This paper argues that the proponents of epistemological scientism must take some stand on scientific methodology. The supporters of scientism cannot simply defer to the social organisation of science because the social processes themselves must meet some methodological criteria. Among such criteria is epistemic evaluability, which demands intersubjective access to reasons. We derive twelve theses outlining some implications of epistemic evaluability. Evaluability can support weak and broad variants of epistemological scientism, which state that sciences, broadly (...) construed, are the best sources of knowledge or some other epistemic goods. Since humanities and social sciences produce epistemically evaluable results, narrow types of scientism that take only natural sciences as sources of knowledge require additional argumentation in their support. Strong scientism, which takes sciences as the only source of knowledge, also needs to appeal to some further principles since evaluability is not an all-or-nothing affair. (shrink)

Including the perspectives of scientists about the nature and process of science is important for an authentic and nuanced portrayal of science in science education. The small number of studies that have explored scientists’ worldviews about science has thus far generated contradictory findings, with recent studies claiming that scientists simultaneously hold contradictory sophisticated and naïve views. This article reports on an exploratory study that uses the framework of Bhaskar’s critical realism to elicit and separately analyse academic scientists’ ontological and (...) class='Hi'>epistemological views about science in semi-structured interviews. When the views of scientists are analysed through the lens of critical realism, it is clear that it is possible to hold a realist ontological commitment about what knowledge is of, simultaneously with a fallibilist epistemological commitment about knowledge itself. The apparent incongruence of scientists’ so-called naïve and sophisticated views about science is resolved when analysed using a critical realist framework. Critical realism offers a simple and coherent framework for science educators that avoids many of the problems of positivism and social constructivism by finding a middle ground between them. The three pillars of critical realism: ontological realism, epistemological fallibilism and judgmental rationality help to make sense of how socially constructed scientific knowledge can be anchored in an independent reality. (shrink)

Naturalists seek continuity between epistemology and science. Critics argue this illegitimately expands science into epistemology and commits the fallacy of scientism. Must naturalists commit this fallacy? I defend a conception of naturalized epistemology which upholds the non-identity of epistemic ends, norms, and concepts with scientific evidential ends, norms, and concepts. I argue it enables naturalists to avoid three leading scientistic fallacies: dogmatism, one dimensionalism, and granting science an epistemic monopoly.

This article investigates epistemological aspects of scientists’ reuse of empirical data over decades and centuries. Giving examples, I discuss three respects in which empirical data are historical entities and the implications for the notion of data reuse. First, any data reuse necessitates metadata, which specify the data’s circumstances of origin. Second, interpretation of historical data often requires the tools of humanities disciplines, which produce a further historicization of data. Finally, some qualitative social scientists hold that data are personal to (...) the researcher who coconstructs them in the research process and are therefore skeptical about the prospects of reusing data. (shrink)

This chapter offers a virtue epistemological framework for making sense of the common complaint that scientism is arrogant, dogmatic, or otherwise epistemically vicious. After characterising scientism in terms of stances, I argue that their components can include epistemically vicious dispositions, with the consequence that an agent who adopts such stances can be led to manifest epistemic vices. The main focus of the chapter is the vice of closed-mindedness, but I go on to consider the idea that arrogance (...) and dogmatism are ‘cooperative vices’, ones liable to be activated by closed-mindedness. I conclude that determining whether or not any given stance is vicious will require sensitivity to the ontology of that stance and the psychology of the agents who adopt them. This would be contribute to our understanding both of scientism and of epistemic virtuous and vicious characters or psychologies. (shrink)

Moderate scientism is the view that empirical science can help answer questions in nonscientific disciplines. In this paper, we evaluate moderate scientism in philosophy. We review several ways that science has contributed to research in epistemology, action theory, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. We also review several ways that science has contributed to our understanding of how philosophers make judgments and decisions. Based on this research, we conclude that the case for moderate philosophical scientism (...) is strong: scientific practice has promoted significant progress in philosophy and its further development should be welcomed and encouraged. (shrink)

Social epistemology is a wide-ranging field of study concerned with investigating how various social factors, practices, and institutions affect our prospects of gaining and spreading knowledge. Philosophers working in social epistemology have focused on a range of topics, including trust and testimony, the effects of social location on knowing, and whether or not groups of people can have knowledge that is not reducible to the knowledge of the individual members of the group. Much of the work in social epistemology is (...) not concerned specifically with science and scientists but, rather, with knowing agents in general. This chapter will be concerned narrowly with the social epistemology of scientific knowledge. After a brief discussion of Thomas Kuhn's contribution to the social epistemology of science, the chapter addresses the following issues: the ideal epistemic community; collaboration and trust; social values and bias; and science policy and expertise. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of methodology in the social epistemology of science. (shrink)

Bernard Wills (2018) joins Christopher Brown (2017, 2018) in criticizing my defense of Weak Scientism (Mizrahi 2017a, 2017b, 2018a). Unfortunately, it seems that Wills did not read my latest defense of Weak Scientism carefully, nor does he cite any of the other papers in my exchange with Brown.

Renia Gasparatou’s article contributes to a symposium on Moti Mizrahi’s For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (2022) published by Rowman & Littlefield as part of the “Collective Studies in Knowledge and Society” book series.

Can only science deliver genuine knowledge about the world and ourselves? Is science our only guide to what exists? Scientism answers both questions with yes. Scientism is increasingly influential in popular scientific literature and intellectual life in general, but philosophers have hitherto largely ignored it. This collection is one of the first to develop and assess scientism as a serious philosophical position. It features twelve new essays by both proponents and critics of scientism. Before scientism (...) can be evaluated, it needs to be clear what it is. Hence, the collection opens with essays that provide an overview of the many different versions of scientism and their mutual interrelations. Next, several card-carrying proponents of scientism make their case, either by developing and arguing directly for their preferred version of scientism or by responding to objections. Then, the floor is given to critics of scientism. It is examined whether scientism is epistemically vicious, whether scientism presents a plausible general epistemological outlook and whether science has limits. The final four essays zoom out and connect scientism to ongoing debates elsewhere in philosophy. What does scientism mean for religious epistemology? What can science tell us about morality and is a scientistic moral epistemology plausible? How is scientism related to physicalism? And is experimental philosophy really a form of scientism tailored to philosophy? (shrink)

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are (...) fundamentally epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (shrink)

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments (...) against scientism, the (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether and to what extent scientists (e.g. inquirers such as epidemiologists or virologists) can have rational and fruitful disagreement with what we call post-enquirers (e.g. conspiratorial anti-vaxxers) on topics of scientific relevance such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines. In order to accomplish this aim, we will rely and expand on the epistemological framework developed in detail in Ferrari & Moruzzi (2021) to study the underlying normative profile of enquiry and post-enquiry. We take (...) it that our analysis provides an effective explanation of why standard argumentative strategies such as fact-checking and debunking cannot work in the context of disagreement between scientists and denialists unless they are coupled with a discussion of the values that are endorsed by the scientific community. (shrink)

Both the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of science are centrally concerned with the succession of scientific beliefs. In case studies of scientific debates, however, the emphasis tends to be placed on the outcome of disputes. This paper proposes that attention should instead be focused on the process of debate: that is, on scientific argumentation. It is shown how such a focus circumvents many traditional epistemological problems concerning the truth-status of scientific knowledge. By reference to the consensus conception (...) of truth, it is claimed that scientific arguments can be studied naturalistically whilst still honouring the orientation towards truth exhibited by scientists. Finally, the paper offers a brief résumé of recent studies indicating how this naturalistic study of scientific argumentation can be developed through the sociology of language. (shrink)

In “What’s So Bad about Scientism?” (Mizrahi 2017), I argue that Weak Scientism, the view that “Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge” (Mizrahi 2017, 354; emphasis in original) is a defensible position. That is to say, Weak Scientism “can be successfully defended against objections” (Mizrahi 2017, 354). In his response to Mizrahi (2017), Christopher Brown (2017) provides more objections against Weak Scientism, and thus another opportunity for me to show that (...) Weak Scientism is a defensible position, which is what I will do in this reply. In fact, I think that I have already addressed Brown’s (2017) objections in Mizrahi (2017), so I will simply highlight these arguments here. (shrink)

How is epistemology related to the issue of teaching science and evolution in the schools? Addressing a flashpoint issue in our schools today, this book explores core epistemological differences between proponents of intelligent design and evolutionary scientists, as well as the critical role of epistemological beliefs in learning science. Preeminent scholars in these areas report empirical research and/or make a theoretical contribution, with a particular emphasis on the controversy over whether intelligent design deserves to be considered a science (...) alongside Darwinian evolution. This pioneering book coordinates and provides a complete picture of the intersections in the study of evolution, epistemology, and science education, in order to allow a deeper understanding of the intelligent design vs. evolution controversy. This is a very timely book for teachers and policy makers who are wrestling with issues of how to teach biology and evolution within a cultural context in which intelligent design has been and is likely to remain a challenge for the foreseeable future. (shrink)

During the last quarter of the twentieth century, Soviet Russian philosophy did away with ideology in the fields of Science; but until the mid-1980s, scientists could not escape intense ideological scrutiny. A great number of Soviet scientists did their best to avoid this ideological supervision, and pursued their research, remaining neutral toward Marxist ideology. Among these fields of research were so called “philosophical problems of natural sciences”. Some Soviet Russian philosophers put forward original conceptions of scientific development, the structural features (...) of science, and/or provided novel interpretations of certain scientific principles and ideas. These thinkers had deep roots in Marxism, though not orthodox Marxism. They, so to speak, overcame classical Marxism and proposed innovative ideas largely based upon epistemological considerations. The legacies of I. S. Alekseev and M. A. Rozov are especially worthy of attention for their original epistemological contributions to the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Mizrahi (2017a) advances an argument in support of Weak Scientism, which is the view that scientific knowledge is the best (but not the only) knowledge we have, according to which Weak Scientism follows from the premises that scientific knowledge is quantitatively and qualitatively better than non-scientific knowledge. In this paper, I develop a different argument for Weak Scientism. This latter argument for Weak Scientism proceeds from the premise that academic disciplines that make progress are superior to (...) academic disciplines that do not make progress. In other words, other things being equal, it is generally better for an academic discipline to make progress than to make little or no progress, given that an academic discipline that is making little or no progress is an academic discipline that is failing to achieve its epistemic goals. Now, if there is no question among academic philosophers that science makes progress, and significantly so, but there is an open question among academic philosophers as to whether academic philosophy makes progress (and if so, how much), then academic philosophers would have to agree that science is superior to academic philosophy in terms of making progress. I develop this argument in this paper and provide empirical evidence suggesting that the premises would be acceptable to academic philosophers. (shrink)

In their attempt to defend philosophy from accusations of uselessness made by prominent scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, some philosophers respond with the charge of ‘scientism.’ This charge makes endorsing a scientistic stance, a mistake by definition. For this reason, it begs the question against these critics of philosophy, or anyone who is inclined to endorse a scientistic stance, and turns the scientism debate into a verbal dispute. In this paper, I propose a different definition of scientism, (...) and thus a new way of looking at the scientism debate. Those philosophers who seek to defend philosophy against accusations of uselessness would do philosophy a much better service, I submit, if they were to engage with the definition of scientism put forth in this paper, rather than simply make it analytic that scientism is a mistake. (shrink)

Summing up the discussion on “field” research in epistemology, we can say that its participants were very attentive to its theses and suggested several interesting ways of their development. Among these proposals is the study of the history of language and images of science used by Russian scientists, starting from the 18th century. An important example is the attempt in Europe and Russia to create a universal language understandable to all educated people, in which it would be possible to describe (...) nature, science, and crafts. No less serious is the proposal to pay attention to the socio-cultural contexts of science and technology in Russia in the 19th century. In this field, we can encounter many concepts that will help us understand how to understand and describe scientific activity in Russian society with its historical features. Here, various optics are possible that enrich each other. An illustration using a specific example of how fruitful the interaction of different areas of the humanities can be – in this case, epistemology and linguistics – in the study of technoscientific texts is very important. The linguist helps with the rhetorical means used by the authors of the articles, and also offers a comparison of the rhetoric of the Russian language with the rhetoric of the modern universal scientific language – English. When a practitioner – a publisher of technoscientific journals – enters the discussion, we see how difficult it is today to organize interdisciplinary communication, even promising interesting results. (shrink)

The concept of “predatory” publishing, despite many studies of the phenomenon, continues to be unclear. This paper visualizes this topic through an epistemological perspective, claiming that these limitations emerge from an impressionism of idealization, the entrapment of cause and effect induced by a journalology-based perspective, and entrenched fantasized extraction, imagination and divination of what constitutes the truth, in essence, a path never followed by an _epistēmōn_. Reality, proof, verification, recorded observations and their interpretations have been pivoted to fit the (...) theoretical flavor of the day, an entity one day being predatory, the next not. Perhaps ephemeral judgements of predatory have been built on boundless disregard for common sense. Yet, these have led to scientists’ apotheosis, almost oblivious of the intangibility of “valid”, or the infinitesimal continuum of “predatory”. Perhaps their fault-ridden authoritarian argumentative disabilities is at fault. (shrink)

Popper's conception of methodology and its relationship to epistemology is examined, and found wanting. Popper argues that positivist criteria of demarcation fail because they are attempts to discover a difference in the natures of empirical science and metaphysics. His alternative to naturalism is that a plausible criterion of demarcation is a proposal for an agreement, or convention. But this conventionalism about methodology is misplaced. Methodological rules are conventions, but which methodological rules are followed by scientists it is not itself a (...) matter of convention. This casts doubt upon the status of Popper's famous criterion of demarcation. (shrink)

In this paper, I report the results of an empirical study, which was designed to test the following hypotheses: (H1) Many philosophers find scientism threatening because they see it as a threat to the future of philosophy as a major in colleges and universities; (H2) Many philosophers find scientism threatening because they see it as a threat to the soul or essence of philosophy as an a priori discipline. My results provide some empirical evidence in support of H2. (...) These results are also in line with the results of other empirical studies that point to a methodological shift in philosophy from the armchair to the laboratory. (shrink)

Scientistic conceptualisations hold to the positivistic positions that science is limitless in its potential representations of material phenomena and that it is the only sure path to knowledge. In recent popular scientific literature, these presuppositions have been reaffirmed to the detriment of both philosophy and theology. This article argues for the contrary position by a meta-analysis of empirical science from a Thomist perspective. Identifying empirical science as limited in its method and bound to the material sphere of being alone, we (...) posit that rather than standing as the sole path to the knowledge of being, empirical science is constrained at its frontiers. It is subsequently contended that far from empirical science having the explanatory ability to respond to all presenting scientific problems in principle, fundamentals without the grasp of the methodology of empirical science exist. To relate the article’s meta-analysis to scientific praxis, physical cosmology – as the most foundational empirical science – is exemplified in the discussion.Keywords: Philosophy; Religion; Science; Scientism; Thomism; Metaphysics; Epistemology. (shrink)

The New Atheist movement has been called “fundamentalist” in its allegiance to science. While true that New Atheism is remarkable among the various historical formations of atheism for its championing of the sciences, it is not fundamentalist. Where it does share a resemblance to Christian fundamentalism is in their respective attachments to a salvific epistemology either of science or of faith. For New Atheists, science “saves” as it provides order against chaos. This paper focuses on the writings of the New (...) Atheist Sam Harris, drawing attention not just to the ordering function of science generally but also the ways in which Harris deploys science to engulf 1) morality, 2) the Buddhist belief that the self is an illusion, and 3) Buddhist practices of meditation. This study illuminates some affective potencies of science (or other potential epistemologies) as an ordering, and therefore “salvific,” way of navigating the world. (shrink)

This chapter outlines ways in which Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism is manifest in his later conception of philosophy and the negative attitude he held toward his times. The chapter tries to make clear how these two areas of Wittgenstein’s thought are connected and reflect an anti-scientistic worldview he held, one intimated in Philosophical Investigations §122. -/- It is argued that the later Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is marked out against two scientistic claims in particular. First, the view that the scientific method (...) is superior to all other means of learning or gaining knowledge. Second, the view that scientific knowledge is superior to all other kinds of knowledge and understanding. Wittgenstein’s opposition to these claims is brought out through examining a fundamental aim of his later philosophy, producing the ‘kind of understanding which consists in “seeing connections”’ (PI §122), and his attempts to expose certain philosophical confusions. It is argued that these reflect his antiscientistic worldview. -/- Through discussion of Oswald Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein, the chapter outlines how Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism underwrites his negative cultural outlook and how this is connected with the anti-scientistic elements of his later philosophy discussed. The work of Ray Monk (1999; 1990) and Hans-Johann Glock (1996) is instrumental in what follows. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

I would like to thank Renia Gasparatou, Philip Goff, and Andreas Vrahimis for contributing to the book symposium on For and Against Scientism: Science, Methodology, and the Future of Philosophy (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). I am grateful to James Collier for hosting this book symposium on the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. In what follows, I will reply to Gasparatou and Vrahimis’s contributions to this book symposium.1 Before I do so, I will summarize what I take to (...) be their main arguments against my conception of scientism. Briefly, my conception of scientism runs along the weak and broad lines of epistemological scientism (Mizrahi 2022a, 12). More specifically, Weak Scientism is the view that scientific knowledge is the best knowledge (or some other epistemic good, such as justified belief) we have. Weak Scientism is a weaker version of epistemological scientism than Strong Scientism, which is the view that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge we have. According to Weak Scientism, while non-scientific disciplines do produce knowledge, scientific disciplines produce knowledge that is superior—both quantitatively (in terms of research output and research impact) and qualitatively (in terms of explanatory, predictive, and instrumental success)—to non-scientific knowledge (Mizrahi 2017, 354; 2022a, 6–7; 2023, 41). (shrink)

Conditionals are sentences of the form 'If A, then B', and they play a central role in scientific, logical, and everyday reasoning. They have been in the philosophical limelight for centuries, and more recently, they have been receiving attention from psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists. In spite of this, many key questions concerning conditionals remain unanswered. While most of the work on conditionals has addressed semantical questions - questions about the truth conditions of conditionals - this book focuses on the (...) main epistemological questions that conditionals give rise to, such as: what are the probabilities of conditionals? When is a conditional acceptable or assertable? What do we learn when we receive new conditional information? In answering these questions, this book combines the formal tools of logic and probability theory with the experimental approach of cognitive psychology. It will be of interest to students and researchers in logic, epistemology, and psychology of reasoning. (shrink)

Abstractvan Fraassen (The empirical stance, 2002) contrasts the empirical stance with the materialist stance. The way he describes them makes both of them attractive, and while opposed they have something in common for both stances are scientific approaches to philosophy. The difference between them reflects their differing conceptions of science itself. Empiricists emphasise fallibilism, verifiability and falsifiability, and also to some extent scepticism and tolerance of novel hypotheses. Materialists regard the theoretical picture of the world as matter in motion as (...) a true and explanatory account and insist on not taking ‘spooky’ entities or processes seriously as potential explanations of phenomena that so far lie outside the scope of successful science. The history of science shows us that both stances have been instrumental in the achievement of progress at various times. It is therefore plausible for a naturalist to suggest that science depends for its success on the dialectic between empiricism and materialism. A truly naturalist approach to philosophy ought then to synthesise them. Call the synthesized empiricist and materialist stances ‘the scientistic stance’. This paper elaborates and defends it. (shrink)

If one is to believe recent popular scientific accounts of developments in physics, biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, most of the perennial philosophical questions have been wrested from the hands of philosophers by now, only to be resolved (or sometimes dissolved) by contemporary science. To mention but a few examples of issues that science has now allegedly dealt with: the origin and destiny of the universe, the origin of human life, the soul, free will, morality, and religion. My aim in (...) this paper is threefold: (1) to show that these claims stem from the pervasive influence of a scientistic epistemology in popular science writing, (2) to argue that this influence is undesirable because it ultimately undermines not only the important role of popular science reporting in society but also the public’s trust in science, and (3) to offer suggestions on how popular science writing can be improved. (shrink)

Scientism is a philosophy which purports to define what the world ‘really is’. It adopts what the philosopher Thomas Nagel called ‘an epistemological criterion of reality’, defining what is real as that which can be discovered by certain quite specific methods of investigation. As a consequence all features of experience not revealed by those methods are deemed ‘subjective’ in a way that suggests they are either not real, or lie beyond the scope of meaningful rational inquiry. This devalues (...) capacities that (we argue) are in fact essential components of good reasoning and virtuous practice. Ultimately, the implications of scientism for statements of value undermine value-judgements essential for science itself to have a sound basis. Scientism has implications, therefore, for ontology, epistemology and also for which claims we can assert as objective truths about the world. Adopting scientism as a world view will have consequences for reasoning and decision-making in clinical and other contexts. We analyse the implications of this approach and conclude that we need to reject scientism if we are to avoid stifling virtuous practice and to develop richer conceptions of human reasoning. (shrink)

There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way (...) that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups. (shrink)

This research explores the incorporation of narrative perspectives in economics as a social science and its implications for rethinking epistemology. By examining the role of narratives in economic analysis, the study highlights the advantages of narratives in providing contextualized accounts of human experiences, connecting economic concepts to real-world phenomena, and exploring diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, economists, and social scientists to gain a comprehensive understanding of narratives' influence on economic decision-making, market dynamics, and consumer (...) behaviour. The research suggests that narratives offer a means to challenge the notion of a single, objective truth and contribute to a more inclusive and robust framework for analyzing economic phenomena. The implications extend beyond economics, urging a broader perspective on epistemology by embracing narrative perspectives and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines. Overall, this research calls for a rethinking of epistemology, recognising the significance of narratives and their role in knowledge production. (shrink)

Computers have transformed science and help to extend the boundaries of human knowledge. However, does the validation and diffusion of results of computational inquiries and computer simulations call for a novel epistemological analysis? I discuss how the notion of novelty should be cashed out to investigate this issue meaningfully and argue that a consequentialist framework similar to the one used by Goldman to develop social epistemologySocial epistemology can be helpful at this point. I highlight computational, mathematical, representational, and social (...) stages on which the validity of simulation-based belief-generating processes hinges, and emphasize that their epistemic impact depends on the scientific practices that scientists adopt at these different stages. I further argue that epistemologists cannot ignore these partially novel issues and conclude that the epistemology of computational inquiries needs to go beyond that of models and scientific representations and has cognitive, social, and in the present case computational, dimensions. (shrink)

In my (2017a), I defend a view I call Weak Scientism, which is the view that knowledge produced by scientific disciplines is better than knowledge produced by non-scientific disciplines. Scientific knowledge can be said to be quantitatively better than non-scientific knowledge insofar as scientific disciplines produce more impactful knowledge–in the form of scholarly publications–than non-scientific disciplines (as measured by research output and research impact). Scientific knowledge can be said to be qualitatively better than non-scientific knowledge insofar as such knowledge (...) is explanatorily, instrumentally, and predictively more successful than non-scientific knowledge. Brown (2017a) raises several objections against my defense of Weak Scientism and I have replied to his objections (Mizrahi 2017b), thereby showing again that Weak Scientism is a defensible view. Since then, Brown (2017b) has reiterated his objections in another reply on SERRC. In this paper, I respond to Brown's objections, thereby showing once more that Weak Scientism is a defensible view. (shrink)

Epistemology, I will argue, is of crucial importance to the sociology of knowledge— not just by way of definition of the phenomenon under study, but also because approaches to the sociology of knowledge rely on too-often implicit epistemological stances. I will make this argument through a series of categorizations: first, I will classify the field of epistemology into its three main forms; second, I will classify the sociology of knowledge into epistemological categories; third, I will classify the sociology (...) of science into these same categories. All the while, I will be making an argument for an empirical epistemology and "agnostic" studies of knowledge. This article does not cover the field of epistemology exhaustively, but tries to offer an orderly overview of classic positions for the benefit of social scientists. (shrink)

In a reply to Mizrahi (2019), Bryant (2020) raises several methodological concerns regarding my attempt to test hypotheses about the observation that academic philosophers tend to find “scientism” threatening empirically using quantitative, corpus based methods. Chief among her methodological concerns is that numbers of philosophical publications that mention “scientism” are a “poor proxy for scholarly sentiment” (Bryant 2020, 31). In reply, I conduct a sentiment analysis that is designed to find out whether academic philosophers have negative, positive, or (...) neutral sentiments toward “scientism.” The results of this analysis suggest that, for the most part, articles on “scientism” written by academic philosophers tend to contain mostly negative rather than positive (or neutral) sentiments about “scientism.”. (shrink)

I assume here, what I have argued elsewhere, that Rorty's dissolution of the Tradition is in the main well taken. Foundationalist epistemologically based or metaphysically oriented philosophy, including systematic analytical philosophy, is not a viable enterprise. I then argue that Rorty's replacement is itself not plausible and I further argue that, his affinities with pragmatism to the contrary notwithstanding, his ?aestheticized pragmatism? misses (a) the key social functions of philosophy (a reconstructed philosophy) articulated and practised by Dewey with his conception (...) of philosophy as a criticism of criticisms and as social critique and (b) that Rorty's ?pragmatism without method? misses what is most distinctive in pragmatism, namely its conception of the expanded role in fixing belief for a flexible and non?scientistic conception of scientific method in the stream of life. Rorty fails to see here the possibility for some form of critical theory as a successor subject to philosophy which still carries on some of its critical functions. More generally, Rorty, in properly reacting against scientistic images of philosophy and conceptions of the omnipotence of science, treats science too much as a text, as just one language?game among other language?games, and fails to appreciate its impact on our knowledge of ourselves and the rest of the furniture of the universe. (shrink)

My occupation is applied research and - funding arrangements being the force which drives such work - I am working with feedlot cattle at the moment. I have to find out whether they are unduly stressed and, if so, how to relieve it; also how much and what type of shade they require, and what are acceptable criteria of animal welfare. Like most research scientists, I also have a personal hobbyhorse which I can weave into my work. It is that (...) stress affects the competence of an animal's immune system in subtle ways that have to do with its cognition. Alas, the plot thickens! (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this answer to “Evolutionism as a Modern Form of Mechanicism”: 287–306) I discuss the strange double use the authors make of their reference to Kant in order to deny the relevance of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics, and more generally, of the physical irreversibility question in the problem of evolution.On the one hand, the authors quite legitimately use a materialist version of Kantian apriorism in the guise of “means of cognition” presupposed by any physical theory. But on the other hand, they (...) accept a theoretical interpretation of physical irreversibility whose precise historical function was to occult the intrinsic difference between the cognitive means of dynamics and those of thermodynamics in order to promote a mechanistic unification of physics.I thus argue that at stake is not the case of such or such a physicist transgressing the border between philosophy and natural science as defended by von Borzeszkowski and Wahsner, but rather the very interpretation of irreversibility accepted by most physicists since Boltzmann. In contrast, Prigogine's enterprise could be understood as an attempt to take the notion of cognitive means seriously, by approaching the problem of evolution via the problem of the relevance of these means.I conclude with comments on the strategic role Kant is still made to play today by physicists who wish to transform dissents in physical theory into philosophical ones and by philosophers who wish to judge scientists instead of trying to understand them. (shrink)