According to this evolutionary picture [of science], the course of science is highly contingent on accidents of history. So, the models of the world held at any given time might have been quite different if historical contingencies had been different. On the other hand, [from a realist perspective] the truths about the world are commonly regarded as being fixed ... So even a modestly evolutionary picture of science seems incompatible with scientific realism. My solution to this problem is to keep the evolutionary picture of science and revise the conception of scientific realism ... Imagine the universe having a definite structure, but exceedingly complex, so complex that no models humans can devise would capture more than limited aspects of the total complexity. Nevertheless, some ways of constructing models of the world do provide resources for capturing some aspects of the world more or less well ... It does not matter that different evolutionary paths might lead to different sciences. Each might genuinely capture some aspects of reality.Now, does this explanation resolve the problem or does it simply find a "solution" that cannot be refuted or falsified?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Biomedical research ontologies, realism, and Ronald Giere's perspective
From a discussion with Werner Ceusters in a previous post, it is obvious that the traditional philosophical discussion about realism vs. relativism has some very practical implications for the way we do biomedical research. Since I mentioned Ronald Giere's view on the issue, I thought it would be worth quoting some sections that are relevant for this discussion from his chapter in the book Selection Theory and Social Construction (p. 62-64):
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4 comments:
Giere's position comes quite close to the fallibilist perspectivalism, which Werner and I have been defending in our recent papers. This, too, is a view which accepts that there is a complex reality out there, of which we can have a number of mutually compatible though distinct perspectives, for example on different levels of granularity. It is also a view which accepts that there are aspects of these perspectives which science creates -- corresponding to the fiat boundaries which we create, for example, when we demarcate different sections of the lumen of the gut, or different regions of the cortex. But it is fully realist in the sense that it accepts that the portions of reality captured in such perspectives exist independently of our scientific activity -- this is so even of the sections of the lumen of the gut -- even though no one would have recognized these sections if the corresponding scientists had not existed.
thanks Barry. I remember reading something about fallibilist perspectivalism in a chapter you wrote in Domenico's book about biomedical ontologies. It is certainly an interesting approach, similar to something used by Colin McGinn when trying to explain why we cannot understand consciousness -- Colin's premise is that consciousness is beyond what a human brain can conceive. Similarly, if we cannot prove the existence of God, we simply say it is beyond what we can understand and assume God's existence based on indirect effects, which I think was something along Aquinas' argument.
Although this is certainly a plausible approach and is indeed the closest to my personal current perspective regarding both the realism and consciousness issues, it bothers me to the extent that it seems somewhat like an escape route: if we cannot explain a phenomenon, we assume it is beyond what we as humans can understand and leave it there, not leaving room for falsification. This is a very crude way to put it and I should probably elaborate on this in a separate text later on.
I admire Colin McGinn, but the realism Werner and I defend does not embrace any elements of McGinn's mysterianism. It takes as its starting point (1) that we already know a great deal about reality, and (2) that there are no limits to scientific advance. Another difference is that McGinn (like the good philosopher that he is) goes for the hard problems (God, consciousness, love, evil, and so forth). The ontologist, we hold, should follow the principle of low hanging fruit: computers need guidance even about the simplest matters of biology, and it is part of the job of ontology to give this guidance -- here again the full realist perspective kicks in.
Realism itself, then, is not a hard problem (as you suggest it is); rather it is a heuristic principle. By their fruits ..., and all that.
Barry, good point. I believe Ronald Giere would probably agree with you, based on the comment he made in "Explaining Science, a Cognitive Approach" when discussing the relativist position of those in the Sociology of Science (Strong Programme and such) and whether scientific knowledge is _primarily_ a social construct and not a type of representation of reality:
"The main trouble with this approach [referring to scientific knowledge as a social construct] is that it utterly fails to explain the obvious success of science, and particularly the successes of science-based technology, since the seventeenth century." (p. 4)
Not sure if this could be called a practicalist approach within a pragmatist view, but it is certainly compelling. In sum, if it works, it's got to be true, which is certainly easier to state in relation to science than the other tough topics you mentioned.
Not to be advertising about our conference in Potenza, but the paper I will be presenting there actually deals with the issue of distributed cognition in support of Giere's version of realism, a point that was contentious between Peirce and James (for more details on this see Taylor's chapter in http://books.google.com/books?id=e5p67F8_WE4C&pg=PA162&sig=FtrN1ynNSLKytlKaSdpyDaeirGc)
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