The Value of the Humanities

1. Reconstruction
Jennan Ismaels paper Why (Study) the Humanities? The View from Science begins by
distinguishing between two prevalent criticisms of the humanities. The first criticism claims that
the humanities are not worth as much as science and engineering whereas the second claims
that the humanities will ultimately be absorbed into science. Ismael mentions some standard
responses to these concerns, highlighting especially Martha Nussbaums and Stanley Fishs
responses. As she summarizes their positions, Nussbaums claim is that studying the humanities
makes one into a better citizen and thus is crucial for a successful political society whereas Fish
questions why the humanities should have to justify themselves according to external standards,
whether they are corporate or scientific. Ismael sees Nussbaums politically motivated reason for
studying the humanities as responding primarily to the first criticism, whereas Fishs rhetorical
questioning of the justification of the humanities by external standards responds to the second.
While she does not evaluate Nussbaums argument, Ismael sees Fishs response as valid but
largely unpersuasive. Fish, according to Ismael,
makes it sound as though the humanities are a pleasurable diversion to be enjoyed by
those with the privilege of leisure, and that is not the kind of defense that will persuade a
parent to support a childs decision to study art history rather than (say) physics. A deeper
defense would say what kind of knowledge the humanities provide, how it differs from
that of the sciences and why it is indispensible in living a well-lived life. It would address
the relationship between the scientific vision of the human being and the humanistic one
explicitly, and say whether the humanistic vision is undermined by what science is
teaching us about ourselves. (Ismael 2)

In other words, Fishs response fails to give a positive account of the value of humanistic
understanding (even on its own terms) and does not address the challenge of science adequately.
A better response would (1) explain what kinds of knowledge can be gained from studying the
humanities, (2) how this knowledge can be distinguished from the knowledge gained through
science, (3) why this humanistic knowledge is crucial to a good life, (4) how humanistic
knowledge relates to scientific knowledge and (5) whether humanistic knowledge is subsumed
by science. It is to this ambitious defense that Ismael then turns.
She begins by defining what she calls the DL principle, which states that if we know
the initial state of the matter inside [a] sphere [and] all of the forces that impinge on the surface
of the sphere over any interval of time, we can predict the behavior of anything inside the sphere
with certainty (2). Ismael then proceeds to survey different systems that can be said to meet
illustrate this principle, from the relative simplicity of a toaster to the complexity of living beings
such as frogs. Ismael goes on to claim that this principle breaks down when applied to humans.
As she writes, what is special about the human being is that in the human mind we see the
development of a cognitive platform for the emergence of a new behavior management strategy
involving deliberation and choice (4). Unlike frogs, Ismael explains that humans occasionally
have Hamlet moments where our entire life is called into question. These moments highlight
the fact that
the choice-governed aspects of human behaviour does not just depend on the immediate
stimulus, but is open to influence from an in-principle unlimited number of sources, all stored
in memory and encoded in the soft structure of the brain. As if that werent bad enough, the
bearing of this information on behaviour is filtered through a quite complex set of higher-

order principles for choice (goals, values, priorities, beliefs about who we are and who we
want to be) that themselves vary from one person to the next and are constantly evolving. (5)
The upshot of this for Ismael is that choice effectively randomizes the effect of stimulus on
response (5). For Ismael, this means that while laws can be applied to other domains, human
behavior is fundamentally unpredictable. From this, it seems to follow that the ways we ought to
understand human behavior differ fundamentally from the approach of the sciences, and this is
indeed the direction of the remainder of her paper. In a crucial footnote, however, Ismael hedges
on the implications of this point. Citing Philip Kitchers argument, Ismael writes that the
differences that I emphasize might be differences of degree rather than kind (12). I will return
to this point in the evaluation section of my paper, but first will return to characterizing Ismaels
position on the distinctiveness of humanistic knowledge.
Since, as stated above, human behavior cannot be predicted, Ismael emphasizes that it is
crucial to pursue an understanding that explains choices in the terms in which they understand
themselves (6). This kind of understanding is important for Ismael since it does not reduce
humans to material systems, but rather comprehends them as subjects of experience and sources
of agency (6). This kind of understanding cannot be derived from a physical law, but even more
importantly it allows us to interact with other people as rational agents, generating reasons that
will be persuasive to them. Ismael emphasizes in a footnote that this understanding is necessary
if we wish to avoid coercion or manipulation, and therefore by implication is crucial both
ethically and politically. For Ismael, this kind of third person understanding, while crucial, needs
to be supplemented by an understanding that emphasizes the first person perspective, to which I
now turn.

When it comes to first person understanding, the humanities allow us to better address
questions like How should I live? Citing her personal experience reading classic authors like
Plato and Dante, Ismael claims that
once you see your role in creating history, rather than being a passive observer you see that
the humanities are not a recherch pursuit undertaken in leisure from which people with
highbrow tastes draw enjoyment. They help us decide what to make of our lives. They are
the tools of our becoming.
The argument seems to be that these books help us move from a passive to a more active
standpoint, and in doing so help us to figure out how to live. The somewhat poetic expression
tools of our becoming seems to mean in this context that these books facilitate the various ways
that we become who we want to be. Ismael emphasizes the artistic and creative side of this
understanding, since its interpretation rely fundamentally on the imagination. In order to
highlight this, she gives examples of interpretations that bring out unexpected aspects of the
object in question. Interpretation is particularly concerned with discernment for Ismael, not
merely a proliferation of interpretive possibilities. Ismael explains the necessity to get it right
by referring to Iris Murdochs case of a mother-in-laws changing understanding of her daughterin-laws actions. Ismael argues that getting it right is rigorous in a way different than science,
since in this form of understanding, [o]ne has to get comfortable with ambiguity and
squishiness and the lack of full resolution i.e., with interpretation rather than calculation - to
operate in that environment (9). Ismael argues that this conception of humanistic understanding
as interpretation is complementary to scientific understanding and is contained within our
everyday usage of the word understanding. She concludes by writing that we can say on
scientific grounds what is wrong with the idea that the sciences will ever replace (or displace) the

humanities (10). This seems to answer the second cluster of objections mentioned above, since
it answers all the desired attributes: (1) we can gain both third person and first person
understanding from the humanities, (2) humanistic knowledge is interpretive rather than
predictive, (3) that humanistic understanding helps us better engage with others and become
active shapers of our lives, (4) humanistic understanding complementary to, but distinct from,
scientific understanding (although this difference might be one in degree rather than kind) and
(5) that the humanities cannot be subsumed into science.
2. Evaluation
While Ismael meets the challenge she sets for herself, there are a number of problems
with her account. In what follows, I lay out these objections, beginning with those that accept her
premises.
Perhaps the most obvious omission from her analysis is the inspirational value of the
sciences. Our understanding of science can yield, at minimum, what Ismael would consider first
person guidance. A scientist who reads a study on Galileo might pay closest attention to Galileos
discoveries, but those discoveries are not in themselves meaningful unless they place these
discoveries in the context of previous theories and prevailing opinion. The inspiration a scientist
derives from Galileo might instead stem from his struggle against Church authority. It seems
clear in this case that the scientific and humanistic cannot be so clearly separated. Ismael would
probably respond that this understanding of Galileo would then be a humanistic one, but this
seems to arbitrarily claim that scientific understanding exists outside of a context. While this
might be possible for mathematics and physics (although even in those domains there is ample
room for doubt) it is certainly not true of Darwins evolution or Freuds psychoanalysis, two
theories that have had their scientific status questioned.

Ismaels argument also runs into problems when it comes to her analysis of choice.
Regardless of whether one accepts a notion of free will, Ismaels claim that human behavior is
unpredictable seems questionable at best. There are entire disciplines (tellingly called the social
sciences) which do in fact devote their time to predicting human behavior. While Ismael
dismisses psychological understanding as thinner than the kind of understanding she favors, the
fact that psychology and similar fields can predict any behavior at all seems to raise a problem
for her theory. If Ismael were to argue that this would be an instance where there is a difference
in degree rather than kind, claiming that social scientific understanding is somewhere in
between science and humanistic understanding this would still leave the problem of human
biology. While our models may still be far too weak to capture a phenomenon as complex as
human activity, it does seem clear that at least certain local fields can be fairly confidently
mapped. A relatively uncontroversial example of this would be human development. While it is
true that there is variation, there are also predictable trends to the various stages of psychological
and social development that humans undergo. If humans were truly unpredictable, it would be
difficult to predict that an infant that cannot talk will within two years begin to speak. Ismael
could say that this example doesnt account for the distinctly human deliberative capacity. This
strategy, however, would force her to commit to an account where humans are first
fundamentally predictable and then later by becoming agents step outside of the possibility of
being predicted. There is an additional problem with this account: it is not clear why predictions
need to be 100% certain in order to qualify as predictions. The fact that humans are random need
not constitute an objection to predictability, since predictions in quantum mechanics for instance
also function in this way. While Ismael is careful to note that quantum mechanics are at a

different scale than everyday human life, this does not mean that the concept of prediction that
they contain is therefore equally irrelevant.
Both of the above objections accept for the most part Ismaels framing, questioning
instead her conclusions. However, it is not clear that Ismaels concept of the humanities captures
the full scope of the work that actually goes on in those fields, and in the remainder of the paper I
highlight one such omission: critique. Both of the kinds of understanding that Ismael claims are
relevant in the humanities (first and third person) rely on a notion of interpretation. This view
could be called pan-hermeneutic, and finds prominent adherents in both analytic and continental
strands of contemporary thinking. However to reduce the humanities to this function seems to be
a mistake. When a student reads an author in the critical tradition such as Kant or Marx, it is not
only that their understanding of themselves and others changes, but they also gain an
understanding of cognitive or social structure. The humanities teach the value not only of
interpretation (a word etymologically deriving from the Latin interpres, or translator) but also of
analysis and critique (both words etymologically deriving from words to do with distinction and
separation). It is this critical part of the humanities that is completely ignored in Ismaels
account.
The notion of critique raises a related problem. Notably, critical efforts have often
referred to themselves as scientific, although the concept of science at stake is closer to the
German notion of wissenschaft. Ismael would run into problems in categorizing a text like
Hegels Science of Logic, for example, but even in the analytic tradition texts like Wittgensteins
Tractatus Logico-Politicus blend logic with more aphoristic thought. Another example of this
would be Husserls scientific method of phenomenology. Examples like these call into
question what Ismaels definition of science. On these and similar broader concepts of science, it

seems her argument would be doomed from the start, since thinkers like these explicitly claim
that what has traditionally been understood through interpretations can better be understood as
existing within a scientific framework.