Incommensurability and the pressure to conform
This notion of moral praxis is attractive to me, because at least it would effectively eliminate hypocrisy. Of course, there will still be the difficulty that different integral people can practise differing ethics. Both could legitimately claim that their moral 'experiments' thereby confirmed their hypotheses. That might be what makes ethics a level 3 discipline: the fact that there simply are not enough rules to determine what constitutes a confirmation or disconfirmation of a hypothesis.
You are assuming that both moral perspectives cannot be right at once. A subjectivist might identify the truth of a moral statement as simply determined by the individual subject.
Ah, but one of the things that I argue is that moral arguments are legitimate. It is very tempting to conclude that ethics is subjective, but this is very difficult to practice consistently. Even if the determinant of the truth-value of a moral statement inheres in the subject, we are still going to value that other people share our moral views. The evidence for this is both phenomenological, empirical and anecdotal. Stevenson relies upon the idea as part of his theory of emotivism for ethics, that part of the emotional meaning of a moral statement is a prescription that others do what one wants. If we are to value a non-coercive approach to this kind of regulation, then we need arguments to justify our positions.
This brings us to the point of incommensurability. There is no reason why two different perspectives are reconcilable in principle. In fact, if there is to be any room for pure speculation, then there will always be the possibility to break off in another direction with new foundational assumptions that cannot be reconciled with others' views.
Well, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) is making one thing perfectly clear. There is no reason a priori to suppose that the differing theories of scientists are any more commensurable than those in ethics. Yet science has achieved level 2, and ethics is still at level 3. This is particularly surprising given the remarkable elasticity of a theory such as utilitarianism. When one compares it with the early versions of the fluid theory of electricity, it seems to have far more applications than the latter. Yet the latter was accepted as a scientific paradigm for well over a hundred years, while utilitarianism is far from being considered a moral paradigm.
There is only one reason that I can fathom for this. In the culture of science, there is far more pressure to reach a consensus than in philosophy. Philosophy contains a culture of pure speculation that resists any attempt to arrive at paradigmatic assumptions. The scientific culture, on the other hand, is much quicker to jump on the bandwagon of a theory that shows promise of explanatory and predictive power. I think that these cultural forces have to be understood as essentially arational. There seems no reason in principle why science couldn't encourage pure speculation, resulting in a fragmented, perspectivist picture of the universe. Nor does there seem any reason in principle why the culture of philosophy could not put pressure on people to form a consensus.
Why, then, is there this cultural difference? First, why is there not a cultural pressure in philosophy to conform to some kind of consensus of opinion? The only reason seems to me to be that that is not the meta-theoretical motive of the philosopher at all. The point of philosophy is often described as being to move beyond the veil of received opinion, questioning any assumption that is put forward. In so doing, it will create an opening for the formation of two different, opposing but self-consistent perspectives. As Kuhn discusses in SSR, a set of assumptions must be shared in order to arrive at any non-coercive convergence of opinion. But the skeptical nature of the philosophical project is destructive to the very commonality that it would require for that convergence. The natural tendency of philosophy over time is therefore to bifurcate into a multiplicity of incommensurable views. The tendency of science, on the other hand, is to eliminate different views by whatever means it can that are not explicitly irrational. As such, a pre-paradigmatic school does not triumph by being completely successful with a single problem. It does not even have to be notably successful with a large number of problems. At the start, the triumph is largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples, and 'normal science' consists in the actualisation of that promise. (pp.23-24.)
Why, then, is there such a cultural pressure in science to reach a consensus of opinion? I cannot speak with as great an authority about this subject as I can about philosophy, since I am a philosopher by training, not a scientist. But still, it seems to me as an outsider that part of the general project of science is rather complementary to that of philosophy. That is, the point of philosophy in many ways is to move beyond the veil of received opinion. On the other hand, the point of science, in part, is to be received opinion. Philosophy is an inherently skeptical, questioning project that encourages a multiplicity of views. Science, by nature, is non-skeptical and conservative, and encourages a monolithic world-view. It must accomplish this through the rules of reason, but this is still consistent with certain arational pressures to reach a conformity of views that precludes much pure speculation. The fact that science can achieve a consensus so successfully is part of what gives it a veneer of authority, the authority of received opinion. Pure speculation is counter-productive to a consensus and would therefore undermine science's authority. Support for this claim can be found on p.24 of Kuhn. During the process of normal science, as he notes, scientists are actually very intolerant of any new theories that contradict the dominant paradigm.
You are assuming that both moral perspectives cannot be right at once. A subjectivist might identify the truth of a moral statement as simply determined by the individual subject.
Ah, but one of the things that I argue is that moral arguments are legitimate. It is very tempting to conclude that ethics is subjective, but this is very difficult to practice consistently. Even if the determinant of the truth-value of a moral statement inheres in the subject, we are still going to value that other people share our moral views. The evidence for this is both phenomenological, empirical and anecdotal. Stevenson relies upon the idea as part of his theory of emotivism for ethics, that part of the emotional meaning of a moral statement is a prescription that others do what one wants. If we are to value a non-coercive approach to this kind of regulation, then we need arguments to justify our positions.
This brings us to the point of incommensurability. There is no reason why two different perspectives are reconcilable in principle. In fact, if there is to be any room for pure speculation, then there will always be the possibility to break off in another direction with new foundational assumptions that cannot be reconciled with others' views.
Well, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SSR) is making one thing perfectly clear. There is no reason a priori to suppose that the differing theories of scientists are any more commensurable than those in ethics. Yet science has achieved level 2, and ethics is still at level 3. This is particularly surprising given the remarkable elasticity of a theory such as utilitarianism. When one compares it with the early versions of the fluid theory of electricity, it seems to have far more applications than the latter. Yet the latter was accepted as a scientific paradigm for well over a hundred years, while utilitarianism is far from being considered a moral paradigm.
There is only one reason that I can fathom for this. In the culture of science, there is far more pressure to reach a consensus than in philosophy. Philosophy contains a culture of pure speculation that resists any attempt to arrive at paradigmatic assumptions. The scientific culture, on the other hand, is much quicker to jump on the bandwagon of a theory that shows promise of explanatory and predictive power. I think that these cultural forces have to be understood as essentially arational. There seems no reason in principle why science couldn't encourage pure speculation, resulting in a fragmented, perspectivist picture of the universe. Nor does there seem any reason in principle why the culture of philosophy could not put pressure on people to form a consensus.
Why, then, is there this cultural difference? First, why is there not a cultural pressure in philosophy to conform to some kind of consensus of opinion? The only reason seems to me to be that that is not the meta-theoretical motive of the philosopher at all. The point of philosophy is often described as being to move beyond the veil of received opinion, questioning any assumption that is put forward. In so doing, it will create an opening for the formation of two different, opposing but self-consistent perspectives. As Kuhn discusses in SSR, a set of assumptions must be shared in order to arrive at any non-coercive convergence of opinion. But the skeptical nature of the philosophical project is destructive to the very commonality that it would require for that convergence. The natural tendency of philosophy over time is therefore to bifurcate into a multiplicity of incommensurable views. The tendency of science, on the other hand, is to eliminate different views by whatever means it can that are not explicitly irrational. As such, a pre-paradigmatic school does not triumph by being completely successful with a single problem. It does not even have to be notably successful with a large number of problems. At the start, the triumph is largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples, and 'normal science' consists in the actualisation of that promise. (pp.23-24.)
Why, then, is there such a cultural pressure in science to reach a consensus of opinion? I cannot speak with as great an authority about this subject as I can about philosophy, since I am a philosopher by training, not a scientist. But still, it seems to me as an outsider that part of the general project of science is rather complementary to that of philosophy. That is, the point of philosophy in many ways is to move beyond the veil of received opinion. On the other hand, the point of science, in part, is to be received opinion. Philosophy is an inherently skeptical, questioning project that encourages a multiplicity of views. Science, by nature, is non-skeptical and conservative, and encourages a monolithic world-view. It must accomplish this through the rules of reason, but this is still consistent with certain arational pressures to reach a conformity of views that precludes much pure speculation. The fact that science can achieve a consensus so successfully is part of what gives it a veneer of authority, the authority of received opinion. Pure speculation is counter-productive to a consensus and would therefore undermine science's authority. Support for this claim can be found on p.24 of Kuhn. During the process of normal science, as he notes, scientists are actually very intolerant of any new theories that contradict the dominant paradigm.
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