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Stance Pluralism, Scientology, and the Problem of Relativism

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Abstract

Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. Consequently, we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which epistemic stances can be ranked by degrees, and (2) some way to demarcate science from pseudo-science so that we know what epistemic stances are about. Regarding (1), I argue that empirical detectability can serve as the ground in relation to which epistemic stances are ranked by degrees. Regarding (2), I argue for ranking sciences on a continuum according to established institutional criteria, rather than attempting to draw a strict demarcation.

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Notes

  1. See the 2011 special issue of Synthese (volume 178, issue 1) edited by Darrell Rowbottom and Octavio Bueno for the status of the contemporary debate.

  2. Scientology originally took the form of what Hubbard called Dianetics (as outlined in his (1950) book Dianetics: The modern science of mental health). Once Dianetics began to take on overtly religious tones, it morphed into what we now know as Scientology.

  3. The question of whether Scientology is largely a money-making pyramid scheme rather than a sincere philanthropic religion is often discussed (see e.g. Miller, 1988; Wright, 2013). I will however not engage with this debate since our concern is with the empirical, rather than financial, practices contained in Scientology.

  4. See Bigliardi (2016) for a detailed study of the E-meter, its role in Scientology, and its relationship to conventional science and technology.

  5. These claims rely on us having a level of trust in Scientologists’ sincerity. In other words, we will have to believe that Scientologists are (on the whole) well-meaning, but misguided pseudo-scientists, rather than charlatans. I do not see how we can make judgements to the contrary without insights into their deep psychological motives (see Hansson, 2017; Dawes, 2018 for more on this issue).

  6. Stathis Psillos (2021) argues likewise that creationism is not obviously self-defeating. Matthew Slater (2021) suggests the same for climate change denial and flat-Earthism.

  7. Chakravartty declines to offer examples of pathological epistemic stances. He does nonetheless state that an epistemic stance is pathological if its “associated epistemic policies are transparently flawed” (Chakravartty, 2017, p. 230). PSES seems to fit this definition.

  8. The National Academies of Science reports the reliability of polygraph testing as being between 81% and 91% (National Research Council, 2003). Lewis and Cuppari (2009) argue for the empirical legitimacy of polygraphy. Ekman (1996) and Cacioppo et al. (2000) disagree.

  9. Kyle Stanford notes likewise that creationism enjoys “‘some’ degree of representational accuracy”; the theory is not “wrong or misleading about everything” (2003, p. 567; see also Mahner, 2007, pp. 518–519). According to van Fraassen, there is no clear demarcation between science and religion (2002, pp. 153–155).

  10. See Hansson (2020) for a thorough discussion of pseudo-technology and its relation to pseudo-science.

  11. Probability theory may offer one way to formalise such a ranking schema. Jared Henderson (2021) has suggested that we can make sense of “partial verification” in terms of probability. Since probability comes in degrees, a claim is more or less verified depending on how probable it is made by the available evidence. In terms of our discussion, we can think of the ontological claims that form part of the content of an epistemic stance as being made more or less probable by the degree to which they are verifiable by detection. The more probable an epistemic stance’s ontological claims are, the more legitimate it will be, and the more our confidence in it should increase.

  12. See Hansson (2021) and for a thorough discussion of the demarcation problem. See Hirvonen and Karisto (2022) for a history.

  13. An anonymous reviewer pointed out that many English speakers mistakenly use the term ‘bona fide’ to mean something like ‘legitimate’, when it, in fact, means ‘in good faith’. The context of the Ladyman and Ross quote suggests that they intend the former. For consistency, I will follow Ladyman and Ross in using the mistaken sense of the term.

  14. As before, if ranking disciplines proves controversial, x-phi studies could empirically establish degrees of scientificity by surveying institutional norms.

  15. If graphed, this continuum should form a bell curve shape. Legitimate sciences cluster in the centre and pseudo-sciences reside in the long tail of the distribution. See also Mahner (2007) and Boudry (2017) for similar ranking schemas.

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John Templeton Foundation Project ID: 61408, Increasing Complexity: The First Rule of Evolution?

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities, Institute for the Future of Knowledge, University of Johannesburg, Kingsway Campus, Corner Kingsway and University Road,, Auckland Park, Johannesburg, 2000, South Africa

    Ragnar van der Merwe

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van der Merwe, R. Stance Pluralism, Scientology, and the Problem of Relativism. Found Sci (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-022-09882-w

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