Ethics- Introduction

Many early philosophers of science had suggested that scientists are in the business of confirming their theories. That is that they begin with a theory and then they look for evidence which proves that this theory is true and offers epistemic warrant confirmation. So, I begin with a certain hypothesis which predicts experimental results are I performed the experiment and I get experimental results are and thus I have confirmed my initial hypothesis. While this view of what is going on in science might have initial appeal, it actually is deeply flawed according to Karl Popper.

Karl Popper (1902-94) set some very high standards for scientific rigor. He suggested by contrast, that scientists are (should be) constantly to setting out to disprove their work. Any current scientific theory, for Popper, is always in the state of being “not yet disproved.” There is something to be said for this approach of looking for data to contradict one’s beliefs rather than more data that supports them. Instead of seeking to confirm what a theory claims to be the case, Popper is using potential conflict between a theory, its predictions and actual data about the real world to drive science forward.

Popper points out that we cannot really verify a theory if theoretical testing amount to:

Theory T predicts observation O.

O occurs.

Therefore

Theory T it true.

This simply amounts to:

If T then O

Therefore

Affirming the Consequent

But this is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Nothing (strictly) follows from the premise set [(P -> Q) & Q]. Thus, according to Popper, theories cannot be conclusively confirmed, rather they can only be falsified. Science progresses according to Popper not by Confirmation, but by repeated attempts at falsification.

Falsification

Testing must take the form Theory T predicts observation O. If O occurs it tells us next to nothing. However, if O does NOT occur (~O), we have falsifying evidence for Theory T.:

If T the O

Therefore

This, by contrast, is not a fallacy at all. Rather it is the logical deductively valid syllogism known as modus tollens. But this means theories can only be falsified, NOT verified.

Now, the longer a theory resists falsification the more credence it gains, but it never is verified in the absolute sense. This is why, Popper maintains, that every current scientific theory is in the state of being “not yet disproved.”

Popper argues that science is accountable to rigorous, objective standards, in particular falsification, which he regarded as the core of science. This is how science progresses according to Popper, but further, this is what demarcates genuine science from pseudo-science. Falsifiability is the hallmark of true science. Any “theory” that cannot be falsified is at best pseudo-science (e.g. Marxism[1]). But later philosophers were critical a Popper’s view. This, they claim, is idealized science at best. It is not how actual science is practiced. When Thomas Kuhn looked at the history of science, he couldn’t find much evidence of this falsification process actually happening in practice. Thus is could NOT be an accurate account of how science progresses.

Thomas Khun and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Thomas Kuhn (1922-96) developed a theory of science that directly challenges that of Karl Popper. He argues that most of the time science (what he called Normal Science) operated within a set of given assumptions or a “Paradigm” that is taken as given and not subject to testing. If Kuhn is correct here, this would greatly restrict the extent to which Popperian disproof could actually happen. In fact, the Paradigm as conceived by Kuhn is a sort of fundamentalist orthodoxy about “how the world is.” Normal Science is, according to Kuhn, the process of mere elaboration of the prevailing Paradigm or central theory in ever more detail. A whole generation of scientists grows up with this set of common assumptions and they exhibit strong resistance to any data that might call the central Paradigm into question.

Originally printed as an article in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science

Here Kuhn argues that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts." Here he reviews past major scientific advances and attempts to show the “steady accretion of scientific progress via normal falsification” view of scientific progress (a la Popper) was just wrong, or, at least incomplete. Instead, Kuhn claimed that science advanced (and advances) the most by occasional revolutionary explosions of new knowledge, each revolution triggered by the introduction of new ways of thought so large and different they must be called “paradigm shift.” From Kuhn's work came the popular use of terms like "paradigm," "paradigm shift," and "paradigm change." These are radical reimaginings of “the way the world is.”

Paradigm:

1. a typical example or pattern of something; a model. "there is a new paradigm for public art in this country"

2. a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.- Kuhn’s notion "the discovery of universal gravitation became the paradigm of successful science"

3. a set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles. "English determiners form a paradigm: we can say “a book” or “his book” but not “a his book.”

Thomas Kuhn defined paradigms as

"universally recognized scientific achievements that, for a time, provide model problems and solutions for a community of researchers,"[2]

In short, a paradigm is a comprehensive model of understanding that provides a field's members with viewpoints and rules on how to look at the field's problems and how to solve them.

"Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute."

Kuhn challenges the traditional understanding of how science “progresses.” He argues that the history of science is punctuated by moments of revolutionary breakthroughs ("paradigm shifts”). During these times, the entire scientific discipline is transformed.

Six Distinct Stages

Kuhn outlines six distinct stages with respect to scientific progress:

1. Prescience: Here there is a general lack of an unifying central paradigm.

(In a given discipline the stage only occurs once. Subsequently, there is always an existing paradigm.)

All new fields begin in Prescience, where they have begun to focus on a problem area, but are not yet capable of solving it or making major advances. A field cannot make major progress on its central problems at this point because it cannot articulate, and therefore does not know what the “major problems” are. Without a working paradigm, it lacks the tools necessary to conceptualize the problems to be addressed. Consequently if cannot tell what an “answer” to the “problem” would look like. Similarly, it cannot collect “relevant facts/ evidence” since is lack a framework necessary to distinguish “relevant” facts from “irrelevant” facts. In this period, one starts from ground zero and attempts to build a science from scratch. Because there is no paradigm to organize the data, all facts seem equally relevant. Science consists of simple indiscriminant data collection with no real organizing principle.

2. Normal Science: scientists operate within an overarching paradigm that guides them in their research, the formation of questions, conducting experiments. The paradigm provides them with a means to ask the questions and test the answers to those questions. This is a "puzzle-solving" phase. Guided by the paradigm, normal science is extremely productive:

"when the paradigm is successful, the profession will have solved problems that its members could scarcely have imagined and would never have undertaken without commitment to the paradigm".

In this stage, scientific progress consists in extending our knowledge of relevant facts (as delineated by the paradigm), working on those issues highlighted as important by the paradigm, increasing the match between the observations and the paradigm's predictions, and further development and articulation of the paradigm. Scientists doing “normal science” do not work to refute or overthrow a paradigm, or even to find out whether it is true, according to Kuhn; they presuppose that it is true, and work on that assumption. Again, this puts Kuhn in direct opposition to Popper and the claim that scientific progress is only had by repeated attempts at falsification.

3. Model Drift: During this period we begin to see, in the course of normal science, failures of experimental results to conform to the paradigm’s predictions. However, these failures are seen not as refuting the paradigm, but rather attributed to mistakes by the researchers.

A few anomalies -- cases in which the observational facts do not match up with what our paradigm has led us to expect -- can always be explained away. (The experiment was badly performed, the beakers weren't washed well enough, there must be another planet we haven't found yet, . . . )

This, Kuhn argues, in seeming opposition to Karl Popper's notion that science “corrects” itself and progresses via the “falsifiability criterion.” However, during this phase, as the anomalies accumulate, a sense grows within the scientific community that something is fundamentally wrong.

4. Model Crisis: As anomalous results accumulate the paradigm comes to a “crisis stage.”

As anomalies accumulate, there grows the suspicion that something is fundamentally wrong. Again, Kuhn argues this in seeming opposition to Karl Popper's notion that science “corrects” itself and progresses via the “falsifiability criterion.”

5. Model Revolution: at this point at new paradigm is formulated. The new paradigm subsumes the old set of observations, both the anomalous results and non-anomalous results into one coherent framework.

Even so, there is (will be) resistance within the scientific community to adopt the new paradigm. There is an inherent conservative impulse in science, according to Kuhn, and the “old guard” scientists will seek to preserve their previous worldview.

6. Paradigm Shift: at this point the new paradigm is accepted and the old one discarded. This is termed “revolutionary science.”

Kuhn suggest that this may take a generation. Older researchers, trained and accomplished in the old paradigm, may need to die off and make room for new researchers open to the new paradigm before it can gain a foothold.

The change from one paradigm to another is not dictated by the observational data in any straightforward way. Both paradigms will have ways of accommodating the data, and proponents of the different paradigms may have different interpretations of the criteria for theory choice, so that theory A looks simpler (or more coherent with existing theory, etc.) to proponents of theory A, while theory B looks simpler to proponents of theory B.

Moreover, to some extent proponents of differing paradigms have difficulty even communicating with each other, because they will use the same terms (phonemes) to mean different things

The Kuhn Cycle

Diagram, text

Description automatically generated

The Kuhn Cycle is preceded by the Prescience step. After that the cycle consists of the five steps:

Kuhn’s account of scientific progress has Darwinian/ evolutionary overtones.

Punctuated equilibrium:

Punctuated equilibrium: is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When significant evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is generally restricted to rare and geologically rapid events of branching speciation....

Punctuated equilibrium is commonly contrasted against the theory of phyletic gradualism, which states that evolution generally occurs uniformly and by the steady and gradual transformation of whole lineages (called anagenesis). In this view, evolution is seen as generally smooth and continuous.

Incommensurability

Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable. It is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm.[3] David Stove and other critics of Kuhn, claimed that this account of science suggests that theory choice is fundamentally irrational and relative. If rival theories cannot be directly compared in some objective way (non-paradigmatic), then one cannot make a rational choice as to which one is better.

Kuhn stresses a notion he calls incommensurability. We are always in one paradigm or another and thus using a framework to interpret a rival framework. Kuhn himself denied his view has this result. (third edition of SSR), and sought to clarify his views to avoid further misinterpretation. Freeman Dyson has quoted Kuhn as saying "I am not a Kuhnian!" This notion of “no neutral space” idea gets applied, in a number of different areas with a common pattern. Here are some of them:

A: No neutral language

This is the most basic sense in which Kuhn uses the notion of incommensurability. The idea is that different paradigms, even if they use the same vocabulary, will use it in different ways, so that scientists committed to the differing paradigms will tend to "talk through" each other. The theoretical justification here seems to be that any aspect of a theory can affect the meanings of its terms -- there is no distinction between "analytic" and "synthetic" sentences, between sentences which merely give the meanings of terms and sentences which state facts about the world.[4] So there is no way to give neutral definitions of words shared by different theories, definitions both theories can accept. And so it is extremely difficult (Kuhn doesn't actually say "impossible") for proponents of one paradigm to even figure out what proponents of another are really trying to say. (It would require them to be “bilingual.”)

B: No neutral observations

Observation is "theory-laden": what we observe depends to some extent on our theoretical commitments. Our theories provide the categories in terms of which we classify our observations, and thus to some extent affect what we see. The positivist ideal of theory choice was a situation in which two competing theories made conflicting observational predictions, a "crucial experiment" was performed, and one theory won the day while the other was refuted. On Kuhn's view, things are rarely this simple; often different theories will handle different sets of observations, and even where in some sense they overlap they may not agree in their interpretation of what is observed. (The duck-rabbit drawing is helpful in getting a feel for what Kuhn has in mind here: two people can look at exactly the same drawing and still in some sense see entirely different things.)

C: No neutral criteria for theory choice

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, especially chapter IX, Kuhn appears to suggest that each "paradigm" carries with it a set of evaluative criteria on which it scores well, so that there are no neutral criteria that will decide which theory is best.

"In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, methods, and standards together, usually in an inextricable mixture. . . . each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of those dictated by its opponent" (pp. 109-110).

In later writing, notably "Values, Objectivity, and Theory Choice," Kuhn takes what seems to be a more moderate view (though he claims that this is what he meant all along), holding that there are general criteria for theory choice on which nearly everyone can agree -- things like simplicity, scope, coherence with existing theory, etc. But he also argues that proponents of different theories may well interpret these criteria differently.

D: No neutral world

This is the most radical of the claims Kuhn makes. He suggests that scientists committed to different paradigms in a certain sense "live in different worlds." His view here is a nuanced one; he does not deny that there is a real world which is not changed by changes in our theories or paradigms, but nevertheless insists that the world we experience and live in is changed when our theories change. (For instance, he argues that until the medieval period, there were no pendulums, but only swinging objects.)

The Impact of Kuhn's Work

The enormous impact of Kuhn's work is evident in the changes it has effected in the vocabulary of the philosophy of science:

· "paradigm shift"

· "paradigm" (formerly confined to linguistics)

· "normal science"

· "scientific revolutions"

The frequent use of the phrase "paradigm shift" has made scientists more aware of, and in many cases more receptive to, paradigm changes, so that Kuhn's analysis of the evolution of scientific views has by itself influenced that evolution.

Kuhn's work has been used extensively in social sciences as well as the natural sciences. Kuhn’s analysis has been Influential in understanding the history of economic thought, for example the “Keynesian Revolution,” and in debates in political science.

Further, it suggested the fruitfulness of using the social sciences to examine the natural sciences. Notice how much of the early philosophy of science took the form a “rational reconstruction” and was to a point, “a priori” prescription rather than close examination of what actual scientists do do. Post-Mertonian Sociology of Scientific Knowledge is once such examination.

Kuhn's work has also been used in the Arts and Humanities.

I am NOT a Scientific Relativist!

Kuhn himself wish to defend himself against the charge that his account of scientific progress found in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions results in relativism. He does so in his essay "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice." In this essay, he reiterates five criteria from the penultimate chapter of SSR that determine (or help determine, more properly) theory choice:

1. Accurate - empirically adequate with experimentation and observation

2. Consistent - internally consistent, but also externally consistent with other theories

3. Broad Scope - a theory's consequences should extend beyond that which it was initially designed to explain

4. Simple - the simplest explanation, principally similar to Occam's razor

5. Fruitful - a theory should disclose new phenomena or new relationships among phenomena

These, it would seem, demonstrate that some theory choices are better, more rational than others, that there are absolute standards by which to adjudicate competing theories and that he is, therefore, not relativist with respect to science.

But…

Nevertheless, Kuhn then goes on to show how, although these criteria admittedly determine theory choice, they are themselves imprecise. Further, in practice they are used differently by individual scientists, some according more weight to one aspect over another.

According to Kuhn,

"When scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions."

Thus, despite Kuhn’s efforts to prove the contrary, in the end there remains an irreducibly arbitrariness and irrationality to theory preference. This being the case, one still cannot call these criteria "objective." If individual researchers come to different conclusions, despite the fact then none of them has done anything “epistemically improper” (i.e. due to valuing one criterion over another or even adding additional criteria) then these conclusions are relative, no one of them objectively better or worse than the other. It would seem that, according to this account of scientific practice, there is always the possibility that there are no absolute principles by which to adjudicate competing scientific theories (i.e. scientific relativism).

Further still, as Kuhn notes, even this picture presumes the absence of selfish or other subjective motivations, motivations of which the scientists themselves may be unaware. Thus, this may well be, no less than Popper’s, an idealization as opposed to an account of how actual science proceeds.

Kuhn then goes on to say:

"I am suggesting, of course, that the criteria of choice with which I began function not as rules, which determine choice, but as values, which influence it."

Because Kuhn utilizes the history of science in his account of science, his criteria or values for theory choice are often understood as descriptive normative rules (or more properly, values) of theory choice for the scientific community rather than prescriptive normative rules in the usual sense of the word "criteria", although there are many varied interpretations of Kuhn's account of science.

Kuhn's Metaphysical Views

The fourth claim listed above, that there is no neutral world, appears to involve a commitment to some sort of metaphysical anti-realism about the empirical world, combined with an acknowledgment that there is also a “real mind-independent world” that is not changed by our changing theories of it. Kuhn's view here is really very Kantian (except for the view that there can be different worlds for different paradigms; for Kant there is only one human "paradigm" and so only one empirical world). He shares with Kant the idea that the really real, independently existing world (for Kant, the "thing-in-itself") is completely unknowable, and that the empirical world, the world as we experience it, which is knowable, is partly constructed by our categories and concepts.

But it is hard to maintain simultaneously the view that there is a thing-in-itself (a mind-independent world) and the view that we cannot know anything at all about this world. Just as the philosophers who followed Kant tended either to be realists who argued that we can and do know the real nature of things, or to be idealists, who rejected the idea that there is any such thing-in-itself, so post-Kuhnian philosophers of science tend to be either straightforward realists who think that science gives us real, objective knowledge of the world, or anti-realists (such as social constructionists) who seem to reject the idea that there is a mind-independent world at all.

Epilog: Found this on a Blog Post:

Personal Footnote: Sometime in the mid 1970s I was browsing the Philosophy of Science section of Dillon’s the London University Bookstore. I pulled out Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions for a look. A professorial type appeared alongside me and glanced at what I was reading: he said: ‘Scientific revolutions, my ass’ and walked off. It was Karl Popper.

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[1] Popper contended that Marxism began as a genuine scientific theory, which made bold predictions about the observable future of certain economic/political systems. However, when those predictions were observed NOT to come true, Marxists, rather than admit their theory had been falsified, instead reinterpreted the data in ways consistent with the truth of their theory, in effect, rendering their theory unfalsifiable, and therefore, in Popper’s view, removing it from the realm of genuine “science.”

[2] Think of the Social Conflict Theory as a means of understanding, explaining and predicting social history, current societal structures and practices, and future societal developments. But the paradigm takes as “given” that all these items can be (must be) understood in terms of the social conflict which occasions them.

[3] Note this is similar to Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Quine’s contention that it is a mistake to think that individual words are the bearers of meaning independent of the theories (language systems within which they are being used).

[1] [1] Popper contended that Marxism began as a genuine scientific theory, which made bold predictions about the observable future of certain economic/political systems. However, when those predictions were observed NOT to come true, Marxists, rather than admit their theory had been falsified, instead reinterpreted the data in ways consistent with the truth of their theory, in effect, rendering their theory unfalsifiable, and therefore, in Popper’s view, removing it from the realm of genuine “science.”

[2] Think of the Social Conflict Theory as a means of understanding, explaining and predicting social history, current societal structures and practices, and future societal developments. But the paradigm takes as “given” that all these items can be (must be) understood in terms of the social conflict which occasions them.

[3] Consider the differing worldviews and explanatory resources available to sociologists who are “Functionalists” vs. “Conflict Theorists” vs Symbolic Interactionists when they attempt to explain, or even describe, social phenomena.

[4] Note this is similar to Quine’s attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Quine’s contention that it is a mistake to think that individual words are the bearers of meaning independent of the theories (language systems within which they are being used).