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Summary book Exploring Humans endterm - Tilburg University
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  • Exploring Humans

Thinking About Science summary Chapters 8 to 12, and chapter 5 Including article Susan Haack: 'common sense, only more so' and 'the same only different'

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  • 6 december 2021
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Thinking about Science endterm
Lecture 7: Thomas Kuhn & Strong Programme
8.1 INTRODUCTION
Popper’s attempt to find a criterion of demarcation failed. Thomas Kuhn was next in line with an alternative
approach. He presented the idea that it is important to describe the pattern according to which a science develops.
Such a description must then be essential input when we think about a normative criterion which separates science
from everything else. In essence, Kuhn’s idea of science is that we can detect (and hence describe) a specific pattern
in the dynamics of science once we turn to the actual history of science. This pattern shows that scientists usually
uncritically work within a framework that shows them which phenomena, problems and technologies are relevant to
them. This framework offers them a perspective on reality and tells them which questions are meaningful at all, and
which questions are answerable at all. Kuhn calls such a framework a paradigm.
 Example: Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology.
 Paradigms are rejected and accepted in brief and fierce moments of revolution.
 One of the controversial aspects of Kuhn’s idea of paradigms in science is that the objectivity of scientific
knowledge seems to be undermined.

Normative project Descriptive project
Popper + logical positivists Kuhn
Investigation of the standards for scientific theories Study of how science actually develops  description
Justification of scientific knowledge Relevance of the history of science  search for
universal norm
Goal: defense of the rationality of science What are the causes of scientific development? 
reasons/justification/rationality
Project failed  thus another approach Is science rational?

8.2 LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN: PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
The younger Wittgenstein inspired the logical positivists (cf. C6). Remarkably, the later Wittgenstein influenced
relativists, who hold ideas in stark contrast to the positivists’ claims. After Tractatus, Wittgenstein wrote another
book Philosophical Investigations (1953). This is much controversy about how to interpret it. Still, to an important
extent these investigations motivated much of what became known as relativism. The reason for this is that the later
Wittgenstein developed the idea of a language game.

8.2.1 THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EARLY AND LATER WITTGENSTEIN
In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein rejects the picture theory of the early Wittgenstein. He also no
longer defends the view that language depicts reality. He now argues that meaning is use: words get their meaning
from the way in which they are used by a group of people. Words are used in a social context, in what Wittgenstein
calls a form of life or a language game. The meanings of words and statements are determined in a social linguistic
context, and language is no longer a representation or image of reality.

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein identifies the social linguistic practice in which words or concepts
receive their meaning as the most important feature of a language. Some words might still have a representational
function, but they get their full meaning only when they are used in this social linguistic context, a language game.
According to Wittgenstein there are many different language games. This implies that a word does not have one
single meaning, but that it might have different meanings in different language games.
 The term ‘language game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of a language is part
of an activity, or of a form of life.

Wittgenstein’s idea is that words have meaning relative to the language game in which they are used, and it
becomes plausible to accept a form of relativism. Given the notion of a language game, there can be many language
games or different forms of life. When people from different forms of life think differently about the world, it is only
possible to understand what they think when we ourselves are members of that very form of life, playing the same

,language game. Outside this social-linguistic framework, ideas, words, concepts and statements are meaningless, or
they might have a completely different meaning when they are used within a different game.
 Now one might easily be seduced into seeking that these considerations result in the doctrine of relativism:
any factual claim about the world is only true (or false) relative to the language game.
 Kuhn suggests that even in science there are different frameworks or paradigms, and that the truth of
scientific claims is thus relative to the paradigm in which these claims are uttered.

Language games/forms of life (later Wittgenstein)
 The socio-linguistic context and practice in and by which words get their meaning
 Language games create their own rules about the correct usage of terms
Example: ‘God is good.’
 Logical positivists: the statement would be meaningless, since there is no way to check the reference of
the words God or good.
 Later Wittgenstein: the sentence has meaning in one language game (the language of religion), but not in
another language game (the language of science). The words are used in a religious language in such a
manner that they do have meaning. In the scientific empiricist language game, where it is a rule that
words need to refer to observable objects and events, these terms do not mean anything at all.

8.2.2 WITTGENSTEIN’S PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT
There is a restriction on the size of any language game, according to Wittgenstein, which is related to the very idea of
a language rule. Using a language presupposes that there are certain rules, certain conventions. This is why a
language can be compared to playing a game. Language rules (both implicit and explicit) constitute a language game.
Rules, however, rule out truly solitary games. To be able to obey a rule, one must be able to explain the rule to
someone else, so that can be assessed what counts as breaking the rule. The rules of any game are public rules: if
someone only followed his own private rules which were inaccessible to anyone else, he would not be playing a
game at all. Therefore, there are no private languages.

Rules have to be public rules. The rules of a game must be publicly testable. Language games also exist by virtue of
this possibility of publicly evaluating whether everyone is following the rules or not. If you try to make the rules
yourself, then you are not participating in a language game.
 Wittgenstein’s private language argument = Wittgenstein thus presents an argument against the view that
there can be a private language.
o Relativism = truth is not universal but relative to the language game

Words and sentences get their meaning through the practices in which they figure. It is the social and linguistic
context which determines what a word, concept, term or statement means.

There can be many different language games and the truth of our claims about the world depends on/is relative to,
the framework in which the statement is a legitimate move. However, given the argument against a private
language, language users within a language game are not unboundedly free in claiming knowledge about the world.
For their knowledge claims to have any meaning at all, they are restricted to the rules of the language game they
play. This can easily be interpreted as fueling the argument that our alleged knowledge of the world is only valid
relative to a framework. If there are several different language games, the question is: how are these games related?
Do we interpret the same world differently or do we even live in different worlds?
 Thomas Kuhn offered reasons to believe that this problem of relativism can be traced in science as well. In
science, we find an abundance of consecutive paradigms and the truth of scientific statements might
likewise be relative to such frameworks. Kuhn seems to steer towards a counter-intuitive relativism,
throwing common sense ideas about science overboard.


8.3 FURTHER SUPPORT FOR RELATIVISM

2

,8.3.1 A RESULT FROM PSYCHOLOGY: THEORY-LADENNESS
Relativism = the view that the truth of a claim depends on some kind of framework in which the claim has its proper
place.
 Example: some relativists argue that what is morally correct depends on the culture from within which one
views the world  issue of death penalty.
 In a different culture, the morals are likely to be different as well. The question whether which morals are
the right one has no objective answer, the relativist solution is to claim that the one is not better than the
other, they are simply different.
 The next step is to argue that if a world view is relative to a certain culture, one must radically conclude that
what exists in the world is relative to this culture. So even the facts about the world come out as being
construed  do witches exist?
 The route to relativism is paradoxically backed up by psychology. Humans see what they see in the light of
what they expect to see. What they expect to see is determined by the framework they share with others.
Anything that does not fit these expectations is left out of the field of observation. This issue takes on a
crucial importance when we think observation is the firm basis of science (empiricism).

Both Popper and Kuhn accepted that human perception is theory-laden. They pointed out that empiricists are wrong
in their assumption that there are unproblematic raw empirical data: observations are theory-laden = we see what
we see in the light of already acquired expectations and preconceptions.
 Theory guides our observations  no neutral observations.
 Reality becomes a theoretical construction  constructivism.
 However (and contra Popper), the idea that all perception is theory-laden is not just an argument against
empiricism, it is also another argument for relativism, further undermining the objectivity of science.

There is no easy way out for empiricists, the easy way out would be to claim that we are first presented with the
uninterpreted raw data in experience and the interpretation of these raw data (the hypothesis) only follows in a
second stage of processing. Surely, this interpretation might differ from person to person, but they at least have the
same experiences of the same raw data. Hanson however, points out that we do not interpret our experiences as a
secondary step, but rather the interpretation is already present in the observation.
 Popper, Kuhn (and Feyerabond, cf. C9) agree with Hanson that there are no neutral observations.
Phenomena are only meaningful given some theory or some background knowledge. Observations are
‘contaminated’ by our thinking.
 Now, reality becomes our own construction. Constructivism = when our theories change, what we consider
to be the facts that make up reality changes with them.
o If one accepts constructivism, ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ are no longer to be taken at face value. What we
mean by reality is determined a priori by the theories we already accepted and the anticipations we
already acquired.
o What is true about the world changes with different groups or individuals in different periods.
o Popper thought it possible to nevertheless get closer to a true theory about the world (using the
negative, falsificationist way), Kuhn will argue that there is no such thing as ‘the truth’.
Scientific relativism = what scientists take to be the truth and what they think reality looks like is
always relative to a group of scientists in a certain period in time within a certain paradigm. Theory-
ladenness is an important argument in defending this form of relativism.




8.3.2 THE SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS FROM LINGUISTICS
3

, Franz Boas (1858 – 1942):
 One of the founding fathers of relativism, which started as a view within western anthropology. Main idea:
other cultures should not be studied through the lens of western assumptions about universality or
superiority.
 Language is the way of classifying experiences.
o This view traces back to Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835) who argued that our language
determines our thought.

Edward Sapir (1884 – 1939):
 Boas’ student
 The idea that language works as a system of classification was later developed by Sapir and Benjamin Lee
Whorf (1897 – 1941).

Sapir + Whorf
 Argued for linguistic relativity = what one can think about and what one can perceive is relative to the
language one speaks  Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
 Language determines how we view the world.
 The basic tenet of linguistic relativity is that a language has consequences for the way we think about
reality.
o Example: Inuit have different words for ‘snow’, while we only have one word for ‘snow’.
 Linguistic relativism supports the idea that if science also uses linguistic systems to classify the
kaleidoscopic flux of impressions, even science might fall prey to a kind of relativism.
 Combined with Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, this view of language makes it credible that
even science inherits the problem of relativism generated by the fact that our observations and
categorizations are theory-laden and language-driven.
There are of course many different uses of the notion of relativism, depending on the context of debate. All that can
be done is compare different theoretical frameworks with each other; we cannot compare them with uninterpreted
data or facts. Hence, we will never be able to claim truth (or falsity) to any theory.

Relativism in science would amount to the claim that what is accepted as facts or data is relative to a scientific
community and the conglomerate of accepted theories, assumptions, methods and techniques. When there are 2
different scientific views, we cannot distinguish between the correct and incorrect view. The conclusion must be that
the different views are merely different  this would make science a trivial human enterprise, for what is accepted
as a fact today might cease to be a fact tomorrow.

8.4 THOMAS KUHN’S VIEW OF SCIENCE
Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996):
 Seen as one of the foremost relativists in the philosophy of science.
 Influenced by Popper and Wittgenstein.
 Influenced by Aristotle and Kant.
o Just as Kant argued that we need the categories to be able to perceive anything at all (cf. C4), Kuhn
argues that we need paradigms. The main difference is that paradigms can change, while the Kantian
categories cannot.

Kuhn about Popper:
Popper is right Popper is wrong
Science consists of sequences of theories Science is not about falsification
Observations are theory-laden Science does not involve criticism, but more conservatism
No road to truth
No rationality
8.4.1 PATTERNS IN SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT
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