Consensual Nature of Scientific Truths

DOI

10.2991/cesses-18.2018.187How to use a DOI?

Keywords

scientific cognition; scientific truth; the subject of scientific cognition; part of scientific knowledge; level of scientific knowledge; scientific consensus

Abstract

The article enunciates and justifies the consensual conception of the scientific truths nature. The basis of this conception is a constructive and representational interpretation of scientific knowledge at all levels of scientific cognition: sensual, empirical, theoretical and meta-theoretical. We consider the consensual paradigm of the scientific truths nature as an alternative to two traditional paradigms in understanding the scientific truths nature: empiricist and rationalist conceptions. According to the first conception, the basis, source and criterion of truth of any scientific knowledge element is an empirical experience. However, the truth nature of mathematical knowledge and scientific theories in modern natural sciences is contrary to the empiricist conception of scientific truth. As follows from the rationalist conception, any scientific truth is a product of thinking, the main methods of which are intuition, idealization and deduction. But this conception contradicts the ways of obtaining and verifying the truth of sense-data in science along with science facts and empirical laws. Unlike experimentalism and rationalism the process of scientific cognition within the framework of consensual paradigm is thought of as having an intrinsically social character, and its real subject is neither a transcendental subject nor an individual scientist, but only the disciplinary scientific community. On the contrary, the process of obtaining, justification and estimation of the scientific cognition results rests in a substantial way not only on the subject-object cognitive relation, but also on the communicative relationships within the scientific community. In view of this, the recognition of any part of scientific knowledge by the scientific community as true (or untrue) always has an expert and consensual character.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Sergey Lebedev
PY  - 2018/11
DA  - 2018/11
TI  - Consensual Nature of Scientific Truths
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2018)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 847
EP  - 849
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/cesses-18.2018.187
DO  - 10.2991/cesses-18.2018.187
ID  - Lebedev2018/11
ER  -