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Methods and moral inquiryRobert W. Lakea

a Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, RutgersUniversity, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USAPublished online: 30 May 2014.

To cite this article: Robert W. Lake (2014) Methods and moral inquiry, Urban Geography, 35:5,657-668

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2014.920220

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Methods and moral inquiry

Robert W. Lake*

Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick,NJ 08901, USA

(Received 14 February 2014; accepted 2 April 2014)

Despite a consistent and pervasive concern with analytic method, geography and thesocial sciences in general lack an adequately developed method of moral inquiry.When researchers working across a variety of political and ideological perspectives,for example, equally embraced the analytical turn in mid-twentieth century geography,the considerable disagreements among them rested not on methodological but onpolitical and moral grounds. But while all the protagonists in this debate presentedthemselves as moral actors, their moral judgments were exogenous to their analyticalmethods, and none of those methods provide a usable way to evaluate their respectivemoral claims. The legacy of positivism and its debates is to make us believe that thechallenge we face is to become better methodologists, leaving unresolved the problemof how to become better moral agents, a question raised by John Dewey nearly acentury ago. Rephrasing the question in this way encourages us to stop thinking of themoral question as a search for means to achieving desired outcomes, instead elevatingmoral inquiry as an end in itself. Such a shift changes the problem from knowing andrepresenting the world so as to point toward moral outcomes and instead expands ourability to produce moral knowledge. If our challenge is not about making moraljudgments but rather about pursuing moral inquiry, what is needed is a method ofmoral inquiry, one that Dewey located in science understood not as an analytic methodbut as democratic practice.

Keywords: positivism; methodology; pragmatism; moral geography

Man has never had such a varied body of knowledge in his possession before, and probablynever before has he been so uncertain and so perplexed as to what his knowledge means,what it points to in action and in consequences. (Dewey, 1929/1960, p. 313)

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only questionimportant for us: ‘What shall we do and how shall we live?’ (Weber, 1919/1946, p. 143)

The interesting dividing line. . .divides people busy conforming to well-understood criteriafor making contributions to knowledge from people trying to expand their own moralimaginations. (Rorty, 1999a, p. 127)

Politics and method

Wars over methods are inextricably linked to differences in ideology. Consider the well-known debate between positivists and Marxists in mid-twentieth-century humangeography.

*Email: rlake@rutgers.edu

Urban Geography, 2014Vol. 35, No. 5, 657–668, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2014.920220

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The opening sentence of Brian Berry’s first published journal article, appearing in theAAG Annals in 1958, reads in its entirety: ‘Pick any large area’ (Berry & Garrison, 1958,p. 83; Lake, 2009). That introductory sentence was an early salvo in the analyticreorientation of the discipline of geography from the task of unique regional descriptionto the search for generalized laws and universal regularities applicable in ‘any large area.’For Berry, the quintessential positivist, ‘the symbolic models of interest are those whichprovide idealized representations of properly formulated and verified scientific theoriesrelating to cities’ (Berry, 1964, p. 147). At stake was ‘the possibility of a science ofgeography. . ., tested and refined using statistical inference and mathematical models’(Berry, 1993, p. 439).

But the analytical turn was not restricted to a particular political or ideologicalorientation. Writing at the same mid-century moment as Berry but from a decidedlydifferent ideological position, the Marxist sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf proffered a visionof sociology as ‘an exact social science with precisely—ideally, of course, mathematically—formulated postulates, theoretical models, and testable laws’ (Dahrendorf, 1959, p. ix).Dahrendorf drew his inspiration from Marx who, he observed, ‘was not concerned withdescribing an existing state of society (but) rather, with the analysis of certain laws ofsocial development and of the forces involved in this development’ (Dahrendorf, 1959,p. 19). He based this observation on Marx’s statement (in Capital, Vol. III, p. 167) that‘real conditions are presented only in so far as they express their own general type’(quoted in Dahrendorf, 1959, p. 20), reflecting the influence of nineteenth-centurypositivism on Marx’s scientific thought (Henderson, 2013; Sperber, 2013). Explainingthe urban process under capitalism, David Harvey relates that ‘Marx insists (that) there isa single unitary principle at work that underpins and frames all of this revolutionaryupheaval, fragmentation, and perpetual insecurity’ and wryly notes that ‘there is morethan a hint of the Enlightenment project in passages of this sort’ (Harvey, 1990, p.107, 111).

The shared belief in generalizable and universal laws, the knowability of society by anobjective observer, and the application of Enlightenment reason to direct empiricalobservation unite Berry, the liberal positivist, and Harvey, the historical materialist,despite their fundamental substantive disagreement on which explanatory framework todeploy. As Harvey observed, ‘There are. . .certain things which Marxism and positivismhave in common. They both have a materialist base and both resort to an analytic method’(Harvey, 1972, p. 7). In moving from the rigorous positivism of Explanation inGeography (Harvey, 1969) to the structural Marxism of Social Justice and the City(Harvey, 1973), Harvey did not relinquish an analytical commitment to universal reasonbut merely substituted one metanarrative for another. As Harvey subsequently (andrhetorically) asked: ‘If there is a metatheory with which to embrace all these gyrations. . ., then why should we not deploy it?’ (1990, p. 337).

And yet Harvey and Berry cast themselves (and each other) at opposite poles of anapparently unbridgeable divide (Berry, 1972; Harvey, 1975). When Harvey famouslycastigated Berry for his ‘attachment to the liberal virtue of objectivity (and) faith intechnocratic “scientific” solutions’ (Harvey, 1975, p. 102), his complaint was politicaland ideological rather than methodological. Harvey’s denouncement of ‘the harnessingof scientific activity. . .to the special interests of those who are in control of the meansof production’ (Harvey, 1972, p. 2) was not a critique of ‘scientific activity’ as methodper se but rather its application toward ends with which he was not in politicalagreement. ‘The problem in many cases,’ Harvey concluded, ‘is not the marginalistmethod per se or optimizing techniques per se, but that those methods are being

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applied in the wrong context’ (1972, p. 11). Two decades later, the same logic ledHarvey to denigrate the ‘flagrant irresponsibility’ of post-modernism’s repudiation ofmetanarratives in favor of variability and contingency. His reproach once again wasnot that the knowledge produced through post-modernism's rejection of metanarrativesis ontologically wrong but that it is politically problematic (1990, p. 357). Harvey’scomplaint with respect to both positivism and post-modernism rested on moralgrounds: the charge that neither heroic modernism nor contingent post-modernism,by Harvey’s lights, yields substantive knowledge and resultant social practices thatinstantiate his desired moral values of social justice.

Methodological certainties and moral ambiguities

If the disagreement is not over epistemology or method (‘per se’) but instead is a moralone, we are faced with a wicked problem because all the protagonists in this debatepresent themselves as moral actors. ‘To be moral,’ wrote Robert Sack, ‘is to do the rightthing, to do good, and this in turn means we have to have an idea of what is good, an ideaof the good’ (Sack, 2003, p. 6). But ideas of ‘the good’ and sources of their justificationdiffer widely across ideological, cultural, and political predispositions. In his 1980 pre-sidential address to the Association of American Geographers, an unrepentant Brian Berryoffered an adamant defense of positivist social science and then challenged his audiencewith a clear moral exhortation:

There remains the strong primary orientation to enlarging individual opportunity, to increas-ing information about those opportunities, to removing barriers that have prevented somefrom participating in the mainstream, and to enhancing mobility, meanwhile struggling toconstrain excessive concentrations of power, to force internalization of negative externalities,and to buffer the fortunes of those afflicted by market fluctuations or otherwise left behind.(Berry, 1980, p. 455)

Meanwhile, from a different ideological and epistemological vantage point, David Harveyconcluded that:

An urbanism founded upon exploitation is a legacy of history. A genuinely humanizingurbanism has yet to be brought into being. It remains for revolutionary theory to chart thepath from an urbanism based on exploitation to an urbanism appropriate for the humanspecies. (Harvey, 1973, p. 314)

Contra Berry’s assumptions of liberal individualism, Harvey explicitly differentiated hisstructural epistemology from that of ‘scholars who typically operate under a presupposi-tion of atomistic association,’ and he situated moral outcomes in structural change,charting his own conceptual evolution ‘from a predisposition to regard social justice asa matter of eternal justice and morality to regard it as something contingent upon thesocial processes operating in society as a whole’ (Harvey, 1973, p. 15).

How are we to evaluate such disparate statements? On what grounds does one decidebetween Berry’s ‘enlarging individual opportunity’ and Harvey’s ‘genuinely humanizingurbanism’? To assert such principles as self-evident, intuitively obvious, or universallytrue is simply to leave them unexamined as justifications that themselves require nojustification. Calling for an enlarged engagement with normative thinking, Olson andSayer (2009, p. 181) observe that ‘radical geographers regularly use terms like “oppres-sive,” “racist,” or “exploitative” in their descriptions of social practices, but generally

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without saying why these things are bad. . ..We either agree with the stated positions or wedon’t’ (Olson & Sayer, 2009, p. 182). Cloke, Philo & Sandler, (1991), characterizingprevailing practice, locate the justification of moral claims as typically beyond the pur-view of academic inquiry: ‘the most crucial frames of reference. . .issues to do with thegeographer’s morality and politics. . .are rooted “beyond” academic matters’ (Cloke, et al.,1991, p. 205).

The problem we encounter when faced with disparate moral platforms is that neitherthe incommensurable metanarratives from which they emanate nor the consequent meth-odological choices deployed in empirical analysis provides us with a usable way toevaluate these respective moral claims. The ethical precepts and moral logics undergirdingasserted value claims are exogenous to and precede the choice of analytical methods.(Note Harvey’s reference to ‘presuppositions’ and ‘predispositions,’ leaving unexaminedeither the source or the justification of those axiomatic moral principles.) As a conse-quence, the various epistemological approaches and metatheories (positivism, modernism,materialism, post-modernism, and any other number of methodological-isms) that offeralternative directions for navigating the rocky terrain of empirical analysis are far lessuseful as guideposts for discerning and evaluating the moral implications of those materialobservations. Terms like ‘repression,’ ‘exploitation,’ or ‘liberation’ can be deployed aseither descriptive or evaluative statements and, although these distinct tropes are oftenconflated in practice, the evaluative judgment, as Hume (1739/1978) famously observed,relies on methods and logics different from those that produce the empirical description(Lekan, 2003). Calculating regression coefficients to the fourth decimal place indicateswith great precision the statistical distance between an observed measure and the averagetendency within a sample of observations, but the method of calculating regressioncoefficients is of no help in assessing the moral meaning of that precisely measureddistance. Two experts producing identical numbers in an analysis, faithfully meeting thereplicability criterion of positivist science, may announce contradictory versions of whatthose numbers ‘mean’ because the dueling experts are guided in their interpretations bydisparate political ideologies and divergent moral compasses. Such conclusions may besaid to be statistically overdetermined, based on rigorous standards of statistical signifi-cance, while morally underdetermined, asserting moral claims derived independently fromthe statistical analysis just performed and based on standards that remain obscured andunexamined.

What is at stake here is not merely a rehearsal of the well-worn conflation of fact andvalue nor is it simply a matter of renouncing methods that obscure that conflation. Indeed,it is not a question of methodology at all, as methodology is commonly understood. Theoverwhelming legacy of positivism in the social sciences and of the long-running debatesover positivism pro and con has been to make us believe that the challenge we face is oneof becoming better methodologists. But as Elvin Wyly perceptively points out, ‘Anyepistemology, any methodology, can be co-opted and drafted into service for violence,destruction and injustice; conversely, all methodologies and epistemologies can be mobi-lized for radical projects of social justice’ (Wyly, 2011, p. 898; see also Latour, 2004;Wyly, 2009). If any method can be mobilized for any political project, there is no a prioripolitical, ideological, or moral argument for or against the use of any method per se. Itfollows that if method doesn’t matter, morally speaking, then debating among methods isasking the wrong question. The question is not which method of empirical analysis todeploy—that is, how to become better methodologists—but rather how to become bettermoral agents. What is at stake, more precisely, is not a method of empirical analysis but amethod of moral inquiry.

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Toward moral inquiry

The lack of an adequate method of moral inquiry was posed with characteristic eloquenceby John Dewey in 1920:

Where is the moral progress that corresponds to our economic accomplishments? The latter isthe direct fruit of the revolution that has been wrought in physical science. But where is therea corresponding human science and art? Not only has the improvement in the method ofknowing remained so far mainly limited to technical and economic matters but this progresshas brought with it serious new moral disturbances. I need only cite the late war, the problemof capital and labor, the relation of economic classes, the fact that while the new science hasachieved wonders in medicine and surgery, it has also produced and spread occasions fordiseases and weaknesses. These considerations indicate to us how undeveloped are ourpolitics, how crude and primitive our education, how passive and inert our morals. (Dewey,1920/2004, p. 72)

Dewey’s concern was not with passing moral judgment but rather with advancing thepractice of moral inquiry. Moral judgment requires a foundational moral precept, whetherderived from faith, tradition, human nature, or wide reflective equilibrium (Rawls, 1999),as a starting point (a moral ‘predisposition’) against which to evaluate actions or outcomes(e.g. Fainstein, 2010). Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy saw such foundational precepts asunsubstantiatable, resting on faith, and obstructive, closing down inquiry rather thanpromoting it (Anderson, 1998; Bernstein, 2010; Cutchin, 2008; Westbrook, 1991). ‘Bytheir very nature,’ Dewey wrote,

these ‘causes’ escape observation, so that their explanatory value can be neither confirmednor refuted by further observation or experience. Hence belief in them becomes purelytraditionary. They give rise to doctrines which, inculcated and handed down, become dogmas;subsequent inquiry and reflection are actually stifled. (Dewey, 1910, p. 149)

In their introduction to a collection of essays on Deweyan moral inquiry, Fox andWestbrook (1998, p. 8) declare an ‘aversion to moralizing, which might be characterizedas moral judgment untethered from responsible moral inquiry.’ In contrast to moraljudgment, moral inquiry ‘does not preach or press evidence into service of pre-establishedarguments. . ..The purpose of moral inquiry. . .is to enrich moral deliberation, not preemptit.’ Rather than judging outcomes against an a priori moral standard, moral inquiry takesthat standard as its subject, not as an abstract principle but specifically with respect to itsbearing on the question and outcome at issue. ‘Sometimes,’ they conclude, ‘all we mightreasonably ask of moral inquiry is a clearer, better set of questions to work with as westruggle to shape our common moral life’ (Fox and Westbrook, 1998, p. 8).

Dewey’s search for a better set of questions informed by his pragmatist beliefs proposed aprocess of knowledge production as moral inquiry. In a persistent theme extending throughouthis voluminous writing over a prolonged career (Dewey, 1910, 1911, 1920, 1929;Westbrook,1991), Dewey provided an architecture of moral inquiry resting on three interrelated andinterdependent precepts: a shift from representing reality to producing moral knowledge, aconcomitant reorientation in the temporality of knowledge production, and a grounding oftruth in practice.

From representation to action. Holding that ‘knowledge. . .is wholly a moral affair’(1927/1954, p. 175), Dewey replaced the idea of knowledge as representation of realitywith a ‘moral interest’ in knowledge as a guide to action (1903/1977, p. 19). The aim ofknowledge production, for Dewey, is not to reveal a world whose moral implications one

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might (somehow) subsequently discern behind empirical observation of a separatelyexisting reality (Jones, 2008). Knowledge instead helps us better answer the integrallyinterrelated questions of what kind of reality we want to create and which practices bestadvance its creation. Moral knowledge is to be found in the possibilities that knowledgeoffers for moral action: ‘the choice of thoughtful men about what they would have life tobe’ (Dewey, 1920/2004, p. 15). Dewey anticipated by nearly a century the value-rationalquestions of what Flyvbjerg calls phronetic social science: ‘(1) Where are we going? (2) Isthis desirable? (3) What should be done?’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 60). These questions domore than simply shift attention from the descriptive to the normative (Barnett, 2014;Olson & Sayer, 2009), a shift that nonetheless maintains a distinction between knowingwhat is and knowing what should be. For Dewey as for Flyvbjerg, the production ofknowledge through empirical inquiry provides the means for discerning desired moralends and the means to achieve them, a shift from knowing what is, as an end in itself, toknowing whether, and how well, ‘what is’ realizes our desired moral purposes.

Dewey distinguished between what he called ‘monopolistic’ and ‘instrumental’ knowl-edge (Dewey, 1929/1960, p. 298).Where monopolistic knowledge claims privileged access tothe real, instrumental knowledge is a guide to action. As Rorty explains, monopolisticknowledge is knowledge of ‘reality as somehow represented by representations which arenot merely ours but its own, as it looks to itself, as it would describe itself if it could’ (Rorty,1982, p. 194). In place of this necessitarian, even coercive, understanding of truth (Bridge,2013; Nelson, Megill & McCloskey, 1987; Steward, 2008), Rorty (following Dewey) wants‘to give up the notion of science traveling towards an end called “correspondence withreality”’ and to pursue instead the kind of instrumental knowledge that helps us ‘say merelythat a given vocabulary (about the world) works better than another for a given purpose’(1982, p. 193; see also Rorty, 1981, 1999b). Rather than a means for arriving at more or lessaccurate representations of the truth, empirical inquiry guides the choice between better andworse actions for attaining desired moral outcomes. In Rorty’s terms, ‘Dewey thought that ifhe could break down this notion (of representation), if scientific inquiry could be seen asadapting and coping rather than copying, the continuity between science, morals and artwould become apparent’ (Rorty, 2010, p. 83; see also Lake & Zitcer, 2012).

Temporality: from demonstration to discovery. The move from representation toaction, from copying to coping, instigates a fundamental reorientation in the temporalityof knowledge production (Lake, 2012). Representation mirrors a world as it already is andhas been, while action forms a world in the process of its becoming. Of the social sciencesdevoted to knowledge production as representation of an already existing reality, Deweyheld that ‘their material comes too late, too far after the event’ (Dewey, 1927/1954, p.179) and that this retrospective view contributes to ‘inert conservatism’ (1920/2004, p.19). In contrast to the retrospective stance of representation, Dewey advocated a movefrom ‘contemplative’ to ‘operative’ forms of knowledge production advanced through a‘method of discovery’ rather than a ‘method of demonstration.’ ‘A logic of discovery,’ heasserted, ‘looks to the future’ (Dewey, 1920/2004, p. 19), coupling apprehension withanticipation and employing observation to inform preparation:

When we intelligently observe, we are, as we say apprehensive, as well as apprehending.We are on the alert for something still to come. Curiosity, inquiry, investigation, are directedquite as truly into what is going to happen next as into what has happened. . ..Observation isdiagnosis and diagnosis implies an interest in anticipation and preparation. It makes readyin advance an attitude of response so that we shall not be caught unawares. (Dewey, 1920/2004, p. 82)

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The shift from the monopolistic knowledge of representation to instrumental knowledgeas a guide to action follows what Jean Elshtain describes as a turn from ‘narratives ofclosure’ to ‘narratives of possibility’ (Elshtain, 1998, p. 54). Instrumental knowledge is aknowledge of possibility, finding its outer limit not in the quixotic goal of accuraterepresentation but in attainment of the ideal, where ‘the ideal and the possible areequivalent ideas’ (Dewey, 1929/1960, p. 299).

Truth found in practice. Oriented to the future and rejecting representation as the goaland method of knowledge production, a narrative of possibility finds the truth of astatement in its usefulness for achieving a moral purpose that is itself delineated by theinquirers as a coequal aspect of the process of inquiry. Rorty says of Dewey that ‘hisexperimentalism asks us to see knowledge-claims as proposals about what actions to tryout next’ (Rorty, 1982, p. 204). Dewey replaced the notion of facticity with the term‘warranted assertability,’ meaning that an assertion of fact becomes warranted when theutility of its application is demonstrated in practice, much as the choice of a tool can beratified only when its usefulness can be demonstrated within the process of completing thetask at hand. According to Westbrook, ‘when pragmatists say a belief is true, they arepaying a compliment to its usefulness’ (2005, p. x; see also Mead, 1938/1964).

In The Quest for Certainty, Dewey challenged the conventional search for regularityand prediction, arguing instead that ‘the test of consequences is more exacting than thatafforded by fixed general rules.’ Furthermore, ‘it secures constant development, for whennew acts are tried new results are experienced, while the lauded immutability of eternalideals and norms is in itself a denial of the possibility of development and improvement’(1929/1960, p. 278). Exploring the pragmatist roots of feminist theory, Shannon Sullivanexplains it this way:

A judgment or belief is true not if it matches the state of affairs it attempts to report, but ratherif, when acted on, it produces the transformation of experience that was desired by thoseengaged in the experience. In that way, truth refers to the future career of a judgment and, inparticular, the ability of that judgment to effect an improved transaction between living thingsand their environments. Truth must pass the test of experience. Claims to truth are not to beconsidered true until ‘tested in the satisfaction of the most intimate and comprehensive humanneeds’ [Dewey, 1911/1985, p. 66]. When considering the truth of a claim, one is not askingwhether it mirrors reality, but instead whether it satisfies desires and need. (Sullivan, 2002,pp. 220–221)

Science as democratic inquiry. Dewey fervently believed that moral questions are suscep-tible to empirical investigation and saw in science a model for the practice of moralinquiry (Bernstein, 2010; Misak, 2013; Westbrook, 1991, 2005). The same science thatproduced impressive technical advances and material accomplishments, he insisted, couldbe turned to the purpose of moral progress directed at ‘the relief of human estate’ (Dewey,1920/2004, p. 25; Mead, 1923). ‘Dewey’s overriding mission,’ according to CherylMisak, ‘is to encourage scientific thought in all branches of philosophy (and) to find aplace for value in a scientific world-view’ (Misak, 2013, pp. 107, 168). She quotes Deweyas saying that the pragmatist ‘has at least tried to face, and not to dodge, the question ofhow it is that moral and scientific knowledge can both hold of one and the same world’(Misak, 2013, p. 128). Science, in Dewey’s view, offers more than the possibility of moralinquiry, it is indispensable to its practice: ‘[M]oralists usually draw a sharp line betweenthe field of the natural sciences and the conduct that is regarded as moral. But a moral thatframes its judgments of value on the basis of consequences must depend in a mostintimate manner upon the conclusions of science’ (Dewey, 1929/1960, p. 274).

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But—and this is a central point—the science that Dewey’s pragmatism advocated as amethod of moral inquiry radically departs from the Enlightenment principles of univers-ality, subject–object distance, and lawful regularity. Science, as Dewey understood it, is an‘attitude of mind’ characterized by a commitment to experimentation and a ‘trial of ideas’(Dewey, 1916, p. 211). It is a ‘type of operation for solving problems’ (Tschaepe, 2011, p.190) providing a ‘guide of conduct’ (Dewey, 1929/1960, p. 273). The experimentalattitude engenders a continuous process of observation, assessment, correction, newobservation, and so on, specifically directed at solving the problem at hand. Outcomesare only ever provisional, the condition for continuing inquiry rather than an end achievedonce and for all.

Participation in science understood as a process of problem solving is not merely theprivileged province of the expert elite. The hallmark of science, as Dewey saw it, is itsdemocratic character, an experimental practice open to all and dependent for its success onparticipation by multiple inquirers bringing multiple perspectives to bear in the inquiry.Science, democracy, and education—the three themes that occupied Dewey throughouthis life—are different sides of the same coin in which science, as a method of knowledgeproduction, flourishes only under conditions of widespread, inclusive democratic partici-pation and education prepares participants to capably engage in the democratic process ofexperimentation and discovery required to progress toward a just society. ‘For Dewey,’says the neopragmatist Hilary Putnam, ‘the scientific method is simply the method ofexperimental inquiry combined with free and full discussion—which means, in the case ofsocial problems, the maximum use of the capacities of citizens for proposing courses ofaction, for testing them, and for evaluating the results’ (Putnam, 1991, p. 227). Dewey’sunderstanding of science as democratic experimentation informed the social researcherssurrounding Jane Addams at the turn of the twentieth century (Addams, 1902), Lewin's(1946) action research approach, and the participatory action research currently gainingrecognition in contemporary geography (Kindon, Pain & Kesby, 2007; Lake, 2013).

No idealist, Dewey fully recognized the forces undermining the capacities of citizensto engage in democratic scientific inquiry, including the failures of education to producecompetent thinking individuals, the mass production of ideas, and the too-easy manipula-tion of public opinion (Dewey, 1927/1954). But he held that the democratization ofscience benefits both the individual citizen and the progress of society and arguedforcefully against governance by the elite. Dewey believed that ‘learning to think scien-tifically was important. . .for all members of a democratic society because scientificintelligence was a resource essential to effective freedom’ (Westbrook, 1991, p. 169).Inquiry is necessarily a collective rather than a solitary endeavor since ‘no scientificinquirer can keep what he finds to himself,’ and ‘everything discovered belongs to thecommunity of workers’ (Dewey, 1930/1984, p. 115). The democratic (i.e. collective)practice of science frees Dewey’s pragmatism from the charge of relativism to which itfrequently has been subjected. Allowing all points of view to contribute to democraticinquiry is not at all to see all points of view as equally valid or necessarily capable ofsurviving the test of collective assessment (MacGilvray, 1999; Westbrook, 2005).

Elizabeth Anderson (1998) offers a pragmatist approach to a democratic science ofmoral inquiry. Democratically inclusive empirical inquiry, from her perspective, providesusable evidence to answer the value-rational questions regarding material circumstances(What are we doing?), the justification of moral principles (What should we do?), andprogress toward desired outcomes (How should we do it?), questions that comprise‘interconnected aspects of a joint enterprise’ (Anderson, 1998, p. 15). On this view,‘there are domains of human experience equally relevant to the justification of moral

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principles and the justification of empirical accounts of human affairs’ (p. 18), and theseconjoined questions are amenable to empirical investigation because ‘moral and factualinquiry alike entail a commitment to revise one’s beliefs in light of the evidence’ (p. 38).The empirical approach to moral inquiry produces what Anderson refers to as ‘thickevaluative concepts’ that ‘combine factual and evaluative judgments’ and ‘provide thecrucial empirical evidence for ethical judgments’ (p. 18). Access to the empirical evidenceinforming answers to these conjoined questions is available within the lived experience ofthe processes in question rather than through the external vantage point of a distancedobserver. ‘The evidence pragmatists care about,’ she explains, ‘is gathered not fromarmchair reflection, which takes place from an observer’s point of view, but from livingthe lives themselves from the point of view of agents’ (p. 16). The democratization ofempirical inquiry explicit in this perspective is thus not simply a normative ideal but isessential to its realization. It cannot be practiced in the abstract but is highly contextualand specific to the case within which it is pursued.

Conclusion

The practice of moral inquiry in the pragmatist tradition puts debates over method in anew light, suggesting that the struggle over method is an unnecessary distraction. Aquarter-century ago, David Harvey characterized his disagreement with the positivistBrian Berry ‘as an argument over method,’ arguing that ‘once these fundamental ques-tions of method are resolved much of the argument over the evidence will disappear’(Harvey, 1973, p. 294). Because Berry and Harvey shared the common goal of represent-ing reality as the object of knowledge production, their debate devolved to one over thechoice of methods for producing the representations that best aligned with their disparateideological presuppositions. Once we discard the representation of reality as the point ofknowledge production, the question of method for constructing such representationsbecomes moot. As Rorty concludes: ‘The whole idea of “being scientific” or of choosingbetween “methods”. . . seems to be misguided’ (1982, p. 195).

To forego debates about method, and about doing research differently, is to replaceresearch with conversation. It is to give up science as a method of analysis in favor ofscience as a conversational style, in which the subjects of our inquiries are participants inproblem solving rather than objects to be described. To be scientific within the Deweyanpractice of moral inquiry invokes an empathetic attitude rather than a descriptive method(Zitcer & Lake, 2012). To engage in moral inquiry is to participate in an inclusive processof democratic experimentation in which the aim is collectively to discern how to be bettermoral agents, an assuredly more contentious yet potentially more productive debate thanis the debate among theorists over how to be better methodologists. As Dewey notednearly a century ago, that is a methodological challenge we have yet satisfactorily totake up.

AcknowledgementsThanks to David Wilson for organizing the panel at the 2012 annual meeting of the Association ofAmerican Geographers where this article was first presented. Bob Beauregard, Kathe Newman, JuanRivero, David Wilson, Elvin Wyly and Andrew Zitcer provided extremely helpful comments onearlier drafts but are not in any way responsible for shortcomings remaining in the article. Thanks toMarvin Taylor for pointing me to Dewey’s Reconstruction in Philosophy.

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