Heidegger’s authenticity – in scientific practice

I spent a couple of hours in the car yesterday and got hooked again on the podcast Philosophize This! by Stephen West – not sure why I inadvertently took a break from it. Stephen does an amazing job with his presentation and crams an incredible amount of information into a small space without making me feel too claustrophobic.

One of the episodes I listened to was Martin Heidegger pt. 3 – Authenticity (Episode #102). When I’m listening to these, I of course find myself thinking about life in general, but usually find myself thinking more specifically about how useful the ideas and language are for describing how we do science – applying ideas on the philosophy of being human to the philosophy of doing science. This one was particularly helpful in in terms of adding welcome structure to my thoughts about how statistical methods and related technologies are often used in science today.

Why do we care about what we do in the process of doing science? And, why do we choose the tasks we do – that ultimately make up our scientific practice?

Here’s Stephen West’s intro to Heidegger’s The Care Structure:

Ontological beings constantly engage in tasks that we care about – the things which we care about, and the various things that dictate the things we choose to care about – many of which are entirely out of our control. This overall concept of care becomes a central focus in Heidegger’s philosophy. And the way he breaks down what a Dosein ultimately chooses to care about is commonly explained in terms of three major factors, the group of which is sometimes called the care structure. What a Dosein ultimately chooses to care about comes down to three things: its facticity, its fallenness, and its existentiality.

About minute 7:00 in Episode #102

I find it very helpful to think about these three aspects in the context of doing science — which he ultimately uses to discuss the concept of authenticity. While authenticity is a popular word now, it has always seemed vague and hard to define to me – thus, giving the concept some structure and better definition makes it seem more useful to me. In particular, it seems helpful to reflect on a degree of authenticity with which each of us practices our science – using Heidegger’s three part care structure. First, we need just a quick intro to three parts – facticity, fallenness, and existentiality. I use quotes from the podcast to provide these.

So, the first one is Dasein’s facticity. Heidegger would say “Look, it’s not like before you were born you found yourself you found yourself on some cosmic game show where you got to pick when and where you were born, who your parents were, how tall you were, … No! What happened was one day you just kind of found yourself thrown into existence. Thrown into a particular historical context, a particular cultural context, a particular socio-economic class, a particular gender. None of these are things you explicitly chose, but all of these things drastically influence the tasks you care about enough to care about to be constantly engaged in. This collection of things about your individual being that you had no control over … Whatever it is that you are, these facts and many others like them, individual to you, make up the facticity of your existence. And again, this facticity strongly influence what things you decide to care about.

About minute 7:58 (my transcription may contain small deviations from what was actually said)

It doesn’t take much of a leap to translate this to the context of doing science – we are practicing science in a particular historical and cultural context. Things we did not explicitly choose drastically influence the tasks we engage in to practice science. I am not saying this as a bad thing, but as a thing that just is – a thing we can easily forget, but would be well served to notice and openly acknowledge more often. There seems to be a belief that we are lucky enough to be living after development of The scientific method, with a lack of awareness that humans in the future will look back and criticize aspects of how we do science as silly — even though it might look perfectly reasonable to us at the moment. This is just part of being human, and part of progress. We do this all the time in our own lives! How many times have you made a decision that seemed so right at the time, only to look back later and realize it was silly — but there would have been no way to see the silliness at the time. I’ve diverged a bit from facticity. Let’s look at fallenness:

Fallenness is an important part of being a Dasein. And while at first we may not like to admit all the ways we’re behaving simply because someone else told us to behave that way, but make no mistake – we’re all doing it at varying levels. We’ve all, in a sense, fallen into tasks as Daseins. It’s part of our nature.

About minute 13:30 in Episode #102 (my transcription may contain small deviations from what was actually said)

So, fallenness is describes doing “what other Daseins are already doing around you.” This of course goes along with facticity – but so neatly describes what we see in the application of statistical methods in doing science. Scientists using methods, often very specific ones within disciplines, because that’s what other scientists around them are doing. That’s what other scientists are asking for in reviews or grant applications, that’s what other scientists are teaching – because that’s what they were taught. This “fallenness in scientific practice” is worrisome and made worse by lack of awareness or reflection on aspects of our scientific “facticity.”

The existentiality part of the structure describes the possibilities we have as humans – we are a particular type of being that has possibilities, different from say, a rock or a tree. West sums up the the three concepts in this way —

So, the first thing that had an effect on the tasks we decide to care about was facticity, the second thing was our fallenness, and the last piece is existentially. ….. The first thing that has an effect is the reality you were thrown into, the second thing is what other Daseins are already doing around you, and the last thing are the possibilities you have at your disposal.

About minute 14:00 in Episode #102 (my transcription may contain small deviations from what was actually said)

Finally – West introduces Heidegger’s idea of authenticity through essentially weighting the three components of the care structure. Again, it doesn’t take much of a leap to use these ideas to frame a kind of authenticity of scientific practice. I think it’s important to add the “practice” at the end, rather than just “authenticity of science”, because the “practice” highlights the idea of the choices regarding the tasks we use that essentially make up our scientific practice (which may be different than how we theoretically want to do science or even tell others we’re doing science).

Now, when you consider these three parts of the care structure: facticity, fallenness, and existentiality; when you arrive at this place of realizing how they drastically affect the way you’re going to be behaving, Heidegger thinks at this point you’re left with a choice. It’s a choice of living in a certain way on a giant spectrum between what he called authenticity on one end and inauthenticity on the other. Now the sort of quintessential example of an inauthentic person is someone who really only embodies the first two parts of this care structure, their facticity and fallenness. They’re thrown into existence in a particular time and place, and they fall into tasks that other people around them tell them to do, never really considering the possibilities at their disposal about other ways to live their life, never considering the whole branch of existentiality. Now, as you can imagine, the antithesis to that – living authentically – is to radically consider the possibilities you have and to live in a way that brings about what he calls the Dasein’s own potentiality. To be deeply engaged in asking these ontological questions of being; to examine and understand your own facticity, including the cultural and historical context you were born into; to be introspective, and to realize the tasks that you’ve, you know, fallen into simply because someone else told you to do it. To be truly authentic is to fully embody the statement “being one’s own” or “living for yourself.”

As you can imagine, this is far from a dichotomy. It’s not like you’re either, you know, a mindless drone going along with whatever other people tell you to do or “Oh, I don’t just go along with what everyone else says to do, I must be authentic!” No, we all exist on different points along this spectrum of authenticity. And even if you’re someone who’s self aware enough to have corrected a few things along the way – you realized that they were just ways other people told you to act – what most people do, by and large, is they get to a point in their life where they feel like they’re living authentically enough and then they just sort of stop asking these ontological questions. They stop trying to arrive at a deeper understanding of the culture and time period they were born into. They stop actively examining their behavior, trying to identify the things that they’re doing just ’cause someone told them to do it at one point. What happens is, in practice, what most of us end up doing – we arrive at these sort of rest stops on this giant road trip of life and we end up living the rest of our lives largely inauthentically by telling ourselves a story – “Well, I’m more authentic than that person over there, so…” And the interesting thing to think about there is that this too, is part of what it is to be a Dasein. Again, Heidegger’s not writing an ethical doctrine here, he’s talking about the nature of what it is to be us. He never says that living authentically is better than living inauthentically, he’s just sort of laying it out.

Minute 14:10 in Episode #102 (my transcription may contain small deviations from what was actually said)

In my experience, many scientists get to this same “rest area” in their practices. We stop trying to arrive at a deeper understanding of the how the culture and time period we were born into is influencing what work we do and how we do it. We keep doing what others around us are doing, even if we don’t really understand it or agree with it. We stop actively examining our behavior and stop actively trying to identify the things we’re doing just ’cause someone told us to do it (e.g., providing the p-value for a reviewer or the power analysis for a grant proposal!). I can’t help but wonder if introducing concepts with clear words like “facticity” and “fallenness” could help motivate more introspection and reform of practices at the individual level — maybe someone else has tried this already and I just haven’t heard it yet.

P.S. I think the ideas presented here are interesting and potentially helpful – but that does not imply I endorse Heidegger’s beliefs and actions in general!