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Fallibilism, Objectivity, and the New Cynicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Susan Haack
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Nobody seriously doubts the possibility, or the usefulness, of finding things out; that is something we all take for granted when we inquire about our plane schedule, the state of our bank account, the best treatment for our child's illness, and so forth – a presupposition of the most ordinary, everyday looking into things as well as of the most sophisticated scientific research, not to mention of the legal system. Of course, nobody seriously doubts, either, that sometimes, instead of really looking into things, people fake, fudge, and obfuscate to avoid discovering unpalatable truths or having to give up comfortable tenets; that is something we all take for granted when we ask who paid for a reassuring (or a damning) study, who stands to gain from an Official Inquiry, which party an expert witness works for, and so on.

Of late, however, radical feminists, multiculturalists, sociologists and rhetoricians of science, and (I am embarrassed to say) a good many philosophers as well – though they look into questions about their plane schedules, bank accounts, medical treatments, etc., just like everyone else – profess to have seen through what the rest of us take for granted.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , June 2004, pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

References

Notes

1 The first quotation is from The New Organon (1620), Book One, Aphorism LXXXVIII; the second is from Bacon's essay “Of Truth” (1625)

2 Rorty, Richard, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.85CrossRefGoogle Scholar (philosophers who think of themselves as seeking the truth are “lovably old-fashioned prigs”); Stich, Stephen P., The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), p.101Google Scholar (“once we have a clear view of the matter, … most of us will not find any value.. in having true beliefs”).

3 The phrase is Clark Glymour's, from Theory and Evidence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), p.ixGoogle ScholarPubMed.

4 Adam Rogers, “Come in Mars,” Newsweek, 15 August 1996: 56-8; Sharon Begley and Adam Rogers, “War of the Worlds,” Newsweek, February 10, 1997: 56-8. For the continuing saga, see Haack, , Defending Science – Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp.59, 118Google Scholar.

5 I first introduced this analogy in my “Rebuilding the Ship While Sailing on the Water,” in Perspectives on Quine, eds Barrett, R. and Gibson, Roger (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 111–27Google Scholar; it is developed in my Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)Google Scholar, chapter 4; and further developed in my Defending Science – Within Reason (note 4 above), especially chapters 3 and 4.

6 Wendy Bounds, “One Family's Search for a Faulty Gene,” Wall Street Journal, 15 August 1996; “Wish You Were Here,” Oxford Today 10.3, Trinity 1998, p. 40; Gregory White, “GM Takes Advice from Disease Sleuths to Debug Cars,” Wall Street Journal, 8 April 1999, B1 and B4.

7 The key case is Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786 (1993) – the first case in its 204-year history in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the standards of admissibility of scientific testimony. See also Haack, “An Epistemologist in the Bramble-Bush: At the Supreme Court With Mr. Joiner,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 26.2, April 2002: 217-48, and “Disentangling Daubert: An Epistemological Study in Theory and Practice,” APA (American Philosophical Association) Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, 03.1, fall 2003: 118-22.

8 My source is Grove, J. W., In Defence of Science: Science, Technology and Politics in Modern Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989), p.p.13Google Scholar. He doesn't give an exact reference, and I have not been able to locate the original.

9 Albert Einstein, “Physics and Reality” (1936), translated by Bargmann, Sonja in Ideas and Opinions of Albert Einstein (New York: Crown Publishers, 1954), 290–323, p.290Google Scholar.

10 Bergmann, Gustav, Philosophy of Science (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), p. 20Google Scholar.

11 Throughout this section I have drawn on my “Puzzling Out Science” (1995), reprinted in my Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, 90–103Google Scholar; “Science as Social? – Yes and No” (1996), reprinted in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, 104-22; and Defending Science – Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (note 4 above), chapters 1, 3, and 4.

12 The term “Passes-for Fallacy” was first introduced in my “Knowledge and Propaganda: Reflections of an Old Feminist” (1993), reprinted in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (note 11 above), 123-36.

13 On the use of scare quotes to neutralize success-words, the classic treatment is Stove, David, Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981)Google Scholar, reprinted under the title Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism (Paddington, Australia: Macleay Press, 1998)Google Scholar, chapter 1.

14 An argument first suggested in Evidence and Inquiry (note 5 above), pp. 206-7.

15 See Judson, Horace Freeland, The Eighth Day of Creation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp.33 ffGoogle Scholar.

16 For a classification of the many forms of relativism, see Haack, “Refle-ctions on Relativism: From Momentous Tautology to Seductive Contradiction” (1996), reprinted in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (note 11 above), 149-66.

17 See my Defending Science – Within Reason (note 4 above), pp. 182 ff.

18 See my Evidence and Inquiry (note 5 above), pp.193 ff.

19 See Haack, “Science as Social? – Yes and No” (note 11 above), and Defending Science – Within Reason (note 4 above), pp.69-71 (on evidence-sharing), 106-9 (on division of labor, etc.), and 190-91 (on social constructivism).

20 See also Haack, Defending Science – Within Reason (note 4 above), chapter 8.

21 Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, eds. Hartshorne, Charles, Weiss, Paul, and Burks, Arthur (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938–1951)Google Scholar, 1.14, c. 1897. References are by volume and paragraph number.

22 James, William, The Will to Believe (1897; New York: Dover, 1956), p.17Google Scholar.

23 The quotations come (in order of appearance) from: Rorty, Richard, “Science as Solidarity,” in Nelson, John S., Megill, Allan, and McCloskey, Donald, eds, The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 38–52Google Scholar, p.45; Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.32Google ScholarPubMed; “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids,” Common Knowledge, 1.3, 1992: 140-53, p.141Google Scholar.

24 Peirce, Collected Papers (note 21 above), 2.135, 1902.

25 The quotations come (in order of appearance) from Rorty, , Consequences of Pragmatism (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982), 1982, p.211Google Scholar, and “Realism, Anti-Realism, and Pragmatism: Comments on Alston, Chisholm, and Davidson,” in Kulp, Christopher, ed., Realism/Anti-Realism and Epistemology (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little.eld, 1997), 149–72, p.149Google Scholar; “The Pragmatist's Progress,” in Collini, Stephan, ed., Interpretation and Over-Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 89–108, p.93Google Scholar; Consequences of Pragmatism, p.161.

26 See also Haack, “‘We Pragmatists …’; Peirce and Rorty in Conversation” (1997), reprinted in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (note 11 above), 31-47, and “Pragmatism, Old and New,” forthcoming in Contemporary Pragmatism.

27 Peirce, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” Collected Papers (note 21 above), 5.213-63, 1868; “Some Conse-quences of Four Incapacities,” Collected Papers 5.264-316, 1868; and “The Fixation of Belief,” Collected Papers 5.358-87, 1877. Dewey, John, The Quest for Certainty (1929; New York: Capricorn Books, 1960)Google Scholar; Logic, The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938)Google ScholarPubMed.

28 This is the title of chapter VIII of Dewey's The Quest for Certainty (note 27 above).

29 Hook, Sidney “Naturalism and First Principles,”in Hook, , ed., American Philosophers at Work (New York: Criterion Books, 1956), 236–58Google Scholar; reprinted in Hook, , The Quest for Being (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1961), 172–95Google Scholar. Hook argues for naturalism both in the sense in which it is opposed to apriorism and in the sense in which it is opposed to supernaturalism.

30 Quine, W. V. O., “Epistemology Naturalized,” in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 69–90Google Scholar.

31 Harding, Sandra, The Science Question in Feminism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Whose Science? whose Knowl-edge? (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

32 Sayers, Dorothy, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,” in Unpopular Opinions: Twenty-One Essays (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1947), 142–9, p.42Google Scholar (“women are more like men …”); “Are Women Human?” (1938), also in Unpopular Opinions, 129-41, p.141 (“the error of insisting …”).

33 Holtby, Winifred, cited in Rosalind Delmar's “Afterword” to Vera Brittain's Testament of Friendship (London: Virago, 1945), p.450Google Scholar.

34 In these paragraphs I have drawn on Defending Science – Within Reason (note 4 above), chapter 11.

35 Bleier, Ruth, “Science and the Construction of Meanings in the Neurosciences,” in Rosser, Sue V., ed., Feminism within the Science and Health Care Professions: Overcoming Resistance (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), 91–104, pp.92, 100Google Scholar.

36 Longino, Helen, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1990Google Scholar.

37 Which is why, in “Science as Social? – Yes and No” (note 11 above), I contrasted Peirce's understanding of the social aspects of science with Sandra Harding's, Helen Longino's. etc.

38 Barzun, Jacques, The American University (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p.222Google Scholar. See also Haack, “Preposterism and Its Consequences (1996), reprinted in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate (note 11 above), 188-208.

39 C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers (note 21 above), 1.58, c. 1896.

40 C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers (note 21 above), 1.13, c.1897.

41 This is a much expanded and adapted version of an earlier paper, “Staying for an answer: the untidy process of groping for truth,” published in the Times Literary Supplement, July 9th, 1999, 12-14. My thanks to Mark Migotti for helpful comments on a draft.