Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University Cheshire, Crewe Green Road, Crewe Cheshire CW1 5DU, UK.
Health Care Anal. 2013 Jun;21(2):130-45. doi: 10.1007/s10728-012-0211-6.
Scientism is a philosophy which purports to define what the world 'really is'. It adopts what the philosopher Thomas Nagel called 'an epistemological criterion of reality', defining what is real as that which can be discovered by certain quite specific methods of investigation. As a consequence all features of experience not revealed by those methods are deemed 'subjective' in a way that suggests they are either not real, or lie beyond the scope of meaningful rational inquiry. This devalues capacities that (we argue) are in fact essential components of good reasoning and virtuous practice. Ultimately, the implications of scientism for statements of value undermine value-judgements essential for science itself to have a sound basis. Scientism has implications, therefore, for ontology, epistemology and also for which claims we can assert as objective truths about the world. Adopting scientism as a world view will have consequences for reasoning and decision-making in clinical and other contexts. We analyse the implications of this approach and conclude that we need to reject scientism if we are to avoid stifling virtuous practice and to develop richer conceptions of human reasoning.
科学主义是一种试图定义世界“真实本质”的哲学。它采用了哲学家托马斯·内格尔（Thomas Nagel）所谓的“现实的认识论标准”，将真实定义为可以通过某些特定的调查方法发现的东西。因此，所有无法通过这些方法揭示的经验特征都被认为是“主观的”，这表明它们要么不真实，要么超出了有意义的理性探究的范围。这贬低了（我们认为）实际上是良好推理和有道德的实践的重要组成部分的能力。最终，科学主义对价值陈述的影响破坏了科学本身具有合理基础的重要价值判断。因此，科学主义对本体论、认识论以及我们可以断言的关于世界的客观真理主张都有影响。将科学主义作为一种世界观，将对临床和其他环境中的推理和决策产生影响。我们分析了这种方法的含义，并得出结论，如果我们要避免扼杀有道德的实践并发展更丰富的人类推理概念，我们就需要拒绝科学主义。
