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Feyerabend's
Philosophy of Science
Of the four basic topics that may be
considered in philosophy of science (aim of science,
scientific explanation, scientific criticism, and
scientific discovery) the place to begin an overview
of Feyerabend's philosophy of science is with the
topic of scientific criticism.
Criticism
Given Feyerabend’s critique of Popper, it
might be said at the outset and at the risk of
oversimplification that Popper’s philosophy of
criticism admits that test design statements can be
revised, but takes as its point of departure the
acceptance and agreement about test design language
as a necessary condition for decidable criticism and
progress in science.
Kuhn and Feyerabend on the other hand choose
to examine the practices of criticism and the
conditions for progress, where test design
statements are being revised, such that tests are
invalidated. Central
to Kuhn and Feyerabend’s philosophies is the
thesis that the choice of scientific theories is not
fully decidable empirically, and this thesis is the
basis for their attacks on Popper's falsificationism
or critical rationalism.
But Feyerabend and Kuhn also differ.
Feyerabend attacks Kuhn's sociological thesis
of how the empirical undecidability is resolved.
The arbitrariness in criticism permitted by
this empirical indeterminacy has been described in
various ways. Conant
called it "prejudice", Kuhn called it
"paradigm consensus", and Feyerabend
called it "tenacity".
Conant was simply dismayed by the phenomenon
he observed in the history of science, but he took
it more seriously than did his contemporaries, the
Positivist philosophers, who preferred to dismiss it
as simply unscientific. Conant found that prejudice is too frequently practiced by
contributing scientists to be dismissed so easily. He also explicitly admitted the strategic role of his own
prejudices in his preference for a historical
examination of science.
Kuhn did not merely accept prejudice as a
frequent fact in the history of science.
He saw it as integral to science due to a
sociological function that it performs within a
scientific community, a function that is a condition
for scientific progress.
Prejudice, which Kuhn had earlier referred to
as the problem of scientific belief, is the
sociologically enforced consensus about a paradigm
that is necessary for the scientific community to
function effectively and efficiently for solving
detailed technical problems Kuhn calls puzzles. Without the consensus the community could not marshal its
limited resources for the exploration or
articulation of the promises of the paradigm.
In Kuhn's concept of science professional
discipline becomes synonymous with conformity to the
prevailing view defined by the paradigm.
The phase during which this conformity is a
criterion for criticism and is effectively enforced
by sociological controls, is normal science.
Feyerabend rejects Kuhn's thesis that
prejudice functions by virtue of a sociologically
enforced uniformity.
In Feyerabend's view any such uniformity is
indicative of stagnation rather than progress.
Instead, prejudice understood as his
principle of tenacity is strategically functional,
because it has just the opposite effect that Kuhn
thought: it promotes diversity and theoretical
pluralism, which in Feyerabend's view are necessary
conditions for scientific progress.
It might be said that Feyerabend views Kuhn's
sociological thesis of normal science as an instance
of the fallacy of composition, the fallacy of
incorrectly attributing to a whole the properties
had by its component parts: just as houses need not
have the rectangular shape of their component
bricks, so too whole scientific professions need not
have the monomaniacal prejudices of their individual
members. The
prejudice or tenacity practiced by the individual
member scientist performs a function that does not
obtain if his whole profession were unanimously to
share in his prejudice or his tenaciously held view.
The process by which the individual
scientist's tenacity is strategically functional is
counterinduction.
Its strategic functional contribution occurs
due to Thesis I, which says that theory supplies the
concepts for observation.
Tenacious development of a chosen theory
results in the articulation of new facts, which
enhance empirical criticism.
New facts produced by counterinduction can
both falsify currently accepted theories and
revitalize previously falsified theories.
The revitalization occurs because the new
facts occur in sciences that are auxiliary to the
falsified theory.
This possibility of revitalization justifies
the scientist's prejudicial belief in a falsified
theory, his irrational rejection of falsifying
factual evidence.
Aim of Science
Feyerabend’s views on scientific criticism
leads to the topic of the aim of science. Popper has a well defined and explicit thesis of the aim of
science. The
aim of science in his view is the perpetual
succession of conjectures and refutations in which
each successive conjecture or theory can explain
both what had been explained by its falsified
predecessor and the anomalous cases that falsified
the predecessor.
The new theory is therefore more general than
its predecessor, while it also replaces and corrects
its falsified predecessor.
Popper saw the process of refutation as
involving a deductive procedure having the logical
form of modus
tollens. And
because it is a procedure in deductive logic, it is
not subject to cultural or historical change.
Popper admits that application of the logic
in the sense of experimental identification of the
falsifying instances may be problematic and may take
several years.
But he maintains that the logic of
falsification isolates the conditions for scientific
progress, and that it represents adequately how
science has proceeded historically, when it has
proceeded successfully.
He maintains that this procedure may be said
to have become institutionalized, but its validity,
which is guaranteed by deductive logic, does not
depend on its institutional status.
Its validity is ahistorical, and will never
be invalidated by historical or institutional
change; it is tradition independent.
Both Kuhn and Feyerabend deny that Popper's
vision of the development of science is historically
faithful.
The principal deficiency in the Popperian
vision is its optimistic assessment of the
decidability of falsification.
Not only do they view the range of
nondecidability of scientific criticism to be
greater than Popper thinks, but they also view it as
having an integral role in the process of scientific
development. This
nondecidability gives the scientist a range of
latitude which he is free to resolve by his
strategic choices.
Kuhn and Feyerabend disagree on which aims
influence these choices, but they agree that they
are historical or institutional in nature and may
change. Furthermore,
such changes involve semantical changes, which
introduce an additional dimension to the scientist's
freedom of choice, when they involve an
incommensurable semantic discontinuity.
Kuhn views incommensurable change as
characteristic only of occasional scientific
revolutions, with sociologically enforced consensus
resisting such change and defining the aim of
science during the inter-revolutionary periods of
normal science.
Feyerabend also views incommensurable changes
as infrequent, but he does not regard the interim
periods as an enforced consensus contributing to
scientific progress, but instead views normal
science as Kuhn defined it as an impediment to
progress. He
therefore advocates a much more individualistic aim
of science, which he refers to as scientific
anarchy. Ironically
both Popper and Feyerabend explicitly reference
Marx's call for revolution in permanence, but their
meanings are diametrically opposed.
Popper means perpetual conjectures and
refutations occurring within an enduring
institutionalized logical framework for conclusive
refutation, while Feyerabend means perpetual
institutional change with no controlling
tradition-independent framework.
Explanation
Feyerabend's discussion of scientific
explanation contains much more criticism of other
philosophers' views than elaboration of his own
views. From
the outset of his professional career he criticized
the deductive-nomological concept of scientific
explanation and of logical reductionism advocated by
the Logical Positivists.
Initially Feyerabend also considered Bohr's
concept of explanation to be a higher kind of
Positivism, but he later preferred to view Bohr as a
kind of historicist philosopher, due to Bohr's
distinctive relationalist interpretation of
complementarity in quantum theory.
As it happens, Bohr was sufficiently naive a
philosopher that Positivist, neo-Kantian, and
historicist characterizations can all find support
in his works.
For most of the first two decades of his
career Feyerabend subscribed to Popper's philosophy
of science, which contains a concept of scientific
explanation requiring universal statements.
Popper's philosophy of explanation also
contains the idea of deeper levels of explanation,
where the depth is determined by the scope or extent
of universality of the explanation.
Initially Popper proposed his thesis of
verisimilitude, according to which the deeper
explanations are said to be closer to the truth.
Later he reconsidered the idea of
verisimilitude, but he continued to describe
explanations as having greater or lesser depth
according to the extent of their universality.
And he also continued to describe the
universal laws and theories occurring in
explanations as having greater or lesser
corroboration, because science cannot attain truth
in any timeless sense of truth.
After Hanson had persuaded Feyerabend to
reconsider the merits of the Copenhagen
interpretation of quantum theory, Feyerabend
rejected Popper's concept of explanation by logical
deduction from universal laws, and instead accepted
historicism.
He was led to this conclusion by his
incommensurability thesis and by the nonuniversalist
implications he found in Bohr's relationalist
interpretation of quantum theory.
Popper had stated that scientific theories
are merely conjectures that may be highly
corroborated, but may never be true in any timeless
sense. Feyerabend
furthermore says that theories have an even more
historical character, since the complementarity
thesis in quantum theory demonstrates their regional
character. Complementarity
makes quantum theory nonuniversal at all times,
because it is conditional upon mutually exclusive
experimental circumstances; unlike classical physics
it is not even temporarily universal.
Feyerabend thus concluded that universal
science, science containing universal laws and
theories, is only apparently universal, and that it
is actually a special and recent historical
tradition.
Regrettably Feyerabend did not elaborate on
his historicist philosophy of scientific
explanation. For
example he never related his views to the genetic
type of explanation that is characteristic of
historicism. Although
this type of explanation had been dismissed by
Positivists as merely an elliptical deductive-nomological
explanation, it was discussed seriously by Hanson in
"The Genetic Fallacy Revisited" in American
Philosophical Quarterly (1967).
Hanson distinguishes different levels of
language, one for historical fact and one for
conceptual analysis.
He says that the distinction differentiates
history of science from philosophy of science, and
that the genetic fallacy consists of the attempt to
argue from premises in the historical level to
conclusions in the analytical level.
It is clear, however, that given his
distinction between the theoretical and historical
traditions and the way he relates them, Feyerabend
would not admit to Hanson’s genetic fallacy
thesis.
Discovery
The topic of discovery may be taken to refer
either to the development of new theories or to the
development of new facts.
Feyerabend's thesis of counterinduction is a
thesis of the development of new facts.
Thesis I enables the scientist to use the
concepts supplied by new theory to make new
observations. Counterinduction is a thesis of observation according to the
artifactual philosophy of the semantics of language,
which Feyerabend set forth in his Thesis I.
It is unfortunate that Feyerabend never
examined Heisenberg's use of Einstein's admonition
for reinterpreting the Wilson cloud chamber
observations as an example of counterinduction.
But Feyerabend virtually never references
anything written by Heisenberg, and it is unlikely
that he had an adequate appreciation for the
differences between Heisenberg's and Bohr's
philosophies of quantum theory.
Feyerabend addresses the problem of
developing new theories in "Creativity" in
his Farewell to Reason. In
this brief article he takes issue with what other
philosophers have often called the heroic theory of
invention, the idea that creativity is a special and
personal gift.
He criticizes Einstein for maintaining a
variation on the heroic thesis.
He renders Einstein as saying that theory
development is a free creation, in the sense that it
is a conscious production from sense impressions,
and that theories are fictions, which are
unconnected with these sense impressions, even
though theories purport to describe a hidden and
objective world.
Feyerabend maintains that at no time does the
human mind freely select special bundles of
experience from the labyrinth of sense impressions,
because sense impressions are late theoretical
constructs and not the beginnings of knowledge. Einstein, who said that thinking without concepts is like
breathing in a vacuum, would not have agreed with
Feyerabend’s rendering of his views.
Feyerabend expresses much greater sympathy
for Mach's treatment of scientific discovery.
Mach advanced the idea of instinct, which
Feyerabend contrasts with Einstein's idea of free
creation. Mach
offered an analysis of the process, according to
which instinct enables a researcher to formulate
general principles without a detailed examination of
relevant empirical evidence.
Instinct seems not as such to be inherent,
but rather is the result of a long process of
adaptation, to which everyone is subjected.
Many expectations are disappointed during
this process of adaptation, and the human mind
retains the results of consequently altered
behavior. These
daily confirmations and disappointments greatly
exceed the number of planned experiments. They are
used to correct the results of experiments, which
are in need of correction because they can be
distorted by alien circumstances.
Therefore, according to Mach empirical laws
developed from principles proceeding from instinct
are better than laws developed from experiment.
In concluding his discussion of the topic of
creativity Feyerabend advocates a return to
wholeness, in which human beings are viewed as
inseparable parts of nature and society, and not as
independent architects.
He rejects as conceited the view that some
individuals have a divine gift of creativity.
Feyerabend therefore apparently subscribes to
the social theory of invention, as would be expected
of a historicist.
Comments
and Conclusion
Consider
firstly Kuhn’s the linguistic analysis.
As mentioned above Kuhn postulates a
structured lexical taxonomy, which he also calls a
conceptual scheme, and he maintains that it is not a
set of beliefs.
He calls it instead an operating mode of a
mental module prerequisite to having beliefs, a
module that supplies and bonds what is possible to
conceive. He also says that the taxonomic module is prelinguistic and
possessed by animals, therefore calls himself a
post-Darwinian Kantian, because like the Kantian
categories the lexicon supplies preconditions of
possible experience, while unlike Kantian categories
the lexicon can and does change.
But Kuhn’s woolly Darwinist neo-Kantianism
is a needless deus
ex machina for explaining the cognition and
communication constraints associated with meaning
change through theory criticism and development.
There certainly exists what may be called a
conceptual scheme, but it is beliefs that do the
bonding and structuring.
And what they bond and structure are the
components of complex meanings for association with
the sign vehicle or individual term.
These complexes of components function as do
Kuhn’s cluster of criteria for referencing
individuals including contrast sets of terms that he
says each language user associates with a
descriptive term.
Their limits on what can be conceived is
Pickwickian, because when empirical testing or more
informal experience occasions a reconsideration of
one or several beliefs, the falsifying test outcome
or experience can always be expressed with the
existing vocabulary with its associated semantics by
articulating the contradiction to the theory’s
prediction. The
empirically based contradiction due to falsification
makes the bonds and structures disintegrate, but
formation of a new semantical re-integration due to
a revision of beliefs by formation of new hypotheses
is constrained psychologically only by the mundane
fact of language habit.
This is not to trivialize scientific
discovery; formulating new hypotheses that even
promise to solve the new scientific problem is a
task that often demands high intelligence and
fertile imagination.
And the greater the semantical disintegration
due to the more extensive rejection of current
beliefs, the more demanding the task.
Two reasons
for incommensurability can be distinguished in
Kuhn’s literary corpus.
Firstly incommensurability is due to
semantics that is unavailable in the language of an
earlier theory that is available in the language of
a later one. Secondly
incommensurability is due to semantic restructuring
of the taxonomic lexicon.
However, only the first reason compels
anything that might be called incommensurability in
the sense of inexpressibility. Language for a later
theory containing descriptive vocabulary enabling
distinguishing features of the world for which an
earlier theory’s language supplies no descriptive
terminology, may very possibly render impossible the
expression of those distinctions in the earlier
theory’s language.
Obvious examples may include features of the
world that are distinguishable with the aid of
microscopes, telescopes, or other observational
instruments not available at the time the earlier
theory was formulated, but which are recognized and
expressed in the language of a later theory.
This reason for incommensurability can be
described in terms of semantic values.
The meanings attached to descriptive terms
are not atomistic; they are composite and have parts
that can be exhibited as predicates in universally
quantified affirmations. Belief in the universal affirmation “all ravens are
black” makes the phrase “black ravens…”
redundant, thereby indicating that the idea of
blackness in a component part of the meaning of the
concept of raven.
However, all descriptive terms including the
term “black” also have composition, such that it
may have a lexical entry in a unilingual dictionary.
The smallest distinguishable features
available to the language user in his descriptive
vocabulary are not exclusively or uniquely
associated with any descriptive term, but they are
expressible in the descriptive language.
These smallest distinguishable features of
the world recognized in the semantics of a language
at a given point in time may be called “semantic
values.” Thus
semantic incommensurability may occur when theory
change consists in the introduction of new semantic
values not available in the language of the earlier
theory.
Kuhn’s
second reason for incommensurability, lexicon
restructuring, does not occasion incommensurability
in the sense of inexpressibility; there is no
missing semantics, but instead there is only the
reorganization of previously available semantic
values. The
reorganization is due to the revision of beliefs,
which may be extensive and result in correspondingly
difficult adjustment not only for the developer of
the new theory formulating the new set of beliefs
but also for the members of the cognizant profession
who must assimilate the new theory.
The composite meanings associated with each
descriptive term common to both old and new theories
are disintegrated into their elementary semantic
values, and then are reintegrated by the statements
of the new theory.
And concomitant to this restructuring the
users’ old language habits must be overcome and
new ones acquired.
An ironic aspect to this view is that
semantic incommensurability, introduction of new
semantic values, occurs in developmental episodes
that appear least to be revolutionary, while those
involving extensive reorganization and thus
appearing most revolutionary have no semantic
incommensurability.
In his “Commensurability, Comparability and
Communicability”, Kuhn says that if scientists
moving forward in time experience revolutions, their
switches in gestalts will ordinarily be smaller than
the historian’s, for what the later experience as
a single revolutionary change will usually have been
spread over a number of such changes during the
development of the sciences.
And he immediately adds that it is not clear
that those small incremental changes need have had
the character of revolutions, although he retains
his wholistic thesis of gestalt switch for these
cases. Clearly the time intervals in the forward
movement of the theory-invention must be incremental
subject only to the time it took the inventing
scientist to formulate his new theory, while the
time intervals in the comparative retrospection may
be as lengthy as the historian chooses, as the very
lengthy interval considered by Kuhn in his Aristotle
experience comparing the physics of Aristotle and
Newton. But
more than duration of time interval is involved in
the forward movement.
On the one hand the recognition and
articulation of any new semantic values and on the
other hand the disintegration and reintegration of
available semantic values in the meaning complexes
in a lexical restructuring are seldom accomplished
simultaneously, since the one process is an
impediment to the accomplishment of the other.
Attempted reintegration of disintegrated
concepts is probably the worst time to attempt
introduction of new semantic values.
Throwing new semantic values into the
existing confusion of conceptual disorientation
could only exacerbate and compound the difficulties
involved in conceptual reintegration and
restructuring.
For this reason scientists will attack one of
these problems at a time.
Furthermore new semantic values can at times
be articulated with existing descriptive vocabulary,
as Hanson exhibited with his thesis of phenomenal
seeing exemplified by the biologist viewing a new
microbe under a microscope and for which he yet has
no classification.
Then the product of phenomenal-seeing
description is a new kind term, which functions as a
label or classification for the new phenomenon, and
the new kind term may then later acquire still more
semantics by incorporation into a theory.
Revolutions are reorganizations of available
semantic values, and incommensurability due to new
semantic values is not found in revolutions except
in the periods created by the historian’s sweeping
retrospective choices of time intervals for
comparison. In
the forward movement the new semantic values (or
kind terms based on them) introduced into the
current language may be accommodated by the relevant
currently accepted theory by the extension of that
theory, or their introduction may subsequently
occasion a modification of the current theory by
elaborating it into a new and slightly different
theory. And
new semantic values may eventually lead to
revolutionary revisions of current theory, but they
do not constitute revolutions.
In summery it must be said that Kuhn was a
rather naïve philosopher, and was quite unprepared
to undertake a linguistic analysis of science.
His idea of learning had been anticipated by
Hesse and by Feyerabend.
And his idea of Kantianism with movable
categories echoes the Kantianism that Heisenberg
says is in the views of Bohr, who was also a naïve
philosopher. The
first object of the human mind is not its own ideas. The first object is reality, and then by reflection it knows
its ideas. It
is better to shed irresponsible Kantianism once and
forever, and to focus on the semantics, ontology,
and pragmatics of the language of science.
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