Abstract
In its early development philosophy of science did not allow the possibility of a relativistic approach with regard to explanation of external phenomena. Relativism was seen as justified exclusively with regard to internal phenomena, for example, in the realm of moral and aesthetic judgment. In the realm of moral judgment, external realism functions as a necessary hypothesis, according to which our moral judgment and moral decisions have a real effect in the external world, for which we can be held responsible. A paradigm shift in the theory of science, inaugurated by Th. S. Kuhn, led to the rise of relativism with regard to judgment in the realm of external phenomena and specifically with regard to the validity of scientific theories. Critics of relativism do not take into account that it is not enough to point out the logical inconsistency of relativism. Most arguments for scientific justification of external realism are doomed to failure, because they do not take into account the role of the judgmental subject. In this article I will show that the role of “second nature” is significant not only for the constitution of moral realism, but also for the implementation of scientific naturalism.
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Notes
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981; Gail Fine, "Protagorean relativisms", in J. Cleary and W. Wians (eds.), Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, Lanham, MD: University Press of America 1996, 211–243; M. F. Burnyeat, “Protagoras and Self Refutation in Plato’s Theaetetus.” Philosophical Review 85 (1976). 172–95. The publication of this article was made possible through the funding of the Croatian Science Foundation as part my research project “Relevance of Hermeneutic Judgment”.
Hermann Diels, Walther Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Zweiter Band, Zürich: Weidmann 1985, Nachdruck der 6. verbesserten Auflage DK, 80 B1; cf. Plato, Theaet. 152a.
Myles Burnyeat, The Theaetetus of Plato. With a Translation by M. J. Levett, Revised by Myles Burnyeat, (Hackett: Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1990, 9.
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 121.
Ibid, 124.
Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge, Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006, 2.
Cf. David Malet Armstrong, What is a Law of Nature? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983. 59.
Cf. Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks the Truth, London and New York; Routledge, 1999, 10–12; 222.
Clark Glymour, “Explanation and Realism”, in J. Leplin (ed.), Scientific Realism, Berkeley: University of California Press 1984, pp. 173–192, p. 173.
Cf. Paul R. Thagard, “The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice”; The Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1978) 76–92.
Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, April 1993, p. 172.
cf. T.S. Kuhn “Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice” in: Thomas S. Kuhn, The essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago. Press, 1977, p. 322.
Ernan McMullin, The Inference that Makes Science (Aquinas Lecture) Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1992, p. 2; Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd Edition) London: Routledge, 2004, s. 56; W. H. Newton-Smith, “Realism and the Inference to the Best Explanation”, Fundamenta Scientiae 7 (1987) 305–316; W. H. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1981; Paul Boghossian, “What is Inference”, Philosophical Studies 169 (1):1–18 (2014).
Craig Dilworth, Scientific Progress. A Study Concerning the Nature of the Relation Between Successive Scientific Theories. Dordrecht: Springer 2008, p. 85 sq.
Paul R. Thagard, “The Best Explanation: Criteria for Theory Choice”, The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 75, No. 2 (Feb., 1978), pp. 76–92.
For the critique of the criterion of simplicity cf. Elliott Sober, Ockham's Razors: A User's Manual, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 171.
I. Kant, Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis, Gesammelte Werke, Akademieausgabe 8, p. 275.
Bas C. van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1989, 132. Bas van Fraassen has become well known for his criticism of the method of inference to the best explanation. His attack on IBE in Laws and Symmetry (1989) is remarkable, for van Fraassen sees no merit at all in the idea of IBE: “One is that it pretends to be something other than it is. Another is that it is supported by bad arguments. A third is that it conflicts with other forms of change of opinion, that we accept as rational”, Ibid., 142.
Cf. Ibid., 171.
R. Carnap, The Logical Structure of the World and Pseudo-problems in Philosophy, translated by Rolf A. George. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1967 repr. 2003, p. 297.
Ibid., 297.
Cf. Hilary Putnam, "Problems with the observational/theoretical distinction", in Scientific Inquiry, Robert Klee, ed (New York, USA: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp 25–29; Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, 10 sq; Stephen Toulmin, Philosophy of Science. An Introduction. Oxford 1953, 10; C. Ulises Moulines, “Wer bestimmt, was es gibt? Zum Verhältnis zwischen Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie”, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 48 (1994) 175–191.
“Philosophie als Wissenschaft, als ernstliche, strenge, ja apodiktisch strenge Wissenschaft—der Traum ist ausgeträumt”, in: Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Hrsg. von Walter Biemel, Husserliana—Band VI The Haag: Martinus Nijhoff 1954, 508.
Ibid., 3.
Ibid., 140.
Ibid., 6–7; Here is cited the translation of David Carr; E. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press 1970, 9.
Ernst Cassirer, An essay on man: An introduction to a philosophy of human culture 1954, 261.
Cf. Carles Ulises Moulines, Die Entwicklung der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie (1890–2000), p. 124; Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford University Press, 2006, 118; Alan Sokal, Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, 191.
Considering the influence of Kuhn's Structure of the Scientific Revolution, I. Hacking wrote: “It is often said that Kuhn completely overthrew the philosophy of the Vienna Circle and its descendants, that he inaugurated ‘postpositivism’. Yet he perpetuated many of its presuppositions. Rudolf Carnap’s most famous book is entitled The Logical Syntax of Language. The work of Kuhn’s final years can be said to be engaged in the logical syntax of the language of science” T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Fourth Edition. With an Introductory by Ian Hacking. Chicago 2012, p. xiii.
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge. London: Verso 1993, 14.
Richard Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Second edition. 1953, 17.
Cf. Paul K. Feyerabend, Three Dialogues on Knowledge Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1991, 32.
Wolfgang Wieland, “The Philosophy of Science: Its Possibilities and Limits”, Angewandte Chemie (International Edition in English) 20 (1981) 617–623; 622; Cf. Christian Morgenstern, The Gallows Songs. Christian Morgenstern's Galgenlieder, translated by Max Knight (University of California Press, 1964), p. 35:
The Impossible Fact
Palmstroem, old, an aimless rover,
walking in the wrong direction
at a busy intersection
is run over.
"How," he says, his life restoring
and with pluck his death ignoring,
"can an accident like this
ever happen? What's amiss?
"Did the state administration
fail in motor transportation?
Did police ignore the need
for reducing driving speed?”
"Isn't there a prohibition,
barring motorized transmission
of the living to the dead?
Was the driver right who sped … ?"
Tightly swathed in dampened tissues
he explores the legal issues,
and it soon is clear as air:
Cars were not permitted there!
And he comes to the conclusion:
His mishap was an illusion,
for, he reasons pointedly,
that which must not, can not be.
Stephen Toulmin, « Hermeneutics of the Natural Sciences » u: Babette E. Babich (ed.) Hermeneutic Philosophy of Science, Van Gogh's Eyes, and God New York: Springer 2002, 25–32; Michael A. Arbib and Mary B. Hesse, The Construction of Reality; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986; E. Agazzi, Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts. Berlin: Springer, 2014, p IX, 334; Patrick A. Heelan, « Why hermeneutical philosophy of natural science » in: Robert P. Crease (ed.) Hermeneutics and the Natural Sciences Dordrecht: Springer 1997, pp. 271–298, p. 278.
Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie, Oxford University Press 1983, 58.
Sellars, Wilfrid, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. With an Introduction by Richard Rorty and a Study Guide by Robert Brandom. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 766.
John McDowell, Mind and World, London: Routledge, 2002, p. XX.
Ibid., 4.
Ibid., xx.
Ibid., 87.
Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, edited by Allen W. Wood, translated by H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, § 4.
G.W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, § 151.
Cf. Sami Pihlström, Pragmatic Moral Realism: A Transcendental Defense. Amsterdam: Rodopi 2005, 9 sq.
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. Oxford 2012, 114.
Ibid. 114.
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Zovko, J. Some Problems with Scientific Relativism and Moral Realism. Axiomathes 28, 665–678 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9400-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-018-9400-8