I often run into a phenomenon I've come to call "paradigm-dependent argument" -- there may be a philosophically proper name for it out there somewhere, but I haven't yet heard it.
There are two variants -- paradigm dependent evidence for a theory, and paradigm-dependent refutations of a theory. Both are related to, but not identical to, the informal fallacy of "Begging the question"
Paradigm-dependent evidence works like this. In order to provide evidence for a theory, you line up evidence; but the significance of the evidence in supporting the theory depends on assuming the theory is true in the first place.
For example: "The Bible is inerrant. As evidence, there is a passage in which it claims to be God-breathed, and we know God cannot breath lies!"
The evidence to support the conclusion of inerrancy is the passage in which "all scripture" is described as "God-breathed." However, the significance of this "evidence" depends on the assumption that the Bible is inerrant. If the Bible is not inerrant, then this passage could well be in error. And if the passage is in error, then it holds no significance in supporting the conclusion.
On the other side of the ideological chasm, evolutionists often use paradigm-dependent evidence to support the conclusion of common descent. For example, "Human and chimp DNA is overwhelmingly similar; therefore humans and chimps are closely related." However, this "evidence" depends for its significance on the assumption that humans and chimps are related. If humans and chimps are not related, then it's entirely possible that the designer or designers simply used very similar designs for the two, modifying the designs only insofar as necessary to achieve the desired differences.
The end result is that people can appear to be lining up all sorts of "evidence" to support a conclusion, but because of the nature of the evidence itself, it's not really evidence at all.
Paradigm-dependent refutations
This is basically the other side of the coin. I present evidence against your theory which depends for its significance upon the assumptions of my theory, or a strawman version of your theory.
For example:
The one I run into most often is the argument against design from "suboptimal design." It goes like this: Many aspects of the biological design of humans are less efficient than they could be. A competent designer would not design things so inefficiently. Therefore they were not designed.
This "evidence" depends on a straw-man assumption about design -- that the designer, must, of necessity, have intended to create life with optimal efficiency. But without that assumption, we're left with the possibility that life was designed to be efficient, but not perfectly efficient. Much like engineers today, compromises in efficiency have to be made to get the dang thing to work.
Therefore, the evidence depends for its significane on the tacit assumptions that "The Designer would have designed optimally," and "our conclusions of suboptimal designer are actually suboptimal." Without these two dubious assumptions, the "evidence" holds no significance.
The funniest thing of all is hearing scientists call the "design of life" suboptimal, when it is so vastly beyond our ability to design, construct, or even understand. Because we can imagine life being "better designed," (even though we can't even design or construct the most basic forms), we infer that the "Designer" was incompetent. Talk about Monday-morning, arm-chair quarterbacking.
A theistic example of this fallacy is the ontological argument. It goes like this: God is defined as "The being than which no greater can be conceived." It is greater to exist than not to exist. Therefore, if you conceive of God as not existing, you're conceiving of something less than "the greatest." Therefore, if you conceive of God as not existing, you're not really conceiving of God. Therefore, atheism is self-contradictory.
This argument depends on the assumption that "God is defined as 'the being than which no greater can be conceived.'"
But if an atheist instead conceives of God as "An imaginery conception in the mind of men without any corresponding reality outside the mind," then the ontological argument holds no power. The whole argument depends on a definition of God with which an atheist could reasonably disagree.
Bird Flight Automaton
1 year ago
4 comments:
In the original sense of paradigms, as they were used to describe "normal science" by Kuhn, I thought that the paradigm dependence of evidence was what was being described. According to Kuhn, after all, progress is easily described within a formalized scientific paradigm. It was with revolutions and inter-paradigm commensurability where the importance of a piece of evidence broke down.
What I'm driving at is that "paradigm dependence" as a linguistic entity argues for itself. If there are such things as paradigms, then the importance of pieces of evidence must be dependent upon them. What's good about this post is the examples of the kinds of evidence under discussion.
Thanks for your comment -- you're certainly right that Kuhnian thought runs deep here.
But the purpose of the post was to take his concepts in a different direction -- applying his thought regarding paradigms to the context of rhetoric.
I goal was to describe paradigm dependence not as a characteristic of "normal science," but as a particular type of informal fallacy -- one that I think turns out to be a cousin of begging the question.
In my limited reading of Kuhn, I've never heard him put this spin on paradigms -- he describes how our thought is bound by paradigms, but I never noticed him describing how arguments bound up in paradigm hold no real persuasive power.
Could be wrong though.
A lot of the controversy generated by Kuhn's book was based on the idea that different scientific paradigms might be incommensurable to one another. Once a revolution occurs in a given field, the scientists on one side of the revolution might use the same terms with different referents, making it difficult for scientists which are supposed to be in the same field to discuss anything, much less persuade one another of the merits of the new paradigm.
This isn't to say, though, that arguments bounded by a paradigm lack persuasive power. For one thing, looking backward, historians and philosophers of science frequently attempt rational reconstructions of paradigm change. A lot of the time, there seem to be scientific values which can be appealed to in order to persuade an individual that one paradigm is superior to another. I think Kuhn's version of paradigm dependence is more about the difficulty of cross-paradigm communication than it is about the emptiness of paradigm dependent rhetoric.
All of this is made easier for Kuhn's argument, though, in that he is considering scientific examples only. When the idea of paradigms is broadened to that of theology (to use one of your examples), the difficulty might become even more pronounced.
This isn't to say, though, that arguments bounded by a paradigm lack persuasive power. For one thing, looking backward, historians and philosophers of science frequently attempt rational reconstructions of paradigm change. A lot of the time, there seem to be scientific values which can be appealed to in order to persuade an individual that one paradigm is superior to another.
Thanks again for your comments. I think that what you're talking about is very different from the "paradigm-dependent" argument I'm criticizing. Arguments stemming from scientific values must stem from a shared paradigm of value (for instance, parsimony). You argue that one theory is better than another not because of an interpretation of evidence that depends on one of the theories, but because some value of science external to both theories and shared by both parties in the dialogue dictates the change. For example, "Why do you believe in that? This answer is so much simpler and explains so much more." That doesn't depend on either paradigm. It depends on the (presumably) shared paradigm of parsimony.
I also agree with you that I don't think Kuhn's purpose was to emphasize the rhetorical applications of the concept of "paradigms," and that he emphasized cross-paradigm communication. His ideas were, after all, largely limited to the scientific context.
I think that the problems of paradigm-dependence do get more pronounced the further and further you get from science. There's also a significant grey-area between science and theology -- the social scientists. Paradigm-dependent argument shows up in economics (is capitalism causing poor countries to languish and their internal socialism their saving grace, or vice versa?) It shows up in relationships (You don't really love me -- because if you loved me, you'd do this). It shows up in politics (You just want to lower taxes because you're rich!)
It's the fallacy itself that I'm primarily interested in -- both in its applications in science, theology, and the great in between of philosophy.
That's why I didn't name Kuhn in my initial post -- because I think the fallacy of "paradigm-dependent argument" reaches way beyond what he argued, although I think he'd probably agree with it at least somewhat if it were presented to him.
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