Transcript How (Not) to Write the History of Pragmatist Philosophy of

How (Not) to Write the History of
Pragmatist Philosophy of
Science?
Sami Pihlström
Professor of Practical Philosophy
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
Introduction
• Is there a distinctive tradition of pragmatist philosophy of
science?
• C.S. Peirce & scientific realism
• W. James, J. Dewey & empiricism, instrumentalism
• W. James, J. Dewey & relativism, constructivism (cf.
neopragmatism: H. Putnam, R. Rorty)
• The issue of realism (and truth) is at the center of these
interpretations of pragmatism.
• Other important philosophers’ of science contributions to
the pragmatist tradition (W.V. Quine, T.S. Kuhn, P.
Feyerabend)?
Instrumentalism in James’s and
Dewey’s pragmatism
• Peirce’s influence on 20th century philosophy of
science is obvious: abduction, scientific progress
(toward truth?), etc.
– N.B. Peirce was also a speculative metaphysician
(contrary to the spirit of the Vienna Circle).
• I will focus (among the classical pragmatists) on
James and Dewey, whose relevance to later
philosophy of science is more problematic.
• Cf. Popper: pragmatism = instrumentalism
(antirealism: theories are not true or false but
more or less useful). Misleading!
James: theories are instruments
• “[A]s the sciences have developed farther, the notion has
gained ground that most, perhaps all, of our laws are
only approximations. The laws themselves, moreover,
have grown so numerous that there is no counting them;
and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the
branches of science that investigators have become
accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a
transcript of reality, but that any one of them may from
some point of view be useful. Their great use is to
summarize old facts and to lead to new ones. They are
only a man-made language, a conceptual shorthand [...],
in which we write our reports of nature [...].” (James,
Pragmatism, 1975 [1907], p. 33.)
James (continued)
• “[W]e are witnessing a curious reversion of the common-sense way
of looking at physical nature, in the philosophy of science favored by
such men as Mach, Ostwald and Duhem. According to these
teachers no hypothesis is truer than any other in the sense of being
a more literal copy of reality. They are all but ways of talking on our
part, to be compared solely from the point of view of their use. The
only literally true thing is reality; and the only reality we know is, for
these logicians, sensible reality, the flux of our sensations and
emotions as they pass.” (James, Pragmatism, 1975 [1907], p. 93.)
• “There are so many geometries, so many logics, so many physical
and chemical hypotheses, so many classifications, each one of them
good for so much and yet not good for everything, that the notion
that even the truest formula may be a human device and not a literal
transcript has dawned upon us. We hear scientific laws now treated
as so much ‘conceptual shorthand,’ true so far as they are useful but
no farther. Our mind has become tolerant of symbol instead of
reproduction, of approximation instead of exactness, of plasticity
instead of rigor.” (James, The Meaning of Truth, 1975 [1909], p. 40.)
James (continued)
• Theories are ”instruments, not answers to enigmas”
(Pragmatism, p. 32). Their ”truth” lies in their usefulness,
not in their accurate representation (”copying”) of an
independent reality.
• However, Jamesian pragmatism is not simple
phenomenalism. James accepts Berkeley’s criticism of
the material substance (ibid., ch. 3) but rejects
phenomenalism on the grounds that ”the category of
trans-perceptual reality is … one of the foundations of
our life” (ibid., p. 43). Realism is pragmatically true.
• James’s ”pragmatic theory of truth” is not thoroughly
antirealist, either: truth is ”agreement with reality”, but
this agreement must be pragmatically explicated.
Dewey’s instrumentalism and
experimentalism
• “There is something both ridiculous and disconcerting in the way in
which men have let themselves be imposed upon, so as to infer that
scientific ways of thinking of objects give the inner reality of things,
and that they put a mark of spuriousness upon all other ways of
thinking of them, and of perceiving and enjoying them. It is ludicrous
because these scientific conceptions, like other instruments, are
hand-made by man in pursuit of realization of a certain interest –
that of the maximum convertibility of every object of thought into any
and every other. [...] [W]hen the physical sciences describe objects
and the world as being such and such, it is thought that the
description is of reality as it exists in itself. [... However, the]
business of thought is not to conform to or reproduce the characters
already possessed by objects but to judge them as potentialities of
what they become through an indicated operation. [...] [T]o think of
the world in terms of mathematical formulae of space, time and
motion is not to have a picture of the independent and fixed essence
of the universe. It is to describe experienceable objects as material
upon which certain operations are performed.” (Dewey, The Quest
for Certainty, 1929, pp. 135-137.)
Dewey (continued)
• Compare: P. Bridgman’s ”operationalism”. Dewey
frequently speaks about ”operational thinking” almost
synonymously with ”instrumentalism” or
”experimentalism”.
• ”Scientific conceptions” are ”instrumentalities which
direct operations of experimental observations” (ibid., p.
192). They are not intended to reveal to ultimate
structure of an antecedently given reality an sich.
• Is this antirealism?
• The ”Eddington tables”: does Dewey claim that the
”scientific table” (the scientific image of reality) is
secondary to the commonsense (experienceable) one?
Dewey (continued)
• Realism & empiricism: the objects of science are
experienceable objects, not experience-transcending
noumena.
• Realism & constructivism: the objects of science are
”constructed” in and through inquiry, not ”ready-made”
prior to inquiry. (Yet, we do not construct reality ex nihilo.
There is a natural world we are parts of.)
• Realism & naturalism: ”unnatural doubts” about the
reality of theoretical entities postulated in science ought
to be abandoned as foreign to scientific practice. There
is no first philosophy prior to scientific inquiry itself.
• These different elements of scientific realism (and
antirealism) form a harmonious whole in Dewey’s
philosophy of science. None of them is prior or absolute.
James & Dewey (conclusion)
• In some respects, the Jamesian and/or Deweyan forms
of pragmatism are realistic; in other respects, they are
antirealistic (e.g., instrumentalist, constructivist, or even
idealist).
• There is no way to determine in general terms whether
classical pragmatism is a form of realism or not. A
pragmatic realism reconcilable with moderate
constructivism (with an undeniable threat of relativism) is
a plausible interpretation (or reconstruction) of James’s
and Dewey’s views.
• Piecemeal approach: no general solution to the realism
issue; attention to particular cases (cf. Wittgenstein). Yet,
realism is not ”dead” (pace A. Fine).
Quine’s ”more thorough
pragmatism”?
• W.V. Quine’s naturalism: ”there is no first philosophy”.
(Deweyan background, with little explicit influence.)
• Quine, ”Two Dogmas” (1951): a ”more thorough
pragmatism” – compared to what?
– Compared to Carnap (”Empiricism, Semantics, Ontology”, 1950)!
– Quine speaks about ”pragmatism” only in the sense in which
Carnap did. He doesn’t claim to be influenced by, or continuing,
the pragmatist tradition, though he does recognize a connection
with Dewey’s naturalism (and though he respects Peirce’s logic).
• Neopragmatist criticism of Quine, e.g., by Putnam:
Quine’s naturalism is too reductive, or even eliminative,
in comparison to the pragmatists’ (including Dewey’s)
non-reductive naturalism. Normativity sacrificed.
• Quine is more clearly a positivist than a pragmatist.
Neopragmatism and the
emergence of scientific objects
• Putnam & Kuhn: constructivism, ”internal realism”: there
is no ”ready-made” reality, but (scientific) objects are
constructed within, or emerge from, scientific theorization
and practices. There is no ”God’s-Eye View”, no
paradigm-transcendent perspective on the world as it is
in itself.
• This is not antirealism in the sense of empiricist
instrumentalism, but is it antirealism in the sense of
constructivism, relativism, or even idealism? (Reality is
mind- or paradigm-dependent? There is only ”theoryinternal” truth, no theory-external correspondence truth?)
• Close to Rorty’s more radical neopragmatism, with only
”conversational” constraints for inquiry?
Neopragmatism (continued)
• Both Putnam’s neopragmatism (internal or pragmatic
realism) and Kuhn’s view on paradigms as constitutive
not only of scientific rationality but of the reality
investigated are (re)interpretable as contemporary forms
of Kantian transcendental idealism: paradigms,
conceptual schemes, frameworks, etc. provide the
practice-laden context within which scientific objects,
including the unobservable theoretical entities postulated
in scientific theories, can be said to be real (or unreal).
• Kantianism without incognizable ”things in themselves”,
historicized and pragmatized transcendental philosophy:
Kant’s fixed set of a priori concepts is replaced by
dynamically developing scientific practices (paradigms).
Neopragmatism (continued)
• Cf. Kant: empirical realism is possible within (and requires)
transcendental idealism. Kuhn & Putnam: pragmatic realism about
scientific objects is possible (and requires) constructivism at the
transcendental level (”transcendental pragmatism”).
• Putnam is explicit about his Jamesian and Deweyan (and Peircean)
influences, but Kuhn very seldom refers to the classical pragmatists.
Both acknowledge their Kantian background and Wittgensteinian
connections, however.
– Wittgenstein’s role in the development of the pragmatist
tradition? (A large issue to be set aside here.)
• Pragmatists (early and late) should be more explicit about the
fundamentally Kantian character of their views.
– Cf. the debate over the status of transcendental arguments:
comparison to abductive, naturalized arguments?
– Transcendental idealism can be ”updated” by reconceptualizing
it as Kuhnian constructivism.
Neopragmatism (continued)
• Other (post-Kuhnian) pragmatic philosophers of
science:
– Feyerabend? If Rorty is entitled to ”pragmatism”, then
why not Feyerabend, too?
– Fine? NOA: cf. Deweyan naturalism? (Too
antiphilosophical to qualify as true pragmatism!)
– Hacking? ”If you can spray them, they are real.”
– Laudan? Attacking ”convergent realism”, emphasizing
the practical success of theories.
– Rouse? Defending (non-reductive) naturalism and the
inherent normativity of scientific practices – close to
Dewey!
Conclusion
• As our survey reaches recent neopragmatism, our picture of
”pragmatist philosophy of science” becomes pluralistic and
vague. There is no essence to the pragmatist tradition in the
philosophy of science (or anywhere else), other than the
highly general idea (shared by many non-pragmatists as well)
that philosophers of science should turn toward scientific
practice. There are only family resemblances.
• Cf. the vague boundary between philosophy of science and
science studies. The classical pragmatists made the ”practical
turn” decades earlier than science studies.
• Key issues: realism vs. antirealism (in its many forms); logicoepistemological vs. socio-historical approaches to science (cf.
Popper vs. Kuhn as a paradigmatic 20th century controversy).
– Transcendental concerns can, and must, be maintained in both!
– Kant as the crucial background figure of pragmatism – and of
20th century philosophy of science more generally.