Scientism and Science’s Unlimited Domain

The logical positivist Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) deemed science’s domain to be unlimited. His position perfectly captures what critics later called scientism. So it must be said that the term “scientism” is often used as little more than a term of abuse… This essay asks questions about science’s domain. It’s also about whether or not many non-scientific questions (at least the debated ones) can ever be answered. In other words, are many religious, philosophical, aesthetic, ethical, etc. questions unanswerable? Alternatively, are my own questions about questions an implicit (perhaps explicit) reversion to (some new kind of) logical positivism?

“When we say that scientific knowledge is unlimited, we mean ‘there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science.’”

— Rudolf Carnap

Many people are shocked by the position advanced by Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) above. Or at least they’re shocked by similar positions expressed by other philosophers and scientists.

Some philosophers are shocked too.

William P. Alston, for example, wrote (in his paper ‘Yes, Virginia, There is a Real World’) that it was “a piece of outrageous imperialism” to believe (or claim) that scientific knowledge is the only kind of knowledge, or that only the sciences can answer certain relevant questions.

On the other hand, many other people will strongly support Carnap’s position (at least in various qualified ways).

In any case, the opening passage perfectly captures the (or a) logical-positivist position (see ‘Logical positivism’) as it was expressed in the late 1920s. (This was published in Carnap’s 1928 book Der logische Aufbau der Welt — The Logical Structure of the World.)

Carnap’s words also perfectly capture what people now take to be scientism.

“Many scientists bow down to science”, “science is a religion”, “scientists are dogmatic and fundamentalist”, etc… You can see the common theme here. Sceptics would class all this as psychological projection or even schoolboy tactics. In other words, it’s all a case of accusing your opponents of exactly the same things they’ve just accused you of.

When Rudolf Carnap’s words above are quoted, they’re done so almost exclusively in relation to what the authors call “scientism”. Consequently, these words have been quoted many times (see here.) For example, you’ll find them in the book Scientism: Science, Ethics and Religion, as well as in Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism. (It can be suspected that these authors found this passage from Carnap in the writings of other critics of scientism, not from Carnap’s own book, The Logical Structure of the World.)

So it’s a little odd that these new(ish) books are relying on a passage from 1928 to summarise the (or a) scientistic position. (See the last section of this essay for some more very-retrospective bashing of logical positivism.)

Science Unlimited?

To sum up this essay’s particular take on Rudolf Carnap’s words.

The opening passage states that scientific knowledge is “unlimited”. Indeed, Carnap’s definition (“there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science”) is an explicit reference to science’s unlimited (or unrestricted) role. In other words, there is “no question” (or subject or issue) which is beyond science.

This is where Carnap’s position must be both qualified and explained a little.

There are indeed some (even many) questions which cannot be answered by the sciences. However, that’s because they are — perhaps sometimes (almost) by definition — unanswerable.

In other words, no answers outside the sciences can ever be confirmed, tested, verified, quantified, etc. Consequently, they’re never conclusive. Indeed, it’s that lack of conclusiveness which takes such questions (or even their answers) beyond science.

Now some critics of scientism may freely acknowledge this. That is, they may admit that (some of) the questions which the sciences can’t answer aren’t unanswerable by any other discipline either…

However, that isn’t usually the case.

Many people believe that their own chosen religion, philosophy, or theory can indeed answer such questions. It’s just that the sciences can’t.

So can we ever know that an answer has been provided by religion, philosophy, etc?

History has often shown us that this isn’t the case.

Thus, the questions which are answered by non-scientific domains aren’t really answered by them at all. They remain in perpetual dispute.

Such is the case with most — even all — religious, philosophical, political, aesthetic, etc. answers to those questions which aren’t — or which can’t be — tackled by the sciences.

All that said, this isn’t simply a scientific take on (possibly) unanswerable questions. There are many other ways to approach this issue.

Take the American-English philosopher Gordon Park Baker (1938–2002).

Gordan Park Baker

In his ‘φιλοσοφια: εικων και ειδος’ (which can be found in Philosophy in Britain Today), Baker wrote:

“We should [] make serious efforts at raising questions about the questions commonly viewed as being genuinely philosophical. Perhaps the proper answers to such questions are often, even if not always, further questions!”

All sorts of questions have been deemed to be profound, deep and worthy of serious thought. These questions are usually also deemed to be “beyond science”. So perhaps it’s just as important — and indeed just as philosophical — to ask questions about these questions. Or as Gordon Baker put it:

“The unexamined question is not worth answering.”

Baker added:

“To accept a question as making good sense and embark on building a philosophical theory to answer it is already to make the decisive step in the whole investigation.”

Note that those words aren’t the views of a scientist.

They aren’t part of science either.

Relevantly, Gordon Baker’s positions certainly aren’t “scientistic”.

So perhaps these particular questions about questions are partly Wittgensteinian in nature. Indeed, Baker makes more Wittgensteinian points in the following passage:

“[T]o suppose that the answers to philosophical questions await discovery is to presuppose that the questions themselves make sense and stand in need of answers (not already available). Why should this not be a fit subject for philosophical scrutiny?”

Carnap and other logical positivists (i.e., well before Gordon Baker) did believe that these non-scientific questions were a fit subject for philosophical scrutiny. And, since then, such questions have been scrutinised by other philosophers too.

If Not Science, Then What?

Stephen Jay Gould’s politically diplomatic solution to a related problem. Hence its extremely neat and contrived nature.

Recall that Carnap concluded that “there is no question whose answer is in principle unattainable by science”.

So if the argument is that some answers aren’t attainable by the sciences, then by what discipline, philosophy, theory, domain or group/person are they attainable by?

It can be supposed that this depends on the question or the precise subject.

So, to start off with a trivial example, would we expect the sciences to have an answer to this question? -

What is the the greatest rock song of all time?

Or:

What is the true religion?

More strongly:

Is war ever right?

Let’s just say that the sciences can’t give us answers to these questions.

That may be because there can’t be a answer to them (at least not a conclusive answer). That said, the sciences may help with data, arguments, evidence, facts, etc. The problem is that these things alone will still never provide an answer.

More specifically, which facts, data, evidence, etc. would establish what the greatest rock song of all time is? Some people may offer certain facts, data or evidence to help their case, but would they alone establish this?

Say that someone states that ‘Making Your Mind Up’ (by the “power combo” Bucks Fizz) is the greatest rock song ever because it has sold the most. Thus, we can make the point that the rock song that sells the most is by definition the greatest rock song ever. However, that’s a mere stipulative definition. There’s no reason why everyone — or even anyone — should accept this definition of the greatest rock song ever.

So other people will define the greatest rock song ever in other ways and by other standards.

The problem is that these other accounts won’t be conclusive (or definitive) either.

This is the reason why the sciences may have a problem with providing answers to these questions. Again, this isn’t because the questions (or subjects/issues) “transcend science”. It will be because, in a strong sense, there are no answers at all. Thus, it’s because there are no answers at all that such questions are deemed to transcend science. It’s not that answers are indeed forthcoming, and those answers transcend science.

Or, rather, there are many answers that many people will give to these questions. However, none of them can be established as being true or even correct.

The same goes for the question, “Is war ever right?”.

Apart from it being a highly generalised question, it supposedly transcends the sciences not simply because it belongs to the unique realm of philosophy, religion, ethics or morality. It transcends the sciences because no tests, data, observations, evidence, facts, etc. could ever establish a (conclusive?) answer to that question. Again, that’s because, in a strong sense, there is no answer…

Or, rather, there are many answers that many people will give to this question. However, none of them can be established as being true.

So, in these cases, it’s not that there are questions which fall to domains other than the sciences because they transcend science in some strange or indefinable ways. Rather, no genuine answers to these questions will ever be forthcoming whichever religious person, philosopher, theorist, etc. claims to have the answers.

As for putting Carnap’s opening passage in its general context.

You Needn’t Be a Carnapian or a Logical Positivist

All the above isn’t a categorical defence of Rudolf Carnap’s logical positivism.

So, sure, there are problems with both Carnap’s own positions, and with logical positivism generally.

Is that a surprise?

For example, it’s easy to find Carnap’s views about the extremely circumscribed role of philosophy to be a little off-putting. (The same can be said about Wittgenstein’s positions on philosophy from the 1920s to his death in 1951.) Similarly, Carnap’s views on the “immediately given” — and how such a thing was once believed to provide the fundamental basis of science — seems a little old-fashioned today.

That said, perhaps most — or even all — philosophical positions from the 1920s seem a little old-fashioned today. Similarly, perhaps almost all philosophical views from today will seem a little old-fashioned at the beginning of the 22nd century… and probably long before that!

What’s more, there are problems with other philosophical movements and positions from the 1920s and beyond, just as most other people will have problems with other movements and other positions from that period and beyond.

What’s more, it was former logical positivists, the admirers of logical positivism and those philosophers who were very sympathetic to science who (to be rhetorical for a moment) destroyed logical positivism. In other words, religious (or “spiritual”) commentators, idealists, postmodern philosophers, poststructuralists, etc. didn’t destroy logical positivism. Rather, these people simply sneered at logical positivism long after philosophers such as Quine, Popper, Putnam, Strawson, Goodman, Ayer, etc. had already dealt with many of its flaws. In other words, many religious, postmodernist, poststructuralist, idealist, etc. critics of logical positivism simply picked up the crumbs which had been left for them by those aforementioned philosophers — all of whom were very positive toward science generally.

To sum up.

What the logical positivists wrote and claimed (from the 1920s to the 1940s) is gone over with a fine tooth comb by self-styled advocates of anti-scientism. To such critics, then, it’s as if logical positivism was the only philosophical movement which took wrong turns and claimed things which can be disputed.

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Julian Baggini’s Banal, Unoriginal and Dogmatic Derrida

This is my final essay on Julian Baggini’s Prospect article ‘Think Jacques Derrida was a charlatan? Look again’. (It’s a follow up to my ‘Julian Baggini on the Anti-Derrida ‘Cambridge Affair’ of 1992’ and ‘Philosopher Julian Baggini on Derrida and the Anglo-Saxon Academy’.) The following focuses on various banal, unoriginal and dogmatic claims by — and ideas from - Derrida, at least as they’re offered up by Julian Baggini.

Jacques Derrida and Julian Baggini.

“British-trained philosophers like myself don’t know much about Derrida, though that doesn’t stop some of them dismissing him. I don’t dismiss him, but nor do I know enough to be able to sum him up.”

— Julian Baggini. [The source of that passage can be found here. See note at the end of this essay.]

(i) Introduction

(ii) Julian Baggini’s Original Derrida

(iii) Derrida’s (or Baggini’s) Dogmatic Claims

(iv) Derrida’s (or Baggini’s) Banal Claims

(v) Conclusion

To offer up a forced binary opposition: Julian Baggini is on the side of those who believe that Jacques Derrida was a (to use his own words) “true philosopher”. The other side of that opposition believes that he was a “charlatan”. (See Baggini’s own forced binary opposition of Stalinism-vs-Catholicism later.)

The Derrida-was-a-true-philosopher position dates back to the late 1960s… and even before that.

Baggini writes:

“One of Derrida’s examiners at his prestigious high school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, wrote of his work: ‘The answers are brilliant in the very same way that they are obscure.’”

Perhaps this examiner was simply bowled over — or even hoodwinked — by Derrida’s writing style and its inherent (poetic or literary) obscurantism. Of course, that writing style is one of the (main) reasons why so many people still admire Derrida.

So how did this examiner know that Derrida’s answers were “brilliant” at the very same time as acknowledging that they were “obscure”? They were clearly not obscure enough for this examiner not to recognise that they were also brilliant.

Thus, perhaps Derrida’s answers either weren’t obscure at all, or they couldn’t actually have been known to be brilliant — precisely because they were obscure.

The same line argument can be aimed at Michel Foucault.

According to Baggini, Foucault said that Derrida’s work was “either an F or an A+”.

Nice line! But what does it mean?

Am I being a “pedant” here?

Am I merely “logic chopping”?

In other words, am I failing to simply immerse myself in the poetic and quasi-religious experience of reading Derrida?

On the other hand, if Derrida was truly a “joker” (as so many have claimed), then all this is made a little clearer.

Was Derrida a joker?

It’s hard to tell. Take the following words from Professor Eric Schliesser:

“Now one need not be friend of Žižek (who makes Derrida seem highminded), to recognize that one, thereby, is in no position to recognize that sometimes — maybe all the time in our fallen world in which our hands are sullied with innocent blood everywhere — the stance of the jokester is the only morally responsible stance.”

So was Derrida a joker, and that was a good thing?

Was he a joker, and that was bad thing?

Or was Derrida simply not a joker at all?

Julian Baggini’s Original Derrida

Some of the ideas which Julian Baggini claims (or sometimes merely hints) are original to Jacques Derrida… aren’t original to Derrida.

Indeed, the very opening subtext of Baggini’s article is a good example of this. It goes like this:

“A true philosopher: Derrida questioned his own peculiar methods as much as the things he was questioning.”

We also have this:

“Derrida’s project is diametrically opposed to that of most philosophers.”

Baggini adds that “Derrida’s whole project was one of radical doubt”.

Is Baggini (or Peter Salmon) really claiming that all this radical questioning wasn’t the case with many of the philosophers who came before Derrida?

Alternatively, is Baggini referring exclusively to those philosophers who belong to what he calls “the Anglo-Saxon academy”?

Now Baggini does seem to claim (or sometimes simply imply) that this radical questioning is peculiar to Derrida…

Actually, he seems to have it both ways.

Baggini emphasises Derrida’s profound originality (“Derrida’s project is diametrically opposed to that of most philosophers”), at the same time as stressing that he was part of a tradition:

“For all his 20th-century jargon, Derrida at heart belongs to a long line of sceptics that traces back to Pyrrho in Ancient Greece.”

Of course, it can be provisionally accepted that profound originality and being part of a tradition can exist together.

So perhaps it depends.

A tradition of “radical doubt” (even of one’s “own peculiar methods”) can most obviously be found in René Descartes’s work, and later in David Hume’s. It can also be found further back in history (as Baggini himself acknowledges) with various Greek philosophers.

Even Baggini’s stress on aporia isn’t original to Derrida.

Take this description:

“In philosophy, an aporia is a philosophical puzzle or a seemingly irresoluble impasse in an inquiry, often arising as a result of equally plausible yet inconsistent premises (i.e. a paradox).”

To take only a single example, that passage is an almost perfect account of Kant’s antinomies.

In addition, most general accounts of aporia mention its use in Greek philosophy. Worse for Baggini, it’s even called an “instrument of investigation in analytic philosophy”!

However, it’s the following additional definition of aporia that Baggini (as well as Salmon) link specifically to Derrida:

“It can also denote the state of being perplexed, or at a loss, at such a puzzle or impasse.”

Except that many of the critics of Derrida won’t see any states of being perplexed in his work. Quite the opposite in fact (as will be shown in a few moments).

What about Derrida’s position on truth — is that original?

Baggini writes the following:

“He was not a nihilist who denied truth, but a sceptic who thought ‘we cannot know whether there is truth or not.’”

Yet doesn’t that leave us in roughly — even exactly — the same position as a nihilist, or, indeed, a relativist? In other words, what practical or philosophical difference is there between denying truth outright and claiming that “we cannot know whether there is truth or not”?

More to the point, what do the words “we cannot know whether there is truth or not” mean?

Is it a poeticism?

Is Derrida’s non-nihilist position on truth something so deep and profound that it’s beyond explanation (or justification), and even without a (what Baggini calls) “fixed meaning”?

Derrida’s (or Baggini’s) Dogmatic Claims

In the “Searle-Derrida affair”, Derrida expressed lots of categorical claims, used the word “truth” about his own positions, and displayed written and verbal anger at John Searle and his other critics.

Derrida (if only via Baggini) makes a lot of categorical — even dogmatic — claims.

For example, we have this categorical statement:

“Deconstruction is not destruction, as he was at pains to point out.”

Who says that deconstruction is not destruction?

Well, obviously, Baggini does, and Derrida did too.

Many others argue that deconstruction is (a mode of) destruction, and such people have done so in great detail.

What’s more, Martin Heidegger’s own term Destruktion was literally based on the word “destruction”. Take these words:

“Heidegger employs a number of words for ‘destruction’ — including Destruktion, Zerstörung, and ‘dismantling,’ ‘unbuilding,’ or ‘deconstruction’ (Abbau).”

More relevantly, Derrida borrowed this term from Heidegger himself.

Many sympathetic commentators on both Heidegger and Derrida see both Destruktion and deconstruction as being (philosophical) means of… destruction. (See the many links here.)

Now, of course, no one is claiming that (Derrida’s) deconstruction and (Heidegger’s) Destruktion are identical. Still, even if critical commentators are ignorant of Heidegger’s coinage, they still have a multitude of reasons for believing that deconstruction is a philosophical mode of destruction.

What’s more, even if Baggini provides arguments, then there’s still no reason why other people should accept his categorical (or dogmatic) claim that deconstruction is not destruction.

Another example of a dogmatic — or at least categorical — claim can be found when Baggini says (speaking of Derrida’s position) that

“[p]hilosophers’ attempts to pin down words are as futile as nailing jelly to a wall”.

Here’s another example:

“[W]hen talking of promising as a speech act, Searle wrote: ‘I am ignoring marginal, fringe, and partially defective promises.’ For Derrida this was inexcusable.”

Note the very-strong word “inexcusable”.

Here’s another categorical claim:

“By only focusing on abstracted, tidied-up, ideal forms of speech acts, Searle was ignoring how they actually work.”

Baggini is writing about the complexity of speech acts as they occur in the (as it were) real world. Thus, it’s a position against idealisation and rigidity. Yet Derrida was still telling us — in strong words — how speech acts “actually work”…

Yes, that’s right: Derrida told us how speech acts actually work.

So Derrida must have believed he knew how speech acts work. He must have also believed that he knew that John Searle didn’t know how they work. Yet Baggini also writes that

“Derrida thought it was another example of philosophy choosing a false precision over more truthful messiness”.

Is there false precision in Derrida’s statements about Searle’s (supposed) “false precision”? (Note that Baggini uses the term “truthful” about Derrida’s — as opposed to Searle’s — position.)

Baggini also writes:

“‘Crucial to [Derrida’s] thinking,’ says Salmon, was an opposition to the ‘violence of any gesture that pretends (assumes, supposes, presupposes) to know.’”

Did Derrida know that we can’t know any given x… or know anything at all?

Alternatively, did Derrida simply pretend, assume or suppose that he knew that we couldn’t know?

To move on. Some of Derrida’s ideas aren’t only unoriginal, they’re also banal.

Derrida’s (or Baggini’s) Banal Claims

The charge of banality raises the question (again) as to Baggini’s assumption (actually, he states it too) that most (many? all?) critics of Derrida haven’t actually read him. (This assumption was featured in my ‘Julian Baggini on the Anti-Derrida ‘Cambridge Affair’ of 1992’). Yet some critics have understood Derrida well enough to realise that it’s often the case that banality lurks underneath the arcane prose. Indeed, some of Derrida’s critics have cited many actual examples of this.

For a new example of banality, Baggini informs us that Derrida attempted

“to show that the way we think of things is not the only way they can be thought”.

We also have this:

“[A]s Derrida incessantly argued, all categorisations are to some degree arbitrary.”

The important and relevant word (from a philosophical point of view at least) is the last one — “arbitrary”.

The word “arbitrary” is strong.

Or at the least that word is often used rhetorically. Relevantly, it can be argued that it’s used rhetorically in the passage from Baggini above.

So here’s one definition of the word “arbitrariness”:

“Arbitrariness is the quality of being ‘determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle’. It is also used to refer to a choice made without any specific criterion or restraint.”

Derrida and postmodern philosophers have claimed (or often simply assumed) that something is arbitrary if it isn’t necessary. What’s more, poststructuralists and postmodern philosophers have really played on this assumption, and it’s even central to their various philosophies. (Think of the omnipresent phrase “the social construction of [x]” in this context.)

In detail. Because nature, culture, our mind/brain or whatever doesn’t force us to categorise x in the way (or ways) that we do actually categorise it, or “name” any given x with the name we do actually give it, then (the Derridean position is) it must be the case that any categorisation at all must be purely arbitrary.

Yet that’s not the case.

True, our choice of names or words are contingent, and, in a sense, of little importance to the philosopher. (Locke made this point way back in the 17th century. See here.) In other words, we needn’t have called trees “trees” or mountains “mountains”. So, sure, that’s just an English word, and the French word for a tree is just a French word too. However, this is to conflate not only linking the words we choose with contingency, and thus with arbitrariness, but literally all categorisations too.

Here’s another banality from Derrida (or from Baggini):

“For Derrida, it is not that nature has no joints, or that the world can simply be carved however we please. Rather, there is always more than one way to carve.”

Okay.

Asking questions about nature’s joints isn’t banal. However, Baggini must at least acknowledge that these types of question have been asked by numerous analytic philosophers in the 20th century — both before and after Derrida. Indeed, such philosophers have even used the phrase “carve nature at its joints”, and questioned the assumption — and even the possibility — that we can do so.

Baggini continued:

“[E]very slice divorces us from possible alternative ways of seeing and understanding. Naming is thus, says Salmon, a ‘founding act of violence [] before there is a road taken and a road not taken.’”

Now this ethical addition to a metaphysical thesis may well be original to Derrida. (The metaphysical thesis itself has been held by many analytic philosophers.) Or perhaps not. Derrida actually had very similar view to Emmanuel Levinas on this matter (see here).

Now take this banality:

“As a graduate student Derrida felt he faced a choice between just two available options: the ‘Catholics’ or the ‘Stalinists’. He rejected that dichotomy and this fed into his later attacks on binary oppositions as being philosophically fallacious.”

Sure, Baggini doesn’t actually quote Derrida here. Indeed, it may well be the case that Derrida himself didn’t actually use the term “binary opposition” in relation to this particular biographical choice of his.

In any case, having a problem with being forced to choose between only two options (or even seeing things in terms of only two options) is a commonplace situation noted by many adult human beings. What’s more, it’s commonplace to state that “there are more than two options” in many particular cases.

Sure, there may well be some genuine binary oppositions.

However, is Stalinism-or-Catholicism really such a thing?

Instead, was this just an option faced by a particular French philosopher (i.e., Derrida) at a particular time in history? In other words, why dignify this event in Derrida’s life with the pompous (technical) term “binary opposition”?

Conclusion

Julian Baggini finishes off his article on Derrida by saying that those with open minds

“will surely have their minds changed by Salmon’s scintillating account of his life and thought”.

That’s possible.

However, why on earth would (or could) a single book on Derrida make such a big difference? It may do so to those who’re new to Derrida. However, could it really be the case that those who previously believed that Derrida was a “charlatan” would suddenly stop believing that after reading Peter Salmon’s book?

Is that all it takes?

To put that another way.

Surely the understanding of Derrida isn’t dependent on a single biography written by Peter Salmon. Personally, I’ve never really understood Derrida. That’s the case even though I’ve been attempting to do so since the late 1990s.

So perhaps my true understanding was all dependent on reading Salmon’s biography of Derrida (published in 2020).

This single book may be my own — and many readers — gateway into Derrida.

---

Note

(*) To be fair to Julian Baggini, this passage was written in 2004. Perhaps things have changed since then. Indeed, perhaps Peter Salmon’s biography changes everything when it comes to “British-trained philosophers” — as well as others — getting Derrida.

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