REALISM BETWEEN METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Johanna Wolff July 2010 © 2010 by Johanna Wolff. All Rights Reserved. Re-distributed by Stanford University under license with the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ This dissertation is online at: http://purl.stanford.edu/dx641bh8212 ii I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Alexis Burgess, Primary Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Thomas Ryckman, Co-Adviser I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Nadeem Hussain I certify that I have read this dissertation and that, in my opinion, it is fully adequate in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Helen Longino Approved for the Stanford University Committee on Graduate Studies. Patricia J. Gumport, Vice Provost Graduate Education This signature page was generated electronically upon submission of this dissertation in electronic format. An original signed hard copy of the signature page is on file in University Archives. iii Abstract “Realism is dead”, said Arthur Fine a quarter of a century ago. What Fine was trying to bury wasn’t just realism, but debates about realism or antirealism in the philosophy of science. The aim of my dissertation is to understand what the realism debate in the philosophy of science should be about, and, hopefully, to revive interest in the debate. To achieve this goal, a number of questions need to be addressed: What is the target of realism and antirealism in the philosophy of science, and what does it mean to be a realist or an antirealist? Is realism the only position in this debate which implies a commitment to metaphysics, or are both realism and antirealism equally metaphysical positions? Is there really anything to be debated, or should we just be quietists about realism debates in philosophy of science? My answer will be that, in its current form, the realism debate in philosophy of science is a skeptical debate, that is, antirealism is offered exclusively as an epistemic challenge to realism. This leads to an unsatisfactory stalemate between realism and antirealism, which often prompts a kind of quietism about these debates. While I reject this quietism as in- sufficiently supported by argument, I concede that the debate in its current shape is not satisfactory either. Instead I propose to change the target of realism debates away from claims about unobservables and towards modal claims made in the sciences. Debates about the latter, I argue, can go beyond skeptical challenges to include semantic and metaphysical questions as well. Switching the target in this way makes the debate about realism in the philosophy of science more like realism debates in other fields. iv Acknowledgements Like most academic endeavors, this dissertation would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. I am very grateful to my advisors and committee members Tom Ryckman, Alexis Burgess, Helen Longino, and Nadeem Hussain, for their sheer endless patience with my attempts to bang my head against several walls at once. I would also like to thank my former committee members, Michael Friedman and Ken Taylor, who gave me helpful advice in the early stages of this project. I am grateful to many members of the philosophy department at Stanford, but I would in particular like to thank Chris Bobonich and Lanier Anderson for their support and advice, as well as Jesse Alama, Alexei Angelides, Tal Glezer, Dan Giberman, Tomohiro Hoshi, Alistair Isaac, Samuel Kahn, Micah Lewin, Peyton McElroy, Teru Miyake, Assaf Sharon, Quayshawn Spencer and Ben Wolfson for relentless criticisms of parts of earlier versions of this project. Beyond the Stanford community, I would like to thank Hans Halvorson for generously taking the time to explain to me the basics of quantum field theory, as well as Katherine Brading, James Ladyman, and George Smith. I would also like to thank Johannes Haag and Karl-Georg Niebergall who sent me on this way. Finally I would like to thank the Andrew W. Mellow Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, who supported my research through a Dissertation Comple- tion Fellowship as part of the Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowship Program during the academic year 2009/10. v Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements v 1 Introduction 1 2 The Carnap - Quine debate 10 2.1 Introduction . 10 2.2 Carnap’s anti-metaphysical stance . 11 2.2.1 Carnap’s position in ESO ....................... 12 2.2.2 How is Carnap’s position supposed to work? . 16 2.3 A closer look at some aspects of Carnap’s view . 18 2.3.1 Agreement about evidence . 18 2.3.2 Deflationism . 20 2.4 Non-Cognitivism and Quietism . 24 2.5 The practical/epistemic distinction criticized . 29 2.5.1 Arbitrary Frameworks . 29 2.5.2 Existence questions and pragmatism . 33 2.6 Yes/No questions and pragmatism . 36 2.6.1 Chemical elements . 37 2.6.2 Charged particles . 38 2.7 Conclusion . 41 vi 3 Realism debates in philosophy of science 44 3.1 Introduction . 44 3.2 The skeptical challenges . 45 3.2.1 Constructive Empiricism . 45 3.2.2 The pessimistic meta-induction argument . 48 3.3 A new quietism . 52 3.4 Should we settle for realist quietism? . 57 3.4.1 Three worries about quietism . 57 3.4.2 Moving to the exit . 60 3.5 Changing the target - modal claims . 66 3.6 Conclusion . 72 4 Where does structural realism fit? 73 4.1 Introduction . 73 4.2 An alternative to standard scientific realism . 76 4.3 A thesis in metaphysics . 79 4.3.1 What is ontic structural realism? . 80 4.3.2 ESR as a response to PMI . 83 4.3.3 Theories and Ramseyfication . 84 4.3.4 Summary . 88 4.3.5 The dialectic between ESR and OSR . 88 4.4 As the ‘ontology’ of particular theories . 90 4.4.1 The argument from the interpretation of quantum mechanics . 91 4.4.2 The argument from the interpretation of QFT . 95 4.4.3 How well does this strategy work? . 100 4.5 As a resolution of underdetermination problems . 101 4.5.1 The argument from multiple interpretation . 102 4.5.2 Other cases of multiple interpretation? . 104 4.6 A different debate . 106 4.6.1 Objects and Structure - which one has priority? . 109 4.6.2 Structure and Modality . 112 vii 4.7 Conclusion . 114 5 The varieties of necessity in physical laws 115 5.1 Introduction . 115 5.2 Varieties of necessity and the place of laws . 117 5.2.1 Lange’s view . 118 5.3 Some examples of varieties of laws . 129 5.3.1 Electrons have negative charge . 130 5.3.2 Conservation laws . 131 5.3.3 What about other laws? . 136 5.4 The necessity of laws . 138 5.5 Conclusion . 145 6 Conclusion 146 6.1 Summary . 146 6.2 The Answer . 148 viii List of Figures 3.1 Realist and Antirealist options . 69 4.1 What is the thesis of structural realism? . 75 4.2 The Aharonov-Bohm Effect . 98 ix Chapter 1 Introduction: Realism between metaphysics and science The aim of my dissertation is to understand what realism debates in philosophy of science should be about. This question is of interest not just to philosophers of science, but also to metaphysicians, since it bears directly on the question of the relationship between science and philosophy of science and metaphysics. To achieve this goal, a number of questions need to be addressed: What is the target of realism and antirealism in the philosophy of science, and what does it mean to be a realist or an antirealist? Does only realism in this debate imply a commitment to metaphysics, or are both realism and antirealism equally metaphysical positions? Is there really anything to be debated, or should we just be quietists about realism debates in philosophy of science? My answer will be that, in its current form, the realism debate in philosophy of science is a skeptical debate, that is, antirealism is offered exclusively as an epistemic challenge to realism. This leads to an unsatisfactory stalemate between realism and antirealism, which often prompts a kind of quietism about these debates. While I reject this quietism as in- sufficiently supported by argument, I concede that the debate in its current shape is not satisfactory either. Instead I propose to change the target of realism debates away from claims about unobservables towards modal claims made in the sciences. Debates about the latter, I argue, can go beyond skeptical challenges to include semantic and metaphysical questions as well. Switching the target in this way makes the debate about realism in the 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2 philosophy of science more like realism debates in other fields. Both realism and antirealism turn out to be metaphysical views in two different senses. First, they are metaphysical because they are genuine philosophical positions – they arise as answers to a distinctively philosophical project.