[Critical-Realism] rts2-12

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2. THREE TRADITIONS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Viewed historically, three broad positions in the philosophy
of science may be distinguished.  According to the first,
that of *classical empiricism*, represented by Hume and his
heirs, the ultimate objects of knowledge are atomistic
events.  Such events constitute given facts and their
conjunctions exhaust the objective content of our idea of
natural necessity.  Knowledge and the world may be viewed as
surfaces whose points are in isomorphic {RTS2:25}
correspondence or, in the case of phenomenalism, actually
fused.  On this conception, science is conceived as a kind
of automatic or behavioural response to the stimulus of
given facts and their conjunctions.  Even if, as in logical
empiricism, such a behaviourism is rejected as an account of
the genesis of scientific knowledge, its valid content can
still in principle be reduced to such facts and their
conjunctions.  Thus science becomes a kind of epiphenomenon
of nature.

         The second position received its classical though
static formulation in Kant's *transcendental idealism*, but
it is susceptible of updated and dynamized variations.
According to it, the objects of scientific knowledge are
models, ideals of natural order etc.  Such objects are
artificial constructs and though they may be independent of
particular men, they are not independent of men or human
activity in general.  On this conception, a constant
conjunction of events is insufficient, though it is still
necessary, for the attribution of natural necessity.
Knowledge is seen as a structure rather than a surface.  But
the natural world becomes a construction of the human mind
or, in its modern versions, of the scientific community.

         The third position, which is advanced here, may be
characterized as *transcendental realism*.  It regards the
objects of knowledge as the structures and mechanisms that
generate phenomena; and the knowledge as produced in the
social activity of science.  These objects are neither
phenomena (empiricism) nor human constructs imposed upon the
phenomena (idealism), but real structures which endure and
operate independently of our knowledge, our experience and
the conditions which allow us access to them.  Against
empiricism, the objects of knowledge are structures, not
events; against idealism, they are intransitive (in the
sense defined).  On this conception, a constant conjunction
of events is no more a necessary than it is a sufficient
condition for the assumption of the operation of a causal
law.  According to this view, both knowledge and the world
are structured, both are differentiated and changing; the
latter exists independently of the former (though not our
knowledge of this fact); and experiences and the things and
causal laws to which it affords us access are normally out
of phase with one another.  On this view, science is not an
epiphenomenon of nature, nor is nature a product of man.

         {RTS2:26} A word of caution is necessary here.  In
outlining these positions, I am not offering them as a
complete typology, but only as one which will be of some
significance in illuminating current issues in the
philosophy of science.  Thus I am not concerned with
rationalism as such, or absolute idealism.  Moreover, few,
if any, modern philosophers of science could be
unambiguously located under one of these banners.  Nagel for
example stands somewhere along the continuum between Humean
empiricism and neo-Kantianism; Sellars nearer the position
characterized here as transcendental realist; and so on.
One could say of such philosophers that they combine, and
when successful in an original way synthesize, aspects of
those philosophical limits whose study we are undertaking.
It is my intention here, in working out the implications of
a full and consistent realism, to describe such a limit; in
rather the way Hume did.  As an intellectual exercise alone
this would be rewarding, but I believe, and hope to show,
that it is also the only postion that can do justice to
science.

         Transcendental realism must be distinguished from,
and is in direct opposition to, *empirical realism*.  This
is a doctrine to which both classical empiricism and
transcendental idealism subscribe.  My reasons for rejecting
it will be elaborated in a moment.  `Realism' is normally
associated by philosophers with positions in the theory of
perception or the theory of universals.  In the former case
the real entity concerned is some particular object of
perception; in the latter case some general feature or
property of the world.  The `real entities' the
transcendental realist is concerned with are the objects of
scientific discovery and investigation, such as causal laws.
Realism about such entities will be seen to entail
particular realist positions in the theory of perception and
universals, but not to be reducible to them.

         Only transcendental realism, I will argue, can
sustain the idea of a law-governed world independent of man;
and it is this concept, I will argue, that is necessary to
understand science.

         Classical empiricism can sustain neither transitive
nor intransitive dimensions; so that it fails both the
criteria of adequacy (1)' and (2)' advanced on page 24
above.  Moreover in its most consistent forms it involves
both solipsism and phenomenalism; so that neither (1) nor
(2) can be upheld.  In particular {RTS2:27} not even the
idea of the independence of the event from the experience
that grounds it, i.e. the intransitivity of events, can be
sustained; and, in the last instance, events must be
analysed as sensations or in terms of what is
epistemologically equivalent, viz. human operations.

         Transcendental idealism attempts to uphold the
objectivity (intersubjectivity) of facts, i.e. (1).  And, if
given a dynamic gloss, it can allow a transitive dimensions
and satisfy criterion (1)'; so that, in this respect, it is
an improvement on empiricism.  According to such a dynamized
transcendental idealism knowledge is given structure by a
sequence of models, rather than a fixed set of a priori
rules.  However in neither its static nor its dynamic form
can it sustain the intransitive dimension.  For in both
cases the objects of which knowledge is obtained do not
exist independently of human activity in general.  And if
there are things which do (things-in-themselves), no
scientific knowledge of them can be obtained.

         Both transcendental realism and transcendental
idealism reject the empiricist account of science, according
to which its valid content is exhausted by atomistic facts
and their conjunctions.  Both agree that there could be no
knowledge without the social activity of science.  They
disagree over whether in this case there would be no nature
also.  Transcendental realism argues that it is necessary to
assume for the intelligibility of science that the order
discovered in nature exists independently of men, i.e. of
human activity in general.  Transcendental idealism
maintains that this order is actually imposed by men in
their cognitive activity.  Their differences should thus be
clear.  According to transcendental realism, if there were
no science there would still be a nature, and it is this
nature which is investigated by science.  Whatever is
discovered in nature must be expressed in thought, but the
structures and constitutions and causal laws discovered in
nature do not depend upon thought.  Moreover, the
transcendental realist argues, this is not just a dogmatic
metaphysical belief; but rather a philosophical position
presupposed by key aspects of the social activity of
science, whose intelligibility the transcendental idealist
cannot thus, anymore than the empiricist, sustain.

         Neither classical empiricism nor transcendental
idealism can sustain the idea of the independent existence
and action of the {RTS2:28} causal structures and things
investigated and discovered by science.  It is in their
shared ontology that the source of this common incapacity
lies.  For although transcendental idealism rejects the
empiricist account of science, it tacitly takes over the
empiricist account of being.  This ontological legacy is
expressed most succin{c}tly in its commitment to empirical
realism, and thus to the concept of the `*empirical world*'.
For the transcendental realist this concept embodies a
sequence of related philosophical mistakes.  The first
consists in the use of the category of experience to define
the world.  This involves giving what is in effect a
particular epistemological concept a general ontological
function.  The second consists in the view that it's being
experienced or experienciable is an essential property of
the world; whereas it is more correctly conceived as an
accidental property of some things, albeit one which can, in
special circumstances, be of great significance for science.
The third thus consists in the neglect of the (socially
produced) circumstances under which experience is in fact
epistemically significant in science.

         If the bounds of the real and the empirical are
co-extensive then of course any `surplus-element' which the
transcendental idealist finds in the analysis of law-like
statements cannot reflect a real difference between
necessary and accidental sequences of events.  It merely
reflects a difference in men's attitude to them.  Saying
that light travels in straight lines ceases then to express
a proposition about the world; it expresses instead a
proposition about the way men understand it.  Structure
becomes a function of human needs; it is denied a place in
the world of things.  But just because of this, I shall
argue, the transcendental idealist cannot adequately
describe the principles according to which our theories are
constructed and empirically tested; so that the rationality
of the transitive process of science, in which our knowledge
of the world is continually extended and corrected, cannot
be sustained.

         To say that the weaknesses of both the empiricist
and idealist traditions lie in their commitment to empirical
realism is of course to commit oneself to the impossibility
of ontological neutrality in an account of science; and thus
to the impossibility of avoiding ontological questions in
the philosophy of science.  The sense in which every account
of science presupposes an ontology is the sense in which it
presupposes a schematic {RTS2:29} answer to the question of
what the world must be like for science to be possible.
Thus suppose a philosopher holds, as both empiricists and
transcendental idealists do, that a constant conjunction of
events apprehended in sense-experience is at least a
necessary condition for the ascription of a causal law and
that it is an essential part of the job of science to
discover them.  Such a philosopher is then committed to the
belief that, given that science occurs, there are such
conjunctions.  As Mill put it, that `there are such things
in nature as parallel cases; that what happens once will,
under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstance,
happen again'.^7

         There are two important points to register about
such ontological beliefs and commitments.  The first is that
they should only be interpreted hypothetically, viz. as
entailing what must be the case for science to be possible;
on which interpretation it is a contingent fact that the
world is such that science can occur.  It is only in this
relative or conditional sense that an account of science
presupposes an ontology.  The status of propositions in
ontology may thus be described by the following formula: It
is not necessary that science occurs.  But given that it
does, it is necessary that the world is a certain way.  It
is contingent that the world is such that science is
possible.  And, given that it is possible, it is contingent
upon the satisfaction of certain social conditions that
science in fact occurs.  But given that science does or
could occur, the world *must* be a certain way.  Thus, the
transcendental realist asserts, that the world is structured
and differentiated can be established by philosophical
argument; though the particular structures it contains and
the ways in which it is differentiated are matters for
substantive scientific investigation.  The necessity for
categorical distinctions between structures and events and
between open systems and closed are indices of the
stratification and differentiation of the world, i.e. of the
transcendental realist philosophical ontology.  These
distinctions are presupposed, it will be shown, by the
intelligibility of experimental activity.  Whenever there is
any danger of confusion between an `ontology' in the sense
of the kind of world presupposed by a philosophical account
of science and in the sense of the particular entities and
processes postulated by some {RTS2:30} substantive
scientific theory I shall explicitly distinguish between a
philosophical and a scientific ontology.

         The second point to stress is that propositions in
ontology cannot be established independently of an
account of science.  On the contrary, they can only be
established by reference to such an account, or at least
to an account of certain scientific activities.  However,
it will be contended that this essential order of
analysis, viz. science --> being, *reverses* the real
nature of dependency (or, we could say, the real burden
of contingency).  For it is not the fact that science
occurs that gives the world a structure such that it can
be known by men.  Rather, it is the fact that the world
has such a structure that makes science, whether or not
it actually occurs, possible.  That is to say, it is not
the character of science that imposes a determinate
pattern or order on the world; but the order of the world
that, under certain determinate conditions, makes
possible the cluster of activities we call `science'.  It
does not follow from the fact that the nature of the
world can only be *known* from (a study of) science, that
its nature is *determined* by (the structure of) science.
Propositions in ontology, i.e. about being, can only be
established by reference to science.  But this does not
mean that they are disguised, veiled or otherwise
elliptical propositions about science.  What I shall
characterize in a moment as the `*epistemic fallacy*'
consists in assuming that, or arguing as if, they are.



 ^7 J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Bk. III, Chap. 3, Sect. 1.


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