Abstract
Chapter 2 serves to disclose the meta-philosophical assumptions that underlie my analysis of explanatory reduction. This includes explicating (and justifying) the aim of my analysis, the philosophical methodology by which I develop my account, and the criteria of adequacy that I accept. I will characterize my own account as being descriptive and bottom-up but critical, as being as universal as possible and as specific as necessary, as being normative in a certain way but not in another, and as being potentially useful for science.
“If we can understand the science from the inside while retaining a philosophical perspective, we can gain a new and important viewpoint on scientific practice.” (William C. Wimsatt 2007, 27)
“If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses, I would give you the following piece of advice: Don’t listen to his words, examine his achievements.” (Albert Einstein 1933, 5)
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Notes
- 1.
One might also characterize scientific practice in terms of scientific activities, such as classifying, modelling, hypothesizing, idealizing, observing, and so on (Chang 2011).
- 2.
In the following I will use ‘account’ synonymously with ‘theory’ or ‘model’ in order to refer to a bunch of philosophical theses, for instance, about a certain element or feature of a particular scientific field or about science in general.
- 3.
Questions that are discussed in meta-philosophy are for example: Are there genuine philosophical methods like conceptual analysis, thought experiments, etc.? If yes, what distinguishes these from methods in the natural sciences? Which role does or should a priori knowledge play in philosophy? To what extent can or should empirical knowledge about the natural world be included in the development of, for instance, metaphysical accounts?
- 4.
This is particularly true with regard to the question of how to develop an account of reduction in biology.
- 5.
If not indicated otherwise section references refer to sections in the current chapter.
- 6.
This also holds for other accounts in the philosophy of science.
- 7.
A related criterion of adequacy is what Love calls “epistemic transparency”, which demands “a descriptive correspondence between philosophical theories about science and scientific practice” (2012a, 179).
- 8.
Even if one argues for a methodological continuity between philosophy and the natural sciences one can still claim that a philosophical enterprise can be clearly distinguished from a scientific enterprise, for instance by pointing out that they pursue distinct aims and seek to answer different questions.
- 9.
We could thus also speak about a certain kind of empirical adequacy instead of descriptive adequacy.
- 10.
Presupposing that some kind of scientific realism is true.
- 11.
Callebaut adopts a similar view: “The naturalistic perspective implies that matters of fact are as relevant to philosophical theory as they are relevant in science.” (1993, 1).
- 12.
However, I do not want to assert that it is in principle impossible to develop a descriptively adequate account in a top-down manner. My claim is that (presupposing the aim of understanding actual science) philosophy of science should be pursued in a bottom-up fashion since this guarantees that the resulting account is sensitive to real science.
- 13.
- 14.
It should have become clear that what I and other philosophers of science (e.g., Waters 2008) mean by ‘conceptual analysis’ deviates from the notion of conceptual analysis characterized by Frank Jackson (1998; Chalmers and Jackson 2001). The method of conceptual analysis as an a priori analysis of our philosophically interesting everyday concepts and folk theories is also known as “the Canberra plan”.
- 15.
In his recent work Schaffner has taken up a more compliant stance. For instance, in his paper on “Reduction: the Cheshire Cat Problem and a Return to the Roots” (2006), Schaffner concedes that “what have traditionally been seen as robust reductions of one theory or one branch of science by another more fundamental one are largely a myth” (2006, 378). He claims that in the biological sciences we typically find “creeping reductions” (i.e. partial, multi-level reductive explanations) instead of “sweeping reductions” (2006, 397). But although this seems as an immense departure from his original position, many details of Schaffner’s recent work convey that he is still influenced to a great extent by his GRR model. This point will be elaborated in Chap. 3, Sect. 4.
- 16.
This difference between analyzing reduction in practice and developing an account of reduction in principle does not fully coincide with a difference that I will introduce in the next chapter, namely the difference between in practice and in principle claims in the reductionism debate. Even if you pursue a descriptive project and focus on the analysis of cases of reductions that are actually carried out in practice, it is still possible that you use this understanding of reduction to argue for in principle reductionism (e.g., for the thesis that, in principle, all biological explanations can be reduced to molecular explanations). But despite this possible combination, if you think it is important to reconstruct actual cases of reductions in order to understand what reduction is (focus on reduction in practice; descriptive project) it is likely that you will restrict your reductionist or antireductionist claims to cases of reductions that can be accomplished at present (in practice reductionism).
- 17.
For example, with regard to his account of scientific explanation Hempel emphasizes that it is “not meant to describe how working scientists actually formulate their explanatory accounts” (1965, 412).
- 18.
This is not surprising since it seems weird to make claims about how science ideally should work or how certain elements of scientific practice, such as explanation and reduction, should be understood without taking into account how science actually works and what scientific explanations and reductions in fact are.
- 19.
- 20.
Some philosophers argue that the indispensable step of sorting out paradigmatic and important examples displays the normative character that a putatively descriptive kind of philosophy of science also has (Gesang 2005, 18; Anderson 2005, 76 f; Janich 2005, 155f). I agree but it is important to recognize that this is just one respect in which philosophy of science can be normative and that there are other dimensions of normativity.
- 21.
Wimsatt makes a similar claim when he demands that a philosophical account of reduction must be “functional” (1974, 700), that is, it must characterize reduction in terms of its functioning in efficiently promoting the aims of science.
- 22.
Similar reasons prompted Hüttemann and Love (2011) to stress that in their paper on reductive explanations in the biological sciences they are not developing a theory of reductive explanation, but rather highlighting different aspects of reductive explanations.
- 23.
- 24.
These statements reveal that Kellert, Longino, and Waters conceive the kind of pluralism they endorse as an epistemic and not as a metaphysical thesis. Furthermore, they underline that the form of pluralism they advance is not even based on metaphysical assumptions, but rather is empirically motivated (2006, xiii).
- 25.
To be exact, Waters assumes that epistemic norms that “matter to a broader community” (2004, 49) are of particular importance and that elements of scientific practice should primarily be analyzed in relation to these epistemic norms. Furthermore, Waters emphasizes that there exist no “fixed set of epistemic virtues” (2004, 31), although he admits that truth and empirical success will be valued by anyone interested in science as an epistemic enterprise (2004, 52).
- 26.
For an overview see, for example, Sankey (2013).
- 27.
In a personal communication Waters has approved of this assumption.
- 28.
Some authors endorse an even stronger notion of normativity (e.g., Mühlhölzer 2005; Janich 2005). According to their view, an account is normative if it not only includes the justification of epistemic norms but also justifies such norms that are external to actual science, that is, not (yet) accepted in current scientific practice. Hence, they seem to detach the project of justifying epistemic norms completely from the project of making explicit those norms that are currently accepted in science. In their words, philosophers of science are engaged in normative projects only if they posit epistemic norms for the sciences from the outside of science (Janich 2005, 147). It seems to me that this is a too strong notion of the normativity of philosophy of science that is, in particular, improper to accounts that entail normative as well as descriptive elements.
- 29.
A similar idea can be found in Schindler (2013).
- 30.
Schindler also recognizes this problem and proposes an a priori justification of certain norms. We should ask whether it is “plausible that, counterfactually, the ends [of science] would be achieved if certain norms… were to be respected” (2013, 4150).
- 31.
The requirement that an account of reduction should specify the norms of reductive explanation is captured by the first criterion of adequacy.
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Kaiser, M.I. (2015). Meta-philosophical Preliminaries. In: Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25310-7_2
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