The insularity of scientific reasoning

Topoi, 2013

7 Abstract Reasoning, defined as the production and 8 evaluation of reasons, is a central process in science. The 9 dominant view of reasoning, both in the psychology of 10 reasoning and in the psychology of science, is of a mech-11 anism with an asocial function: bettering the beliefs of the 12 lone reasoner. Many observations, however, are difficult to 13 reconcile with this view of reasoning; in particular, rea-14 soning systematically searches for reasons that support the 15 reasoner's initial beliefs, and it only evaluates these reasons 16 cursorily. By contrast, reasoners are well able to evaluate 17 others' reasons: accepting strong arguments and rejecting 18 weak ones. The argumentative theory of reasoning 19 accounts for these traits of reasoning by postulating that the 20 evolved function of reasoning is to argue: to find arguments 21 to convince others and to change one's mind when con-22 fronted with good arguments. Scientific reasoning, how-23 ever, is often described as being at odds with such an 24 argumentative mechanisms: scientists are supposed to 25 reason objectively on their own, and to be pigheaded when 26 their theories are challenged, even by good arguments. In 27 this article, we review evidence showing that scientists, 28 when reasoning, are subject to the same biases as are lay 29 people while being able to change their mind when con-30 fronted with good arguments. We conclude that the argu-31 mentative theory of reasoning explains well key features of 32 scientists' reasoning and that differences in the way 33 scientists and laypeople reason result from the institutional 34 framework of science. 35 36 Journal : Large 11245 Dispatch : 21-10-2013 Pages : 12 Article No. : 9217 h LE h TYPESET MS Code : h CP h DISK 4 4 R E V I S E D P R O O F 56 with the thinking of the lone scientist. Scientists might 57 have inherited the problem they deal with from others; they 58 might have social interests; but ultimately it is through 59 reasoning, with its power to uncover the truth, that scien-60 tists devise new theories. Yet the dichotomy that separates, 61 on the one hand, the social and the contextual phenomena 62 and, on the other hand, the individual and epistemic facts, 63 has long been decried (Bloor 1976). Decades of sociology 64 of science have shown that science is an enterprise that 65 involves social interactions in non-trivial ways: the distri-66 bution of labor (e.g. Giere 2002), the historical construction 67 of epistemic standards (e.g. Knorr Cetina 1991), and the 68 collective assessment of theories (e.g. Latour 1993) are 69 cases in point. But reasoning remains the last and most 70 important bastion of individualism in epistemology and 71 science studies. 2 When we assert that the function of rea-72 soning is argumentative, we give to social interactions a 73 key role in reasoning. Reasoning is something that happens 74 in the individual mind, yet, it is a cognitive ability that is 75 geared for dealing with social interactions. How does 76 reasoning's argumentative function play out in the context 77 of science? And what are the consequences for science, its 78 practices, its institutions, and its epistemic status? 79

1997

The thesis of my paper is that argumentation theory provides a promising heuristic framework for addressing issues raised by the rationality debates in the philosophy of science, in particular the issues connected with scientific controversies over the appraisal and choice of competing theories. The first part of the paper grounds this thesis historically. In criticizing the logical empiricists, Thomas Kuhn set the stage for the subsequent opposition between a normative, anti-sociological philosophy of science and a descriptive, anti-philosophical sociology of knowledge. But he also hinted at the main lines of a multi-dimensional theory of argumentation which might frame a wide range of current investigations into scientific reasoning. In the second part of the paper I focus on the central normative aspect of this framework, dialectical argumentation, and clarify the key challenge, the underdetermination of theories by evidence. In the third part, I attempt to get beyond the dichotomy informing the rationality debates by reformulating the problem of theory choice within a broader context of scientific rationality. *** The dynamics and rationality of scientific progress continues to endure as a crucial issue in the philosophy of science. One of the central questions is this: What makes it rational for scientists to choose one theory over its competitors? More broadly, what justifies the claim that science is progressing, that our theories today are superior to those of previous generations? In the first half of the twentieth century, the logical empiricists attempted to answer such questions by reconstructing a normative "logic of justification" that primarily relied on the tools of formal logic, whether deductive, inductive, or probabilistic. This approach was in serious difficulty even before Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970a) appeared in 1962.1 A watershed in the study of science, Kuhn's book opened the topic of scientific rationality to a host of sociological, historiographic, and rhetorical analyses which then competed alongside the philosophy of science. Unfortunately, cooperation among these various disciplinary perspectives has not always been the order of the day. One of the more conspicuous rifts opened up between philosophical attempts to rescue norms of rationality and progress, and more descriptive sociological and historical approaches, which often proclaimed a principled epistemological relativism. Consequently, the rationality debates sparked by the "sociology of scientific knowledge" (SSK) have pitted not just different theories against one another but entire disciplines as well.2 In this paper I assume that a less dichotomous, more cooperative atmosphere is desirable, and I propose that argumentation theory can foster this. Specifically, argumentation theory can provide a heuristic framework within which a number of disciplinary approaches, both normative and descriptive, could investigate and debate issues involved in the rationality of scientific advance. In the first part of the paper I motivate this thesis historically and

More than a quarter of a century ago, science studies scholars began shifting their attention from science as a system of ideas or beliefs produced by a social institution to a conceptualization of science as a set of practices. A theoretically and disciplinarily diverse set of laboratory and controversy studies published in the late 1970s and early 1980s offered a "naturalistic" look at what scientists are doing when they prepare, devise, or conduct their experiments; collect and interpret data; discuss, formulate, or write up their work; and agree or disagree about their findings. Some adopted the new approach because of a commitment to ethnomethodology; others had a background in anthropology and its ethnographic methods or in symbolic interactionist modes of analysis of work. Still others were inspired by Kuhn's interpretation of paradigms as exemplars, concrete practical achievements which scientists treat as models in need of further elaboration rather than as articulated systems of beliefs; by Polanyi's idea of tacit knowledge; or by the Wittgensteinian or Winchian attention to forms of life.

and Habermas, MIT Press, 2009, 345pp., $40.00 (hbk) ISBN 9780262182713. Books can easily be found that offer to examine and account for the "science wars", understood as the ongoing turf battle between philosophers and sociologists. The focus of the conflict concerns how to explain what considerations actually determine what comes to be accepted as the received views in any one of the natural sciences. The main contenders consist of two apparently opposed explanatory strategies. On the one hand, some advocate the primacy of contextual factors in order to explain why a scientific community settles on a particular view. On such accounts, the norms of scientific inquiry represent only the contingent products of historical circumstance. On the other hand, "internalist" accounts typically seek to establish that evidence can be and is rationally determinative. Evaluative procedures can have validity that transcend their context. On this view, use of proper rational procedure explains what prevails and why within a scientific community. The former view denies and the latter affirms that standards of rationality simpliciter can and do explain accepted scientific views.

2023

Translation of "Rationalité scientifique, disciplinarité et interdisciplinarité", Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales, vol. 16, no 2, 2021, p. 201-236. Abstract This article questions the possibility of an interdisciplinarity that would be practiced outside the scientific field. To provide some answer, it shows how philosophy is intrinsically associated with subjectivity, how science progressively pulls away from philosophy, how this distancing enables the division of knowledge, how the division of knowledge calls for interdisciplinarity. Having established that, it reports some requests for an unscientific interdisciplinarity and then shows that these aspirations relate more to philosophy than interdisciplinarity.

Argumentation, 1990

In this article it is argued that a complex model that includes Toulmin's functional account of argument, the pragma-dialectical stage analysis of argumentation offered by the Amsterdam School, and criteria developed in critical thinking theory, can be used to account for the normativity and field-dependence of argumentation in science. A pragma-dialectical interpretation of the four main elements of Toulmin's model, and a revised account of the double role of warrants, illuminates the domain specificity of scientific argumentation and the restrictions to which the confrontation and opening stages of scientific critical discussions are subjected. In regard to the argumentation stage, examples are given to show that a general account of argumentation, as advocated by informal logicians, is not applicable to arguments in science. Furthermore, although patterns of inference differ in various scientific practices, deductive validity is argued to be a crucial notion in the assessment of scientific arguments. Finally, some remarks are made concerning the burden of proof and the concluding stage of scientific argumentation.

Philosophica

The aim of this paper is to disambiguate between different notions of pursuit worthiness regarding scientific inquiries. To this end we propose a unifying pattern of pursuit worthiness: "It is rational for Y to pursue X if and only if pursuing X is conducive of the set of goals Z." By showing in which ways variables X, Y, and Z can be changed, we present different notions of pursuit and pursuit worthiness. With respect to variable X, we distinguish the pursuit of scientific theories, epistemic objects, and technological developments. With respect to variable Z, we distinguish between epistemic and practical pursuit worthiness. Finally, with respect to variable Y, we distinguish between individual and communal pursuit worthiness. By means of these distinctions we are able to explicate some of the major ambiguities underlying the concept of pursuit of pursuit worthiness, as well as to shed light on some confusions in philosophical literature that have resulted from their neglect.

Philosophica, 2012

The aim of this paper is to disambiguate between different notions of pursuit worthiness regarding scientific inquiries. To this end we propose a unifying pattern of pursuit worthiness: “It is rational for Y to pursue X if and only if pursuing X is conducive of the set of goals Z.” By showing in which ways variables X, Y , and Z can be changed, we present different notions of pursuit and pursuit worthiness. With respect to variable X, we distinguish the pursuit of scientific theories, epistemic objects, and technological developments. With respect to variable Z, we distinguish between epistemic and practical pursuit worthiness. Finally, with respect to variable Y, we distinguish between individual and communal pursuit worthiness. By means of these distinctions we are able to explicate some of the major ambiguities underlying the concept of pursuit of pursuit worthiness, as well as to shed light on some confusions in philosophical literature that have resulted from their neglect.