Annotations to Bhaskar’s Realist Theory of Science Hans G. Ehrbar May 12, 2005 Contents Prefaces i 0.1 Bibliographical Remark .......................... i 0.2 Preface to the First Edition ........................ ii 0.3 Preface to the 2nd edition ......................... xiii 0.4 Footnotes to the Preface .......................... xiii Introduction xv 2 CONTENTS 3 1 Philosophy and Scientific Realism 1 1.1 Two Sides of ‘Knowledge’ ......................... 1 1.2 Three Traditions in the Philosophy of Science .............. 8 1.3 The Transcendental Analysis of Experiences ............... 19 1.3.A The Analysis of Perception .................... 21 1.3.B Analysis of Experimental Activity ................ 25 1.4 Status of Ontology and its Dissolution in Classical Philosophy ..... 31 1.5 Ontology Vindicated and the Real Basis of Causal Laws ........ 47 1.6 A sketch of a critique of empirical realism ................ 68 1.7 Footnotes to Chapter 1 .......................... 76 2 Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 82 2.1 Introduction: On the Actuality of the Causal Connection ....... 82 2.2 Regularity Determinism and the Quest for a Closure .......... 90 2.3 The Classical Paradigm of Action ..................... 103 2.4 Actualism and Transcendental Realism: the Interpretation of Normic Statements ................................. 120 2.5 Autonomy and Reduction ......................... 140 2.6 Explanation in Open Systems ....................... 158 4 CONTENTS 2.7 Footnotes to Chapter 2 .......................... 169 2.8 Appendix: Orthodox Philosophy of Science and the Implications of Open Systems ................................ 173 3 The Logic of Scientific Discovery 196 3.1 Introduction: On the Contingency of the Causal Connection ...... 196 3.2 The Surplus-element in the Analysis of Law-like Statements: A Cri- tique of the Theory of Models ....................... 204 3.3 Natural Necessity and Natural Kinds: The Stratification of Nature and the Stratification of Science ...................... 222 3.4 The Social Production of Knowledge by Means of Knowledge ..... 249 3.5 Objections to the Account of Natural Necessity Proposed ....... 267 3.6 The Problem of Induction ......................... 290 3.7 Footnotes to Chapter 3 .......................... 308 3.8 Appendix: Natural Tendencies and Causal Powers ........... 316 3.9 Footnotes to Appendix of Chapter 3 ................... 330 4 Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science 331 4.1 Footnotes to Chapter 4 .......................... 348 CONTENTS 5 5 Postscript to the Second Edition 349 5.1 Footnotes for the Postscript ........................ 361 Bhaskar’s Bibliography 367 6 CONTENTS Prefaces 0.1 Bibliographical Re- low follows these editions. [Bha97] is a mark reprint of the second edition. The collec- tion [ABC+98] has reprints of chapters The first edition [Bha75] and second edi- 1 and 2, page breaks of the form <16> tion [Bha78] of Bhaskar’s Realist The- come from this collection. The present ory of Science are identical until p. 250 pdf edition is fairly accurate concerning (except for a short remark at the end the text, but many diagrams are not yet of the preface). The second edition has transcribed. a postscript and an updated bibliogra- There is a mailing list about criti- phy. The paragraph numbering given be- cal realism and Bhaskar’s work, with i ii PREFACES archives at http://archives.econ.utah. the proverbial frog at the bottom of the beer edu/archives/bhaskar. Between July 2, mug, they have always reappeared. 1996 and March 1998 this mailing list has There was a phase in recent philosophy been discussing the Realist Theory of Sci- when it was widely held that the problem ence. was the problems and not their solution. In practice, however, this interesting idea was usually coupled with the belief that termi- 0.2 Preface to the First nation of philosophical reflection of the tra- ditional kind would be in itself sufficient to Edition resolve the problems to which, it was held, philosophical reflection had given rise. The preface begins be mentioning a num- The next paragraph gives a number of ber of “problems of philosophy” that have examples where problems of philosophy eluded solution this far. A little later, in crop up in the substantive sciences. 10:1, Bhaskar says that this book will not 6:2 Whatever the merits of such a view in solve these problems of philosophy, but it general, it is quite untenable for any philoso- will prepare the ground for their solution. pher who is concerned with science. For 6:1 It has often been claimed, and per- in one science after another recent develop- haps more often felt, that the problems of ments, or in some cases the lack of them, philosophy have been solved. And yet, like have forced old philosophical problems to the 0.2. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION iii fore. Thus the dispute between Parmenides by lacking tools and an inadequate con- and Heraclitus as to whether being or be- ceptual equipment. coming is ultimate lies not far from the cen- 6:3/o In this context one might have ex- tre of methodological controversy in physics; pected a ferment of creative activity within while the dispute between rationalists and the philosophy of science, and to a degree empiricists over the respective roles of the a this has occurred. But the latter’s capac- priori and the empirical continues to domi- ity for autonomous growth is limited. For nate methodological discussion in economics. the critical or analytical philosopher of sci- Sociologists are making increasing use of the ence can only say as much as the philosoph- allegedly discredited Aristotelian typology of ical tools at his disposal enable him to say. causes. And the problem of universals has And if philosophy lags behind the needs of re-emerged in an almost Platonic form in the moment then he is left in the position of structural linguistics, anthropology and de- a Priestley forced, by the inadequacy of his velopmental biology. The spectre of deter- conceptual equipment, to think of oxygen as minism continues to haunt many of the sci- ‘dephlogisticated air’;1 or, of a Winch baffled ences; and the problem of ‘free-will’ is still a by an alien sociology.2 problem for psychology. Question 1 In the Preface of A Real- ⇓ These problems should have given ist Theory of Science, Bhaskar writes that rise to a ferment of activity in philoso- philosophy has not kept up with modern phy, but philosophy has been held back sciences. Modern sciences are plagued iv PREFACES by a number of ancient unresolved “pi- focus has been almost exclusively on how losophical problems.” Philosophy has not we know, marginalizing consideration of been able to solve these problems because what has to be the case ontologically for its framework is too limited. Bhaskar us to know at all. proposes in his book to expand this frame- The very word “objective” is generally work and thus enable philosophy to better assumed to be an outdated, untenable, understand science and also be helpful to epistemological category – as in “there it. What does the great advance in phi- is no objective or value-neutral” point of losophy consist of, which RB alludes to view. But “objective” is also an ontolog- here? ical category: While all our ideas about the world are our own creation (episte- Here is Doug Porpora’s answer to mologically), we still make an ontologi- this question on the Bhaskar list, on cal distinction among our ideas between http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/bhaskar/1996-those that refer to what is dependent on 07-26.024/msg00052.htm: our consciousness and those that refer to I think Bhaskar makes the crucial what is independent of our consciousness. point that contemporary philosophical Today, these two senses of “objective” are or meta-theoretical discussion has “priv- conflated at the expense of ontology. ileged” epistemology over ontology. The Bhaskar intends to recover the dis- 0.2. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION v tinction. And he is going to do so too late.3 Yet there can be little doubt that by focusing on how we conceptualize our theory of knowledge has scarcely come to that ontologically objective quality we terms with, let alone resolved the crises in- call causality. Positivism conceptualized duced by, the changes that have taken place causality as event-regularities, a concep- across the whole spectrum of scientific (and tion that presupposes a certain ontology. one might add social and political) thought. In this respect our present age contrasts un- By examining that ontology, we can de- favourably with both Ancient Greece and termine whether the conception is ten- Post-Renaissance Europe, where there was able. Already, Bhaskar is suggesting that a close and mutually beneficial relationship this conception will not be tenable and between science and philosophy. It is true that a post-positivist account of causal- that in the second of these periods there was ity is needed, which presupposes a dif- a progressive ‘problem-shift’ within philos- ferent, presumably more defensible ontol- ophy from the question of the content of ogy. That ontology will presumably also knowledge to the meta-question of its sta- 4 make better sense of what science is ac- tus as such. This shift was in part a re- tually doing. sponse to the consolidation of the Newtonian world-view, until by Kant’s time its funda- 7:1 mental axioms could be regarded as a priori Hegel may have exaggerated when he said conditions of the possibility of any empiri- that philosophy always arrives on the scene vi PREFACES cal knowledge. However, those philosophers a Beethoven symphony or the perfume of a of the present who insist upon their total au- rose, as a mere effect of those primary pow- tonomy from the natural and human sciences ers. Suppose further that philosophers had not only impoverish, but delude themselves. taken biology or economics as their paradigm For they thereby condemn themselves to liv- of a science rather than physics; or 16th not ing in the shadow cast by the great scientific 17th century physics as their paradigm of sci- thought of the past.