Philosophy Naturalized a Bit

Abstract

Ronald Giere (RG) was once a philosopher of science of the traditional logical-empiricist type. As a good logical empiricist, he took it as his job to explicate the philosophical that is, logical foundations of science. But then he saw the light. As he tells us in the preface to Explaining Science (ES), in the early 1980s 'I began to lose my faith in the general program. My skepticism progressed to the point that I now believe there are no special philosophical foundations to any science' (xvi). Accordingly, like not a few of his colleagues, RG decided to bale out. Instead of explaining science philosophically, he concluded that explanation must be 'naturalistic' (xvii) meaning, I take it, that one should try to explain how science is actually done in laboratories, offices, seminar rooms, and so on, without reducing one's account to any pre-given base like logic. The explanatory framework should be developed hand-in-hand with empirical research. This is music to our ears in science studies, where it goes without saying that the way to develop a systematic understanding of science is actually to look at it, examine it, think about it all the obvious things that traditional philosophy of science has been reluctant to do. So we should welcome RG's defection from philosophy and applaud his naturalizing impulse. But that does not mean that we have to accept the particular naturalized account of science that RG offers. Indeed, the question of what to make of ES is pressing, since in it RG