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Is science value-free?
The ideal of value-freedom in science (cf. Max Weber). Scientists subjective valuations must not be allowed to influence scientific theory-choice or the way evidence supports or refutes theories. Entzauberung, disenchantment: there are no mysterious entities in the world as described by science, thus no queer objective values, either (cf. J.L. Mackie). Scientific realism and moral relativism (or moral skepticism) often go together. Scientific realism: science investigates a mind- and discourseindependent world; as values are mind- and discoursedependent human constructions (i.e., something subjective, or at least not fully objective), they cannot be part of the ultimate structure of the scientifically describable and explainable reality.
Science as value-laden
However, science itself is a deeply value-laden human practice. Pragmatism: science cannot describe the world from a Gods-Eye View but from human points of view. The reality of scientifically postulated entities is internal to such practice-embedded descriptions (cf. Putnam: internal realism). Any descriptions/schemes we employ when (scientifically) investigating the world presuppose human purposes and thus values.
Thoroughgoing value-neutrality is an impossible ideal. Science can be value-neutral only in a contextualized sense: in specific scientific contexts, the bracketing of explicit value commitments is important (and is itself a value-laden activity).
Rorty (contd)
Rorty does not maintain, like many other atheists do, that scientific progress has made religious beliefs irrational or poorly warranted (etc.). He just holds that we should drop the religious vocabulary, just as we should drop the vocabulary of scientific realism. Both assume that there is a way the world is independently of us, and that there are contraints for inquiry other than conversational ones. We should, rather, continue the conversation of mankind without dreaming of getting in touch with ultimate reality. Problem: if Rortys ethnocentrism leads to relativism, he lacks the normative resources needed for any genuine critique of religion. He can only suggest replacing an outdated vocabulary by another vocabulary. He cannot tell us that this is what we ought to do. (Cf. Feyerabend, anarchism.)
Rorty (contd)
In the 1990s and 2000s, Rorty wrote more seriously about religion, proposing that hope should replace knowledge as the central goal of human pursuits (cf. Rorty 1999, 2000). Because pragmatists do not believe that there is a way things really are, they suggest that the reality vs. appearance distinction ought to be replaced by the distinction between descriptions of the world and of ourselves which are less useful and those which are more useful (Rorty 1999, 27). Here the concept of hope becomes important, because useful can only mean useful to create a better future (ibid.). Hope for a better future is essential in pragmatism; moreover, it is Rortys own meta-level hope that hope would replace the pursuit of knowledge.
Scientific hope (final opinion cf. Peirce) vs. religious/moral hope?
Rorty (contd)
According to Rorty, there is little difference between scientific realism and religious fundamentalism! Scientific realism and religious fundamentalism are products of the same urge. The attempt to convince people that they have a duty to develop what Bernard Williams calls an absolute conception of reality is, from a Tillichian or Jamesian point of view, of a piece with the attempt to live for God only, and to insist that others do so also. Both scientific realism and religious fundamentalism are private projects which have got out of hand. They are attempts to make ones own private way of giving meaning to ones own life a way which romanticizes ones relation to something starkly and magnificently nonhuman, something Ultimately True and Real obligatory for the general public. (Rorty 1999, 157.)
Rorty (contd)
There is, according to Rorty, no need to seek any ahistorical, Gods-eye, overview of the relations between all human practices (Rorty 2003, 39). In particular, it is not up to philosophy (as some kind of super-science or super-practice) to offer such an overview of the relations between scientific and religious practices. (Cf. naturalized philosophy of science.) Kant was right to argue that religion should not be defended or criticized on the grounds of empirical evidence, but he was wrong to assume that philosophy can adjudicate the debates between these different human practices. Secularism, for Rorty, is a political, not philosophical position. (Cf. Rorty 2003 on anti-clericalism.)
Rorty (contd)
For Rorty, philosophical criticism of religion is a matter of cultural politics, not ontology, metaphysics, or epistemology. It is a matter of what kind of vocabularies should be maintained in our culture (and how to define, through our vocabularies, what is our culture and who we are). Meta-level issue: whether cultural politics should replace ontology is itself a matter of cultural politics (Rorty 2007, 5). Questionbegging? Rorty just refuses to see in the question of Gods existence (or any other supposedly metaphysical question) anything else than a conflict between different cultural-political ways of talking. He does not argue for atheism. Cultural politics is the only game in town (ibid., 8). Presumably, not just philosophy of religion but philosophy of science as well will be reduced to cultural politics? Problem: can Rorty non-question-beggingly maintain that we should not or cannot argue for atheism, or that we should reconceptualized philosophy (of science, of religion) as mere cultural politics?
Rorty (contd)
James, according to Rorty (2007, 36), should have said: [W]e are free to describe the universe in many different ways. Describing it as the drifting of cosmic atoms is useful for the social project of working together to control our environment and improve mans estate. But that description leaves us entirely free to say, for example, that the Heavens proclaim the glory of God. James should not have talked about the literal and objective truth of religious beliefs. He should have rested content with The Will to Believe: we have a right to believe what we like when we are, so to speak, on our own time. But we abandon this right when we are engaged in, for example, a scientific or a political project. (Ibid., 37.) Public vs. private? Rorty prefers Deweys A Common Faith (1934) to Jamess writings on religion (e.g., The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902), because Dewey was much less prone to a sense of guilt than was James (Rorty 2007, 38). But living with a sense of guilt might be what religion is all about for many people?