Rescuing reason : a critique of anti-rationalist views of science and knowledge / by Robert Nola.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nola, Robert.

Series:

Boston studies in the philosophy of science ; v. 230.

Boston studies in the philosophy of science ; v. 230

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Philosophy.

Science.

Reasoning.

Knowledge, Theory of.

Physical Description:

x, 559 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, [2003]

Contents:

Part I Knowledge, Science and the Epistemological Enterprise

Chapter 1 The Critical Tradition and Some of its Discontents 19

1.1 On the Very Idea of a Critical Tradition 19

1.2 Solving the Legitimation Problem 29

1.3 Some Dethroners of the Critical Tradition 35

1.4 Kuhn as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition? 49

1.5 The Anarchist Feyerabend as Dethroner of the Critical Tradition? 62

Chapter 2 The Problem of Knowledge 75

2.1 Knowledge - Why Bother? The Problem of Plato's Tether 76

2.2 Agrippa's Problem for Knowledge as Justified True Belief 83

2.3 Reliabilism and the Definition of Knowledge 90

2.4 Some Social Aspects of Knowledge 102

Chapter 3 Naturalism and Norms of Reason and Method 117

3.1 Quine's Naturalized Epistemology 118

3.2 Varieties of Naturalism 124

3.3 Some Norms of Science and Epistemology 128

3.4 Naturalism and Norms of Reasoning and Method: Mapping the Terrain 132

3.5 Naturalism and Normative Anti-Objectivism 140

3.6 Folk Scientific Rationality 147

3.7 Reconciling the Normative With the Natural: Ramsey-Lewis Definition 156

3.8 The Supervenience of the Methodologically Normative on the Non-Normative 162

Part II The Poverty of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Chapter 4 Some German Connections: Marx and Mannheim 179

4.1 Marx and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge 181

4.2 Mannheim and the Sociology of Science and Scientific Knowledge 192

4.3 Merton and Norms for the Ethos of Science 199

Chapter 5 The Edinburgh Connection I: The Strong Programme and the Social Causes of Scientific Belief 205

5.1 Interpreting the Strong Programme 205

5.2 Social and Non-Social Factors in Belief Causation 211

5.3 The Causality Tenet and a Social Cause Model of Explanation Within the Strong Programme 216

5.4 The Causality Tenet and the Rational Explanation of Scientific Beliefs by Methodological Principles of Science 222

5.5 Social and Political Interests as Causes of Belief 231

5.6 Case Study I: Acausality and Weimar Physicists 236

5.7 Case Study II: Bloor on the Social Causes of Boyle's Beliefs about Matter 242

5.8 Sociological Laws and the Causality Tenet 249

5.9 Causality, Causal Dependence, Explanation and a Reformulation of the Causality Tenet 252

5.10 An Unnatural Naturalization 256

Chapter 6 The Edinburgh Connection II: Strong and Wrong 261

6.1 Rival Models for the Explanation of Scientific Belief 261

6.2 The Impartiality Tenet 268

6.3 The Symmetry Tenet 274

6.4 The Reflexivity Tenet 285

6.5 Relativism and the Strong Programme 289

Chapter 7 The Wittgenstein Connection: The Social and the Rational 297

7.1 Ordinary Inference as Individual Capacity or Social Relation? A Refutation of the Causality Tenet 298

7.2 The Strong Programme and the Causes of Belief in Alternative Logics 305

7.3 Is the Hardness of the Logical Must Really the Softness of a Social Relation? 313

7.4 Wittgenstein on Logical Relations, Practices, Codifications and Form of Life 319

7.5 The Scientism of the Strong Programme and Wittgenstein's Anti-Scientism in Philosophy 326

7.6 Communitarianism, Meaning Finitism and the Strong Programme 336

7.7 Natural Kinds and Meaning Finitism 347

7.8 'Sociology is a Way of Sending us to Sleep' 354

Part III The French Connection: Foucault

Chapter 8 An Archaeological Dig Through Foucault's Texts 365

8.1 Foucault on Knowledge 368

8.2 Foucault on Discourse and the Identity Conditions for Statements and Discourses 376

8.3 Rules for the Formation of Concepts and Strategies 387

8.4 Rules for the Formation of Objects: the Case of Madness 392

8.5 Realism and Nominalistic Anti-Realism about Objects and Kinds 398

8.6 The Contextualist Theory of Meaning and 'Ersatz' Objects 405

8.7 The Individuation of Sentences and Discourses - Once More 409

8.8 A Reflexive Paradox in Foucault's Theory of Discourse 412

Chapter 9 Genealogy, Power and Knowledge 417

9.1 The Cause of Discourse Discontinuity 418

9.2 The Emergence of Power as The Cause 419

9.4 Power/Knowledge 431

9.5 Six Criticisms of the Power/Knowledge Doctrine 445

9.6 Brief Comments on Foucault's Talk of Truth 457

Part IV The German Connection: Nietzsche

Chapter 10 Nietzsche's Genealogy of Belief and Morality 465

10.1 The Metaphysical Conception of the "Will to Power" 468

10.2 The "Will to Power" as the Leading Hypothesis of an Explanatory and Reductive Programme 478

10.3 Nietzsche's Naturalism and Ordinary Objects 481

10.4 The Genealogy of Belief in Substantive Objects and in Logic 485

10.5 The Genealogy of Belief and Truth 497

10.6 The Genealogy of Belief in Truth and the Ascetic Ideal 503

10.7 The Genealogy of Morals: Psychosocial History as Fiction or Reality? 516

10.8 Addendum on Nietzsche's Genealogical Project 530.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [543]-553) and index.

ISBN:

1402010427

1402010435

OCLC:

51172412