The Inference That Makes Science (Aquinas Lecture) by Ernan McMullin (PDF)

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Book by McMullin, Ernan

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⭐Hackneyed History, Frivolous PhilosophyThis pamphlet is based on an address given by the Reverend McMullin of the University of Notre Dame philosophy department to the philosophy faculty of Marquette University. This Reverend McMullin doesn’t just study the past; he actually lives in it. His construing ancient philosophers as writing philosophy of science before science was invented is absurd. Only a Roman Catholic priest addressing the philosophy faculty of another Roman Catholic philosophy school would ever think of writing a pamphlet like this one.The first 52 pages of this 85-page monograph discuss the ancient Aristotelian concept of science. That is 60 percent of the book, which has nothing to do with science, as we know it. The next 11 pages discuss inductive inference from bacon to the Logical Positivists. That is 13 percent of the book that discusses views that have been repudiated. Then the following 6 pages discuss abduction beginning with Peirce. That is 7 percent. Here as elsewhere instead of writing philosophy McMullin serves up hackneyed history of philosophy about authors for whom an abundant secondary literature already exists. Based on my experience in Notre Dame’s philosophy school while he was department chairman, I had concluded that McMullin relies on history of philosophy as a substitute for writing original investigative philosophy, much less consequential philosophy.The concluding pages set forth McMullin’s “proposal” that contains terms such as “empirical law”, “theory”, “induction” and “causal explanation”, all of which clearly have positivist meanings in his text. Oddly on page 93 McMullin parenthetically comments that observations are theory dependent, yet he blithely fails (or refuses) to see that any dependence of observation on theory undercuts positivism’s axiomatic thesis that observation is uncontaminated by theory. McMullin seems unable to recognize relativized semantics and ontological relativity in the contemporary pragmatist thesis that says observation is theory dependent.Even more anachronistic is McMullin’s rationalistic treatment of realism; he is what I call a “closet Cartesian”. In “The Two Faces of Science” in The Metaphysical Review (Sept. 1974), originally an address also given at Marquette University, McMullin attempted to construe philosophy of science as metaphysics. In Roman Catholic schools philosophy of science is still taught as metaphysics of science, as it is in this pamphlet.McMullin claims (p. 94) that “retroduction” – by which he means a combination of deduction, induction and abduction – is an inference to realism. This is a nonsequitur. Retroduction is also consistent with idealism and instrumentalism. Realism, the thesis that reality is mind-independent, is not an inference, and retroduction however construed can make no such metaphysical inference.I and other philosophers say that realism is literally a prejudice; it is not a conclusion, an extrapolation or an inference, and it has no premises. For example in his

⭐, especially in the seventh and eighth chapters, John R. Searle defines realism as the view that the world exists independently of our representation of it (p. 153) and he maintains that there can be no argument for realism that is not question-begging (p. 184).And I refer McMullin to Quine’s “Scope and Language of Science” in his

⭐. There Quine says that we cannot question the existence of the external world or deny that there is evidence for external objects in the testimony of our senses, for to do so is to dissociate the terms “reality” and “evidence” from the very applications, which originally did most to invest these terms with whatever intelligibility they may have for us. Instead of his rationalistic metaphysical realism, McMullin needs to learn the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of language, on which the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of science is based.Contrary to McMullin, basic research in science is not fathomed merely by concocting a combined eclectic meaning for “retroduction”. McMullin offers no original insight or thought in his pamphlet. He serves up only a frivolous relabeling of old ideas; he is anachronistic and out of his depth.Furthermore new scientific theories are not generated by retroduction. Today the creation of new scientific theories is investigated with computer systems in computational philosophy of science, a newly emerging area not even mentioned by McMullin, an area undoubtedly beyond his shallow intellectual capital. And the diverse logics in these systems are much more complex and sophisticated than McMullin’s simplistic idea of retroduction. Philosophy of science has become too empirical and descriptive to be regarded as metaphysics, unless “metaphysics” is made a semantically vacuous weasel word.McMullin’s claim to fame at Notre Dame was to dump the mediaeval Catholic Scholastic philosophy mandated by Pope Leo XIII in the 1890’s. But merely dumping Scholasticism could never be sufficient to produce a great school of philosophy in contemporary academia. Notre Dame’s philosophy department has been marginalized since its founding in the 1930’s, and what they now crave is professional acceptance.Merely groveling for acceptance does not produce a great school. The Notre Dame philosophers fail to recognize that in their conformism to anachronistic ideas like rationalism they actually aspire to mediocrity. One does not lead the pack by seeking to join it, by following the followers, but rather one leads it by moving out ahead of the pack. Leaders aspire to be different in exceptionally productive ways, and they assume the concomitant risks of deviationism from the conventional wisdom. But Notre Dame philosophers are still too insecure to assume such professional risks.McMullin is thus content to shepherd his academic sheep with banal history of philosophy, such as in this pamphlet and his other writings. He may think that hack history is suitably safe, but its outcome is retardation. Prospective employers of Notre Dame philosophy graduates should consider how this book reveals the mediocrity of Notre Dame’s philosophy education.To my knowledge this pamphlet is the only book that McMullin has actually written all by himself. He has otherwise been an editor who gets academic visibility and a stack of IOU’s by creating publishing opportunities for other lesser lights. When I knew him in the late 1960’s, I concluded that he is a self-promoting positivist who never got beyond operational definitions. He should stick to editing so others write his books for him. This pamphlet is a parody, an expose in desperate mediocrity.For a contemporary exposition I invite readers to view my

⭐and my

⭐.Thomas J. Hickey

⭐Unfortunately, my english is somewhat poor, thus I cannot explain how I should, but I feel the urgent need to counter the profoundly unjust and biased previous review. The reviewer takes to be a reverend a sufficient reason to be biased about science, but it is not so! And I am an atheist. It is the reviewer who is biased! I didn’t know personally Ernan Mc Mullin, I didn’t study with him: I know him only through his work, and I think that he was a great philosopher, who used the history to really understand the science of today. Briefly,- This work is not a “pamphlet”- It is not true that “terms such as “empirical law”, “theory”, “induction” and “causal explanation”, (…) have positivist meanings in his text”. They have meanings adherent to current usage in the philosophy of science- His treatment is not cartesian, whatever his ideas were, nor anachronistically metaphysical: his inquiry is epistemological-methodological, subtle and perfectly updated- To say that “New scientific theories are not generated by retroduction” (because) “Today the creation of new scientific theories is investigated with computer systems in computational philosophy of science” is pure nonsense. Moreover, these methods are promising, but nothing more- Finally, McMullin wrote many very interesting articles. He was not a mere compiler

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