Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T05:26:08.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Descriptive vs Revisionary Social Epistemology: The Former as Seen by the Latter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Steve Fuller
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Peter Strawson (1959) subtitled the most celebrated book in ordinary language philosophy, Individuals, ‘An essay in descriptive metaphysics’, he shocked mainly for having reintroduced ‘metaphysics’ into intellectually respectable English a quarter-century after A.J. Ayer had consigned it to the logical positivists' index of forbidden philosophical words (Passmore 1966, 504). Few at the time appreciated the import of the modifiers ‘descriptive’ and its opposite, ‘revisionary’. Now, another half century on, philosophers have come around to Bertrand Russell's original view that both the ordinary language philosophy Strawson championed and the ideal scientific language philosophy Ayer championed offer alternative metaphysical visions. The remaining question of philosophical interest is what hangs in the balance between a descriptive and revisionary approach to metaphysics – or, for that matter, any branch of philosophy. This paper critically examines the currently dominant descriptive approach from a revisionary standpoint, initially relying on the terms Strawson uses to frame the distinction, and then moving outward to consider its implications for our understanding of the history of modern philosophy, especially the ‘naturalist’ sensibility that has been especially influential in analytic social epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , June 2004 , pp. 23 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Austin, John L (1960) Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borradori, Giovanna (1994) The American Philosophers: Conversations with Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Nozick, Danto, Rorty, Cavell, MacIntyre, and Kuhn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, Robert. (2000) ‘Vocabularies of pragmatism: Synthesizing naturalism and historicism”. In Brandom, R., ed. Rorty and His Critics. (pp. 156–82) Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cohen, Morris and Nagel, Ernest (1934) An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda (2003) Epistemic injustice and a role for virtue in the politics of knowing. In Brady, M. and Pritchard, D., eds. Moral and Epistemic Virtues. (pp. 139–58) Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fuller, Steve (1996) “Recent work in social epistemology.” American Philosophical Quarterly 33: 149–66Google Scholar
Fuller, Steve (2000) Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fuller, Steve (2002a) “Prolegomena to a sociology of philosophy in the 20th century English-speaking world.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32: 151–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Steve (2002b) “Making up the past: a response to Sharrock and Leudar.” History of the Human Sciences 15 (4): 115–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Steve and Collier, James (2004) Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge. 2nd edn. (Orig. 1993) Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1975) The Emergence of Probability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hamblin, CL (1970) Fallacies. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Israel, Jonathan (2001) Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (1993) The Advancement of Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip (2001) Science, Truth and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklick, Bruce (2001) A History of Philosophy in America, 1720-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno (1987) Science in Action. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Passmore, John (1966) A Hundred Years of Philosophy. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary (1975) Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, volume 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, WVO (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1955) “Two concepts of rules.” Philosophical Review 64: 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, John (1972) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Fred ed. (1994) Socializing Epistemology. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid (1962) “Philosophy and the scientific image of man.” In Colodny, R., ed. Frontiers of Science and Philosophy. (pp. 35–78) Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Sokal, Alan & Bricmont, Jean (1998) Intellectual Impostures. London: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Strauss, Leo (1952) Persecution and the Art of Writing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter (1959) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen.Google Scholar