Grice speaks (inspired by Myro for worse or bad) of 'the Devil of Scientism'. This is in the online essay on Grice by Grandy/Warner, e.g. -- straight from "Method in philosophical psychology":
Thus, Grandy & Warner speak of
"a more accurate and complete scientific theory of behavior": "Grice objects on this ground to theories that regard only
scientific
knowledge as truly descriptive and explanatory and that relegate commonsense psychological explanation to a second-class role as a theory, useful in daily life, but not a theory we should endorse as a description or explanation of reality."
At this point they quote from Grice's Method:
"We must be ever
watchful against the
Devil of scientism, who
would lead us into myopic
overconcentration on the
nature and importance of knowledge, and of
scientific
knowledge
in particular;
the Devil who is even so audacious
as to tempt us to call in question the
very system of ideas require to make
intelligible the idea of calling in
question anything at all; and
who would even prompt us, in effect, to
suggest that since we do not really
think but only think that we think, we had
better change our minds without undue delay"
(Grice (1975b, 53) repr. in Conception of Value, 1991).
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I'm not sure I follow Grice on that remark about the Devil of scientism.
After all, for the Latins, 'scio' was just "I know". It's not like there are, or SHOULD be, different uses
of 'know'.
So when people, like Grice above, makes remarkes about
'scientific knowledge' -- but he explicitly talks about 'knowledge' simpliciter --
I'm not sure I follow.
Suppose I say,
"I know it"
Someone remarks, or objects:
"Yes, but not scientifically"
I could not care less!
----
It's up to the remarker to see how the use of 'know' (when 'scientifically' does not follow) differs from those uses where 'scientifically' DOES follow). Or not!
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Feyerabend's "Against Method" was not merely anything goes, JLster. That was the..right-wing and/or Steinford reading (as in Leland $teinford U.....Ambrose Bierce's spelling).
ReplyDeleteI've read Feyerabend came to regret the book (e.g., "I should have never written that fucking book", or somethin') and admittedly ...PF may have been inspired by the...60s bay-area Zeitgeist (unlike say Searle, inspired by....getting in on the Berkeley real estate market, and at one point approving Reagan/Meese, methinx), but.... the sections of AM
I've perused seem sort of anthropological, slightly anarchistic, and PC (one reason Steinfordians hated it). Not that far from say Kuhn, though with some humanist touches.
At first, I considered PF a bit simple or primitive- marxist, but...Feyeraebend's...weltanschauung if you will doesn't quite jibe with the academic leftists...or right. He seems like a Kropotkin figure.
Good. I should re-read my review of the book.
ReplyDeleteMy motto is Revd. Sidney Smith's: "I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so".
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I think Susan Sontag also wrote a book 'against interpretation', --. I wonder how many books there are with "Against" in the title.
In Greek, 'method' meant, literally, 'by-way', 'meta', by, and 'hodos', way.
As in Descartes, Discourse de la method.
In French, method is Feminine. In Greek, it was masculine.
In Feyerabend, it was possibly neutral -- but cfr. German.
"Anything goes" is the title of a Cole Porter comedy, too.