[Critical-Realism] RTS2: First Part of Introduction

[ehrbar <ehrbar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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{RTS2:12} Introduction
======================


The aim of this book is the development of a systematic
realist account of science.  Such an account must provide a
comprehensive alternative to the positivism which since the
time of Hume has fashioned our image of science.  Central to
the positivist vision of science is the Humean theory of
causal laws.  It is a principal concern of this study to
develop some new arguments and show how they relate to more
familiar ones against this still widely accepted theory.  In
particular I want to argue that not only is a constant
conjunction of events not a sufficient, it is not even a
necessary condition for a scientific law; and that it is
only if we can establish the latter that we can provide an
adequate rationale for the former.  It has often been
contended that a constant conjunction of events is
insufficient but it has not so far been systematically
argued that it is not necessary.  This can, however, be
shown by a transcendental argument from the nature of
experimental activity.

         It is a condition of the intelligibility of
experimental activity that in an experiment the experimenter
is a causal agent of a sequence of events but not of the
causal law which the sequence of events enables him to
identify.  This suggests that there is a ontological
distinction between scientific laws and patterns of events.
Obviously this creates a prima facie problem for any theory
of science.  I think that it can be solved along the
following lines:  To ascribe a law one needs a theory.  For
it is only if it is backed by a theory, containing a model
or conception of a putative causal or explanatory 'link',
that a law can be distinguished from a purely accidental
concommitance.  The possibility of saying this clearly
depends upon a non-reductionist conception of theory.  Now
at the core of theory is a conception or picture of a
natural mechanism or structure at work.  Under certain
conditions some postulated mechanisms can come to be
established as real.  And it is in the working of such
mechanisms that the objective basis of our ascriptions of
natural necessity lies.


         {RTS2:13} It is only if we make the assumption of
the real independence of such mechanisms from the events
they generate that we are justified in assuming that they
endure and go on acting in their normal way outside the
experimentally closed conditions that enable us to
empirically identify them.  But it is only if we are
justified in assuming this that the idea of the universality
of a known law can be sustained or that experimental
activity can be rendered intelligible.  Hence one of the
chief objections to positivism is that it cannot show why or
the conditions under which experience is significant in
science.  Most critics have emphasized its depreciation of
the role of theory; this argument shows its inadequacy to
experience.  Moreover it is only because it must be assumed,
if experimental activity is to be rendered intelligible,
that natural mechanisms endure and act outside the
conditions that enable us to identify them that the
applicability of known laws in open systems, i.e. in systems
where no constant conjunctions of events prevail, can be
sustained.  This has the corollary that a constant
conjunction of events cannot be necessary for the assumption
of the efficacy of a law.

        This argument shows that real structures exist
independently of and are often out of phase with the actual
patterns of events.  Indeed it is only because of the latter
that we need to perform experiments and only because of the
former that we can make sense of our performances of them.
Similarly it can be shown to be a condition of the
intelligibility of perception that events occur
independently of experiences.  And experiences are often
(epistemically speaking) 'out of phase' with events -
e.g. when they are misidentified.  It is partly because of
this possibility that the scientist needs a scientific
education or training.  Thus I will argue that what I will
call the domains of the real, the actual and the empirical
are distinct.  This is represented in Table 0.1 below:-

                     Table 0.1
-----------------------------------------------------------
                    Domain of    Domain of    Domain of
                    Real           Actual     Empirical
Mechanisms            X
Events                X              X
Experiences           X              X              X
-----------------------------------------------------------

         {RTS2:14} The real basis of causal laws are
provided by the generative mechanisms of nature.  Such
generative mechanisms are, it is argued, nothing other than
the ways of acting of things.  And causal laws must be
analyzed as their tendencies.  Tendencies may be regarded as
powers or liabilities of a thing which may be exercised
without being manifest in any particular outcome.  The kind
of conditional we are concerned with here may be
characterised as normic.  They are not counter-factual but
transfactual statements.  Nomic universals, properly
understood, are transfactual or normic statements with
factual instances in the laboratory (and perhaps a few other
effectively closed contexts) that constitute their empirical
grounds; they need not, and in general will not, be
reflected in an invariant pattern or regularly recurring
sequence of events.

         The weakness of the Humean concept of laws is that
it ties laws to closed systems, viz. systems where a
constant conjunction of events occurs.  This has the
consequence that neither the experimental establishment nor
the practical application of our knowledge in open systems
can be sustained.  Once we allow for open systems then laws
can only be universal if they are interpreted in a
non-empirical (trans-factual) way, i.e. as designating the
activity of generative mechanisms and structures
independently of any particular sequence or pattern of
events.  But once we do this there is an ontological basis
for a concept of natural necessity, that is necessity in
nature quite independent of men or human activity.

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