Abstract
This essay aims to sharpen debates on the pros and cons of historical epistemology, which is now understood as a novel approach to the study of knowledge, by comparing it with the history of epistemology as traditionally pursued by philosophers. The many versions of both approaches are not always easily discernable. Yet, a reasoned comparison of certain versions can and should be made. In the first section of this article, I argue that the most interesting difference involves neither the subject matter nor goal, but the methods used by the two approaches. In the second section, I ask which of the two approaches or methods is more promising given that both historical epistemologists and historians of epistemology claim to contribute to epistemology simpliciter. Using traditional problems concerning the epistemic role of perception, I argue that the historical epistemologies of Wartofsky and Daston and Galison fail to show that studying practices of perception is philosophically significant. Standard methods from the history of epistemology are more promising, as I show by means of reconstructing arguments in a debate about the relation between perception and judgment in psychological research on the famous moon illusion.
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Notes
Exceptions being, e.g., the philosophers Marx Wartofsky and Ian Hacking (below more on both). The latter prefers to describe his work not as belonging to historical epistemology but “historical meta-epistemology”, arguing that the former notion refers more to historical accounts of the development of scientific knowledge whereas his—and Daston’s—work is more about the historical development of epistemic concepts such as ‘objectivity’, ‘rationality’, or ‘knowledge’ (Hacking 1999). Moreover, “historical meta-epistemology” supposedly falls under “historical ontology” (Hacking 2002, pp. 7–12). Things get complicated here, because at least one other version of historical epistemology, namely that of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, is about what Hacking calls “historical ontology”, or the history of objects of science. It suffices to note these terminological juxtapositions; from now on, I shall ignore them (a few reasons for considering Hacking an historical epistemologist can be found in Kusch 2011).
Historians resent the term “rational reconstruction”, but they need not. As Kitcher (1993, p. 13) says, “philosophically oriented history should not reconstruct in the sense of drawing lines that would have to be altered in a more detailed presentation”. Admittedly, rationalizations often do not provide the true causes for the adoption of a belief or the acceptance of a method. Whether Kant was truly awakened from his dogmatic slumber by Hume’s reminder about causation is doubtful (Carl 1989). And according to Schaffer (1994), Kekule’s dream story of how he discovered the benzene ring was made up afterwards. But it still is possible that rationalizations are sometimes correct explanations. Moreover, we should distinguish between reasons for the acquisition of and reasons for sustaining a belief. Even when a belief has not been adopted for the reason the philosopher or scientist officially states, it may well be sustained later on for that reason. Finally, rational reconstructions are methodologically recommendable: When an author makes a certain claim only once, or without any premises on which the claim is based, or without any inferences made from the claim, then the claim should perhaps not be taken seriously. In contrast, claims involving many premises and consequences give good reason to believe that the author meant them seriously. So we should look for these kinds of inferential items when trying to identify an author’s beliefs.
The paper is related to others in his work (e.g., Wartofsky 1976, 1983a, b, 1987; cf. Gould 2003, p. x; Dolling 2003), and is probably the first publication where HE was advanced in the English-speaking world. Wartofsky (1928–1997), an editor for the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, organized various events during the 1970 s to promote his approach (see e.g., a session on “Historical Epistemology and Scientific Practice”; Anonymous 1975). Another paper, from 1977, reveals that Wartofsky was aware of Bachelard, Foucault, and Lecourt. So, he might have taken the term ‘HE’ from that tradition (Wartofsky 1979, p. 121)—but he does not mention any doctrine he adopted from it.
Wartofsky’s approach does contain Marxist elements. For instance, he claims that “our modes of cognitive practice change with changes in our modes of production, of social organization, of technology and technique” (1979, p. xxii; cf. Gould 2003, p. x). However, his arguments for the historicity of perception do not depend on these elements.
This conclusion even questions some of his own statements, e.g.: “My own view… is an explicitly realist view of perception in… that the ‘objects of perception’ are taken to be independent of perception, though they are mediated by an activity of perception” (Wartofsky 1979, p. 193).
For the claim that perception is to be explained or caused by actions: “… the forms or modes of perception, its structures themselves, are historically variant;… this variation is related to historical changes in the forms or modes of human action” (Wartofsky 1979, 189). Or: “… in its very genesis, perception is linked to that practical interaction with an external world” (ibid., 194). For the claim that perception is itself a kind of action: “… perception is a highly evolved and specific mode of human action (or praxis)” (ibid., p. 189). “I take perception to be a mode of outward motor action” (ibid., 194). “… perception is understood as a mode of human action;… it is therefore… endowed with all the qualities of human action or praxis, namely: effectiveness in the world (causal efficacy); intentionality (as it is involved in the conscious teleology of human action); and, necessarily, a mode of physical or organic activity… and exhibiting… the specific features of reflexiveness or internal activity characteristic of such other organic functions as digestion, emotion, or hormone balance” (ibid., p. 196).
For the faculty view: “I take human perception… as the specifically human faculty which develops only after biological evolution of our sensory system has been completed. That is to say, I take it as an historically evolved faculty…” (Wartofsky 1979, p. 189).
In conversation, Daston has emphasized that much of her claims concern the emergence of epistemic concepts: practices precede the “crystallization” of a concept like objectivity. One can grant this only to a certain extent: (1) If one writes a history of the emergence of X one must already have a preliminary (if minimal) understanding of X, since only then can one sort out historical material properly; also (2) for the material to be sorted out properly, there had to be an at least implicit understanding on the side of the historical agents that what they were doing falls—in a minimal sense—under ‘X'. Daston justly cautioned me that this is true for any history whatsoever, even for biological accounts of species development. The further one goes back, the less the ancestor resembles a current organism (or epistemic concept). Still, without the concepts or ideals of practices we cannot even speak about the latter.
The SDIH describes the relation between the perceived size S of an object with a given visual angle α and the perceived distance D between object and observer: S = tan α × D. This is a function based upon the physical facts about the relation between the size of an object, its distance to a viewer and the visual angle of the object on the retina, formed by the light traveling from the object to the viewer (Hershenson 1989).
Emmert’s (1881) law states the same relation as the SDIH but only for afterimages: Create an afterimage on your retina by looking at some color stimulus for a sufficient time (30 or 60 s will do). Next, look at a white wall at a greater distance. The afterimage appears “blown up”, depending on the distance to the wall.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Alix Hui, John Carson, Uljana Feest, Kyle Stanford, Jens Timmermann, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments and criticism. Cynthia Klohr made helpful suggestions for wording the text. Special thanks go to Lorraine Daston, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Jürgen Renn, whose work provoked me to think more clearly about the relation between philosophy and the history of science. Completion of this essay was supported by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation, Reference number FFI 2008-01559/FISO.
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Sturm, T. Historical Epistemology or History of Epistemology? The Case of the Relation Between Perception and Judgment. Erkenn 75, 303–324 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9338-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-011-9338-3