Topics Philosophy

Question Is there any test in philosophy to verify or refute the philosophers' guesses/hypotheses?

Accepted:
April 25, 2006

Comments

It really depends upon the subject. In the area of formal logic, one can (not always readily or easily, mind you!) refute a hypothesis, for example, by showing that it entails a contradiction.

In most areas of philosophy, however, the closest we can come to a refutation is to show that the hypothesis in question entails some consequence that is contrary to the very sorts of intuitions or cases that motivate the inquiry in the first place.

Let me give one example of this sort--one that is often used in classroom discussions in the field of ethics. Suppose we are considering an ethical theory that holds value to consist in the maximization of benefits to all of those, collectively, who will be affected by the action. (There are ethical theories like this, generically called "consequentialist" theories.) But a standard criticism of this theory is that the mandate to maximize the overall benefit of all concerned could result in a mandate to inflict great suffering on a completely innocent person. Even if we ended up regarding such a thing as a "necessary evil," it cannot be seen as such by the sort of consequentialism we are talking about--precisely because forcing the innocent to suffer would (in whatever imagined case we might create) result in the maximization of overall benefit, the consequentialist must declare such a case to be a case of positive value--in other words, it is not merely a "necessary evil" that is to be done to the innocent, but a positive good. But that can't be right...so such a form of consequentialism must not be right.

Of course, it is open to the one so "ref uted" simply to "bite the bullet," as it is said--and seek to preserve the theory or hypothesis by denying that our intuition about the case is correct. This can look like (and is usually taken to be) just a version of "special pleading" to save a defeated theory. But we also do need to be aware that what have sometimes seemed to be the most obviously intuitive moral (or other) truths have, as a result of changes in our dominant theories or just as a result of closer inspection given to the intuitions themselves, later turned out to be simply false--take for example the once widespread belief that difference in skin color coincided with significant difference in one's share of humanity.

So even when a hypothesis is "refuted" in this way, those attracted to the hypothesis may not find the "refutation" decisive--they may claim, to the contrary, that all the refuting case shows is that our intuitions about that case have been shown to be faulty.

There are data that philosophers aim to respect, and their guesses/hypotheses may either fail to fit, or succeed in fitting, this data.

Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of consensus in the philosophical community on exactly what this data consists in. However, many philosophers would like to count (i) our best scientific data, and (ii) many of our common sense intuitions, as data that their hypotheses should respect.

One major difficulty is that it is often not possible to fit all the data at once: philosophical hypotheses may explain some data at the cost of ignoring others.

Another difficulty is that there can be more than one hypothesis that explains the data, and it can be difficult to tell which explains the data best.

Question Is there any test in philosophy to verify or refute the philosophers' guesses/hypotheses? Accepted:April 25, 2006

Question Is there any test in philosophy to verify or refute the philosophers' guesses/hypotheses?

Accepted:
April 25, 2006