Valeriano Iranzo

The paper is a critical examination of some aspects of Laudan's views in his book Science and Values. Not only do the aims of science change; there are axiological disputes in science as well. Scientific disagreements are not solely theoretical or methodological. Progress in science consists not only in developing new theories more suitable for implementing certain epistemic values than earlier ones but also in reaching a deeper understanding of those values. The paper considers whether there are principles to guide axiological choices in science, whether the task of assessing the legitimacy of goals makes any sense. Larry Laudan's criteria to settle questions concerning the aims of science are critically canvassed. According to Laudan, axiological choices are on the same footing as the theoretical and methodological ones: all of them may be objectively grounded. The generality of the principles and their naturalistic flavour are the most remarkable merits of Laudan's account but the results are rather meagre. His principle of coherence may be, in the end, a mere a posteriori justification of changes in axiological direction carried out by the scientific community. The rejection of a demonstrable utopian goal, granting naturalistic assumptions, is completely sound but it has a very limited scope. The paper suggests that science could not demonstrate much about goals. From the rejection of semantic utopianism we can draw a need for a previous clarification rather than sustantive criticisms and, finally, Laudan's charge of epistemic utopianism is very controversial

According to the “no-miracles argument” (NMA), truth is the best explanation of the predictive-instrumental success of scientific theories. A standard objection against NMA is that it is viciously circular. In Scientific Realism: How Science Tracks Truth Stathis Psillos has claimed that the circularity objection can be met when NMA is supplemented with a reliabilist approach to justification. I will try to show, however, that scientific realists cannot take much comfort from this policy: if reliabilism makes no qualifications about the domain where inference to the best explanation is reliable, scientific realists flagrantly beg the question. A qualified version of reliabilism, on the other side, does not entitle us to infer the realist conclusion. I conclude, then, that Psillos’s proposal does not make any significant progress for scientific realism.

Ciencia, valores y relativismo discute el papel desempeñado por los valores en la práctica científica. El subtítulo del libro-una defensa de la filosofía de la ciencia-es asimismo indicativo de la posición que defiende Rodríguez Alcázar. La crisis del fundamentismo en la teoría del conocimiento, y el derrumbe de la Concepción Heredada en la filosofía de la ciencia, han llevado a cuestionar la legitimidad del propio discurso filosófico sobre la ciencia y el conocimiento. Enfoques como el pragmatismo rortyano, el anarquismo epistemológico de Feyerabend, o las escuelas sociologistas, manifiestan este rechazo. Contra estas corrientes, las tesis nucleares de Ciencia, valores y relativismo son, primero, que la filosofía de la ciencia se distingue del resto de ciencias de la ciencia por su perspectiva normativa; y, segundo, que una filosofía de la ciencia así entendida permite evitar tanto el fundamentismo como el relativismo.