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Modern Science: A Case of Collective Intelligence? On the Role of Thought Economy and Gratifying Attention in Knowledge Production
Abstract
Your attention please: Phenomenal conciousness, that is, how something feels, does not exist for an observer. As science relies on observations, it is not aware of the nature of subjectivity and thus science is not often defined as a collective intelligence. In this Essay, the roles of intelligence and attention are discussed, as well as an analysis of scientific communication and citation, in order to evaluate whether science is a case of collective intelligence.
Supplementary resource (1)
... In scientific research, sequencing a complex problem into manageable pieces simplifies the problem, and this approach is often referenced in the scientific method described by Francis Bacon (Bacon, 1878;Franck, 2012). The scientific method involves the formulation of a hypothesis, followed by testing it to verify or falsify the hypothesis (Turro, 1986). ...
Building scientific arguments is a central ability for all scientists regardless of their specific domain. In organic chemistry, building arguments is a necessary skill to estimate reaction processes in consideration of the reactivities of reaction centres or the chemical and physical properties. Moreover, building arguments for multiple reaction pathways might help students overcome the tendency toward one-reason decision-making and offer them an authentic perspective on organic processes. Reasoning about multiple alternative organic reaction pathways requires students to build arguments and then judge and weigh the plausibility of these pathways. However, students often struggle to build strong arguments and use scientific principles appropriately to justify their claims. In the present study, the argumentation patterns of 29 chemistry majors students were analysed using a simplified version of Toulmin's argumentation model (claim–evidence–reasoning). The students solved various tasks related to alternative reaction pathways of a substitution reaction. They supported their claims with evidence and justified the evidence through reasoning. We investigated (a) the extent to which the students use evidence and reasoning in their argumentation (referred to as their argumentation approach), (b) how students with different argumentation approaches rationalised changes in their initial claims, and (c) how students used reasoning to justify their arguments. The results indicate that students need further support to appropriately use evidence and reasoning and to apply conceptual knowledge to build well-grounded arguments.
Subjectively, vigilance measures the intensity of mental presence ; objectively, it refers to activation patterns and, in particular, to the energy level of the physical brain. In order to account for this dualism beyond the trodden paths, a distinction in the modes of existence is introduced. The mode in which consciousness exists is presence, the mode in which the brain exists is realness. In contrast to theories such as neutral monism or panpsychism, this modal dualism is not ad hoc, accounting for the mind-matter distinction only. Presence includes both mental presence and the temporal present. Presence, moreover, is an intrinsically dynamic mode of existing. The dualism of presence and realness corresponds to the dualism of temporal change and real change. Temporal change means that world states having been future become present and then past ; real change means that world states differing in date also differ in structure or function. Temporal change, concerning the distribution of presence among world states only, is spontaneous and disregarded by physics. Real change, in contrast, is causal and energetic, thus physically objective. Vigilance represents the remarkable case of a synthesis of temporal change and real change. It is synchronized with the temporal present as well as energized by the physical brain. The hypothesis put forward is that mental presence has emerged in evolution in virtue of the inventiveness of nature to embody presence by branching off individual streams of consciousness from the overall flow of time.
Science is the core sector of present-day knowledge production. Yet, the mechanisms of science as an industry are poorly understood. The economic theory of science is still in its infancy, and philosophy of science has only sparsely addressed the issue of economic rationality. Research, however, is costly. Inefficient use of resources consumed by the scientific industry is as detrimental to the collective advancement of knowledge as are deficiencies in method. Economic inefficiency encompasses methodological inadequacy. Methods are inadequate if they tend to misallocate time and effort. If one omits the question of how inputs are transformed into outputs in self-organised knowledge production, this means neglecting an essential aspect of the collective rationality of science. A self-organised tendency towards efficiency comes to the fore as soon as science is described as an economy in which researchers invest their own attention in order to obtain the attention of others. Viewed like this, scientific communication appears to be a market where information is exchanged for attention. Scientific information is measured in terms of the attention it earns. Since scientists demand scientific information as a means of production, the attention that a theory attracts is a measure of its value as a capital good. On the other hand, the attention a scientist earns is capitalised into the asset called reputation. Elaborating the ideas introduced in Franck (1998) and (1999), the paper describes science as a highly developed market economy. Science conceived as capital market covers the specific conditions under which scientists, while maximising their reputation, optimise output in the eyes of those competent to judge. Attention is not just any resource. It is the resource whose efficient use is called intelligence. Science, as an industry transforming attention into cognitive output, is bound to miss the hallmark of rationality if it does not pass a test of collective intelligence. The paper closes with considering the prospective outcome of such a test.
Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.
Success in science is rewarded with attention. Citation represents a fee paid through transfer of some of the attention earned
by the citing author to the cited author. An economy of attention links the collectively most rewarding allocation of attention
with the maximum value of the attention its holder can earn. In terms of the resulting collective efficiency it attains, the
intelligence of science as a whole surpasses that which individual scientists can attain in isolation.
Traducción de: Die krisis der europeaischen wissenschaften und die transzendentale pheanomenologie