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Complexity And The Relationship Between Knowledge And Action

FoCAS Initiative
FoCAS Initiative

The document discusses the relationship between knowledge and action when dealing with complex systems. It argues that relying only on scientific knowledge and analysis is insufficient for managing complexity and making decisions. A "logic of care" is needed that incorporates situated knowledge, values, and continuous engagement. When outcomes are uncertain, the focus should not be only on desired outcomes but also on ensuring fair and virtuous decision-making processes that allow all stakeholders to have a voice. Complexity methods can help inform decisions, but other approaches are also needed, and any tools created must consider normative and ethical questions around whose interests and opinions are prioritized.

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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 Observation Objective information Action Evaluation
LOGIC OF CARE Situated knowledge Experimental action Continuous engagement
CARE AND INTUITION IN WINE GROWING Wine growing under this sky Intuition as highest level of expertise (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986) Experts respond quickly and accurately to the contingencies of the situation without the conscious analytical division of situations into parts and evaluation according to context-independent rules Intuitive action : a form of intelligent behaviour which goes beyond cognitivist understandings of humans as rational and 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?
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Complexity And The Relationship Between Knowledge And Action

  • 1. COMPLEXITY AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION Anna Krzywoszynska, Durham University
  • 2. 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?
  • 3. KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION: DIFFERENT MODELS Past Future know act analysis foresight Statistics, cost benefit analysis, risk assessments Dominates policy
  • 4. 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.
  • 5. 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
  • 7. LOGIC OF CARE Situated knowledge Experimental action Continuous engagement
  • 8. CARE AND INTUITION IN WINE GROWING Wine growing under this sky Intuition as highest level of expertise (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986) Experts respond quickly and accurately to the contingencies of the situation without the conscious analytical division of situations into parts and evaluation according to context-independent rules Intuitive action : a form of intelligent behaviour which goes beyond cognitivist understandings of humans as rational and calculating decision makers
  • 9. 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?
  • 10. 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.
  • 11. 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?