Rescuing Reason

by Nola, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781402010439
• ISBN10: 1402010435
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Do knowledge and science arise from the application of canons of rationality and scientific method? Or is all our scientific knowledge caused by socio-political factors, or by our interests in the socio-political - the view of sociologists of "knowledge"? Or does it result from interplay of relations of power - the view of Michel Foucault? Or does our knowledge arise from "the will to power" - the view of Nietzsche? This volume sets out to critically examine the theses of those who would debunk the idea of rational explanation.The book is wide-ranging. The theories of method of Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend (amongst others) are discussed and related to the views of Marx, Foucault, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as well as sociologists of science such as Mannheim and Bloor. The author provides a wide interpretative framework which links the doctrines espoused by many of these authors; it is argued that they inherit many of the difficulties in the Strong Programme in the sociology of "knowledge", and that they fail to reconcile the normativity of knowledge with their naturalism. It is argued that neither relativists, sceptics, nihilists, sociologists of "knowledge" nor the postmodernists successfully debunk the claims of rational explanation, far from it: these theorists presuppose much of the theory of methodology they deny.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(14)
PART I: KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL ENTERPRISE
Synopsis of Part I	15	(4)
The Critical Tradition and Some of Its Discontents	19	(56)
On the Very Idea of a Critical Tradition	19	(10)
Solving the Legitimation Problem	29	(6)
Some Dethroners of the Critical Tradition	35	(14)
Kuhn as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition?	49	(13)
The Anarchist Feyerabend as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition?	62	(13)
The Problem of Knowledge	75	(42)
Knowledge - Why Bother? The Problem of Plato's Tether	76	(7)
Agrippa's Problem for Knowledge as Justified True Belief	83	(7)
Reliabilism and the Definition of Knowledge	90	(12)
Some Social Aspects of Knowledge	102	(15)
Naturalism and Norms of Reason and Method	117	(62)
Quine's Naturalized Epistemology	118	(6)
Varieties of Naturalism	124	(4)
Some Norms of Science and Epistemology	128	(4)
Naturalism and Norms of Reasoning and Method: Mapping the Terrain	132	(8)
Naturalism and Normative Anti-Objectivism	140	(7)
Folk Scientific Rationality	147	(9)
Reconciling the Normative With the Natural: Ramsey-Lewis Definition	156	(6)
The Supervenience of the Methodologically Normative on the Non-Normative	162	(13)
PART II: THE POVERTY OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
Synopsis of Part II	175	(4)
Some German Connections: Marx and Mannheim	179	(26)
Marx and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge	181	(11)
Mannheim and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge	192	(7)
Merton and Norms for the Ethos of Science	199	(6)
The Edinburgh Connection I: The Strong Programme and the Social Causes of Scientific Belief	205	(56)
Interpreting the Strong Programme	205	(6)
Social and Non-Social Factors in Belief Causation	211	(5)
The Causality Tenet and a Social Cause Model of Explanation Within the Strong Programme	216	(6)
The Causality Tenet and the Rational Explanation of Scientific Beliefs by Methodological Principles of Science	222	(9)
Social and Political Interests as Causes of Belief	231	(5)
Case Study I: Acausality and Weimar Physicists	236	(6)
Case Study II: Bloor on the Social Causes of Boyle's Beliefs about Matter	242	(7)
Sociological Laws and the Causality Tenet	249	(3)
Causality, Causal Dependence, Explanation and a Reformulation of the Causality Tenet	252	(4)
An Unnatural Naturalization	256	(5)
The Edinburgh Connection II: Strong and Wrong	261	(36)
Rival Models for the Explanation of Scientific Belief	261	(7)
The Impartiality Tenet	268	(6)
The Symmetry Tenet	274	(11)
The Reflexivity Tenet	285	(4)
Relativism and the Strong Programme	289	(8)
The Wittgenstein Connection: The Social and the Rational	297	(68)
Ordinary Inference as Individual Capacity or Social Relation? A Refutation of the Causality Tenet	298	(7)
The Strong Programme and the Causes of Belief in Alternative Logics	305	(8)
Is the Hardness of the Logical Must Really the Softness of a Social Relation?	313	(6)
Wittgenstein on Logical Relations, Practices, Codifications and Form of Life	319	(7)
The Scientism of the Strong Programme and Wittgenstein's Anti-Scientism in Philosophy	326	(10)
Communitarianism, Meaning Finitism and the Strong Programme	336	(11)
Natural Kinds and Meaning Finitism	347	(7)
`Sociology is a Way of Sending us to Sleep'	354	(9)
PART III: THE FRENCH CONNECTION: FOUCAULT
Synopsis of Part III	363	(2)
An Archaeological Dig Through Foucault's Texts	365	(52)
Foucault on Knowledge	368	(8)
Foucault on Discourse and the Identity Conditions for Statements and Discourses	376	(11)
Rules for the Formation of Concepts and Strategies	387	(5)
Rules for the Formation of Objects: the Case of Madness	392	(6)
Realism and Nominalistic Anti-Realism about Objects and Kinds	398	(7)
The Contextualist Theory of Meaning and `Ersatz' Objects	405	(4)
The Individuation of Sentences and Discourses -- Once More	409	(3)
A Reflexive Paradox in Foucault's Theory of Discourse	412	(5)
Genealogy, Power and Knowledge	417	(48)
The Cause of Discourse Discontinuity	418	(1)
The Emergence of Power as The Cause	419	(4)
Power	423	(8)
Power/Knowledge	431	(14)
Six Criticisms of the Power/Knowledge Doctrine	445	(12)
Brief Comments on Foucault's Talk of Truth	457	(6)
PART IV: THE GERMAN CONNECTION: NIETZSCHE
Synopsis of Part IV	463	(2)
Nietzsche's Genealogy of Belief and Morality	465	(74)
The Metaphysical Conception of the ``Will to Power''	468	(10)
The ``Will to Power'' as the Leading Hypothesis of an Explanatory and Reductive Programme	478	(3)
Nietzsche's Naturalism and Ordinary Objects	481	(4)
The Genealogy of Belief in Substantive Objects and in Logic	485	(12)
The Genealogy of Belief and Truth	497	(6)
The Genealogy of Belief in Truth and the Ascetic Ideal	503	(13)
The Genealogy of Morals: Psychosocial History as Fiction or Reality?	516	(14)
Addendum on Nietzsche's Genealogical Project	530	(9)
Epilogue	539	(4)
References	543	(12)
Name Index	555