Knobe on the Continuity between Science and Common Sense
This entry was posted on 11/17/2006 11:01 AM and is filed under Philosophy of Science.
Joshua Knobe was kind enough to write me as follows (reproduced with permission):
I was happy to see that you wrote up a description of our
session [two weeks ago at the PSA Meeting], and I'm glad that you are bringing attention to these important questions about the relationship between common sense and
scientific theory. I worry, though, that I didn't really do such a
good job of presenting my argument in the talk. So I thought it might
be a good idea to write to you personally and try to explain the
argument more clearly.
In essence, the claim is that one of the major lessons of experimental
philosophy thus far is that moral considerations play a key role in
many of our most basic common sense concepts. So it has been shown
that moral considerations play a role in the concepts of intentional
action, reason explanation, doing and allowing, valuing, causation,
perhaps even consciousness. (In the talk, I presented some data about
the concept of causation, but that was just supposed to be an
illustration of a broader theme that emerges from this whole research
program.)
Now, it seems to me that scientific concepts are not infected with
moral considerations in quite this same way. So I wanted to suggest
that there is a certain kind of fundamental discontinuity between
science and common sense. Specifically, when we switch over to
developing scientific theories, we seem to construct concepts that
serve specifically to help us *predict* and *explain* certain phenomena
(rather than to make moral judgments about those phenomena).
When I describe the argument in this way, does it seem any more
compelling to you?
Here is my response to Joshua:
Your argument is interesting but I have some concerns about it.
1. The claim of continuity between common sense and scientific theory
is so vague that it's difficult to evaluate effectively without
specifying more precisely in what way common sense and science are
deemed to be continuous or discontinuous.
2. Some of the effects you describe may be due to a bias that is
present in common sense and that needs to be eliminated before genuine
scientific theorizing gets off the ground. If so, I would be inclined
to retain the continuity thesis with the obvious caveat that common
sense is full of confusions and fallacies, which people need to overcome
in order to think scientifically.
3. Are you familiar with the literature on science and values? It is
now quite accepted that contrary to the old positivist view that science
is value-free, ethical values play a role in various aspects of
scientific reasoning. For instance, when scientists need to say which
levels of certain pollutants are likely to be harmful to people, they
often need to go beyond the existing evidence. The conclusions they
draw are different depending on which levels of risk they find
tolerable, which depend on the values they have, which in turn tend to
correlate with whether they work for industry, government, or academia.
So some of the effects you describe may well be present in scientific
reasoning too.
4. How do people become scientists if science is not continuous with
common sense? I would be interested in knowing more about how you think
people can change their way of thinking from common sense to scientific
theorizing. It seems to me that a story about that ought to be part of
any compelling case against the continuity thesis.
I do agree with the following point Joshua made: "It seems to me that these issues are very complex but also extremely fundamental and that it would be wonderful if we could foster further discussion of them."
