Jarrett Leplin has recently criticized a number of aspects of my views of the aims and goals of science, of the rationale of scientific change, and of the consequent relations between science and the philosophy of science, and in particular of the methodology of the latter (Leplin 1984, 1987, 1988a, 1988b). Here I will respond to those criticisms, and also reply to some related criticisms made by other writers.

The alleged problem of "incommensurability" is examined, and attempts to explain scientific change in terms of concepts of meaning and reference are analyzed and rejected. A way of understanding scientific change through a properly developed concept of "reasons" is presented, and the issues of reasons, meaning, and reference are placed in the context of this broader interpretation of scientific change.

Both inside and outside philosophy of science, the past 25 years has seen a remarkable increase in the epistemic importance attached to the role of background beliefs and values of agents engaged in cognitive inquiry. Emphasis on the role of background commitments has been beneficial in bringing philosophy of science back into closer relation with the varied forms of science. But at present there cannot be said to be any clear consensus among philosophers on issues of the theoretical status of (...) such commitments, or of their import upon conceptions of scientific meta-methodology.The situation worsens when one considers widespread suspicion today among many historicists and sociologists of science of the viability of philosophy of science as a normative enterprise. This marks the ground between normative epistemology and its critics. But to understand the skeptical attitude towards normative theory, one must attend to the background assumptions about normative discourse imbedded in logical empiricism, and in particular to the state of logical empiricist metascience just prior to the revolution of sorts that occurred in the 1960’s. (shrink)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1991.