Origin of Articles

[Angrboda]

Actually, I'll furnish this move for him/her. Yes, the presuppositionist can assert these things and remain consistent. The reason s/he can is what's known as epistemological holism (aka underdetermination of theory, or the Duhem-Quine thesis).

In a nutshell, epistemological holism is the quality of theories that, in addition to the top level hypothesis, are supported by a raft of auxiliary assumptions and hypotheses, all the way from auxiliary components from the theory of measurement, to theories of falsification, to theories of logic and mathematics and metaphysical postulates (e.g. the many worlds hypothesis). If we have a fact or observation which is not what was predicted by our hypothesis, the hypothesis itself may be the faulty component in the system, or the fault could be in an auxiliary component of the theory, totally unrelated to the question we framed with our hypothesis. So logically speaking, since any theory, including his/her presuppositionalism, is composed of manyfold unarticulated parts, any failure of the top level theory can be accommodated by adjusting an auxiliary part, many of which may be unknown until they are changed explicitly to handle an exception. In this way, a bad theory or an unscrupulous person can make any theory be effectively unfalsifiable, and essentially meaningless. Like this perpetual round of ad hoc justifications and bare assertions; a talented person could keep this game going indefinitely. But in the end, that's all it is: just a game.

For example, in the first half of the 19th century, astronomers were observing the path of the planet Uranus to see if it conformed to the path predicted by Newton's law of gravitation; it didn't. There were an indeterminate number of possible explanations, such as that the telescopic observations were wrong because of some unknown factor; or that Newton's laws were in error; or that God moves different planets in different ways. However, it was eventually accepted that an unknown planet was affecting the path of Uranus, and that the hypothesis that there are seven planets in our solar system was false. Le Verrier calculated the approximate position of the interfering planet and its existence was confirmed in 1846. We now call the planet Neptune.

There are two aspects of confirmation holism. The first is that interpretation of observation is dependent on theory (sometimes called theory-laden). Before accepting the telescopic observations one must look into the optics of the telescope, the way the mount is constructed in order to ensure that the telescope is pointing in the right direction, and that light travels through space in a straight line (which Einstein demonstrated is not generally true, but is often an adequate approximation). The second is that evidence alone is insufficient to determine which theory is correct. Each of the alternatives above might have been correct, but only one was in the end accepted.

That theories can only be tested as they relate to other theories implies that one can always claim that test results that seem to refute a favoured scientific theory have not refuted that theory at all. Rather, one can claim that the test results conflict with predictions because some other theory is false or unrecognised (this is Einstein's basic objection when it comes to the uncertainty principle). Maybe the test equipment was out of alignment because the cleaning lady bumped into it the previous night. Or, maybe, there is dark matter in the universe that accounts for the strange motions of some galaxies.

That one cannot unambiguously determine which theory is refuted by unexpected data means that scientists must use judgements about which theories to accept and which to reject. Logic alone does not guide such decisions.

And that last sentence suggests that the reasonableness of interpretation of the evidence is dependent on the reasonableness of the interpreter. Since we know that a presuppositionalist is beholden to two masters, reason and her religious beliefs, it's questionable that such a person can be trusted to interpret the evidence. Not my main concern but it points up a side of science which many people deny, that science depends as much on the skill and values of the scientists themselves, as it does on the method. (And I would contend that the method and scientific presuppositions (assuming that there are any that aren't shared with the presuppositionalist) is only a small part of what makes science. Some may see this as playing into the presuppositionalist's hands, but I am not concerned with a political goal or justifying an end result here, so that cannot be my guiding principle.)





(I'm not certain of this latter point, but since the boundaries of what a hypothesis is dependent upon are never explicit, it would seem reasonable to suppose that one might restore coherence by introducing additional assumptions that weren't included before, solely to bear the burden of taking the logical hit, or, reframing the question so that the prior observation or evidence is no longer applicable, as that may obsolete the failed observation, or provide justification for shifting the blame for the observational failure; note that in this case, a clever presuppositionalist will always explain the failure as occurring in that part of the system that lies outside her presuppositionalist theories, aka science, thus avoiding all fault to his system. This is the so-called ad hoc explanation.)