Organizations and Markets

Undisputed Knowledge

| Lasse Lien |

Someone recently had the nerve to ask me for examples of undisputed knowledge generated from the social sciences. I.e., things we “know” that are both uncontroversial and does not require a lot of assumptions that are themselves in dispute (or not always true). . . .

I must admit that it was surprisingly (embarrassingly) difficult to come up with something that would qualify a strict interpretation of these criteria. Drawing a blank and under pressure to save face, I suggested that perhaps there would be universal agreement that there is nothing we can universally agree on. But then I realized that this would be an example of the liars paradox. I mean, it’s a logical impossibility that we can all agree that we cannot agree on anything.

So I guess my heroic defense of the social sciences boiled down to the claim that we can agree on only one thing, which unfortunately is a logical impossibility. . . .

7 November 2008 at 7:10 am Lasse 21 comments