The Contexts of Scientific Justification. Some Reflections on the Relation Between Epistemological Contextualism and Philosophy of Science

Abstract

Problems of knowledge and justification are central both to philosophy of science and to analytic epistemology. By “analytic epistemology” I mean here the North American tradition of epistemology that has developed out of the Viennese logical empiricist philosophy of science after the Vienna Circle’s emigration to America and Canada. Analytic epistemology has since become a philosophical enterprise separate from philosophy of science. In fact, these fields of study have drifted so far apart that it is sometimes hard to think that the two have common origins. Particularly the debates about knowledge in these fields seem to have not much in common: While philosophers of science have been concerned with refining and revising models for the reconstruction and assessment of scientific theories, analytic epistemologists have almost exclusively debated the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge as justified true belief. 1 Gettier’s problem 2 has dominated the discussion. Each time a new set of conditions is suggested, a novel Gettier-type counter-example emerges. Nowadays, “Gettier” is a label for epistemologists’ activities rather than a proper name. 3 In recent years, significant re-orientations have occurred in both analytic epistemology and philosophy of science. In analytic epistemology, the focus has shifted from analyses of the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge to the issue of justification itself, and analytic philosophers have begun to consider the structure of epistemic justification, its internalist or externalist nature,4 its sources and limits. 5 In philosophy of science, formal models for the reconstruction and assessment of theories have lost their vigour. Instead, philosophers of science have begun to acknowledge that scientific rationality has to do with giving and asking for reasons, making value-laden decisions, and so on. In both fields, however, a new topic has emerged, one which might help to bring the two traditions closer together again. This is the topic of context: scholars in both analytic epistemology and philosophy of science have begun to pay attention to contextual factors. They concede the context-relativity of epistemic concepts and argumentation. More specifically, they argue that the validity of justification procedures depends on various features of context rather than on absolute epistemic criteria. 6