A Naturalistic Approach to Ethics: Three Paradigmatic Assumptions
I have gained an insight into the nature of a Kuhnian paradigm from reading that section on the regress problem. I had no idea that holistic coherentism could explain it so effectively, but it clearly can. Surely I can't be the only person who has noticed this.
Trying the search string, "holistic coherentism Kuhnian paradigms", nothing comes up. On the string, "holistic coherentism scientific paradigms", I get 70 results. I guess that's typical, that the contributor of a new idea often doesn't get the credit that he deserves, even if everybody ends up using his idea--unless he's Edward de Bono. ;)
The top-ranking article is Scientific Naturalism and the Value of Knowledge. If I am going to contribute to this general area of study, then this sounds like the sort of thing that I should be reading, so let's do that.
I think that if you're going to say something like that, Dr Kvanvig, you'd better define your term!
Wikipedia to the rescue:
The only form of philosophical naturalism with which I am familiar is logical positivism, but that is a bit of a soft target. Still, some form of philosophical naturalism might well be attractive, just because I find science so inspiring. In fact, given such a definition, it is even tempting to classify my conception of an empirical theory of ethics as ethical naturalism. But if I were going to do that, I would need to spell out far more exactly what I think an empirical theory of ethics actually is. Exactly how it would be accessible to natural science would also be problematic. Certainly I would not buy into crude emotivism, such as that espoused by Stevenson. I suppose that one would also have to make three basic, paradigmatic assumptions about ethics, namely that:
Obvious metaphysical questions arise here about the first two propositions. The standard objectivist position is that ethics has to inhere in objects for these two propositions to hold. I argue in the section titled Subjectivity versus Objectivity in Ethics that this position is false. These propositions are as compatible with a subjective account of values as they are with an objective account of values. Therefore, as a paradigmatic assumption for a naturalist theory of ethics, that issue can be bypassed.
The other element of the paradigm has to do with commensurability, as I discuss it in my theory. The theory of commensurability legitimises moral arguments by establishing the foundation within which they are legitimate. If there is adequate common ground between two people, then they can reach a consensus, and if there is not, then their positions will be incommensurable. Nevertheless, they will still not be arbitrary, nor will it remove the legitimacy of their arguments, any more than it would in philosophy in general. Between two incommensurable views, the justification for rational argument is that those views become clarified and deepened through the dialectical process. With views, this also serves to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not every view is rationally defensible, and rational argument serves to weed out irrational views from the mix. Rationality is therefore perfectly appropriate in moral arguments whether or not the moral views being argued are commensurable with each other.
Now I am thinking of this in terms of my original Masters thesis. I had ordered the chapters in a rigorously hierarchical way, so that later chapters built on the work of earlier chapters. At no point did I ever say, "I will discuss this matter later." The matter got discussed immediately as it became relevant, so that it could lay the foundation for what was to follow.
This had the effect that it was easy to see where I would slot new material into the thesis as it came in. For instance, these paradigmatic assumptions would clearly fit in after chapter 5. As a new chapter 6, they would clearly be superior to what I wrote in the original thesis. Seeing as how the external reviewer thought that as a bare minimum chapters 6 to 9 should have been re-written, I think that this would have pleased him as well. At least, it should have if he had any intellectual honesty in the review at all.
Trying the search string, "holistic coherentism Kuhnian paradigms", nothing comes up. On the string, "holistic coherentism scientific paradigms", I get 70 results. I guess that's typical, that the contributor of a new idea often doesn't get the credit that he deserves, even if everybody ends up using his idea--unless he's Edward de Bono. ;)
The top-ranking article is Scientific Naturalism and the Value of Knowledge. If I am going to contribute to this general area of study, then this sounds like the sort of thing that I should be reading, so let's do that.
Philosophical naturalism is, arguably, the dominant philosophical tradition in contemporary western philosophy.
I think that if you're going to say something like that, Dr Kvanvig, you'd better define your term!
Wikipedia to the rescue:
Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that reject the validity of explanations or theories making use of entities inaccessible to natural science.
The only form of philosophical naturalism with which I am familiar is logical positivism, but that is a bit of a soft target. Still, some form of philosophical naturalism might well be attractive, just because I find science so inspiring. In fact, given such a definition, it is even tempting to classify my conception of an empirical theory of ethics as ethical naturalism. But if I were going to do that, I would need to spell out far more exactly what I think an empirical theory of ethics actually is. Exactly how it would be accessible to natural science would also be problematic. Certainly I would not buy into crude emotivism, such as that espoused by Stevenson. I suppose that one would also have to make three basic, paradigmatic assumptions about ethics, namely that:
- Ethics is not arbitrary;
- Ethics is to be taken seriously; and
- Moral arguments are legitimate.
Obvious metaphysical questions arise here about the first two propositions. The standard objectivist position is that ethics has to inhere in objects for these two propositions to hold. I argue in the section titled Subjectivity versus Objectivity in Ethics that this position is false. These propositions are as compatible with a subjective account of values as they are with an objective account of values. Therefore, as a paradigmatic assumption for a naturalist theory of ethics, that issue can be bypassed.
The other element of the paradigm has to do with commensurability, as I discuss it in my theory. The theory of commensurability legitimises moral arguments by establishing the foundation within which they are legitimate. If there is adequate common ground between two people, then they can reach a consensus, and if there is not, then their positions will be incommensurable. Nevertheless, they will still not be arbitrary, nor will it remove the legitimacy of their arguments, any more than it would in philosophy in general. Between two incommensurable views, the justification for rational argument is that those views become clarified and deepened through the dialectical process. With views, this also serves to separate the wheat from the chaff. Not every view is rationally defensible, and rational argument serves to weed out irrational views from the mix. Rationality is therefore perfectly appropriate in moral arguments whether or not the moral views being argued are commensurable with each other.
Now I am thinking of this in terms of my original Masters thesis. I had ordered the chapters in a rigorously hierarchical way, so that later chapters built on the work of earlier chapters. At no point did I ever say, "I will discuss this matter later." The matter got discussed immediately as it became relevant, so that it could lay the foundation for what was to follow.
This had the effect that it was easy to see where I would slot new material into the thesis as it came in. For instance, these paradigmatic assumptions would clearly fit in after chapter 5. As a new chapter 6, they would clearly be superior to what I wrote in the original thesis. Seeing as how the external reviewer thought that as a bare minimum chapters 6 to 9 should have been re-written, I think that this would have pleased him as well. At least, it should have if he had any intellectual honesty in the review at all.
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