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Interpreting Kuhn's Incommensurability-Thesis: Its Different Meanings and Epistemological Consequences

Interpreting Kuhn's Incommensurability-Thesis: Its Different Meanings and Epistemological Consequences
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摘要 Kuhn's incommensurability-thesis is crucial for consequences for the pursuit of epistemology. A interpreting his views on the development of science and their commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of the original version of Kuhn's epoch-making book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (henceforth: SSR) should thus provide a thorough reflection on this thesis. However, this thesis is not easy to interpret. It is not only complex in itself but has also undergone a historical development--in Kuhn's own hands and in those of his interpreters. In this article, I sort out the different interpretations of it, in particular, in Part A. In Part B, I demonstrate their epistemological consequences. Under closer scrutiny, Kuhn's incommensurability-thesis contains several sub-theses Different senses of "incommensurability" thus need to be distinguished. However, the way in which those distinctions are drawn in Kuhn-scholarship differs. In paragraph I of Part A, I provide an overview of the reception of the incommensurability-thesis in Kuhn-scholarship. In Paragraph II, I trace its development in Kuhn's later writings: given its importance and contested nature, Kuhn later clarifies his original thesis. Those later clarifications' main function consists in domesticating the most radically relativistic aspects his original incommensurability-thesis had, at least, in the eyes of his interpreters. The upshot of Part A (Paragraphs I and II) is to provide a coherent interpretation of Kuhn's incommensurability-thesis. To that end, I distinguish in line with much of Kuhn-scholarship a semantic from a methodological sense of incommensurability. In part B, the question is raised: What sort of epistemological consequences follow from both senses of incommensurability? In particular, what consequences follow for the issues of reference, subjectivity (objectivity), pluralism, and realism? The underlying question is to what extent Kuhnian incommensurability caters to a relativistic understanding of those issues. This question is answered in Paragraph Ill with the help of the analyses of a currently leading Kuhn-scholar, C. H. Sankey. His answers are taken as a vantage point for my concluding evaluation of the consequences of Kuhnian incommensurability in Paragraph IV.
机构地区 Ph.D.
出处 《Journal of Philosophy Study》 2013年第5期377-397,共21页 哲学研究(英文版)
关键词 Sankey reference Hoyningen-Huene paradigm shift RORTY Bernstein RELATIVISM PLURALISM 不可通约性 认识论 库恩 论文 解读 科学革命 奖学金 相对论
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  • 1Traditionally, "observation language" was supposed to fulfill the function of an impartial referee. Yet, Kuhn's considerations cast serious doubts on its impartiality (see Hoyningen-Huene 1993, 36-37).
  • 2Kubn, i 970b, 118; similarly 4, 111, 150 et al. Those "different worlds"-dicta are discussed below, see Section 5.
  • 3For overviews of the vast literature on the reception of Kubn's incommensurability-thesis (see, e.g., Gattei 2008, 118, f. 219; Hoyningen-Huene 1993, 207, f. 58).
  • 4See the collection of the charges in Bernstein (1989 22, v. 234).
  • 5See Section 1. Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 201-06) uses the term "change of world.".
  • 6See also his account (1993, 203) of how Kuhn wrestled with metaphors different from "change of worlds" before the publication of SSR. 7.
  • 7This is not to deny the importance of Kuhn's "different worlds"----dicta (see Hoyningen-Huene 1993, 201-06 and Section 4). In my analysis of a "Neu-Erschlieflung der Wirklichkeit" through paradigm shifts, I analyze their importance (see Grube 2012, 44-49). 8.
  • 8See Kuhn's retrospective remarks on the importance the incommensurability-thesis had for the development of his own work (in Conant and Haugeland 2000, 91). 9.
  • 9For a full account of the differences (see Sankey 1997, 34-38). 10.
  • 10See Kuhn, 1983, 677. For Kuhn's still later reliance on the no-overlap principle and its connection with natural kind terms, see Sankey, 1997, 70-72. 11.

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