Reason, Reference, and the Quest for Knowledge

Abstract

There is a traditional theory of meaning, or, more exactly, a class of theories of meaning, which has been much discussed in recent years both within and outside philosophy of science. Briefly, the idea is the following: we choose certain features as defining a type of thing, as giving the “meaning” of the term we choose to use for that type of thing. From then on, those features will serve as “criteria”, in the sense of necessary and, or perhaps or, sufficient conditions for anything’s being that sort of thing, for deserving to be referred to by that term. If the criteria are not satisfied (or, for that version known as the “cluster” theory, if “enough” of them are not satisfied), we will not apply the term in question to it. According to such theories, nothing we find out empirically about the things in question can be relevant to changing those criteria; for if a thing did not satisfy them, it would not even be that sort of thing, and hence could not be a counterexample affecting the criteria. One aspect of this type of theory that has been the focus of much attention among philosophers of science is that it, if anything, was supposed to account for continuity of discussion between different, and particularly successive, theories: theories would be “talking about the same”, and thus really in agreement or competition with one another, if and only if the terms used in those theories have the same “meaning”.

This paper examines the “causal theory of reference” according to which science aims at the discovery of “essences” which are the objects of reference of natural kind terms (among others). This theory has been advanced as an alternative to traditional views of “meaning”, on which a number of philosophical accounts of science have relied, and which have been criticized earlier by the present author. However, this newer theory of reference is shown to be equally subject to fatal internal difficulties, and to be incompatible with actual science as well. Indeed, it rests on assumptions which it shares with the purportedly opposing theory of meaning. Behind those common assumptions is the supposition that the nature of science can be illuminated by an examination of alleged necessities of language which are independent of the results and methods of scientific inquiry. An alternative view of science is proposed, according to which the goals and language of science develop as integral parts of the process of demarcating science from non-science, a process in which the notion of a “reason” gradually assumes a decisive role. On this view, the comparability, competition, and development of scientific ideas are understood without reliance on either common “meanings” or common “references” as fundamental tools of analysis.