Working deliberat(iv)ely with(in) wicked problems: The existential, epistemological and ethical nexus of imperfect knowledge

Abstract

Our problem is to express intertwined existential, epistemological and ethical aspects of a scientific method for informing action under conditions of high stakes and urgency. Addressing situations where, taking Descartes at his word, “…the pressure of things to be done does not allow us to stop and make a meticulous check,” we set out a framework for multi-actor multi-criteria deliberative evaluation for building knowledge partnerships within wicked problems of action. With the metaphor of Borges' Library of Babel, we suggest a cataloguing process whose effect is to signal, or assign, the Qualities of a knowledge proposition along several axes of the context of their mobilisation. The protagonists in a controversy are actors de facto in a KQA deliberation process, contributors (willy-nilly) to a collective resource of putative knowledge claims, participants in Borges' eternally-unfinished Congress of the World. Finally, with urgency and high stakes is associated the passage - repeated, traumatic, ineluctable - through dilemmas. These passages, irreducible to rationalisation, are often painful and always transformative. Adopting a third Borges metaphor, The Garden of Forking Paths, we argue for a reflexivity accepting the ethical complexity of our status as vulnerable actors engaged hastily, in necessarily value-laden terms, in matters of life-and-death.