The ineffable: A framework for the study of methods through the case of mid-century mind-brain sciences

Abstract

Conventionally, the story of modern research methods has been told as the gradual ascendancy of practices that scientists designed to extract evidence out of minds and bodies. These methods, which we call ‘methods of extraction’, have not been the exclusive ways in which experts have generated evidence. In a variety of case studies, scholars in Science and Technology Studies have persuasively documented scientists’ efforts to know the extra-linguistic, internal experiences of other beings – prior to or aside from their efforts to represent those experiences in words and images. We propose a new framework to resolve a seeming contradiction in STS, which stems from the fact that the language of ‘subjectivity’ has been used to refer to two analytically distinct features of scientists’ methods: the epistemological premises of a method, on the one hand, and the evaluation of the method in the moral economy of science, on the other hand. Building on Shapin’s provocation to study the ‘sciences of subjectivity’, we analyze three sites in the epistemic niche of 1950s US Federal mind-brain scientists and find that ‘methods of extraction’ neither replaced nor invariably trumped additional methods that researchers designed to provide evidence of people’s interior experiences. We call these additional approaches ‘methods of ingression’ because researchers purported to generate authoritative evidence by climbing inside the experience of another being, rather than pulling the evidence out. Methods of ingression and methods of extraction coexisted and developed iteratively in dynamic relationship with each other – not in isolation nor in competition, as is commonly assumed. Through this empirical study, we provide a new framework that departs from the binary framework of objectivity-subjectivity to allow scholars in STS to more aptly describe scientists’ epistemic worlds; to discern a greater range of methods at play; and to appreciate the warrants for knowledge used in our own field.

Aiming at the ‘proper’ body: How exoskeletons foster ‘risky’ bodies and conflicting knowledge regimes

“…Because they collect data and establish data profiles from one therapy session to another, exoskeletons can be placed in the category of those devices I call ‘extraction technologies’, following a term coined by Stark and Campbell (2018). These authors, who, with respect to research in psychiatry, discuss a typology of methods that are used ‘to know the interiority of others and to represent experiences that they regarded as beyond representation’, evoke two types of method: methods of extraction and methods of ingression (Stark & Campbell, 2018, p. 790).…”

“…Because they collect data and establish data profiles from one therapy session to another, exoskeletons can be placed in the category of those devices I call ‘extraction technologies’, following a term coined by Stark and Campbell (2018). These authors, who, with respect to research in psychiatry, discuss a typology of methods that are used ‘to know the interiority of others and to represent experiences that they regarded as beyond representation’, evoke two types of method: methods of extraction and methods of ingression (Stark & Campbell, 2018, p. 790). Exoskeletons engage in a specific type of access to the user’s interiority by means of their sensors because they collect information from their users’ bodies, contributing to reinforce current practices related to the ‘extraction imperative’ (Zuboff, 2019, p. 87) in rehabilitation worlds; hence, my categorising them as ‘extraction technologies’.…”

Narrating the Unspeakable

“…However, I am less convinced that doing so is a required part of ethnographic research. Stark and Campbell (2018) correctly assert that ethnographers use their own methods of ingression in the form of participant observation. Learning through experience, ethnographers 'actively deploy [techniques] to access the interior experience of other beings through their own interiority' (Stark and Campbell 2018, 810).…”

Documenting the multisensory and ephemeral: Navajo Chantway singers and the troubles of a “science” of ceremonialism

“…To see Matthews’ documentary efforts solely within the framework of objectivity‐subjectivity is complicated by the ultimately ineffable nature of his “scientific” object: ceremonialism. A useful alternative framework, especially for sciences investigating “ineffable” experiences and events, has been proposed by Stark and Nancy (). Stark and Campbell's “extraction‐ingression” framework allows for historical analysis of scientific practices when practitioners used both the tools of (objective) external, materializable data accumulation and (subjective) experiential knowledge‐making.…”