Daniel Andler

David Atkinson asks whether nonempirical constructions can lead to genuine knowledge in science, and answers in the negative. Thought experiments, in his view, are to be commended only insofar as they eventually lead to real experiments. The claim does not rely on a general study, conceptual or historical, of thought experiments as such: the range of the paper is at once narrower and broader. Atkinson views thought experiments as commonly understood as just one kind of episode in the development of physics in which real experimentation is bypassed, and he believes that such episodes are justified only inasmuch as they are transitory stages on the way to genuine empirical inquiry. Atkinson wants to kill with one arrow what is usually regarded as two different birds: the notion that thought experiments proper can be persuasive in themselves, and the thesis that theories which cannot be brought to the tribunal of experience can nevertheless belong to science. He thus implicitly opposes three views which are commonly, albeit not universally, held: (i) some thought experiments are conclusive; (ii) some theories belong to science despite not being evidently and concretely amenable to empirical corroboration; (iii) the two issues are largely independent. The standpoint from which Atkinson operates is a rather strict form of empiricism, one which relies on a fairly sharp distinction between the conceptual and empirical dimensions of inquiry. My outlook is rather different: the conceptual and empirical seem to me to be intertwined, both conceptually, as suggested by Quine’s critique of logical positivism, and empirically, as revealed by the evidence provided by science itself in its daily and historical reality. Rather than take the high road, I propose to focus first on the critique to which Atkinson subjects Galileo’s thought experiment, and the lessons he draws from his analysis..

When scientists are at work, they are busy ‘naturalizing’ their domain. This applies, without qualification, to natural scientists. In the sciences of man (which I will understand in the broadest sense, as including the social sciences), the issue is moot. This raises a problem for cognitive scientists, a vast majority of whom think of themselves as natural scientists. Yet theirs, to a large extent, is a science of man. Cognitive scientists are, it would seem, in the business of naturalizing man, and while this, to them, is unproblematic, it raises considerable difficulties to many, whether philosophers or social scientists of antinaturalist persuasion, or lay people wondering what the ultimate goals of cognitive science are and how far it should be expected to achieve these goals. Among his many duties, the philosopher of cognitive science, part of whose job is to clarify assumptions made, concepts used, methods deployed, at all levels of the field, and to try and situate the enterprise within the wider context, has the legitimate worry that misunderstandings, both within and outside cognitive science, might durably prevent the articulation of its viewpoint with those elaborated by the other sciences of man. The philosopher is thus intent on bringing forth an understanding of the enterprise of cognitive science, as free as possible of the ‘idols of the tribe’ (the field’s own self-aggrandizing prejudices) and of the ‘idols of the marketplace’ (the allegations of ‘tunnel vision’ and ‘reductionism’).

Many attempts have been made to define analytic philosophy in a nonhistorical or otherwise deictic way, and to provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a piece of philosophical work to be part of analytic philosophy. This is more difficult than might appear, for the conditions appealed to are normative and must be claimed by non-analytic philosophers to apply to their production as well. In fact, no such set of conditions has been forthcoming, and it is unlikely that it ever will. Instead, I offer a holistic characterization of analytic philosophy as a mode of organization of philosophical work modeled on science. This accounts for analytic philosophy’s success in the academic world, its pedagogic virtues, and its ability to expand beyond its initial boundaries. Two related questions remain: one about the indirect justification analytic philosophy might be granted from outside of philosophy, the other about its ability to make contact with cultural realms other than those with which it has until now established a fruitful exchange. The answers are crucial for the potential renewal of analytic philosophy.

The rise of cognitive science in the last half-century has been accompanied by a considerable amount of philosophical activity. No other area within analytic philosophy in the second half of that period has attracted more attention or produced more publications. Philosophical work relevant to cognitive science has become a sprawling field (extending beyond analytic philosophy) which no one can fully master, although some try and keep abreast of the philosophical literature and of the essential scientific developments. Due to the particular nature of its subject, it touches on a multitude of distinct special branches in philosophy and in science. It has also become quite a difficult, complicated and technical field, to the point of being nearly impenetrable for philosophers or scientists coming from other fields or traditions. Finally, it is contentious: Cognitive science is far from having reached stability, it is still widely regarded with suspicion, philosophers working within its confine have sharp disagreements amongst themselves, and philosophers standing outside, especially (but not only) of non-analytic persuasion, are often inclined to see both cognitive science and its accompanying philosophy as more or less confused or even deeply flawed. The sensible way to go under the circumstances, or so one might judge, would be to pick a sample of salient topics, in the present case, philosophical discussions of some central foundational issues, in the hope thereby of giving the reader a sense of what the field is about. This however is not the path I propose to take. There are two reasons for choosing another tack. The negative reason is that there is now available a plethora of excellent expositions, of any length one might desire, from one-page summaries to chapter- or volume-length introductions, of central topics in philosophy of mind (which constitutes in turn the core of what most philosophers think of as philosophy of cognitive science: more on this in a moment)1..