HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610 Introduction to the Philosophy of ... · HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610 Introduction to the Philosophy of Science Feyerabend: Epistemological Anarchism Adam Caulton [email protected]

HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610Introduction to the Philosophy of Science

Feyerabend: Epistemological Anarchism

Adam [email protected]

Wednesday 8 October 2014

HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610 Lecture 12

Feyerabend

Paul K. Feyerabend (1924-1994)

I Chalmers, WITTCS?, Ch. 10

I Godfrey-Smith, T&R, Ch. 7, §§4-7.


Against Method

I Science has no universal, unchanging method: any rule that onewould wish to lay down (and has been laid down) will have to bebroken (or has been broken) to make progress, in the lights of anyrationalist account: epistemological anarchism.

I The enforcement of epistemological “law and order” is a limit onhuman creativity and freedom (and crucial opportunism).

I Nothing distinguishes science from non-science.


The failure of rationalism

I Verification (Logical Positivism) – failed

I Confirmation (Logical Positivism) – failed

I (Short-term) falsification (Popper) – failed

I Normal science & consensus (Kuhn) – tyrannical

I (Long-term) falsification (Lakatos) – empty

‘. . . [T]he idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory ofrationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his socialsurroundings. To those who look at the rich material providedby history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in orderto please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectualsecurity in the form of clarity, precision, ‘objectivity’, ‘truth’, itwill become clear that there is only one principle that can bedefended under all circumstances and in all stages of humandevelopment. It is the principle: anything goes.’ (AM, p. 19)


Inspirations

I Dadaism: ‘Dada not only hadno programme, it was againstall programmes.’ – HansRichter (quoted in AM, 16n.).

I J. S. Mill’s On Liberty (1859):the “marketplace of ideas”.(See also Justice Oliver WendellHolmes, Jr.’s dissent in Abramsv United States, 1919).

I But cf. Mill’s A System ofLogic (1843).

I Hegel, Marx, Kropotkin.


‘Anything goes’

I Sometimes use induction.

I Sometimes use counter-induction.

I Sometimes be guided by the observable facts.

I Sometimes challenge the observable facts.

I Sometimes reject a falisified ideology.

I Sometimes borrow from rejected ideologies.

I ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom!’

‘There is no need to fear that the diminished concern for lawand order in science and society that characterizes an anarchismof this kind will lead to chaos. The human nervous system istoo well organized for that.’ (p. 5)


Against distinctions

Rejection of four distinctions:

I Context of discovery/context of justfication

I Fact/value

I Observational/theoretical

I Science/ideology

‘[T]he question is not what distinctions a fertile mind candream up when confronted with a complex process, or howsome homogenous material may be subdivided; the question isto what extent the distinction drawn reflects a real differenceand whether science can advance without a strong interactionbetween the separated domains.’ (pp. 139-40)

I Feyerabend had similar views to Kuhn about the language andconcepts of science.

I “Incommensurability” again.

I Empiricism as untenable.

I Cf. the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.


Whorf: Shawnee and English gestalts


Galileo, again

‘[T]here is no limit to my astonishment when I reflect thatAristarchus and Copernicus were able to make reason soconquer sense that in defiance of the latter, the former becamemistress of their belief.’ – Galileo, quoted in Chalmers (p. 151)

The “observable facts”:

I The Earth is stationary (e.g. objects fallen from a tower land at thetower’s foot).

I Venus and Mars do not appreciably change their size over the year.

Galileo’s response:

I Appeal to, and preference for, the ‘superior and better sense’ of thetelescope, in the face of discrepancies with the naked eye.

I The covert substitution of old ‘natural interpretations’ for newones, ptic. in the introduction of circular inertia.

I Shrewd popularization: appeal to the orthodoxy’s discontents;publishing in Italian, rather than Latin.



Objections and responses

I Is Feyerabend guided by the wrong notion of freedom? Could therebe such a thing as an ideology-neutral state? (Chalmers)

I No rule for the elimination of ideas. (PGS)

I What about medicine, ecology and technology? (PGS)I Improvements are in need of explanation.I The importance of consensus, or objectivity?

‘What do you call alternative medicine that’s been proven to work?Medicine.’ – Tim Minchin

I Is there a middle-ground between an ‘universal, unchanging method’and ‘anything goes’? – Worrall’s argument and Chalmers, Ch. 11:‘common-sense universal method’.


HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610 Introduction to the Philosophy of ... · HPS 1653 / PHIL 1610 Introduction to the Philosophy of Science Feyerabend: Epistemological Anarchism Adam Caulton [email protected]

Documents