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Models, Perspectives, and Scientific Realism

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Models, Perspectives, and Scientific Realism MODELS, PERSPECTIVES, AND SCIENTIFIC REALISM: ON RONALD GIERE'S PERSPECTIVAL REALISM A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Brian R. Huth May, 2014 Thesis written by Brian R. Huth B.A., Kent State University 2012 M.A., Kent State University 2014 Approved by Frank X. Ryan, Advisor Linda Williams, Chair, Department of Philosophy James L. Blank, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................. iv INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I. FROM THE RECEIVED VIEW TO THE MODEL-THEORETIC VIEW........................................................................................................... 7 Section 1.1.................................................................................................... 9 Section 1.2.................................................................................................... 16 II. RONALD GIERE'S CONSTRUCTIVISM AND PERSPECTIVAL REALISM.................................................................................................... 25 Section 2.1.................................................................................................... 25 Section 2.2.................................................................................................... 31 Section 2.3.................................................................................................... 34 Section 2.4.................................................................................................... 37 III. PROBLEMS WITH RONALD GIERE'S PERSPECTIVAL REALISM AND SUGGESTED REVISIONS......................................................................... 50 Section 3.1.................................................................................................... 51 Section 3.2.................................................................................................... 55 Section 3.3.................................................................................................... 61 Section 3.4.................................................................................................... 66 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................ 70 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Frank X. Ryan for so diligently taking up this project with me midway through its completion. I would also like to thank my former thesis advisor, Dr. Gene Pendleton, for his generous time and assistance. Additionally, I extend thanks to my committee of readers, Dr. Pereplyotchik, Dr. Byron, and Dr. Crawford for their time, honesty, and consideration of this thesis. Finally, thank you to my grandmother June Eisenmann for her never ceasing support. iv INTRODUCTION "If any problem in the philosophy of science justifiably can be claimed the most central or important, it is that of the nature and structure of scientific theories, including the diverse roles theories play in the scientific enterprise." (Frederick Suppe, 1977.) Frederick Suppe's claim that the most important question for philosophers of science is that of the nature and structure of scientific theories was written in the introductory section of his 1977 work The Structure of Scientific Theories. There can be little doubt that philosophers have given great emphasis and attention to the inquiry into the nature and structure of scientific theories (see Chapter 1); however, as recently as 1989, there has been a domineering theoretical approach about the structure and nature of scientific theories that has won prevalence throughout the philosophical community: the so-called semantic conception of theories in science.1 Frederick Suppe (1989) has traced the origins of the semantic conception of scientific theories back to the work of von Neumann, however, the common view seems 1 See Suppe 1989, p.3. Here, Suppe claims that the semantic conception has become the most widely held analysis of the structure and nature of scientific theories espoused by philosophers of science. Suppe also claims that there has, as of 1989, yet to be any significant challenges made to the semantic conception in the literature. However, in the last decade or so, there have been several attempts to argue against the semantic conception as the correct way of conceptualizing scientific theories. For more on opposition to the semantic conception, see Portides 2005. 1 2 to be, according to Paul Thompson (1988), that the semantic conception of scientific theories was first proposed in the works of Evert Beth and Patrick Suppes in the late 1940s and 1950s as a reaction against the syntactic accounts of scientific theories of the logical positivists. Syntactic accounts of theories identified scientific theories with a body of theorems stated in a singular and particular language chosen for the theory, while semantic accounts identified theories by identifying a class of structures or models which could be described in radically different ways in various languages (van Fraassen, 1980: 44). The semantic conception is then an attempt to characterize the structure of scientific theories as being clusters or families of models, while the syntactic conception of theories presented an axiomatic theory system which formulated scientific theories as a set of theoretical laws written in a particular language (the language of first-order predicate logic). Since the semantic conception is an approach that utilizes models -- which are (in the sense they are here being used) concrete, mathematical, or computational devices -- it is also referred to as the model-theoretic approach to scientific theories. 2 Within the model-theoretic conception ('MTC' henceforth) the models of a scientific theory are of paramount importance, for it is the models of the theory that provide the means, but not necessarily the mode, of representation. The models of which constitute scientific theories within MTC are usually characterized as being abstract and, often, non-linguistic 2 Mauricio Suárez has pointed out that the name 'semantic conception of scientific theories' is perhaps a misnomer, for it suggests a kind of syntax/semantics distinction in linguistics -- a distinction of which is often not present within certain model-theoretic approaches to the structure and nature of scientific theories (See Suárez, 2005: 35). Bas van Fraassen is one such model-theoretician. In order to avoid being ambiguous about whether or not I am speaking of a model-theoretic approach that incorporates partial linguistic entities ( e.g. Suppes, 1961), I will thus refer to the semantic conception as the model-theoretic conception from now on. 3 entities whose sole purpose is to function as items of representational value: One uses a model or group of models to represent a domain of phenomena. In recent years, MTC has gained influence not only within the field of philosophy of science (see Chapter 1), but a thinned-out version of the approach has also found its way into commercial pop-science books such as in Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's book The Grand Design, where the two scientists claim to advocate an approach of which they call "model-dependent realism." Additionally, Bailler-Jones (2009) recently published a rather interesting and varied series of interviews involving practicing scientists' own accounts of the use of models in science, further escalating the interest of how models fit into the structure and nature of scientific theories. In this paper, I will be addressing one issue that has recently surfaced as a criticism of MTC, viz. the topic of scientific realism. I am not, however, concerned with whether or not there can ever generally be any adequate kind of scientific realism within MTC. After all, many proponents of MTC do not even classify themselves as realists: van Fraassen is classified as an anti-realist, Suppe calls himself a "quasi-realist," etc. Neither is it my intention to argue whether or not MTC can sustain an adequate representation of scientific theories as it claims to do. I am solely here concerned with one variation of MTC and whether or not there can be a scientific realist account within the framework of that specific variation. The variation of which I am referring to in the preceding sentence is Ronald Giere's so-called constructive realism or perspectival realism.3 3 Giere calls his approach "constructive realism" in 1988 and in 2006 refers to it as "perspectival realism" (which is, as Giere notes, nothing more than a continuation of his constructive realism). 4 Ronald Giere presents an account of MTC that claims scientific realism due to its capacity to represent, in some respects and to some degree, aspects of a mind- independent world instead of favoring some non-representational virtue of scientific theories such as problem-solving effectiveness (Giere, 1988: 7). I will later argue that Giere's way of utilizing models as representational is entirely dependent upon the virtue of whether or not the models being used to represent a particular phenomenon are solely explanatorily successful, hence, solely effective problem-solvers. Thus, Giere's claim to scientific realism cannot be supported based upon his own definition of scientific realism. Further, I will draw upon two arguments first made
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