Larry Laudan

This paper argues that it has been widely assumed by philosophers of science that the cumulative retention of explanatory success is a "sine qua non" for making judgements about the progress or rational preferability of one theory over another. It has also been assumed that it is impossible to make objective, Comparative judgements of the acceptability of rival theories unless all the statements of both theories could be translated into a common language. This paper seeks to show that both these dogmas are mistaken; that progress without cumulativity and comparability without commensurability are both viable

Normative naturalism is a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a meta-epistemology. It maintains that epistemology can both discharge its traditional normative role and nonetheless claim a sensitivity to empirical evidence. The first sections of this essay set out the central tenets of normative naturalism, both in its epistemic and its axiological dimensions; later sections respond to criticisms of that species of naturalism from Gerald Doppelt, Jarrett Leplin and Alex Rosenberg

Intuitionistic meta-methodologies, which abound in recent philosophy of science, take the criterion of success for theories of scientific rationality to be whether those theories adequately explicate our intuitive judgments of rationality in exemplary cases. Garber's (1985) critique of Laudan's (1977) intuitionistic meta-methodology, correct as far as it goes, does not go far enough. Indeed, Garber himself advocates a form of intuitionistic meta-methodology; he merely denies any special role for historical (as opposed to contemporary or imaginary) test cases. What all such positions lack is a base from which to inform, criticize, or restructure our core methodological intuitions. To acquiesce in this is to deny that exemplary cases can serve the sort of warranting role required for intuitionism. This point is reinforced by a series of reasons for denying the warranting role of pre-analytic judgments of rationality. These reasons point the way toward an improved approach to meta-methodology.

It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustrating how a rational community with divergent standards can encourage innovation and eventually reach consensus, recent developments in geophysics are discussed at some length