Taking the Human Sciences Seriously (original) (raw)
Philosophy, 2012
There is a puzzling tension in contemporary scientific attitudes towards human nature. On the one hand, evolutionary biologists correctly maintain that the traditional essentialist conception of human nature is untenable; and moreover that this is obviously so in the light of quite general and exceedingly well-known evolutionary considerations. 1 On this view, talk of human nature is just an expression of pre-Darwinian superstition. 2 On the other hand, talk of human nature abounds in certain regions of the sciences, especially in linguistics, psychology and cognitive science. Further, it is very frequently most common amongst those cognitive-behavioral scientists who should be most familiar with the sorts of facts that putatively undermine the very notion of human nature: sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists, and more generally, theorists working on the evolution of mind and culture.
Science and morality: The role of values in science and the scientific study of moral phenomena
Psychological Bulletin, 1990
This article contributes to the debate over values in science. A critical co-constructivist framework is proposed for conceptualizing the role that debate over values plays in all science. Using the psychological literature on moral development, it is shown that although debate over values is an integral part of all scientific discourse, it plays a more explicit role in fields within the human sciences (e.g., anthropology, psychology, sociology, etc.) that touch on moral phenomena. Debate over values thus raises a central issue for modern science, namely the need to develop consensually agreed-on methods for resolving such debate.
Science and Human Nature: A Complex Dynamics of Reality
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2013
Man is a complex being that has defied all efforts to comprehend. This complexity is basically due to the nature of man. Several scholars and philosophers right from the ancient epoch to the contemporary period have employed several methods toward the understanding of man, but without any satisfying result. This effort to understand the nature of man has generated several problems that transcend philosophy into the sciences. Also, the scientific approach to grasp the nature of man has not yielded concrete evidence of satisfaction. This again, is due to the nature of science, which empirical orientation and root cannot capture the whole essence or nature of man which transcends the physical. This therefore, has created epistemological vacuum that has made it difficult for man to understand himself or reality that he constitutes. This scenario has created confusion in the search towards the understanding of man thereby revealing the dynamic nature of reality which includes man. This paper, therefore, seeks to explain human nature and the nature of science and posits that man or reality cannot be understood using a singular method of science but rather a combination of what the paper describes as a philo-scientific approach.
The True, the Good, and the Value of Science
This paper defends the claim that questions about the epistemic value of the sciences cannot be detached from wider ethical questions about ‘the good life’ for human beings. Science cannot be conceived as valuable solely or primarily because of its capacity to provide Truths about the world. The reason is that Truth can only appear as a valuable and meaningful in relation to a wider conception of the Good. Identifying and articulating the conception of the Good which animates the modern sciences is therefore a neglected project for the philosophy of science.
Science, Values, and the World
The central aim of science is to demythologize our intuitions about the natural world, to convert the irrationality of discovery into the rationality of justification. A judicious mixture of both creative inspiration and rigorous testing is essential to the success of this massive human project.
Review of: "Naturalism's maxims and its methods. Is naturalistic philosophy like science?
Qeios, 2022
This review of Carin Robinson's 'Naturalism's maxims and its methods. Is naturalistic philosophy like science?' is taken, at the outset, from a standpoint of agreement with her conclusion: that naturalistic philosophy is not like science. However I do not find all her arguments compelling. On the other hand, this is not to say I find them uninteresting. I think they might be strengthened. This review is written with that goal in mind. My initial reasons for getting involved with this topic were practical rather than theoretical, as I shall briefly explain in the paragraphs immediately below. Further investigating Carin's argument has drawn me into some more theoretical considerations. These have led in the direction of supporting Carin's view that science is discontinuous with naturalistic philosophy in certain respects. I argue the discontinuity occurs in some ways but not in others. Naturalistic philosophy and science share the same points of origin. Science differs in its methods of justification. Naturalistic philosophy does not originate in science but rather originates the a priori, which means in the literal sense, ' from the former'. Naturalistic philosophers may form productive relationships with science but continuation of these depends, ultimately, for their scientific justification, on what scientists, rather than naturalistic philosophers, do. All these points need much further expansion. My necessarily brief response to the article takes an occupational perspective which is primarily focussed on what people do, but brings in other considerations based on humanistic perspectives. As a 'practical' philosopher who has worked in collaboration with scientists for the past three decades, I have never assumed that my work (mainly in moral and political philosophy, and applied ethics) is anything like theirs. In short, I have never claimed to be doing science. I have, rather, relied on a distinction between science as predictive, and ethics as deliberative. The aims of science are fulfilled when predictions are accurate; the aims of ethics are fulfilled when deliberations lead to satisfactory moral outcomes. However I do not think this cursory distinction adequately summarises either discipline, nor does it touch upon their relationship. Much more needs to be said in either case.
The Natural vs. The Human Sciences: Myth, Methodology, and Ontology
Discusiones Filosóficas 22(1): 13–29, 2013, 2013
I argue that the human sciences (i.e. humanities, social- and behavioural sciences) should not try to imitate the methodology of the natural sciences. The human sciences study meaningful phenomena whose nature is decisively different from the merely physical phenomena studied by the natural sciences, and whose study therefore require different methods; meaningful phenomena do not obviously obey natural laws while the merely physical necessarily does. This is not to say that the human sciences do not study an objective reality about which we cannot have genuine knowledge. The notion of objective reality is discussed, and it is suggested that social constructions can be understood as objectively real entities.
Science cannot determine human values
2016
Sam Harris, in his book The Moral Landscape, argues that “science can determine human values.” Against this view, I argue that while secular moral philosophy can certainly help us to determine our values, science—at least as that word is commonly understood—must play a subservient role. To the extent that science can “determine” what we ought to do, it is only by providing us with empirical information, which can then be slotted into a chain of deductive (moral) reasoning. The premises of such reasoning, however, can in no way be derived from the scientific method: they come, instead, from philosophy—and common sense.
Science, Ethics and Observation
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 2013
Please refer to the published version when quoting or citing. In Richard Boyd's classic manifesto for what came to be known as Cornell Realism, his 1988 essay "How to be a Moral Realist" we find this striking passage. 1 This paper develops some thoughts I adumbrated rather breathlessly in a footnote (pp. 66-67) to my Lenman 2007. It was written for Royal Institute for Philosophy Conference on "Human Experience and Nature" at the University of the West of England, 30th August-2nd September, 2011 at the kind invitation of Havi Carel and Darian Meacham and was read a second time to the University of Hull Philosophy Department in December 2011. I am grateful to lively audiences on both these occasions. I am grateful also to Nick Zangwill for comments on an earlier version. 2 Boyd 1997, p. 124.
Science. An All Too Human Practice In A More Than Human World
More than Human, 2023
This text argues that conventional scientific practices, inherited from the humanist tradition, continue to exclude most of humanity and have long been complicit in the destructive relationship with the non-human world. The authors propose a new episteme that, by acknowledging and coming to good terms with our own animal nature, seeks to promote more ethical and purposeful scientific practices.
The dawn of science-based moral reasoning
Medical Hypotheses, 2007
The dawn of science-based moral reasoning Summary In 1998, Edward O. Wilson discussed the biological basis of morality, pointed out that the analysis of its material origins should enable us to fashion a wise ethical consensus, and predicted the dawn of science-based moral reasoning. This article testifies that his prediction was right. Morality, being based on altruism and collaboration, evolved as a socially advantageous biological phenomenon aimed at ensuring the survival of our species, which was structured in small groups at high risk of extinction for the 99.5% of its existence. In the last 0.5%, the advent of agriculture resulted in a demographic explosion that impaired human beings' moral discernment, because the socially detrimental consequences of immoral actions, which had been recognised and condemned promptly in small groups consisting of a few tens of members, were diluted among millions of untouched individuals, thereby becoming less easily recognisable. Nowadays, to test the supposed morality of individual actions and government policies, we should use reason or, in doubtful cases, mathematical modelling to determine their predictable effects on the survival of small theoretical communities. Unless we untenably claim that the unlikelihood of extinction of today's immense societies entitles us to overturn the meaning of morality, all actions and policies that would cause the extinction of small communities should be regarded as indisputably immoral. This article also presents some examples of sciencebased moral arguments showing the immorality of restrictions and bans on research with human embryonic stem cells and demonstrates that the old concept of the ''naturalistic fallacy'', which philosophers frequently invoke to dismiss any scientific approach to morality, is no longer tenable, because it increasingly emerges to be a proof of what may well be defined the ''philosophical fallacy''.
European Journal of Philosophy, 2010
I argue that attempts to demarcation ethics from science are not jeopardized by the fact that conjunctions of moral claims may have empirically verifiable logical consequences