Скачать или смотреть In Defence of Deference (Tushar Menon)

On Tuesday 30th March 2021 we had Tushar Menon join us to defend a specific variety of naturalism, which he calls "deferential naturalism".

Abstract

My goal in this talk is to justify the widespread conviction that science is authoritative, by articulating a robust defense of a position I refer to as `deferential naturalism’. Deferential naturalists believe that science has a decisive bearing on all philosophical questions to which it (putatively) provides answers. Although deferential naturalism is an attractive position, with many adherents, explicit arguments for deferential naturalism are hard to come by, and the position has recently come under attack. In this talk, I show that we can motivate and defend deferential naturalism using the resources of epistemic utility theory. Perhaps unexpectedly, the strength of this defence tracks positions on the scientific realism/anitrealism spectrum. I argue that, appropriately construed, deferential naturalism can sit alongside a range of epistemic norms which urge agents to defer to experts, in this case, science