that Tom, Abby, and John were using the same concepts—perfect banana, steal, lie, etc.—in the same way), Tom and Abby were able to agree to use Tom’s characterization of a perfect banana as one that was yellow, absent of scrapes, and embellished with the tell-tale sticker Under this interpretation, (b) an act of experiential and intersubjective engagement took place, in which Tom and Abby experienced the bananas at the campus store as falling short of their standards for perfection Finally, there was (c) an act of intersubjective coordination, wherein Tom and Abby pitted the various pieces of intersubjectively structured evidence against each other In so doing, John’s claim to have purchased the banana was inconsistent with Tom and Abby’s experience of the blotchy bananas at the campus store In contrast, the interpretation that John stole the banana is consistent with Tom’s having seen (i.e., experienced) John eating a “perfect banana,” Tom and Abby’s belief that John is capable of lying in this circumstance, and the general lack of availability of perfect bananas The corroboration of data suggests that it is highly likely that John did steal the banana In this process, no single piece of evidence is definitive; even the highest degrees of corroborating evidence not identify objective truths Instead, a case is made as multiple pieces of evidence corroborate each other and converge on one or another explanation or interpretation Within the intersubjectively structured parameters of this episode, Tom and Abby can assert that their conclusion is highly corroborated by the pattern of their individual and joint experiences New evidence can, of course, threaten the integrity of the entire system of corroboration, as can doubt that might be cast on any of the background assumptions that framed the process For example, Tom’s status as faculty member brought with it an unquestioned presumption of credibility; should there be reason to question Tom’s honesty, the entire system of corroboration would be in disequilibrium Thus, within the process of intersubjective corroboration, one can speak of theoretical statements as more or less corroborated by evidence without invoking the idea of correspondence to an objective reality It is in this way that we can agree with Osbeck (this issue) who states, “there are degrees of assurance or ‘certainty.’” IS CORROBORATION POSSIBLE? Strong (this issue) raises additional questions about the possibility that verification can be understood as a form of intersubjective corroboration Strong worries that in acts of SOCIAL SCIENCE AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION 55 corroboration, even if we seem to be using words in similar ways, we have no way to ensure that those words name the same forms of experiencing: [If] family therapists could not agree on what a smile meant, what enabled Mascolo and Kallio to corroborate their concepts of the smile they observed? If the latter group shared their corroborated concepts with the videotaped person, would everyone agree on what has been clarified? Is the phenomenology of the “between” on the smile the authors corroborated a meld of shared experience, the same as what each individual was experiencing? Or might it be that this phenomenological “between” exemplifies a negotiation of concepts agreeable to the research analysist? (Strong, this issue) It seems that these concerns are valid primarily under the presupposition that what we call corroboration means correspondence to reality Would the corroborations that emerged among the researchers in our study be agreeable to people outside of the research group? The answer is that people outside of the research group would likely corroborate some aspects of the encounter but not others If so, however, this would not be a reason for despair Instead, it might bring about a state of excitement regarding the possibility of improving our accounting of the participant’s smile through further corroboration and revision From a hermeneutic perspective, there is always the possibility of constructing more integrative accountings of the world as we entertain the implications of novel ways of experiencing Strong anchors his concerns about the difficulties in corroborating meanings with reference to Wittgenstein, whose thinking is central to our own analysis My qualm with what they have written centers on shared experience as being corroborated, which to me sounds like the very thing Wittgenstein (1953) was trying to get beyond with his famous “private language” argument By that argument, people come to acquire the means to communicate their personal experience from learning situated particulars from their communicative interactions with others They learn to express pain, for example, as the others who grew up closest to them did, not in some generalizable or universal way Although we may acquire shared vocabularies and understandings of experiences or phenomena like gestures, they not communicate the exact same experiences for each of us (Strong, this issue) In rejecting the possibility of a private language, Wittgenstein (1953) was not merely saying that, “people come to acquire the means to communicate their personal experience from learning situated particulars from their communicative interactions with others.” Such a state of affairs would treat personal experience as if it were something that held a merely arbitrary relation to public expression, cultural or otherwise Wittgenstein’s point was the inverse of this statement We are able to use language to represent our experience because experiences are not inherently private; spontaneous experiences are typically revealed in their public expressions (Although we can hide our experiences, we so by hiding the expression, not an inner experiential state.) Natural public expressions are not arbitrarily related to experience; they are the public manifestations of experience If this were not the case, it would be difficult to know how it would be possible to gain shared understandings of experiences at all In this way, Wittgenstein made the case for the absurdity of the idea that experiences are states that are inaccessible to other people In so doing, he paved the way to understanding how the linguistic corroboration of experience is possible 56 M F MASCOLO AND E KALLIO Strong (this issue) suggests that the process we call intersubjective corroboration is one that is capable, at best, of producing consensus among interlocutors, writing, “For the researchers to have talked their way to a consensus (read: corroboration), however, does not away with the problems I have raised that relate to reconciling differences.” Strong raises an important issue: If intersubjective corroboration simply reduces to consensus, then corroborated accounts simply provide arbitrary agreements that are relative to the social conditions that produce them However, in our approach, corroboration extends beyond mere consensus Corroboration involves assessing relations among diverse forms of mediated and experiential evidence Each new piece of evidence puts corroborative constraints on the types of theoretical explanations that can account for any given observation Genuine progress in the social and psychological sciences is possible because the theoretical statements that arise from intersubjective corroboration are not mere sociolinguistic constructions Through the process of corroboration, multiple representations of the experienced world are corroborated with each other to constrain and corroborate emerging theoretical meanings The process is open ended rather than definitive; to the extent that differences remain among interlocutors, they are potentially resolvable through further corroboration Differences among interlocutors not threaten the process, they point to the possibility of improved knowledge as those differences drive further corroboration THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION A final issue is raised by Osbeck (this issue), who castigates her husband for using a cheese slicer to clean the cat litter box Disgusted by his unorthodox selection of tools, Osbeck is nonetheless enamored with her husband’s imagination She uses this example to highlight the role of imagination not simply in practical activity but also in the creation of novel scientific hypotheses My point is that adequate accounts of knowledge must take into consideration the imaginal acts of persons Persons, whatever they are, are highly complex, involving many forms of meaning making and multiple capacities, which include language use but also innate powers of imagination and a grasp of material affordances … we cannot eliminate the capacity of the person to interact with the world in ways that are not exhausted by the social meanings already provided (Osbeck, this issue) Osbeck is, of course, correct It is sometimes tempting to think of culture as if it were a part of the environment, a force that exists external to the individual being We would take culture to refer to a system of shared and contested meanings, practices, and artifacts distributed throughout a linguistic community Where these meanings, practices, and artifacts live? They reside in the activity of the persons and relations that make up a given community Although cultural meanings mediate the actions of individuals, each individual is a unique part of the culture If this were not so, there would be no opportunity for cultural or scientific progress SOCIAL SCIENCE AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION 57 BANANAS REDUX Let us return to the question of John and the banana For Tom and Abby, the theory that John stole the banana is highly corroborated by the available evidence Recently, as Osbeck might have hoped, Abby looked again at the photograph she took of the blotchy, stickerless bananas offered by the campus store, the bunch from which John claimed to have purchased his banana There she saw displayed conspicuously among the blotchy bananas, a previously unseen banana, less blotchy than the others and with a sticker displayed prominently on its peel Is it possible that John did find a perfect banana at the campus store? Admittedly, the banana did not rise to the agreed-upon standards that defined the perfect banana We can just hear Strong ask, “Just what were those standards again?” And Chiari chiming in, “And how did they come into doubt?” More corroboration—and perhaps humility—is needed REFERENCES Alvesson, M., & Sk€ oldberg, K (2009) Reflexive methodology: New vistas for qualitative research Los Angeles, CA: Sage Bernstein, R J (1983) Beyond objectivism and relativism: Science, hermeneutics and praxis Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Presss Chiari, G., & Nuzzo, M L (2004) Steering personal construct theory toward hermeneutic constructivism In J D Raskin, & S K Bridges (Eds.), Studies in meaning 2: Bridging the personal and social in constructivist psychology (pp 51–65) New York, NY: Pace University Press Gadamer, H.-G (2004) Truth and method Bloomsbury: Academic Gergen, K (2009) Relational being: Beyond self and community New York: Oxford University Press Haslanger, S (2012) Resisting reality: Social construction and social critique Oxford: Oxford University Press Heidegger, M (1926/1996) J Stambaugh (Eds.), Trans Being and time New York, NY: State University of New York Press Husserl, E (1937/1970) (D Carr (Eds.), Trans) The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy Evanston, IL Northwestern University Press Maturana, H R (2005) The origin and conservation of self-consciousness: Reflections on four questions by Heinz von Foerster Kybernetes, 34, 54–88 Popper, K (1976) The logic of the social sciences In T Adorno (Ed.), The positivist dispute in German sociology New York: Harper Phillips, D (1990) Postpositivistic science: Myths and realities In E Guba (Eds.), The paradigm dialogue (pp 31–45) Newbury Park, CA: Sage Rorty, R (1978) Philosophy and the mirror of nature Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press Stern, D N (2005) Intersubjectivity In E S Person, A M Cooper, & G O Gabbard (Eds.), The American Psychiatric Publishing textbook of psychoanalysis (pp 77–92) Arlington, VA American Psychiatric Publishing Turiel, E (1989) The social construction of social construction In W Damon (Eds.), Child development: Today and tomorrow (pp 86–106) San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Wittgenstein, L (1953) (G E M Anscombe (Eds.), trans.) Philosophical investigations Oxford Blackwell ... print / 1521-0650 online DOI: 10.1080/10720537.2019.1635928 Who Stole My Banana? Social Science as Intersubjective Corroboration Michael F Mascolo Department of Psychology, Merrimack College, North... scientific progress SOCIAL SCIENCE AS INTERSUBJECTIVE CORROBORATION 57 BANANAS REDUX Let us return to the question of John and the banana For Tom and Abby, the theory that John stole the banana is highly... the banana was gone but that John, a student, was eating a banana When asked, John denied taking the banana and indicated that he purchased the banana at the campus store Knowing that John was