ABSTRACT In a recent article, Samir Okasha presented an argument that suggests that there is no rational way to choose among scientific theories. This would seriously undermine the view that science is a rational enterprise. In this article, I show how a suitably nuanced view of what scientific rationality requires allows us to sidestep this argument. In doing so, I present a new argument in favour of voluntarism of the type favoured by van Fraassen. I then show how such a (...) view of scientific rationality gives a precise interpretation of what Thomas Kuhn thought. _1_ Introduction _2_ Okasha’s Argument _3_ Rationality Can Be Silent _4_ Arrow Undermined _5_ The Informational-Basis Escape _6_ Theory Choice at the Level of the Individual Scientist _7_ Kuhn Vindicated _8_ Trade-offs and Partial Commensurability _9_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Van Fraassen’s view that many philosophical positions should be understood as stances rather than factual beliefs with propositional content, has become increasingly popular. But the precise relation between a philosophical stance, and the factual beliefs that typically accompany it, is an unresolved issue. It is widely accepted that no factual belief is sufficient for holding a particular stance, but some have argued that holding certain factual beliefs is nonetheless necessary for adopting a given stance. I argue against this claim, along (...) with the weaker claim that while there are no beliefs that are necessary for adopting a particular stance, those who share a stance must share some characteristic belief(s) in common. I outline and defend an alternative ‘cluster’ account, according to which, in order to accept a stance, one must hold some minimal subset of the set of theoretical beliefs characteristic of the stance in question. This view can accommodate the intuitions motivating those who defend the stronger necessity claims, while crucially allowing for the flexibility of a stance vis-à-vis the relevant factual beliefs, and its relative independence from those beliefs, which is central to van Fraassen’s main examples of stances and their nature. (shrink)

Van Fraassen has argued that many philosophical positions should be understood as stances rather than factual beliefs. In this paper I discuss the vexed question of whether and how such stances can be rationally justified. Until this question has been satisfactorily answered, the otherwise promising stance approach cannot be considered a viable metaphilosophical option. One can find hints, and the beginnings of an answer to this question, in van Fraassen’s (and others’) writings, but no general, fully clear and convincing account (...) has been offered. I aim to provide such an account. In the first section I introduce the concept of a stance. In the second section I argue that stances may be justified pragmatically, in terms of both their epistemic fruits, and their coherence with values. In the third section I further consider the relationship between stances and values, arguing that the value-ladenness of a stance does not render it immune to rational scrutiny. In the final section I look at van Fraassen’s version of epistemological voluntarism, which plays a central role in his conception of the basis on which a stance may be rationally adopted. I show that voluntarism provides a theoretical framework, and approach to epistemology, within which the forms of justification appropriate to stance choice I outline in sections 2 and 3 find a natural home. (shrink)

What is it about relativism that justifies, or at least explains, its continued appeal in the face of relentless attacks through the history of philosophy? This paper explores a new answer to this old question, casting the response in metaphilosophical terms. § i introduces the problem. § ii argues that one part of the answer is that some of the well-known defences of relativism take it to be a philosophical stance—that is, a broad perspective or orientation with normative consequences—rather than (...) a doctrine or a thesis. § iii draws attention to an assumption, not always explicitly stated by its proponents, that the relativist stance leads to the cultivation of some key intellectual virtues. Open-mindedness, tolerance, intellectual humility, and curiosity are examples of the intellectual virtues that relativism can foster. § iv argues that the defence of relativism on the basis of the virtues that are assumed to follow from it, at best, is only partially successful. Moreover, there is a range of epistemic vices, resulting from the stance, that undercuts the virtue-based defence presented in § iii. (shrink)

Some versions of empiricism have been accused of being neither empirically confirmable nor analytically true and therefore meaningless or unknowable by their own lights. Carnap, and more recently van Fraassen, have responded to this objection by construing empiricism as a stance containing non-cognitive attitudes. The resulting stance empiricism is not subject to the norms of knowledge, and so does not self-defeat as per the objection. In response to this proposal, several philosophers have argued that if empiricism is a stance, then (...) there can be no distinctively epistemic reasons in favor of adopting it, but only prudential or moral reasons. I defend stance empiricism against this objection by showing that stance empiricism furthers many plausibly epistemic goals, such as false belief avoidance, wisdom, and justification. I respond to three objections to my argument: that I assume a conception of epistemic reason that leads to problematic tradeoffs, that to have epistemic reason is just to be epistemically justified, and that my premise that experience is the only source of information has no empirical content. (shrink)

This paper connects veritistic teleological epistemology, VTE, with the epistemological dimension of the scientific realism debate. VTE sees our epistemic activities as a tradeoff between believing truths and avoiding error. I argue that van Fraassen’s epistemology is not suited to give a justification for a crucial presupposition of his Bad Lot objection to inference to the best explanation (IBE), the presupposition that believing that p is linked to p being more likely to be true. This makes him vulnerable to a (...) counterargument, tailored after Musgrave’s defense of IBE, which would result in a stalemate between them about presuppositions of rationality. I will, however, show that switching to VTE can justify van Fraassen’s presupposition. This leads to a dismissal of common IBE arguments for realism as presented by Boyd and Musgrave, but I also argue that a more cautious version of realism can be rescued from the Bad Lot objection. Finally, I raise some worries about epistemic risk-attitude consistency for constructive empiricists and develop an alternative anti-realist position.1. (shrink)

A traditional view is that to be an empiricist is to hold a particular epistemological belief: something to the effect that knowledge must derive from experience. In his recent book The Empirical Stance, and in a number of other publications, Bas van Fraassen has disagreed, arguing that if empiricism is to be defensible it must instead be thought of as a stance: an attitude of mind or methodological orientation rather than a factual belief. In this article I will examine his (...) arguments for this claim in detail. I will argue that they do not succeed and that empiricism is, contrary to van Fraassen's claim, better thought of as a truth‐evaluable doctrine than as a stance. (shrink)

Bas C. van Fraassen, in his Terry Lectures at Yale University, is concerned to elucidate what empiricism is, and could be, given past and current failures of characterization. He contends that naïve empiricism—the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of a thesis—is self-refuting, and he offers a reductio ad absurdum to substantiate this claim. Moreover, in place of naïve empiricism, van Fraassen endorses stance empiricism: the metaphilosophical position that characterizes empiricism in terms of certain attitudes and commitments. The present (...) article, however, argues that van Fraassen begs the question in his reductio of naïve empiricism, and thus that his primary defense of stance empiricism is inadequate. (shrink)