Instrumentalists believe science is not in the business of explanation, and ontology is not its concern. Science is concerned only with making successful predictions based on observable data. If positing electrons, protons, etc., helps make these predictions, then we need not bother ourselves with the further question about their existence. If they do not exist, then they also need not explain anything.
Quine, an empiricist, joined pragmatism with realism. Our most successful theory of the world is true in the sense that it gets the world’s ontology right. But he also adds that the only evidence we have for deciding between two competing theories is sensory evidence, and it is possible in theory that two incommensurable theories may fit all observable evidence without our being able to tell which is the correct one. He concludes that there is no fact of the matter that decides which theory is the correct one, and ultimately, the choice of preferring one over the other will be pragmatic. This, however, seems to undermine his realism, though Quine finds his pragmatism and realism compatible. The reason his realism seems to be undermined by his pragmatism is that the only objective data we have is sensory or observable data, and this does not allow us to find a uniquely correct theory about the world.
If science is about explanation, then it is also about ontology, and it must inform us about what exists and what does not exist. It must be the measure of reality. What is lacking in the Quinean framework is the modality that allows the transition from an explanation to the correct explanation. Modality, however, is a concept of conceptual thought and purely from observation, we cannot make claims about what must necessarily be the case. Saul Kripke has made modal logic and the idea of de re necessities respectable again. In this framework, science is in the business of finding essences, and this discovery is expressed in theoretical identification statements such as water = H2O. The ‘=’ means identity because to find the essence of something is to tell what it is, and nothing can be different from itself. However, these identities cannot be discovered through conceptual analysis and require empirical observation. Once, however, the linkage is made, we should be able to grasp the necessity of the identity conceptually.
We have seen that explanation and ontology are linked, but now we should see how scientific cognition and explanation are linked. To comprehend something is to be able to explain it, and there must be something in the object that is comprehended or is transparent to thought. And this something we noted is the ‘essence’ — whatever that might be. In the above case, the problem is not that the discovery of essence requires additional empirical information but that when the essence is discovered, the identity must be comprehended and rendered transparent to thought. But the theory here draws a wedge between the look of water (appearance) and its essence (reality), so it is possible (as we see in Putnam style twin earth scenarios) that the look of water and its reality may come apart which possibility undermines the necessity of identity. What is left as a remainder in this identity statement is one side of the term — H20 while the other disappears. This is most cogent in the case of the identification of brain states and conscious mental states, and led David Chalmers to develop a two-dimensional semantics to make the point that our concept of conscious mental states leaves nothing further to be desired, to be explained, unlike the case of water, but identity theorists regard both identifications as analogous. The bone of contention is that for Chalmers et al, in the case of conscious mental states, appearance is reality, and hence our mental concepts indicate that no explanation in terms of micro-level physical states is required; for identity theorists, there is no disanalogy in the case of physical stuff like water or gold and conscious mental states obstructing the reduction of the latter to physical essences discovered in science. The resistance to reduction is purely psychological because we associate different senses with, say, water or any conscious mental state and the underlying physical state (Fregean senses, in contrast, are part of the cognitive content of a proposition). But the epistemological case for theoretical identification statements is considerably weakened if scientific explanation is in this manner distanced from scientific comprehension.
The problem is not that the identity is empirically discoverable but that once it is discovered how do we comprehend this identity. To comprehend an identity is to know that say ‘water’ and ‘H20’ and two different names of the same thing. But following Leibniz’s law that two identical things have the same properties — H20 is not fluid and fluidity emerges as a contingent property of water. It seems that it is not identity but that one thing is being eliminated in favour of another.
From this account, we can perhaps tentatively conclude that scientific thinking, explanation and ontology are linked, but science itself is not able to draw that link, and so a higher science or philosophy is needed to demonstrate that linkage. This higher science, whose nature for the moment I keep open, is connected with empirical sciences like pure mathematics, and is with applied mathematics, and so every regional science is like a regional philosophy. It is wrong in my view to treat the empirical as presuppositionless and insulated from concepts.
Comments
Post a Comment