A Uniquely Posthuman Logic of Inference: Moving Beyond Reductio Ad Absurdum Reasoning in the Empirical Social Sciences

• In Event: Ontologies of Promise: Cultivating Equity

Abstract

Objectives
Logic is often thought of as rules for reasoning that seeks certainty as its ideal outcome. Understood in this way, logic can seem anathema to the themes of speculative reasoning, ontological pluralism, and openness that are featured in posthumanist scholarship.
This paper will:
● Draw on past and contemporary theories of logic to challenge this narrow conception of logic (Author, 2014, 2021).
● Review how posthumanist philosophies seek affirmative alternatives to practices of inquiry that rely primarily on critique as a mode of analysis and why this constitutes a departure from most contemporary social science methodologies—from null hypothesis testing to critical theoretic identification of ideological contradictions and poststructuralist deconstructions.
● Offer an alternative logic of inference germane to posthumanist empirical inquiry and unpack the ontological, ethical, and political implications of this practice of reasoning.

Theoretical Framework
Early 20th century and more recent scholarship on logic includes work that falls outside the aforementioned narrow conception of logic. More pluralistic, speculative, generative, and open-ended practices of reasoning also have consistent patterns which can be identified and even formalized without being truncated. Examples include logics developed by early pragmatist philosophers (Peirce & de Waal, 2014; Royce, 1905), contemporary paraconsistent logics (da Costa, Crauss, & Bueno, 2007), and quantum logics (Birkhoff & von Neumann, 1936; Dalla Chiara & Giuntini, 2002). This paper draws upon these more inclusive logics to offer an account of inference more germane to posthumanist empirical studies.

Mode of Inquiry
This paper presents a philosophical examination of the logic of inference underlying most empirical research methodology in the field of education. It will explain the limits of this logic and the ways posthumanist ontologies require a different, or more inclusive, practice of inference.

Data Sources
The paper will draw upon a literature review of over 100 empirical studies in the field of education that use posthumanist ontologies as their core theoretical framework. This review will provide examples of the unique kinds of inference being enacted by social science scholars influenced by posthumanist philosophy.

Substantiated Conclusions
The paper observes that empirical research grounded in post-positivism, critical theory, and poststructuralism all rely on reduction ad absurdum forms of reasoning. It further explains how reductio arguments, grounded in the principle of non-contradiction, cannot provide support for practices of speculative affirmation found in a significant subset of posthumanist empirical scholarship. It will offer an outline of an alternative logic of inference more suited to posthumanist scholarship.

Scholarly Significance of the Paper
Among the advantages of this more inclusive logic are: 1) the capacity for application beyond the confines of human reason, 2) a vocabulary that precisely identifies the limits of practices of inquiry that centrally depend on critique, and 3) a means for highlighting the ethical stakes of ontologically constituting relations through practices of representation and inference. It is this simultaneously older and newer understanding of logic, one that reaches beyond the bounds of the human and holds space for relational ontologies, that can help refine and amplify posthumanist philosophy’s contribution to the social sciences.

Authors

• Scott L. Pratt, University of Oregon

• Jerry L. Rosiek, University of Oregon