I’m never quite sure what “scientism” is supposed to mean. It often seems to be little more than a strawman, or a punching bag used by some theists and some philosophers.
In any case, a recent blog post by Larry Moran:
drew my attention to an argument against scientism by Massimo Pigliucci.
I suggest you start by reading Larry Moran’s post.
Pigliucci’s questions
In his argument, Pigliucci gives a list of questions that he sees as philosophical questions rather than scientific questions. I shall quote the questions here, and then give my comments on them.
- In metaphysics: what is a cause?
Why should any scientist care about this? Yes, causation is important to science. But for science, we test causation be seeing what we can cause in our experimentation. We attempt to narrow down causes. And we tend to extrapolate that knowledge by way of predictions. It is not at all clear that this has anything much to do with the metaphysics of cause.
- In logic: is modus ponens a type of valid inference?
I’m not sure why any scientist would even care about this.
The Heretical Philosopher 