horrors

minha vida tem sido isso:

The attempt to adequate the links between representation and represented object in a research can lead to what Woolgar (1988) denominated “the methodological horrors”, which are ways in which attempts to effect connections between those two entities can go wrong. Such inadequacy can be expressed by three problems: indexicality, inconcludability, and reflexivity. According to the author, scientists have their own procedures to try to get rid of those horrors, strategically managing to deny the problem. But, despite their efforts in finding better adequacy between representations and objects, the mistakes are still embedded in the scientific construct, in the theory, even after the problem had been strategically managed. A brief account to this problem, in this section, will be worth to clear the representational problem either in the framework developed and in the results obtained from framework’s application.

Connections between object and its representations can go wrong when its links are indexical, which means, the underlying reality of a representation is never fixed and is always able to change with occasion. The indexicality problem means that is not in principle possible to establish an invariant meaning for any given representation, being always possible to nominate an alternative to any specific proposed meaning. The constant availability of alternative versions of the same event has the fairly obvious consequence that all attempts to do representation are defeasible, that is, are capable of being defeated.

The other methodological horror concerns the inconcludability of the research. The task of exhaustively and precisely defining the underlying meaning of any one representation is, in principle, endless. It is always possible to ask for further clarification, elaboration, elucidation, and the like. Attempts to meet this request are ultimately doomed to failure, once it will involve inevitably the use of other representations as part of the clarification process, and those later representations can be subject to the same kinds of request for yet further elucidation.

The third horror corresponds to the reflexivity between representation and represented object. The interdependence between them is such that the sense of the representation is elaborated by drawing on knowledge of the object, and knowledge of the object is elaborated by what is known about its representation. In other words, it is not possible to conceive of component parts of any representation-object couple as straightforwardly independent. In models of causal explanation, the reflexivity suggests that we recognize Explanans and explanandum as intimately and inextricably intertwined.