Scientism

At The Electric Agora I recently discussed the views of Alex Rosenberg and some other thinkers on science, knowledge and consciousness. Rosenberg embraces the term 'scientism' (which, of course, was coined as a derogatory term) as being descriptive of his point of view. I highlighted serious problems with Rosenberg's approach, but there are some aspects of it with which I agree.

The term 'scientism' is used in different ways. In a dialogue between Dan Kaufman and Massimo Pigliucci which was linked to in the comment thread, reference was made to a Scientia Salon article which specified 26 different meanings of the term.

As I understand it, 'scientism' referred originally to the clearly inappropriate use of scientific (or science-like) methods; to the application of such methods to areas where they cannot be made to work effectively (such as normative ethics, for example). I strongly reject scientism in this sense.

In the past I have emphasized the pitfalls of polysemy. Philosophical debate in particular routinely involves -- and in fact is often driven by -- confusions about meaning, with interlocutors imperceptibly sliding from one meaning of a term to another in the course of the discussion. The essential vagueness not only of the terms of ordinary language but also of most philosophical terms needs to be recognized. The tendency of philosophers to imagine that philosophical terms can be made precise in the way scientific or mathematical terms can be made precise, which leads more often than not to a process of semantic hair-splitting and an unproductive proliferation of points of view, can in fact be seen as a form of scientism in the original sense of the term.

But the term has come to be applied to the views of those whose only sin is to have a high regard for science and who question the worth and validity of certain kinds of discourse (like theology, for example). In the dialogue mentioned above, Massimo Pigliucci talks about the way religious thinkers insist on “other ways of knowing” and use the term ‘scientistic’ to label those who reject these purported ways of knowing.

How you see intuitions is crucial here. Obviously they are important in practical life and for theoretical conjectures. But they need to be tested using rigorous scientific or scholarly methods if they are to be incorporated into our body of scientific and scholarly-historical knowledge.

If such a view constitutes scientism, I happily embrace the label. But, given the confusion surrounding the term, we would probably be better off dispensing with it altogether.

Patricia Churchland

There are a number of contemporary thinkers whose views I especially respect. Patricia Churchland is one of them (and I'll be mentioning others in subsequent posts).

In this interview, Churchland discusses her motivations and her general views on science, philosophy and the human brain. The point of view she is putting forward would be characterized - and condemned - as scientism by many, but it seems to me eminently sensible and not extreme in any way.

I was particularly interested in what she had to say about possible world semantics - namely, that she used to think it interesting, and now sees it as "utterly uninteresting". In other remarks, she dismisses much of the work which defines the core of contemporary (analytic) philosophy as being of little value.

The post I am currently writing (and which I will put up soon) is in part about these issues.

Scientism

'Scientism' is a scare word. Its chief purpose is not so much to describe a position as to describe-and-attack. It is generally used by those who are ill-disposed to what they see as a narrowly scientific view of the world to suggest that there are other sources of knowledge than ordinary human perceptions and judgements and the empirical and deductive methods of science and mathematics.

Many thinkers take human consciousness (which of course incorporates value judgements, etc.) as a window into something like a spiritual or moral realm, but I would have thought that our perceptions and judgements are entirely the result of processes associated with individual organisms interacting with each other and the wider organic and inorganic environment in which we find ourselves.

The fact that mathematics seems to subsist in a world of its own - accessible to human reason and not empirical in the normal sense - poses problems for radical empiricism, but computational approaches to mathematics (incorporating the concept of information as something physical) may lead to a natural way of sustaining a physicalist, anti-Platonic outlook.

The very fact that we have so many alternative philosophies of mathematics and no clear way to decide which of them (if any) is 'true' suggests that the traditional categories and concepts in which these competing approaches have been framed might be the real source of confusion, and that radically new ways of addressing the questions are needed.

The trend certainly seems to be towards seeing mathematics as being rather closer to physics than has previously been thought to be the case.

Our knowledge of the world may conveniently be divided between ordinary, everyday knowledge (incorporating skills, commonsense, values and so-called intuitions) and theoretical knowledge. The latter is valuable in my view only to the extent that it is scientific (broadly interpreted).

If this is scientism, I can live with it.