RE: BHA: Mainstream Philosophy of Science

[Richard Moodey <moodey001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marsh and Mervyn,

A comment on one of Marsh's responses to Mervyn


> Yes, but then we need to elaborate on what we mean by explanatory power. I
> also think this is not enough. Milton Friedman, in _An Essay on Positive
> Economics_, argues that theories are like black-box calculating devices.
> Their value is in helping us make good predictions about the world (not
> necessarily, or not even primarily, predictions about the future state of
> the world, but rather predictions about the patterns of data in our
> scientific studies). Thus, he argues, the fantastic constructs in
> neoclassical economics are perfectly legitimate. We do not care if people
> really behave as "rational economic man" or if there is perfect information,
> etc. All we should care about, according to Milton, is that these constructs
> help us make good predictions.

I think that a critical realist has to go on to ask, "What the hell is
going on inside that black box?"


> In some cases, I am inclined to agree with uncle Milty. If we're trying to
> project a town's population for next year, then a good projective model is
> all we need. Of course, we also need a good realist theory of population so
> that we have cause to believe the demi-regs under which the model operates
> will still be in effect next year. However, Milty wants to go beyond this.
> He wants to license science as being strictly concerned about predictions
> which, in the Hempel-Popper tradition, is the same thing as an explanation.
> I believe the plausibility of the theory's terms -- in other words the
> theory's internal realism about the world -- is also important. Late
> capitalism is a better theory than post-industrialism because (1) capitalist
> relations still govern production (of not only industrial goods but also
> services, cultural goods like music, etc.) and because (2) the bulk of
> economic production (and a good deal of value) still involves industrial
> goods, although now their production is more global so that countries within
> the over-developed world may in fact have more "knowledge workers" than
> industrial workers. Nonetheless, for some purposes, we might have an easier
> time using the post-industrial theory to explain things. For instance, if we
> consider changes in Chicago's political machine, we might explain it more
> easily by pointing to the shift from blue-collar industrial workers to
> white-collar post-industrial workers, so that the machine's patronage was no
> longer an effective mechanism for political governance. A theory based on
> late-capitalism may be more difficult to apply precisely because it is based
> on a deeper level of reality so that the connections to empirical events are
> more complex and contingent. Still, I would throw my hat in with the
> late-capitalism theory precisely because it penetrates reality more deeply.

This could be an ignorant question from a non-economist, but don't both
"late capitalism" and "post-industrial" theories differ more in the
descriptions they offer of the contemporary world than in their
explanations of that world as described?  That is, they describe states of
the world using different terms.  Granted, these terms are "theory laden,"
but it my CR perspective on this would lead me to assert that the
respective descriptions are not just theoretical emmanations, but are
really, and powerfully, influenced by the actual state of the
world.  Describing the state of the world using the language of different
theories would seem to be heuristically very useful, in that each would
sensitize us to things which the others might ignore.  Using several
theoretical languages would result in a richer description of the state of
the world than would using just one.  But explanation is a further step,
involving asking questions for understanding.  And judgment requires still
more work, reflecting upon the adequacy of alternative explanations.

Of course, this is what Marsh advocates in the paragraph I quoted,
above.  One of my points is that there is a descriptive phase in the
process of inquiry in which different theoretical languages can be used
together, heuristically.  At this stage, it might not be productive to try
to judge between the theories.

A second point is that in social science, at least, explanations of actual
events or states usually requires more than describing the phenomena using
the language provided by a theory one likes.  Explanations of complex
phenomena require insights, formulation of these insights into propositions
about the phenomena, and reflection upon these propositions to determine
the conditions that must be met for judging them to be true or false (or
probably true or false).

To get back to Uncle Milty, he seems to be saying that the only
propositions worth expending this kind of effort on are those that take the
form of predictions -- if (event) A, then (event) B (with all sorts of
sophisticated complications, of course).  CR, imo, gives us philosophical
justification for formulating propositions about internal relations inside
the black box, and for reflecting upon the relative truth and falsity of
alternative propositions about these internal relations.   I am saying
anything here that is inconsistent with this next paragraph of Marsh's?

> I think CR points us in one of two directions, which are almost equivalent.
> (1) We can define a good explanation to be one that's based on real things
> and causal powers necessarily arising as emergent properties from their
> internal relations. Or, (2) we can accept a more open and imprecisely
> defined notion of "explanation" and add a second criterion for accepting a
> theory besides its explanatory power. This second criterion would be the
> theory's realism.



> However we resolve this, we're straying a bit from the original discussion
> of scientific truth. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I'm attracted to
> a criteria for the true existence of a scientific entity as requiring it to
> have two independent causal properties which are verified through scientific
> research.

I do not think it is controversial to say that the members of a scientific
community only gradually come to agree that a proposition in science is
true.  I think it is consistent with CR to say that this slowly emerging
agreement is not what makes the proposition true.  It is really true only
to the extent that it expresses a true grasp of the nature of the
phenomenon to which it refers.  I think that it is to that *nature of the
phenomenon* that "alethic truth" refers.

Regards,

Dick




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