Contemporary Topics of Big Data, Social Complexity and Social Epistemology ^†

Abstract

The emergence of big data increases the complexity of society, and it also provides new objects and perspectives for social epistemology research. This paper aims to comprehensively illustrate the social changes caused by big data and deeply understand the complexity of society, and it puts forward suggestions on how to expand and deepen the research of social epistemology.

1. Deeply Understand the Changes Caused by Big Data

In fact, this kind of change is what the contemporary world and China are facing in depth. What are the changes?

The first change concerns our world. Originally, when we talk about the world, we mean a material world. Later, we emphasized on a living world, and then, we added a spiritual world. Now, a new world has appeared, which is the data world. The emergence of the big data world actually gives the world a new pattern. Although it seems like the direct effect of big data, the data that have been stored in computers has actually caused many new problems. For example, which world is the real world? Of course, you may think that the physical world is the real world, the living world is the real world, the world of relationship is the real world, and the world of thought is the reflection of the real physical world. If big data is further popularized, we will find that how our thoughts grasp the physical world, relational world and living world depends on the correlation, especially the relevance, between the data world and our physical world, relational world and living world. The more real the data world is, the clearer we can see the real world. Therefore, the first change is that our world has changed. Popper once put forward the theory of “Three Worlds”, which requires us to deeply study what it means under the condition of big data. Anyway, we are living in a world that has never been so complex.

The second change is the technological change caused by big data. As a result of big data, the entire information technology system has undergone a series of changes from collection, reception, storage, exploration, interpretation, protection and so on. Some even consider that the core of the fourth industrial revolution is the data revolution. For example, why does the original AI need to enter big data intelligence now? This is a revolutionary change, and this change is greatly magnified by 5G. Although 5G seems to be a problem of data transmission, it has actually triggered a systematic and profound changes in the production, life and communication of the whole world.

The third change is that big data has caused systematic and holistic changes in the way people live and communicate. The social world is undergoing profound changes, which are still in the process. The production, living and communication of human society are all being restructured under the role of the information-driven high-tech systems. Since the “Made in China 2025” plan is likely to reach the center of the world in the future, it will become the largest, most comprehensive, and possibly the most advanced and important industrial system. China has established the most powerful industrial system in the world. This shows that our human society is experiencing profound changes in production and life and even in our emotions.

The fourth change is the change of world view. When we observed the world in the past, we focused on a relatively simple thing in an individual way. Now, we are facing an extremely complex world—the big data world. The connotation within this world has exceeded our original imagination. If philosophy is the essence of the spirit of the times, it will bring about changes in the whole world view, social and historical view, values and human studies because of the above three changes, and finally, almost all ideological theories will change.

From the above, we can know the changes brought by big data thoroughly, and this kind of change may be just a beginning. Where it will go in the future is not yet predictable.

2. Deeply Understand the Social Complexity Caused by Big Data

I have been paying attention to the issue of complexity from the “Old Three Theories” to the later “New Three Theories” for a long time. In 2003, I published a special article named “Complexity and Innovation in Humanities and Social Sciences” in Philosophical Research, and since then, I have been studying the complexity of global governance and national governance all the way to today. Judging by the current development of the world and China, the complexity of society is beyond our original imagination. Social epistemology was used to talked about social complexity. We originally said that social complexity is mainly different from nature, though nature itself is also very complex. By comparing nature complexity and social complexity, we will find that the nature operates according to natural rhythms and relies on natural laws, when the complexity of society itself has many more advanced problems,

The first social complexity is the complexity of social ontology, which is the premise and basis of all research. Originally, we talked about social existence and social awareness. Now, it seems that the social data system has profoundly affected both social existence and social awareness. The reality of data or the complexity of the relationship shown by data has become an important part of social life, which needs further discussion. All this have been changed by big data. First of all, it has constituted a more complex social world whether from its elements, its relations, its structure, its operation mode and its evolution mode, and even its isolation, its collapse, its catastrophes and its disaster will become more and more, I am afraid. Under the condition of big data, on the one hand, we can more clearly see the rules for how society operates; on the other hand, the society will be full of catastrophes, uncertainties, diversities and complexities.

The second social complexity is the change in social values and social significance.

When we generally talk about social values, we mean the distribution of wealth, power, discourse and social status among people. Now it seems that data are becoming a kind of power, a kind of wealth and an important factor of social justice and injustice. How can we truly allocate data, a special strategic resource, in a fair sense? In my opinion, one of the outstanding features of this era of big data is the imbalance and insufficiency of data distribution and data possession. Different individuals and social groups vary greatly in their ability to collect and interpret data, and their ability to master big data technology varies even more. Under this circumstance, the diversity of social values includes a very important factor from the perspective of value theory—that is, how the data value can be fairly distributed, reasonably used and safely guaranteed by the society. If there is a value system that has become extremely complex due to the infiltration of big data, which may exceed our existing value distribution system and social control ability, then how can we apply big data in a reasonable way?

The third social complexity is the epistemology of the data age. From the perspective of traditional Marxist philosophy, what kind of epistemology is reliable? We used to talk about empiricism epistemology, which is “Seeing is believing, hearing is believing, and touching is believing”. If you want to know the taste of pears, you have to taste them yourself. Empiricism epistemology is still useful in our life, but it has also turned to a new field, which is the epistemology of big data. The epistemology of big data has a wide range of contents. The understanding and interpretation of data and their connotation and meaning become extremely complex and multidimensional, which leads to extreme differences in people’s cognitive abilities. This means that epistemology is now facing more complex problems, such as the authenticity and falsity of data and how to evaluate and identify them under the condition of big data. This poses an unprecedented challenge to our cognitive ability.

The fourth social complexity is the logic of the development of social history. What kind of operation logic is behind the development of social history? Is it based on a physical inheritance, a relational collision, a data reorganization, or an extremely complex interaction between them? We have been talking about the parallelogram of force in the past. But due to the changes in the above three aspects, the mode of existence and evolution of society have changed greatly, and even the logic on how to grasp historical progress has changed. The core issue here lies in normal logic and abnormal logic, as well as their interweaving and interaction. We focused on normal logic in the past, but now it seems that the impact of abnormal logic is extremely severe.

3. Social Epistemology Research for Complex Data Society

Our team have studied social epistemology for many years, which have focused on the problem of social complexity. When I first put forward social epistemology in China, I added a task to explore the mystery of human society’s self-knowledge. At that time, it was believed that self-knowledge was more complicated than object-based knowledge. However, even now it seems that the understanding of social objectiveness is extremely complex, and it becomes more complex due to the involvement of big data. Later, I wrote an article called “Deeply Exploring the Mystery of the Complexity of Human Society—Review and Prospect of Social Epistemology”. How complex is the social epistemology in the perspective of big data? This needs to be discussed systematically. There are many problems, which includes the following three core problems:

Firstly, regarding society and social epistemology, its research needs to be expanded to the extremely complex social world related to big data and the complexity of the highly data-based social world;

Secondly, it requires that our research methods should be greatly expanded and updated, and we should be able to learn to use the theory and methods of big data to cope with the highly data-based social world;

Thirdly, we should actively carry out interdisciplinary research. Big data itself has fundamentally broken our traditional discipline boundaries, so that all of us need to have a revolutionary transformation of ourselves before we can really acquire the ability to conduct interdisciplinary research. We should consciously and constantly renew and surpass ourselves.