Working deliberat(iv)ely with(in) wicked problems

The existential, epistemological and ethical nexus of imperfect knowledge

Bibliographic Data

ID9843161
AuthorsMartin O’connor (0000-0002-5278-3399, Université Paris-Saclay, corresponding author), Martin Paul O’Connor, Jean-Marc Douguet (0000-0003-3204-6700, Université Paris-Saclay)
Year2024
Volume163
Pages103436
Publication date2024-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFutures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-3287 • E-ISSN: 1873-6378
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.futures.2024.103436
OpenAlexW4401198194
LanguageEN
References cited26

Our problem is to express intertwined existential, epistemological and ethical aspects of a scientific method for informing action under conditions of high stakes and urgency. Addressing situations where, taking Descartes at his word, “...the pressure of things to be done does not allow us to stop and make a meticulous check,” we set out a framework for multi-actor multi-criteria deliberative evaluation for building knowledge partnerships within wicked problems of action. With the metaphor of Borges' Library of Babel, we suggest a cataloguing process whose effect is to signal, or assign, the Qualities of a knowledge proposition along several axes of the context of their mobilisation. The protagonists in a controversy are actors de facto in a KQA deliberation process, contributors (willy-nilly) to a collective resource of putative knowledge claims, participants in Borges' eternally-unfinished Congress of the World. Finally, with urgency and high stakes is associated the passage - repeated, traumatic, ineluctable - through dilemmas. These passages, irreducible to rationalisation, are often painful and always transformative. Adopting a third Borges metaphor, The Garden of Forking Paths, we argue for a reflexivity accepting the ethical complexity of our status as vulnerable actors engaged hastily, in necessarily value-laden terms, in matters of life-and-death. • A structured deliberative approach to the mobilisation and evaluation of knowledge propositions, for Post-Normal conditions. • History of science context (from Descartes to Maxwell), in synthesis of Natural History, deterministic chaos and complexity. • Knowledge quality as fitness for purpose, triangulation [What, Why, for Whom?] integrating scientific and societal KQA. • A review of different published formulations since the 1990s of “matrixial” approaches to knowledge-action problems. • Sustained use of metaphors from Jorge Luis BORGES, to evoke dilemmas and impossibilities of working within wickedness

Epistemology · Existentialism · Imperfect · Nexus (standard · Sociology · Computer Science · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy

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