Three Paradigms of Scientific Realism: A Truthmaking Account

Abstract

This paper investigates the nature of scientific realism. I begin by considering the anomalous fact that Bas van Fraassen's account of scientific realism is strikingly similar to Arthur Fine's account of scientific non-realism. To resolve this puzzle, I demonstrate how the two theorists understand the nature of truth and its connection to ontology, and how that informs their conception of the realism debate. I then argue that the debate is much better captured by the theory of truthmaking, and not by any particular theory of truth. To be a scientific realist is to adopt a realism-relevant account of what makes true the scientific theories one accepts. The truthmaking approach restores realism's metaphysical core—distancing itself from linguistic conceptions of the debate—and thereby offers a better characterization of what is at stake in the question of scientific realism.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks go to a referee for this journal, and to Marc Lange, John Roberts, and Keith Simmons for reading and commenting on various drafts. A version of this paper was presented at the University of Sydney; my thanks go to that audience for their questions, comments, and suggestions.

Notes

Notice that I think it is Fine himself who is the truth-monger, for he thinks that truth is the notion that bears all the weight in the debate. I find it ironic that someone like Fine, who has a rather deflationary attitude about truth, puts so much theoretical weight on it nonetheless.

Interestingly, Fine's fellow truth-monger Putnam refers to just this kind of attitude as a species of realism. See Putnam (1975–1976, 193). For more truth-mongering, see Putnam (1982), Ellis (1985), and Jardine (1986).

See, e.g. BonJour (1985, 160), Railton (1986), Wright (1986, 1992), Fales (1988), Jennings (1989, 240), Matheson (1989), Bigelow and Pargetter (1990, 442), Musgrave (1996, 23), Timmons (1999, 36), Taylor (2006), Williams (2006), and Lynch (2009).

See also Jennings (1989, 237), Musgrave (1989), and Psillos (1999), chapter 10. For discussion and criticism of Putnam's truth-mongering internal realism, see Field (1982), Newton-Smith (1989b), Davidson (1990, 307–309), Sosa (1993), van Fraassen (1997), and Niiniluoto (1999).

Moreover, we may want to adopt localized realism within a domain. We might want to be realists about particles, say, but not fields. Such narrowly localized views are even harder to maintain for the truth-monger. (Thanks go to Marc Lange on this point.)

To be fair, when Fine and Putnam were putting forth their views in the 1970s and 1980s, deflationist views of truth did not have the same grasp on the philosophical mindset that they enjoy today. Nonetheless, the views of Ramsey (1927), Ayer (1952), and Quine (1970) were hardly unknown at the time (quite to the contrary), and it is surprising to see how their deflationary views seem not to earn a place in the truth-mongers' setting up of the issue.

Indeed, at times Fine (1986, 175) expresses sympathy with deflationary views.

See, e.g. Mulligan, Simons, and Smith (1984, 288–289), Oliver (1996, 69), and Armstrong (2004, 16–17). In fact, Fine (1984b, 97) himself makes use of the language of ‘making true’ when discussing correspondence theories.

Nor is it any tenet of deflationism that truths have truthmakers. Deflationary theories are built up around the T-sentences (i.e. ‘The proposition that p is true if and only if p’), which themselves are silent on the topic of truthmaking (contra Vision 2003). T-sentences merely express an equivalence between different sentences. Deflationism tells you that the proposition that Socrates was a philosopher is true if and only if Socrates was a philosopher. It does not tell you what the truthmaker is for the proposition, or even if it has one.

My thanks go to Marc Lange, Huw Price, and Keith Simmons for pressing me on this point.

Alan Musgrave comes close to my interpretation of Fine, which he notes was not originally obvious to him. He describes NOA as ‘a complete philosophical know-nothing-ism. The NOA[er] is not committed to electrons, the moon, tables and chairs, physical objects, other people, his self, anything at all’ (Musgrave 1989, 391).

Related to the truth-mongers are the reference-mongers. Often, scientific realism has been defined with explicit connection to the theory of reference. The theory of reference has played a central role in both defences (Boyd 1984) and critiques (Laudan 1981) of realism. Whether such reference to reference is essential to the adherents' arguments, or just a by-product of more linguistic times, is an open question; certainly, it is essential in the case of Kitcher's (1993, 2001, 2002) defences of realism, and in Hardin and Rosenberg (1982). In any event, I am even less moved by the thought of framing realism debates in terms of reference than I am by the thought of framing them in terms of truth. For critical discussion of the ‘flight to reference’ in the philosophy of science, see Bishop and Stich (1998) and Bishop (2003).

See also Asay (2012), which articulates my general truthmaking treatment of realism, of which the present account is an instance.

In this respect, I am fully in line with Devitt's (1984, 1991) non-semantic approach to realism, according to which doctrines concerning truth and doctrines concerning realism do not entail each other. Where I disagree with Devitt (1991) is over his claim that realism lends abductive support to correspondence theory, though it does not entail it (44). So on my view, I keep realism and truth even more separate from each other, precisely because I spell out realism in terms of truthmaking, and so the theory of truth simply does not come into play.

See Devitt (1984) and Jenkins (2005) for treatments of mind-independence. For a challenge to the notion of mind-independence, see Rosen (1994).

To be more precise, constructive empiricists hold that all that science requires of us when we accept its theories is that we believe them to be empirically adequate. But there could be extrascientific reasons for believing in the unobservable portions of theories. Constructive empiricists qua scientific thinkers must remain agnostic about electrons, but they might renounce such agnosticism for other reasons external to the scientific enterprise.

I borrow the example from Boghossian (2006, 26), who in turn borrows it from Sokal and Bricmont (1998).

Such are the familiar tactics of Rorty (1972), Putnam (1978, 1981), and Fine (1986). For criticism, see Musgrave (1989, 1996), Newton-Smith (1989b), Niiniluoto (1999), and Psillos (1999, 2000).

I imagine that some of the figures I have here engaged—in particular van Fraassen and Ladyman—will be unmoved by the thought that their philosophy of science will be helpfully supplemented by my discussion of truthmaking. Both philosophers are highly sceptical of the significance of such ‘metaphysical’ inquiry (where ‘metaphysical’ is taken to be a derogatory term). That van Fraassen is suspicious of any metaphysics incompatible with nominalism is fine as far as my project is concerned. Nominalists have a place in the truthmaking framework; they are fellow metaphysicians. On the nominalist's view, all truths are grounded in particular objects, not universals. Ladyman would be suspicious of any metaphysical labour being performed by metaphysicians that goes beyond what is performed by physicists and philosophers of physics. So be it. On his view, we can understand the proper ontological grounds for truth by attending to physics and physics alone. His is a view about how we should go about accounting for what makes our theories true, not a rejection of the enterprise.