Since Kant used the word Weltanschaungen with reference to the mathematical sublime in the Critique in 1790, this notion of a foundational grounding that determines, or at least influences, our way of experiencing and comprehending the world has been taken up, at first by Fichte and Schilling and later by theologians, as a fact of cognition. Englert (2022) calls this the “worldview maneuver”, but by the end of the nineteenth century, this had become a doctrine, or theory, and I will call it the Worldview Theory (or WVT). Over a century after Kant, in 1908, James Orr wrote A Christian view of God and the world, which made the term and notion more or less ubiquitous. "although the existence of something independent of the mind is conceded, everything that we can know about this mind-independent “reality” is held to be so permeated by the creative, formative, or constructive activities of the mind (of some kind or other) that all claims to knowledge must be considered, in some sense, to be a form of self-knowledge [Guyer and Horstmann, 2023)" and this was echoed and amplified throughout the twentieth century, by linguists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, educational theorists, political theorists of the Frankfurt School, and of course philosophy, with Wittgenstein in the Investigations and On Certainty one of the more influential amplifiers. And of course, in the philosophy of science, we have theory-dependence of observation, Kuhn’s “paradigms”, disciplinary matrices and their consequent incommensurabilities. So a lot of weight is carried by the WVT. But just how plausible are worldviews? I will argue there is a spectrum ranging from hard determinism of beliefs and actions through to soft influences, and that WVT equivocates on this spectrum. I will argue further that the acquisition of belief structures inevitably occurs piecemeal, and that no overarching belief systems ever develop, or could. Finally, I will suggest that we actually acquire such views of the world as we typically have through the populating of our belief nets by picking prêt-à-porter beliefs from epistemic authorities.

1. JOHN WILKINS, NOVEMBER 2023
Worldviews and their (im)plausibility:
Science and Holism
Artwork by Abhishek Chauhan. Used with permission.
All rights reserved Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung India

2. Worldviews do not have a life of their own, apart from
their human carriers; and since we habitually entertain
contradictory worldviews, blithely invoking whatever
seems appropriate to varying circumstances, there are
more worldviews at any given time than persons
walking the face of the earth.
William H. McNeill, “History and the Scientific Worldview”
2002

3. Worldviews are a notion found in German idealism and used in a number of
fields:
• Psychology
• Educational Theory
• Social Theory
• Political Theory
• Linguistics
but also Philosophy of Science
• Kuhnian paradigms (disciplinary matrices, global theories, Carnap’s
Aufbau).
I call this notion World View Theory (WVT)
Worldviews and Science

4. Philosophy and the Scientific Image
Not the definite article: “the” SI. Is there only the one?
Though Sellars did not suggest this, and indeed was concerned by the
scientific treatment of humanity, others talk about the SI as a way of
interpreting the world.
Pluralisms of SIs arrived with the theoretical turn, though, in particular with
Kuhn
What I want to do is look at this notion in general terms, in terms of
worldviews
Sellars’ Scientific Image

5. Currently, worldviews are thought to have at least the following properties:
1. Foundational and unjustifiable beliefs (usually intuited).
1. These go by various names: presuppositions, hinge beliefs, founding
principles (Prinzipen), doxastic stances, program cores, standpoints,
postulates
2. Relative to absolute determinism of perception and judgement by the
system
1. Linguistic determinism (Humboldt to Whorf-Sapir)
2. Theory dependence of observation and “creating a world”
3. Conceptual determinism in religion and ideology
3. Incommensurability of competing worldviews (no common ground)
Features of Worldviews

6. Epistemic and doxastic construct
As a set of beliefs or guiding rules or stances for creating solutions to problems: A
kind of anti-realism
Sociological convention
As a set of shared beliefs or ways of seeing the world that coordinate a social group
and set up identity: for instance, religious or political beliefs
Metaphysical Views
As a view of the ontology of the world (e.g., corpuscular or fields): A kind of realism
Interpretations of Worldviews

7. [if] we ask what a Kuhnian paradigm is,
Kuhn’s habit of multiple definition poses a
problem. If we ask, however, what a
paradigm does, it becomes clear at once ...
that the construct sense of “paradigm,” and
not the metaphysical sense . . . is the
fundamental one. For only with an artifact
can you solve puzzles.
Masterman (1970:70)
Worldviews in Philosophy of Science

8. From Kant to Kuhn
While WVT varies according to period, culture and discipline (e.g., late
nineteenth century Reformed theology) there is some commonality across
the tradition
Kuhn may have partly derived his version from Wittgenstein (PI had just
been published a few years before Structure), as it was a shared German
notion from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s linguistic determinism, through to
Heidegger.
The details and targets differ, but WVT is structurally and functionally the
same in each case.
Why is it maleficent and malignant?
Kuhn ≈ Wittgenstein ≈ German Idealism

9. Lebesformen
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him [PI 223]
I always thought this was one of the silliest things Wittgenstein ever wrote.
It is clear we share with lions a vast amount of biological history, including
signalling behaviours, and many shared interests (kids, food and
environmental dangers). They may or may not have transmitted culture (I
think most mammals do, as well as birds), but when a lion talks, they say
My mates! My kids! My food! Get away!
W wants language to be founded upon biocultural lifestyle (hinge beliefs),
but the more we investigate non-humans, the more we find they have
functional or even homological capabilities, if not sophisticated as ours.
Lions can talk and we can understand them

10. In a sense that I am unable to
explicate further, the proponents
of competing paradigms practice
their trades in different worlds. . . .
Practicing in different worlds, the
two groups of scientists see
different things when they look
from the same point in the same
direction.
A Newtonian and an Einsteinian walk into a
bar

11. Perceptual incommensurability
Pendulums: Aristotle constrained fall; Galilean: pendulum motion
Linguistic incommensurability
Terminological inequality: MassN ≠ MassE
Taxonomic incommensurability
Earth is not/is a planet. The sun is not/is a star…
“What characterizes revolutions is ... change in several of the taxonomic
categories prerequisite to scientific descriptions and generalizations. That
change ... is an adjustment not only of criteria relevant to categorization, but
also of the way in which objects and situations are distributed among
preexisting categories.” (Kuhn 1987, pp. 19–20)
Yet, all these are jointly understood by historians and scientists: how?
A Newtonian and an Einsteinian walk into a
bar

12. Scientists share a Lebensformen
Several actually:
• conventions,
• techniques,
• extramural measurements,
• cultures
How could they not be able to communicate and understand each other? No
matter how distinct a tradition, episteme, worldview or paradigm, there is
always common ground such that an honest attempt to understand is
pragmatically possible, even with flaws. If not cultural, at least biological
Shared epistemes

13. Where do they originate, and how are they
acquired?
Individually
Nobody studies the entirety of a worldview in order to develop it. One is exposed
instead to fractions or pieces of worldviews so-called. Many will be inconsistent
As a result, individuals will either have incoherent sets of beliefs, even hinge
beliefs, or will “outsource” worldview definition to authorities
Believers may reconcile some of their core beliefs by revising them as they are
taught, or by mimesis. But it is vanishingly unlikely they will complete this for all
their views and values
The development of worldviews

14. Where do they originate, and how are
they acquired?
Sociocultural
Worldviews are often ascribed to communities of faith, culture or political
stance
This involves a social structure of authorities and gatekeepers to guide and
sanction belief acquisition
In the case of schisms shared vocabularies are often reinterpreted (e.g., the
Reformation) but still comprehensible to each other
In short, Worldviews seem not to be as holistic in meaning as advertised
The development of worldviews

15. Where do they originate, and how are
they acquired?
Historically
Worldviews appear to be temporal segments of a skein of traditions
There is no set domain for traditions: something can be science or religion,
political ideology or methodology (esp. in the human sciences)
Given this interweaving and evolution of traditions and domains, language
and concepts must themselves be in a state of flux.
Normal times and revolutionary times differ in degrees of change rates (cf.
Toulmin and Watkins in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge)
The development of worldviews

16. Conversion
Counting Worldviews
Worldview Type Commensurability
Other issues

17. Why so bad?
WVT puts abstract concepts over concrete communities and traditions
WVT allows intellectuals to elide from one sense to another (e.g., weak to
strong)
WVT oversimplifies complex situations
WVT is used to “other” people based on arbitrary criteria
WVs do not exist (at least strongly)
I do not like WVT
Conclusion

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