Abstract This paper deals with two fundamental assumptions of the Strong programme in the sociology of knowledge and the theoretical (im) possibility of their co?existence with the general relativist tendency of this programme. The first assumption is the realist thesis introduced into the Strong programme through the materialist presupposition that sense experience is reliable and humans are able to learn about the regularities of the non?social world in order to survive. The second assumption is the causal principle. Arguments developed in (...) this paper lead to the conclusion that neither realism nor causalism can be reconciled with relativism. In both cases inconsistency is brought about by a tension between scientific perspective and relativism, between an external approach aiming at objective, universal, and causal explanation of what is studied, on the one hand, and the internal, relativist and reflexive, hermeneutical understanding of the human, on the other hand. The belief that the sociology of knowledge can be at the same time scientific, like the natural sciences, and relativist, like certain philosophies but not the natural sciences, is not sufficiently justified in the Strong programme. (shrink)

Recently, many historians of science have chosen to present their historical narratives from the ‘actors’-eye view’. Scientific knowledge not available within the actors’ culture is not permitted to do explanatory work. Proponents of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge purport to ground this historiography on epistemological relativism. I argue that they are making an unnecessary mistake: unnecessary because the historiographical genre in question can be defended on aesthetic and didactic grounds; and a mistake because the argument from relativism is in any (...) case incoherent.The argument of the present article is self-contained, but steers clear of metaphysical debates in the philosophy of science. To allay fears of hidden assumptions, the sequel, to be published in the following issue, will consider SSK’s prospects of succour from scientific realism, instrumentalism, and a metaphysical system of Bruno Latour’s own devising. (shrink)

Historians of science have frequently sought to exclude modern scientific knowledge from their narratives. Part I of this paper, published in the previous issue, cautioned against seeing more than a literary preference at work here. In particular, it was argued—contra advocates of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge —that a commitment to epistemological relativism should not be seen as having straightforward historiographical consequences. Part II considers further SSK-inspired attempts to entangle the currently fashionable historiography with particular positions in the philosophy of (...) science. None, I argue, is promising. David Bloor’s proposed alliance with scientific realism relies upon a mistaken view of contrastive explanation; Andrew Pickering’s appeal to instrumentalism is persuasive for particle physics but much less so for science as a whole; and Bruno Latour’s home-grown metaphysics is so bizarre that its compatibility with SSK is, if anything, a further blow to the latter’s plausibility. (shrink)

Historians must be sensitive to the alienness of the past. Insofar as they are concerned with their actors’ reasoning, they must (through open-minded empirical investigation) find out how their actors thought, and not assume that they thought like us. This is familiar historiographical advice, but pushed too far it can be brought to conflict with rather weak assumptions about what historians must presuppose if they are to interpret their actors at all. The present paper sketches those assumptions, and argues that (...) the influential ‘Strong Program’ in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) falls foul of them. We do not argue from the correctness of the assumptions to the falsity of SSK. Rather, we note the incompatibility, and then show how SSK theorists’ tendency to take interpretation for granted blinds them—and perhaps their readers—to the existence of the conflict. (shrink)

In recent years a number of writers have defended and attacked various features of structural, or neo-realist theories of international politics. Few, however, have quarrelled with one of the most foundational features of neorealist theory: its assumptions about the nature of science and scientific theories. In this essay I assess the views of science underlying much neorealist theory, especially as they are articulated in the work of Kenneth Waltz. I argue not only that neorealist theories rest on assumptions about science (...) and theory that have been questioned by postpositivist philosophers and historians of science, but also that the failure to consider the work of these writers yields theories of international politics that are deficient in several respects: they are weak theories in the sense that they cannot illuminate crucial features of international politics, they presuppose and sustain a narrow view of power and power relations, they reify practices and relations in the international arena and they offer little promise of producing the sort of Copernican Revolution for which Waltz called (or, more modestly, even a minimally satisfactory theory of international politics). In light of these shortcomings, I sketch an alternative approach to the study of international affairs, one that has been termed prototype studies. I contend that such an approach provides scholars with a rigorous way of studying international politics, without being a theoretical science. (shrink)

Anthropologists often claim to have understood an ethical outlook that they nevertheless believe is largely false. Some moral philosophers---e.g., Susan Hurley---argue that this claim is incoherent because understanding an ethical outlook necessarily involves believing it to be largely true. To reach this conclusion, they apply an argument of Donald Davidson’s to the ethical case. My central aim is to defend the coherence of the anthropologists’ claim against this argument.To begin with, I specify a candidate-language that contains a significant number of (...) alien thick descriptions. A thick description is a term that has both descriptive and evaluative content, e.g., “courageous.” I then argue that, because of its alien thick descriptions, this candidate-language cannot be interpreted by someone who adheres to the strictures of Davidson’s account of interpretation. To complete my criticism, I demonstrate that the meaningfulness of this candidate-language cannot be impugned on Davidson’s own terms. This involves showing that an interpreter’s correctly assigning truth-conditions, expressed in her own language, to sentences featuring alien thick descriptions is consistent with her believing those sentences to be false. (shrink)

I extract, and then analyse critically, the epistemological ideas that are implicit in Robin DiAngelo's best-selling book White Fragility and her other writings. On what grounds, according to DiAngelo, can people know what they claim to know? And on what grounds does DiAngelo know what she claims to know?

Following the standard practice in sociology, cultural anthropology and history, sociologists, historians of science and some philosophers of science define scientific communities as groups with shared beliefs, values and practices. In this paper it is argued that in real cases the beliefs of the members of such communities often vary significantly in important ways. This has rather dire implications for the convergence defense against the charge of the excessive subjectivity of subjective Bayesianism because that defense requires that communities of Bayesian (...) inquirers share a significant set of modal beliefs. The important implication is then that given the actual variation in modal beliefs across individuals, either Bayesians cannot claim that actual theories have been objectively confirmed or they must accept that such theories have been confirmed relative only to epistemically insignificant communities. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Stump argues that pragmatism distances itself from absolutism due to its assent to fallibilism while it rejects relativism at the same time because of its insistence on experience. Therefore, pragmatism can provide a third position between relativism and absolutism. I argue in this note that his argument is profoundly inadequate for both claims. Fallibilism is compatible with both relativism and absolutism, and accordingly cannot be considered as the middle ground. Furthermore, the experience itself (...) and the way it is inferred from is the subject of the relativists’ debates, not a response. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism. It is argued that a fundamental argument for contemporary epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. Pyrrhonian scepticism is compared and contrasted with Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Humean scepticism about induction. Epistemic relativism is characterized as relativism due to the variation of epistemic norms, and is contrasted with other forms of cognitive relativism, such as truth relativism, conceptual relativism and ontological relativism. An argument (...) from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion to epistemic relativism is presented, and is contrasted with three other arguments for epistemic relativism. It is argued that the argument from the criterion is the most fundamental argument for epistemic relativism. Finally, it is noted how the argument of the present paper fits with the author’s previous suggestion that a particularist response to the Pyrrhonian sceptic may be combined with a naturalistic view of epistemic warrant to meet the challenge of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between scepticism and epistemic relativism in the context of recent history and philosophy of science. More specifically, it seeks to show that significant treatments of epistemic relativism by influential figures in the history and philosophy of science draw upon the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. The paper begins with a presentation of the problem of the criterion as it occurs in the work of Sextus Empiricus. It is then shown that significant treatments of epistemic relativism (...) in recent history and philosophy of science (critical rationalism, historical philosophy of science and the strong programme) draw upon the problem of the criterion. It is briefly suggested that a particularist response to the problem of the criterion may be put to good use against epistemic relativism. (shrink)

What are philosophers doing when they prescribe a particular epistemology for science? According to science and technology studies, the answer to this question implicates both knowledge and politics, even when the latter is hidden. Exploring this dynamic via a specific case, I argue that Longino’s “critical contextual empiricism” ultimately relies on a form of political liberalism. Her choice to nevertheless foreground epistemological concerns can be clarified by considering historical relationships between science and society, as well as the culture of academic (...) philosophy. This example, I conclude, challenges philosophers of science to consider the political ideals and accountability entailed by their prescribed knowledge practices. (shrink)

I call an experiment “crucial” when it makes possible a decisive choice between conflicting hypotheses. Joharmsen's selection for size and weight within pure lines of beans played a central role in the controversy over continuity or discontinuity in hereditary change, often known as the Biometrician-Mendelian controversy. The “crucial” effect of this experiment was not an instantaneous event, but an extended process of repeating similar experiments and discussing possible objections. It took years before Johannsen's claim about the genetic stability of pure (...) lines was accepted as conclusively demonstrated by the community of geneticists. The paper also argues that crucial experiments thus interpreted contradict certain ideas about the underdetermination of theories by facts and the theory-ladenness of facts which have been influential in recent history and sociology of science. The acceptance of stability in the pure lines did not rest on prior preference for continuity or discontinuity. And this fact permitted a final choice between the two theories. When such choice is characterized as “decisive” or “final”, this is not meant in an absolute philosophical sense. What we achive in these cases is highly reliable empirical knowledge. The philosophical possibility of drawing (almost) any conclusion in doubt should be distinguished from reasonable doubt in empirical science. (shrink)

This article asks whether an interdisciplinary "critical science studies" (CSS) is possible between a critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition, with its commitment to universal standards of reason, and relativistic sociologies of scientific knowledge (e.g., David Bloor's strong programme). It is argued that CSS is possible if its practitioners adopt the epistemological equivalent of Rawls's method of avoidance. A discriminating, public policy–relevant critique of science can then proceed on the basis of an argumentation theory that employs an immanent standard (...) of relevance, which is illustrated by drawing on Helen Longino's critique of behavioral theory. (shrink)

Social Epistemology arose from the recognition that nearly all that we believe or claim to know is second hand and derived from the speech or writing of others. The “we” of “our knowledge” here is, of course, “educated members of advanced industrial societies”. Our remoter, but still identifiably, human ancestors, without speech or writing, picked up such knowledge or belief as they had on their own, apart from what they may have leant from the reactions of others to the presence (...) of quarry or danger. Palaeolithic man, having mastered speech, had access to plenty of second hand knowledge. But it was only of what the people he directly met could tell him. With writing a vast new range of informants is brought into play. Clay tablets and papyrus rolls give way to codices – in other words, books – and another gigantic step forward is made with the invention of printing. We would appear to be going through a comparable information revolution at the present day. We, as defined above, either posses or have ready access to a vast assemblage of common knowledge, actual or claimed. How are we to rationally to decide how much of this we are to accept? It is obviously not all worthy, or equally worthy of acceptance. (shrink)

A popular accusation against moral relativism is that it goes too far in its vindication of tolerance. The idea behind accusations like this can be summarized in the slogan, frequently attributed to relativism, that “anything goes”. The aim of this paper is to defend moral relativism from the accusation that it is an “anything goes” view; from the accusation that it forces us to suspend our judgment in cases in which we do not think we should even be allowed to. (...) In the end, relativism is not an “anything goes” view because it is not a view about what goes, but about the way things go—about what goes on when we say that something is morally right or wrong. There is indeed a view, sometimes called “relativism”, that forces us to suspend our judgment about practices that do not allow for such comfort, but it is not so much moral relativism as moral contextualism. Apparently, though, the most salient alternative to “anything goes” views such as contextualism is not moral relativism. It is moral objectivism, according to which there is a fact of the matter about moral issues. However, I show that moral objectivism too ends up being an “anything goes” view unless the objectivist takes herself to be endowed with “God’s point of view”, which I prove troublesome. (shrink)

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn resorts to concepts from several disciplines in order to describe the general patterns of scientific development. This blend of disciplines can be explained in part by Kuhn's intellectual path, from physics to history and then to philosophy of science; but it also points to a deeper methodological problem, which is the question of what is the real unity of analysis in his model of science. The primary intention of this article is, thus, (...) to give a solution to this difficulty. The answer, I believe, rests on identifying three fundamental units present in Kuhn's theory of scientific development. They are, respectively, the individual, responsible for producing evidence, spreading information, and choosing theories; the community, a set of scientists investigating a series of phenomena; and the groups, individuals with similar behavior but with looser institutional or social ties — a usually neglected category in Kuhnian literature, but equally fundamental for the final outcome of scientific debates. After investigating these categories in detail, I propose a way of integrating them into a general model for explaining the resolution of scientific controversies. Finally, I try to resolve the apparent conflict among disciplinary vocabularies by offering an account of the function of sociological, psychological, and epistemological concepts for describing controversies, and some of the methodologies appropriate for each of these tasks. (shrink)

I argue that a standard formulation of hinge epistemology is host to epistemic relativism and show that two leading hinge approaches (Coliva’s acceptance account and Pritchard’s nondoxastic account) are vulnerable to a form of incommensurability that leads to relativism. Building on both accounts, I introduce a new, minimally epistemic conception of hinges that avoids epistemic relativism and rationally resolves hinge disagreements. According to my proposed account, putative cases of epistemic incommensurability are rationally resolvable: hinges are propositions that are the objects (...) of our belief-like attitudes and are rationally revisable in virtue of our overarching commitment to avoid systematic deception in our epistemic practices. (shrink)

This article discusses explanations behind theory choice, that is, ultimately, what leads people to accept a certain claim as valid. There has been a recent debate as to how closure was achieved in the continental-drift discussion. The controversy had found its usual explanation under rationalist terms: Wegener’s 1912 continental-drift theory was accepted 50 years later only after the plate tectonic theory had provided more evidence or a more in-depth problem-solving capacity. Nevertheless, a re-examination of the controversy under constructivist terms argued (...) that closure was achieved by a change in the style of thought. This analysis prompted some authors to react calling to a ‘defence of rationalism’ and insisting on explaining that the continental-drift theory was only accepted because of epistemic reasons. As the debate impacts on the way to explain scientific controversies, in this article I analyze rationalist and constructivist approaches with respect to ways to explain the social acceptance or rejection of a theory. The analytical perspectives will be contextualized within a broader theoretical discussion in philosophy and social sciences about the role of different factors that condition knowledge, which will also include an empirical approximation in the analysis of GMO and continental-drift controversies. Ultimately, the debate with rationalism is situated in a broader context about the ways of explaining the social acceptance of a theory, arguing that the problem with the rationalism that confuses a purely logical explanation with a sociological one is that it tends to judge rather than understand. (shrink)

The continental drift controversy has been deeply analysed in terms of rationalist notions, which seem to find there a unique topic to describe the weight of evidence for reaching consensus. In that sense, many authors suggest that Alfred Wegener’s theory of the original supercontinent Pangea and the subsequent continental displacements finally reached a consensus when irrefutable evidence became available. Therefore, rationalist approaches suggest that evidence can be enough by itself to close scientific controversies. In this article I analyse continental drift (...) debates from a different perspective which is based on styles of thought. I’ll argue that continental drift debate took much longer than it was usually recognized with two styles of thought coexisting for hundreds of years. These were fixism and mobilism and they were always confronting their own evidence and interpretations and functioning as general frameworks for the acceptability of a specific theory. Therefore, this text aims to bring much broader sociological elements than usually involved in the analysis of the continental drift theory. (shrink)

The central concern of Knowledge in a Social World is to restore the notion of Truth to the rightful place of glory that it had before the onslaught of those pragmatic, cultural-studying, social constructing, critical legalistic and feministic postmodernists (PoMo’s, for short). As G sees it, these PoMo’s have never put forward any “real” arguments for their veriphobia; and, well, how could they, since their position is committed to the “denial of Truth” and hence committed to denying that there is (...) any such thing as a valid or a sound argument. Instead, according to G, they have artfully inculcated various types of considerations so that a defender of Truth now must swim against the entire flow of academe to even stand a chance of making his or her voice heard. G finds six overlapping currents in this wash of anti-veritas ideas, listing them in his §1.3 and devoting a further section to each of them in turn (§1.4–§1.9). These currents spring up in various later parts of the book for further discussion, but even in these places G refers the reader back to the material in Chapter 1 as refuting them. (Insofar as a current that is not based on any consideration of Truth, validity, or soundness is susceptible of refutation.) I think it is fair to say that G does not really intend that his comments about the anti-veritas ideas will be taken as definitive by the veriphobes, but rather that he believes the strength of his positive account in the rest of the book (which accords Truth a central role) will sway all neutral readers into a belief of the usefulness of Truth in an account of social knowledge. Still, I think many readers…even veriphiles…will find the considerations that G brings against the six currents to be disappointingly short. I want to consider some of the currents in the stream of PoMo ideas. As I said, G’s six currents overlap at various points, and each of the currents has sub-flows. This means that we might put.... (shrink)

The article appearing previously in this journal entitled “Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate” (Pellegrini 2019) prompted a response from Weber and Šešelja (2020) which they termed as “a defence of rationalist accounts”. They argue that their self-designated “sophisticated rationalism” explains the closure of the continental-drift debate without being affected by my critiques to rationalist approaches. While ignoring the empirical evidence that shows the complexity of the debate and the necessity to include broader social elements in the analysis (...) (such as scientists denying continental drift even after the plate tectonics theory, others supporting it without being familiarized with the literature), they proclaim to be unconvinced about the analysis of the styles of thought. In order to clarify differences in the approach to the continental-drift historical controversy, I respond here to the criticism my paper drew while discussing the place of rationalism when explaining the acceptance of a theory. I will argue that their distinction between “crude” and “sophisticated” rationalism does not solve the problem of social aspects being left aside by rationalists in view of the acceptance of a theory. I will also argue that in order to understand what leads people to embrace a belief (namely scientists in accepting a theory), the analysis of mere cognitive or epistemic arguments is not enough and it leads to a reductionist explanation as to social behaviour. (shrink)

Van Fraassen (1980) claims that successful theories exist today because successful theories survive and unsuccessful ones die. Wray (2007, 2010) appeals to Stanford’s new pessimistic induction (2006), arguing that van Fraassen’s selectionist explanation is better than the realist explanation that successful theories exist because they are approximately true. I argue that if the pessimistic induction is correct, then the evolutionary explanation is neither true nor empirically adequate, and that realism is better than selectionism because realism explains more phenomena in science (...) than selectionism. (shrink)

David Bloor has advocated a bold hypothesis about the form any sociology of science should take in setting out the four central tenets of his ?strong programme? (SP). The first section of this paper discusses how three of these tenets are best formulated and how they relate to one another. The second section discusses how reasons can be causes of belief and how such reasons raise a serious difficulty for SP. The third section discusses how SP is committed to a (...) form of relativism about truth. The fourth section discusses how one might deal with the problem of SP applying both to itself and to other sociological theories. In addition there is, throughout, a discussion of how rules of inference, methodologies, and philosophical doctrines either apply to SP or are exempt from applying. It is argued that SP must be a severely limited doctrine impotent to make evaluative claims about the worth of any theory, including itself. (shrink)

In 1967, American biologist Adrian Wenner (1928-) launched an extensive challenge to Karl von Frisch's (1886-1982) theory that bees communicate to each other the direction and distance of food sources by a symbolic dance language. Wenner and various collaborators argued that bees locate foods solely by odors. Although the dispute had largely run its course by 1973 -- von Frisch was awarded a Nobel Prize, while Wenner withdrew from active bee research -- it offers us a rare window into mid-twentieth (...) century discussions about animals, language, and cognition. Historians, sociologists, and scientists have commented on the debate and its outcome, but none has seriously questioned why von Frisch and Wenner pursued such different explanations of the bees' dances. In this paper, I explore von Frisch and Wenner's differing visions of animals and their behaviors and show how these contributed to their respective positions. Von Frisch's early-twentieth-century training in experimental physiology disposed him to focus on individual animals, their abilities, and their behaviors' evolutionary significance. Wenner, by contrast, was trained in mathematics and statistics and the Schneirla school of behavior. He viewed the bees' behaviors probabilistically with an eye toward the entire hive and its surroundings and ultimately explained them in terms of simple stimulus--response conditioning. Finally, while the debate was resolved in von Frisch's favor, he neither waged nor won the battle by himself. Instead, I show that practitioners, whose agendas ranged from the nascent fields of sociobiology to cognitive ethology, took up the cause of the communicating bees. (shrink)

: This paper analyzes the development of Kuhn's metaphilosophical position concerning the proper relationship between the history and the philosophy of science. I reconstruct Kuhn's model of scientific change presented in Structure as having the logical status of a Weberian explanatory theory; the philosophy of science and the history of science were of equal importance in its development and defense. However, Kuhn's metaphilosophical position changed in the 1990s, when he gave primacy to philosophy over the history of science in response (...) to the challenge new sociology of science presented to his views. I analyze Kuhn's seldom discussed 'first principles' and argue that the locution should be understood as marking this metaphilosophical shift. Kuhn's project in his last writings was to develop epistemology and metaphysics capable of withstanding relativism and of selecting cognitive internal historiography as the appropriate historiography for the philosophy of science. I sketch the contours of this project which Kuhn was unable to complete in his lifetime. (shrink)