[Critical-Realism] One last review

["Ruth Groff" <RGroff1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

I'm pleased to move on -- and thanks to Brian for the summary of the next section.  I just found myself wanting to review the first section one last time, to make sure, now that we've talked about it, that we are relatively clear on the main points.  Apologies if it's over-kill.

RB writes:

1. TWO SIDES OF  KNOWLEDGE

Any adequate philosophy of science must find a way of
grappling with this central paradox of science: that men in
their social activity produce knowledge which is a social
product much like any other, which is no more independent of
its production and the men who produce it than motor cars,
armchairs or books, which has its own craftsmen,
technicians, publicists, standards and skills and which is
no less subject to change than any other commodity.  This is
one side of `knowledge'.  


The other is that knowledge is
`of' things which are not produced by men at all: the
specific gravity of mercury, the process of electrolysis,
the mechanism of light propagation.  None of these `objects
of knowledge' depend upon human activity.  If men ceased to
exist sound would continue to travel and heavy bodies fall
to the earth in exactly the same way, though ex hypothesi
there would be no-one to know it.  Let us call these, in an
unavoidable technical neologism, the intransitive objects of
knowledge.  

The transitive objects of knowledge [TO RETURN TO THE FIRST "SIDE" OF KNOWLEDGE]
Aristotelian material causes.^1  They are the raw materials
of science - the artificial objects fashioned into items of
knowledge by the science of the day.^2  They include the
antecedently established facts and theories, paradigms and
models, methods and techniques of inquiry available to a
particular scientific school or worker.  


Ruth:  Okay, so RB has set out here very clearly what each of these terms means here.  These definitions, I would suggest, are the ones that we should adopt for the purposes of reading this text for the first time.  I'm not saying that they are good terms, or even that RB's definitions here are the best, only that these terms, defined in this way, are given in the very first paragraph of the book.  

RB:

We can easily imagine a world similar to ours,
containing the same intransitive objects of scientific
knowledge, but without any science to produce knowledge of
them.  In such a world, which has occurred and may come
again, reality would be unspoken for and yet things would
not cease to act and interact in all kinds of ways.  In such
a world the causal laws that science has now, as a matter of
fact, discovered would presumably still prevail, and the
kinds of things that science has identified endure.  

Ruth:  So this is a statement of the position called "scientific realism."  Scientific realists are realists specifically about the objects that figure in scientific theories.  It's a good term to know, as it helps make important distinctions.  


RB:

If we can imagine a world of intransitive objects
without science, we cannot imagine a science without
transitive objects, i.e. without scientific or
pre-scientific antecedents.  That is, we cannot imagine the
production of knowledge save from, and by means of,
knowledge-like materials.  Knowledge depends upon
knowledge-like antecedents.   

Ruth: So the production of scientific knowledge is not well-conceived as merely an encounter with the intransitive object.  It is also, irreducibly, the transformation of exisiting ideas. 

RB:

Knowledge of B is produced by means of knowledge of A, but both items of knowledge exist only in thought.

Ruth:
This interesting phrase contains two different claims.  Both, in my view, may be usefully compared with Althusser, as I can't imagine that he is not the implicit figure in the background in this passage.


RB:

If we cannot imagine a science without transitive
objects, can we imagine a science without intransitive ones?

If the answer to this question is `no', then a philosophical
study of the intransitive objects of science becomes
possible.  The answer to the transcendental question `what
must the world be like for science to be possible?'
deserves the name of ontology.  And in showing that the
objects of science are intransitive (in this sense) and of a
certain kind, viz. structures not events, it is my intention
to furnish the new philosophy of science with an ontology.

Ruth: By "the new philosophy of science" I read RB as reference a loose collection of anti-positivist thinkers, including but limited to Kuhn, who had gained significant philosophical headway by 1975, but who had primarily attacked positivism for its flawed epistemology rather than for its flawed ontology.

Note that RB is stipulating that it is not just that he is going to argue for scientific realism, but for an ontology that is structures-based rather than events-based.  This is crucial in setting cr and other forms of scientific essentialism and dispositional realism apart from scientific realism as a general position vis-a-vis the real existence of the objects that figure in scientific theories.

RB:
The parallel question `what must science be like to give us
knowledge of intransitive objects (of this kind)?' is not a
petitio principii of the ontological question, because the
intelligibility of the {RTS2:24} scientific activities of
perception and experimentation already entails the
intransitivity of the objects to which, in the course of
these activities, access is obtained.  That is to say, the
philosophical position developed in this study does not
depend upon an arbitrary definition of science, but rather
upon the intelligibility of certain universally recognized,
if inadequately analysed, scientific activities.  

Ruth: Here he is anticipating an objection to the analysis that he hasn't yet given.  He is saying that in asking "What must the world be like for science to be possible?" he is not asking what it must be like for specific theories to be true, but rather - as we'll see - for experiements to do and be what "we" believe them to do and be.


RB:

Any adequate philosophy of science must be capable
of sustaining and reconciling both aspects of science; that
is, of showing how science which is a transitive process,
dependent upon antecedent knowledge and the efficient
activity of men, has intransitive objects which depend upon
neither.  `


That is, it must be capable of sustaining both
(1) the social character of science and (2) the independence
from science of the objects of scientific thought.  

More
specifically, it must satisfy both:

 (1)' a criterion of the non-spontaneous production of
knowledge, viz. the production of knowledge from and by
means of knowledge (in the transitive dimension), and

 (2)' a criterion of structural and essential realism,
viz. the independent existence and activity of causal
structures and things (in the intransitive dimension).

For science, I will argue, is a social activity whose aim is
the production of the knowledge of the kinds and ways of
acting of independently existing and active things.


Ruth:  One last time, note again not just the "independently existing" but the "active."  The latter is far more philosophically controversial, for moderns, than is the former.

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