Abstract
This chapter elaborates on the results reached in Chap. 2, and is devoted to the analysis of the functional elements through which scientific inquiry is carried out. Dewey is explicit that all the elements that are used in inquiry – and which he calls ‘propositions’ – are linguistic, and that taken together they contribute to the construction of the judgment that closes inquiry. I will reconstruct Dewey’s account of evidence, a priori knowledge, and objectivity, and I will show how the latter paves the way for the formulation of a strong form of scientific pluralism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is not a controversial assumption in Deweyan scholarship. See, for instance, the book John Dewey Between Pragmatism and Constructivism, in which Dewey’s constructivism is analyzed from various different perspectives (philosophy of education, philosophy of technology, philosophy of culture) (Hickman and Reich 2009). As will be made clear in the following, the peculiarity of my approach resides exclusively in the logical tone that I attribute to Dewey’s constructivism, not in the fact of understanding Dewey’s theory of inquiry – and, consequently, his philosophy of science – as a form of constructivism.
- 2.
- 3.
The theoretical relevance of the distinction between construction and reconstruction, as well as the realistic implications of the latter notion, is highlighted by Godfrey-Smith in the article Dewey and the Question of Realism. See, in particular, Godfrey-Smith (2013a, 77).
- 4.
An interpretation along this line may seem to stand in tension with the naturalistic and realistic commitment attributed to Dewey’s perspective. However, this conflict is mainly illusory, and depends on what I take to be a too narrow interpretation of Dewey’s notion of language. As has been highlighted in Chap. 2, Dewey’s semantic theory – that is, Dewey’s theory of meaning and significance – is also framed within a naturalistic paradigm. Meaning and significance, symbols and signs, are modes of cultural and biological behavior, rather than intermediaries between mind and world. Consequently, the two aspects of inquiry – objective modification of the environment and semantic reconstruction of the significances of the objects of the situation – can be seen as two different ways of describing the same phenomenon, and are, therefore, compliant one with the other. I give pride of place to the semantic reading on the basis of Dewey’s insistence on the linguistic nature of inquiry – see below Sect. 4.2.
- 5.
Since in his works Dewey is almost exclusively concerned with common-sense and scientific inquiries, I could have said that the goal of his theory of inquiry is that of explaining how synthetic judgments a posteriori are possible. Now, I think that this (narrower) reading is correct, and I am ready to accept it. However, in order to properly argue for it, I should reconstruct Dewey’s philosophy of mathematics from his sketchy and sparse remarks on that topic, and then assess whether, according to Dewey, mathematical judgments are analytic or synthetic. This is a highly interesting issue that deserves to be carefully investigated, but which I cannot pursue here. For this reason, I have preferred to speak of synthetic judgments in general, leaving the question of whether there is any real difference between synthetic judgments and synthetic judgments a posteriori open for further discussion.
- 6.
A remarkable exception is Seigfried (1993).
- 7.
During inquiry, the predicate content is attributed only tentatively to the subject, with the aim of accounting for the evidence provided by existential propositions. At the same time, the consequences that can be logically derived from the predicate content are sought after; if they are actually discovered or produced, they provide support to the hypothesis that was advanced to account for the data available at that moment.
- 8.
The functions of singling out potentialities and formulating possibilities are intrinsically different, and their difference is a difference in degree of acceptance as well as a difference in generality. It is a difference in generality because, contrary to existential propositions, universal propositions do not refer to any actual operation. An if-then proposition merely states a connection between a set of operations and its possible consequences, and the validity of the proposition depends on whether or not that connection is discovered to hold. On the contrary, by attributing certain powers to a certain thing, an existential proposition refers to specific operations that are to be performed on that particular object under some specific conditions. It is a difference in degree of acceptance because, contrary to universal propositions, existential propositions commit the inquirer to the reality of the connection between operations and their consequences. This white and granoulous substance has the power to solve in water: accordingly, the content of this existential proposition attributes the dispositional property ‘soluble’ to this table of sugar. So, though the corresponding operations are not actually performed, the existential power that is expected to be triggered by those operations is attributed to the object. The inquirer ‘knows’ that if she puts this table of sugar in a glass of water, it will solve. Similarly, the inquirer ‘knows’ that if she bombards the nucleus of an uranium-235 atom with neutrons, a nuclear fission may follow. The existential proposition “uranium-235 is fissionable” states a real potentiality of the object on which the inquirer can count in the course of further inquiry. On the contrary, the content of an universal proposition is not attributed to the object referred to by existential propositions as one of its properties. Dewey is explicit on this point: “the predicational content […] is related to the factual content, that is, the subject, as the possible to the actual” (LW12, 134). Being in the mode of possibility – Dewey speaks of “operability” to stress the fact that they are purely possible operations – the content of the universal proposition can be attributed to the subject without contradiction. However, that does not mean that for the mere fact of being a possible property it is thereby actual. The passage from possibility to actuality does not come for free; it requires some operation of an experimental kind, by which it is ascertained whether the object responds in the expected way to the actions made by the inquirer under the guidance of the hypothesis that constitutes the content of the universal proposition.
- 9.
Theories, therefore, construct the significances of the evidential data. Consequently, not simply the meanings that are advanced as possible ways to solve the problematic situation are tentative; the significance of the factual material is also held provisionally. Clearly, this result is in agreement with Dewey’s theory of the linguistic nature of propositions. It is worth noting that factual material is provisional in two senses: it is provisional in the sense that it is not clear whether or not it is relevant for the case under discussion; and it is provisional in the sense that it is not clear whether or not it supports the interpretation provided by the meanings that constitute the hypothesis under investigation. As Dewey repeatedly remarks, when these two features of evidence are clarified, the validity of the hypothesis is also established, and inquiry reaches a conclusion. In the negative case, evidence and hypothesis turn out not to be relevant to the specific problem at stake; a (negative) adjudgment closes this line of investigation, and demands a different approach. In the positive case, the available evidence confirms and supports the hypothesis, which indicates which action to undertake; a judgment is eventually constructed, and inquiry ends.
- 10.
It should also be remarked that there seems to be no footing in Dewey’s philosophy for introducing the distinction between sparse and abundant properties. According to Dewey, indeed, any quality is final, independently of its level of complexity (LW1, 82). Consider the notion of tertiary quality. This is a point in which any direct comparison between Dewey and contemporary metaphysical approaches simply cannot be made.
- 11.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Assuming that such a difference exists. For instance, Taylor (2017) denies that there is a real difference between the two positions.
- 15.
A terminological clarification is in order. Dewey defines the notions of trait or characteristic, quality, and property in the following terms: “We are thus enabled to make definite the logical differences between quality, characteristic trait, and property which have previously been noted. ‘Turning paper red’, is, as the object of a particular observation, a quality. As enabling reasonably safe inference to be made as to the occurrence of other qualities under certain conditions, it is a distinguishing trait or characteristic descriptive of a kind. It becomes a property when it is determined by negative as well as positive instances to be a constant dependable sign of other conjoined characteristics. It then belongs inherently to all cases of the kind” (LW12, 291–292). Characteristic, or trait, and property are to be understood – at least, according to the reading I defend in these pages – as two different manifestations, at two different levels of complexity, of the same quality. Please compare this definition to what Dewey says about subject-matter taking different forms (subject-matter, content and object) in different phases of inquiry.
- 16.
- 17.
It is precisely because not every quality is reliable evidence of every other property that some principles of classification are sounder than others. So, for instance, the classification “all winged creatures are avian” takes the trait “having wings” as reliable evidence for inferring “being a bird”. That connection was once held as reliable, even though it is now known that is wrong – bats have wings, but they are mammalians, to name only one remarkable example. A different sets of traits have to be singled out as definitory of the kind “bird”. This is a point which Dewey puts great emphasis on. See, for instance, (LW12, 294–295).
- 18.
See also the following important passage, in which the relations between qualities and dispositions on a logical plane are further articulated and clarified: “The determination that a singular is an enduring object is all one with the determination that it is one of a kind. The identification of a sudden light as a flash of lightning, of a noise as the banging of a door, is not grounded upon existential qualities which immediately present themselves, but upon the qualities with respect to the evidential function or use in inquiry they subserve. What is recurrent, uniform, ’common’, is the power of immediate qualities to be signs. Immediate qualities in their immediacy are, as we have seen, unique, non-recurrent. But in spite of their existential uniqueness, they are capable, in the continuum of inquiry, of becoming distinguishing characteristics which mark off (circumscribe) and identify a kind of objects or events. As far as qualities are identical in their functional force, as means of identification and demarcation of kinds, objects are of the same kind no matter how unlike their immediate qualities” (LW12, 248–249).
- 19.
More precisely, in the article A Pragmatist Theory of Evidence, Reiss lists four requirements that a good theory of evidence should satisfy: (1) it distinguishes support and warrant; (2) it provides an account of evidential support; (3) it provides an account of warrant that allows warrant to come in degrees; (4) it applies to nonideal circumstances typical of science in practice. Now, my contention is that Dewey’s pragmatist approach is rich enough to satisfy all these requirements (Reiss 2015, 344).
- 20.
Obviously, ‘logically’ is used in Deweyan sense. It does not mean that the hypothesis is a logical consequence of the evidence, so that P(H—E) = 1; rather, it means that the evidence collected throughout inquiry is capable, to quote Dewey’s own words, of “form[ing] an ordered whole in response to operations prescribed by the ideas they occasion and support” (LW12, 117).
- 21.
Something more can be said in this regard. For a proposition to be grounded, Dewey writes, “alternative possibilities must be ruled out” (LW12, 189). The point that Dewey is trying to make – which is rather classical, as a matter of fact – is that affirmation cannot be disjointed from negation: when something is affirmed, all the other elements of the logical space are indirectly denied. Take the existential proposition “this is red”. Dewey writes: “[v]alid determination that “this is red” depends upon (1) exhaustive disjunction of alternative possibilities of color and (2) upon elimination of all other possibilities than the one affirmed, the elimination resulting (3) from a series of hypothetical propositions such as “if blue, then such and such consequences,” etc., in contrast with the proposition “If red, then such and such other and differential consequences” (LW12, 189). Accordingly, the true logical form of the hypothetical proposition that grounds the conclusion “This is red” is something of this kind: “Only if this is red, will observed phenomena be what they are” (LW12, 189). The logical force of that ‘only’ derives from a series of eliminations of the alternative hypotheses which are expressed in and through negative propositions. The kind of elimination that is thus performed is related to a series of experimental operations whose function is to provide new and better evidence. This task can be accomplished only because alternative hypotheses play a role in the process of determination and elaboration of the selected hypothesis.
- 22.
I will not deal with Dewey’s account of induction here. A satisfactory analysis of this issue can be found in Burke (2002). As is quite well-known, Dewey’s theory of induction has been strongly criticized by Brodbeck in the article Brodbeck (1949). For a reply to Brodbeck, see Mayeroff (1950). I hope to address this topic in a future work.
- 23.
Much has been written on Reichenbach’s reformulation of the Kantian a priori, as well as on the debate that followed the publication of his book. See, among the others, Coffa (2003, Chapter 10), Parrini (2002, Chapters 1 and 3), Ryckman (2005, Chapter 2), and the Appendix. The expression “relativized a priori” was coined by Michael Friedman. See Friedman (1999) and, in particular, Friedman (2001) in which the notion of relativized a priori is used to articulate “a modified version of a Kantian philosophy of science”, which is capable of acknowledging a place for the idea of constitutive principles of objectivity within a post-Quinean and post-Kuhnian framework (Friedman 2001, 71). Friedman’s work has sparked interest in the issue. See, in particular, the remarks made by Mormann in (Mormann 2012), in which the notion of relativized a priori is interpreted in pragmatist terms.
- 24.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that, in order to clarify this point, Dewey draws a comparison between logical forms and what he calls the postulates of geometry: “[j]ust as the postulates of […] geometry are not self-evident first truths that are externally imposed premises but are formulations of the conditions that have to be satisfied in procedures that deal with a certain subject-matter, so with logical forms which hold for every inquiry” (LW12, 24).
- 25.
A useful classification of Dewey’s propositions is provided in Burke (1994, 176–190).
- 26.
In some passages, Dewey seems to be ready to take a step further, and to acknowledge a sort of expressivist connection between these two types of propositions. Among the other things, this way of framing the issue sheds an interesting light on the relations between science and common sense. Dewey formulates that insight as follows: “Such systematization is one of the chief differences between common sense and scientific kinds. It is this systematic serial relationship which renders the category of membership or inclusion applicable to included kinds and not to the case in which a singular is simply identified and demarcated as one of a kind. The proposition of a relation of kinds thus provides the logical ground of the singular proposition. For in the proposition of the form “This is one of a kind,” there is implicitly postulated that there are other kinds related to the one specified. For characteristics which suffice to ground the reference of this to a kind must be such as to demarcate it from other kinds. The adequate grounding of such a proposition demands, accordingly, that related but excluded kinds be determinately established” (LW12, 294).
- 27.
Dewey considers these two propositions: “Each and every whale, whether observed or not, or whether now existent or not, is a mammal” and “If an animal is cetacean, it is mammalian.” Now, he writes, “[w]hen we compare these two propositions as to their logical form, it is evident that the latter expresses a necessary relation of characters and holds whether whales exist or not. The first proposition refers to each and every existence marked by a certain conjunction of traits” (LW12, 256)
- 28.
The last remarks highlight a feature of Dewey’s account of the constitutive element of science which is of some relevance for contemporary philosophy of science. Recall the example made by Stump, which I have quoted at the beginning of this section. Commenting on the philosophical import of that example, Stump remarks that the latter can be read in two different ways, which points to two different and alternative philosophical frameworks. I quote the passage in its entirety: “[t]here are at least two ways of looking at the setting up of criteria in this manner. The philosopher Arthur Pap discusses this in terms of meaning, so that he would want to say that the definition of an uncontaminated Petri dish includes the idea that there are no microbes in the dish before they are placed there in the course of research. We could, however, leave out any discussion of the meaning of terms and simply say that the presence of microbes in a new Petri dish has become a criterion of the contamination of the dish. The second option focusses on the practice of science, rather than semantics, which provides a picture of science that is more historically accurate” (Stump 2015, 2). What is relevant to note is that, according to Dewey’s approach, these two ways of interpreting the Petri example are not alternative. Rather the contrary, the semantic reading clarifies the function that the constitutive element of knowledge plays in the concrete practice of science.
- 29.
For a detailed analysis of the similarities between Lewis and Dewey’s theories of a priori, please see Rosenthal (1987).
- 30.
I would like to thank Lorenzo Buccio for his expertise on intertidal biofilm and his extremely useful comments on this section.
- 31.
- 32.
The literature on scientific pluralism is wide. See, in particular, the so-called Stanford school of philosophy of science: Cartwright (1983, 1999), Dupré (1995), and the collection of essays (Galison and Stump 1996). A different approach to scientific pluralism, which centers on the notion of complexity, is (Mitchell 2003, 2009). For a detailed analysis of the notion of scientific pluralism, as well as of the various forms in which it may be articulated, see the classical (Kellert et al. 2006) and the more recent (Ruphy 2017). Dewey’s scientific pluralism is different from those approaches in that it is primarily a pluralism about scientific activities.
- 33.
For a detailed analysis of the distinction, see (Campbell 1995, 100ff.).
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Gronda, R. (2020). Construction. In: Dewey's Philosophy of Science. Synthese Library, vol 421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37562-1_4
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