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Objectivity, Rationality, and Scientific Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Dudle Shapere
Dudle Shapere*
Affiliation:
Wake Forest University
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Extract

Many philosophers used to believe that the objectivity and rationality of science lay in its reliance on “brute facts”, on what was “given” in sense-experience without any interpretation (and therefore any presuppositions) whatever. For those philosophers, granted their sharp distinction between the pure given and what is built on or added thereto, a distinction between “objectivity” and “rationality” was comparatively easy to draw (though I know of no place where it was explicitly so drawn). For a person to be “objective” in a given inquiry would be for that person to base his inquiry (either his deductions or inductions from the given, or his justification of his theories, depending on the particular version of the view we are considering) solely on the unvarnished facts, the pure given. And for a proposition (conclusion, hypothesis) to be “objectively based” would be for it to be based solely on (deduced or induced solely from, justified in terms of) the pure, uninterpreted given.

Type
Part XVI. Reason and Scientific Change
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 637 - 663
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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