Against Progress and Best Explanations

There are stubborn dissenters from modern scientific consensuses that we take to be socially important, and philosophers say we should like to show that we are in some sense really doing better than them. Think of climate change sceptics, or evolution denialists, anti-vaxxers, etc.  This has been pointed out to me as a means of motivating philosophers' projects to develop an account of scientific progress which vindicates our sense that we are doing objectively better than the ancients, or past scientists more broadly. And, relatedly, this is purportedly why we should want an account of scientific theory choice that makes it such that there is a unique best procedure for picking out favoured theories given evidence, or at least that people are pretty severely restrained in what they are allowed to still do and count as being properly scientific.

Short post on why I don't find this a convincing rationale for such projects.

First, it's a misidentification of the real source of the problem identified. I do not believe it is even alwayss actually a problem. I am less bothered by the thought of somebody somewhere being wrong than others - philosophers should generally do better at learning to live with diversity. But even where I grant it is troubling, it is more usually a social problem than an epistemic one. What is wanted is a political and economic system, and media and social network platform environment especially, not dominated by gajillionares and their paid misinformants, not a better theory of objectivity. If under better social conditions people still wanted to maintain their dissent then we can see what we think of it then.  

Second, perhaps as a consequence of that misidentification the means of addressing the problem is quite ineffective. In so far as you could show that there is some sort of objectively favoured means of going from the evidence to our present theoretical consensuses, it would just be one more thing to ignore. The stubborn dissenters have already ignored the predictive and explanatory power of the dominant theories, their pleasing elegance and simplicity, their ability to fruitfully generate and solve puzzles. What real difference is it for them to then ignore the fact that the present theory is also the one which a favoured system of weights or amalgamation procedure would select from these facts? It is, at best, only a function of stuff they already failed to find convincing in the first place. 

Perhaps this lets us explain to ourselves, and to our own satisfaction, why we are right - even if it would never persuade the sceptic. Perhaps so, but put as such, it seems a much less urgent problem, and does not do much to motivate the project.

We like what we like, we believe what we believe, and we can give reasons for doing as such. Other people can do the same, and we will not always be aligned. We should strive for a social reform that will minimise the avoidable mistakes arising from ideology or propaganda, and we should learn to be ok with persistent disagreement where it is unavoidable. Away with any hope that Reason or the Universe or the Nature of Objectivity or the Ideal Discourse Procedure or The Optimal Theory Choice Procedure or any other philosopher's fetish will vindicate us in our preferences, conveniently enough side with us against our political enemies while it does so, and in the process sway all fair minded observers to our side once explained. 

I think that it is good to be able to settle disputes within a paradigm by some sort of not-just-clash-of-personalities method, and preferable in particular that we can do this in a way which is hard to manipulate. So, say, I think it a marked improvement in a community if it moves away from assessing the strength of evidence by having pundits tell us their vague hunches, and instead it becomes the norm for people build and explain their models that explicitly state their assumptions and reasoning methods, and also allow us to build up a track record of their accuracy. But if somebody just doesn't want to join a paradigm I don't see what use it is pointing out to them that the standards we endorse tell them they ought to.