Dogmatism, Learning and Scientific Pratices

Dados Bibliográficos

ID13002017
AutoresMarco Marletta (University of Palermo, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume5
Fascículo2
Data de publicação2013-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2036-4091 • E-ISSN: 2036-4091
EditoraAssociazione Pragma (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.4000/ejpap.541
OpenAlexW2184637492
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas31

In the traditional debate on the dichotomy between dogmatism and criticism in scientific practice (the Popper-Kuhn debate), dogmatism is considered a psychological or ethical attitude of the individual scientist. In this paper, I propose a new interpretation of scientific dogmatism by means of a reconstruction of the pragmatist and Wittgensteinian heritage of Kuhn’s concept of dogmatism. My thesis is that such a revised concept accounts for both the stability of scientific knowledge (against scepticism and ceaseless scientific revolutions), and the importance of doubt and criticism for scientific progress. This is possible only if we consider dogmatism from a social perspective that focuses on scientific communities as the main actors in the history of science. From this point of view, dogmatism is not the unjustified acceptance of particular beliefs, but the blind adherence to the “formal” normative structure of the paradigm. I argue that we have grounded this normative structure in the training process that physics students experience in their formative years, and that Kuhn describes in a similar way to Wittgenstein’s analysis of general linguistic training. Finally, dogmatism does not refer to a system of beliefs, but to a system of norms; not to the specific content of knowledge but to the way that scientific knowledge is authenticated, organised, and transmitted by scientific communities. The institutional structure of science, that is to say its social organisation trough training, textbooks, scientific communities and so on, is a precondition for the organisation of meaningful scientific discourse (i.e. for the production and organisation of empirically verifiable or falsifiable statements). That is the nature of the paradigm: it creates and constrains the possibilities of scientific practice. In normal circumstances, dogmatism and certainty are concerned with such pragmatic a priori, while criticism and doubt are concerned with the empirical statements articulated through it

Criticism · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy · Normative · Political science · Pragmatism · Presupposition · Skepticism · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Educational Strategies and Epistemologies · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology