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At the Boston Review, along with conversations about Kuhn between Morris and Hilary Putnam and Noam Chomsky. Thoughts from readers?
(Some of our earlier coverage of Mr. Morris's work related to philosophy.)
Barry Lam has a nice episode on this in season 1 of his podcast Hi Phi Nation, in which you get to hear Morris rant about Kuhn in an interview.
There was also an interesting piece Morris did at the NYT a few years back.
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the-ultimatum-part-1/
I would not be able to get through a conversation like this with Morris without a whole box fulll of ashtrays to chuck at him.
As a philosopher who wrote his dissertation on the incommensurability thesis, I submit that Morris doesn't understand Kuhn, who expended great effort trying to clarify his views (in, e.g., papers like "Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability," published in a PSA vol. in 1983 or thereabouts). Kuhn grew weary of trying to explain his views to critics who felt stubbornly compelled to shoehorn scientific change & cross-theoretical communication into the truncated systems supplied by technical formal logic.
First, the commensurability concept was borrowed from mathematics, where we see the incommensurability of rational & irrational numbers. But we can compare two incommensurables, e.g., "pi" & 2.17159, to any degree we choose or have need for; in practice, no one gets confused or finds the issue "unclear" (except for analytic philosophers)–even if there is a mathematical "residue." Transfer this notion to languages, & in particular to scientific languages, & it shouldn't be terribly hard to see what is going on. Those who are bilingual (myself included, as I speak Spanish as well as English) can confirm that there are "pockets" of each language that can't be translated easily into the other without the sense that something hasn't been captured. Professional translators deal with such matters all the time, & they do not get confused or regard what they are doing as "unclear." In scientific languages the issue is the same, surprisingly; the example I used was phlogiston chemistry vs. oxygen chemistry (simplifying a little for space & time's sake). The core concepts of the former dropped out because while proponents of the latter theory such as Lavoisier understood them they no longer regarded them as referring expressions; that was the "residue."
Nowhere does this truly imply incomparability or that people on opposite sides of a theoretical divide can't communicate or that we can't make true statements about the world, or that science does not make progress unless, again, we define "progress" as progress towards some abstract ideal linguistic-conceptual system (as opposed to an entity we judge pragmatically since, as the historicists rightly realized, we do not have a standpoint outside of history & locality).
As I enjoyed a brief correspondence with Kuhn over these & related matters back in the 1980s, I can confirm his frustration at the major tendencies which, since logical positivism had been thoroughly discredited long before, could only be attributed to a kind of pigheadedness: philosophers confusing clarity with logical exactitude & so necessarily seeing Kuhn as falling short as he never set out to supply this; it was the thrust of his contention that theory change is not a "logical process" that can be made compelling to one who "refuses to step into the circle," even though we can supply abundant reasons why a new "paradigm" replaces its predecessor. The final decision in theory choice is pragmatic. This is a longer story than can be told in a blog comment, obviously, but Kuhn's frustration at those who were either unable or unwilling to try & understand him almost surely explains the thrown ashtray, although again obviously no rigorous deductive proof of this can be given.
DO NOTE: Most of the time I praise analytic philosophers for have established the important of language & clarity of definition & use for philosophy (& much more!), but on issues such as Kuhn & incommensurability, & a supposed clash between these & realism & progress, the consensus, if that's what it is, is dead wrong.
The plausibility of Kuhn's incommensurability claims is proportionate to the plausibility of descriptive theories of meaning for scientific terms. Or at least that's what I was led to believe when I read the book and its critics. Does Morris offer an argument against descriptivism in his Ashtray book? That's what seems to be missing from the recent article. Barking about relativism seems to miss the interesting bits of Kuhn, and to focus too much on his book-selling sallies into relativistic territory.
In the late 80's, Errol Morris related the following about his time as Kuhn's student (in History of Science) at Princeton:
"I did enter Princeton actually thinking I was going to get a doctorate," he says. "I was wrong. I had big fights with my adviser. I was supposed to be concentrating on the history of physics. And, naturally, my adviser expected me to take all these courses in physics. But the classes were always full of fourteen-year-old Chinese prodigies, with their hands in the air – 'Call on me! Call on me!' I couldn't do it. I reneged on some of my commitments. At the end, my adviser actually assaulted me. He was on sabbatical and had an office at the Institute for Advanced Study. I remember thinking, This is the Institute for Advanced Study, and he's assaulting me. I'd written a thirty-page double-spaced paper, and he produced thirty single-spaced pages of his own criticizing it. The bile just flowed out of him. I accused him of not even finishing reading what I'd written. It turns out I was a problem, but at least I wasn't a drudge, and that school was filled with drudges. I remember saying to my adviser, 'You won't even look through my telescope.' And his response was 'Errol, it's not a telescope, it's a kaleidoscope.'"
The final exchange is intriguing; in light of his subsequent biography (not to mention the structure of this essay), I would be curious to know who Morris thinks was right.
Whoops, scratch that — I just read the piece linked to in #2, where Morris addresses this very question. He's a strange character; his asides in that piece indicate a kind of psychological 'peripheral vision' with respect to his own motivations that are lacking from his explicit considerations. Maybe that's how you end up being a better artist than philosopher.
Kuhn has always been sort of "two faced". Paraphrasing Susan Haack, there's the place where he says X and then where he "takes X back". Focusing on the X, then – one then needs a theory of reference to see if two (or more) scientific theories are about the same thing or not (or if it comes in degrees as Mario Bunge proposed). Not many of his critics or proponents ever did this that I know of, so it is hard to know how successful it was as a thesis or how to take it. (As suggested, Bunge *did*, so there is at least one example.)
On the more historical front, Philip Kitcher and the chemistry historian W. Brock (implicitly) have shown continuity over some of the supposed stronger "incommeasurabilities" like the Lavoisier case mentioned by A Facebook User.
As for the "takes X back" – well, I have never found the weaker versions of the thesis understandable and anything other than banal. Moreover, the strong versions are in the text *too*, so what do you do with inconsistency? (I'm genuinely interested in this problem, still.)
There is reason to believe that Morris' account of his past interactions with Kuhn are either exaggerated or distorted. In his past piece, which you linked to years ago, he mentions Kuhn's smoking habits and the brand of cigarettes Kuhn smoked. Kuhn's daughter replied to that piece years ago, noting that Morris was mistaken about the cigarette brand.
That's not very strong evidence of systematic exaggeration or distortion.
David,
Morris is a story-teller. He is a film maker. Here is what he said in the earlier episode: "Kuhn in those days was an incredible chain-smoker. First Pall Malls and then True Blues (a low tar and low nicotine alternative). Alternating. One cigarette lighting another. Matches were irrelevant." (https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/the-ashtray-the-ultimatum-part-1/).
This is a standard trope. Lots of detail. You get the sense you are there with him. The fact that the facts are wrong matter little, at least not for his rhetorical purposes.
Fair to Kuhn’s position(s)or not, I’m glad Errol Morris is writing these pieces up. I look forward to the book.
Ask any generally educated non-philosopher to name one philosopher is science, who will they name? When a name is given, it will almost certainly be Kuhn’s. For better or worse, his reputation will almost certainly survive one critical book.
Brad,
You may be right about Morris, I don't know. I'm merely suggesting that the fact, if it is a fact, that Kuhn smoked Camels rather than Pall Malls is not strong evidence that Morris habitually distorts the truth. If it were a trial and Morris were testifying from the witness stand, impeaching his testimony on that point alone wouldn't have much impact.
But again, you may have other reasons for charging Morris with indifference to the facts, at least when they are inconsistent with the story he wants to tell. And if you're right, its amusing that he's so indignant about Kuhn's supposed support for " the relativism of truth, the social construction of reality."
I think what is most interesting here is how a problematic relationship between advisor and student likely drove Morris out of the field. Reading a little between the lines, Kuhn seemed to think that Morris' work was worth discussing but that he wasn't good enough to graduate, pass, or whatever. But surely given what we know about Morris' mind and voice, displayed in these writings and in his films, he should have been encouraged to become an academic. I think it is plausible, given Kuhn's anger and Morris' attempts (after decades) to say something about his relationship with Kuhn, that their conflict became personal and emotional more than intellectual, even if they perceived it to be only a battle over the facts of whether Morris' ideas were good philosophy.
Perhaps the lesson should be that advisors, in their role qua advisor, should not see themselves as gatekeepers of the profession who could get into battles with their advisees, because the battles could become corrupted with interpersonal, emotional baggage. Perhaps advisors should be only supportive: assisting, and advocating. Others could take the role of the critic and gatekeeper who decide "this work means this person should not be granted a degree, a recommendation, or an academic job." Indeed, it should always be a panel performing that gatekeeper role so that the conflict between student and evaluator(s) is never one on one, because one on one can veer away from philosophy and into personal way too easily.
These are very interesting and insightful comments, thank you.
I never really understood why the "Philosopher's Lexicon" didn't have an entry for "to Kuhn": "to propose a radical provocative thesis, followed by a very successful career eliminating everything that was originally provocative." Kuhn, ultimately, seems to say that scientists change their minds about things, and sometimes it is not entirely obvious why they do so. I'm not sure that claim would have made him the kind of profound thinker non-scientists seem to think he is/was.
I like your verb 'to kuhn'. I'd add a necessary precursor to kuhning: the previous act of coming up with a clever, insightful, and valid point, and then exaggerating it to a ridiculous extent so that it becomes nonsense. Perhaps we could call this 'to quine'.
Many of these indeed are interesting & insightful into Morris's disdain for Kuhn, but this last comment brought me up short. It reflects the double-bind Kuhn himself & many of us who found merit in his work found ourselves in: either he is "radical[ly] provocative" or "banal" (earlier comment) & uninteresting.
It's worth keeping in mind that a lot of people, some of them very well educated, will find most analytic philosophy of science "uninteresting." Interest is where you find it.
But what did Kuhn eliminate? He tried his best to end confusion over what he had said in *Structure*, not always adequately, as his primary training was in theoretical physics & then the history of science, not philosophy per se. Sometimes he was his own worst enemy, writing at one point how the final decision over paradigm-choice would have to be based "on faith"; or that philosophers might have to give up the idea that scientific change brings us "closer & closer to the truth." Neither of which I would have said. Kuhn gave us a healthy range of criteria that in his judgment had guided theory choice, although they function as heuristics rather than providing logical closure. The decision is, & has to be, made amidst an aggregate of particulars & local circumstances: not "unclear" or failing to be "entirely obvious," but because the exact criteria change from case to case. And only if "the truth" is understood, again, as some kind of Absolute Ideal Theory or Completed Descriptive Vocabulary (as if we'd all become some linguistic equivalent of Hegelian Absolute Idealists without knowing it!), must we give up approaching it. This doesn't seem to me a relativist or especially "provocative" thesis, whatever this means other than stirring controversy. If it is "banal" or uninteresting, make the best of it.
These are great comments. Although, it's sad (to me) that the professionalization of philosophy has made it make sense to say that Morris was "driven out of the field." Think about it: he's written a book in philosophy, interviewed great philosophers, and clearly continues to grapple with philosophical ideas and their implications (regardless of one agrees with his conclusions). I think it makes sense to say he's still in the field.
As a meditation on the title question ("Is There Such a Thing as Truth?"), I found Errol Morris's piece in the Boston Review to be lively. Morris grabbed my attention in the first two sentences because, like him, I do not regard Kuhn's Structure as one of the seminal works of the twentieth century.
What I find lacking in Morris's piece is any sympathy (or empathy) for Kuhn's thought and for the very specific intellectual circumstances of Kuhn's thought. I myself mostly lacked such sympathy until I read an article by Vasso Kindi that instilled in me a more sympathetic understanding of why Kuhn's project in Structure was important to Kuhn even if it seems unimportant to me; see: Vasso Kindi (2005), The relation of history of science to philosophy of science in 'The structure of scientific revolutions' and Kuhn's later philosophical work, Perspectives on Science, 13(4), 495–530.
Kindi helped me to see how much of the argumentation against Kuhn was arguing against a straw man; as she put it in that article: "When his critics cite all the evidence of continuity and communication, they fight, I believe, a straw man." Kindi expanded on this idea in a recent chapter: Vasso Kindi (2018), The Kuhnian straw man, in: Moti Mizrahi (ed.), The Kuhnian image of science: time for a decisive transformation? (pp. 95–112), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Morris's Kuhn seems to me to be a straw man. More sympathy for Kuhn's thought would make Morris's portrayal of that thought more accurate, if less lively (and I can imagine personal reasons why such sympathy is not likely to be forthcoming).
Drawing the line between gatekeeper and supportive advisor is tricky, but from my experience from the junior side of the advisor-advisee relationship, far, far more of my fellow grad students are drowning in neglect from their advisor and fellow faculty than suffering from too much criticism. If supportive assistance leads to friendly meetings without critical engagement with the work, that can be more damaging to all but a few.
Morris is too attached to truth, in my view.
While I agree that Kuhn’s anti-realism is nonsense, it is less than 20% of his contribution to the philosophy of science. The remaining ideas – e.g., why science is successful, how it is/should be done, the idea of a paradigm, and the 2-stage view of scientific progress – as vague (and wrong) as they are, are just sharp (and insightful) enough to remain a valuable topic for discussion and investigation for 100 years.
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