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© 2014 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 45, No. 1, January 2014
0026-1068

TWO KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SCIENCE

AND PHILOSOPHY

ANDREW M. CAVALLO

Abstract: C. S. Peirce made the following claim: If science reveals truth, then
consensus among scientists can be expected in the limit. This article does not
dispute this claim; it simply assumes it. On the basis of this assumption, the
following question is asked: Is it possible to extend Peirce’s claim to philosophy in
a natural way? It is argued that two important differences between science and
philosophy strongly militate against such an extension. Does this mean that there
is no truth to be found in philosophy? Are there, perhaps, different kinds of truth
(scientific, philosophical, religious, and so on)? But such questions, though related
to the present investigation, are nevertheless well beyond the scope of this article.

Keywords: consensus, C. S. Peirce, metaphilosophy, metascience, science, truth.

As the work of man, science is subject to his arbitrariness and to all the
imperfections of his mental powers. There would essentially be no more science
for a man gifted with an unbounded understanding—a man for whom the final
conclusions, which we attain through a long chain of inferences, would be
immediately evident truths.
—Richard Dedekind (1996, 755–56)

C. S. Peirce (e.g., 1958) made the following claim: If science reveals truth,
then consensus among scientists can be expected in the limit. One could
debate the truth of this claim, but that is not the purpose of this article.
This article asks: If we assume Peirce’s claim, can we then extend it in a
natural way to philosophy?
Science and philosophy intersect with respect to subject matter. Both
are concerned with the nature of the universe and the role that humans
play in it. But philosophy alone is concerned with the investigation and
justification of values and morals. Of course, science can help us attain
ends that we might regard as desirable from an axiological or moral point
of view, but it has little to say about why those ends should be desirable in
the first place. It is tempting to believe otherwise, however. Consider the
following made-up argument:

Scientific studies x, y, and z indicate that treating others well results in

(a) better health and (b) a sense of fulfillment. Assuming the accuracy
of these studies, it follows at once that one should treat others well.

© 2014 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

134 ANDREW M. CAVALLO

This argument appears to settle a deep philosophical issue on the basis

of nothing more than impartial scientific information. But hidden in this
innocent-looking line of thought is an evaluative premise to the effect that
the reported physiological and psychological changes are good, hence
worth aiming for. Although the goodness of such changes may seem
obvious to the reader (as well as the author!), the fact-value gap—which is
an assumption of this article—militates against a strictly scientific justifi-
cation of any such value claim. It is not that science is value-neutral, as
some have claimed. It is simply that science cannot validate those values
with which it finds itself involved. This is our first key difference between
science and philosophy.
Observe that there is a kind of methodological consensus among sci-
entists. This does not amount to insisting that there is an algorithm for
scientific inquiry. It means only that the majority of scientists agree that all
genuine scientific investigations have certain ingredients in common. For
example, it is generally agreed that—unless something extraordinary is
at work—new hypotheses should not contradict established laws, for
example, the conservation laws. Other points of methodological consen-
sus could be cited, but I will leave that task to the reader. The important
point is this: Methodological consensus is a reality within the scientific
community.
Methodological consensus does not exist among philosophers. This is
obvious to anyone who has studied philosophy. I now make the strong
claim that this is no accident. It is the result of the nature of philosophy.
Why? Because the question “What is the nature of philosophical
method?” is itself a philosophical question, hence open to philosophical
debate. By contrast, the question “What is the nature of scientific
method?” is not a scientific question; it is a metascientific or philosophical
one. Of course, some scientists definitely think about the nature of scien-
tific inquiry, but this simply amounts to saying that some scientists are
also philosophers. Our second key difference between science and phi-
losophy is therefore this: Metaphilosophy is part of ordinary philosophy;
metascience is not part of ordinary science. While philosophy examines
itself as well as other matters, science examines only scientific questions.
What is and is not a scientific question is not itself a scientific question; it
is a philosophical one.
In summary, philosophy is inherently different from science in its con-
templation of (a) evaluative matters and (b) itself. These fundamental
differences strongly militate against the view that Peirce’s claim can be
applied to philosophy in a natural way.

255 William Street

Middletown, CT 06457
USA
andrewmcavallo@gmail.com

© 2014 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

 TWO KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 135

References
Dedekind, Richard. 1996. “On the Introduction of New Functions in
Mathematics.” In William Ewald, From Kant to Hilbert: A Sourcebook
in the Foundations of Mathematics, 2:754–61. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1958. “The Formulation of Realism.” In Col-
lected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volumes 7 and 8: Science and
Philosophy and Reviews, Correspondence and Bibliography, edited by
Arthur W. Burks, 8.12. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard
Universtity Press.

© 2014 Metaphilosophy LLC and John Wiley & Sons Ltd