I. Background

A. Context of present discussion: a few two related questions. Q1) Under what conditions is a scientific claim or theory justified? Simple induction tells only part of the story, and there were puzzles about induction anyway. Popper’s falsification account seemed problematic also. Interwoven with discussions of Q1) were discussions of Q2): What counts as a scientific theory or hypothesis anyway? (Demarcation problem)An answer to this might be: the sort of thing to which the kind of justification involved in an answer to (Q1) might apply. So that’s one reason the questions are connected.

 

B. A theme running through all of this is: are there “objective” criteria for justification and demarcation? So the simple view is that science is what’s testable, and justified science is what passes the tests. But: things that are supposed to be not science turn out to be testable, and the criteria for a good theory involves more than just making correct predictions. (Underdetermination problem.) This led to discussion of inference to the best explanation. One of the notable ideas that emerged there was a question about whether there was an “objective” way to apply the multiple criteria and a worry (not much explored yet) about whether all the criteria themselves were “objective”.

 

C. The word “objective” is itself not so clear, and this matters. One thing people sometimes have in mind with respect to (Q2) is: are there purely logical features of a theory or hypothesis, things internal to it, that determine its status as science? If “yes” then you could just look at a theory, understand what it says, and determine that it is, or is not, science. Whether it is justified or not will take more - presumably something about experimental results. Popper proposed a purely logical criterion - falsifiability. Allegedly, just by examining the content of the claims made, you could tell whether or not it was falsifiable. It didn’t matter who said it, when, where, etc. Context didn’t matter either. But things didn’t work out as he hoped. In our discussion, from Rosenberg, t morphed into a claim about the behavior of defenders of theories. Thagard offers a new response to (Q2).

 

D. Opening paragraph contains a few references that require some explanation. He mentions Kuhn and Feyerabend. We will discuss some of this later on. Key idea about them: radical non-objectivity accounts of these matters. Main point for now is the last sentence. By saying that he will introduce “social and historical features as well as logical ones” into his account of social science, he means to contrast his view from the purely logical account Popper hoped for. Thagard denies that any such factors alone do the job.

 

E. In thinking about astrology, like many other theories, it is useful to distinguish various kinds of claims. Here there are at least these categories: i) the most general ideas, e.g., the position of the stars, sun, moon, and planets at the time and place of birth significantly influences personality and behavior. ii) claims about the effects of specific factors, e.g.,

“When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars “

or the examples in ¶3, p.223. iii) specific predictions such as those we looked at the other day.

 

II. Discussion of Alternative Accounts

 

A. Thagard’s brief history is interesting. He mentions rise of astrology since 1930s. Note: Nancy Reagan. Then he quickly dismisses various demarcation criteria.

 

B. Origins: astrology is pseudoscience because it has its origins in magical world views. Hard to know exactly how to generalize on this. But he says correctly that this won’t suffice as demarcation criterion. (225)

 

C. Basis of ordinary belief: astrology is pseudoscience because people typically believe in it for illegitimate reasons. He gives no examples here. But that’s a bad reason. People could believe good theories for bad reasons.

 

D. Physical basis. Astrology is pseudoscience because there is no physical basis. This is the point of the smoking example. It refutes the generalization of this principle. [Perhaps this is unfair. Not just no mechanism yet identified. Perhaps the claim is that there couldn’t be one.??]

 

E. Verifiability and falsifiability. Here the main idea is something we’ve discussed. Astrology is pseudoscience because it has no observable implications. (“It is possible to deduce observation statements from it.”) His main ideas about this fit with what we said the other day. Also, statistical studies looking for similarities are possible. This seems to be a pretty good test.

 

So Thagard concludes that these sorts of factors won’t do as providing a principle of demarcation.

 

III. Thagard’s Account

A. See statement on pp. 227-8

.

B. He claims that astrology comes out as a pseudoscience since it is not progressive, faces unsolved problems, there are more progressive alternatives, and practitioners don’t evaluate the theory in relation to others.

 

C. Change over time (229): Being a science or pseudoscience is not a fixed fact about a theory. It can change with time. So he thinks that astrology was a science, but it became a pseudoscience with the rise of psychology in the late 19^th century. This is because alternatives arose. So condition (1) is no longer satisfied. So, to clarify the theory, add time references: X is a pseudoscience at time t only if at t, it has been less progressive than existing rival theories ...

 

 

 

D. Cultural relativism (229-30): Given what he’s said about time, one might think that you’d say the same sort of thing about cultural isolation. That’s what the example is supposed to bring out.

If astrology was science in earlier times, then it is also science for anyone who is in the same situation as those earlier people. He rejects this: alternatives are those things “generally available in the world [at the time].”

 

IV. Comments

 

A. The differing treatment of time and place seems wrong to me. Be clear about how this works out: for ancient astrologers there were no alternatives, for contemporary isolated astrologers, there are alternatives. Notice: they could be reasoning and thinking in exactly the same ways.

I think he’d be better off saying that whether something is a pseudoscience is relative to both time and place (or to community of thinkers). So the isolated astrologers are not pseudoscientists if they are just like the early astrologers who were not. This can be spelled out by making the idea of an alternative something like this: X is an alternative to Y for S at T only if S is in a position to know about X at T.

 

B. The idea that science must have competitors is an odd one. His view implies that once something wins the day, it’s no longer science. That seems clearly wrong. Consider evolution. Maybe creationism is a competitor. But if creationism went away, would evolution cease to be a science?

 

C. It’s not so clear that astrology does fail condition (2). Some astrologers do try to solve problems and compare it to other theories, etc. Issue about the precession of the equinoxes. See http://www.elysian.co.uk/precessi.htm for an astrologer’s response. It may be that what they say on these topics isn’t very good, but they do try. So it’s not so clear that astrologers fail the behavioral test he mentions. So if astrology is a pseudoscience, then maybe (2) isn’t the right condition.

 

D. A question about the issue: see last ¶ of paper. It is important to separate serious science about real issues, e.g., global warming, from unreasonable views about these topics. But given the various criteria for theory choice, astrology seems to come out very bad. [This claim is not defended here.] Thagard wants a three way distinction: good science/bad science/pseudoscience. He wants astrology to come out in the third. But why? A good science/bad science distinction be good enough for the public issues he discusses in the final ¶.