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Invention and JustificationAuthor(s): Larry Laudan

Source: Philosophy of Science, Vol. 50, No. 2 (Jun., 1983), pp. 320-322Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/188018 .

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DISCUSSION:INVENTION AND JUSTIFICATION*

LARRY LAUDANDepartment of PhilosophyVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In Robert McLaughlin's recent article in this journal (1982), severaldoctrines are attributedto me which I am reluctant to claim as my own.Because they are central to the structureof McLaughlin's essay, I thinkit is worth pointing out that they rest on a reading of my work which isvery different from mine. In the essay for which McLaughlin takes meto task (Laudan 1980), I sought: (1) to explain why several prominent19th-centuryphilosophers of science turned away from the logic of dis-covery, and (2) to draw some 'morals' from that story about the currentrationalefor the analysis of discovery. McLaughlin quarrelswith my his-tory no less than with my morals. I suspect that he has misunderstoodboth.In a nutshell, my historical claim was this: so long as epistemologistsof science believed (a) that science was infallible knowledge, and (b) thatthe post hoc evaluation of the consequences of a theory was inconclusivewith respect to the truthof that theory, then the justification of a theorywould have to be found (if at all) in the circumstances of its genesis. Thelogic of discovery, in such a framework, would thus do double service;it would serve both heuristic and epistemic purposes. However (so Iclaimed), once (a) was abandoned, it then became reasonable-as it hadnot been before-to argue that the post hoc testing of a theory couldprovide its epistemic warrantand that a theory's origins could be ignoredin its appraisal. The moral I drew from this admittedly over-simple his-toricalaccountwas that, once fallibilism was accepted, logics of post hoctheory testing "renderedredundantand gratuitousthe logic of discoveryso far as the epistemological issue [of well-founded knowledge claims]was concerned" (1980, p. 182).McLaughlin imagines, however, that I was making different and moreambitious claims. Where I had argued that the decline of infallibilismmade it possible, even reasonable, to arguethat a theory could be justified

*Received August 1982.Philosophy of Science, 50 (1983)pp. 320-322.Copyright 1983by thePhilosophy f ScienceAssociation.

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INVENTION AND JUSTIFICATION 321independentlyof an analysis of its origins, he takes me to have said that"the decline of an infallibilist view of appraisal. . . require[d]the divorceof invention from appraisal"(1982, p. 203). The thrustof McLaughlin'sown analysis is to the effect that fallibilism does not require the dismissalof the epistemic significance of a logic of discovery. I fully agree withhim that fallibilism does not preclude the search for a logic of discovery;but that has no bearing on the account I was giving. I had argued thatthe emergence of fallibilism was a necessary condition for the recognitionof the epistemic centrality of logics of post hoc theory testing of a con-sequentialist sort. McLaughlin, on the other hand, takes me to have as-serted that fallibilism is a logically sufficient ground for the repudiationof the logic of discovery tout court. Nothing in McLaughlin's essay un-dercuts the historical thesis which I actually propounded (as opposed tothe one he attributesto me). McLaughlin has, I think, just misunderstoodthe characterof the conceptual interconnections which I was addressing.

As for his criticism of the morals I was drawing from the history, thereis again a serious mis-reading taking place. I had suggested that, if wewere ever to have a full-blown logic of post hoc theory evaluation (whichwe manifestly do not yet), then our epistemic tasks-so far as theoryassessment was concerned-would be at an end. Under such ideal cir-cumstances, a logic of discovery (even assuming one could be devised)would not be requiredto provide a warrantfor the theoretical claims ofscience. As I wrote, the logic of discovery would be epistemically "gra-tuitous and redundant"(1980, p. 182) if we had a full-blown logic ofjustification. McLaughlin takes me to have said, rather, that the factorswhich play a role in the invention of a theory are always irrelevantto itsappraisaland thus that there is no 'intersection' between the "contexts ofinvention and appraisal"(1982, p. 205). I suggested nothing of the sort.I was persuaded long ago by Peter Achinstein that many of the consid-erationsrelevant to the appraisalof a theory may well have been presentin the mind of the theory's inventor (Achinstein 1971). Invention some-times is a rational and rule-governed process. I can even imagine thatmany of the rules of a logic of discovery might be the same as those ofa logic of justification. But, on pain of belaboring the obvious, it is notessential to the evaluation of any theory to know anything whatever aboutthe reasoning processes of its inventor. Nor does the possibility of a logicof evaluationdependupon the possibilityof a logic of discovery. I squarelyrejectMcLaughlin's insistence that ignoring "thelogic of its [i.e., a theo-ry's] invention would be to overlook an importantelement in the logicof its appraisal, so as to do a defective job of epistemological reconstruc-tion" (1982, p. 205). Insofar as the factors utilized in the invention of atheory are relevant to that theory's epistemic warrant, they will show upin the logic of its appraisal. But they can earn a place there not by virtue

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322 LARRY LAUDANof their role in its invention, but only because we have epistemicallyindependent grounds for believing them to be relevant to appraisal.

REFERENCESAchinstein, P. (1971), Law and Explanation. New York: The Clarendon Press; OxfordUniversity Press.Laudan, L. (1980), "Why was the Logic of Discovery Abandoned?" in Nickles, T. (ed.),Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, pp. 173-183. (Arevised version of this essay appears in Laudan, L., Science and Hypothesis, 1981.)McLaughlin, R. (1982), "Invention and Induction: Laudan, Simon, and the Logic of Dis-covery", Philosophy of Science 49: 198-211.