Joel Katzav

I present the two philosophies of science developed by Theodore de Laguna and Grace Andrus de Laguna in America before the 1930s arrival of the logical positivists there. I also provide a contextualised comparison of these pre-logical positivist views with the post-positivist views of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. We will see that the de Lagunas articulate the key influential aspects of the philosophies of science of Popper and Kuhn and, with the help of a more developed theoretical framework than that of Popper or Kuhn, address what came to be key challenges to these later thinkers’ views. We will also see that ‘Kuhnian’ ideas were ubiquitous in America during the 1930s and 1940s. These observations allow me to further support the recent thesis that the logical positivists were proposing a narrowing down and winding back of philosophy of science when they arrived in America. Indeed, it will be challenging to rationally reconstruct the history of the philosophy of science which developed later. It was still, even after Kuhn in the early 1960s, playing catch up with the speculative tradition to which the de Lagunas belonged. My observations also suggest that Kuhn was an important conduit through which ideas from the speculative tradition made their way into analytic philosophy of science.

Recent work on the epistemology of climate science includes arguments that are against probabilistic representations of uncertainty about climate and for possibilistic ones as well as some development and use of the latter. I reinstate these arguments, partly by rebutting Corey Dethier’s recent challenge to them and partly by arguing that they remain effective against recent improvements to probabilistic representations. Recognising, however, that the case for possibilistic representations can be undermined by problematic interpretations of epistemic possibilities, I set out criteria of adequacy for such interpretations in the climate context while arguing for a preferred interpretation. I criticise the appropriateness of standard interpretations, according to which a proposition is epistemically possible if and only if it is not recognised to be excluded by what is known, as well as some other prominent non-probabilistic interpretations. So too, I criticise interpretations of epistemic possibilities in terms of upper probabilities. I conclude that an interpretation of epistemic possibilities as possibilities that are consistent with knowledge that approximates the basic way things are is preferable to the other available interpretations.

This chapter briefly presents some of the key responses to the mind-body problem as well as some of the issues these responses raise. The presentation serves as a background to the articles on the mind-body problem by the psychologist Margaret Floy Washburn and by the speculative philosophers Grace Andrus de Laguna and Mary Whiton Calkins. This chapter also summarises these articles. We will see that Washburn articulates a dualistic approach to psychology, while de Laguna objects to such an approach on methodological grounds, including with a private language argument. In a separate paper, de Laguna critiques type physicalism through an appeal to what came to be called ‘multiple-realisability’ and develops a functionalist theory of mind. Calkins defends idealism.

This part introduces the discussion of human free will, including of the problem of whether free will is compatible with determinism and of what free will amounts to if it exists. We begin by presenting standard compatibilist, incompatibilist and libertarian responses to this problem. Against this background, we discuss in detail the idealist views of freedom presented by Ellen Bliss TalbotTalbot, Ellen Bliss, Marjorie Silliman Harris and Grace Andrus de Laguna in the articles included here. All three authors argue that an individual’s freedom is grounded in their unique and unrepeatable, self-determining nature.

Contemporary theories of time largely bifurcate neatly into A-series theories and B-series theories. The former take events to move through time, from future, to present to past. The latter deny that events move in this way, taking being future, present and past not to capture fundamental features of time and taking the relations of before, after and simultaneous with to do so instead. This chapter presents the distinction between A- and B-theories and uses it as a background for presenting the articles on time by Mary Whiton Calkins, Ellen Bliss Talbot and Grace Neal Dolson. We will see that Calkins develops a view of time that recognises the reality of time in a way that is compatible with her absolute idealism but that fits neither A-series nor B-series views. We will see Dolson critically discussing Henri Bergson’s view of time, which rejects both A-series and B-series views. Finally, we will see Talbot offering an A-series view that is a novel alternative to familiar options such as the presentist view, according to which only the present exists, and to the growing block view, according to which the present is the edge of the growing block of time.

I revisit my paper, ‘Grace de Laguna’s 1909 Critique of Analytic Philosophy’ and respond to the commentary on it. I respond to James Chase and Jack Reynolds by further analysing the difference between speculative philosophy as de Laguna conceived of it and analytic philosophy, by clarifying how her critique of analytic philosophy remains relevant to some of its more speculative forms, and by explaining what justifies the criticism of established opinion that goes along with her rejection of analytic philosophy’s epistemic conservatism. In response to Andreas Vrahimis, I contextualise my reading of de Laguna’s work in 1909. This clarifies her critique of pragmatism, distinguishes it from her critique of epistemically conservative philosophy, and shows that she was not only already aware of the full scope of the latter critique but is likely to have identified the then incipient analytic philosophy as its primary target. Also, contra Vrahimis, her argument is effective against Bertrand Russell’s later, epistemically conservative approach to philosophy. In response to Cheryl Misak, I point out that her argument that de Laguna is, despite herself, a pragmatist rests on a misunderstanding of the differences between pragmatism and idealism, and I show that de Laguna’s main early influences were Herbert Spencer and her teacher, James Edwin Creighton. I further argue that Misak’s rejection of de Laguna’s critique of pragmatism rests on a misrepresentation of the critique.

A number of authors, including me, have argued that the output of our most complex climate models, that is, of global climate models and Earth system models, should be assessed possibilistically. Worries about the viability of doing so have also been expressed. I examine the assessment of the output of relatively simple climate models in the context of discovery and point out that this assessment is of epistemic possibilities. At the same time, I show that the concept of epistemic possibility used in the relevant studies does not fit available analyses of this concept. Moreover, I provide an alternative analysis that does fit the studies and broad climate modelling practices as well as meshes with my existing view that climate model assessment should typically be of real possibilities. On my analysis, to assert that a proposition is epistemically possible is to assert that it is not known to be false and is consistent with at least approximate knowledge of the basic way things are. I, finally, consider some of the implications of my discussion for available possibilistic views of climate model assessment and for worries about such views. I conclude that my view helps to address worries about such assessment and permits using the full range of climate models in it.

I outline the theoretical framework of, and three research programs within American speculative philosophy of science during the period 1900-1931. One program applies verificationism to research in psychology, one investigates the methodology of research programs, and one analyses scientific explanation and other scientific concepts. The primary sources for my outline are works by Morris Raphael Cohen, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Theodore de Laguna, Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., Harold Robert Smart, and Marie Collins Swabey. I also use my outline to provide a partial comparison of American speculative philosophy of science and 1930s logical positivism. My comparison suggests that logical positivism was a proposal for substantially narrowing down and winding back American philosophy of science and was based on positions that were already problematized in the American context.

Katzav and Vaesen have argued that control by analytic philosophers of key journals, philosophy departments and at least one funding body plays a substantial role in explaining the emergence of analytic philosophy into dominance in the Anglophone world and the corresponding decline of speculative philosophy. They also argued that this use of control suggests a characterisation of analytic philosophy as, at the institutional level, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. I test these hypotheses against data about philosophy job hires at key philosophy departments in the USA during the period 1930-1979, and against data about PhD completions during the period 1956-1965. I argue, further, that Katzav and Vaesen’s hypotheses can fully explain the data and are more fully able to do so than are some other key accounts of the emergence of analytic philosophy in the USA.

Grace A. de Laguna was an American philosopher of exceptional originality. Many of the arguments and positions she developed during the early decades of the twentieth century later came to be central to analytic philosophy. These arguments and positions included, even before 1930, a critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction, a private language argument, a critique of type physicalism, a functionalist theory of mind, a critique of scientific reductionism, a methodology of research programs in science and more. Nevertheless, de Laguna identified herself as a defender of the speculative vision of philosophy, a vision which, in her words, “analytic philosophy condemns.” I outline her speculative vision of philosophy as well as what is, in effect, an argument she offers against analytic philosophy. This is an argument against the view that key parts of established opinion, e.g., our best theoretical physics or most certain common sense, should be assumed to be true in order to answer philosophical questions. I go on to bring out the implications of her argument for the approaches to philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Willard V. Quine and David Lewis, and I also compare the argument to recent, related arguments against analytic philosophy. I will suggest that de Laguna offers a viable critique of analytic philosophy and an alternative approach to philosophy that meets this critique.

This chapter introduces the articles by Marie C. Swabey, Thelma Z. Lavine, Grace A. de Laguna and Dorothy Walsh on the objectivity of scientific knowledge. We will see Swabey placing herself outside the historicist traditions of (later) authors (e.g., Thomas Kuhn), and arguing that the rationality and objectivity of science are grounded in synthetic a priori justified logical principles. Lavine and de Laguna, by contrast, embrace socio-historical approaches to the study of science, thus anticipating later developments in philosophy of science. Still, whereas Lavine embraces a relativist notion of objectivity, de Laguna argues that science, at least in some respects, actually is universally valid. Walsh, finally, like Swabey, believes in context-independent objectivity that is grounded in metaphysics, but like de Laguna and Lavine, contends that such objectivity is discipline-specific.

I introduce the key ideas of foundationalist, coherentist and pragmatist theories of knowledge. I then use these ideas as background for presenting the work on knowledge and perception in this part, work by Grace Andrus de Laguna and Marie Collins Swabey. We will see that these authors critique the idea of sense data that was central to the foundationalist theories of knowledge of Bertrand Russel and other early analytic thinkers, though de Laguna’s critique leads to perspectivism about perception and knowledge while Swabey rejects perspectivism. So too, we will see that de Laguna and Swabey develop epistemologies with strong coherentist elements, much as did their idealist teacher James Edwin Creighton. De Laguna’s, developed jointly with her husband, Theodore de Laguna, is a sophisticated form of naturalism that is built on a critique of pragmatist naturalism and is similar to the one made famous later by Willard V. Quine. Swabey rejects all forms of naturalism, arguing that knowledge requires an a priori foundation in reason.