Abstract
In this chapter, the historical and conceptual connections between Lewis and Kuhn are explored carefully and systematically. There is textual evidence that Kuhn was both directly and indirectly influenced by Lewis. Further parallels show that Lewis is committed to relativism about knowledge, but not about truth, as Kuhn was. Finally, it is argued that Lewis’s talk of “the given element in experience” would not be a problem for Kuhn, since the given only has an epistemic role insofar as it is conceptually interpreted, and interpretations are conceptually relative. Thus Lewis helps explicate the epistemological framework for Kuhn, whereas Kuhn shows the concrete implications of a Lewisian epistemology.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
See Kuhn (1945a, esp. pp. 16–17).
- 6.
See Kuhn’s card on the book in TSKP 7.
- 7.
See Kuhn (2000), esp. Chs. 4, 11, for an introduction to his new perspective, and p. 93 for his idea of a “lexicon.”
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
See Lewis (1929, pp. 53, 121–124). The phrase “pointing to the given” slightly modifies Lewis’s in his (1926, p. 249). I shall not remark on the concept of qualia further. It is worth mentioning the idea that they are the qualities that allow us to analyze the given experience in some recurrent aspects of our experience. For Lewis, though a quale would be misrepresented by the idea of property of the object given to experience, it is, in his words, “a sort of universal” (1929, p. 121). It is, therefore, different from the given, which is a particular. Other than that, both the given and its qualia are themselves ineffable (1929, pp. 123–124). On the given and qualia in Lewis, and the recent epistemological tradition, see Crane (2000, pp. 71–75); Faerna (1996, pp. 235–249); and Hookway (2008).
- 11.
See Lewis (1929, pp. 310–312).
- 12.
This position bears some resemblance to Wittgenstein’s in On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1969).
- 13.
Lewis says that: “Old truth will pass away when old concepts are abandoned” (1926, p. 255). I shall talk about conceptual change in Lewis later.
- 14.
- 15.
On the idea of common concepts, see Lewis (1929, Chapter IV).
- 16.
Remember the connection with Kuhn in this regard (see sections “A likely connection” and “Kuhn and Lewis: constructing linguistic relativism”).
- 17.
- 18.
See Lewis (1926, pp. 247–248, and 1929, Chapter III) for a presentation of his position. As Lewis explains in Chapter VI of Analysis, there is a difference between sense meaning and linguistic meaning that corresponds to – and further specifies – the difference above reconstructed, that is, respectively, between the mental, or experiential, basis for the application of a term and the common concept involved. See Lewis (1946, Chapter VI) and useful introductions to this distinction in Murphey (2005, pp. 263–265) and Rosenthal (2007, pp. 31–39).
- 19.
- 20.
- 21.
For a parallel argument about Wittgenstein, see Grayling (2001, pp. 306–308).
- 22.
- 23.
- 24.
See Kuhn (1996, pp. 125–127, 195–196).
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
- 28.
- 29.
See Kuhn (1996, pp. 195–196):
To say that the members of different groups may have different perceptions when confronted with the same stimuli is not to imply that they may have just any perceptions at all. In many environments a group that could not tell wolves from dogs could not endure. Nor would a group of nuclear physicists today survive as scientists if unable to recognize the tracks of alpha particles and electrons.
The passage goes on assuming the same adaptive functions for paradigm-conditioned ways of seeing the world as a value that grants them stability within a group.
- 30.
See Kuhn (1996, pp. 111, 120, 128); Kuhn uses the expressions “looks at” and “looking at” in that sense in this latter place.
- 31.
In my view, Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s “object-sided moments” in perception, which are not created by the subject, but are present in every perception of the world (and inseparable from the “genetically subject-sided”, which the active mind creates), are good candidates for a Lewisian given. See Hoyningen-Huene (1993, Chapter II).
- 32.
For the “quasi-analytic,” see Kuhn (1977, p. 304, fn. 14, 2000, p. 187, fn. 17). Kuhn says in this latter reference that “…constitutive elements are…quasi-analytic, i.e., partially determined by the language in which nature is discussed rather than by nature tout court” (2000, p. 187, fn. 17). For the “synthetic a priori,” see Kuhn (1990a, pp. 306 y 317, fn. 17, 2000, p. 71). A good account is available in Hoyningen-Huene (1993, p. 211). For Lewis’s rejection of the “synthetic a priori,” see Rosenthal (2007, pp. 30, 37–39).
- 33.
- 34.
See Hoyningen-Huene (1993, Chapter II (esp. pp. 33 ff.)), where the concept of phenomenal world was first used and explored.
- 35.
Baghramian (2004, Chapter VII (esp. pp. 218 ff.)) includes Lewis among the conceptual relativists, for instance.
- 36.
- 37.
- 38.
- 39.
Kuhn (1987, pp. 38, 72–76).
- 40.
An agreement between their positions is not out of the question; nevertheless, though I shall not pursue that point here. I thank the editors’s commentary on this particular point.
Bibliography
Abbott, A. (2016). Structure as Cited, Structure as Read. In Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty, eds. R. J. Richards and L. Daston, pp. 167–181. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Baghramian, M. (2004). Relativism. New York: Routledge.
Cohen, M. R., and Nagel, E. (1934). An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co.
Crane, T. (1992). The Non-Conceptual Content of Experience. In Aspects of Psychologism, pp. 175–195. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. (2000). The Origins of Qualia. In Aspects of Psychologism, pp. 61–86. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
———. (2014). Aspects of Psychologism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Davidson, D. (1984). On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, pp. 183–198. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dewey, J. (1941). Propositions, Warranted Assertability, and Truth. Journal of Philosophy, 38, pp. 169–186.
Faerna, A. M. (1996). C.I. Lewis y el orden del mundo. In Introducción a la teoría pragmatista del conocimiento, pp. 222–305. Madrid: Siglo XXI.
Frisch, M. (2014). Causal Reasoning in Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fuller, S. (2000). Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Goheen, J. D., and Mothershead, Jr., J. L. (eds.) (1970). Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Grayling, A. C. (2001). Wittgenstein on Scepticism and Certainty. In Wittgenstein: A Critical Reader, ed. H. J. Glock, pp. 305–321. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Hacking, I. (1993). Working in a New World: The Taxonomic Solution. In World Changes, ed. P. Horwich, pp. 275–310. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Hookway, C. (2008). Pragmatism and the Given: C.I. Lewis, Quine, and Peirce. In The Pragmatic Maxim: Essays on Peirce and Pragmatism, pp. 149–164. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1993). Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. S. (1942). The Metaphysical Possibilities of Physics. ca. 1941–1942, TSKP 1.3.
———. (1945a). A Comparison of the Logic of Propositions with that of Ascriptives. Fall Term 1945–1946, TSKP 1.3.
———. (1945b). An Analysis of Causal Connexity. Fall Term 1945–1946, TSKP 1.3.
———. (1977). The Essential Tension. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
———. (1987). The Presence of Past Science. The Shearman Memorial Lectures, University College, London, TSKP 23.32.
———. (1990a). Dubbing and Redubbing: The Vulnerability of Rigid Designation. In Scientific Theories, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. XIV, Ed. C. Wade Savage, pp. 298–318. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. (1990b). A Function for Incommensurability. Unpublished Talk, Philosophy Colloquium, UCLA, California, TSKP 24.8.
———. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
———. (1999). Remarks on Incommensurability and Translation. In Incommensurability andTranslation: Kuhnian Perspectives on Scientific Communication and Theory Change, eds. R. Rossini Favretti, G. Sandri, and R. Scazzieri, pp. 33–37. Northampton: Edward Elgar.
———. (2000). The Road since Structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Lewis, C.I. (1918). A Survey of Symbolic Logic. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. (1926). The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge. University of California Publications in Philosophy, 6, pp. 205–227.
———. (1929). Mind and the World-Order. New York: Dover.
———. (1946). An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. La Salle: Open Court.
Lewis, C.I. and Langford, C. H. (1932). Symbolic Logic. New York: The Century Company.
Mayoral, J. V. (2009). Intensions, Belief and Science: Kuhn’s Early Philosophical Outlook (1940–1945). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 40, pp. 175–184.
Murphey, M. G. (2005). C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist. Albany: SUNY Press.
Peirce, C. S. ([1878] 1992). How to Make Our Ideas Clear. Popular Science Monthly, 12, pp. 286–302.
Rosenthal, S. B. (2007). C.I. Lewis in Focus: The Pulse of Pragmatism. Blomington: Indiana University Press.
Russell, B. (1912–1913). On the Notion of Cause. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 13, pp. 1–26.
Sankey, H. (1994). The Incommensurability Thesis. Aldershot: Ashgate.
TSKP = Thomas S. Kuhn Papers, 1922–1996. MC 240. Institute Archives and Special Collections. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, MA. [TSKP X.Y = TSKP, box X, folder Y.]
Williams, M. (2004). Wittgenstein, Truth and Certainty. In Wittgenstein’s Lasting Significance, eds. M. Kölbel and B. Weiss, pp. 247–281. London: Routledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. Oxford: Blackwell.
Acknowledgement
I am indebted to Peter Olen, Carl Sachs, and Ángel Faerna for their careful reading and commentary on this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mayoral, J.V. (2017). The Given, the Pragmatic A Priori, and Scientific Change. In: Olen, P., Sachs, C. (eds) Pragmatism in Transition . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52863-2_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52863-2_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52862-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52863-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)