Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T15:22:46.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Philosophical Requirements for an Adequate Conception of Scientific Rationality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Gerald Doppelt
Gerald Doppelt*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I argue that post-Kuhnian approaches to rational scientific change fail to appreciate several distinct philosophical requirements and relativist challenges that have been assumed to be, and may in fact be essential to any adequate conception of scientific rationality. These separate requirements and relativist challenges are clearly distinguished and motivated. My argument then focuses on Shapere's view that there are typically good reasons for scientific change. I argue: (1) that contrary to his central aim, his account of good reasons ultimately presupposes the requirement of universal standards of scientific reasoning; (2) that the good reasons established by his account underdetermine the rationality of scientific change and allow that other changes would have been equally or even more rational; (3) that as a result, Shapere's approach fails to meet what I characterize as the challenges of moderate, sociological, and cognitive relativism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1988 , pp. 104 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to express my appreciation to the National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship Program (Independent Study and Research, 1984–1985) for funding the research on which this paper is based. I am also grateful to Adolf Grünbaum, Carl Hempel, Larry Laudan, and Jack Meiland for support and encouragement concerning my NEH project.

References

REFERENCES

Doppelt, G. (1978), “Kuhn's Epistemological Relativism: An Interpretation and Defense”, Inquiry 31: 33–86; reprinted in J. Meiland and M. Krausz (eds.) (1982), Relativism: Cognitive and Moral. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 113–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doppelt, G. (1981), “Laudan's Pragmatic Alternative to Positivism and Historicism”, Inquiry 24: 253–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doppelt, G. (1983), “Relativism and Recent Pragmatic Conceptions of Scientific Rationality”, in Rescher, N. (ed.), Scientific Explanation and Understanding: Essays on Reasoning and Rationality in Science. London: Center for Philosophy of Science Publications in Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh and University Press of America, pp. 106–142.Google Scholar
Doppelt, G. (1986), “Relativism and the Reticulational Model of Scientific Rationality”, Synthese 69: 225–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lakatos, I. (1978), The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. Edited by Worrall, J. and Currie, G. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1977), Progress and Its Problems. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Doppelt, G. (1981), Science and Hypothesis. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Doppelt, G. (1984), Science and Values. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shapere, D. (1982), “The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy”, Philosophy of Science 49: 485–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapere, D. (1984), Reason and the Search for Knowledge. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 78. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar