2004/05/04
Lecture 10
Naturalistic Philosophy in Theory and Practice
Naturalism
One question: what kind of theory should the “philosophy of science” (hereafter, POS)
try to develop?
Logical empiricists (hereafter, LE): the POS is concerned above all with the logic of
science. But, by the middle of 1970s, LE’s view broke down.
POS had to go beyond logical analysis, but what should be done instead?
Naturalism: “philosophy should be continuous with science.”
But, what does it really mean?
Reject the idea that philosophy should be sharply separated from other fields.
There should be some kind of close connection between scientific theories and
philosophical theories, but the topic that what this connection should be like is
debatable.
Philosophy should be “continuous” with science. But, what does this “continuity”
mean for actual scientific practices?
A useful summarized idea of naturalism may answer the question: philosophy can use
results from the sciences to help answer philosophical questions and can do this even
in the philosophy of science itself.
Criticism of vicious circularity: to use scientific ideas when theorizing about science
involves a vicious circularity. The main reason is that we should not assume, at the
outset, the reliability of the scientific ideas that we are trying to investigate and assess.
We have to stand outside of science when we are trying to describe its most general
features and assess the integrity of its methods.
Foundationalist attack: we should do the POS from an external and more secure
standpoint. Requirements: no assumptions be made about the accuracy of particular
scientific ideas when doing POS. The reason is that, before our philosophical theory is
established, the status of scientific work is in doubt. So naturalism is generally
described as opposing to foundationalism.
Naturalism: the project of trying to give general philosophical foundations for science
is always doomed to fail. A philosophical foundation is not something science needs
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in any case. Instead, we can only hope to develop an adequate description of how
knowledge and science work if we draw on scientific ideas as we go. And the
description of knowledge and science that results will be no more certain or secure
than the scientific theories themselves.
The aforementioned sketch of naturalism would be agreed by most philosophers who
call themselves naturalists. From there on, there is a lot of disagreement. The term
“Naturalism” suggests that one’s theories contain “no artificial ingredients.”—> there
is a risk that naturalism as a movement will be swamped by the overuse of the term
and will dissolve into platitudes. Despite this risk, naturalism can be regarded as one
possible way of hoping for solving the core problems of POS.
Quine, Dewey, and Others
The roots of contemporary naturalistic philosophy:
Dewey: a pragmatist, but turned to naturalism from roughly 1925 onward (the later
part of his career)
Quine: Epistemology Naturalized (1969)—the birth of modern naturalism
In this paper, Quine made the following claims:
We should not expect philosophers to give “foundations” for scientific knowledge.
Epistemological questions are so closely tied to questions in scientific psychology that
epistemology should not survive as a distinct field at all, epistemology should be
absorbed into psychology. The only questions asked by epistemologists that have any
real importance are questions best answered by psychology itself. Philosophers should
expect that psychology will eventually give us a purely scientific description of how
beliefs are formed and how they change, and we should ask for no more. —> science
as the only proper source of questions as well as the source of answers.
Another version of naturalism: there is such a thing as philosophical question, distinct
from the kinds of questions asked by scientists. A naturalist can think that science can
contribute to the answers to philosophical questions, without thinking that science
should replace philosophical questions with scientific questions.
If we think that philosophical questions are important and also tend to differ from
those asked by scientists, there is no reason to expect a replacement of epistemology
by psychology and other sciences. Science is used as resource for philosophy, not as a
replacement.
What might be examples of these questions that remain relevant in naturalist
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philosophy but which are not directly addressed within science itself?
Example 1:
Normative questions—questions that involve a value judgment.
If epistemology was absorbed by psychology, we might get a good description of how
beliefs are actually formed, but apparently we would not be told which belief-forming
mechanisms are good and which are bad. We would not be able to address the
epistemological questions that have to do with how we should handle evidence, and
how we can tell a good argument from a bad one.
For the naturalist, the answers to these questions will often depend on facts about
psychological mechanisms and the connections that exist between our minds and the
world. But the naturalist expects that it will remain the task of philosophy to actually
try to answer these questions. The sciences tend to concern themselves with different
issues.
Normative naturalism—naturalistic views that want to retain the normative side of
epistemology. ( this term was coined by Larry Lauden (1987))—>toward the end of
his career, Quine modified his view and brought it closer to normative naturalism.
—accepts many of the normative questions that have been passed down to us from
traditional epistemology.
What is the basis for making these value judgments? What is the basis for a
distinction between good and bad policies for forming beliefs?—> the old and
difficult problem of locating values in the world of facts.
Normative naturalists chose a simple reply—the value judgments relevant to
epistemology are made in an instrumental way.
In philosophical discussions of decision-making, an action is said to be instrumentally
rational if it is a good way of achieving the goal that the agent is pursuing, what ever
that goal might be. When assessing actions according to their instrumental rationality,
we do not worry about where the goals come from or whether they are appropriate
goals. We just ask whether the action is likely to achieve the outcome that the agent
desires. And if some action A is being used as a means to B, it is a factual matter
whether or not A is likely to lead the agent to B. So it is a factual matter whether or
not action A is instrumentally rational for that agent.
Other related questions: is instrumental rationality the only kind of rationality?
Among a person’s ultimate goals, which are justifiable?
Dewey’s handling of the question of epistemological norms and values (1937, Logic):
In Dewey’s epistemology, claims of “good” and “bad” reasoning are intended in the
same way that we would understand claims about “good” and “bad” farming.
Everyone is aware that some farming techniques are better than others at achieving
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the usual sorts of goals that farmers have. The likely consequences of different
farming decisions are a factual matter, and we learn about these consequences from
experience. The methods of farming that we presently regard as good ones are not
perfect, and they might be improved further in the future. But there is no
philosophical problem with making value judgments of this kind. Dewey says that the
same is true of value judgments in epistemology.
Example 2:
What kind of match (or mismatch) is there between our commonsense or everyday
view of the world, on one hand, and the scientific picture of the world, on the other?
Or
What relationship is there between the common-sense or everyday picture of human
knowledge, and a scientific description of our real contact with the world?
→ One of the fastest-moving and most interesting parts of naturalistic philosophy in
recent decades has been the naturalistic philosophy of mind: How does the everyday
picture of the human mind and its contents (thoughts, beliefs, desires, memories)
compare with the picture of the mind that is emerging from psychology and
neurobiology?
Example 3:
Questions about the relations between different sciences:
The various (special) sciences each give us fragments, based on empirical work, of
what the world is like and how it runs. But do the fragments tend to fit together neatly,
or are there mismatches and tensions between them?
The research in this topic can result in philosophical criticism of particular scientific
ideas, but the criticism is made from the point of view of our overall scientific picture.
A naturalistic position:
Naturalism in philosophy requires that we begin our philosophical investigations from
the standpoint provided by our best current scientific picture of human beings and
their place in the universe.
We begin from this picture, and we do not try to give a general justification, from
outside of science, for our entitlement to use it.
The science we rely on is not completely certain, of course, and may eventually
change.
The questions we try to answer, however, need not be derived from the sciences; our
questions will often be rather traditional philosophical questions about the nature of
belief, justification, and knowledge.
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Science is a resource for settling philosophical questions, rather than a replacement
for philosophy or the source of philosophy’s agenda.
Philosophy’s another unusual and useful role in intellectual culture—acted as an
incubator for novel, speculative ideas, giving them room to develop to a point where
they may become scientifically useful.
Philosophy often benefits from its somewhat loose organization and open-ended
agenda. We never know what new ideas, issues, or approaches might appear. But to
the extent that we can expect to solve the big problems in fields like epistemology,
naturalism is probably the right approach.
So, what questions should we address in naturalistic philosophy of science?
Recall two sets of questions mentioned in Chapter 1:
(1) a general understanding of how humans gain knowledge of the world around them,
and
(2) an understanding of what makes the work descended from the Scientific
Revolution different from other kinds of investigation of the world.
The notion of “responsiveness” to the world:
-Theories of science proposed by some sociologists of science: no role the notion of
responsiveness” can play in establishing a theory of scientific change. The reason is
that experiments would be no more than expensive “public relation” exercises, and
theories would change via a process of negotiation between factions.
-How do we know that some science is not like this?
In order to resolve this question, we need to distinguish some “in principle” questions
and some “in practice” questions.
In principle questions: does the nature of human thought and perception allow that
scientific belief can be made responsive to the real structure of the world?
In practice questions: Even if this is possible in principle, do actual scientific
communities operate in a way that makes this responsiveness occurs in practice?
-Suppose: we are indeed able to vindicate the idea that science is responsive to the
world; then what sort of contact with the world do our successful theories achieve?
It is familiar to think of truth as the goal that we set for our theories; a good theory is
one that represents the world truly. But is the traditional concept of truth a coherent
and useful one here? Does it help us understand scientific progress at all?
In recent decades, philosophical discussions of science have become more responsive
to a variety of sources of ideas. This broadened perspective on the kinds of
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information that might be helpful has been a notable feature of recent philosophy.
The Debate about the “Theory-Ladenness of Observation”
-whether observational evidence can be considered an unbiased or neutral source of
information when choosing between theories, or
-whether observations tend to be “contaminated” by theoretical assumptions in a way
that prevents them from having this role.
-The problem is especially important for people who want to develop empiricist views,
the reason is that advocates of radical theories of science have often seen the
theory-ladenness of observation as a powerful argument against mainstream
empiricism.
-This problem can be much more easily settled if it is approached from a naturalistic
point of view. → this issue gives us a hint of how naturalistic philosophy works in
practice.
-Empiricists have agreed that observation is our source of knowledge about the world.
Observation has generally been seen as theory-neutral. This neutrality (=absence of
bias) is often the basis for the claim that observation is an “objective” way to settle
disagreements.
-Anti-Neutrality argument (works by Hanson, Kuhn, Feyerabend): observation cannot
function as an unbiased way of testing theories (or larger units like paradigms),
because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer.
Therefore, traditional empiricist views about the role of observation in science are
false.
The possible topics in the debate:
1. Arguments about observation concern theory’s influence:
-Observation is guided by theory, because theories tell scientists where to look and
what to look for. This claim is true, but this fact does not affect the capacity of
observation to act as a test of theory, unless scientists are refusing to look where
unfriendly observations might be found. All empiricists would regard that as a
breakdown of fundamental scientific procedures.
-Scientists must use theoretical assumptions to decide which observations to take
seriously. Some apparent observations might involve malfunctions or mistakes of
various kinds and can be disregarded. The observations that affect theory choice are
“filtered” through a process in which some data are discarded. Because theoretical
beliefs affect this filtering, there is the possibility of bias here.
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2. Arguments about observation concern language:
When a scientist has an experience, ho or she can only make this experience relevant
to science by putting it into words.
The vocabulary used, and the meanings of even innocent-looking terms, will be
influenced by the scientist’s theoretical framework. Given the interconnections
between the meanings of words in a language, there is no part of language whose
application to phenomena is totally “theory-free”.
-But, simply to show that the language of observation is in some sense “theoretical” is
not sufficient to claim that empiricism is dead. In working out the relevance of the
issue to more modern forms of empiricism, everything depends on (1) which kinds of
theories affect the language of observation and on (2) the nature of this effect.
-For example, maybe observational reports assume “theories” that are so low-level
that the testing of real scientific theories will never be affected. → Example: the effect
of the (theoretical) assumption that objects retain their shape when we are not looking
at them on the observation reports does not usually matter to testing in science. (for
condition (1))
-Suppose that observation reports are affected by the kinds of theories that are
themselves being tested. This kind of effect may or may not be philosophically
important. A theory might contribute the concepts used to express an observation,
without this affecting the capacity of an observation report to test the theory in
question. Not every result described in terms of the concepts preferred by theory T
will be an observation report that is favorable to theory T. → Example: An
observation of rabbit fossils in Precambrian rocks would be a massive shock to
evolutionary theory. In this example, it is clear that the fact that observation reports
are expressed using concepts derived from a theory ahs no effect on the capacity of
nature to say NO to a conjecture. (for condition (2))
3. Arguments about observation concern experiences:
Some people argue that even the experiences themselves that a person has are
influenced by their beliefs, including their theories. Not just the use of observation
reports in assessing theories, and not just the linguistic form of the reports are affected,
but the perceptual experiences themselves are. There is NO STAGE in the processes
of observation in science where theories do not play a role. (This is the most
important aspect of the criticism against empiricism)
-Using the results of psychological research to refute a “passive” view of perception
and replacing it with a view holding that perception is active and intelligent. →
Argument: Due to the fact that there are multiple ways in which a pattern of
stimulation on the retina could be caused by objects in the world, theoretical
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assumptions must be used by the visual system to make a choice. People have taken
the result from the study of the Müller-Lyer illusion to show a kind of
theory-ladenness in perception—we do not realize it, but our general and implicit
beliefs about the world are affecting what we see.
Counter argument (Jerry Fodor):
-Although it is true that the illusions seem to be produced by the effects of
unconscious theory, some pieces of theory or background knowledge seem to have no
effect on perception. → Example: the illusion is not affected by the knowledge that it
is an illusion, or by knowledge of the theory of illusions. Those pieces of background
knowledge do not make the illusion go away.
-Fodor links this argument to a research program in psychology that posits modules in
the explanation of perception and some other tasks. Modules are automatic, innate
pieces of mental machinery that do their processing unconsciously and make use of a
fixed subset of a person’s background knowledge. In perception, modules send their
output to the “central” cognitive mechanisms. These central mechanisms have access
to all a person’s theories and ideas when working out what to do with the observation.
So, although the later stages of responding to observation are affected, in principle, by
all the theories a person might have, the output of the perceptual module is not. The
module’s operation—which determines how things seem to a person—is not biased
by whether the person accepts one scientific theory or another.
-Fodor reminded that even if observation itself is not biased by commitments to
scientific theories, there is still the issue of what a person does with the observation.
That takes us back again to the problem of holism about testing.
The aforementioned discussion about the role of observation in science provides
support for a naturalistic approach to POS—Observation is a natural phenomenon,
studied by fields like psychology and psychophysics. Those disciplines tell us what
perceptual mechanisms are like and what kind of connection we have to the world via
these mechanisms. Naturalistic philosophers can put these results to use in working
out how observation operates in science generally.
A version of empiricism that follows a naturalistic approach to the role of observation:
-What is the role of observation in science?
→ Need to understand the actual role of observation in the sociological patterns of
scientific activity.
-How is observation used as a resource in science?
-How is it used in the settlement of controversies?
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→ Start to feed in results from the scientific study of observation.
Given (1) the kind of connection to the world that observation provides, and (2) the
role of observation in science,
-What kind of contact does science itself have with the world?
If observation is the channel by which theory makes contact with reality,
-What kind of channel is it?
→This is a question that we can only answer by drawing on the empirical sciences
that deal with observation and perception.
If empiricism about science is vindicated by the answers to these questions, it will be
a form of empiricism that differs from traditional forms.
Observation: a form of physical contact between our minds and the world. This
contact is the product of evolution, and it has whatever degree of reliability it has
because of our evolutionary history and the contingent relationships between our
structure and that of our surroundings.
Science: an attempt to exploit this contact between our minds and the world. Science
is also motivated by the limitations that result from our relations to the world; we
need science because much of the world is not accessible to ordinary observation.
Science works by taking theoretical ideas and trying to find ways to expose them to
observation.
The scientific strategy: an action to construe ideas, to embed them in surrounding
conceptual frameworks, and to develop them, in such a way that this exposure is
possible even in the case of the most general and ambitious hypotheses about the
universe.
A naturalistic empiricism: This is a form of empiricism in which naturalism is primary.
In this form of empiricism, the advantages of empiricist philosophical ideas are not
shown or established by philosophy alone; they are shown or established also by
various other scientific disciplines that feed in their relevant research results to the
construction of the content of this form of empiricism.
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