The Revised Pragmatic Approach to the Demarcation Problem with Multidimensional Classification

タジゲンテキ　レンゾク　ブンルイホウ　ト　プラグマティック　アプローチ　ニ　ヨッテ　カガク　ヲ　キメル　ホウホウ

ササキ, ワタル

Sasaki, Wataru

オオサカ ダイガク ダイガクイン ニンゲン カガク ケンキュウカ シャカイガク ニンゲンガク ジンルイガク ケンキュウシツ

Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University

境界設定問題

疑似科学

ラウダン

プラグマティック・アプローチ

demarcation problem

pseudoscience

Laudan

falsifi cationism

pragmatic approach

The demarcation problem is a philosophical problem to find a solution to distinguish science and non-science or pseudo-science, and it has been of keen interest of philosophers of science until the mid-twentieth century. However, since most solutions to this problem have been rejected, philosophers gradually doubted the existence of a sharp boundary between the two, and then some philosophers began to criticize the problem itself. There are many criticisms on this, but especially, the criticism of Laudan (1983a) is known to be a very powerful one. However, recently, from the viewpoint of dealing with the issues of pseudoscience, some philosophers claim to rethink the demarcation problem, and several prospective solutions have been proposed in a different way from the traditional approach. In this situation, I decided to interpret the demarcation problem in a different way and propose a new solution. First, we examined the criticisms of the demarcation problem (section 2), and point out that there remain some problems that cannot be solved by such criticisms (section 3). Furthermore, we reconsider the purposes, methods and premises to consider the demarcation problem in terms of practical concerns (Section 4). Also, we examine several analyses of pseudoscience (Section 5), consider the pragmatic approach proposed by Resnik (2000) and refi ne it with Pigliucci (2013)'s multidimensional continuous classifi cation and confi rm that the revised pragmatic approach is a viable method to evaluate science in terms of practical concerns (section 6).