AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

In his small, often-neglected book Verteidigungsrede fur die Philosophie (1966), philosopher Josef Pieper offers an ingenious criticism of scientism, the thesis that all knowledge is from science. While proponents of scientism are few and far between for well-known problems such as its self-referential incoherence, science's descriptive and explanatory limits, extra-scientific assumptions, and failure to take seriously the qualitative features of reality (plus its materialist underpinnings, though not all are worried on this matter, no pun intended), nonetheless Pieper's criticism displaces both scientism and the move towards so-called "weak scientism" (the thesis that science is broader than natural sciences) and "epistemic opportunism" (the thesis that we should be optimists about scientific success). Following the demise of the Early Vienna Circle and logical positivism on what "empirical" and "observation" mean, Pieper's argument is that scientism intrinsically carries with it an implausible concept of experience, and so should be rejected. Here is the structure of the argument. Because science is an empirical (a posteriori) endeavor, it requires an intelligible notion of experience (or observation). Scientism must say that what exhausts experience is simply the natural world as experienced by our senses. However, this leaves out much of the world as we experience it, not only in its extra-scientific qualities (Schrödinger provides some entertaining examples) but also in the objects of experience themselves ("moral experience", as some call it, is a paradigmatic example). The theoretical advantages of this broad(er) account of experience (which is incompatible with scientism) are its alignment with moral-epistemic virtues like epistemic justice, as well as science's praise for dispassionate objectivity. Broader accounts of experience carry concerns as well, especially Platonic concerns about appearances versus reality, but all this shows - says Pieper - is that the philosophical act is indispensable.