Relativism and Skepticism vs Rationality in Philosophy and Science | Tomsk State University Journal of Philosophy, Sociology and Political Science. 2021. № 60. DOI: 10.17223/1998863X/60/11

Relativism and Skepticism vs Rationality in Philosophy and Science

The article considers whether philosophy deals with the same criteria and the same type of rationality as natural sciences. The research method involves inversion in the spirit of John Langshaw Austin, according to which the meaning of the concept is revealed by analyzing its opposite - in this case, replacing rationality with the concepts of relativism, skepticism and irrationalism. The corresponding concepts in science and philosophy are analyzed by comparing the ideas of the methodologist and historian of science Thomas Kuhn and the philosopher Richard Rorty. It is shown that Kuhn and Rorty are the most interesting figures in this comparison, since Rorty's transfer of the categorical apparatus of Kuhn's concept of the development of science to philosophy proper presents the clearest picture of the “frontal” comparison of relativism (rationality) in “mature sciences” and philosophy. The original problem is to investigate whether philosophy deals with the same criteria and the same type of rationality as natural sciences. Further, it is shown that Kuhn's relativism is an implicit appearance of the skeptical position he took under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's skeptical philosophy. Errol Morris initially raised this problem in his recent critical assessment of Kuhn's skepticism, based on the involvement of Saul Kripke, in two independent aspects: 1) the concept of a posteriori necessary truths as a refutation of Kuhn's relitivism, and 2) Kripke's skeptical interpretation of Wittgenstein's late philosophy. The use of the Austin method is quite compatible with the Wittgenstein method, which required philosophy not to explain, but to describe. In this case, the description of the above examples of the relationship between science and philosophy, again the assumed relativism and skepticism, allows a less traditional view of the problem.

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Keywords

rationalism, relativism, Thomas Kuhn, Richard Rorty, Ludwig Wittgenstein, skepticism

Authors

Name	Organization	E-mail
Tselishcheva Oksana I.	Institute of Philosophy and Law of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences	oxanatse@gmail.com

Всего: 1

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