In philosophical epistemology , there are two types of coherentism : the coherence theory of truth , and the coherence theory of justification (also known as epistemic coherentism ).
110-464: The Lakatos Award is given annually for an outstanding contribution to the philosophy of science , widely interpreted. The contribution must be in the form of a monograph , co-authored or single-authored, and published in English during the previous six years. The award is in memory of the influential Hungarian philosopher of science and mathematics Imre Lakatos , whose tenure as Professor of Logic at
220-642: A logical syntax . A scientific theory would be stated with its method of verification, whereby a logical calculus or empirical operation could verify its falsity or truth. In the late 1930s, logical positivists fled Germany and Austria for Britain and America. By then, many had replaced Mach's phenomenalism with Otto Neurath 's physicalism , and Rudolf Carnap had sought to replace verification with simply confirmation . With World War II 's close in 1945, logical positivism became milder, logical empiricism , led largely by Carl Hempel , in America, who expounded
330-417: A transit of Venus is justified by its being coherent with broader beliefs about celestial mechanics and earlier observations. As explained above, observation is a cognitive act. That is, it relies on a pre-existing understanding, a systematic set of beliefs. An observation of a transit of Venus requires a huge range of auxiliary beliefs, such as those that describe the optics of telescopes, the mechanics of
440-514: A "survival of the fittest" view in which the most falsifiable scientific theories are to be preferred. Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994) argued that no description of scientific method could possibly be broad enough to include all the approaches and methods used by scientists, and that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science. He argued that "the only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes ". Feyerabend said that science started as
550-471: A ban on causal hypotheses in natural philosophy". In particular, later in the 18th century, David Hume would famously articulate skepticism about the ability of science to determine causality and gave a definitive formulation of the problem of induction , though both theses would be contested by the end of the 18th century by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science . In 19th century Auguste Comte made
660-612: A basic level, they can agree on what they see, e.g., the thermometer shows 37.9 degrees C. But, if these scientists have different ideas about the theories that have been developed to explain these basic observations, they may disagree about what they are observing. For example, before Albert Einstein 's general theory of relativity , observers would have likely interpreted an image of the Einstein cross as five different objects in space. In light of that theory, however, astronomers will tell you that there are actually only two objects, one in
770-708: A basis consistent with examples from the empirical sciences ). Seeking to overhaul all of philosophy and convert it to a new scientific philosophy , the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle propounded logical positivism in the late 1920s. Interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein 's early philosophy of language , logical positivists identified a verifiability principle or criterion of cognitive meaningfulness. From Bertrand Russell 's logicism they sought reduction of mathematics to logic. They also embraced Russell's logical atomism , Ernst Mach 's phenomenalism —whereby
880-478: A building as a model for the structure of knowledge with different metaphors, such as the metaphor that models our knowledge on a ship at sea whose seaworthiness must be ensured by repairs to any part in need of it. This metaphor fulfills the purpose of explaining the problem of incoherence, which was first raised in mathematics. Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in
990-460: A different guise in the foundations of statistics . The question of what counts as science and what should be excluded arises as a life-or-death matter in the philosophy of medicine . Additionally, the philosophies of biology, psychology, and the social sciences explore whether the scientific studies of human nature can achieve objectivity or are inevitably shaped by values and by social relations. Distinguishing between science and non-science
1100-499: A form of logical foundationalism. But otherwise, it must be assumed that a loop begs the question , meaning that it does not provide sufficient logic to constitute proof. One might conclude that there must be some statements that, for some reason, do not need justification. This view is called foundationalism . For instance, rationalists such as Descartes and Spinoza developed axiomatic systems that relied on statements that were taken to be self-evident: " I think therefore I am "
1210-402: A formal proof that there is no way to formalise the notion of coherence such that the coherence of a set of beliefs always increases the probability of the joint truth of the beliefs. Attempts have been made to construct a theoretical account of coherentist intuitions. Importantly, epistemologist Luca Moretti and mathematical economist Franz Dietrich have given a formal proof that in certain cases
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#17327936073681320-486: A historical and sociological turn to science, with a priority on lived experience (a kind of Husserlian "life-world" ), rather than a progress-based or anti-historical approach as emphasised in the analytic tradition. One can trace this continental strand of thought through the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), the late works of Merleau-Ponty ( Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France , 1956–1960), and
1430-431: A historical event might be explained in sociological and psychological terms, which in turn might be described in terms of human physiology, which in turn might be described in terms of chemistry and physics. Daniel Dennett distinguishes legitimate reductionism from what he calls greedy reductionism , which denies real complexities and leaps too quickly to sweeping generalizations. Coherentism Coherent truth
1540-413: A justification for P', and so forth. There are three possible outcomes to this questioning process: An infinite series appears to offer little help, unless a way is found to model infinite sets. This might entail additional assumptions. Otherwise, it is impossible to check that each justification is satisfactory without making broad generalizations. Coherentism is sometimes characterized as accepting that
1650-456: A legitimacy that it would not otherwise be able to achieve is referred to as pseudoscience , fringe science , or junk science . Physicist Richard Feynman coined the term " cargo cult science " for cases in which researchers believe they are doing science because their activities have the outward appearance of it but actually lack the "kind of utter honesty" that allows their results to be rigorously evaluated. A closely related question
1760-487: A liberating movement, but that over time it had become increasingly dogmatic and rigid and had some oppressive features, and thus had become increasingly an ideology . Because of this, he said it was impossible to come up with an unambiguous way to distinguish science from religion , magic , or mythology . He saw the exclusive dominance of science as a means of directing society as authoritarian and ungrounded. Promulgation of this epistemological anarchism earned Feyerabend
1870-605: A logical process. Kuhn's position, however, is not one of relativism . According to Kuhn, a paradigm shift occurs when a significant number of observational anomalies arise in the old paradigm and a new paradigm makes sense of them. That is, the choice of a new paradigm is based on observations, even though those observations are made against the background of the old paradigm. According to Robert Priddy, all scientific study inescapably builds on at least some essential assumptions that cannot be tested by scientific processes; that is, that scientists must start with some assumptions as to
1980-668: A major contribution to the theory of science. The 19th century writings of John Stuart Mill are also considered important in the formation of current conceptions of the scientific method, as well as anticipating later accounts of scientific explanation. Instrumentalism became popular among physicists around the turn of the 20th century, after which logical positivism defined the field for several decades. Logical positivism accepts only testable statements as meaningful, rejects metaphysical interpretations, and embraces verificationism (a set of theories of knowledge that combines logicism , empiricism , and linguistics to ground philosophy on
2090-425: A minimum, that not all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. To defend this view, they may argue that conjunctions ( and ) are more specific, and thus in some way more defensible, than disjunctions ( or ). After responding to foundationalism, coherentists normally characterize their view positively by replacing the foundationalism metaphor of
2200-469: A number of important works: especially those of a Kuhnian precursor, Alexandre Koyré (1892–1964). Another important development was that of Michel Foucault 's analysis of historical and scientific thought in The Order of Things (1966) and his study of power and corruption within the "science" of madness . Post-Heideggerian authors contributing to continental philosophy of science in the second half of
2310-436: A paradigm – comprise a collection of beliefs, values and techniques that are held by a given scientific community, which legitimize their systems and set the limitations to their investigation. For naturalists, nature is the only reality, the "correct" paradigm, and there is no such thing as supernatural , i.e. anything above, beyond, or outside of nature. The scientific method is to be used to investigate all reality, including
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#17327936073682420-438: A pattern, particularly in the context of universal patterns and the human propensity to perceive patterns, even where there might be none. This evaluation is pivotal in advancing research in diverse fields, from climate change to machine learning, where recognition and validation of real patterns in scientific models play a crucial role. Values intersect with science in different ways. There are epistemic values that mainly guide
2530-509: A property of a belief only if that belief is a member of a coherent set. What distinguishes coherentism from other theories of justification is that the set is the primary bearer of justification. As an epistemological theory , coherentism opposes dogmatic foundationalism and also infinitism through its insistence on definitions. It also attempts to offer a solution to the regress argument that plagues correspondence theory. Brand Blanshard argues that where we seem to determine truth from
2640-459: A proposition's self-evidence, we are in fact using coherence as a criterion of truth to certify the proposition as true. For the certainty of the truth of a proposition like '2 + 2 = 4', one rather appeals "to the coherence of [one's] proposition with an enormous mass of others" whose truth must stand or fall with it. Coherentism is a view either about the structure and system of knowledge and truth, or else justified belief. The coherentist's thesis
2750-552: A role ranging from determining which research gets funded to influencing which theories achieve scientific consensus. For example, in the 19th century, cultural values held by scientists about race shaped research on evolution , and values concerning social class influenced debates on phrenology (considered scientific at the time). Feminist philosophers of science , sociologists of science, and others explore how social values affect science. The origins of philosophy of science trace back to Plato and Aristotle , who distinguished
2860-408: A scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits . The public backlash of scientists against such views, particularly in the 1990s, became known as the science wars . A major development in recent decades has been the study of
2970-547: A test fails, something is wrong. But there is a problem in figuring out what that something is: a missing planet, badly calibrated test equipment, an unsuspected curvature of space, or something else. One consequence of the Duhem–Quine thesis is that one can make any theory compatible with any empirical observation by the addition of a sufficient number of suitable ad hoc hypotheses. Karl Popper accepted this thesis, leading him to reject naïve falsification . Instead, he favored
3080-559: A theory is validated if it makes sense of observations as part of a coherent whole, became prominent due to W. V. Quine and others. Some thinkers such as Stephen Jay Gould seek to ground science in axiomatic assumptions, such as the uniformity of nature . A vocal minority of philosophers, and Paul Feyerabend in particular, argue against the existence of the " scientific method ", so all approaches to science should be allowed, including explicitly supernatural ones. Another approach to thinking about science involves studying how knowledge
3190-415: Is Bertrand Russell 's argument concerning contradiction. Russell maintained that a belief and its negation will each separately cohere with one complete set of all beliefs, thus making it internally inconsistent. For example, if someone holds a belief that is false, how might we determine whether the belief refers to something real although it is false, or whether instead the right belief is true although it
3300-540: Is only a property of sets of beliefs, hence ruling out any such connection through experience, then it seems that coherentism would allow for the justification of empirical beliefs in isolation from the external world. Coherentists have a variety of responses to this. One strategy is to argue that no set of beliefs held by an agent would remain coherent over time if it was isolated from the external world in this way. Another approach argues that coherentism should be modified such that empirical beliefs can only be justified if
3410-426: Is a matter of chance, or otherwise cannot be perfectly predicted from what is known. Wesley Salmon developed a model in which a good scientific explanation must be statistically relevant to the outcome to be explained. Others have argued that the key to a good explanation is unifying disparate phenomena or providing a causal mechanism. Although it is often taken for granted, it is not at all clear how one can infer
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3520-973: Is actively engaged in distinguishing the phenomenon being observed from surrounding sensory data. Therefore, observations are affected by one's underlying understanding of the way in which the world functions, and that understanding may influence what is perceived, noticed, or deemed worthy of consideration. In this sense, it can be argued that all observation is theory-laden. Should science aim to determine ultimate truth, or are there questions that science cannot answer ? Scientific realists claim that science aims at truth and that one ought to regard scientific theories as true, approximately true, or likely true. Conversely, scientific anti-realists argue that science does not aim (or at least does not succeed) at truth, especially truth about unobservables like electrons or other universes. Instrumentalists argue that scientific theories should only be evaluated on whether they are useful. In their view, whether theories are true or not
3630-401: Is also sometimes thought to be an epistemic coherentist. Both coherence and foundationalist theories of justification attempt to answer the regress argument , a fundamental problem in epistemology that goes as follows. Given some statement P, it appears reasonable to ask for a justification for P. If that justification takes the form of another statement, P', one can again reasonably ask for
3740-518: Is beside the point, because the purpose of science is to make predictions and enable effective technology. Realists often point to the success of recent scientific theories as evidence for the truth (or near truth) of current theories. Antirealists point to either the many false theories in the history of science , epistemic morals, the success of false modeling assumptions, or widely termed postmodern criticisms of objectivity as evidence against scientific realism. Antirealists attempt to explain
3850-718: Is commonly portrayed as taking the extreme position that scientific language should never refer to anything unobservable—even the seemingly core notions of causality, mechanism, and principles—but that is an exaggeration. Talk of such unobservables could be allowed as metaphorical—direct observations viewed in the abstract—or at worst metaphysical or emotional. Theoretical laws would be reduced to empirical laws , while theoretical terms would garner meaning from observational terms via correspondence rules . Mathematics in physics would reduce to symbolic logic via logicism, while rational reconstruction would convert ordinary language into standardized equivalents, all networked and united by
3960-459: Is created from a sociological perspective, an approach represented by scholars like David Bloor and Barry Barnes . Finally, a tradition in continental philosophy approaches science from the perspective of a rigorous analysis of human experience. Philosophies of the particular sciences range from questions about the nature of time raised by Einstein's general relativity , to the implications of economics for public policy . A central theme
4070-598: Is divided between an anthropological approach, which applies only to localized networks ('true within a given sample of a population, given our understanding of the population'), and an approach that is judged on the basis of universals, such as categorical sets. The anthropological approach belongs more properly to the correspondence theory of truth , while the universal theories are a small development within analytic philosophy . The coherentist theory of justification, which may be interpreted as relating to either theory of coherent truth, characterizes epistemic justification as
4180-424: Is generally accepted that there is no such thing as a theory-independent measure of simplicity. In other words, there appear to be as many different measures of simplicity as there are theories themselves, and the task of choosing between measures of simplicity appears to be every bit as problematic as the job of choosing between theories. Nicholas Maxwell has argued for some decades that unity rather than simplicity
4290-418: Is meant by truth. At this point, Coherence could be faulted for adopting its own variation of dogmatic foundationalism by arbitrarily selecting truth values. Coherentists must argue that their truth-values are not arbitrary for provable reasons. A second objection also emerges, the finite problem : that arbitrary, ad hoc relativism could reduce statements of relatively insignificant value to non-entities during
4400-516: Is normally formulated in terms of a denial of its contrary, such as dogmatic foundationalism, which lacks a proof-theoretical framework, or correspondence theory, which lacks universalism. Counterfactualism , through a vocabulary developed by David K. Lewis and his many worlds theory although popular with philosophers, has had the effect of creating wide disbelief of universals amongst academics. Many difficulties lie in between hypothetical coherence and its effective actualization. Coherentism claims, at
4510-430: Is not believed? Coherence must thus rely on a theory that is either non-contradictory or accepts some limited degree of incoherence, such as relativism or paradox . Additional necessary criteria for coherence may include universalism or absoluteness, suggesting that the theory remains anthropological or incoherent when it does not use the concept of infinity. A coherentist might argue that this scenario applies regardless of
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4620-466: Is not. The Coherentist analytic project then involves a process of justifying what is meant by adequate criteria for non-dogmatic truth. As an offshoot of this, the theory insists that it is always reasonable to ask for a justification for any statement. For example, if someone makes an observational statement, such as "it is raining", the coherentist contends that it is reasonable to ask for example whether this mere statement refers to anything real. What
4730-476: Is rather the product of systems of power relations struggling to construct scientific disciplines and knowledge within given societies. With the advances of scientific disciplines, such as psychology and anthropology, the need to separate, categorize, normalize and institutionalize populations into constructed social identities became a staple of the sciences. Constructions of what were considered "normal" and "abnormal" stigmatized and ostracized groups of people, like
4840-525: Is real about the statement, it turns out, is the extended pattern of relations that we call justifications. But, unlike the relativist, the coherentist argues that these associations may be objectively real. Coherentism contends that dogmatic foundationalism does not provide the whole set of pure relations that might result in actually understanding the objective context of phenomena, because dogmatic assumptions are not proof-theoretic, and therefore remain incoherent or relativistic. Coherentists therefore argue that
4950-468: Is referred to as the demarcation problem. For example, should psychoanalysis , creation science , and historical materialism be considered pseudosciences? Karl Popper called this the central question in the philosophy of science. However, no unified account of the problem has won acceptance among philosophers, and some regard the problem as unsolvable or uninteresting. Martin Gardner has argued for
5060-492: Is socially constructed, though this does not necessarily imply the more radical notion that reality itself is a social construct . Michel Foucault sought to analyze and uncover how disciplines within the social sciences developed and adopted the methodologies used by their practitioners. In works like The Archaeology of Knowledge , he used the term human sciences . The human sciences do not comprise mainstream academic disciplines; they are rather an interdisciplinary space for
5170-436: Is taken to imply something stronger than mere consistency. Statements that are comprehensive and meet the requirements of Occam's razor are usually to be preferred. As an illustration of the principle, if people lived in a virtual reality universe, they could see birds in the trees that aren't really there. Not only are the birds not really there, but the trees aren't really there either. The people may or may not know that
5280-446: Is the deductive-nomological model. It says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law . This view has been subjected to substantial criticism, resulting in several widely acknowledged counterexamples to the theory. It is especially challenging to characterize what is meant by an explanation when the thing to be explained cannot be deduced from any law because it
5390-551: Is the key non-empirical factor in influencing the choice of theory in science, persistent preference for unified theories in effect committing science to the acceptance of a metaphysical thesis concerning unity in nature. In order to improve this problematic thesis, it needs to be represented in the form of a hierarchy of theses, each thesis becoming more insubstantial as one goes up the hierarchy. When making observations, scientists look through telescopes, study images on electronic screens, record meter readings, and so on. Generally, on
5500-407: Is the most famous example. Similarly, empiricists take observations as providing the foundation for the series. Foundationalism relies on the claim that it is not necessary to ask for justification of certain propositions, or that they are self-justifying. Coherentists argue that this position is overly dogmatic. In other words, it does not provide real criteria for determining what is true and what
5610-411: Is true if and only if it is coherent with all or most of his or her other (true) beliefs. The terminology of coherence is then said to correlate with truth via some concept of what qualifies all truth, such as absoluteness or universalism. These further terms become the qualifiers of what is meant by a truth statement, and the truth-statements then decide what is meant by a true belief. Usually, coherence
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#17327936073685720-499: Is what counts as a good scientific explanation. In addition to providing predictions about future events, society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. Philosophers have investigated the criteria by which a scientific theory can be said to have successfully explained a phenomenon, as well as what it means to say a scientific theory has explanatory power . One early and influential account of scientific explanation
5830-399: Is whether the terms of one scientific theory can be intra- or intertheoretically reduced to the terms of another. Can chemistry be reduced to physics, or can sociology be reduced to individual psychology ? The general questions of philosophy of science also arise with greater specificity in some particular sciences. For instance, the question of the validity of scientific reasoning is seen in
5940-593: The Latsis Foundation , is £10,000, and to take it up a successful candidate must visit the LSE and deliver a public lecture. The award is administered by the following committee: The Committee makes the Award on the advice of an independent and anonymous panel of selectors. The Award has so far been won by: Philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with
6050-532: The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) was cut short by his early and unexpected death. While administered by an international management committee organised from the LSE, it is independent of the LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method, with many of the committee's members being academics from other institutions. The value of the award, which has been endowed by
6160-509: The covering law model of scientific explanation as a way of identifying the logical form of explanations without any reference to the suspect notion of "causation". The logical positivist movement became a major underpinning of analytic philosophy , and dominated Anglosphere philosophy, including philosophy of science, while influencing sciences, into the 1960s. Yet the movement failed to resolve its central problems, and its doctrines were increasingly assaulted. Nevertheless, it brought about
6270-496: The hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). The largest effect on the continental tradition with respect to science came from Martin Heidegger's critique of the theoretical attitude in general, which of course includes the scientific attitude. For this reason, the continental tradition has remained much more skeptical of the importance of science in human life and in philosophical inquiry. Nonetheless, there have been
6380-440: The reflection and refraction of light. Roger Bacon (1214–1294), an English thinker and experimenter heavily influenced by al-Haytham, is recognized by many to be the father of modern scientific method. His view that mathematics was essential to a correct understanding of natural philosophy is considered to have been 400 years ahead of its time. Francis Bacon (no direct relation to Roger Bacon , who lived 300 years earlier)
6490-649: The 20th century include Jürgen Habermas (e.g., Truth and Justification , 1998), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ( The Unity of Nature , 1980; German : Die Einheit der Natur (1971)), and Wolfgang Stegmüller ( Probleme und Resultate der Wissenschaftstheorie und Analytischen Philosophie , 1973–1986). Analysis involves breaking an observation or theory down into simpler concepts in order to understand it. Reductionism can refer to one of several philosophical positions related to this approach. One type of reductionism suggests that phenomena are amenable to scientific explanation at lower levels of analysis and inquiry. Perhaps
6600-476: The approach to the philosophy of science is to study how scientific communities actually operate. Philosophers in the continental philosophical tradition are not traditionally categorized as philosophers of science. However, they have much to say about science, some of which has anticipated themes in the analytical tradition. For example, in The Genealogy of Morals (1887) Friedrich Nietzsche advanced
6710-411: The beliefs P", P', and P work together to achieve epistemic justification. Catherine Elgin has expressed the same point differently, arguing that beliefs must be "mutually consistent, cotenable, and supportive. That is, the components must be reasonable in light of one another. Since both cotenability and supportiveness are matters of degree, coherence is too." Usually the system of belief is taken to be
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#17327936073686820-416: The best explanation. In this account, science is not about generalizing specific instances but rather about hypothesizing explanations for what is observed. As discussed in the previous section, it is not always clear what is meant by the "best explanation". Ockham's razor , which counsels choosing the simplest available explanation, thus plays an important role in some versions of this approach. To return to
6930-409: The bird and the tree are there, but in either case there is a coherence between the virtual world and the real one, expressed in terms of true beliefs within available experience. Coherence is a way of explicating truth values while circumventing beliefs that might be false in any way. More traditional critics from the correspondence theory of truth have said that it cannot have contents and proofs at
7040-482: The center and four different images of a second object around the sides. Alternatively, if other scientists suspect that something is wrong with the telescope and only one object is actually being observed, they are operating under yet another theory. Observations that cannot be separated from theoretical interpretation are said to be theory-laden . All observation involves both perception and cognition . That is, one does not make an observation passively, but rather
7150-449: The central role of reason as opposed to sensory experience. By contrast, in 1713, the 2nd edition of Isaac Newton 's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica argued that "... hypotheses ... have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy[,] propositions are deduced from the phenomena and rendered general by induction." This passage influenced a "later generation of philosophically-inclined readers to pronounce
7260-487: The chicken. How is scientific reasoning more trustworthy than the chicken's reasoning? One approach is to acknowledge that induction cannot achieve certainty, but observing more instances of a general statement can at least make the general statement more probable . So the chicken would be right to conclude from all those mornings that it is likely the farmer will come with food again the next morning, even if it cannot be certain. However, there remain difficult questions about
7370-427: The coherence of a set of beliefs transmits incremental confirmation: if some evidence confirms a given belief, and this belief is sufficiently coherent with other beliefs, then the evidence also confirms these other beliefs. . Moretti has then used the same formalism to show that if an evidential set (i.e. a set of propositions used as evidence) is sufficiently coherent and a proposition in the set incrementally confirms
7480-407: The complete set of beliefs of the individual or group, that is, their theory of the world. It is necessary for coherentism to explain in some detail what it means for a system to be coherent. At the least, coherence must include logical consistency. It also usually requires some degree of integration of the various components of the system. A system that contains more than one unrelated explanation of
7590-423: The establishment of philosophy of science as a distinct subdiscipline of philosophy, with Carl Hempel playing a key role. In the 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , Thomas Kuhn argued that the process of observation and evaluation takes place within a paradigm, a logically consistent "portrait" of the world that is consistent with observations made from its framing. A paradigm also encompasses
7700-415: The example of the chicken, would it be simpler to suppose that the farmer cares about it and will continue taking care of it indefinitely or that the farmer is fattening it up for slaughter? Philosophers have tried to make this heuristic principle more precise regarding theoretical parsimony or other measures. Yet, although various measures of simplicity have been brought forward as potential candidates, it
7810-499: The formation, structure, and evolution of scientific communities by sociologists and anthropologists – including David Bloor , Harry Collins , Bruno Latour , Ian Hacking and Anselm Strauss . Concepts and methods (such as rational choice, social choice or game theory) from economics have also been applied for understanding the efficiency of scientific communities in the production of knowledge. This interdisciplinary field has come to be known as science and technology studies . Here
7920-469: The forms of approximate and exact reasoning, set out the threefold scheme of abductive , deductive , and inductive inference, and also analyzed reasoning by analogy . The eleventh century Arab polymath Ibn al-Haytham (known in Latin as Alhazen ) conducted his research in optics by way of controlled experimental testing and applied geometry , especially in his investigations into the images resulting from
8030-466: The foundations, methods , and implications of science . Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science , the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose and meaning of science as a human endeavour. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical , epistemic and semantic aspects of scientific practice, and overlaps with metaphysics , ontology , logic , and epistemology , for example, when it explores
8140-571: The greater the number of phenomena explained by the system, the greater its coherence. A problem coherentism has to face is the plurality objection . There is nothing within the definition of coherence that makes it impossible for two entirely different sets of beliefs to be internally coherent. Thus there might be several such sets. But if one supposes—in line with the principle of non-contradiction —that there can only be one complete set of truths, coherentism must therefore resolve internally that these systems are not contradictory, by establishing what
8250-471: The human spirit. Some claim that naturalism is the implicit philosophy of working scientists, and that the following basic assumptions are needed to justify the scientific method: In contrast to the view that science rests on foundational assumptions, coherentism asserts that statements are justified by being a part of a coherent system. Or, rather, individual statements cannot be validated on their own: only coherent systems can be justified. A prediction of
8360-559: The investigation of patterns observed in scientific phenomena to ascertain whether they signify underlying truths or are mere constructs of human interpretation. Dennett provides a unique ontological account concerning real patterns, examining the extent to which these recognized patterns have predictive utility and allow for efficient compression of information. The discourse on real patterns extends beyond philosophical circles, finding relevance in various scientific domains. For example, in biology, inquiries into real patterns seek to elucidate
8470-438: The justification of an empirical belief must depend on some connection between the believed proposition and the way the world is. For example, a belief that 'snow is white' must in some way connect to the fact that snow really is white in the external world . Such a connection could be found in how the agent in question has experiences of the world being this way. However, if coherence is sufficient for justification and coherence
8580-532: The mentally ill and sexual and gender minorities. However, some (such as Quine) do maintain that scientific reality is a social construct: Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer ... For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it
8690-507: The mind knows only actual or potential sensory experience, which is the content of all sciences, whether physics or psychology—and Percy Bridgman 's operationalism . Thereby, only the verifiable was scientific and cognitively meaningful , whereas the unverifiable was unscientific, cognitively meaningless "pseudostatements"—metaphysical, emotive, or such—not worthy of further review by philosophers, who were newly tasked to organize knowledge rather than develop new knowledge. Logical positivism
8800-410: The nature of biological explanations, exploring how recognized patterns contribute to a comprehensive understanding of biological phenomena. Similarly, in chemistry, debates around the reality of chemical bonds as real patterns continue. Evaluation of real patterns also holds significance in broader scientific inquiries. Researchers, like Tyler Millhouse, propose criteria for evaluating the realness of
8910-407: The observations are grounded, and he argued that it is not possible to evaluate competing paradigms independently. More than one logically consistent construct can paint a usable likeness of the world, but there is no common ground from which to pit two against each other, theory against theory. Each paradigm has its own distinct questions, aims, and interpretations. Neither provides a standard by which
9020-473: The only way to reach proof-theoretic truth that is not relativistic is through coherency. Coherentism rejects the soundness of the regression argument, which assumes that the justification for a proposition follows a linear sequence: P" justifies P', which in turn justifies P. According to coherentism, justification is a holistic process. Inferential justification for the belief that P is nonlinear, meaning that P" and P' are not epistemically prior to P. Instead,
9130-425: The other can be judged, so there is no clear way to measure scientific progress across paradigms. For Kuhn, the choice of paradigm was sustained by rational processes, but not ultimately determined by them. The choice between paradigms involves setting two or more "portraits" against the world and deciding which likeness is most promising. For Kuhn, acceptance or rejection of a paradigm is a social process as much as
9240-590: The philosophy of science lack contemporary consensus, including whether science can infer truth about unobservable entities and whether inductive reasoning can be justified as yielding definite scientific knowledge. Philosophers of science also consider philosophical problems within particular sciences (such as biology , physics and social sciences such as economics and psychology ). Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself . While philosophical thought pertaining to science dates back at least to
9350-428: The process of establishing universalism or absoluteness. This might result in a totally flat truth-theoretic framework, or even arbitrary truth values. Coherentists generally solve this by adopting a metaphysical condition of universalism, sometimes leading to materialism , or by arguing that relativism is trivial. A third objection that coherentism faces is the problem of isolation . Intuitively, one might think that
9460-457: The process of interpreting any given evidence into a probability that the general statement is true. One way out of these particular difficulties is to declare that all beliefs about scientific theories are subjective , or personal, and correct reasoning is merely about how evidence should change one's subjective beliefs over time. Some argue that what scientists do is not inductive reasoning at all but rather abductive reasoning , or inference to
9570-493: The reflection on man who is the subject of more mainstream scientific knowledge, taken now as an object, sitting between these more conventional areas, and of course associating with disciplines such as anthropology , psychology , sociology , and even history . Rejecting the realist view of scientific inquiry, Foucault argued throughout his work that scientific discourse is not simply an objective study of phenomena, as both natural and social scientists like to believe, but
9680-417: The relationship between science and the concept of truth . Philosophy of science is both a theoretical and empirical discipline , relying on philosophical theorising as well as meta-studies of scientific practice. Ethical issues such as bioethics and scientific misconduct are often considered ethics or science studies rather than the philosophy of science. Many of the central problems concerned with
9790-512: The relevant set includes beliefs and experiences, and hence no belief can be justified without involving experiences about the world. This latter position is known as non-doxastic coherentism. However, metaphysics poses another problem, the problem of the stowaway argument that might carry epistemological implications. However, a coherentist might say that if the truth conditions of the logic hold, then there will be no problem regardless of any additional conditions that happen to be true. Thus,
9900-413: The same phenomenon is not as coherent as one that uses only one explanation, all other things being equal. Conversely, a theory that explains divergent phenomena using unrelated explanations is not as coherent as one that uses only one explanation for those divergent phenomena. These requirements are variations on Occam's razor . The same points can be made more formally using Bayesian statistics . Finally,
10010-419: The same time, unless the contents are infinite, or unless the contents somehow exist in the form of proof. Such a form of 'existing proof' might seem ridiculous, but coherentists tend to think it is non-problematic. It therefore falls into a group of theories that are sometimes deemed excessively generalistic, what Gábor Forrai calls 'blob realism'. Perhaps the best-known objection to a coherence theory of truth
10120-419: The scientific research. The scientific enterprise is embedded in particular culture and values through individual practitioners. Values emerge from science, both as product and process and can be distributed among several cultures in the society. When it comes to the justification of science in the sense of general public participation by single practitioners, science plays the role of a mediator between evaluating
10230-404: The series forms a loop, but although this would produce a form of coherentism, this is not what is generally meant by the term. Those who do accept the loop theory sometimes argue that the body of assumptions used to prove the theory is not what is at question in considering a loop of premises. This would serve the typical purpose of circumventing the reliance on a regression, but might be considered
10340-412: The set of questions and practices that define a scientific discipline. He characterized normal science as the process of observation and "puzzle solving" which takes place within a paradigm, whereas revolutionary science occurs when one paradigm overtakes another in a paradigm shift . Kuhn denied that it is ever possible to isolate the hypothesis being tested from the influence of the theory in which
10450-454: The solar system, one needs information about the masses and positions of the Sun and all the planets. Famously, the failure to predict the orbit of Uranus in the 19th century led not to the rejection of Newton's Law but rather to the rejection of the hypothesis that the solar system comprises only seven planets. The investigations that followed led to the discovery of an eighth planet, Neptune . If
10560-404: The standards and policies of society and its participating individuals, wherefore science indeed falls victim to vandalism and sabotage adapting the means to the end. If it is unclear what counts as science, how the process of confirming theories works, and what the purpose of science is, there is considerable scope for values and other social influences to shape science. Indeed, values can play
10670-494: The stress is on making the theory valid within the set, and also verifiable. A number of philosophers have raised concerns over the link between intuitive notions of coherence that form the foundation of epistemic forms of coherentism and some formal results in Bayesian probability . This is an issue raised by Luc Bovens and Stephen Hartmann and by Erik J. Olsson in the form of 'impossibility' theorems. These theorems aim to give
10780-437: The success of scientific theories without reference to truth. Some antirealists claim that scientific theories aim at being accurate only about observable objects and argue that their success is primarily judged by that criterion. The notion of real patterns has been propounded, notably by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett , as an intermediate position between strong realism and eliminative materialism . This concept delves into
10890-594: The telescope mount, and an understanding of celestial mechanics . If the prediction fails and a transit is not observed, that is likely to occasion an adjustment in the system, a change in some auxiliary assumption, rather than a rejection of the theoretical system. In fact, according to the Duhem–Quine thesis , after Pierre Duhem and W.V. Quine , it is impossible to test a theory in isolation. One must always add auxiliary hypotheses in order to make testable predictions. For example, to test Newton's Law of Gravitation in
11000-417: The theories being considered, and so, that coherentism must be the preferred truth-theoretical framework in avoiding relativism. In modern philosophy , the coherence theory of truth was defended by Baruch Spinoza , Immanuel Kant , Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel , and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Harold Henry Joachim (who is credited with the definitive formulation of
11110-619: The theory). However, Spinoza and Kant have also been interpreted as defenders of the correspondence theory of truth. In late modern philosophy , epistemic coherentist views were held by Schlegel and Hegel, but the definitive formulation of the coherence theory of justification was provided by F. H. Bradley in his book The Principles of Logic (1883). In contemporary philosophy, epistemologists who have significantly contributed to epistemic coherentism include: A. C. Ewing , Brand Blanshard , C. I. Lewis , Nicholas Rescher , Laurence BonJour , Keith Lehrer , and Paul Thagard . Otto Neurath
11220-415: The thesis that the motive for the search for truth in sciences is a kind of ascetic ideal. In general, continental philosophy views science from a world-historical perspective. Philosophers such as Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) and Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) wrote their works with this world-historical approach to science, predating Kuhn's 1962 work by a generation or more. All of these approaches involve
11330-474: The time of Aristotle , the general philosophy of science emerged as a distinct discipline only in the 20th century following the logical positivist movement, which aimed to formulate criteria for ensuring all philosophical statements' meaningfulness and objectively assessing them. Karl Popper criticized logical positivism and helped establish a modern set of standards for scientific methodology . Thomas Kuhn 's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
11440-674: The title of "the worst enemy of science" from his detractors. According to Kuhn, science is an inherently communal activity which can only be done as part of a community. For him, the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there is insufficient difference between social practices in science and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. For them, social factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but they do not serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. On this account, science
11550-467: The ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions would then be justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions." Kuhn also claims that all science is based on assumptions about the character of the universe, rather than merely on empirical facts. These assumptions –
11660-497: The use of a Potter Stewart standard ("I know it when I see it") for recognizing pseudoscience. Early attempts by the logical positivists grounded science in observation while non-science was non-observational and hence meaningless. Popper argued that the central property of science is falsifiability . That is, every genuinely scientific claim is capable of being proven false, at least in principle. An area of study or speculation that masquerades as science in an attempt to claim
11770-414: The validity of a general statement from a number of specific instances or infer the truth of a theory from a series of successful tests. For example, a chicken observes that each morning the farmer comes and gives it food, for hundreds of days in a row. The chicken may therefore use inductive reasoning to infer that the farmer will bring food every morning. However, one morning, the farmer comes and kills
11880-455: The way maintained by dogmatic foundationalists. In this way universal truths are in closer reach. Different varieties of coherentism are individuated by the specific relationship between a system of knowledge and justified belief, which can be interpreted in terms of predicate logic , or ideally, proof theory . As a theory of truth, coherentism restricts true sentences to those that cohere with some specified set of sentences. Someone's belief
11990-566: Was a seminal figure in philosophy of science at the time of the Scientific Revolution . In his work Novum Organum (1620)—an allusion to Aristotle's Organon —Bacon outlined a new system of logic to improve upon the old philosophical process of syllogism . Bacon's method relied on experimental histories to eliminate alternative theories. In 1637, René Descartes established a new framework for grounding scientific knowledge in his treatise, Discourse on Method , advocating
12100-421: Was also formative, challenging the view of scientific progress as the steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge based on a fixed method of systematic experimentation and instead arguing that any progress is relative to a " paradigm ", the set of questions, concepts, and practices that define a scientific discipline in a particular historical period. Subsequently, the coherentist approach to science, in which
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