Philosophy of Science: The Strong Programme

[@pcb8059]

Thank you, you are a top level expert communicator of dense information written in each paragraph. No word is wasted.

[@DigitalGnosis]

Thanks for the video Kane, lets naturalise it all!

[@FelipeHautequestt]

This is excellent, as always! I have an undergrad in Psychology and I was just wondering what about Jean Piaget's work on the psychology of intelligence. I mean, Piaget has the ambitious aim to explain the development of rationality from childhood to adolescence, when the basic psychological structures that allow scientific thinking are finally formed. If I understand it correctly, according to the tradicional view that Bloor is criticizing, human and social sciences should be concerned only with irrational belief and thinking. Bloor contends that these disciplines should not be restricted in such a way, and I'm sure that Piaget would agree with this point, since he is primarily interested in explaining rationality itself. But, on the other hand, it seems to me that he is trying to do something very peculiar. Piaget's theory poses no threat of relativism; quite the opposite, it's an elegant attempt to explain the normativity of reason through a kind of biological and psychological normativity (the process of progressive equilibration of cognitive schemata). So, it is a sort of naturalistic framework that manages to accomodate the normativity of reason and, in doing so, seems to feel no need to give rational and irrational beliefs and thinking a symmetrical treatment, as Bloor advocates. What do you think?!

[@KaneB]

Interesting! Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Piaget to give a substantive response, but thanks for drawing my attention to this. I plan to do an "objections to the strong programme" video, and this might help with that. More generally though, I do think a serious problem with Bloor's argument is that in his defense of symmetry, he attacks two very naive positions: the teleological model and the empiricist model. I don't know of anybody in this field who endorses the teleological model, and while plenty of people endorse something like the empiricist model, I worry that Bloor attacks a strawman version of it. It is one thing to say that rational beliefs and irrational belief tend to have different types of causes (this seems prima facie reasonable, and could be elaborated in lots of different ways), another to say that the distinction is just that rational belief has non-social causes and irrational belief has social causes (this position is clearly problematic for the reasons that Bloor outlines).

[@entityidentity1773]

Thank you for your work.

[@IsaacVanos]

Can’t wait to watch

[@DigitalGnosis]

Looking at David Bloor's philosophical influences, lo and behold; Wittgenstein!

[@KingCrocoduck]

Someone's been watching my videos....

[@KaneB]

That's true, but probably not for the reason you think. Somebody mentioned your channel to me a couple of days ago, so I did check out some of your videos. However, the script for this video was about 90% finished by that point. So the similarity in the topics of our recent videos is genuinely a coincidence. I'm currently dealing with constructivism-related topics in my PhD work, so that was what inspired this video.

[@KingCrocoduck]

@@KaneB I like your stuff, even though we'll probably disagree on the social constitution of science.

[@KaneB]

@@KingCrocoduck I'm not sure how deep our disagreement would really go on this point. I mean, I am a kind of constructivist, though I would like to think of it as "constructivism without the bullshit", haha. My constructivism is really a consequence of my empiricism -- I see myself as working in the philosophical tradition of Poincare, Mach, the logical positivists, van Fraassen, etc. By the way, if you're interested, I'm open to having a discussion about this. I totally understand if that's not your thing, of course. But I enjoyed your recent videos and I think a conversation might be productive.

[@KingCrocoduck]

@@KaneB I would love to have a conversation with you. Truth be told, I've been a fan of your channel for several months, so I'm actually thrilled at the invitation. Hit me up at [e-mail] and we'll set something up

[@Youshallbeeatenbyme]

@@KaneB I second this motion! It will definitely have to be when your schedules allow, but it will be something worth looking forward to if it does end up happening.

[@DigitalGnosis]

Kane - What are your thoughts on rationality being another socially constructed and culturally contingent linguistic practice, rather than some kind of absolute set of rules for inference or ideal thought or something? Think of the Lewis Caroll essay on Achilles and the Hare - isn't the grounds for our saying an inference is "logical" just our training in a particular practice?

[@DigitalGnosis]

I suppose you touch on some of this at 36:10 ish

[@calebm6818]

Wait, why would you want to exclude "because it was rational" as part of the explanation for why scientists held the belief at the time? I understand why you would want to exclude something like "because it was true" (because you want to be able to explain both past, current, and future theories independent of their truth), and I understand why you wouldn't want "because it was rational" to be the *entire* account (because of the relevant factors you go on to mention later), but any story that you tell that completely abandons beliefs being at least partially motivated by the data would seem incomplete, right?

[@KaneB]

Bloor accepts that beliefs are motivated by the data. But if rationality is simply a matter of beliefs being motivated by the data, then both all theories accepted by any scientists will count as rational, since all have been motivated by the data in one way or the other. Having said that, I am inclined to agree with your concern here, and it's an objection to the strong programme that I intend to discuss in the next video on it (though I'm not sure when I'll get around to making that...) My own take on this is that it's reasonable for sociologists to adopt the methodological constraint of avoiding attributions of rationality, but this has no interesting epistemological consequences.

[@JOHNSMITH-ve3rq]

Gold bro

[@DigitalGnosis]

43:20 Surely *something* determines future uses and that is whether we can operationally deploy a term to achieve pragmatic success. i.e. if I am "teaching" a child how to use the word "circle" I will say "this is a circle" pointing at "O" and "and this is a circle" pointing at "o" and "and other such things...now can you show me what a circle is" and I will have succesfully *used* my language just in case the child is able to go on pointing to instances of what I agree to be circles and naming them appropriately. This is obviously an overly simplified example but surely operational success dictates future use. If there are no constraints whatsoever on future use then aren't we in a scenario with basically a private language "...But in the present case, I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem correct to me is correct. And that only means that here we can’t talk about ‘correct’."

[@WackyConundrum]

Wasn't there supposed to be a difference between "constructionism" and "constructivism"? Hmmm...

[@KaneB]

"Constructivism" is the term more commonly used in philosophy of science, but as far as I know, there is no standard distinction between those terms. Not among philosophers of science, at least.

[@WackyConundrum]

@@KaneB I see. Thank you 🙂

[@Ansatz66]

It's difficult to decide what the strong programme is exactly trying to investigate. For example, we might consider why people believe in the germ theory of disease, but this appears to be a question for biologists, not a question for sociologists. Biologists study the germ theory of disease and accumulate evidence about germs, and this biological evidence is what causes people to believe in the germ theory of disease. Surely we can learn far more about the evidence for the germ theory from biologists than from sociologists, so that's probably not what the strong programme is trying to investigate. Instead of asking why people believe some particular theory and getting a list of evidence as the answer, perhaps the strong programme is trying to investigate why people can be convinced by evidence. For example, what is it about the sun rising every day that causes people to believe the sun will rise tomorrow? Why are people convinced by induction, and how do people decide which inductive inferences they will accept and what they count as meaningful evidence versus what they dismiss as accidental. What is the difference between a conspiracy theorist who takes every random coincidence as evidence versus a normal person who accepts only some things as evidence? On the other hand, as interesting as these questions may be, they seem more like questions of psychology rather than sociology. The biologists investigate germs and discovers evidence for the germ theory of disease, and the psychologists investigate how evidence leads people to believe in the germ theory of disease. What is there for the sociologists to investigate?

[@KaneB]

"For example, we might consider why people believe in the germ theory of disease" That's what they're trying to investigate. The other question that you mention -- why are people convinced by particular types of evidence and argument? -- will play a role in the answer to this. Bloor grants that part of the explanation must be furnished by psychology.

[@Ansatz66]

@@KaneB : What other parts could the explanation have? Is there seriously any doubt as to whether people believe due to the evidence gathered by science? If the sociologist passes off all the work of discovering why evidence convinces people to the psychologist and passes off all the work of finding where the evidence comes from to the biologists and the physicists and the other fields of science, then what's left for the sociologist to do?

[@KaneB]

​@@Ansatz66 I don't think there's any doubt about that, but people respond to the same evidence very differently. I can see Bloor saying: sure, the biological evidence caused people to believe the germ theory, but it also caused people to believe the miasma theory. Also, per the strong programme, the sociologist does not pass off to the psychologist *all* the work of explaining why particular types of evidence convince particular people. It's just that psychology must also play a role in such explanations. Again, consider the case of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Why did that theory become so prevalent? No doubt, psychological models will play some role in answering this question. But it seems plausible enough that sociology will also be required for a comprehensive answer -- insofar as there is a sensible distinction between psychology and sociology, a model of how the structure of social media tends to create echo chambers would be more a matter of sociology. The strong programme just tells us to extend the same explanatory programme to scientific knowledge.

[@WorthlessWinner]

@@KaneB - Obviously sociological factors play a role, but they are equally obviously less important for some claims than others, I'd wager precisely those claims usually considered "scientific." I'm sure that sort of objection has been brought up before in a better way. Are you planning on covering the objections to the strong program?

[@KaneB]

@@WorthlessWinner Yes. I'm not sure when I will have that video completed though.

[@Ansatz66]

Meaning finitism seems irrelevant to science. Certainly science makes heavy use of language just as we all do, but the social construction of language is a philosophical issue, not a scientific issue. Meaning finitism is quite correct to say there is no fact of the matter regarding the extension of a word like "swan," and since there is no fact to investigate there is no relevance to science. As far as science is concerned, the discovery of black swans was nothing more than a discovery of those particular birds and what society chooses to call those birds cannot affect that discovery. The birds won't change no matter what we call them, so the connection of meaning finitism to the strong programme is puzzling. Is the strong programme conflating a theory with the words that are used to express the theory? For example, if we have a theory that says "All swans are white," we have to express this theory in words and the meanings of those words are social constructs, but theory is not the same as the words used to express the theory. The same theory could easily be expressed in different words and even in different languages. The words and the socially constructed meanings of those words are just tools to allow us to communicate the theory, and the theory itself is an idea that is independent of any particular choice of words. If the meaning of the word "swan" were to change, that would not cause the theory to change; it would only cause us to express the theory using different words, but perhaps the strong programme does not realize this and thinks that theories are dependent upon the meanings of words just because the expression of a theory is dependent upon words. Some day society might swap the meanings of the words _ball_ and _teacup,_ but this would not cause baseball players to start smashing teacups with bats. It would have no impact upon baseball, except to perhaps lead to the name of the sport eventually changing to "baseteacup." In the same way if society changes the meanings of the words that science uses, it will have no impact upon science.