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Evidence, justification, and epistemic standards

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Abstract

Epistemic standards purport to tell us under what conditions we should adopt specific beliefs. In the scientific case, we might understand an epistemic standard as telling us what beliefs we should or even must adopt when faced with such-and-such evidence. It is an open question whether and to what extent science, or scientists, form beliefs based upon standards so construed. Epistemic relativism gives two strong arguments against a robust role for epistemic standards in science. This paper assesses these arguments and argues that even if we accept them, epistemic standards play a strong, normative role and that failure to adhere to epistemic standards, in a sense to be clarified, risks irrationality. To make this argument, we must abandon the idea that standards determine in a strong sense what beliefs scientists must adopt and instead think of them as a guide for choosing between beliefs. If we think of standards in this way, then they can play a role in rational scientific discourse. This conception of standards is inspired by Kuhnian values and helps arbitrate between relativism and more rational conceptions of evidence and justification. The Chemical Revolution provides illustration of this view.

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Notes

  1. For further details on Da Costa and French’s take on Kuhn, and how they differ with respect to the role of criteria and exemplars in science, see in their (2003, pp. 126–127).

  2. These are of course not the only arguments against rationalism, but they seem to me among the most powerful. For other arguments, see (Kusch 2017) and Bloor (2006, 2016).

  3. A number of complex experiments and interpretations preceded the publication of Kirwan’s text and the nature and trajectory of the Chemical Revolution (a period from which this text emerges) is a fraught topic. Just a few problems to emerge from a study of this period include those of pluralism (Chang, 2012; Jacoby, 2021; Kusch, 2015), of the revolutionary nature of science (Klein, 2015; McEvoy, 1997), of structural realism(Blumenthal & Ladyman, 2018) of Lavoisier’s work (Bensaude-Vincent, 1992; Holmes, 1995), the nature of composition (Siegfried, 2002; Siegfried & Dobbs, 1968), and many more. Among these many other topics we can safely add the role of epistemic standards in science, particularly the role they played in exchanges between oxygen and phlogiston chemists.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Levy, Michela Massimi, and Martin Kusch for fruitful and stimulating conversations and conference talks. Several anonymous reviewers generously offered detailed and very constructive feedback; the paper is better for their efforts.

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  1. University of Trier, Universitätsring 15, 54296, Trier, Germany

    Franklin Jacoby

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Jacoby, F. Evidence, justification, and epistemic standards. Synthese 201, 44 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-023-04040-6

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