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What’s so bad about scientism?
- Source :
- Social Epistemology. 31:351-367
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Informa UK Limited, 2017.
-
Abstract
- In their attempt to defend philosophy from accusations of uselessness made by prominent scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, some philosophers respond with the charge of ‘scientism.’ This charge makes endorsing a scientistic stance, a mistake by definition. For this reason, it begs the question against these critics of philosophy, or anyone who is inclined to endorse a scientistic stance, and turns the scientism debate into a verbal dispute. In this paper, I propose a different definition of scientism, and thus a new way of looking at the scientism debate. Those philosophers who seek to defend philosophy against accusations of uselessness would do philosophy a much better service, I submit, if they were to engage with the definition of scientism put forth in this paper, rather than simply make it analytic that scientism is a mistake.
Details
- ISSN :
- 14645297 and 02691728
- Volume :
- 31
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Social Epistemology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........bb647b005f5872d5c3e497cdfd3d210a