Different ways of knowing the world? Scientific Method and Research Ethics Value of Science 1. Greg Bognar Stockholm University September 28, 2018 We know where we came from. We are the descendants of the Buffalo people. They came from inside the earth after supernatural spirits prepared this world for humankind to live here. If non-indians choose to believe they evolved from an ape, so be it. I have yet to come across five Lakotas who believe in science and in evolution. (An offical of the Cheyenne River Sioux, a Lakota tribe) Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. [The Native American world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint of what prehistory is about. (A British archeologist) Is science a privileged way of seeing the world? Is science privileged? Is it better? Some preliminaries Equal validity. There are many radically different, yet equally valid ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them. Social constructivism: 1. Knowledge is not a neutral reflection of an independently existing reality, with truth and falsity established by procedures of rational assessment; 2. All knowledge is situated knowledge, reflecting the position of the knowledge producer at a certain historical moment in a given material and cultural context. Different interpretations: constructivism is a view about truth; constructivism is a thesis about justification; a claim about the role of social factors in explaining why we believe what we believe. What is a belief? has propositional content; can be assessed as true or false; can be assessed as justified or unjustified, rational or irrational. Sam s belief that Titan is the largest moon of Saturn is true if and only if Titan is the largest moon of Saturn: if and only if it is a fact that Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. S s belief that p is true if and only if p. S s belief that p is rational if and only if S has sufficiently good reasons to believe that p. One type of reason: evidence (epistemic reason); Perhaps another type: pragmatic reasons (e.g., Pascal s wager); You can be rational in holding a belief without the belief being true!
The classical picture of knowledge A thinker S knows that p if and only if: 1. S believes p; 2. S is justified in believing p; 3. p is true; (but there are counterexamples...) Objectivism about facts. The world is what it is largely independently of us and our beliefs about it. Even if we had never existed, the world would still have many of the properties that it has. Objectivism about justification. Whether some item of information justifies a given belief does not depend on the contingent needs and Objectivism about rational explanation. Under the appropriate circumstances, our exposure to the evidence alone is capable of explaining why we believe what we believe. The constructivist picture of knowledge Constructivism about facts. The world is not what it is independently of us and our social context. All facts are socially constructed in a way that reflects our contingent needs and interests. Constructivism about justification. Whether some item of information justifies a given belief depends on the contingent needs and Constructivism about rational explanation. It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe solely on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence; our contingent needs and interests must also be invoked. Caveats: there are social facts (e.g., about money, marriage, rules of chess); the questions we ask and the observations we are interested in are in a sense a function of our needs and interests. How did Ramses II die? Constructivism about facts the diagnosis [is that] Ramses died of tuberculosis. How could he have died of a bacillus discovered in 1882 and of a disease whose etiology, in its modern form, dates only from 1819? [... ] The attribution of tuberculosis and Koch s bacillus to Ramses II should strike us as an anachronism [...] Koch bacilli have a local history that limits them to Berlin at the turn of the century. They may be allowed to spread to all the years that come after 1882 [... ] but certainly they cannot jump back to the years before. We are allowed only to say things like our scientists have started in 1976 to interpret Ramses II s death as having been caused by tuberculosis but, at the time, it was interpreted as being caused by Saodowaoth or some such word. Saodowaoth is not a translation of tuberculosis. There is no word to translate it. The cause of Ramses death is thus unknown and should remain irretrievable in the past from which we are infinitely distant. (Bruno Latour) Description dependence of facts. Necessarily, all facts are descriptiondependent: there cannot be a fact of the matter as to how things are with the world independently of our propensity to describe the world as being a certain way. Once we adopt a particular scheme for describing the world, there then come to be facts about the world. Social relativity of descriptions. Which scheme we adopt to describe the world will depend on which scheme we find it useful to adopt; and which scheme we find it useful to adopt will depend on our contingent needs and interests as social beings. E.g., Aboriginal view of the constellations. The thesis of the Social relativity of descriptions is independent of the thesis of the Description dependence, and lends it no support.
Constructivism about justification Galileo vs Bellarmine Constructivism about justification. Whether some item of information justifies a given belief depends on the contingent needs and Are facts about justification universal or might they vary from community to community? Epistemic relativism. There are no universal epistemic reasons, that is, facts about what belief is justified by a given item of evidence. Epistemic reasons can vary from community to community. Equal validity. There are many radically different, yet equally valid ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them. Does the Earth revolve around the Sun? Galileo s observations justify the Copernican view. Scriptural exegesis justifies the Ptolemaic view. The Copernican view is justified by Galileo s observations. The Copernican view is justified by Galileo s observations relative to a system, Science, that, I, the speaker, accept. The Ptolemaic view is justified by scriptural exegesis, and not refuted by Galileo s observations, relative to a system, Doctrine, that, I, the speaker, accept. Science observation; deduction; induction; etc. Consider: The Universe was created in six days. Doctrine observation; deduction; induction; scriptural exegesis; etc. Constructivism about rational explanation Constructivism about rational explanation. It is never possible to explain why we believe what we believe solely on the basis of our exposure to the relevant evidence; our contingent needs and interests must also be invoked. Strong form: There are no epistemic reasons. The Copernican view is justified by Galileo s observations. The Universe was created in six days. Both Science and Doctrine accept that epistemic reasons exist; they make at least some contribution to explaining beliefs. Science is not just another system : it is the rigorous application of general epistemic principles that other systems also accept (at least as long as they accept the existence of epistemic reasons). Did the Buffalo people come from inside the earth? We know where we came from. We are the descendants of the Buffalo people. They came from inside the earth after supernatural spirits prepared this world for humankind to live here. Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. [The Native American world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint. Either the Native American world view is responsive to epistemic reasons, so that there is a rational answer to the question; or it is not responsive to epistemic reasons, in which case it is irrational. In this respect, science is a privileged way of seeing the world; not all ways of knowing the world are equally valid. The Equal validity thesis is false.
Karl R. Popper (1902 1994) Scientific Method and Research Ethics Value of Science 2. Greg Bognar Stockholm University September 28, 2018 Born in Vienna in an upper middle class Jewish family (that converted to Lutheranism); 1918 1919 attends university as a guest student; brief association with Marxist student movement; 1922 1928 formal university student, Doctorate in Psychology; 1934 The Logic of Scientific Discovery; 1937 emigrates to New Zealand, teaches in Christchurch (fleeing Nazism); 1945 The Open Society and Its Enemies; 1946 moves to London School of Economics; 1957 The Poverty of Historicism. Philosophy of science The success of science Demarcation problem. How to distinguish science from pseudo-science? Falsificationism. A hypothesis is scientific if and only if it can potentially be refuted by some possible observation. Falsificationism turns out to be the right account of testing in science; confirmation of scientific hypotheses is not possible. The criterion for distinguishing scientific and pseudo-scientific hypothesis turns out to be the very same criterion that can be used for evaluating scientific hypothesis! E.g., creationism, evolution by natural selection, homeopathy, astrology, the universe as a simulation, conspiracy theories, string theory. Fallibilism. We can never have certainty about empirical facts. All that any observational test (observation or experiment) can do is to show that a theory is false. The natural sciences (together with technology, engineering, etc.) have massively benefited societies and transformed the world. Basic question: Can there be a science of history? Can social science be used to transform societies? Historicism: the aim of the social sciences is historical prediction which is possible by discovering the laws of history. E.g., organizing economic activity by centralized planning. Utopianism: the view that social and historical development has an ultimate aim ( the end of history ). Political action ought to be determined by, and to serve, the aim of reaching this ultimate aim. Is it possible to use the social sciences as a tool for political programs, just as engineers use the natural sciences to achieve technological results?
Historicism and utopianism Why utopianism is pseudo-science Historicism and utopianism together imply large-scale social engineering: limiting liberty in order to advance towards the utopian ideal; extending the power of the state over citizens in order to control and direct the historical forces ; preferring holistic reforms rather than small-scale steps with the consequence of lack of adaptability; utopian social engineering cannot account for the human factor as a solution, it must embark on the transformation of humans themselves, rather than just the transformation of institutions. Therefore, holistic social experimentation requires the centralization of power, which necessarily leads to coercion and compulsion. This requires the suppression of public criticism, which is self-defeating: there is no mechanism to learn about the outcomes and effects of the experiment. E.g., Marxism, fascism/nazism, theocracy, right/left-wing populism. Utopianism starts out with creating a society that fits human nature (or psychology), but it inevitably ends up attempting the transformation of human nature. (This is an admission of the failure of utopianism as a scientific theory: since those who cannot fit in the Utopia are deemed to be incapable to be transformed, the initial claim about the desirability of the utopian state can never be falsified.) E.g., Marxism: the combination of a utopia (Communism) with historicism (as a scientific method). Marxian utopia: a state without political or economic coercion, based on the voluntary cooperation of all according their abilities, with everyone s needs satisfied; Marxist historicism: historical progress is scientifically inevitable (not a matter of choice or moral decision). Other examples: authoritarian traditionalism (utopia is past golden age), theocracy (utopia is transcendental). The argument against historicism The open society (1) The course of human history is strongly influenced by the growth of human knowledge. (2) We cannot predict, by rational or scientific methods, the future growth of our scientific knowledge. (3) We cannot, therefore, predict the future course of human history. (4) This means that we must reject the possibility of a theoretical history...there can be no scientific theory of historical development serving as a basis for historical prediction. (5) Therefore, historicism collapses. Traditional or tribalistic societies are closed: there is no critical attitude towards tradition, because there is no distinction between natural laws and conventions. Collectivist and authoritarian societies are also closed because they make knowledge political. Open societies begin to appear with the distinction between natural laws (to be discovered by science) and conventional laws (to be argued for and justified). The distinction makes it possible to have a critical attitude towards tradition. The distinction is epistemological rather than political: open societies are the political manifestation of accepting fallibilism; they necessarily accept value pluralism. A necessary condition of an open society is freedom of thought and expression, including thought and expression in scientific research.