Everyone should read this. The copy appearing on that page has errors clearly introduced during the copying process, but the underlying argument is brilliant and biting. Thanks to Günther Greindl for bringing this to my attention.
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So far, so good. But Bunge is more complicated than merely this. You should show him beating up another school of scientoids as well. The functionalists. The Dan Dennetts of the world. They waste resources too, and worse: they’re taken seriously by many genuine scientists.
So many quacks, so little time.
Nick Mann said this on February 8, 2009 at 9:00 am |
Link to a relevant GrupoBunge page:
http://tinyurl.com/c3q8zh
Nick Mann said this on February 8, 2009 at 9:31 am |
That’s getting almost too philosophical for me. I do know people who like Dennett but I can’t exactly count myself as one of them.
But I am certainly becoming a fan of Bunge…
quantummoxie said this on February 8, 2009 at 3:55 pm |
Hi Ian,
I think “this” is to some extent an uncomprehending modernism. Although one can find plenty of quotes that show individual critics of modernism are dumb, nonetheless the critique has some force. Bunge quotes Feyerabend, for example, but not Kuhn. Nor is Lakatos in his sights. What about Quine or Putnam? Going back to the early 20th Century, does he think that Poincaré and Duhem had nothing interesting to say?
In terms of concepts, recent realists have had great trouble accommodating underdetermination, incommensurability, the pessimistic meta-induction, and the theory-ladenness of observation. Anti-realist philosophers have had an easier time, although positivism, which in retrospect is a rather realist kind of anti-realism, is pretty hard to maintain without giving away the store.
Accepting that the post-positivist critique has force doesn’t mean that we throw our hands up in despair because nothing has any meaning any more. If we can see only the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave, nonetheless we can see something. It takes more subtlety to construct models that we can conscientiously advocate, and we can longer appeal to the “truth” of a theory as a reason for people to “adopt” it (whatever that is taken to mean). Many academics don’t “get” what is acceptable and what is not acceptable when the rules are no longer so cut and dried, but there is still stuff we can do.
Peter Morgan said this on September 23, 2009 at 1:05 pm |
Peter,
Thanks for your insightful comments. I agree, for the most part, that his analysis is incomplete and, as with anything, it’s not such a black and white affair. I’m not a huge fan of Kuhn and it’s been awhile since I’ve read any Quine, but I am reading Mike Fortun and Herb Bernstein’s book “Muddling Through: Pursuing Science and Truths in the 21st Century,” partly because Herb bribed me (seriously, it’s an interesting book, though I’m not in complete agreement with their tenets).
Nonetheless, Bunge has some valid points. I am particularly taken by his point about ’subjective probability’ as a kind of pseudoscience. It has always bothered me that more and more ’science’ is sold to the public based on statistical results rather than root causes (true, the root causes are not always known). The medical community is very good at this, but it has also been the downfall of climate scientists. Since their arguments include such variability it is easy for opponents to poke holes in them. But the mechanism of global warming is known – it is a simple fact that carbon compounds absorb infrared radiation while molecular oxygen and nitrogen do not. Fortun and Bernstein make a similar point in their book, though they don’t denounce it as pseudoscience. Perhaps that is too harsh a word.
Anyway, I certainly don’t advocate throwing up my hands “in despair.” But I do advocate attempting to change our culture in science, emphasizing root causes (where applicable) and the fact that there are scientific truths out there, e.g. if I toss a ball up in the air, barring interference from something else, it’s gonna come down every single time!
Science should teach us to question everything, but at some point we also have to learn to reach conclusions and accept certain physical truths.
quantummoxie said this on September 24, 2009 at 1:34 pm |