Abstract
This chapter deals with the issue of scientific realism. Traditionally, Dewey’s philosophy of science has been considered as a prototypical form of instrumentalism. On the contrary, I think Dewey is a scientific realist. My aim is to figure out what kind of scientific realism he embraces and defends in his texts. I reject the interpretation that Dewey’s scientific realism is a form of structural realism. Relying on the conclusions reached in the previous chapters, I outline the main features of what I call Dewey’s articulative realism, whose key assumption is the idea that the commitment to the existence of the entities postulated by our best scientific theories is a matter of the kind of activities that an agent is capable of undertaking.
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Notes
- 1.
An instrumentalist reading of Dewey’s philosophy of science has been advanced in Pihlström (2007) and in Shook (2002). The latter proposal is particularly interesting. In that text, indeed, Shook acknowledges that Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy of science has room for propositions about postulated entities which are, by definition, not observable, but he also holds that “Dewey refuses to take a realistic attitude toward such ‘objects’” (Shook 2002, 105). I will discuss and criticize Shook’s proposal below. A neutral approach to the realism/instrumentalism issue has been defended by Hildebrand, who has argued that Dewey’s attempt to avoid traditional philosophical dichotomies entails the dissolution of the problem of realism (Hildebrand 2003). A realist reading of Dewey’s philosophy of science has been formulated by Rubeis in his recent essay Beyond Realism and Antirealism? The Strange Case of Dewey’s Instrumentalism. I am strongly sympathetic with Rubeis’s approach: I share his insistence on the importance of Dewey’s practical standpoint, as well as his emphasis on the realist brand of Dewey’s constructivism. I also agree with him that Dewey’s realism is unorthodox since it is centered on the transformative function of activity (Rubeis 2017, 81). The two main points of disagreement between Rubeis’s account and mine are that (a) I am more inclined than he is to distinguish between logical instrumentalism – the idea that logical elements are to be understood as instruments used to solve a problematic situation – and scientific instrumentalism – the ontological view, to the effect that we are not ontologically committed to the entities postulated by our best scientific theories; and (b) he is more inclined than I am to distinguish between ontological realism/antirealism and epistemological realism/antirealism (Rubeis 2017, 78).
- 2.
See, for instance, the following passage: “What lies back of it [the denial of the validity of the view that scientific and common sense objects are rival] is the belief that the qualitative traits of the things of ordinary common sense knowledge are not only legitimate but necessary in connection with one kind of problems, – those of use and enjoyment –, while the so-called ‘conceptual’ objects of science are legitimate and necessary for the kind of problems with which scientific inquiry is concerned. Hence they are not rival claimants for occupancy of the seat of ‘real’ knowing; and one does not duplicate in ‘true’ or objective fashion what the other presents in a merely apparent and subjective fashion” (LW14, 21).
- 3.
Please notice that Dewey puts the word ‘relation’ in quotes so as to stress that he is adopting Reichenbach terminology without accepting it. I will follow Dewey’s use while discussing the Dewey-Reichenbach debate. The reason why Dewey puts the term ‘relation’ in quotes is due to the fact his and Reichenbach’s use of the term ‘relation’ differ consistently. I will come back to this in Sect. 5.4. For now, please take the notion of relation in its traditional philosophical sense.
- 4.
- 5.
As is well known, the no-miracle argument has been originally formulated by Putnam in (1975, 73). The pessimistic meta-induction, on the contrary, goes back to Laudan (1981). The bibliography of the debate that has arisen about the validity of these two arguments is so extensive that it cannot be summarized here.
- 6.
It is worth noting that serious doubts have been expressed about the capacity of the Helmholtz-Weyl principle to support structural realism. See, in particular, Psillos (2001, S15).
- 7.
See, for instance, Votsis (2004).
- 8.
- 9.
OSR has been originally introduced by French and Ladyman, and then developed into a philosophical proposal that aims to provide a global framework for the understanding of contemporary physics, and, in particular, quantum mechanics. See, among the others, Ladyman (1998), French and Ladyman (2003, 2010) and French (2014).
- 10.
For the sake of completeness, it has to be acknowledged that there are also non-eliminativist versions of OSR. For this reason, it is not properly correct to argue that OSR is necessarily committed to metaphysical eliminativism. According to this moderate form of OSR, there are relations and relata, but relata are nothing more than the relations in which they stand. A non-eliminativist form of OSR is articulated in Esfeld (2004).
- 11.
Here is how Godfrey-Smith formulates the difference between Dewey’s approach and structural realism: “Dewey says that the qualitative is not remote, because we have dealings with these features of the world, though they are not cognitive dealings. But these direct and non-cognitive interactions would only seem to connect us with the qualitative features of what are sometimes called “middle-sized” objects (which Dewey calls objects of “primary experience”), rather than the intrinsic qualities of aspects of the world that are extremely small, or otherwise removed from ordinary experience” (Godfrey-Smith 2011, 79).
- 12.
Because of the importance of this problem, it comes as no surprise that Dewey deals with it at some length in his reply to Reichenbach. The passage immediately quoted, indeed, may be well read in instrumentalist terms: this is the kind of reading that Reichenbach advances and the one that Dewey wants to criticize and reject. The instrumentalist reading seems to be corroborated by another passage on The Quest for Certainty. The passage runs as follows: “[t]he problem which is supposed to exist between two tables, one that of direct perception and use and the other that of physics (to take the favorite illustration of recent discussion) is thus illusory. The perceived and used table is the only table, for it alone has both individuality of form – without which nothing can exist or be perceived – and also includes within itself a continuum of relations or interactions brought to a focus” (LW4, 191). Now, in his reply to Reichenbach Dewey reformulates these ideas in slightly different terms. Directly referring to the passage from The Quest for Certainty, he writes: “‘The perceived and used table is the only table’. Now this passage, because of the use of the word only, might be taken to deny that a scientific physical object exists. If the passage had read: ‘The perceived and used table is the only table’, the italics might have warded off misinterpretation. For it would have indicated that it was not the existence of a swarm of atoms (electrons, etc.) in rapid movement which was denied, but the notion that this swarm somehow constitutes a ghostly kind of table, instead of being just what it is in terms of electrons, deuterons, etc. One would hardly put books or dishes on the latter or sit down before it to eat. That the table as a perceived table is an object of knowledge in one context as truly as the physical atoms, molecules, etc., are in another situational context and with reference to another problem is a position I have given considerable space to developing” (LW14, 22). In so doing, by reformulating the distinction between the two tables in terms of the different life-behaviors in which they are used, instrumentalism loses its bite.
- 13.
Recall here what Dewey writes about the process of meaning liberation in Logic (LW12, 58). On this point, see below Chapter 2.5.
- 14.
In the article Dewey and Quine on the Logic of What There Is, Shook has correctly pointed out that one of the functions that Dewey attributes to scientific theories is that of enabling the agent to intellectually see an observable thing in a radically new way: “the concept of a ‘voltage meter’”, he writes, “is a theoretical means of ‘seeing’ an object in a way unavailable to those not yet initiated into the theory of electrons (Shook 2002, 106). I would like to call attention to the conclusion that Shook draws from that remark. He notices that this function of scientific theories ”permits discussion of a transformed object created by a theory, existing within the experience of those trained in the theory”. Secondary experience is the locus in which these highly refined entities exist. “The transformed entity”, Shook concludes, “is an independent but not transcendent entity, since it can be experienced, yet it is experienced as the sort of thing that exists whether or not it is experienced” (Shook 2002, 106). I wholly agree with Shook on this point. I do not agree with him, on the contrary, when he contrasts transformed objects with transcendent postulated entities. I quote the passage in which he formulates such contrast in its entirety. “Transcendent postulated entities have four characteristics very different from transformed objects according to Dewey’s functionalist epistemology: They can never be observed; they are only hypothetical entities; their meaning as hypothetical is exhausted by their definitions; and they are imaginative creations of theories that are not only fallible but underdetermined by any amount of practical success. Transcendent postulated entities have these characteristics because their meaning consists entirely of their role in ‘universal’ and ‘hypothetical’ propositions of scientific law” (Shook 2002, 107). If I understand it correctly, Shook’s proposal runs as follows: (1) transcendent postulated entities are introduced and defined in scientific laws; (2) within Dewey’s framework, scientific laws concerning this kind of entities are universal or hypothetical propositions; (3) universal propositions do not make existential claims, at least in the first place, since they simply provide the definition of the concepts; (4) so, we are not ontologically committed to the existence of transcendent postulated entities. For the sake of honesty, it has to be acknowledged that Shook’s argument is much more articulated than how I have presented it; nonetheless, I think that those four claims faithfully summarize its relevant content. The reason why I disagree with Shook is that I do not see any sound reason to distinguish between transformed objects and transcendent postulated entities. According to the semantic reading of inquiry that I have laid out in Chap. 4, universal propositions are not truth-bearers. Consequently, it is correct to say – as Shook does – that we are not ontologically committed to the existence of transcendent postulated entities that are formulated in universal propositions. However, propositions are means whose function is to contribute to the reconstruction of the problematic situation that called out inquiry. Now, when the predicate of the judgment – in which universal propositions eventually converge – is existentially predicated of the subject, the meanings contained in the predicate are attributed to the significances of the object. The ways in which the agent transacts with the object are now mediated by the concepts of the scientific theory. At this level, we are ontologically committed to the existence of the transcendent postulated entities that are formulated in universal propositions. Contrary to Shook, I reject the distinction, and I would rather say that transcendent postulated entities are transformed objects in the making.
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Gronda, R. (2020). Realism. In: Dewey's Philosophy of Science. Synthese Library, vol 421. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37562-1_5
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