Naturalism in the Philosophy of Science (1 of 3)

This lecture beings with a summary of the course so far. A noticeable trend in post-Kuhnian philosophy of science has been the shift towards epistemic relativism. From there, I introduce the idea of naturalism in the philosophy of science, as a way of trying to steer away from that trend, while synthesizing the main insights from the various schools of thought at the same time.

[crocaduck]

After reading several scientists' counter-critiques of critiques of science by postmodernists, rad feminists, critical theorists, strong programme sociologists and science and technology studies, I got a great insight into what was seriously wrong with all these trendy postmod academics. The first thing I noticed is that they are basically illiterate in either science generally, or in the specific field they are critiquing, or in the history of science, or in the philosophy of science. Secondly, they don't seem to be able to get out from under their own criticisms. Saying that there are no universal truths is itself a universal statement; (or saying that all is culturally relative or that everything is a construct). Thirdly, if logic and reason are supposedly 'male' or 'Western', how does one construct an argument that makes sense when logic or reason have been jettisoned? When they do talk about actual science, the conversation quickly slides over to the applied science and technology side where they begin their veiled condemnation of all the disasters that science has supposedly wrought. Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2 is forever conjoined to that atomic mushroom cloud. They invariably ignore basic scientific research. I also noticed that they like to misinterpret Kuhn and Feyerabend.

[crocaduck]

I think one of the central questions that arise from the various (relativistic) critiques of science is; do socio-cultural or psychological factors predominate over empirical, rational ones in science? The relativists would answer yes, while probably every scientist or philosopher in the know would answer no. Certainly, at the outset, there may be social, cultural or psychological factors motivating or even biasing scientists in their knowledge pursuits; but over time, mounting empirical investigations and/or rational reasons begin to predominate.

[insidetrip]

In regards to the end and epistemic skepticism, I've always thought that Aristotle's argument against epistemic skeptisim to be highly persuasive, at least rhetorically. To paraphrase: "If you can't know for certain that you will fall off this cliff, then give it a test by jumping."

Like you said, such questions are good intellectual question for our amusement late at night, but they're things that shouldn't be taken too seriously. They're questions that are good exercises for the mind, and could potentially give us insight into other questions, but its important to not take them so seriously; at least we shouldn't take the questions seriously that we're not even willing to take a chance to act on.

The amount with which we should take questions seriously ought to be relative to the commitment to our willingness to act on the beliefs that are in question.

[matthewa]

Great lecture.

Do you mean "can we find a synthesis" of the different philosophies of science in a Hegelian sense? If so, that's quite interesting. And is Quine best known for the claim that "philosophy should be continuous with science"? I think he said that philosophy should clarify what is, and what it means to say something is, and the only way to discover what is -- is by using the scientific method and a close analysis of how we use language.

[lildarker]

Sorry! the mic popping does not paly well with my headphones :( I am calling it at 4:21