Rescuing Reason: A Critique of Anti-Rationalist Views of Science and Knowledge

Portada
Springer Science & Business Media, 2003 M02 28 - 559 páginas

Do knowledge and science arise from the application of canons of rationality and scientific method? Or is all our scientific knowledge caused by socio-political factors, or by our interests in the socio-political - the view of sociologists of "knowledge"? Or does it result from interplay of relations of power - the view of Michel Foucault? Or does our knowledge arise from "the will to power" - the view of Nietzsche? This volume sets out to critically examine the theses of those who would debunk the idea of rational explanation.

The book is wide-ranging. The theories of method of Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend (amongst others) are discussed and related to the views of Marx, Foucault, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as well as sociologists of science such as Mannheim and Bloor. The author provides a wide interpretative framework which links the doctrines espoused by many of these authors; it is argued that they inherit many of the difficulties in the Strong Programme in the sociology of "knowledge", and that they fail to reconcile the normativity of knowledge with their naturalism. It is argued that neither relativists, sceptics, nihilists, sociologists of "knowledge" nor the postmodernists successfully debunk the claims of rational explanation, far from it: these theorists presuppose much of the theory of methodology they deny.

Dentro del libro

Contenido

THE CRITICAL TRADITION AND SOME OF ITS DISCONTENTS
23
12 Solving the Legitimation Problem
33
13 Some Dethroners of the Critical Tradition
39
14 Kuhn as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition?
53
15 The Anarchist Feyerabend as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition?
66
THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
79
21 Knowledge Why Bother? The Problem of Platos Tether
80
22 Agrippas Problem for Knowledge as Justified True Belief
87
71 Ordinary Inference as Individual Capacity or Social Relation? A Refutation of the Causality Tenet
302
72 The Strong Programme and the Causes of Belief in Alternative Logics
309
73 Is the Hardness of the Logical Must Really the Softness of a Social Relation?
317
74 Wittgenstein on Logical Relations Practices Codifications and Form of Life
323
75 The Scientism of the Strong Programme and Wittgensteins AntiScientism in Philosophy
330
76 Communitarianism Meaning Finitism and the Strong Programme
340
77 Natural Kinds and Meaning Finitism
351
78 Sociology is a Way of Sending us to Sleep
358

23 Realism and the Definition of Knowledge
94
24 Some Social Aspects of Knowledge
106
NATURALISM AND NORMS OF REASON AND METHOD
121
31 Quines Naturalized Epistemology
122
32 Varieties of Naturalism
128
33 Some Norms of Science and Epistemology
132
Mapping the Terrain
136
35 Naturalism and Normative AntiObjectivism
144
36 Folk Scientific Rationality
151
RamseyLewis Definition
160
38 The Supervenience of the Methodologically Normative on the NonNormative
166
SYNOPSIS OF PART II
179
SOME GERMAN CONNECTIONS MARX AND MANNHEIM
183
41 Marx and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge
185
42 Mannheim and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge
196
43 Merton and Norms for the Ethos of Science
203
THE EDINBURGH CONNECTION I THE STRONG PROGRAMME AND THE SOCIAL CAUSES OF SCIENTIFIC BELIEF
209
52 Social and NonSocial Factors in Belief Causation
215
53 The Causality Tenet and a Social Cause Model of Explanation Within the Strong Programme
220
54 The Causality Tenet and the Rational Explanation of Scientific Beliefs by Methodological Principles of Science
226
55 Social and Political Interests as Causes of Belief
235
Acausality and Weimar Physicists
240
Bloor on the Social Causes of Boyles Beliefs about Matter
246
58 Sociological Laws and the Causality Tenet
253
59 Causality Causal Dependence Explanation and a Reformulation of the Causality Tenet
256
510 An Unnatural Naturalization
260
THE EDINBURGH CONNECTION II STRONG AND WRONG
265
62 The Impartiality Tenet
272
63 The Symmetry Tenet
278
64 The Reflexivity
289
65 Relativism and the Strong Programme
293
THE WITTGENSTEIN CONNECTION THE SOCIAL AND THE RATIONAL
301
SYNOPSIS OF PART III
367
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG THROUGH FOUCAULTS TEXTS
369
81 Foucault on Knowledge
372
82 Foucault on Discourse and the Identity Conditions for Statements and Discourses
380
83 Rules for the Formation of Concepts and Strategies
391
the Case of Madness
396
85 Realism and Nominalistic AntiRealism about Objects and Kinds
402
86 The Contextualist Theory of Meaning and Ersatz Objects
409
87 The Individuation of Sentences and Discourses Once More
413
88 A Reflexive Paradox in Foucaults Theory of Discourse
416
GENEALOGY POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
421
91 The Cause of Discourse Discontinuity
422
92 The Emergence of Power as The Cause
423
93 Power
427
94 PowerKnowledge
435
95 Six Criticisms of the PowerKnowledge Doctrine
449
96 Brief Comments on Foucaults Talk of Truth
461
SYNOPSIS OF PART IV
467
NIETZSCHES GENEALOGY OF BELIEF AND MORALITY
469
101 The Metaphysical Conception of the Will to Power
472
102 The Will to Power as the Leading Hypothesis of an Explanatory and Reductive Programme
482
103 Nietzches Naturalism and Ordinary Objects
485
104 The Genealogy of Belief in Substantive Objects and in Logic
489
105 The Genealogy of Belief and Truth
501
106 The Genealogy of Belief in Truth and the Ascetic Ideal
507
Psychosocial History as Fiction or Reality?
520
108 Addendum on Nietzches Genealogical Project
534
EPILOGUE
543
References
547
Name Index
559
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