THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE AS A RADICAL SCIENTIFIC PROJECT

Abstract

Philip Tetlock underestimates the import of his own Expert Political Judgment. It is much more than a critical scientific evaluation of the accuracy and consistency of political pundits. It also offers a blueprint for challenging expertise more generally-in the name of scientific advancement. “Thinking the unthinkable”-a strategy Tetlock employs when he gets experts to consider counterfactual scenarios that are far from their epistemic comfort zones-has had explosive consequences historically for both knowledge and morality by extending our sense of what is possible. Thinking the unthinkable might also put into question contemporary assumptions about the legitimacy of science.

Notes

1. For a psychology that has taken this point as foundational for the discipline, see Hammond and Stewart 2001.

2. The locus classicus of this thesis is Cassirer [1910] 1953.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller is the author, inter alia, of Social Epistemology (Indiana University Press, 1988); Science: The Art of Living (Acumen, 2010), and Humanity 2.0: Foundations for 21st Century Social Thought (Macmillan, 2011)