Post by KenNiemann on Mar 25, 2005 3:56:38 GMT -5
Kenneth Schaffner MD PhD is a George Washington University professor of medical humanities.
In a paper titled What is Philosophy? and Its Role in Science and the Healing Arts which he presented to the joint Association of Chiropractic Colleges Educational Conference (ACC) / Research Agenda Conference (RAC), Schaffner has proposed the works of Peirce, the father of pragmaticism, as a philosophical model to ground the sciences in alternative medicine. He defines pragmatism as:
The general philosophical sense of the term defines pragmatism as ' a philosophical view that a theory or concept should be evaluated in terms of how it works and it's consequences as the standard of action and thought. It is this sense that is well supported in the writings of the philosophical pragmatists, and which I am going to take as a general framework for the remainder of this paper.
For purposes of cross referencing, philosopher JP Moreland defines pragmaticism in the following way:
Pragmaticism means, roughly, the idea that science does not give us a progressively truer picture of the world, but aims at giving us theories that work in solving the problems before it. In fact, truth (understood as correspondence with a theory independent world) is irrelevant for science. Scientific theories allow us to predict phenomena, devise technology, improve experimental technique, represent phenomena in a simple, economical way and so forth. But theories can (and often do) work without being true or approximately true, and the truth of a theory is basically an irrelevant factor in determining whether it will work.
Moreland's definition is also consistent with that found in Peter Angeles' Dictionary of Philosophy.
I would offer a number of cautions in Schaffner's approach.
1) A more gracious (but not complete) understanding of Peirce’s attempt toward verisimilitude is, perhaps, warranted than what Moreland presents here. However, Pierce nonetheless rejects foundationalism (i.e. the belief in the First Principles which do not need justification) and places primacy in method. He claims “The legitimacy of any claim to knowledge is not be found in it’s beginning point but rather in the method used to attain it.” All beliefs that cannot be evaluated scientifically fall into a second-class status (logical positivism). But how does Peirce know this? When someone offers “we should only trust science”, it is a self referentially refuting claim. The person has not measured or weighed anything for us; he has not described a physical system. Peirce offers a meta-scientific truth claim with which no experimentation is possible. What method, then, did Peirce use to come up with this method if method is more important than to knowledge than it’s beginning? Pierce rejects foundationalism yet depends on it to make his claim; otherwise he has no ultimate justification for his claim. Contra Peirce, it is an inherent rationality that drives the method for good science to take place. Therefore, one should not ‘pooh-pooh’ a belief just because it is not scientific either.
2) Just because a theory works, it does not follow that it is necessarily true. For example, Chiropractic has demonstrated some success with pain relief but contrary to previous views that success does not have anything to do with subluxation theory. More robust evidence suggests it has more to do with the stimulation of mechanoreceptors which inhibit nociceptors. If we were content to understand subluxation theory as working and therefore true, we would not tease out this more robust model. Put more simply, lying works but this does not mean it's true.
3) An idea is not true because it works, it works because it's true. And how does one judge that it has worked? At some point the pragmatist must assume correspondence theory ( which it rejects) to know if something works or not.
4) For a field that so struggles with legitimacy as does Chiropractic, it seems ill advised to me to make appeals to the irrelevency of correspondence theory and allow the tenticles of postmodernity to impede efforts to find out if the theories in consideration are actually true.
Schaffner also makes an appeal to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to make the point that different theories ( i.e. western vs eastern medicine) are incommensurable. That is, there is no common ground upon which to judge each other.
James Harris, however, who has leveled devastating criticisms of Kuhn, describes his theory this way:
The paradigm switch is abrupt, according to Kuhn, a ‘sudden and unstructured event’. One cannot reason oneself into the new paradigm. Kuhn describes the process of adopting a new paradigm as a ‘conversion experience’ which often ‘occurs in defiance of the evidence’ and which ‘can only be made on faith’.
And Kuhn himself says:
There is no neutral algorithm for theory choice, no systematic decision procedure which, properly applied, must lead each individual in the group to the same decision.
If we apply our test of self-reference we find Kuhn’s theory falsified by Kuhn’s theory. There is no neutral algorithm by which we could understand it to be true. Kuhn’s position thus devours itself. One could have a belief to the contrary and, if theories are incommensurable as Kuhn asserts, he cannot offer a reason why his is to be preferred. Moreover and consistent with our theme, Harris also states the following:
To say that two paradigms are incommensurable requires one to assume an intellectual position such that one can ‘stand outside’ the totality of any single paradigm. The point is one recognized by many philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. To develop any general theory about any totality which includes drawing the boundaries or limitations of that totality, one must also include as part of the argument of the general theory something which is outside of the totality…In the case of Kuhn, he imposes the limitation of his own theory by his claim of the incommensurability of paradigms.
To sum, those who make postmodern philosophical appeals to justify alternative medicine theories are both decidedly false and ill advised.
In a paper titled What is Philosophy? and Its Role in Science and the Healing Arts which he presented to the joint Association of Chiropractic Colleges Educational Conference (ACC) / Research Agenda Conference (RAC), Schaffner has proposed the works of Peirce, the father of pragmaticism, as a philosophical model to ground the sciences in alternative medicine. He defines pragmatism as:
The general philosophical sense of the term defines pragmatism as ' a philosophical view that a theory or concept should be evaluated in terms of how it works and it's consequences as the standard of action and thought. It is this sense that is well supported in the writings of the philosophical pragmatists, and which I am going to take as a general framework for the remainder of this paper.
For purposes of cross referencing, philosopher JP Moreland defines pragmaticism in the following way:
Pragmaticism means, roughly, the idea that science does not give us a progressively truer picture of the world, but aims at giving us theories that work in solving the problems before it. In fact, truth (understood as correspondence with a theory independent world) is irrelevant for science. Scientific theories allow us to predict phenomena, devise technology, improve experimental technique, represent phenomena in a simple, economical way and so forth. But theories can (and often do) work without being true or approximately true, and the truth of a theory is basically an irrelevant factor in determining whether it will work.
Moreland's definition is also consistent with that found in Peter Angeles' Dictionary of Philosophy.
I would offer a number of cautions in Schaffner's approach.
1) A more gracious (but not complete) understanding of Peirce’s attempt toward verisimilitude is, perhaps, warranted than what Moreland presents here. However, Pierce nonetheless rejects foundationalism (i.e. the belief in the First Principles which do not need justification) and places primacy in method. He claims “The legitimacy of any claim to knowledge is not be found in it’s beginning point but rather in the method used to attain it.” All beliefs that cannot be evaluated scientifically fall into a second-class status (logical positivism). But how does Peirce know this? When someone offers “we should only trust science”, it is a self referentially refuting claim. The person has not measured or weighed anything for us; he has not described a physical system. Peirce offers a meta-scientific truth claim with which no experimentation is possible. What method, then, did Peirce use to come up with this method if method is more important than to knowledge than it’s beginning? Pierce rejects foundationalism yet depends on it to make his claim; otherwise he has no ultimate justification for his claim. Contra Peirce, it is an inherent rationality that drives the method for good science to take place. Therefore, one should not ‘pooh-pooh’ a belief just because it is not scientific either.
2) Just because a theory works, it does not follow that it is necessarily true. For example, Chiropractic has demonstrated some success with pain relief but contrary to previous views that success does not have anything to do with subluxation theory. More robust evidence suggests it has more to do with the stimulation of mechanoreceptors which inhibit nociceptors. If we were content to understand subluxation theory as working and therefore true, we would not tease out this more robust model. Put more simply, lying works but this does not mean it's true.
3) An idea is not true because it works, it works because it's true. And how does one judge that it has worked? At some point the pragmatist must assume correspondence theory ( which it rejects) to know if something works or not.
4) For a field that so struggles with legitimacy as does Chiropractic, it seems ill advised to me to make appeals to the irrelevency of correspondence theory and allow the tenticles of postmodernity to impede efforts to find out if the theories in consideration are actually true.
Schaffner also makes an appeal to Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to make the point that different theories ( i.e. western vs eastern medicine) are incommensurable. That is, there is no common ground upon which to judge each other.
James Harris, however, who has leveled devastating criticisms of Kuhn, describes his theory this way:
The paradigm switch is abrupt, according to Kuhn, a ‘sudden and unstructured event’. One cannot reason oneself into the new paradigm. Kuhn describes the process of adopting a new paradigm as a ‘conversion experience’ which often ‘occurs in defiance of the evidence’ and which ‘can only be made on faith’.
And Kuhn himself says:
There is no neutral algorithm for theory choice, no systematic decision procedure which, properly applied, must lead each individual in the group to the same decision.
If we apply our test of self-reference we find Kuhn’s theory falsified by Kuhn’s theory. There is no neutral algorithm by which we could understand it to be true. Kuhn’s position thus devours itself. One could have a belief to the contrary and, if theories are incommensurable as Kuhn asserts, he cannot offer a reason why his is to be preferred. Moreover and consistent with our theme, Harris also states the following:
To say that two paradigms are incommensurable requires one to assume an intellectual position such that one can ‘stand outside’ the totality of any single paradigm. The point is one recognized by many philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein. To develop any general theory about any totality which includes drawing the boundaries or limitations of that totality, one must also include as part of the argument of the general theory something which is outside of the totality…In the case of Kuhn, he imposes the limitation of his own theory by his claim of the incommensurability of paradigms.
To sum, those who make postmodern philosophical appeals to justify alternative medicine theories are both decidedly false and ill advised.