Abstract
The previous chapter dealt with the problem of how we are to distinguish knowledge from mere belief. In all epistemologies knowledge, along with justification, rationality, etc, are normative, evaluative notions that carry with them the idea that our critical canons have been applied to our beliefs. As we will see, a number of the theorists to be discussed in Parts II to IV deny that there is anything to the norms of knowledge and rationality other than what is found in local practices embedded in local cultural and political contexts. And the norms vary dependently on their varying context. Even though they understand such local contexts naturalistically, part of their blindness about the norms of epistemology and methodology is their belief that if there are such norms then they must transcend the natural — from which they conclude ‘so much the worse for norms’. Even though there are “naturalistic” norms embodied in local practices, there is no role for the more robust norms of epistemology and methodology. So, before turning to these theorists in Part II to IV, it is necessary to investigate the ways in which the normative principles of method get their force and authority.
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Notes
For a much clearer account of the connection between the hypothetical imperatives of scientific methodology (linking means with epistemic ends) and empirical claims that are open to test, see the following section 3.4.3. There will be found a brief discussion of Laudan’s account of method that is more sophisticated than Quine’s. See Laudan (1996) Part IV, and Nola and Sankey (eds.) (2000) section 11, for more on the connection between Quine and Laudan on methodology. There are important differences between Laudan and Quine that go unmentioned in the above but are set out in Laudan (1996) Part Two, even though both might, in a broad sense, be said to be pragmatists.
Talk of location and elimination can be found in Jackson (1998) chapter 1. Jackson’s book has strongly influenced some of what is said in this section, as also has Papineau (1993) who addresses similar matters in relation to naturalism. David Armstrong’s writings, such as Armstrong (1981), contain several characterisations of naturalism, aspects of which have been taken on board here.
See Cartwright (1999) chapter 1 section 5, for her denial that the rejection of the supervenience of the physical on the non-physical need commit here to emergentism. Her pluralism in ontology is also echoed in Dupré (1993) with its denial that the sciences could ever constitute a unified project, and the positive claim that there is a plurality of things within ontology that do not stand in any relation of reduction or supervenience to one another. In the text above, a range of positions about naturalism, from an austere physicalism to a disunity of all sciences within naturalism, has been set out in order to depict the terrain of possibilities; however neither of these extremes will be argued for despite the author’s own predilection for physicalism.
There are a wide range of contexts in which norms are relevant beside epistemology, such as ethics, language, law, games, our ordinary human behaviour and action, etc. These other norms are not of concern in this book. For a more general account of these and other areas in which norms are applicable see Raz (1975). For our purposes methodological norms may contain one or more of the following elements: a deontic operator of obligation, permission, etc; a specification of those persons (scientists, reasoners, inquirers, etc) who are to follow the directive of the norm; the action required of any person; the conditions under which the directive will come to apply. These elements are suggested in Hampton (1998), pp. 49-53; much else of what is said by Hampton in these pages can apply here.
Some of the main ideas behind Laudan’s normative naturalism are employed in the above. However not all aspects of normative naturalism will be adopted here. For some criticisms and replies to criticisms, especially concerning Laudan’s test procedure for normative naturalism, see Laudan (1996) chapter 9; see also some problems raised in Nola (1999).
Such a straightforward link between the justification required of epistemology and the norms of scientific method is proposed in Sosa (1991) chapter 14 ‘Methodology and Apt Belief’.
The example of non-refuting anomalies and incompleteness, along with the claim that methodology needs superior tools than epistemology, is discussed by Laudan in ‘Is Epistemology Adequate to the Task of Rational Theory Evaluation?’, in Nola and Sankey (eds.) (2000), pp. 165-175.
See van Fraassen (1980), chapter 2, who rejects the realist value of theoretical truth, and Laudan (1984) chapter 5 who also argues against it.
That one can deduce from a purely factual claim an ought claim was first shown in Prior (1960). This is also the topic of a whole book, Schurz (1997), in which the problem of the very formulation of Hume’s dictum is pursued through a range of deontic logics. Schurz shows that there are some special versions of Hume’s thesis but that it cannot hold generally.
Predicate logic will need in its ontology at least sentences, truth, truth tables for logical constants and a domain for quantifiers. How this sits with the naturalist programme is an issue with which the philosophy of logic must deal. Important here would be the paper by Field (1972) which investigates Tarski’s theory of truth within the context of naturalism.
Hampton (1998) was compiled from the computer files that remained at her untimely death. Though she provides a useful framework in which to place the issues under consideration here, and develops criticisms of others, her positive view of her position is largely in the incomplete chapter 6. That view would have attempted to show any sciencebased argument against the objectivity of methodological norms is self-defeating.
The definitions given in Gibbard (1990) of his norm expressivism on pages 7, 47, 83, and elsewhere, which use the formulation with intentional verbs such as ‘thinks’, ‘judges’, ‘believes’, etc, can also be construed as derivative upon the speech act version given in the text.
For the basis of this claim see Gingerich (1975).
These suggestive examples are from Jackson (1998), p. 9. The text is also indebted to chapters 1, 5 and 6 of Jackson’s book where arguments for the supervenience of the evaluative (in his case the morally evaluative) on the non-evaluative are given. The above is also indebted to Kim (1993), chapters 4, 5, 8 and 9, where various kinds of supervenience are also distinguished.
Note that such a global materialism rules out the possibility of a physicalism that leaves conceptual room for dualism, though such dualism is not true of our world. For a more adequate formulation of physicalism with respect to the mental see Jackson (1998), pp. 9-14. The above examples are intended as only illustrations of global supervenience and not of how an adequate physicalism with respect to the mental may be defined that leaves room for dualism.
A proof is given in Jackson (1998), pp. 121-3. A similar set of considerations can be found in Kim (1993), chapter 4 section IV, and chapters 5 and 9. Bacon (1986) also provides an argument; but he also shows that many other notions of supervenience are also committed to co-extensivity in a way that might lessen the use of a notion of supervenience as distinct from that of reduction. However the necessary co-extensivity that accompanies global supervenience will be exploited to a particular end in what subsequently follows.
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Nola, R. (2003). Naturalism and Norms of Reason and Method. In: Rescuing Reason. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 230. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0289-9_4
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