This paper takes up the critique of armchair philosophy drawn by some experimental philosophers from survey results. It also takes up a more recent development with increased methodological sophistication. The argument based on disagreement among respondents suggests a much more serious problem for armchair philosophy and puts in question the standing of our would-be discipline.

In this paper a bootstrap theory of rationality is presented. Such a theory is an attempt to explain how standards of rational inquiry may be rationally revised — without assuming that there are any basic and fixed standards for evaluating such revisions. The general bootstrap idea is briefly presented in the first sections. The main part of the paper consists of a discussion of what normative requirements a bootstrap theory should contain, and a number of requirements on rational revisions are (...) proposed. The final section deals with the question of whether a bootstrap theory is self-referentially coherent. (shrink)

Many theories require empirical patches or ad hoc assumptions to work properly in application to chemistry. Some examples include the Bohr quantum theory of atomic spectra, the Pauli exclusion principle, the Marcus theory of the rate-equilibrium correlation, Kekule’s hypothesis of bond oscillation in benzene, and the quantum calculation of reaction pathways. Often the proposed refinements do not grow out of the original theory but are devised and added ad hoc. This brings into question the goal of constructing theories derived from (...) first principles and the concept of ranking the merit of theories according to their freedom from empirical contamination. (shrink)

The theoretical system Lyell presented in 1830 was composed of three requirements or principles: 1) the Uniformity Principle which states that past geological events must be explained by the same causes now in operation; 2) the Uniformity of Rate Principle which states that geological laws operate with the same force as at present; 3) the Steady-state Principle which states that the earth does not undergo any directional change. The three principles form a single thesis called uniformitarianism which has been repeatedly (...) questioned and which has been reputed to be unable to face the competing directional synthesis based on the theory of the earth's cooling down. As a result, the significance of Lyell's system has been reduced to a simple actualism which admits the validity of the only Uniformity Principle. I believe that the only way to understand Lyell's role in the history of science is to maintain the unity of his synthesis. To show the Newtonian roots of this synthesis I will compare Lyell's principles and Newton's Rules of Reasoning. I will conclude with an analysis of the methodological function of principles in Lyell's scientific endeavour. (shrink)

Some philosophers of science suggest that philosophical assumptions must influence historical scholarship, because history (like science) has no neutral data and because the treatment of any particular historical episode is going to be influenced to some degree by one's prior philosophical conceptions of what is important in science. However, if the history of science must be laden with philosophical assumptions, then how can the history of science be evidence for the philosophy of science? Would not an inductivist history of science (...) confirm an inductivist philosophy of science and a conventionalist history of science confirm a conventionalist philosophy of science? I attempt to resolve this problem; essentially, I deny the claim that the history of science must be influenced by one's conception of what is important in science — one's general philosophy of science. To accomplish the task I look at a specific historical episode, together with its history, and draw some metamethodological conclusions from it. The specific historical episode I examine is Descartes' critique of Galileo's scientific methodology. (shrink)

The traditional views of science as the possessor of a special method, and as the epitome or apex of rationality, have come under severe challenges for a variety of historical, psychological, sociological, political, and philosophical reasons. As a result, many philosophers are either denying science its claim to rationality, or else casting about for a new account of its rationality. In this paper a defense of the traditional view is offered. It is argued that contemporary philosophical discussion regarding the rationality (...) of science is plagued by a failure to distinguish among three different questions, all taken to be "the" question of the rationality of science. Once these questions are delineated, it becomes possible to answer one of them in such a way that the traditional link between science's rationality and its method is reestablished--although the scientific method is itself given a non-traditional rendering. In short, it is argued that there is a feature of science which is appropriately characterized as its method; that this method does in fact secure science's rationality; and that science is therefore correctly construed as preeminently rational. It is suggested in addition that the philosophy of science is itself best seen as a primarily epistemological activity, and consequently that a correction from the excessively historicist conception of recent philosophy of science is in order. (shrink)

Exploratory statistics represents the transformation of a realist theory of statistics held by early nineteenth-century astronomers into an empiricist theory of statistics held by biometricians at the turn of the twentieth century. This paper discusses four key ideas in empiricist thought that influenced the form exploratory statistics took: (1) Baconianism, (2) associationism, (3) the search for cognitive calculi, and (4) phenomenalism. Some limitations of and alternatives to exploratory statistics as a hypothesis-generating methodology are discussed.

As the seventeenth century progressed, there was a growing realization among those who reflected on the kind of knowledge the new sciences could afford (among them Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Boyle, Huygens) that hypothesis would have to be conceded a much more significant place in natural philosophy than the earlier ideal of demonstration allowed. Then came the mechanics of Newton's Principia, which seemed to manage quite well without appealing to hypothesis (though much would depend on how exactly terms like "force" and (...) "attraction" were construed). If the science of motion could dispense with causal hypothesis and the attendant uncertainty, why should this not serve as the goal of natural philosophy generally? The apparent absence of causal hypothesis from the highly successful new science of motion went far towards shaping, in different ways, the account of scientific knowledge given by many of the philosophers of the century following, notable among them Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and Kant. This "Newtonian" interlude in the history of the philosophy of science would today be accounted on the whole a byway. The Principia, despite its enormous achievement in shaping subsequent work in mechanics, was from the beginning too idiosyncratic from an epistemic standpoint to serve as model for the natural sciences generally. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustrating how a rational community with divergent standards can encourage innovation and (...) eventually reach consensus, recent developments in geophysics are discussed at some length. (shrink)

The article presents a critical discussion of Larry Laudan's naturalistic metamethodological theory known as normative naturalism (NN). I examine the strongest extant objection to NN, and, with reference to ideas in Freedman ( Philosophy of Science , 66 (Proceedings), pp. S526-S537, 1999), show how NN survives it. I then go on to outline two problems that really do compromise NN. The first revolves around Laudan's conception of the relationship between scientific values and the history of science. Laudan argues we can (...) make sense of progress in science without seeing great scientists in the past as having held the cognitive values and methodological rules we hold today as important for science. I argue this is extremely implausible, and moreover that Laudan must see our values today as justified by reference to the values of past scientists if he is to avoid a pernicious form of relativism. The second problem with NN is that its conception of methodological rules--as hypothetical imperatives linking cognitive means to ends--is untenable. Such rules would not be needed in a scientific community; moreover it is doubtful whether they should class as rules at all. I conclude by suggesting that the distinction between cognitive means and ends which undergirds Laudan's view is intuitively not well founded, and in any case does not provide sufficient materials for a viable normative naturalized epistemology. (shrink)

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)

Today, Larry Laudan is known predominantly for his work on the pessimistic metainduction and for his discussion of science and values. This essay examines a less familiar part of Laudan’s work, his typology of historical methodologies from the late 1970s. My aim is to elucidate Laudan’s typology and to examine one of the types in more depth, namely, the “pragmatic, symbiotic” model of historical methodology. Laudan expounded the model in the essays that eventually became his 1981 book Science and Hypothesis. (...) Laudan himself characterized this approach to methodology as “history of philosophy of science” and described a number of historiographical guidelines for this history. Several of Laudan’s questions about past scientific methodologies are still worth pursuing, although—and in part because—the concept of scientific methodology changed dramatically as philosophers turned to experimentation in the late twentieth century. Moreover, the study of Laudan’s work in the historical context in which it was devised can shed light on the historical turn in philosophy of science. (shrink)

The most immediate reason why chemists are unenthusiastic about the philosophy of science is the historic hostility of important philosophers, to the concept of atoms. (Without atoms, discovery in chemistry would have proceeded with glacial slowness, if at all, in the last 200 years.) Other important reasons include the anti-realist influence of the philosophical dogmas of logical positivism, instrumentalism, of strict empiricism. Though (as has been said) these doctrines have recently gone out of fashion, they are still very influential.A diagram (...) of the methodology of experimental research is proposed, in the form of a flow sheet, with feedback. The model is developed as a multi-level expansion of a diagram of the hypothetico-deductive model. It recognizes that strong mutual support, or interlocking, of research endeavors is important, at the underlying level or levels where explanatory causation contributes to scientific understanding. (Mutual support at the laboratory level is generally weak or trivial.) The multiplicity of explanatory levels, and the interlocking, point to solutions to some well-known problems, such as the origin of the hypotheses, and even a resolution to the underdetermination problem. (shrink)

The most immediate reason why chemists are unenthusiastic about the philosophy of science is the historic hostility of important philosophers, to the concept of atoms. (Without atoms, discovery in chemistry would have proceeded with glacial slowness, if at all, in the last 200 years.) Other important reasons include the anti-realist influence of the philosophical dogmas of logical positivism, instrumentalism, of strict empiricism. Though (as has been said) these doctrines have recently gone out of fashion, they are still very influential.A diagram (...) of the methodology of experimental research is proposed, in the form of a flow sheet, with feedback. The model is developed as a multi-level expansion of a diagram of the hypothetico-deductive model. It recognizes that strong mutual support, or interlocking, of research endeavors is important, at the underlying level or levels where explanatory causation contributes to scientific understanding. (Mutual support at the laboratory level is generally weak or trivial.) The multiplicity of explanatory levels, and the interlocking, point to solutions to some well-known problems, such as the origin of the hypotheses, and even a resolution to the underdetermination problem. (shrink)

Cytogenetics was born of the confluence of two so-far independent fields: cytological studies and breeding studies, which merged through the identification of genes with chromosomes. In this paper I argue that genes were introduced as functional entities. Functional explanations are presented here as a subclass of inferences to the best explanation and I argue that abductive arguments do not offer conclusive proof for the existence of the entities postulated through them. However, functional explanations usually follow a scheme laid out by (...) Fodor (1968): there is a first phase where hypothetical entities are postulated and individuated through their effects; there is a second phase where the physical structures responsible for these effects are sought. I analyze the development of both phases in the construction of the chromosome theory of Mendelian inheritance. I will argue that first-phase theories are important to set conditions of identification for the functions played by a certain structure in a given containing system. (shrink)

This article unearths little-studied accounts of the status and role of hypotheses in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Germany. German thinkers regarded hypotheses, including those about unobservable causes for visible effects, as legitimate and necessary ingredients of scientific inquiry. They debated the nature of probable hypotheses resulting from inductions, proposed heuristics for making causal hypotheses, and advanced criteria for assessing and testing them. My survey of these rich and multifaceted discussions shows that many themes and topics that we commonly associate (...) with modern philosophy of science were discussed decades earlier by authors of educational and practice-oriented books on logic: consequential testing, underdetermination, auxiliary hypotheses, the problem of unobservable entities, fallibility, and elaborate methodologies of observation and experimentation. It also illuminates the long-term history of present-day criteria for hypothesis evaluation. (shrink)

William Lynch has provided an informed and probing critique of my embrace of the post-truth condition, which he understands correctly as an extension of the normative project of social epistemology. This article roughly tracks the order of Lynch’s paper, beginning with the vexed role of the ‘normative’ in Science and Technology Studies, which originally triggered my version of social epistemology 35 years ago and has been guided by the field’s ‘symmetry principle’. Here the pejorative use of ‘populism’ to mean democracy (...) is highlighted as a failure of symmetry. Finally, after rejecting Lynch’s appeal to a hybrid Marxian–Darwinism, Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes are contrasted en route to what I have called ‘quantum epistemology’. (shrink)

En la epistemología moderna, el falibilismo es una vía media entre el dogmatismo y el escepticismo. Su origen histórico se encuentra en una rama de la antigua escuela del escepticismo académico. Ya que la diferencia entre las formas fuerte y débil del falibilismo, así como la distinción entre probabilidad epistémica y verosimilitud, sólo han sido comprendidas en las últimas dos décadas, no podemos esperar encontrar formulaciones claras de dichas doctrinas entre los filósofos griegos y romanos. Pero hemos mostrado que las (...) dos ideas centrales del falibilismo –el grado de certeza y el grado de cercanía a la verdad– están presentes en la tradición escéptica al menos desde los tiempos de Cicerón. (shrink)

Scientific evidence and scientific values under risk and uncertainty are strictly connected from the point of view of Peirce’s pragmaticism. In addition, economy and statistics play a key role in both choosing and testing hypotheses. Hence we may show also the connection between the methodology of the economy of research and statistical frequentism, both originating from pragmaticism. The connection is drawn by the regulative principles of synechism, tychism and uberty. These principles are values that have both epistemic and non-epistemic dimension. (...) They concern both the decisions to test a hypothesis as well as inductive risk. The validity of this result stems from the values cost–benefit analysis imposes on scientific inquiry. Values associated with the economy of research are important not only in the pre-test phases of generating hypotheses but also when hypotheses are effectively tested. Peirce took these economic considerations to leave room for an interpretation of probability which is not only a frequentist and propensity-theoretic but also a conceptualist one referring to degrees of belief. We show that this leeway nonetheless agrees with the theory of the economy of scientific methods. (shrink)

The topic of this study is to what extent standards of rational inquiry can be rationally criticized and revised. It is argued that it is rational to treat all such standards as open to criticism and revision. Arguments to the effect that we are fallible with regard to all standards of rational inquiry are presented. Standards cannot be ultimately justified and with certainty established either as adequate or as inescapable presuppositions. Apel's attempt to give ultimate justifications of certain moral and (...) logical rules is examined and criticized. Special attention is given to our fallibility with regard to logical inference rules. The idea that certain logical rules cannot be put into question because any critical argument presupposes them is criticized. It has been claimed that there must be some basic standards which are such that they cannot be rationally evaluated and hence are rationally unrevisable. This is called "the unrevisability thesis". Related to this thesis is the normative policy according to which rationality requires that some standards be treated as unrevisable, the unrevisability policy. Two arguments that have been used to defend the unrevisability thesis and policy are examined and criticized. The conclusion is that we are not forced to accept either the thesis or the policy. The negation of the unrevisability policy is the revisability policy, according to which it is rational to treat all standards as open to rational criticism and revision. Objections that have been directed against the revisability policy are discussed and criticized. According to the objections, the revisability policy leads to rationality relativism. These objections are refuted, and it is argued that it is, on the contrary, rational to adopt the revisability policy and treat all standards of rational inquiry as criticizable and revisable. It is proposed that the rational change of standards should be viewed as a bootstrap process. General features of a bootstrap view of rational change of standards are presented, and it is argued that it is impossible to formulate a real theory of bootstrapping. Two models of standard change are presented and discussed: Laudan's reticulated model of scientific rationality and Briskman's bootstrap theory. It is claimed that in spite of defects and limitations, these models contribute to a richer understanding of bootstrapping. The fallibility and revisability of standards of rational inquiry have consequences for how the normativity of rationality should be understood. The book ends with an account of how the rationality of cognitive actions is related to the idea of the adequacy of standards. A distinction between absolute and standard-relative rationality is made, and it is argued that what an inquiring agent rationally ought to do coincides with what it is standard-relatively rational for him to do. It is shown that this view of rationality of inquiry is nevertheless inconsistent with rationality relativism, and that it is compatible with an objectivistic view of rationality. (shrink)

Although Pierre Duhem is well known for his conventionalist outlook and, in particular, for his critique of crucial experiments outlined in his thesis on the empirical indeterminacy of theory, he also contributed to the scholarship on the psychological profiles of scientists by revising Pascal’s famous distinction between the subtle mind and the geometric mind. For Duhem, the ideal scientist is the one who combines the defining qualities of both types of intellect. As a physicist, Duhem made important theoretical contributions to (...) the field of thermodynamics as well as to the then-nascent physical chemistry. Due to his rejection of atomism and his unrelenting critique of Maxwell’s electrodynamics, however, in his later years, Duhem’s work was surpassed and abandoned by the dominant tendencies of physics of the time. In this essay, I will discuss whether Duhem himself can be understood through the lens of his own account of the scientist’s psychological profile. More specifically, I examine whether the subtle mind – to which he seems to assign greater cognitive value – in fact plays a key role in Duhem’s critique of the English School, or if his preference for the axiomatic structure of theoretical physics shows a greater affinity with the geometric mind. (shrink)

Are knowledge and belief pivotal in science, as contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science nearly universally take them to be? I defend the view that scientists are not primarily concerned with knowing and that the methods of arriving at scientific hypotheses, models and scenarios do not commit us having stable beliefs about them. Instead, what drives scientific discovery is ignorance that scientists can cleverly exploit. Not an absence or negation of knowledge, ignorance concerns fundamental uncertainty, and is brought out by (...) retroductive inferences, which are roughly characterised as reasoning from effects to causes. I argue that recent discoveries in sciences that coped with under-structured problem spaces testify the prevalence of retroductive logic in scientific discovery and its progress. This puts paid to the need of finding epistemic justification or confirmation to retroductive methodologies. A scientist, never frightened of unknown unknowns, strives to advance the forefront of uncertainty, not that of belief or knowledge. Far from rendering science irrational, I conclude that catering well for the right conditions in which to cultivate ignorance is a key to how fertile retroductive inferences arise. (shrink)

In this paper I make more explicit a position that I have being advocating for more than two decades, though its full force does not seem to have been felt. I write in defence of the *commodification* rather than the simple *commercialisation* of knowledge. The two italicised terms are often spoken about in the same breath—and, to be sure, they are related to each other. But they are not the same. Commercialisation refers to the subjection of social life to the (...) price mechanism, something that Adam Smith believed happened spontaneously, if it was not impeded by churches and states. And while Smith’s celebration of commercial culture makes him the philosophical father of capitalism, he would probably not approve of capitalism’s long-term tendency to turn aggregated versions of these spontaneous exchanges into objects that are themselves subject to exchange relations, which is commodification. Nevertheless, it is precisely in this sense of ‘commodification’ that I defend the university as a producer of knowledge as a public good, both in terms of teaching and research. I place the shi from commercialisation to commodification in a larger historical context first clearly identified by Ernst Cassirer – namely, a shi in metaphysical consciousness that accompanied the treatment of substances as the bearers of functions, which is associated with the introduction of algebra as a unifying principle of mathematical reasoning in the early modern era, initially through Descartes, which then became the basis of the modern physical world-view. (shrink)

Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology is widely regarded as one of the great works of 19th century science, and one of the most influential works in the entire history of the earth sciences. Yet the standard critical interpretation of the Principles makes such high regard and influence look puzzling at best. We are told, for instance, that Lyell’s argument rests on a contentious a priori methodological distinction between scientific and non-scientific explanations, the former featuring observed causes at their present intensities, (...) the latter featuring anything else. 2 We are also told that Lyell simply assumes a priori that. (shrink)

Nineteenth-century Harvard faculty and students looked to philosophical ideas about the proper and effective study of nature as the model of rationality to which their religion must conform. As these ideas changed, notions of rationality changed and so did Harvard religion.

Does the viability of the discovery program depend on showing either (1) that methods of generating new problem solutions, per se, have special probative weight (the per se thesis); or, (2) that the original conception of an idea is logically continuous with its justification (anti-divorce thesis)? Many writers have identified these as the key issues of the discovery debate. McLaughlin, Pera, and others recently have defended the discovery program by attacking the divorce thesis, while Laudan has attacked the discovery program (...) by rejecting the per se thesis. This disagreement over the central issue has led to communication breakdown. I contend that both friends and foes of discovery mistake the central issues. Recognizing a form of divorce helps rather than hurts the discovery program. However, the per se thesis is not essential to the program (nor is the related debate over novel prediction); hence, the status of the per se thesis is a side issue. With these clarifications in hand, we can proceed to the next stage of the discovery debate--the development (or revival) of a generative conception of justification which goes beyond consequentialism to forge a strong linkage of generation (or rather, generatability) with justification. (shrink)