In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...) Internet search engine queries for expressions of interest have become quite popular. Apparently, philosophers attempt to surpass the limits of their own linguistic intuitions by appealing to experts or to factual uses of language. I argue that this attempt is commendable but that its execution is wanting. Instead of appealing to dictionaries or Internet queries, philosophers should employ computer-based linguistic corpora in order to confirm or falsify hypotheses about the factual use of language. This approach also has some advantages over methods employed by experimental philosophers. If the importance of ordinary language is stressed, the use of linguistic corpora is hardly avoidable. (shrink)

Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...) DE, and second, the idea of ESV cannot serve as a “foundation” or “root” of distributive egalitarianism. (shrink)

Advocating a sociological explanation of scientific knowledge, David Bloor protests against the adherents of the autonomy of knowledge; i.e., those who asymmetrically explain the credibility of theories in the history of science. These philosophers and historians regard the credibility of true and rational theories due to their proper reasons, while accounting for the acceptance of false or irrational beliefs by citing social causes. Bloor assumes that the credibility of all beliefs is socially influenced, and therefore considers all in need of (...) sociological explanation. To substantiate this claim, he argues that all epistemic factors that are appealed to in explaining true or rational beliefs are really social. However, this argument aligns rational entities with social factors, and thus, undermines the ground of this division. Therefore, his prior complaint of the autonomy of knowledge would be invalidated. Hence, there is a conflict between Bloor’s objection to the asymmetrical explanation of scientific theories and his account of the social construction of epistemic reasons. In this paper, we reveal this concealed conflict and attempt to suggest ways to resolve it. (shrink)

The European tradition makes a sharp distinction between animism and science. On the basis of this distinction, either animism is reproved for failing to reach the heights of science, or science is reproved for failing to reach the heights of animism. In this essay, I draw on work in the history and philosophy and science, combined with a method from the sociology of scientific knowledge, to question the sharpness of this distinction. Along the way, I also take guidance from the (...) research of North American Indigenous scholars. As it turns out, there is a rich, if largely overlooked, tradition of Aristotelian animism running through the history of modern European science, and this tradition sometimes resonates with Indigenous perspectives. By challenging the entrenched distinction between animism and science, I aim to help reconcile ongoing tensions between Indigenous and European scientific groups, and so strengthen prospects for their mutually beneficial cooperation. (shrink)

The following paper argues that issues in paradigmatic proposals for solving the new demarcation problem stem from absolutist assumptions about judgments of value legitimacy. Both the problem of uninformativeness (Larroulet Philippi 2020; Fernandez-Pinto 2014, 2015) and the problem of ambiguous judgments of cases (Hicks 2014; Intemann 2017) are explained by an absolutist pretension contained in one of the main aims of these proposals: providing criteria for differentiating legitimate from illegitimate uses of values, without qualification. After presenting the problems and showing (...) how they stem from that common source, we will sketch a way forward, inspired mainly by Joseph Rouse’s Beyond Epistemic Sovereignty (1996), advancing routes that can allow philosophers of science to evade these pitfalls and engage with scientific practice in a more salutary manner. (shrink)

Book review of: Jeff Kochan (2017). Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Cambridge UK: Open Book Publishers).

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...) discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

History and Philosophy of Science. Between Description and Construction. Taking into consideration the huge amount of programs and departments in ‘History and Philosophy of Science’ (HPS), partly including also technology and sociology of science, the rather weak theoretical conceptualization of this field seems surprising. HPS is conceived of neither as a mere addition of history of science and philosophy of science, nor as a good will parallel action. Therefore, the question arises about the genuine subject and method of this trans‐ (...) and interdisciplinary field of research and teaching. The recent postulate of an “integrated HPS” indicates the need of a closer and more intrinsic cooperation and interaction between history of science and philosophy of science (covering also the social and cultural sciences) from a theoretical and practical point of view. In addition, there should be no more privileging of any part in this joint scholarly enterprise by overcoming the context of discovery and the context of justification. Some best practices and desiderata are mentioned together with the forgotten history of the philosophy of science itself. Based on the description of the scholarly field an ideal‐typical model of HPS is offered. (shrink)

This paper tries to motivate three desiderata for historical epistemologies: (a) that they should be reflective about the pedigree of their conceptual apparatus; (b) that they must face up to the potentially relativistic consequences of their historicism; and (c) that they must not forget the hard-won lessons of microhistory (i.e. historical events must be explained causally; historical events must not be artificially divided into internal/intellectual and external/social “factors” or “levels”; and constructed series of homogenous events must not be treated as (...) quasi-organisms). Ian Hacking’s work on styles of reasoning and Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s investigation into epistemic virtues are used to identify the costs of neglecting these desiderata. (shrink)

Au cours des vingt dernières années, le champ de l’épistémologie s’est tellement élargi, en termes d’objets comme de méthodes, que les frontières qui distinguaient traditionnellement cette discipline d’autres domaines d’étude semblent avoir été abolies. La psychologie sociale, les sciences cognitives, la sociologie, l’histoire, les sciences politiques, l’anthropologie ou encore les études de genre, pour ne nommer que celles-ci, revendiquent toutes leur pertinence quand il s’agit de rendre compte de tout ou partie du phénomène de la connaissance humaine. Si pour certains (...) théoriciens, ces prétentions sont légitimes et même bienvenues, d’autres tiennent fermement à l’indépendance de l’épistémologie comme type d’approche et méthode d’analyse. En nous concentrant en particulier sur les récentes publications en français de Roger Pouivet et Pascal Engel, notre but est ici de rendre compte et discuter d’au moins certains des arguments qui animent ce débat. (shrink)

Social constructivist approaches to science have often been dismissed as inaccurate accounts of scientific knowledge. In this article, we take the claims of robust social constructivism (SC) seriously and attempt to find a theory which does instantiate the epistemic predicament as described by SC. We argue that Freudian psychoanalysis, in virtue of some of its well-known epistemic complications and conceptual confusions, provides a perfect illustration of what SC claims is actually going on in science. In other words, the features SC (...) mistakenly ascribes to science in general correctly characterize the epistemic status of Freudian psychoanalysis. This sheds some light on the internal disputes in the field of psychoanalysis, on the sociology of psychoanalytic movement, and on the “war” that has been waged over Freud's legacy with his critics. In addition, our analysis offers an indirect and independent argument against SC as an account of bona fide science, by illustrating what science would look like if it were to function as SC claims it does. (shrink)

This essay is a follow-up to a previous article by the author, “Epistemic Grace: Antirelativism as Theology in Disguise,” published in Common Knowledge 13, nos. 2–3 : 250–80. Its central claim was that relativism and absolutism should be understood as categories that are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive; the two categories form a dichotomy, and thus the rejection of absolutism is a necessary and sufficient condition for the embrace of relativism and vice versa. Daniel Paksi, in a essay titled “Relativism (...) or Absolutism? David Bloor and the Snares of an Unfortunate Dichotomy,” claims that it is possible to adopt a position, a “third way,” that is neither relativist nor absolutist. He proposes that the “emergentism” of Michael Polanyi is such a third way. In response, David Bloor argues that Paksi's proposed third way is beset by profound and well-known problems of obscurity—specifically, by what is sometimes called the two-worlds problem. Bloor claims that the dichotomy of relativism and absolutism is more intelligible and more defensible than the emergentism that Paksi defends and concludes that the only ism between relativism and absolutism is obscurantism. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the remarkable achievements made by medical science over the last half of the twentieth century, there is a palpable sense that a strictly medical view of human health, that is one founded on modernist assumptions, has become problematic, if not counterproductive. In this study, I argue that as nursing continues to eagerly welcome and indeed champion medical epistemology in the form of knowledge transfer, evidence‐based practice, research utilization, outcomes‐based practice, quantifiable efficiency and effectiveness, it risks becoming little more than (...) a medical science addendum and indeed one that inherits the problems now facing contemporary medicine. The purpose of this study then is to attempt to resituate nursing as a discipline at work within an ontopolitical matrix of radical democratic pluralism. I begin by tracing a philosophical line from Kuhn’s paradigms to Bloor’s strong programme of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Following this, I attempt to explicate the thought of Bruno Latour as a philosophical alternative to Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Next, I outline the radical pluralism of William Connolly in an effort to demonstrate its similarity to Latour’s philosophy and finally how such a position is germane to contemporary nursing and the reality of politics. I do this with reference to the controversial issue of illicit drug use and harm reduction. In effect, I argue that such an issue cannot be dealt with using scientific evidence alone, but rather requires a philosophy of advocacy, what I term democratic advocacy, that is capable of responding to the politics of suffering, which is to say suffering that results from identity/difference. (shrink)

My starting point is that discussions in philosophy about the ontology of technical artifacts ought to be informed by classificatory practices in engineering. Hence, the heuristic value of the natural-artificial distinction in engineering counts against arguments which favour abandoning the distinction in metaphysics. In this chapter, I present the philosophical equipment needed to analyse classificatory practices and then present a case study of engineering practice using these theoretical tools. More in particular, I make use of the Collectivist Account of Technical (...) Artifacts (CAT) according to which there are different classificatory practices for natural, artificial, and social objects. I demonstrate that in the community studied, artificial kinds are marked by distinctive classificatory practices. The presence of these distinctive classificatory practices in engineering with regard to artificial kinds should inform discussions about the ontology of technical artifacts just as the distinctive classificatory practices in natural science inform discussions about natural kinds. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Stump argues that pragmatism distances itself from absolutism due to its assent to fallibilism while it rejects relativism at the same time because of its insistence on experience. Therefore, pragmatism can provide a third position between relativism and absolutism. I argue in this note that his argument is profoundly inadequate for both claims. Fallibilism is compatible with both relativism and absolutism, and accordingly cannot be considered as the middle ground. Furthermore, the experience itself (...) and the way it is inferred from is the subject of the relativists’ debates, not a response. (shrink)

This essay responds to an article, “Epistemic Grace: Antirelativism as Theology in Disguise,” by the philosopher and sociologist of knowledge David Bloor that was published in Common Knowledge 13, nos. 2–3 : 250–80. Bloor's main argument was that there is no third way between relativism and absolutism—that all philosophical positions must fall under one or the other heading. Daniel Paksi's response is that Bloor covertly subscribes to a trichotomy of umbrella headings: idealist relativism, materialist relativism, and absolutism. Bloor, it is (...) argued, connects relativism with neo-Darwinist materialism in order to differentiate his own kind of relativism from the irrealist kind, which denies scientific progress. Paksi argues as well that third ways between idealism and materialism are available—for example, the emergentism of Michael Polanyi—but his main claim is that materialism itself is an absolutist view and thus that its supposed compatibility with relativism undermines Bloor's own aims. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between historians, philosophers and sociologists of science, and indeed scientists themselves. I argue that they co-habit a shared intellectual territory ; and they should be able to do so peacefully, and with mutual respect, even if they disagree radically about how to describe the methods and results of science. I then go on to explore some of the challenges to mutually respectful cohabitation between history, philosophy and sociology of science. I conclude by identifying (...) a familiar kind of project in the philosophy of science which seeks to explore the worldview of a particular scientific discipline, and argue that it too has a right to explore the shared territory even though some historians and sociologists may find it methodologically suspect. (shrink)

Whether truth is absolute or relative has been a widely discussed topic for over two thousand years in epistemology and the philosophy of science. However, this issue has not yet been discussed systematically with respect to linguistics. The present paper attempts to make the first step toward filling this gap. It raises the following question in Sect. 1: What kind of relationship is there between the pluralism of inquiry, the relativistic and the absolutistic approach to truth, and the tolerance of (...) views differing from one’s own in the practice of linguistic research? After Sect. 2 has clarified what is meant by ‘relativism’, ‘absolutism’, ‘pluralism’ and ‘tolerance’, Sects. 3–5 describe, analyse, and systematize the ways in which relativistic and absolutistic views are manifested in linguistic theorizing. Finally, Sect. 6 summarizes the findings and gives a sophisticated answer to the main question of the paper. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s writings on religious and magical beliefs, especially the “Lectures on Religious Belief” and “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough” are taken to imply semantic incommensurability and inaccessibility by the Wittgensteinian Fideism and, in part, the expressivist interpretation. According to these interpretations, religious and non-religious discourses are self-contained, closed, and not intertranslatable. Wittgenstein is taken to deny mutual understanding between believers and non-believers with respect to religious and magical discourse. I argue against such interpretations and support readings by Kusch, Schroeder, and (...) Tripodi that are optimistic of the possibility of mutual understanding. Nevertheless, there is a danger of scepticism for such optimistic readings when they refer to a special attitude that is needed to understand religious belief and speech. I offer a reply to this problem and suggest to see Wittgenstein’s stance on understanding religious discourse in a greater proximity to his general views about language in his later writings. Then, however, any fideist view of the religious form of life as self-contained and isolated from the non-religious has to be repudiated. (shrink)

Taking the use of the logos in Ratzinger's Regensburg Lecture as its starting point, the thesis expands three horizons in Ratzinger studies. Firstly, it extends the understanding of Ratzinger as the author of a logos theology. Secondly, it shows how the Regensburg theme of the full breadth of reason, represented by the logos, is applied by Ratzinger in a critique of secular modernity. Thirdly, it claims that the logos theology of Joseph Ratzinger can provide a repair of the culture of (...) human rights. The thesis argues that if human rights are set exclusively within the framework of secular modernity, they fall sick and fail to meet the criterion of inclusivity and universality. Set within the framework of a Ratzingerian logos theology, their power is strengthened and their promise of inclusivity and universality restored. The thesis calls for a mutually reparative dialogue about human rights, based on the full breadth of reason, between the three constituencies of Christianity, the religions and secular modernity. The thesis concludes that the Regensburg Lecture, far from damaging the dialogue with Islam, and with secular modernity, opens up a new intercultural bridge based on a mutually enriching engagement with a logos-based culture of human rights. (shrink)