PHILOSOPHY OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
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7/3/2011
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Course
Outline
1.
What is philosophy of the
social sciences?
2.
Issues in the philosophy
of sciences
3.
On Induction
I.Hume
II.Kant
III.Popper
4.
Mill on the
systematization of the social sciences
5.
The human sciences and
critical theory
6.
On culture and the human person
7.
Philosophy and technology
8.
Rorty and solidarity
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Introduction
The
most important question that philosophers of the social sciences want to
resolve is the issue of whether scientism is true. But what is scientism?
Scientism is the view that humanity and indeed social sciences should ape or
imitate natural sciences. The pertinent question here is: Is scientism true?
The answer to this question will be arrived at by examining the nature and the
theoretical constructs of the social sciences and for this, J. S. Mill would be
discoursed and also the issue of induction as viewed by Hume, Kant and Popper.
The
natural scientists believed that natural sciences should not be neglected as
the major way of acquiring knowledge. Now, would this be true without the introduction
of some aspects of the social sciences as a way of acquiring knowledge?
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14/3/
2011
The field of science or technology
provides a veritable toll for linking philosophy and technology together. However,
students of philosophy often fail to link philosophy and the social sciences
and one of the ways of doing this is by answering the question: what is
philosophy?
It is not only knowing what philosophy is,
but understanding philosophy and linking it with other disciplines like the
social sciences. This will in a way help us to understand the philosophical
underpinning of other disciplines like the social sciences, technology and so
forth.
F
What
is philosophy?
Philosophy
simply is the study of the fundamental ideas of life and existence. But what is
studying? Studying in this sense does not mean the same as ideas contained in
the discourse. Studying implies that one inquires into something. Through
study, we learn the basics of the subject-matter of a particular discourse and
then we make out impute. Studying therefore implies learning, thinking, asking
questions and criticizing of ideas. Not many will agree with this definition
because philosophers do not agree as to a univocal definition of philosophy.
The above definition is therefore tentative. Any attempt however, to defining
philosophy is expected to include its critical element. Consequently, the
original encyclopedia of philosophy has it that philosophy of a critical
discussion of all critical discussions. In this light, philosophy is seen as a
critical enterprise.
According
to H. S. Stainland, philosophy is the criticism of the ideas we live by. In
trying to understand the world, human beings form ideas and beliefs and these
ideas and beliefs have consequences. Most countries in the world for instance,
believe in democracy and the consequences of democracy are democratization.
Because we sometimes hold false ideas and beliefs, we need to examine and
criticize them in other to either endorse or refute them with good arguments.
Criticism therefore is the hallmark of philosophical enterprise.
Philosophical
enterprise at all times is about criticisms. As such philosophy should be an
analytical endeavourer. Let us take for instance the fact that Plato held that
there is a world of Form and ideas. We should inquire why Plato had such a
belief in the first instance. What are his reasons? Is Plato right in holding
this belief? Is the theory of the world of Form and Ideas true and to what
extent? By doing this, one engages in a philosophical analysis.
According
to Professor Olusegun Oladipo, philosophy is a puzzle-solving activity. This
definition presupposes some level of uncertainties and worries in life. As
such, we need to come to terms with these uncertainties and worries if we hope
to make a meaning out of life’s experiences. Coming to term with these
uncertainties and worries on the other hand, presupposes making choices between
alternatives and philosophy helps us to make these choices between
alternatives. This implies accepting or rejecting one alternative choice
against another, accepting or rejection one idea or belief against another. In
this light, philosophy can be seen as a rejection or acceptance of an idea or
belief against another.
This
explains why Socrates defined philosophy as a preparation for death. Why did
Socrates say this? This is because one of the most striking thing philosophers
have always faced is the issue of death. Without the fear of death, people
would probably not do philosophy. It is the fear of death that makes people to
lead a good life. In trying to lead the good life, we face different choices;
and to make the right choice, we need to criticize the choices we make.
According
to Bertrand Russell, philosophy is an attempt to understand the hierarchy of beings.
Philosophy as such is a systematic discipline to avoid chaos.
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The
Nature of Philosophical Inquiry
There
are close affinity between philosophy and theology, between philosophy and
science. Like theology, philosophy seeks for interpretation, meaning and
understanding about things in reality that are as yet undiscovered and
unexplained. Theology seeks to understand things about the world and philosophy
joins theology to do the same. The only difference is that philosophy does not
reach a final conclusion its search about things that are yet unknown. Theology
on the other hand arrives a final conclusion which is dogmatic in nature.
But
again like science, philosophy uses human reason to interrogate facts, what we
know unlike theology which deals with things unknown. Theology has a final
answer which Russell calls ‘dogmatic answers’. Like theology, science provides
definite knowledge but that of theology is based on faith. Unlike theology,
philosophy provides no final answers or definite knowledge in the areas of
fact.
Philosophy
seeks answer to fundamental problems of human existence such as: ‘What is the
relationship between mind and nature? What is the scope of human knowledge? What
is the nature of reality? How can we distinguish between appearance and
reality? What does it mean to live a good life? These are and many others are
the questions that preoccupy the mind of philosophers and they are contested
questions. Philosophy unlike science is a restless and indefinite quest for
knowledge. Science provides a definite answer to their findings whereas
philosophy provides no definite answer. Philosophy asks relentless questions
and as such is an open system because it does not arrive at a definite
position. Philosophy therefore stands apart from other disciplines.
v
What
is the nature of philosophical inquiry?
Form
what has been said thus far, it is evident that philosophical inquiry is a
fundamental one, meaning that they are very important and unavoidable. Put
differently, questions raised by philosophers are fundamental questions.
Philosophical questions or problems transcend assumptions. Philosophical puzzle
begins where others have stopped. Philosophical questions raise fundamental
questions anew. In philosophy therefore, we raise questions that are at the
root of other discipline. Philosophical questions are unavoidable such that any
attempt to avoid them poses danger to the society at large.
·
What is distinctive about
in philosophical inquiry is that it provides “guide” to issues. Some scholars
have argued that philosophy does not have any relevance given the level of
scientific and technological advancement that we have attained. At best, they
opined that philosophy should become part of psychology – naturalized theory of
V. O. Quine. The fact remains however that if philosophy is discarded as a
discipline, then we would have to face greater challenges about human existence
such as Nuclear weapons, wars, election malpractices as we do experience in
Nigeria, etc. The truth remains that in dealing with such problems as the ones
just mentioned one need to ask the fundamental questions which by their very
nature is philosophical. Philosophy and indeed philosophizing is therefore indispensable.
·
To this extent,
philosophical problems have a general character. Meaning by that, that it
affects people of all cultures, epochs and civilization. Philosophers aim at
generating general answers that are universal. Philosophy produces evergreen
theories that stand the test of time. This is because philosophical puzzles are
abstract in nature.
·
Philosophical
puzzle/inquiry is “perennial” in nature – they live with us.
·
Philosophical question
arise from ontological wonder and this could be seen from the perspective of
the ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Parmenides etc, who
themselves believes that philosophy arises from wonder and curiosity. A
philosopher will always wonder at the happenings in the world. Philosophical inquiry
is a detached form of inquiry. The philosopher removes or detaches himself
emotionally from his investigations. Philosophical inquiries are therefore from
all forms of emotional attachments.
·
Another point is that
philosophy inquiry has its own ‘constituency’. Philosophers always have their
own constituency just as J.S.Mill wrote on the subjection of women.
·
Philosophy is about
saying the unsayable. This explains why we talk about the nature of God, the
issue of death and human existence.
v
Article for Review: What
is philosophy? By A.S Staniland
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Tools
of Philosophical Analysis.
Philosophy is a rational inquiry that
involves critical reasoning. Philosophers aim at clarifying concepts to
eliminate ambiguity; they give good reasons why an idea may be rejected. To
interrogate reality then, philosophy depends on certain tools such as:
·
Clarification of concepts
·
The evaluation of beliefs
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28/3/2011
Every
human society and individual persons operate or are guided by beliefs, views
and convictions about the world and the people and events around them. In most
cases, these beliefs, views and convictions are held uncritical; in other
words, societies and individuals often operate in most cases without caring to
criticize these beliefs, views and conviction so as to find out why they hold
such beliefs and views. The task of philosophers in this regard is to help the
society and the individual persons to evaluate these held beliefs and
convictions for the betterment or reconstruction of the society and the
individual human person. If society and the individual continually evaluate
their beliefs, then they stand the chance of taking better decisions about
their beliefs. We have taken critical evaluation of beliefs as a tool for
philosophical analysis because we often take our beliefs for granted. Our
beliefs and world-views are often assumptions. Philosophy helps us to criticize
and organize these beliefs and assumptions in other to reconstruct them. Our
lives become worth living when we examine and re-examine the beliefs we live-by
and this is what philosophy helps us to achieve. Our examination of the beliefs
we live-by helps us to recognize how these beliefs affect our relationship with
other people and our reaction to the world in general.
Another
important tool of philosophical analysis is the clarification of concepts or
beliefs. Basic or fundamental concepts need to be clarified so as to avoid
ambiguity. Clarification of concepts can be done in two ways:
1.
Historical clarification,
and
2.
Theoretical clarification
In
the historical context, the concept we may wish to clarify may have a
historical origin. We cannot do otherwise therefore other than to employ a
historical approach to such a clarification. Take as example such concepts as
Nazism, Democracy, and rule of law. To clarify Nazism would necessarily require
that we go back to history so as to discover the origin of such concept.
Other concepts with a general character such
as love, constitution, mercy, politics, law, justice and so forth does not lend
itself to an easy clarification and we cannot find any historical origins for
such concepts. Consequently, philosophers often revert to theoretical analysis
when they try to define such concepts. Appeal to authority is another way of
clarifying such concepts as these. Often you hear such comments as “according to
so and so.”
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Philosophy is a normative
discipline which deals with values, with what ought to be rather than with what
is. Science on the other hand, deals with what is, with facts.
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4/4/2011
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Understanding
the Philosophy of Science.
The
scientific enterprise concerns the modern period upwards. Philosophers were
interested in the happenings in the field of science because scientific
progress attracted their attention. The systematic nature, organized, progressive
and recognizable body of knowledge of science made the scientific method very
important and attracted the attention of philosophers. David Hums and Immanuel
Kant developed interest in science because of the indelible fact about the
scientific enterprise. The scientific enterprise is also said to be universal.
Scientific ruminations have been there before the emergence of Newton and
Galileo in the modern era in the history of philosophy. Aristotle talked more
of science so was Plato as well but it became more pronounced during the modern
era of which Isaac Newton and Galileo were of important figures.
·
Scientific
Experiment
There
are principles behind experimentation and this is induction. The principle of
induction simply put states that the future will resemble the past. In other
words, the principle of induction affirms uniformity/regularity in nature.
Also, the principle of causality states that to every effect, there must be a
cause. As such, induction/causation is at the root of every philosophical inquiry
in philosophy of science.
The
principle of induction says it all; following Hume’s position that to prove the
principle of induction, you first have to assume that the principle of
causality is true, which also follows that the principle of causality rests on
the uniformity of nature. Consequently the principle of induction has a solid
foundation within the scientific enterprise.
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Logical
Positivism on the Method of Science
Facts
about science said earlier were later articulated by the logical positivist.
They tried to do two major things:
1.
Demarcation of science
from non-science
2.
Make science the hallmark
of knowledge.
According
to the logical positivist, science is:
a.
A value neutral inquiry
b.
Objective
c.
Rational
Logical positivist in their rumination
intended
d.
To build science on a
firm/strong foundation
e.
To demarcate science from
noon-science/pseudo science.
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Observation:
Notice that nothing can be said of the
philosophy of science without getting to the root of induction. The principle
of induction is the underlying principle behind experimentation. This is
because the scientific enterprise will often come out to be the same following
the fact that the property of “A”, which is placed under experiment ensures in
such way that it is capable of producing
the same result over and over again.
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11/04/2011
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Popper
and Kuhn: Critical component of Inductivism
The
inductivists assume that we can move from the observed behaviour of a thing to
the unobserved. In other words, the inductivists move from what is true of a
set of observed facts to another set of facts of the same kind in the future.
This implies that a property of observed fact will remain true even when it is
not observed. Thus if I touch water today and it produces a cooling effect, it
also follows that if I touch water tomorrow, it will still produce the same
cooling effect. This position ignores the fact that there could be such a thing
as global warming as we have it these days which is capable of causing the
water to produce warm or hot effect instead of cooling effect.
·
Hume?
In
his critique of induction, Hume poses the question: “Are we rationally
justified to move from the instances of observed facts to instances yet to be
observed? According to Hume, the answer to this is NO. Hume’s position is based
on epistemological argument. What then,
is Hume’s logical or epistemological critique of induction? Hume made a
distinction between matters of fact (Science; epiricism) and relations of ideas
(Philosophy); that is distinction between logical and psychological alms of
induction.
According
to Hume, a statement is either analytic (synthetic a prior) or it makes a claim
from what can be observed (matter of fact).
·
Hume: matter of fact
equals knowledge
·
Relations of ideas equal
no knowledge.
Hume went even further to assert that
matters of facts cannot be conclusively verified leading Hume thereby to
skepticism. Hume is therefore both an empiricist and at the same time a skeptics.
Hume’s position when followed to its logical conclusion, leads to the end of
philosophy and this is what Immanuel Kant labored to resuscitate by first of
all refuting Hume. Hume called for an end to philosophy. This is because
according to him, science relates to matters of fact while philosophy relates
to relations of ideas.
Hume dismantled both matters of fact and
relations of ideas. According to him, there is always a possibility of error
concerning our knowledge claim through sense experience (Science). Furthermore,
Hume considers relations of ideas (Philosophy) as trivial. This implied that
both science and philosophy were dismantled by Hume. Unfortunately however,
Hume did not proffer any solution he thus created; instead, he left us with
nothing. In the final analysis, Hume assumes that induction is inescapable
because nature is too strong for principles. Human nature says that induction
is true.
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Popper
critique of Hume.
According
to Popper, Hume made a fundamental error in assuming that knowledge is
something that remains true at all times once it is proven to be true. In other
words, Hume assumed that our knowledge claims once proven to be true, will
remain true always. In other words, knowledge is something eternal, such that
once we know it, we know it. This assumption explains Hume’s position
concerning uniformity of nature. But it is conceivable that such knowledge may
not be true tomorrow.
According
to Popper, knowledge is not something that can be conclusively verified by
experience and that remains true at all times; because the human capacity to
know is fallible. Popper holds that you don’t go out there to observe and
propound theories based on observation; instead human reason formulates
theories and then goes out there in the field to confirm or refute these
theories. For Popper, Hume was right in holding that induction is not true
based on rational thinking(Logical arm) but that Hume was wrong in holding that
induction is true based on human psychological disposition of constant
association of events (Psychological arm).
·
Trial
and error elimination
For
Popper, neither human beings nor animals live by induction. He opines that our
lives are guided more by trial and error elimination principle. According to
him, human beings have so many beliefs, customs and ideologies that guide and
shape their lives. These beliefs, customs and ideologies or principles are
accepted in the first instance because they work in a particular instance.
However, as soon as they fail work in a different instance of situation, these
accepted beliefs; customs and ideologies are shut down or discarded in favour
of new once. This implies what Popper called Testability theory.
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Hand
Out
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What
are the social sciences?
According
to Otite (1979), the social sciences are concerned with the scientific study of
man in society. Specifically, the social sciences deal with human interactions
and with the relationships between people. Notably, other subject areas deal
with one aspect or the other of the society, but the term social sciences
normally refers to Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, Social
Psychology and Sociology. In some Universities, Geography, History, law and
statistics are also taught in the faculty of the social science.
The
question is: What is it that makes these subject areas social scientific? What
do they have in common? As academic disciplines, they deal with man in his
social and cultural context. As separate discipline, each has its own
historical evolution, perspectives and interest, as well as its own emphasis in
research methods and techniques. But, the social sciences have a meeting point,
a common ground for their operations on man and the society.
As
a result, the social sciences make use of common concepts like “role:, “status”
‘system’ etc. This goes to show that although each social science discipline is
distinctive on its own, they maintain a flexibility across their boundaries.
The interrelatedness of the social science gives room for their connection or
overlap with other disciplines such as Biology, Anatomy and Neurology. For
example, there is a convergence of interest by social and natural scientists in
studying and solving problems of malnutrition and its effects on intelligence
and learning. To be sure, the problems the social scientists attempt to resolve
are immanent and important and as such social theories could have direct impact
and meaning in real life situations.
The
“behavioural sciences” contributes an emergent subject area from the social
sciences. They ape (imitate) the method and rules of the social science. The
behavioural sciences emerged from a Ford Foundation Programme and later became
current in the U.S.A. in the 1950s.
The
distinctive nature of the social sciences is therefore the attempt to
substantiate social phenomena through empirical facts and investigations. The
founding fathers of sociology, for example Durkheim emphasized the need for
providing common grounds for wider comparisons and generalizations about social
reality. This emphasis would help in testing interaction and validation or
modification of theory and observed phenomena and facts. To this end, the
social sciences attempts to, and indeed rely on scientific methods in studying
man from various perspectives. This is done so as to ensure a comprehensive
analysis of human behaviour. The common methods of the social sciences include
use of survey, questionnaires, refined systematic interview methods, prolonged
participant observation, vigorous statistical methods and testing, and
systematic analysis. Social scientists use these methods to provide objective
works which provide possibilities and opportunities for prediction leading to
conclusions on recognizable patterns of group institutional behaviour.
The
effort to understand human behaviour and its implication for social conduct is
ultimately geared towards finding solutions to teething human problems in the
areas of institutional structure and organization. Solutions are also sought
for personal, political, religious and other kinds of social problems. In
analyzing the processes of decisions and choice among human members of the
organized social structure, the social sciences and their theories become
crucial for social policy.
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Facts,
Concepts, Theories and Science in the Social Sciences
The
main concern of science and by extension the social sciences are to understand
the world in which our experiences emanate and are defined. In order to
understand h world, scientists use concepts and relate theories to facts. A
theory is a system of ideas held to explain groups of facts or phenomena. A
fact is a datum of experience which verified can be used as basic of reference.
A concept is a general notion, or an idea of a class of objects or phenomena.
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Philosophy
of the social sciences
The philosophy of the
social sciences includes discussions of methodological, epistemological and
logical issues in psychology, sociology, anthropology, history and related
domains. Philosophical engagements in the arena of the social sciences are
suggestive of certain core divergences between the social sciences and the
natural sciences. The questions that arise as philosophy investigates the
social sciences include but are not limited to:
·
Can we say that human
social life as well as individual experiences which the social sciences claim
to study are or are not similar to the non sentient beings and factors studied
in the natural sciences?
·
Put differently, are human experiences and
social experiences explainable by scientific processes? Can we, in short,
describe human social life using the scientific method?
·
Is it the case that the
social sciences are the same as the natural sciences in terms of the subject
matter they study, the method they use and the effectiveness of their result?
·
Can we identify a distinctive method for
social research or can social research be subjected to the scientific method?
These and allied
questions bordering on the scope and limits of application of scientific
paradigms in the study of social reality have engaged the minds of philosophers
for centuries. Thus, an attempt to problematise and tackle the immanent
problems in the social sciences would involve a combination of historical,
theoretical and conceptual analysis of the trajectories of the discourse.
The philosophy of the
social sciences poses the fundamental question or problem of interrogating the
extent to which the themes (subject, ideas), the logic and the methods of the
social sciences are distinctive and peculiar as basis of differentiating the
social sciences from the human sciences on the one hand, and for associating
the social sciences with the natural sciences on the other hand. The challenge
placed squarely before the practitioners of the social sciences is to explain
to us what is veritably scientific about their vocations. Philosophers of the
social sciences intend to establish how well the instruments and values of the
natural sciences could conceivably and actually be applied to the social world.
To what extent can we
hope to apply in a hard headed manner the stringent and disciplinary matrices
of the natural sciences in fulfilling the scientific goals of:
·
Understanding
·
Explanation
·
Prediction and
·
Control, on human agents
whose actions are guided by desires, wills and emotion? How in short, can we
explain and predict or even control fluid human behaviour using objective
scientific paradigms? The crucial point to be made and restates is that the
social sciences insofar as they claim to be scientific must prove two things to
us:
1.
Whether they are
scientific in the way the natural sciences are scientific (A methodological
question)
2.
Whether it is really the
case that human social experience given its variations and fluidity is truly
susceptible to scientific understanding and analysis? (This raises a thematic
issue).
F
Philosophers
and the Social Sciences
Philosophers of the
social sciences have also grappled with another major problem which is a
problem that also arises in the philosophy of science. The problem has to do
with the reducibility of the social. This problem is not to fare removed from
the central problem of the social sciences which is as to whether the social
sciences actually are, or should be natural sciences. The problem
of reducibility raises the question as to whether the social sciences is indeed
reducible to the individual, and if this is so, might not the individual person
be reducible in turn to purely physical matters? Might not the social sciences,
then, be not only essentially similar to, but ultimately derivable, at
least in principle from the physical sciences? The affirmation of both of these
theses about the social sciences constitutes what may be called scientism
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J.
S. Mill: A Proponent of the Systematization of Facts.
J.S.
Mill was a British utilitarian philosopher and economist. Mill was convinced
that it is possible to carry out social investigation through the method of the
natural sciences. The social scientists only need to ape the methods and
approaches of the natural sciences. Mill’s thesis came in the context of the 19th
century surge towards scientism. The attraction to scientism is in turn a
by-product of the unprecedented and spectacular successes of the natural
sciences since the 1600s. Hence the demand for a sciences of society, and in
fact, numerous claims to have established it from such writers and theorists as
Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. But by far the clearest, most
carful, subtlest and most comprehensive articulator of the scientistic position
was that of J. Mill.
According
to Mill, nature is defined by uniformity. In other words, for Mill, all the
phenomena in the world conform to specific regularities. The most fundamental
of these regularities are called Laws of Nature. It then becomes the
task of science to discover these uniformities which are of two kinds:
1.
The uniformities of
coexistence and
2.
The uniformities of
successions.
To
understand Mill properly, the laws of nature are used in explaining things in
reality. These laws of nature are physical laws which have undergone
experimental verification and are consequently developed by the natural
sciences. These laws are subdivided in the manner stated above. And for Mill,
the laws of succession are more important because they are causal laws.
A causal law interconnects the antecedent and the consequent. And again, for
Mill the natural world is governed by the principles of causality or universal
causation.
Mill
goes on to identify induction as the basic principle scientists apply in
discovering and proving general propositions. Mill defines induction here in
terms of what he calls “Method of Difference –that is observation of the difference
made by experimentally controlled presence or absence of a given factor in
otherwise constant conditions. But as Mill immediately saw, the internal
complexity and contradictions of interacting causes often undermines the
usefulness of the inductive method. Thus, for Mill, the scientist then
introduces the deductive method. The deductive method must then begin from the
relevant causal laws, inductively established, to attempt to deduce from these
causal laws the effect of their joint action in given combinations.
But
as Mill admits, such a calculation is subject to various uncertainties and so
its results must be tested by further step, which he calls “verification.”
Following verification, (deductively) conclusions must be found by careful
comparison to accord with the results of direct observation. Uniformities thus
deductively arrived at, which also accord with experiences may be considered as
laws.
F
Mill
on the Social Sciences: There is a Science of Human Nature.
Mill’s
views on the social sciences derive from his general view on nature and the
nature of the human mind. According to him, there is, or at least there may be
and should be a science of human nature, in the same way we have a
science of nature generally. The most fundamental laws to be found in the
science of human nature, Mill continues, are inductively certified laws – laws
of the Mind, that is, laws stating casual regularities. To be able to arrive at
these laws that state and explain causal regularities is important, because for
Mill, this would help us to determine states of mind in individuals with
accuracy. More than anything else, these laws would form the basis of the
science of psychology.
Prominent
among these laws are laws governing the association of ideas. To be sure, says
Mill, several deductive sciences are derivable from the basic laws of Mind
(just as they are, in the case of the physical sciences, from the basic law of
Mechanic). One such is Ethology, the science of the formation of individual character,
to be obtained by deducing the effects of the laws of Mind in particular
circumstances. Another is what Mill calls the ‘social science’ or sociology
which is the understanding of the action and feelings of human beings in the
social state as entirely governed by psychological and ethnological laws.
As
a matter of fact, it would be more accurate to talk about Mill’s social science
in plural, because Mill distinguished between two categories of social
sciences:
1.
A general science of
society
2.
A special or separate
‘abstract’ science dealing with particular areas of social life, in which (as
is sometimes though not typically the case) human action is mainly governed by
one single law of human nature; one single human passion or motive or desire.
Thus for example, the science of political economy is a deduction from men’s
desire of wealth – and from that desire (almost) alone. Mill was careful to
stress both the validity of this social science and its limitations. It is
valid because although it is not generally true that social life is ever wholly
governed by the desire for wealth, it is sufficiently close to the truth I the
area of economic production and distribution.
Its
validity, therefore, is limited to this area; and even in this area, its laws
are only an approximation to the truth. And there is a further limitation: the
laws of political economy are valid, even in the economic sphere only in
particular states of society; i.e., particular societies in a particular stage
of historical development, states of society where the science’s assumptions
both about motivation and about relevant social circumstances hold (at least
approximately) true.
Mill
was well aware that this is far from being universally the case; thus we cannot
arrive by deduction, ‘at any great number of propositions which will be true in
all societies without exception’, because of the eminently modified nature of
the social phenomena, and the multitude and verity of the circumstances by
which they are modified.
In
summary, Mill’s scientism consists, above all, in his belief that all nature,
including human nature and therefore man’s social life is governed by causal
laws discoverable by induction and deduction. But the question that arises for
Mill is; ‘are the laws of human nature in turn, ultimately derivable from
physical laws? Mill considered this to be extremely probable, but not yet
conclusively proved and to this extent, his scientism (unlike that of Comte) is
less than total. Laws of Mind, he claims are discoverable in their own right,
and are the proper basis of the moral sciences.
It
is worth pointing out, in the end, that Mill’s particular brand of sociological
scientism is:
1.
Individualistic:
sociological laws are held to be deducible from laws of Mind and of ethology
having reference to the motives, actions and characters of individuals;
2.
Mentalistic: (Clearly
so); Mill shows……………………
Status
of mental phenomenon as object of scientific study, indeed his fundamental laws
of human nature are, precisely, laws of Mind.
F
Japan
and the World War II
In
February 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of the Nations, at the same time
that Western Powers refused to recognize Manchukuo as an Independent State
under Japanese Military auspices. These moves were followed by continuous
nibbling away at Chinese territory by the Kwantung Army. In April 1933, the
Japanese signed the Tanggu (Tangku) truce with the Chinese government which
extended Japanese area of occupation to the Great Wall.
F
Pearl
Harbor
Knoe
Cabinet in 1940, following the fall of France to the Nazi and the weakening of
the European Powers, announced its intention to create a “Great East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a regional block centering on Japan that would include
French Indo-China and Dutch East Indies and other European colonial territories
as well as Manchukuo and China. This followed an overwhelming vote to
strengthen ties with the Axis Powers – Germany and Italy. In September 1941,
the …. Government signed the Axis Pact, a tripartite mutual agreement treaty
with Germany and Italy as deterrence to the US not to intervene in the European
War or the Sino-Japanese Conflict. Roosevelt administration disapproved of
Japanese aggression in China and kicked against an epidemic of World
Lawlessness and Japan spoke of Liberating Asia from Western Imperialism.
F
Economy
By
the mid 1930s, the US supplied nearly one-third of all Japanese import
including goods critical to Military mobilization. Japan was consequently
vulnerable to American economic pressure. In the summer of 1938, Washington placed
a voluntary “Moral embargo” on shipments of aircrafts, arms, and other War
materials to Japan in July 1939, it abrogated its commercial treaty with Japan
in anticipation of expanded economic warfare, and in 1940, the President
restricted the export of aviation Moto fuel, scrap iron, and steel to Japan.
Japan
simply could not fathom American’s idealism – their support of China with whom
they had little economic interests. Through Nomura Kichisaburo, Japan sought to
end the Chinese aggression under certain conditions:
1.
A negotiated withdrawal
of Japanese troops from China; Chinese recognition of Manchukuo’s independence;
a merger between the Chiang government and the puppet region at Nanjing under
Wang Jingwei; and a Joint Sino-Japanese anti Soviet Pact. America rejected all
of these, insisting on a return to the 1931 Statues.
Japan
then tried to mend fence with the Soviets following the routing of the Kwantung
Army near the Manchukuo border in 1931. But in august 1931, Stalin signed a
Non-aggression Pact with Hitler, making the Japanese fear less o the Soviet.
The Japanese then began to mount major offensive in Southern Indo-China in
preparation for attacks on the Dutch East Indies.
As
a result, the Roosevelt administration froze Japanese assets in the US and
imposed an embargo on oil exports to Japan. Great Britain, the Commonwealth
nations, and the government of Dutch East Indies followed suit, cutting 90% of
Japan’s petroleum imports. The Japanese war effort would have to be contained
somehow. The government of Knoe desired all of these as A B C D (American –
British –Chinese – Dutch) encirclement of Japan. Seizing the oil wells in the
Dutch Indies became the only Japanese opportunity but doing this would lead to
an inevitable war with the US. But Japan was not ready to play second field
with White Imperialist Powers, so in September 1941, decided to go to war with
the US by late October. As a last desperate effort to stop the war, Knoe
proposes a direct conference with Roosevelt, who declined, following which Knoe
resigned and Tojd Hideki, an outspoken military war monger since 1930s took
over as Prime Minister.
Again
the Tojo government proposed to withdraw from Indo-China if US agrees to end
the oil embargo, help Japan get oil from supplies from the Indies and assist
Japan in achieving diplomatic end to hostilities in China. But in November 1941, the Roosevelt
administration once again restated its earlier commitment to respect for
international law and sovereignty: it would accept nothing less than a return
to the Pre 1931 status quo, the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China,
Manchukuo and Indo-China, and Japanese recognition of the Chiang Kai-shek
government. The irresistible force had met an unmovable object.
v
18/4/2011
Logical positivism
signifies a philosophical movement developed in the 1920s by some
analytic-minded scholars who developed a criterion of significance – the
verifiability principle – as a means of ridding philosophy of what they
regarded as its metaphysical, non-scientific, impurities. This school
recognized two categories of significant statements namely (1) statements which
are empirically variable (directly or indirectly) (2) analytic statements which
are true in virtue of the meaning of their terms. The quest for what justifies
scientific belief over metaphysical and religious beliefs was therefore the
moving spirit of the logical positivists. The logical positivists were
concerned with setting out the necessary and sufficient conditions under which
a statement could be said to be genuinely meaningful, and hence to be either
true or false. More specifically, the main objective of the logical positivists
can be outlined as follows:
1.
To identify the
difference between the formal and empirical sciences, and to note the character
of the “formal truths” which derives from former sort of sciences as against
the “factual truths” of the empirical sciences.
2.
To formulate the principle
of verification, or the verification criterion of meaning which would serve as
a means of distinguishing between genuine and pseudo statements or sciences,
etc.
F
Kun:
Critical Advocate of Changing Paradigms.
Despite
the high esteem in which they held science the positivists paid little attention
to the history of science. Indeed, they believed that philosophers had little
to learn from studying history of science. This was primarily because they draw
a sharp distinction between what they called the ‘context of discovery’ and the
‘context of justification’. The context of discovery refers to the actual
historical process by which a scientist arrives at a given theory. The context
of justification refers to the means by which the scientist tries to justify
his theory once it is already there – which includes testing the theory,
searching for relevant evidence, and so on.
The positivists believed that the former was a
subjective, psychological process that wasn’t governed by precise rules, while
the latter was an objective matter of logic. Philosophers of science should
confine themselves to studying the latter, they argued. This sharp distinction
between discovery and justification, and the belief that the former is
‘subjective’ and ‘psychological’ while the latter is not, explains why the
positivists’ approach to philosophy of science was so ahistorical. For the
actual historical process by which scientific ideas change and develop lies
squarely in the context of discovery, not the context of justification. That
process might be of interest to historians or psychologists, but had nothing to
teach philosophers of science, according to the positivists.
·
The acceptance of
positivists’ position would imply that the scientific enterprise is a
value-neutral inquiry – meaning that theory choice is an objective thing. Value-neutral
means that biases, personal opinions and sentiments do not count. Consequently,
if two or more theories conflicts, it is possible to choose which one is better
because there is such a thing as value-neutral-data, meaning raw data that
rival scientific groups could analyze to arrive at objective conclusion.
This
means that science is an objective activity. It could also mean that science is
a universal activity; thereby making science a rational inquiry. Science
becomes therefore the authentic means of acquiring the truth out there in the
world.
F Kun: Post Positivists’
Philosophy of Science.
Kun
was a historian of science by training, and firmly believed that philosophers
had much to learn from studying the history of science. Insufficient attention
to the history of science had led the positivists to form an inaccurate and
naïve picture of the scientific enterprise, he maintained.
According
to Kun, there is nothing like value-neutral-data, instead there is a
value-ladenness of data. Again, according to him, it is not possible to compare
two rival theories. According to Kun, when an existing paradigm is replaced by
a new one in a scientific revolution, scientists have to abandon the whole
conceptual framework which they use to make sense of the world. Indeed, Kun
even claims that before and after a paradigm shift, scientists ‘live in
different worlds’.
Incommensurability
is the idea that two paradigms may be so different as to render impossible any
straightforward comparison of them with each other – there is no common ground
into which both can be translated. As a result, the proponents of different
paradigms ‘fail to make common place contact with each other’s viewpoint’, Kun
claimed.
The
doctrine of incommensurability stems from Kun’s belief that scientific concepts
derive their meaning from the theory in which they play a role. To understand
Newton’s concept of mass, for example, we need to understand the whole of Newtonian
theory – concepts cannot be explained independently of the theories in which
they are embedded. This idea, which is sometimes called ‘holism’, was taken
seriously by Kun. He argued that the term ‘mass’ actually meant something
different for Newton and Einstein, since the theories in which each embedded
the term we so different. This implies that Newton and Einstein were in effect
speaking different languages, which obviously complicates the attempt to choose
between their theories. If a Newtonian and an Einsteinian physicist tried to
have a rational discussion, they would end up taking past each other.
Kun
used the incommensurability thesis both too rebut the view that paradigm shifts
are fully ‘objective’, and to bolster his non-cumulative picture of the history
of science. Traditional philosophy of science saw no huge difficulty in
choosing between competing theories – you simply make an objective comparison
of them, in the light of the available evidence, and decide which is better.
But this clearly presumes that there is a common language in which both
theories can be expressed. If Kun is right that proponents of old and new
paradigms are quite literally talking past each other, no such simplistic
account of paradigm choice can be correct.
If
old and new paradigms are incommensurable, then, it cannot be correct to think
of scientific revolutions as the replacement of ‘wrong’ ideas by ‘right’ ones.
For to call an idea right and another wrong implies the existence of a common
framework for evaluating them, which is precisely what Kun denies.
Incommensurability implies that scientific change, far from being a
straightforward progress towards the truth, is in a sense directionless: later
paradigms are not better than earlier ones, just different.
Not
many philosophers were convinced by Kun’s incommensurability thesis. Part of it
was that Kun also claimed old and new paradigms to be incompatible. If old and
new paradigms were not compatible there would be no need to choose between
them. If the doctrine of incommensurability is right, then, there is no actual
disagreement between Newton and Einstein, for the proposition means something
different for each. Only if the proposition has the same meaning in both
theories, i.e., only if there is no incommensurability, is there a genuine
conflict between the two.
F Theory Ladenness
Suppose
you are a scientist trying to choose between two conflicting theories. The
obvious thing to do is to look for a piece of data that will decide between the
two – which is just what traditional philosophy of science recommended. But
this will only be possible if there exists data that are independent of the
theories, in the sense that a scientist would accept the data whichever of the
two theories he believes. The logical positivists believed in the existence of
such theory-neutral data, which could provide an objective court of appeal
between competing theories. But Kun
argued that the ideal of theory –neutrality is an illusion – data are
invariably contaminated by theoretical assumption. It is impossible to isolate
a set of ‘pure’ data which all scientists would accept irrespective of their
theoretical persuasion.
The
theory-ladenness of data had two consequences for Kun. Firstly, it means that
the issue of between competing paradigms could not be resolved by simply
appealing to ‘the data’ or ‘the facts’, for what a scientist counts as data, or
fact, will depend on which paradigm she accepts. Perfectly objective choices
between two paradigms are therefore impossible: there is no neutral
vantage-point from which to assess the claims of each. Secondly, the very idea
of objective truth is called into question; for to be objectively true, our
theories or beliefs must correspond to the facts, but the idea of such a
correspondence makes little sense if the facts themselves are inferred by our
theories. This is why Kun was led to radical view that truth itself is relative
to a paradigm.
Why
did Kun think that all data are theory-laden? The first is the idea that
perception is heavily conditioned by background beliefs – what we see depends
in part on what we believe. A trained scientist for example, looking at a
sophisticated piece apparatus in a laboratory will see something different from
what a layman sees, for the scientist obviously has many beliefs about the
apparatus that the layman lacks. Secondly, scientists’ experimental and
observational reports are often couched n highly theoretical language. For
example, a scientist might report the outcome of an experiment by saying “an
electric current is flowing through the copper rod’. But this data report is
obviously laden with a large amount of theory. It would not be accepted by a
scientist who did not hold standard beliefs about electric currents, so it is
clearly not theory-neutral.
F Kun’s Scientific
Revolution
Kun
was especially interested in scientific revolution – periods of great upheaval
when existing scientific ideas are replaced with radically new ones. Examples
of scientific revolutions are the Copernican revolution in astronomy, the
Eisteninan revolution in physics, and the Darwinian revolution in biology. Each
of these revolutions led to a fundamental change in the scientific world-view –
the overthrow of an existing set of ideas by a completely different set.
Scientific
revolutions happen relatively infrequently – most of the time any given science
is not in a state of revolution. Kun therefore coined the term ‘normal science’
to describe the ordinary day-to-day activities that scientists engage in when
their discipline is not undergoing revolutionary change. Central to Kun’s
account of normal science is the concept of paradigm. A paradigm consists of
two main components:
1.
Firstly, a set of fundamental theoretical
assumptions that all members of a scientific community accepts at a given time;
2.
Secondary, a set of
‘exemplars’ or ‘particular scientific problems that have been solved by means
of those theoretical assumptions, and that appears in the textbooks if the
discipline in question.
But
a paradigm is more than just a theory. When scientists share a paradigm, they
do not just agree on certain scientific propositions. They also agree on how
future scientific research in their filed should proceed, on which problem are
the pertinent ones to tackle, on what the appropriate method for solving those
problems are, on what an acceptable solution of the problems would look like,
and so on. In short, a paradigm is an entire outlook – a constellation of
shared assumptions, beliefs, and values that unite a scientific community and
allow normal science to take place. According to Kun, normal science is
primarily a matter of puzzle-solving.
However
successful a paradigm is, it will always encounter certain problems – phenomena
that it cannot easily accommodate, mismatches between the theory’s predictions
and the experimental facts, and so on. The job of the normal scientist is to
try to eliminate these minor puzzles while making as few changes as possible to
the paradigm. So normal science is highly conservative activity – its
practitioners are not trying to make any earth-shattering discoveries, but
rather just to develop and extend the existing paradigm. In Kun’s words,
‘normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory, and when
successful finds none’.
Above
all, Kun stressed that normal scientists are not trying to test the paradigm.
On the contrary, they accept the paradigm unquestioningly, and conduct their
research within the limits it sets. If a normal scientist gets an experimental
result that conflict with the paradigm, she will usually assume that her
experimental techniques are faulty, not that the paradigm is wrong. The
paradigm itself is not negotiable.
Typically,
a period of normal science lasts many decades, sometimes even centuries. During
this time scientists gradually articulate that paradigm – fine-tuning it,
filling in details, solving more and more puzzles, extending its range of
application, and so on. But over time anomalies are discovered – phenomena that
simply cannot be reconciled with the theoretical assumptions of the paradigm,
however hard normal scientists try. When anomalies are few in number they tend
to just get ignored. But as more and more anomalies accumulate, a burgeoning
sense of crisis envelops the scientific community. Confidence in the existing
paradigm breaks down, and the process of normal science temporarily grand to a
halt. This marks the beginning of a period of ‘revolutionary science’.
During
such periods, fundamental scientific ideas are up for grab. A variety of
alternatives to the old paradigm are proposed, and eventually a new paradigm
becomes established. A generation or so is usually required before members of
the scientific community are won over to the new paradigm – an event that marks
the completion of a scientific revolution. The essence of a scientific
revolution is the shift from an old paradigm to a new one.
Ordinarily
we assume that when scientists trade their existing theory for new one, they do
so on the basis of objective evidence. Kun however argues that adopting a new
paradigm involves a certain act of faith on the part of the scientists. He
allowed that a scientist could have good reasons for abandoning an old paradigm
for a new one, but he insisted that reason alone could never rationally compel
a paradigm shift. The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm, Kun
maintained, ‘is a conversion experience which cannot be forced’. A new paradigm indeed gains acceptance in the
scientific community through peer pressure of scientists on one another,
forceful advocates and the right political will.
F Critique
If
paradigm shift works the way Kun says, it is hard to see how science can be
regarded as a rational activity at all. Surely scientists are meant to base
their beliefs on evidence and reason, not on faith and peer pressure. Faced
with two competing paradigms, surely the scientists should make an objective
comparison of them to determine which has more evidence on its favour.
Undergoing a ‘conversion experience’, or allowing oneself to be persuaded by
the more forceful one’s fellow scientists, hardly seems like a rational way to
behave. Kun’s account of paradigm shifs seems hard to reconcile with the
familiar positivist image of science as an objective, rational activity. One
critic wrote that on Kun’s account, theory choice in science was ‘a matter of
mob psychology’.
v 9/5/2011
F The Kantian Defence of
Induction
Kant (1724 – 1804)
Kant
is regarded as the greatest philosopher in modern times and in fact can be
pared in the rank of Plato and Aristotle. It was Kant that situated
Epistemology at the center of philosophy in the modern era. Kant was also a
quintessential philosopher of science and he majored in Newtonian physics.
Going
back to what Kant said that it was Hume who woke him from his dogmatic slumber,
as such this gave rise to Kant’s effort in distinguishing and mediating between
analytic – synthetic dichotomy. This dichotomy was brought about by Leibniz and
then Hume before Kant. This is what Hume calls exhaustive dichotomy between
meaningful propositions.
For
Hume therefore, analytic propositions are a priori, relations of ideas, they
are tautologous and do not give us new knowledge. Whereas synthetic proposition
are empirical or matters of facts and the object is not implicit in the
subject. That is, they give us new knowledge.
Kant
saw the problem in Hume’s philosophy that he had actually destroyed/dismantled
philosophy. He wondered therefore on how best to salvage science and of course
Newtonian physics. He went further to establish that metaphysical phenomena and
the sciences, human free-will can be proven. For instance, metaphysical
phenomena like God, spirits, human free-will, and sciences can be proven.
Induction
at the end of the day cannot give us conclusive evidence, says Hume and that is
the major problem of Hume. For him therefore, induction can only be probable.
In the light of the above, Kant proffered another edifice to lay a strong
foundation for philosophy.
·
Like Berkeley and
Leibniz, before him, Kant was concerned with how a world governed by
deterministic causal laws could in turn accommodate human free-will and God’s
existence, and intervention. Whereas Berkeley and Leibniz sought to resolve
this conflict by down-grading the ‘pretentions’ of the physical sciences,
denying their basic tenets, equal status with metaphysical doctrines; on the
other hand, Kant thought the physical sciences has made greater and consistent
progress, where philosophy had floundered in chaos. Philosophers routinely
disagree with one another, and generally ended up refuting every other theory.
Kant
also tackled Hume’s challenge to philosophy. If Leibniz/Hume’s distinction was
right, then, for Kant, philosophy itself was in a serious predicament. This is
so because on the one hand, philosophy does not put itself across as an
empirical science based on observation and experiment, neither would it wish to
concede that all it was doing was elaborating a set of tautologies, analyzing
the terms in which we speak and think. Hume’s question was: “What else could a
philosopher possibly be doing, if he is not doing neither of the two?
The
greater problem as Kant identified was that dividing propositions exhaustively
into those two classes (synthetic or analytic) meant that every general
scientific laws fall outside the gamut of meaningful propositions; since they
are neither analytic nor straight-forwardly factual – they can’t be deductively
arrived at by logic nor can they be proved from experience. this of course led
to Hume’s problem of induction since for Hume inductive statements or
propositions are neither analytic nor factual (i.e., they do not belong to
relation of ideas or to matters of fact). Inductive statements or causal laws
are not tautologies; neither could they be proven from experience. In the end,
however, Hume thought that the thought that the sciences could carry on well
simply as a body of empirical hypothesis without any claim of constituting a
sustainable body of knowledge.
Kant
thought that Hume’s traditional philosophy was mistaken. To demonstrate this,
Kant introduced the notion of synthetic a priori proposition. According to
Kant, the synthetic – a priori propositions are not merely analytic but at the
same time not contingent either. In other words, for Kant, synthetic a priori
propositions are both synthetic and necessary as well. Kant felt sure that he
could point to propositions both in the natural sciences and mathematics which
are not analytic, but were not empirical and contingent either. These are
statements which apply to the world but could not be derived from
experience/observation of the world. But the question is this: “How do we
arrive at synthetic a priori proposition given their very nature?”
From
here it became very important for Kant to make important distinction. Kant
makes a distinction between ‘things –in – themselves’ or the ‘world – in –
itself’ and ‘things – as – they appear to us’ (appearances). To be sure, we
cannot unravel the noumenal[1]
world (things – in – themselves) but as for the phenomenal[2]
world (the world as it appears to us), there are conditions every knowable
world must conform to in order to be intelligible to anybody or us. For Kant,
finally, perceiving subject can only know those things which their a priori
concepts or predispositions can accommodate or experience given the fact that
our knowable world possesses those internal matrices that renders it
intelligible to our sensory, intellectual and conceptual capabilities. What
Kant achieved here as novel was setting down the necessary condition of the
very possibility of experience.
Leibniz
and Hume, according to Kant had been wrong in insisting that all meaningful
propositions must on the one hand be either analytic and a priori (i.e. true or
false by the nature of the terms used and the rules governing their use and
thus knowable in advance of their external application); or on the other hand
synthetic and a posteriori (i.e., true or false according to how things are
observed to be in the empirical external world and therefore knowable only
after the event because such knowledge depends on experience).
For
Kant, we have propositions of a 3rd kind, synthetic, yet a priori,
which are about the world yet are not validated by experience: true or false
about the world yet knowable in advance. For example, Space and Time do not
characterize things as they are in themselves but are inescapable modes of
experience for us. They are not independently existent, but are the only
dimensions through which we can experience the world. They are bodies of
knowledge, the knowledge they give us is given to us in advance of any possible
application in experience, they are synthetic a priori.
v Space
Space
dictate form is provided by geometry and time by arithmetic. Space and time
spell out forms of sensibility. But Kant thought of what he called forms of the
understanding, or forms of thoughts. The fundamental assumption here is that
any possible world of experience, and any world about which objective statement
can be made are sometimes known to true and must necessarily in certain
respects be orderly and predictable. From here, Kant tried to show that if his
claims above are right, then Newtonian principle of universal causal
determinism or quite simply induction was true.
In
summation, Kant’s philosophy is that since our perceptions and experiences came
to us through our sensory and mental apparatus, they all come to us in forms
which are sense-dependent and mind-dependent. We really never can know
things-in-themselves; our knowledge of things are constantly mediated by the
Forms of sensibility and the Forms of Understanding, knowledge for Kant is
therefore restricted by ‘possible experience.’ From here Kant believed that his
critical mediation between Rationalism and Empiricism was complete.
v 16/5/2011
F John Stuart Mill’s System
of Logic – “Proving the Science of Human Nature”
The
view that the sciences offer authentic knowledge and therefore that the method
of science is the best means of acquiring or providing reliable knowledge, not
just in the sciences but in every other field of learning, including for
example the social sciences is called “Scientism”. This view says that the
method of science could be and should be aped by other fields of learning in
other to make the kind of progress we see in science. Put differently, scientism
is the view that science provides reliable knowledge. The philosophy of the
social sciences is precisely an attempt to raise questions about the
scientist’s view, i.e., critical methodological, theoretical questions about
the scienticist’s position.
Philosophy
of the social sciences is an attempt to interrogate, subject the assumptions
behind scientism to critical scrutiny. Put simply, philosophy of the social
sciences asks the question: “Is scientism true?” One major proponent of
scientism, a British Utilitarian philosopher and economist is John Stuart Mill.
He assumed that for us to accept the view that scientism or scientific
endeavour is true, is if the claim of induction is true, or if it is impossible
that induction is true, those could be a reinforcement if induction which is the systematic theory of Logic, i.e.
proving the science of the human mind. If we develop the science of the human
mind, we could predict the future. For Mill, this is to provide metaphysical
foundation for studying human nature that could bring about the contingencies
of history in every epoch.
[1]
Independent object in Kantian Philosophy. In Kantian philosophy, something that
exists independently of intellectual or sensory perception of it, e.g. the soul
in some beliefs.
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