Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T15:18:28.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Naturalized Philosophy of Science with a Plurality of Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

David Stump
David Stump*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of San Francisco
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Naturalism implies unity of method—an application of the methods of science to the methodology of science itself and to value theory. Epistemological naturalists have tried to find a privileged discipline to be the methodological model of philosophy of science and epistemology. However, since science itself is not unitary, the use of one science as a model amounts to a reduction and distorts the philosophy of science just as badly as traditional philosophy of science distorted science, despite the fact that the central theme of naturalized philosophy of science is that methodology should be true to science as practiced. I argue that naturalized philosophy of science must apply a plurality of methods to epistemological issues.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1992 , pp. 456 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under a grant awarded in 1990. I thank the NSF and Stanford University for support. I have benefited from discussions on these topics with John Dupré, Peter Galison and Joseph Rouse, from discussions at Larry Laudan's NEH seminar on Naturalized Epistemology, and from the comments of an anonymous referee.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94117–1080, USA.

References

Brown, H. I. (1988), “Normative Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology”, Inquiry 31: 53–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, D. T. (1974), “Evolutionary Epistemology”, in Schilpp, P. A., (ed.), P. A. Schilpp, vol. 1. La Salle: Open Court, pp. 413–463.Google Scholar
Dupré, J. (1983), “The Disunity of Science”, Mind 92: 321–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, A. (1986), The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, S. (1988), Social Epistemology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, S.; De Mey, M.; Shinn, T. and Woolgar, S. (eds.) (1989), The Cognitive Turn: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science. (Sociological Sciences Yearbook, 1989) Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. L. (1987), How Experiments End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galison, P. L. (1988), “History, Philosophy, and the Central Metaphor”, Science in Context 2: 197–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. L. (1989), “Multiple Constraints, Simultaneous Solutions”, PSA 1988, vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 157–163.Google Scholar
Giere, R. N. (1988), Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. N. (1989), “The Units of Analysis in Science Studies”, in Fuller et al. (eds.), pp. 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldman, A. I. (1986), Epistemology and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laudan, L. (1984), Science and Values: An Essay on the Aims of Science and Their Role in Scientific Debate. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. (1987), “Progress or Rationality? The Prospects for Normative Naturalism”, American Philosophical Quarterly 24: 19–31.Google Scholar
Laudan, L. (1990), “Normative Naturalism”, Philosophy of Science 57: 44–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maffie, J. (1990), “Recent Work on Naturalized Epistemology”, American Philosophical Quarterly 27: 281–293.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (1987), “From Natural Philosophy to Metaphilosophy of Science”, in Achinstein, P. and Kargon, R. (eds.), Kelvin's Baltimore Lectures and Modern Theoretical Physics: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 507–541.Google Scholar
Nickles, T. (1989), “Integrating the Science Studies Disciplines”, in Fuller et al. (eds.), pp. 225–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1953), “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, in From a Logical Point of View. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 20–46.Google Scholar
Quine, W. V. (1969), “Epistemology Naturalized”, in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 69–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapere, D. (1984), Reason and the Search for Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Stump, D. (1991), “Fallibilism, Naturalism and the Traditional Requirements for Knowledge”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 22: 451–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolgar, S. (1989), “Representation, Cognition and Self: What Hope for an Integration of Psychology and Sociology?”, in Fuller et al. (eds.), pp. 201–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar