Heikkinen, H.L.T., Huttunen, R. & Kakkori, L.
"And this story is true..."On the Problem of narrative truth
Scientific studies are fictions like novels. The only difference is that they are badly written but then again, so are most of novels.
- Pentti Saarikoski
A paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research University of Edinburgh, September 20th-23rd, 2000.
In the field of qualitative research, narrative approaches have recently been a topic of discussion. In narrative research, the concept of truth is being construed in a different way than in empirical-analytical research tradition. The truth as a narrative seems to be closer to the notion of truth in literature or art than the one in natural sciences. In this presentation, we discuss the problem of truth as narrative from various philosophical viewpoints on a general level, including the classic truth theories correspondence theory, coherence theory and pragmatism. To develop the theme further, we concentrate on three specific views. Firstly, we discuss the truth as the "revealing of the being" - a Heideggerian and Gadamerian view on the truth. Secondly, we take a Foucaultian view on truth as power. Thirdly, we discuss the narrative truth as the Brunerian "fabula".
1 Introduction
Think Caterpillar. The archetype of a machine, full of power and masculinity. Hear the noise of the chain tracks, smell the oil and the exhaust gas. Feel how the ground trembles, and how the power of the robust diesel engine is transmitted to the terrain. See the caterpillar treads pound the earth’s surface, and the boulders to be pushed aside. Feel the power, become somebody, become a Caterpillar - wear Caterpillar!
The previous narrative was not written by a copywriter, although it could easily have been. The caterpillar is a good example of how the imago of a product has been applied from heavy machinery to clothing. In business and merchandising, the creation of images and brands is becoming increasingly based on the stories, which are gathered around the products themselves. The evocative narratives are then subsequently connected and applied to a wide variety of products. In some cases, the product narratives have become more important than the product itself. The brand of the product is in some cases regarded as more valuable than the productive means. Perhaps some day Caterpillar could forget about the production of earthmovers and continue only with the production of clothing, and Harley Davidson could cease production in its motorbike plants and concentrate only on making pens. But what would happen to Camel if one day the "Camel Boot Man" were to announce on television that he had quit smoking?
The power of narratives has not only been detected by copywriters, but can indeed be regarded more as a general trend in (post)modern society. It has even been said that we are turning from an information society into a narrative society. No wonder there has been an increasing amount of discussion regarding the role of narratives and biographical writing both in the research process and research reporting. The focus has shifted to narratives to the extent to which we could claim that the linguistic turn in the social sciences has become a narrative turn. The growing interest in biographical and narrative approaches has lately been described as "a change in knowledge culture", and even "a paradigm change" (Chamberlayne, Bornat, & Wengraf 2000).
This paradigm shift has also been called a move from (naive or scientific) realism toward constructivism (Lincoln & Guba 1994). For Jerome Bruner, constructivism is "world making" whereas narratives are "life making" (Bruner 1987, 11-13). From the constructivist viewpoint, without any narrative of myself or of the world, neither would exist - there is no "reality" and no "life" which has not been construed by narratives. This statement of Bruner’s presents an interesting clarification of the parallel between constructivism and the narrative turn in the social sciences. On a more general level, the move can also be connected to the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism, which has blurred previously existing distinctions, including the line between scientific reports and artistic expression. As a consequence, personal autobiographies and narratives have engaged an increasingly captivated audience amongst social scientists. There has even been discussion as to whether research reports could potentially be written in the form of novels (e.g. Eisner & Peshkin 1990, 365; Eisner 1993, Richardson 1994 and 1997).
Expressions like "a paradigm change" and "a change in knowledge culture" refer to a fundamental change in basic beliefs concerning reality and knowledge production. The constitutive attitudes to the nature of knowledge seem to have altered. The main discovery beyond this notion is that our knowledge is a composition of narratives, which is perpetually being constructed in the process of social interaction. These days, human knowledge is no longer regarded as "a grand narrative" which tends to draw together a coherent and universal view on reality, based on the correspondence between the "things-in-the-world" and sentences. Rather, it is a plurality of small narratives, local and personal in nature, which are always under (social and psychological) construction.
In this view on reality and knowledge, the individual and the social are intertwined. As Jerome Bruner has said, narrative is "an organizing principle by which people organize their experience in, knowledge about, and transactions with the social world" (Bruner 1990, 35). Individuals make sense of the world and of themselves through narratives, both by telling them and listening to other peoples’ stories.
Narrative is a fundamental means through which people experience their lives, or through which they actually live their lives. It is the narratives in which we situate our experience. Human experience is always narrated, and human knowledge and personal identities are constructed and revised through intersubjectively shared narratives. The narrative is a primary act of mind; "the primary scheme by which human existence is rendered meaningful" (Polkinghorne 1988, 11). The reflexive project of knowing and achieving an identity is to sustain a coherent, yet continuously revised, narrative about ourselves and the world we live in.
But if knowledge continues to become increasingly personal and local narratives as seems to be the case what will become of research work? Is truth merely a parasite of good stories, and if so, should artistic expression be separated of social sciences? Or could we aspire some "magic of the real" in our research work (cf. Bridges 1999)?
What kinds of uses for the concept of truth could we discover in the context of narrative research? If the answer to this question is, that we are unable to find any uses for truth, then we would indeed find ourselves deep in the morass of relativism. In order to avoid relativism we must locate a notion of truth, although one that distinctly differs from that of the field tai sphere of positivistic science. In this presentation, we will take a brief look at the truth as a narrative from various philosophical viewpoints, including the classic truth theories, the correspondence theory, the coherence theory and pragmatism. As we have done in our handling of the topic in our earlier work (Heikkinen, Huttunen & Kakkori 2000), we place more significant emphasis here on three specific views. Firstly, we discuss the "revealing of the being," which refers to the hermeneutical view on truth, based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Secondly, we take a look at the notion of truth as power, which is based on the work of Michel Foucault. Thirdly, we discuss the narrative truth as "sjuzet," "fabula" and "forma" - a view, which is based on the work of Russian formalists, and further developed by Jerome Bruner. On our way to the truth as narrative, we refer to some novels and films to illustrate certain aspects of our argumentation.
2 Truth as correspondence between the story and the world
According to the correspondence theory of truth, a sentence is considered to be true if it corresponds to the state of affairs in reality. Thus, according to the correspondence theory, if Høeg's novel Borderliners represented the state of affairs as it really was, adding nothing and leaving out nothing, the story would be true. This aspect could be useful when evaluating historical tai historically based novels, although in the case of Höeg it is quite useless.
We might take a more sophisticated version of the correspondence theory, like the one proposed by the young Ludwig Wittgenstein in his famous study Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1962). In the opening page of Tractatus the world view of logical atomism is presented. According to Wittgenstein, the world consists of atomic state of affairs and of nothing else (Wittgenstein 1962, 31):
1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
(...)
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
A sentence is true only if the things in the world are linked to each other in accordance with the way in which words are linked to each other in a sentence; in other words, atomic facts correspond to atomic sentences. The meaning of the atomic sentence is its counterpart in reality. This is an elementary part of the Wittgensteinian picture theory of meaning. The truth is regarded as the link which connects the world and language. People creates thoughts (logical pictures) out of atomic facts. Thoughts or logical pictures are true if the meaning content corresponds with reality. To discover the truth or untruth of a picture, one must compare it with reality (see paragraphs 2.21-2.224 in Tractatus).
The Wittgensteinian picture theory can be interpreted in the following way: an atomic sentence in the sphere of language corresponds to an atomic fact (the case or not-the-case) in the world. A complex sentence is a condensation of several atomic sentences and is true if its constituents are true. The only way to find out if the complex sentence (theory, story) is true is to reduce it to atomic sentences (empirical sentences) and to compare atomic sentences with atomic facts. For example, to verify the sentence (the theory, the narrative) "Every human being is a philosopher," we should reduce it to several atomic sentences like: "Hannu Heikkinen is a philosopher," "Rauno Huttunen is a philosopher," "Leena Kakkori is a philosopher" etc. After having done this (that is, giving the perfect empirical description to the theory), we should compare these atomic sentences with reality. If we were to discover that even one human being is not a philosopher, the complex sentence would be untrue.
The biggest problem that Wittgenstein confronted was the verification problem of psychological sentences, constructed from the perspective of the first person. For example, how could we verify sentences like "I have pains," "I am happy," "I feel blue" etc. Høeg=s Borderliners, for instance, is full of such sentences, as is any autobiographical narrative. In the case of psychological sentences we might test their truth content by asking what reality we are comparing the sentences to. It is absurd to compare the sentence "I am happy" to any physical reality. This way of thinking is called "physicalism", which is applied in brain studies. Another possibility is to construct some kind of "inner reality," in other words a reality constructed out of inner experiences B a notion which is referred to as "phenomenalism". The only way to accomplish this, however, is through the formation of psychological sentences. These kind of dilemmas could explain why Wittgenstein abandoned, or at least lost interest in, his picture theory of meaning (see Wittgenstein 1975, 90-91).
3 Truth as coherence between stories
According to the coherence theory, the truth is regarded as the compatibility between sentences. The relationship between language and the world remains irrelevant. Only a connection between theories, stories and statements is involved. According to this view, a story is true when it does not contradict with other stories, but rather forms coherent and compatible metanarrative with other stories. Problems occur when several competing metanarrative appear simultaneously, which presents an incompatible picture of things. For example, the story of Creation contradicts with the metanarrative of Darwin=s theory of evolution. In cases such as this one must choose which metanarrative should be used as the criteria of truth of a single narrative. Figure 1 illustrates the type of situation in which one must choose which metanarrative is used as the criterion of truth.
Another way to apply the coherence theory to the theory of narrativity is to consider it in the light of the Kuhnian paradigm. Thomas Kuhn (1970) called the prevailing scientific framework a "paradigm". According to Kuhn, within "normal science" we collect knowledge, which supports the prevailing paradigm, and we articulate the paradigm in greater detail. Normal science collects facts, which strengthen the existing paradigm. Normal science aims at better coherence between the theory and the related observations. For Kuhn, natural scientific research in the period of "normal science" - as opposed to the abnormal period of scientific revolutions - is the solving of puzzle-problems. As such, a scientist is a kind of "puzzle-solver". The primary concern is not to find new "truths" from nature, but to strengthen the existing truth (paradigm) by finding its missing pieces.