Abstract
Naturalized epistemology, as advanced by Willard Van Orman Quine, appears to make epistemology merely descriptive in form, rather than normative. In striking contrast with the tradition, it appears to leave no place for value judgment in rational formation and change of opinion or belief. Some more recent forms of naturalism in epistemology are more liberal in this respect, but still mainly focus on instrumental value alone. The role of value judgment as it appears in epistemic and doxastic tasks faced in science, as well as in more common practical pursuits, will here be re-examined with a focus on philosophical positions characterized as stances rather than dogmas. The difference between “first-person” expression of value judgments and “third-person” attribution is crucial to the characterization of tasks involved in our epistemic and doxastic life. The conclusion advanced is that such tasks, at every level, involve value judgment, and that epistemology cannot escape involvement with the normative going beyond instrumental value.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
As the quotation in the next paragraph shows, “opinion” is also a technical term in law. “Appreciation,” a term I should like to introduce into epistemology to widen “opinion,” is similarly a technical term already, both in art criticism and in military intelligence (as used in Sheffy 1990). The first two entries in the Oxford English Dictionary for “appreciation” favor the meaning here indicated, though with a nod to the currently dominating connotation of approval, which I do not mean to include (and is not included in the military use).
- 2.
Foley (1993, Chapter 1) advocates an essentially similar account, though in much greater detail, for rationality in general. His discussion provides a good general framework, it seems to me, for Giere’s proposal.
- 3.
This is part of a crucial more general point in Putnam 1982.
- 4.
Despite the phrasing, I think this point does not rest on a sharp fact/value distinction. There is no reason to deny that many of the predicates we use resist being classified wholly on either side of that divide.
- 5.
This analysis will be reminiscent of the disputes between contextualists and invariantists in contextual epistemology.
- 6.
There is an associated somewhat more sophisticated view, that I call Cosa Nostra Ethics. The view that what is good = what meets our own standards faces a problem with the statement “If we had lived in Roman society then slavery would have been good” For certainly, if we had lived in Roman society then that practice would have been in accord with our standards. To overcome this objection, the more sophisticated version insists that the words “our own” are to be understood as “our own actual,” where the indexicals are taken to reach outside the sentence as a whole to the speaker’s context. Compare how the (coherent) wish that I had more money than I actually have compares with the (incoherent) wish to have more money than I have.
- 7.
The point about selection must be included; if omitted we fall back into the first view which will effectively reject all other points of view.
- 8.
Compare the striking descriptions of encounter, whether with a work of art or with another person in Chapter Two of Nehamas 2007.
- 9.
The word “stance” is in danger of sliding into debilitating vagueness, so I won’t call these stances, even though I recognize that one can quite aptly say something like “her stance on questions of evidence and theory choice consists in the following epistemic policy,” cf. Teller 2004.
- 10.
I take it that criteria of vindication take cost into account; an almost impossible policy to follow might be rejected despite its superiority on other counts.
- 11.
See further my Replies in Monton 2007.
- 12.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of judgment (trans. J. C. Meredith; eBooks@Adelaide 2004), First Part. Critique of aesthetic judgment. Section I. Analytic of aesthetic judgement. Book I. Analytic of the beautiful. Section 8. Cf. discussion by Alexander Nehamas, Op. cit., beginning p. 47.
- 13.
Compare Jonathan Dancy’s particularism in ethics, that continues the rather less-known strands of situationalist and existentialist ethics.
- 14.
There are indeed arguments in the literature to the effect that if we meet disagreement with someone we count as an epistemic peer, we should not — on the basis of that alone — lower our own confidence in our views. There are also arguments to the contrary (Elga 2007, 2010; Kelly 2010). But we can leave that general issue aside: even if our confidence is not (or does not need to be) shaken by this encounter, it surely remains that it is to be taken seriously and requires a careful re-examination, and further exploration of the data to be had.
References
Ayer, A. J. (1946). Language, truth and logic (2nd ed.). New York: Dover. (First published 1935)
Bashman, H. J. (2007, April 23). The trial judge as adversary on appeal. Law.com. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1177059874555. Accessed 14 Jan 2013.
Chakravartty, A. (2012). A puzzle about voluntarism about rational epistemic stances. Synthese, 185, 37–48.
Elga, A. (2007). Reflection and disagreement. Noûs, 41, 478–502.
Elga, A. (2010). How to disagree about how to disagree. In R. Feldman & T. Warfield (Eds.), Disagreement (pp. 175–186). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foley, R. (1993). Working without a net: A study of egocentric epistemology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Giere, R. (1985). Philosophy of science naturalized. Philosophy of Science, 52, 331–356.
Giere, R. (1988). Explaining science: A cognitive approach. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Kant, I. (1952[2004]). Critique of judgment (J. C. Meredith, Trans.). EBooks@Adelaide. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16j/index.html. Accessed on 14 Jan 2013.
Kelly, T. (2010). Peer disagreement and higher order evidence. In R. Feldman & T. Warfield (Eds.), Disagreement (pp. 111–174). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Laudan, L. (1990). Science and relativism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Monton, B. (2007). Images of empiricism: Essays on science and stances, with a reply from Bas van Fraassen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nehamas, A. (2007). Only a promise of happiness. The place of beauty in a world of art. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Putnam, H. (1982). Why reason can’t be naturalized. Synthese, 52, 3–23; reprinted in Putnam, H. (1983). Realism and reason, philosophical papers (Vol. 3, pp. 229–247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Putnam, H. (1983). Realism and reason, philosophical papers (Vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Quine, W. V. O. (1977). Epistemology naturalized. In W. V. O. Quine (Ed.), Ontological relativity and other essays (pp. 69–90). New York: Columbia University Press.
Sheffy, Y. (1990). Unconcern at dawn, surprise at sunset: Egyptian intelligence appreciation before the Sinai campaign, 1956. Intelligence and National Security, 5(3), 7–56.
Teller, P. (2004). What is a stance? Philosophical Studies, 121, 159–170.
van Fraassen, B. C. (2002). The empirical stance. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van Fraassen, B.C. (2014). Values, Choices, and Epistemic Stances. In: Gonzalez, W.J. (eds) Bas van Fraassen’s Approach to Representation and Models in Science. Synthese Library, vol 368. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7838-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7838-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7837-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7838-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)