The Edinburgh connection II

strong and wrong

pp. 261-295

in: Robert Nola, Rescuing reason, Berlin, Springer, 2003

Abstract

In this chapter the remaining three tenets of the Strong Programme (SP) will be discussed — Impartiality in section 6.2, Symmetry in section 6.3 and Reflexivity in section 6.4. There is also some unfinished business from the previous chapter, discussed in section 6.5, to do with whether or not SP commits us to relativism. The chapter begins with a review of some of the rival models employed by philosophers and sociologists of science to explain belief. What will be argued is that advocates of SP have overlooked one important model of explanation for false, irrational and unsuccessful beliefs that undercuts much of the opposition they falsely set up between philosopher's rational models for scientific belief and their own causal models.