At first, professor Beller gave us a history of contemporary reason, and
precisely she showed a plausible way from modernity towards post-modernity.
It is true that logical positivism changed into becoming more historical than
logical, but it was with Neurath' s evolution not with Carnap 's
who kept along his views on logic. Effectively, there was a pragmatic dimension
joining together theoretical symbols and observed phenomena... On another
side, if Charles Sanders Peirce himself, who thought 'pragmaticism',
would never have separated logic and scientific reflection, he would never
have overall accepted evaluating theory-choice according to considerations
with extra-scientific criteria !
Therefore, I am afraid to find in Mara Beller 's contribution a history
in which everything present has already been living in the past ! That lets
me think of a similar attempt made by professor Niemann in the review Conceptus
two years ago, when he proved that Popper was a fore-runner of Feyerabend'
s and Kuhn' s positions but evidently with the intention of defending
Popper against the critics developed by Bricmont and Sokal. Today, professor
Beller makes the positivist Frank the fore-runner of our post-modern science
studies and cognitive relativism, but she is doing so in order to prove that
modern reason was never pure in its effective purpose (which however can be
true).
According to an "almost irrefutable relativism", professor Beller
shows that the very epistemological question is now in the case of being able
to distinguish science from non-science. Yes, to-day that is the question.
Professor Beller refuses holism and incommensurability, but she accepts theory-ladenness
of observation and underdetermination of theory by data ; for the two last
issues, I would agree in a relative proportion.
I would effectively say that, firstly, one single isolated fact has no signification
at all, and, secondly, that other new theories could be always conceived regarding
some facts, but if they are seen in a particular way. I would say, exactly
like Mrs G.E.M. Anscombe (1959) concerning actions "under description"
; and I would admit, like Auguste Comte (1830) in the first lesson of his
Course of positive philosophy, that without a theory in order to combine
observations, isolated facts have no signification and are not at all scientific.
Scientific theory gives signification to the facts and render them scientific.
Epistemological relativism is qualified by professor Beller as a pseudo-problem
concentrated on the notion of "theory-choice" which is –
professor Beller writes – "an after effect on the ongoing communicative
practice of scientific theorizing". But she indicates also a continuity
between all these stages and then justifies historically the existence of
a relativist position.
About the notion of "scientific collective" – treated in
the second part of her paper – Mara Beller comes to a notion of which
Karl Popper was the fore-runner according to Hans-Joachim Niemman. Thus, Professor
Beller approaches the notion of consensus which she refuses – and I
agree with her – as an "inadequate notion of scientific truth"
– as she refuses also the position of the Strong Programme of Sociology
of Knowledge.
Mara Beller analyses consensus or "collective agreement" in a
way that she finds at the end solidarity replaces now objectivity, at least
for Rorty "et alia". And the sociologist Emile Durkheim would
be at the origin of such a consideration, when now sociologists of science
develop his proper ideas on closed and tribal communities and extend them
to the scientific communities with a reference to the notion of "cognitive
order". Then, sociologists take Durkheim' s study of religion
and apply it to the study of science ! But science is not religion and many
derivations must have been necessary in order to achieve the transformation
from the primitive mentality into the scientific state of mind. All that is
simply a treason relatively to Durkheim' s sociology ! We may ask :
"Is Durkheim' s fault ?"
All that is perfectly clearly exposed by professor Beller and she is only
speaking of psychosociological effects instead of speaking properly of facts
of thought. And meanwhile it is why she evokes Bruno Latour with his notion
of "imperialism of networks of alliances". It seams that Professor
Beller 's purposes are to show how much all these different heritages
are similar in their effects : logical positivism as much as Durkheim'
s sociology being become the strange grand-fathers of the present post-modernity
and epistemological relativism.
Sure, our present situation has historical backgrounds, but all these comparisons
do not make reason. As one says, "comparison is not reason". Reason
needs logical arguments. Besides, historical backgrounds do not justify the
so called "ingenious mingling" which we can learn nowadays here
and there. I think that it is time to come back to a reasonable solution,
as to the construction of scientific truth which cannot be reduced to social-historical
circumstances. One must say that scientific truth is the result of an intellectual
labor joining experiments and reasoning, indeed elaborated under social and
historical circumstances. And when a new scientific truth is established,
all scientific people will adopt it earlier or later. If consensus plays a
part in the discovery of scientific truth, it is not a causal but a final
part of the scientific research. When reason and experiment have done their
effects, why then would no consensus follow ? But this consensus is based
on the examination of the work done by the brain.
Therefore, consensus is not "the basic notional evaluating and explanation
of scientific results" which it is according to Mara Beller the way
accepted together by positivists and constructionists. Further, is it acceptable
to write that "the state of consensus cannot result in a rational scientific
change" ? On the contrary, consensus is certainly the coronation of
scientific research ; and it can come very late. For instance, the famous
formula e=mc² was verified through particles' accelerators, fifty
years after it was found by Einstein. The consensus does not occur at the
beginning of what is going to become a scientific truth, but happens at the
end of a very long scientific verification.
I believe I have not much place to communicate my own conclusions on dialogic
epistemology that professor Beller presented in the third part of her talk,
and also when she writes : "In the dialogical approach disagreement,
rather than consensus or agreement, provides the basis for scientific interaction
and for ensuing change". Her device "without disagreement, not
any science !" is still something foreign to science in itself. I know,
dialogic procedures may be a manner of conducting exchanges between scientists
who are thinking on data and hypothesis. But who would believe that cogito
could be replaced by a serious cogitamus made by many cogitos
in a real time? It would be so if individuals had knowledge only in a "derivative
way" as long as they belong to a given community. However, could one
reduce scientific knowledge to a social practice with a "knowing subject"
being not an individual but an epistemic community ? If at the end of scientific
work, it may appear that it is so, it is obvious that disagreement is a very
low level of reason. Here one speaks as it were never question of reasoning
or experimenting. We must then admit that dialogic discourse is literary ;
in every case, it is more literature than epistemology, and it is without
any interest for the real and scientific bearing to a scientific truth. If
consensus is a social reality, it is not at all a basis for speaking of general
epistemology.
Excuse me, but I do not think that here would be a third way for epistemology
neither for philosophy of science. The dialogical approach would be the approach
where controversies permit the opponents to come in a final agreement on telling
the (same) truth. Indeed, dialogues have always existed, overall since Socrates
and Plato ; from discussion comes truth, said Augustinus, but scientific truth
was not yet the matter. Professor Beller is right : dialogism does not explain
the growth of knowledge, and, as she writes, it only "is a phenomenological
approach"; it may be useful "for studying scientific texts",
as she also writes.
Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) whose philosophy is regarded by Mara Beller as
being an epistemological key for our problems, was a cultural and literary
theorist on language and texts. It appears that Bakhtin' s methods could
be excellent for a literary work – exactly both for writing and commenting
; his methods are well used also for successful teaching and learning. Another
set of activities in which dialogism must be of some efficiency consists of
policy. And although Bakhtin's ideas have effectively been seen as providing
a theorical basis for certain rhetorical features appearing in scientific
writing, they really seem to be very insufficient for explaining science and
scientific success. In fact, since Socrates, there has been a "dialogic
tradition", renewed in the work of Bakhtin and Gadamer with the search
of fusion with the Other through the mutual articulation of truth : though
all that may be indeed very interesting, it does not help for a general epistemology,
because the Other with whom we are speaking, even if he is important for us,
is not a sufficient condition in order to let us really think And we must
say that dialogical exchange is possible especially in conditions which are
rather the field of hermeneutics.
"Neither modernist, nor postmodernist" : what does mean this slogan
when dialogic epistemology could be classified as a post-modern epistemology
? Maybe, defending and attacking scientific truth, as we are doing together,
is simply something which results from our post-modern condition. Maybe, all
of us, we are postmodernist without knowing it !
If it is possible, after all, to accept that locality, contextuality, historicity,
dialogicity are comprehensible points of view regarding scientific activity,
nevertheless they do not bring us to understand through logical methods and
scientific practices why and how science changes and they do not establish
at all scientific truth.
