Scientific Mind and Objective World: Thomas Kuhn Between Naturalism and Apriorism

Dimitrakos, Thodoris

doi:10.1007/s10670-018-0025-5

Erkenn

2018

DOI: 10.1007/s10670-018-0025-5

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Scientific Mind and Objective World: Thomas Kuhn Between Naturalism and Apriorism

Thodoris Dimitrakos

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Cited by 3 publications

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“… 3 For a detailed examination of Kuhn’s historiographical model on both naturalism and neo-Kantianism, see Dimitrakos (2016; 2020a). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem

Dimitrakos

2021

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to understand the major conceptual ruptures throughout the history of science. I distinguish between two logical forms of explanation: (a) empirical-scientific and (b) normative explanations. Based on this distinction, I distinguish between the scientific and the liberal versions of naturalism concerning the issue of scientific change. I argue in favor of the latter by showing that normative explanations are indispensable in order to fully understand scientific change. I also argue that we can defend scientific rationality without violating the naturalistic framework which is dominant in contemporary analytic philosophy. I conclude that endorsing scientific realism within a naturalistic framework is the only option for preserving scientific rationality.

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“… 3 For a detailed examination of Kuhn’s historiographical model on both naturalism and neo-Kantianism, see Dimitrakos (2016; 2020a). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem

Dimitrakos

2021

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

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Do Kuhnians have to be anti-realists? Towards a realist reconception of Kuhn’s historiography

Dimitrakos

2023

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It is quite unequivocal that Kuhn was committed to (some version of) naturalism; that he defended, especially in his later work, the autonomy of scientific rationality; and that he rejected the correspondence theory of truth, i.e., the traditional realistic conception of the world’s mind-independence. In this paper, I argue that these three philosophical perspectives form an uneasy triangle, for while it is possible to coherently defend each of them separately or two of them combined, holding all three leads to incoherence. Hence, the only option is to reject one of them in a way that is both compatible with Kuhnian historiography and philosophically fruitful. My purpose in this paper is not exegetical. My ambition is to sketch a coherent philosophical framework which does justice to Kuhn’s historiographical model for scientific change and avoids the philosophical costs of relativism and anti-naturalism. In particular, I argue in favor of the following interconnected positions: (1) Given the role of anomalies in Kuhn’s historiographical model, the latter satisfies the two fundamental conditions for acknowledging the mind-independence of the world: the ‘irreducibility condition’ and the ‘objectivity condition’, (2) Kuhn’s rejection of the notion of an ‘Archimedean platform’ does not entail that the truth-value of beliefs doesn’t play a role in the explanation of their change, (3) Adopting scientific realism is the only way to defend the autonomy of scientific rationality within a naturalistic philosophical framework. However, adopting realism leads to a liberal rather than an eliminative version of naturalism.

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Taxonomies, Networks, and Lexicons: A Study of Kuhn’s Post-‘Linguistic Turn’ Philosophy

Politi

2020

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

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Scientific Mind and Objective World: Thomas Kuhn Between Naturalism and Apriorism

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem

The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem

Do Kuhnians have to be anti-realists? Towards a realist reconception of Kuhn’s historiography

Taxonomies, Networks, and Lexicons: A Study of Kuhn’s Post-‘Linguistic Turn’ Philosophy

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