On Fri, 26 Mar 1999 09:07:45 -0800 Sam Pawlett <epawlett at uniserve.com>
writes:
>
>
>>
>>
>> well now see, that wasn't the issue. sam seemed to be suggesting a
>rather
>> positivist account of science: the logic of discovery is or should
>be
>> absolutely distinct from (has no influence on) the logic of
>justification
>> and both should be distinct from the logic of political practice.
>in other
>> words, if only the right procedures are used to heighten the
>scientist's
>> objectivity, then we can produce increasingly objective accounts of
>the
>> social.
>
>The logic of discovery should be independant of the logic of
>justification, but
>is it? I think Kuhn and Hanson refuted the idea that there is a logic
>of
>discovery. Science as it is actually practiced is more messy. It
>relies on
>intangibles like intuition, guess work. I think the logic of discovery
>can be
>weakened into a claim about convergence. Convergence is where two or
>more people
>come to the same conclusion independantly. The paradigm example would
>be
>Descartes and Leibniz both discovering (not inventing) the calculus at
>the same
>time.
Hans Reichenbach in formulating his distinction between the "context of discovery" and the "context of justification" always argued that only the latter was bound by norms of empirical testing and the use of both inductive and deductive logic. In the "context of justification" intuition was to be given free reign as long as it helped investigators to arrive at hypotheses that were fruitful and testable. As a I know Popper's views on this matter were not much different. For him the logic of discovery and the logic of justification were quite different. Kuhn, however, suggested that both are conditioned by the prevailing paradigm in a particular scientific discipline, since the paradigm both delimits the boundaries of what are acceptable or unacceptable hypotheses and it imposes boundaries on what kinds of methods can be used for testing, verifying or refuting hypotheses within a given scientific discipline.
BTW the calculus was independently by Isaac Newton and Liebnitz, not Descartes. Descartes did discover analytic geometry, an impressive enough of an achievement in its own right, and which did serve to lay the groundwork for the calculus.
>
>>
>>
>> sam also seems to be arguing for naturalism: a unity between the
>methods
>> of the natural and social sciences, whether he supports reductionism
>or
>> scientism or something else i'm not yet sure.
>
>Yes, but I do not support reductionism. I've argued against it on
>these lists
>before.
>I'm trying to defend scientific realism, naturalism, non-reductionism
>and Marxism
>at the same time, though I suspect I'm not doing a very good job. To
>lapse into
>jargon, realism is different than positivism in that positivism
>because of its
>verificationism, does not believe that entities which cannot be
>immedietely
>sensed exist. I believe in explanatory unification i.e. a maximal
>amount of
>properties can be exlained by a minimal amount of theory.
> Humans are a part of the natural world so why not study them
>naturalistically?
>However, naturalism may not explain all of the social world
>satisfactorily for
>various reasons.
>
>
>>
>>
>> the criticism you've offered Yoshie are important, but i find that
>it's
>> not nearly powerful enough to reject neopositivist and interpretive
>> epsitemologies/ontologies. i want a stronger critique. so, while
>sam
>> suggests that we simply have to keep tryin' in order to get closer
>to the
>> truth,
>
>Yes, convergence. Isn't that the way science is actually practiced.
>Trial and
>error, intuition, experiment, guessing etc. until one gets a better
>and better
>theory which, presumably, is true description of reality?
>
>> this reads to me as merely an epistemological claim.
The American pragmatist, C.S. Peirce, placed great stress on convergence in the formulation of his consensus theory of truth. How does one know that one's theory gives a true description of reality? A theory is true to the extent that it consistent with the consensus that qualified investigators would arrive at concerning the subject at hand. Peirce, recognized of course that such a consensus may never be arrived at, but the ideal of truth so-conceived could still serve as a regulative ideal. Interestingly enough, the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci arrived at a similar view.
>
>Yes it is an epistemological claim. The problem with claiming that the
>ontological and epistemological are interdependant (social
>construcitonism) is
>conceptual confusion and slipping in to a form of idealism or
>relativism.Constructionists believe that reality exists in least in
>part on the
>way the perceiver perceives it. It is your *knowledge* of reality that
>is theory
>dependant, infused with values etc. not reality itself. You do not
>need to claim
>that ontology and epistemology are interdependant to keep your claims
>about the
>sociology of knowledge.
>
>Sam Pawlett
>
>
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