Re: BHA: Mainstream Philosophy of Science

[Mervyn Hartwig <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Marsh,

Looks like we've ended up agreeing pretty much again.

>n other
>words, I'm not dismissing alethic truth, but I am saying we could use
>something more.

It could be that the something more needed is an elaboration and
development of the existing theory, rather than a new theory.

>Still, I would throw my hat in with the
>late-capitalism theory precisely because it penetrates reality more deeply.

This is exactly what is mainly meant by 'greater explanatory power', and
it is this that sustains the rationality of scientific revolutions - as
we go deeper our theories must change to accomodate the newly discovered
levels of reality. This doesn't entail that predecessor theories are
simply false - they made genuine discoveries at the levels which they
addressed - but they're now 'sublated' and incorporated in a higher
order theory. While this kind of argument is elaborated at greatest
length in DPF, it is of course present in RTS and PON. Ontological depth
makes sense of scientific revolutions, rescuing them from the kind
relativism the literature you've been looking at entertains.

>Nonetheless, even this argument may have logical flaws.
>It seems CR can only benefit by engaging in debates about such logic with
>those who are not sympathetic to CR. This way we can work out the strengths
>and weaknesses of our arguments. Otherwise, we're just preaching to the
>choir.

I agree that such debates are important. But of course if 'not
sympathetic' means hostile, it's unlikely they could be very productive.
Constructive debate presupposes interpretative charity - grasping the
criticised position 'from the inside' and in its strongest light
precisely in order to identify and 'remedy' its weak points. This is the
method of immanent critique. While this is the method par excellence by
which CR has evolved and is evolving as a position in philosophy and
social theory, I agree we should encourage it further and welcome
critiques of CR such that flourishing debates can ensue.

Best,

Mervyn


Marshall Feldman <marsh@xxxxxxx> writes
>Mervyn,
>
>I've interspersed replies below.
>
>> We seem to be inhabiting different paradigms. Holding up empiricism as
>> some kind of model or template for locating deficiencies in CR doesn't
>> cut any ice with me because I accept the CR critique of empiricism. Why?
>> The same reason as I accept any other critique - I make an assessment of
>> the arguments in favour of both outlooks and choose.
>
>I'm not holding up empiricism as a model. What I am doing is saying that
>these philosophers are addressing issues that I feel are not adequately
>addressed in CR. Some of the philosophers are empiricist, some are not. I'm
>not particularly wedded to the answers they give or even the criteria they
>use for what counts as a good answer. Instead, I'm simply pointing to the
>questions they raise and some of the arguments they make about those
>questions. I think questions like "Besides empirical experience, what else
>can science know?" are important.
>
>>
>> >what's important is
>> >the mathematical properties (structure) of light's behavior.
>>
>> Isn't this precisely the CR view, expressed in examples by Bhaskar over
>> an again? I.e. what we have is an ontology of causal powers (plus
>> fundamental structuring principles - the categories); i.e. in the terms
>> used in the later philosophy, dispositional and categorial realism. When
>> Bhaskar gives examples from the natural sciences of the former he cites
>> precisely mathematical formulas for structures.
>
>No, I don't think it is, at least in some versions of CR. As I think I
>mentioned in my original post, this comes close to the CR view but is not
>identical with it. The empiricists claim the only thing we can know is what
>we experience. The author who proposed structural realism (I don't have the
>book with me and I don't recall which of the authors I cited wrote this)
>said the structure of mathematical functions describing light's causal
>properties is real, in addition to the empirical experience of light. In
>other words, he extended the "real" beyond the empirical to include the
>structure of causal powers as they are exercised. CR, on the other hand,
>might accept this but goes further. It would say, for instance, that at some
>point science can identify photons and similar things as being real.
>"Structural realism" deliberately avoids such claims about the real
>existence of photons because of the philosophical difficulties involved. CR
>also uses "structure" differently. Rather than designating the patterning
>and organization of exercised causal powers, CR uses "structure" to
>designate the internal relations of things, from which these things derive
>their causal powers as emergent properties.
>
>I must admit (confess?) that I've not kept up with Bhaskar's more recent
>work, having turned my attention to other CR authors  whose work is more
>directly relevant to my own (Sayer, Archer, etc.). You may be right that
>dispositional realism is the same as "structural realism." Still, if you
>look for instance at Danermark, et al., there is no mention of dispositional
>realism or of the different kinds of theories one finds in science. (Again,
>I don't have the philosophy of science book with me, so I can't cite the
>author -- but I did find the discussion of different kinds of theories,
>including such things as Brownian motion and ideal gas laws, quite useful.
>It allows us, for instance, to distinguish between theories intended to be
>literal depictions of the world from those that are intended as heuristics.)
>
>Might we not, for example, think of Marx's simple commodity production as
>just such an heuristic? Many Marxists have taken it literally and thought of
>it as a sort of pre-capitalism. Bhaskar himself is probably better on this
>(the heuristic nature of some scientific theories) than many of his
>followers. Still, insofar as I know, even RB has not given such a clear
>designation of the different kinds of theories one finds in science.
>Furthermore, it would be very very helpful for practicing critical realists
>to understand these different roles for theory. I think too often we see the
> only role for theory as being to identify real entities whose causal powers
>arise as emergent properties for structures of internal relations and which
>are manifested contingently as actual events.
>
>>
>> Nor does (in you previous email) waving asside the theory of alethic
>> truth - *the* (D)CR theory of truth - on the spurious grounds that it is
>>
>> >truth in terms of the world rather than in terms of human knowledge
>>
>> cut any ice. It is a theory about the human achievement of ontological
>> truth. Ultimately we can know the world because we are an emergent part
>> of it and epistemology is contained within ontology - we are not set off
>> dualistically over against it. We do achieve knowledge of the world and
>> could not have evolved successfully if that weren't so.
>
>I don't necessarily disagree. But at the very least CR's case would be
>helped by linking it to what are apparently widespread themes in
>contemporary philosophy of science. The "human achievement of ontological
>truth" seems to me to be another way of phrasing the "no miracles" argument
>for realism. The latter takes its name from an article by Hillary Putnam in
>which he says something like, "The best argument for realism is that it's
>the only theory that doesn't make the success of science a miracle." Compare
>this, for instance, with RB's critique of Rorty in Reclaiming Reality. If I
>remember correctly, RB starts by saying Rorty is puzzled by why science is
>doing so well of late. Wouldn't it have been stronger to say that Rorty is
>ignoring and dismissing the entire "no miracles" argument for realism? (Much
>as you're criticizing me for overlooking crucial arguments in CR.) Then RB
>could launch into a critique of Rorty and show why his philosophy leads him
>to regard science's success as a miracle.
>
>I also wasn't dismissing alethic truth. I was simply saying that the theory
>of alethic truth does not help us in concrete situations in which we're
>trying to explain the truth-value of terms like photons or the capitalist
>mode of production. Yes, we can say that there are real unobservables and
>that we think that photons and the CMP are such entities. But this just
>establishes their candidacy as real entities. It does not elect them. In
>these specific cases, I think the human species could have evolved perfectly
>well to its current state without knowing about photons or the CMP.
>Furthermore, insofar as the concept of photons helps us make laser devices
>or the concept of the CMP helps us make socialism, I think the pragmatists
>are  right. All we know for sure is that these are concepts that help our
>practice. They may be literally true or they may just be  convenient devices
>that help us cope. To establish their truth as concepts literally
>designating real entities in the world requires an altogether different
>theory of truth than the more general claims about alethic truth. In other
>words, I'm not dismissing alethic truth, but I am saying we could use
>something more.
>
>>
>> Nor does invoking scientific revolutions as if they demonstrate that the
>> truth-claims of the predecessor theory were all false cut any ice. CR
>> has a powerful theory sustaining the rationality of scientific
>> revolutions - see esp. the Hegel-derived epistemological dialectic of
>> science in the early part of DPF.
>
>Not having read all of DPF, I'll have to look this up. The role that
>scientific revolutions play in the literature I brought up is this. If we
>accept that scientific revolutions happen, then what science says today may
>be considered wrong tomorrow. Therefore, we have no strong grounds for
>accepting today's science as literally true. The literature goes on to say
>that some realists attempt to get around this problem by claiming today's
>science is "approximately" true. The question then becomes what does
>"approximately" mean. It also raises interesting questions about historical
>episodes in science. Was Priestley's "dephlogistacated air" "approximately"
>Lavoisier's oxygen? Or, were they entirely two different things such that
>were we to believe in phlogiston we would be totally wrong about air? I'll
>have to look again at DPF to see how it addresses such issues.
>
>
>>
>> How do we choose between theories of late capitalism and of post-
>> industrial society? We've been over this territory before. We make an
>> assessment of their relative explanatory power. (Which theory better
>> explains the imbecile hucksterism of the moronic Empire? And its
>> expansionary dynamic? Do we see an end of ideology? Etc etc etc.) There
>> are no ready made formulae or algorithms that we can apply mechanically
>> - we make an assessment of the overall arguments in favour of each. On
>> the Bhaskarian arguments on facts and values etc, all we need at the
>> outset is commitment to truth (a necessary condition of all discourse,
>> so we're not importing it into the scientific endeavour - it is an
>> aspect of our core universal human nature) and everything else follows,
>> i.e. politics needn't determine our science, it can be the other way
>> around.
>
>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.
>
>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.
>
>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. This would, for example, uphold the existence of the CMP because
>it explains both business cycles and the global spread of commodity
>production, two observable phenomena. Nonetheless, someone could come along
>with a theory explaining business cycles in terms of the money supply and
>the spread of commodity production by psychology. In other words, the idea
>that we postulate some thing to explain one phenomenon and then take the
>fact that the thing, so postulated, explains an entirely independent
>phenomenon as proof of the thing's existence makes intuitive sense and seems
>consistent with CR. Nonetheless, even this argument may have logical flaws.
>It seems CR can only benefit by engaging in debates about such logic with
>those who are not sympathetic to CR. This way we can work out the strengths
>and weaknesses of our arguments. Otherwise, we're just preaching to the
>choir.
>
>
>       Best,
>
>       Marsh Feldman
>
>
>
>
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