A Deweyan Pragmatist Philosophy of Science
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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Science and experience : a Deweyan pragmatist philosophy of science Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/08q037x9 Author Brown, Matthew J. Publication Date 2009 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Science and Experience A Deweyan Pragmatist Philosophy of Science A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Matthew J. Brown Committee in charge: Professor Paul Churchland, Chair Professor Nancy Cartwright, Co-Chair Professor Michael Cole Professor Gerald Doppelt Professor Roddey Reid Professor Donald Rutherford 2009 Copyright Matthew J. Brown, 2009 Some rights reserved. Licensed under the United States Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND). The dissertation of Matthew J. Brown is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Chair University of California, San Diego 2009 iii DEDICATION In memory of Professor Jon J. Johnston (1928-2008) Teacher, Mentor, Friend iv EPIGRAPH To work exclusively within the context provided by the sciences themselves is to ignore their vital context. The place of science in life, the place of its peculiar subject-matter in the wide scheme of materials we experience, is a more ultimate function of philosophy that is any self-contained reflection upon science as such. | John Dewey, Context and Thought (LW 6:19-20) v TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page................................... iii Dedication...................................... iv Epigraph......................................v Table of Contents.................................. vi List of Figures................................... ix Preface.......................................x Acknowledgements................................. xix Vita and Publications............................... xxviii Abstract of the Dissertation............................ xxix Chapter 1 Introduction.............................1 1.1 Whatever happened to American Pragmatism?.......1 1.2 The Transformation of Philosophy of Science, 1930{1960.4 1.3 The Current Impasse as Legacy of Late Logical Empiricism 14 1.4 Back to Dewey: A Counterfactual History......... 17 Chapter 2 John Dewey's Philosophy of Science................ 21 2.1 Introduction.......................... 21 2.2 Background.......................... 26 2.2.1 Lived and Historical Context............. 26 2.2.2 Guiding Principles.................. 30 2.2.3 Dewey's Philosophical Projects........... 34 2.2.4 The relation of logic to science............ 36 2.3 Anti-skeptical fallibilism................... 38 2.4 Anti-foundationalism without coherentism......... 40 2.5 Inquiry defined........................ 42 2.6 The importance of the situation............... 45 2.7 Normative force........................ 47 2.8 The Pattern of Inquiry.................... 49 vi 2.8.1 Facts and problems.................. 50 2.8.2 Ideas and solutions.................. 54 2.8.3 The Coordinate Development of Facts and Ideas.. 55 2.8.4 Reasoning and Conceptual Frameworks....... 59 2.8.5 The Necessity of Experiments............ 60 2.8.6 Final Judgment and the Close of Inquiry...... 62 2.9 The role of values....................... 63 2.10 Summary........................... 69 Chapter 3 Inquiry and Evidence........................ 70 3.1 Introduction.......................... 70 3.2 Evidence and the Pattern of Inquiry............. 72 3.2.1 The E)H (Non-Dynamical) Model......... 72 3.2.2 Dynamical models................... 74 3.2.3 The Inquiry-Model.................. 75 3.2.4 Snow on Cholera................... 78 3.2.5 Evidence on the Inquiry-Model........... 85 3.3 Some Problems of Evidence Dissolved............ 87 3.3.1 Theory-Ladenness and the Experimenter's Regress. 87 3.3.2 Discordant Evidence................. 96 3.3.3 The Value of Robustness............... 101 3.3.4 Evidence for Use................... 106 3.4 Real Perplexities of Evidence................. 108 3.4.1 \Evidence"-Based Policy............... 109 Chapter 4 Genuine Problems and the Significance of Science........ 116 4.1 Introduction.......................... 116 4.2 Why Significance?....................... 119 4.3 Kitcher's Theory of Significance............... 125 4.3.1 Significance Graphs.................. 125 4.3.2 Problems for Kitcher's Theory............ 127 4.4 The Pragmatist Model of Inquiry.............. 129 4.4.1 Peirce's Insight.................... 130 4.4.2 Dewey's Elaboration of the Model.......... 131 4.5 Genuine Problems and Scientific Significance........ 134 4.6 Consequences for Science & Democracy........... 138 vii Chapter 5 Pluralism, Perspectivism, and Pragmatism............ 140 5.1 Giere's Scientific Perspectivism ............... 142 5.2 Feyerabend on representation in art and science............................. 149 5.3 Pragmatism on purpose and inquiry............. 155 5.4 Conclusion........................... 161 Chapter 6 Answering Rorty.......................... 164 6.1 Introduction.......................... 164 6.2 Rorty's Attack on Epistemology............... 164 6.2.1 Three Versions of `Epistemology'.......... 167 6.2.2 Rorty's Critique of Global Epistemology...... 169 6.2.3 Hermeneutics as an Alternative to Epistemology.. 176 6.2.4 Rorty's Critique of Dewey.............. 178 6.3 Feyerabend Against Epistemology.............. 195 Chapter 7 Conclusion: Transforming Experience............... 197 7.1 Science in a Precarious World................ 197 7.2 Transforming Experience................... 199 7.3 Changing the World...................... 201 7.4 Objects, Events, and Meaning................ 203 7.5 Existence, Value, and Criticism............... 206 Appendix A Epilogue: Science as D-Cog.................... 209 A.1 What is D-Cog?........................ 210 A.2 Science as D-Cog....................... 213 A.3 The Cognitive and the Social................. 214 A.4 Challenges........................... 217 A.5 Prospects for a D-Cog Theory of Science.......... 220 Bibliography............................. 224 Index........................................ 233 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: The Pattern of Inquiry........................ 50 Figure 4.1: Toy Significance Graph....................... 126 Figure 4.2: Measure of Intrinsic Significance................... 137 Figure 5.1: Observational Perspectives on the Milky Way........... 145 Figure 5.2: Giere's Models-Based Account of Theories............. 146 Figure 5.3: Rules of Projection for Single-Point Perspective.......... 150 Figure 5.4: Brunelleschi's Perspective Experiment............... 151 Figure 5.5: Brunelleschi's \Stage"........................ 153 Figure 5.6: The CERN Stage........................... 154 Figure 5.7: Feyerabend's Dramatic Model of Scientific Representation.... 154 Figure 5.8: Dewey on the Temporal Development of Inquiry.......... 158 Figure 5.9: Dewey on the Production of Judgment............... 159 Figure 5.10: Dramatic-Perspectivist Model of Scientific Inquiry........ 160 Figure A.1: Longhand Multiplication....................... 212 Figure A.2: Chemical Formulae.......................... 213 ix PREFACE Why Dewey? Why Philosophy of Science? Philosophy of science is headed towards an impasse. The way of thinking about science that has been passed down to us is woefully inadequate for our present purposes. Given the questions that now interest us, this legacy creates more prob- lems than it solves. Further, it tends to alienate us from science, rather than make science seem actually or potentially connected to our lives. At best, it renders science strange, and at worst, it renders it dangerous and frightening. Rather than a set of practices with a human face, striving after goals comprehensible to mere mortals, science has been treated as some or another abstract system of ideas and techno- cratic processes of measurement. I think it likely that the promotion of thinking about science in this way lies behind the reaction to science within the humanities that culminated in the so-called \science wars." Philosophy of science has never been given to a global orthodoxy (talk about \the received view" notwithstanding), so any talk about what the tradition has handed down will necessarily proceed in terms of family resemblances, common trends and shared styles of thinking, rather than a coherent body of doctrine, a single method, or a unified research program. The way in which I attempt to lay bare the common assumptions within the tradition|the source of the mistakes|is by providing a comprehensive alternative, very different from the approaches that have been the main life of philosophy of science. This is my main aim, to provide such an alternative, which I have discovered in the work of the great American philosopher John Dewey. Dewey's long-forgotten philosophy of science was one of the most important players in the formation of that area of specialization, and it wouldn't be an exag- geration to suggest that, as in most areas of intellectual culture, no public discussion x of science in the inter-war period passed without seeking the input of Dewey and his students. Nevertheless, Dewey's philosophy of science came to be eclipsed by the rise of logical positivism in America and the institution of so-called \analytic" philosophy. The reasons for this shift are many and complicated, and I give a partial treatment of them in the introduction; they include a growing fascination