Abstract
Contrary to empiricist hopes, Chakravartty claims that science cannot escape metaphysics. According to him, in line with the theory-ladenness thesis, science necessarily includes metaphysical presuppositions and metaphysical inferences. He contends that strong empiricism provides an implausible description of what scientists do. Furthermore, he claims, empiricists should recognize that in fact they entertain metaphysical beliefs. I analyze Chakravartty’s arguments and point out some significant weaknesses. Drawing on recent experimental results in the field of experimental psychology, I question the use of an exaggerated theory-ladenness thesis and conclude that Chakravartty’s view concerning the relationship between science and metaphysics is far of successfully rebutting the empiricist proposals.
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Notes
That proposal does not have to face the same problems that had led to the abandonment of positivist claims, as the verification criterion of meaning. The warning is relevant because, as we shall see, although the formulation in terms of internal and external problems was coined by Carnap, it certainly expresses a latent idea shared by empiricists of all times, including some current supporters of empiricism, such as van Fraassen, that are not anchored to positivism.
For example, when Popper claimed that Freudian theory was metaphysical (1963, Ch. 1, ii)—i.e., not properly scientific—(because he deemed it empirically irrefutable) he was using the term in the M2 sense. According to Popper’s proposal, scientific theories are always empirically falsifiable, even if they include an ontology of unobservable entities, like electrons.
Schrenk (2016, ix) points out that these metascientific issues “belong to the philosophy of science, especially to its ontological department”. Note here the displacement from metaphysics to ontology.
After all, Millikan’s twists and turns do not seem to show the irresistible force of metaphysical presuppositions but perhaps the intervention of other psychological factors. Perhaps Goodstein is right when he suggests that personal interests may be more influential than metaphysical convictions: “I believe, after reading The Electron [(a book by Millikan)], that Millikan’s real rival was never the hapless Ehrenhaft, but rather J. J. Thomson—not because they disagreed scientifically, but because both wanted to be remembered in history as the father of the electron.” (Goodstein 2000, 38)
In Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a paradigm shifts amounts to a scientific revolution and, in any case, is brought about for various reasons and not by the deliberate pursuit of scientists. But he subsequently moderated his ideas considerably, restricted the scope of incommensurability, and alarmed by the indiscriminate use of the notion of paradigm, decided to stop using it. He even explicitly disavowed some of his followers, such as the advocates of the Strong Programme.
Chakravartty claims: “Can the study of cases shed some telling light on how these disputes should be resolved? Some philosophers appear to think so, but I believe that they are mistaken.” (2017a, 23)
Note, incidentally, that it was originally presented not as an interpretation but as an inextricable internal component of perception, and then it did not seem to be properly a kind of inference. Accordingly, pace Chakravartty, it does not match the idea of being a metaphysical inference.
As for the biased understanding of logical empiricist ideas, for more than thirty years several authors have carried out an enlightening revision of that school of thought, but this does not yet seem to have neutralized the weight of the consecrated stereotype. Ladyman drew our attention to this fact: “Perhaps the folklore about the demise of positivism directly influenced attitudes among late twentieth and early twenty-first century philosophy more than the real intellectual history” (Ladyman 2007, 39). Among the authors who have revealed many commonly ignored aspects of the development of empiricist thinking is Michael Friedman, who wrote: “Thus, for example, it is now clear, I hope, that, far from being naive empiricists, the positivists in fact incorporated what we now call the theory-ladenness of observation as central to their novel conception of science—a conception neither strictly empiricist nor strictly Kantian. Accordingly, they also explicitly recognized—and indeed emphasised—types of theoretical change having no straight-forwardly rational or factual basis. In Carnap’s hands, these conventionalist and pragmatic tendencies even gave rise to a very general version of philosophical “relativism” expressed in the “principle of tolerance” (Friedman 1991, 519).
I do not intend to develop this issue here. I mention van Fraassen, as well as Carnap and Quine, because it seems that the idea that the existence of an external world does not constitute a genuine question is part of the core of the empirical stance, although sometimes empiricists seem to express otherwise. Bringing to mind what those philosophers believe is subject to different interpretations, and I do not intend that this reading, which aims to preserve the coherence of the empiricist conception, is the correct one. I just want to suggest that it is at least debatable and probably wrong, to take for granted, as Chakravartty seems to do, that our contemporary empiricists accept common-sense realism with the metaphysical ladenness that philosophical realists attribute to it. Contemporary empiricists are inclined to consider that they do not have to choose between metaphysical realism, metaphysical idealism, or metaphysical phenomenalism.
Verhaegh points out that the standard interpretation that praises Quine as the restorer of metaphysical tenets about the existence of common-sense and theoretical entities is alive and generally accepted; but in contraposition he mentions Price, Alspector-Kelly and Eklund as part of a group of philosophers opposed to that interpretation.
Duhem, a prolific historian and analyst of science and philosophy who studied in depth the development of the thinking of astronomers and physicists, proposed two ways of conceiving scientific theories: one that attributes to them the function of explaining experimental laws and another that characterises them as abstract systems for classifying and summarising those laws but without claiming to explain them (Duhem 1954, 7). He does not name either of these approaches, but they seem to roughly correspond (as various authors have understood them) to those that later came to be called realism and instrumentalism (respectively). Duhem, who thought that explanation was the task of metaphysics, not science, was well aware that many physicists adhered to the first alternative and rushed to postulate what he considered dubious unobservable entities, e.g. atoms. It was precisely against this tendency that he recommended a more cautious attitude.
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to anonymous reviewers and to Nélida Gentile, Susana Lucero, Adriana Spehrs and Damian Fernandez-Beanato for their valuable suggestions that allowed me to improve the present paper.
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Gaeta, R. Can Science Escape Metaphysics? On Chakravartty’s Scientific Ontology. J Gen Philos Sci (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-022-09603-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-022-09603-8