The question I’m addressing today, is on Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It was posed to me recently, in this form: “Is Kuhn right that we cannot speak of progress across scientific paradigms?” This paper will briefly summarize Kuhn’s own definition of progress both within and across paradigms, explore the implications of these definitions, and assess the conclusion Kuhn comes to at the end of Chapter XIII of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The overall argument of this paper is that the initial question is misleading when compared to what Kuhn actually argues, but that Kuhn is still mistaken in his rejection of the notion of progress because elsewhere he admits himself that incommensurability does not deny the possibility of measurement, and because the analogy to evolution is fundamentally flawed. The paper will conclude with a few summary remarks about progress, both as it relates to science, and as a general concept.
Plato and Aristotle were very different thinkers. They came at the same fundamental philosophical problems from radically different directions. Rafael nicely characterized this in his famous “School of Athens” painting – Plato, ever the tutor, sternly pointing to the sky; Aristotle, the indignant pupil, gesturing reflexively toward the earth. But this image is somewhat deceiving. To anyone unfamiliar with the territory, you might walk away from the work thinking that Plato and Aristotle differed fundamentally, rather than merely instrumentally. Indeed, since the Enlightenment, this is the dominant story told about the thinking of the two men: Plato is the “idealist”, concerned with transcendent objects of pure thought, and disdainful of the material world. Aristotle is the “empiricist” (or, at least, “nominalist”), determined to derive his general understandings from the experience of his senses only, and unconcerned with vaporous notions of transcendence. But this characterization is somewhat misleading. Both men were in fact aiming at the same end, and nowhere is it more plain to see, than in their divergent approaches to The Good. Let’s explore why.
Is it the case that we are meaning-seeking beings, or, that we are meaning-seeking beings and there is meaning to seek?
This, it seems to me, is the basic choice every man faces implicitly as a fundamental part of his maturation, and every philosopher faces explicitly as a fundamental part of his matriculation. And, although reason has a role to play in this process, I have learned that it is a choice that can neither be compelled by a clinching syllogism, nor an empirical test. Indeed, if it could be compelled entirely by the weight of reason or evidence, it would not be a choice at all.
I think there is a lack of subtlety in the modern debate around meaning and truth. People struggle with ham-fisted dichotomies and adversarial arguments that never go anywhere, because of this low resolution notion of meaning. I want to suggest that we think of meaning in three different ways, and that each of them has a context and a scope that is appropriate to that distinction.
VALENCE
Valence is the truth value of a proposition. You may disagree with this (and we can certainly debate it), but I take the metaphysical realist position that truth is necessarily bivalent. Which is to say, I take Dummett’s argument that realism necessarily entails that propositions are - and can only be - true or false. Whether that truth value can be assigned on the basis of “evidence transcendent” means is also a debate for another time. Suffice to say here, that I am committed to both ‘rational’ (a priori) truth, and ‘sensible’ (a posteriori) truth, and I think we can indeed call our awareness of those valences ‘knowledge’ of the truth. All of this demands a great deal more explication. But the point here, is just to briefly identify and define the first form of meaning.
“If I must choose between peace and righteousness, I choose righteousness” ~Theodore Roosevelt
I have long held the belief that moral self-justification is both the engine and the doom of the world. Nobody does what they do thinking to themselves “this is the wrong thing, so I should do it”, or desiring to do wrong for its own sake. Even people as evil as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot all had reasons for why they did what they did. Reasons that they believed made them right to do what they did. Some even wrote whole books justifying themselves.
This is an interesting and surprisingly difficult question. If you look in the OED, what you’ll find there are entirely circular and self-referential explanations: “the quality or state of being true“, ” that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality“, and “a fact or belief that is accepted as true“.
So, the poor souls that rely on the dictionary are left with, essentially, “truth is what’s true”, and “what’s true is what we agree are the facts of reality.” But what if we’re wrong and we still agree? Or worse, what if we disagree, but one of us is right? This can’t be the last word on this topic. What can we say with any confidence about truth, as such? To put it in the words of Bertrand Russell:
