Grounding Knowledge and Normative Valuation in Agent-Based Action and Scientific Commitment

Abstract

If the goal of scientists is the acquisition of knowledge, then knowledge in general and scientific explanation in particular can surely be understood to be the product of that pursuit articulated as a unified set of observation statements. However, those focusing on scientific practice, disagree. They claim that knowledge is always understood with reference to a particular context and in light of the actions of an epistemic agent. Knowledge-making activities are not the result of universal rules for deriving explanation from facts but the result of critical intersubjective modes of investigation. A science-in-practice approach turns our attention to the activities of and communication between scientists in order to understand and characterize the nature of scientific inquiry. As such, it is part of what has been referred to as the practice turn. 1 This refocusing of science on scientific practices highlights the activities that are revealed when we look at the processes and doings of science by scientists and scientific communities (e.g. hypothesizing, testing, experimenting, theorizing, measuring) rather than exclusively on the products of science (e.g. knowledge, equations, devices, theories). The practice turn in philosophy of science is not an apologetic for an andpractice-too approach to the metaphysics of science. A focus on practice provides a route to understanding the nature of the world in ways that have been, until recently, marginalized by aggressive demarcationist interests within traditional philosophy of science. This form of aggressive demarcationism held that research seeking to investigate scientific activity and the work of scientists was not really philosophy but just