Laudans Theory of Scientific Aims Essay -- Laudan Science Utopia Argu

Laudan's Theory of Scientific Aims I criticize Laudan's constraints on cognitive aims as presented in Science and Values. These constraints are axiological consistency and non-utopianism. I argue that (i) Laudan's prescription for non utopian aims is too restrictive because it excludes ideals and characterizes as irrational or non-rational numerous human contingencies. (ii) We aim to ideals because there is no cogent way to specify in advance what degree of deviation from an ideal is acceptable. Thus, one cannot dispense with ideals. (iii) Laudan does not distinguish difficult from impossible goals, making his injunction against utopianism imprecise. It is "semantically utopian" and, furthermore, a prescription for conservatism and mediocrity. (iv) Goals often contradict each other or are at least partially incompatible. Since Laudan does not say how to prioritize incompatible aims, axiological consistency is an utopian desideratum. Thus, his constraints on cognitive aims contradict one another. Finally, (v), Laudan's axiological constraints are too weak and in order to strengthen them, he must invoke without justification some implicit pre-philosophical cognitive aims. This opens the logical possibility of axiological relativism, which Laudan attempted from the beginning to avoid. Laudan's Theory of Aims In Science and Values, Laudan has developed the view that our scientific aims can sometimes be rationally selected by imposing two constraints (1) on them: 1. they should be jointly consistent, 2. a pragmatic constraint of empirical realizability, or non-utopianism. This last requisite follows from Laudan`s means-ends conception of rationality, To adopt a goal with the feature that we can conceive of no actions... ...victory, one obtained by just means, i.e., the means employed should not constitute a greater evil than the evil the war was intended to remedy. (13) Since some axiological inconsistencies can be only pragmatic, it is not always clear whether some collection of ideals is mutually inconsistent. (14) Cf., N. Rescher, The Strife of Systems, chapters 7 & 8. (15) When this happens, our passionate nature will decide what our intellect cannot adequately settle. (16) Laudancs meta-aim of axiological consistency is a goal suspect of being 'demonstrably utopian', because it is not likely that we will ever have a theory of rational value priorizations. So it is not reasonable by Laudan's meta-methodology own standards. If so, Laudan's theory would be suspect of being self-referentially inconsistent. (17) Cf., Laudan, 1996, Beyond Positivism and Relativism, p. 16