COMPLEXITY AND THE RELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION

Anna

Krzywoszynska,

Durham University

KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION

“many pressing challenges for society today are inherently concerned with gaining a better ability to understand and manage interacting living or life-like systems upon which we rely. Problems in these areas demand a better ability to manage complex adaptive systems (CAS) than is currently available.”

How much do we need to know in order to act?

What counts as actionable knowledge?

KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION: DIFFERENT MODELS

Past Future know act

analysis foresight

Statistics, cost benefit analysis, risk assessments

Dominates policy

KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION: DIFFERENT MODELS

Complexity theories and methods as a critique of this approach.

Similarly critical social science points to political, value-laden, and partial character of knowledge – in its creation and use.

All knowledge as situated.

KNOWLEDGE AND CARE IN MEDICINE

Two patterns of behaviour in making decisions about living with diabetes

“logic of choice”

scientific knowledge certainty decision

“logic of care”

Knowledge

Values

Actions

“not a matter of providing better maps of reality, but of crafting more bearable ways of living with, or in, reality”

LOGIC OF CHOICE

ObservationObjective

informationAction Evaluation

LOGIC OF CARE

Situated knowledge

Experimental action

Continuous engagement

CARE AND INTUITION IN WINE GROWINGWine growing “under this sky”

Intuition – as highest level of expertise

(Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986)

Experts respond quickly and accuratelyto the contingencies of the situationwithout the conscious analytical divisionof situations into parts and evaluationaccording to context-independent rules

Intuitive action : a form of intelligentbehaviour which goes beyond cognitivistunderstandings of humans as rationaland calculating decision makers

THE POLITICS OF COMPLEXITY

Christopher Groves: under the conditions of uncertainty and indeterminacy (and so limits to knowledge-action paradigm), decision-making needs to be underlain by shared values.

“If we cannot know all the risks associated with a given course of action, then at least we can agree that the uncertainties that surround it should be borne in the interests of some morally and politically acceptable goal (…) The question, then, is not so much what might the outcomes of doing x be, but the age-old philosophical question: how should we live?”

THE POLITICS OF COMPLEXITY

A focus not on (desired) outcomes but on processes – which virtues may make achieving desired outcomes more likely?

Virtues which characterise care may be good candidates.

Care is not about controlling the future, but about making sure that the cared-for is able to exercise agency, from their position, in making sense and influencing their own future.

From: ‘how do we (experts, governors) manage complex systems’

To: ‘how do we (all of us) live well in the present without endangering the future’.

Public deliberation and participation in decision-making at all levels.

TO CONCLUDE

What is the place and role for complexity-management systems and methods?

What are the best places and areas to employ complexity modelling?

Where can complexity methods and theories help to inform decisions, and where is there space for other paradigms?

When we are thinking of making tools for managing complexity or for making better decisions in complex systems, what are our normative positions?

How do we define good and bad decisions, and good and bad outcomes?

Whose opinions do we take on board in defining these?

Whose interests are taken into account, and whose are side-lined?

THANK YOU