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Diagnosing Pseudoscience – by Getting Rid of the Demarcation Problem

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Abstract

For a long time, philosophers of science have expressed little interest in the so-called demarcation project that occupied the pioneers of their field, and most now concur that terms like “pseudoscience” cannot be defined in any meaningful way. However, recent years have witnessed a revival of philosophical interest in demarcation. In this paper, I argue that, though the demarcation problem of old leads to a dead-end, the concept of pseudoscience is not going away anytime soon, and deserves a fresh look. My approach proposes to naturalize and down-size the concept, anchoring it in real-life doctrines and fields of inquiry. First, I argue against the definite article “the” in “the demarcation problem”, distinguishing between territorial and normative demarcation, and between different failures and shortcomings in science apart from pseudoscience (such as fraudulent or faulty research). Next, I argue that pseudosciences can be fruitfully regarded as simulacra of science, doctrines that are not epistemically warranted but whose proponents try to create the impression that they are. In this element of imitation or mimicry, I argue, lies the clue to their common identity. Despite the huge variety of doctrines and beliefs gathered under the rubric of “pseudoscience”, and the wide range of defects from which they suffer, pseudosciences all engage in similar strategies to create an impression of epistemic warrant. The indirect, symptomatic approach defended here leads to a general characterization of pseudosciences in all domains of inquiry, and to a useful diagnostic tool.

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Notes

  1. A search in the Web of Science database on the topic of ‘pseudoscience’ for three flagship journals in the field yields one result for Philosophy of Science (a paper from 1998), zero results for British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, and one result for Synthese. For the topic of ‘demarcation’, the results are 6, 3 and 16, respectively, but some of these are unrelated to the traditional demarcation problem, dealing with cognition or psychiatric diagnosis. Other journals in the field, such as Theoria, Philosophia, Disputatio, and Journal for General Philosophy of Science, have devoted more attention to the demarcation problem in recent years, as can be gleaned from the list of references of this paper.

  2. By 1952, Popper himself seems to have lost all interest in territorial demarcation, writing about the difference between science and philosophy: “Disciplines are distinguished partly for historical reasons and reasons of administrative convenience (such as the organisation of teaching and of appointments), partly because the theories which we construct to solve our problems have a tendency to grow into unified systems. But all this classification and distinction is a comparatively unimportant and superficial affair.” (Popper 1952, 125).

  3. Laudan himself, in his attack on the normative demarcation and the concept of “pseudoscience”, repeatedly dwells on problems that merely pertain to territorial demarcation, for instance looking for features that “mark off science from other sorts of belief” (Laudan 1982, 118). For a full critique, see Boudry (2013b).

  4. For what it is worth, I believe that the latter problem is indeed intractable, not only because science has fuzzy territorial boundaries with everyday knowledge and with philosophy or other neighboring disciplines, but because, following Quine (1951) and others, I believe all of our human epistemic endeavors are enmeshed in one big web with many interconnected strands. This is not the case for the normative demarcation project: the categories of science and pseudoscience are largely distinct and nonoverlapping, and are certainly not mutually dependent.

  5. For a critique of the notion that ‘methodological naturalism’ is an essential attribute of science, see (Boudry et al. 2010; Fishman & Boudry 2013).

  6. Oxford English Dictionary: www.oed.com/view/Entry/153794.

  7. Hansson (2013, 70–71) has developed an improved version on this definition, centering around “reliability” rather than “epistemic warrant”, but I hope he will not mind that I prefer his original formulation.

  8. From a speech in 1978 titled “How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later”, available at https://urbigenous.net/library/how_to_build.html.

  9. In so-called conspiracy theories — defined as alternative accounts of history in terms of the nefarious actions of a small groups of agents working together — these intelligent attempts to evade detection form the conceptual core of the theory (Coady 2006). Whether or not one wants to classify conspiracy theories as “pseudosciences”, it is clear that they share many features with traditional pseudosciences, and are impervious to criticism and refutation for similar reasons.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Taner Edis, Stefaan Blancke, and Angelo Fasce for comments and suggestions, as well as Martha Evonuk, PhD, from Evonuk Scientific Editing (evonukscientificediting.com) for proof-reading a draft of this manuscript.

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This research was funded by the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO).

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2 - room 041, 9000, Gent, Belgium

    Maarten Boudry

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Boudry, M. Diagnosing Pseudoscience – by Getting Rid of the Demarcation Problem. J Gen Philos Sci 53, 83–101 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-021-09572-4

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