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Scientific Realism Within Perspectivism and Perspectivism Within Scientific Realism

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Abstract

Perspectivism is often understood as a conception according to which subjective conditions inevitably affect our knowledge and, therefore, we are never confronted with reality and facts but only with interpretations. Hence, subjectivism and anti-realism are usually associated with perspectivism. The thesis of this paper is that, especially in the case of the sciences, perspectivism can be better understood as an appreciation of the cognitive attitude that consists in considering reality only from a certain ‘point of view’, in a way that can avoid subjectivism. Whereas the way of conceiving a notion is strictly subjective, the way of using it is open to intersubjective agreement, based on the practice of operations whose nature is neither mental nor linguistic. Therefore, intersubjectivity (that is a ‘weak’ sense of objectivity) is possible within perspectivism. Perspectivism can also help understand the notion of ‘scientific objects’ in a referential sense: they are those ‘things’ that become ‘objects’ of a certain science by being investigated from the ‘point of view’ of that science. They are ‘clipped out’ of things (and constitute the ‘domain of objects’ or the ‘regional ontology’ of that particular science) by means of standardized operations which turn out to be the same as those granting intersubjectivity. Therefore this ‘strong’ sense of objectivity, which is clearly realist, coincides with the ‘weak’ one. The notion of truth appears fully legitimate in the case of the sciences, being clearly defined for the regional ontology of each one of them and, since this truth can be extended in an analogical sense to the theories elaborated in each science, it follows that are real also the unobservable entities postulated by those theories.

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Notes

  1. The term Perspektivismus explicitly occurs in the aphorism 481 of the Will to Power: “In so far as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable [emphasis in original] otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—"Perspectivism." It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm. (Nietzsche et al. 1964, p. 267).

  2. This cross-fertilization between Kantianism and modern science is clearly advocated in Cassirer (1910), and is deepened in Cassirer (1921). In this second work Cassirer engages himself in a detailed and technically very competent analysis of the General Theory of Relativity (recently published at that time) and—through a skillful reference to Kant’s texts of different periods of his thought—tries to show how a suitable elaboration of the transcendental forms of human reason, when applied to the knowledge of the spatio-temporal structure of the physical world, can produce that geometrization of the physical universe which is the core of General Relativity.

  3. For these further developments are particularly significant Cassirer (Cassirer 1923–1929) and (1944).

  4. Reichenbach (1920).

  5. In fact this problem was central to Carnap’s efforts for really getting rid of the “methodological solipsism” that he had adopted in Carnap (1928) and reappeared with new force in the “dispute on protocols” he had with Schlick and Neurat [see Carnap (1932)].

  6. C f. the “Critique of the fourth paralogism of Transcendental Psychology” in Critique of Pure Reason, A 345 ff. The correct interpretation of this Kantian doctrine (that has not been resumed in the second edition of the Critique) has been the object of learned disputes in the Kantian literature.

  7. Cf. “Positivismus und reale Aussenwelt” in Planck (1933, pp. 208–232).

  8. These conceptions are expressed in a less detailed way at the beginning of a more accessible paper: ‘‘The Scientist’s Picture of the Physical Universe,” which is available in English in Planck (1932).

  9. In fact Bridgman strongly defended a subjectivist view of science: “In the last analysis science is only my private science, art is my private art, religion my private religion, etc. The fact that in deciding what will be my private science I find it profitable to consider only those aspects of my direct experience in which my fellow beings act in a particular way, cannot obscure the essential fact that it is mine and naught else. ‘Public Science’ is a particular kind of science of private individuals”. (Bridgman 1936, pp. 13–14).

  10. Let us note that, despite continuously speaking of “observations” and “observables”, analytic philosophers of science and also working scientist actually refer not to the spontaneous approach to the world through the unaided sense organs, but to the last segment of complex operational procedures that (especially in the most advanced sciences) entail the trained use of sophisticated instruments and the skillful ‘reading’ of their results.

  11. Cf. van Fraassen (1980).

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  1. Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Panamerican University, Mexico City, Mexico

    Evandro Agazzi

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  1. Evandro Agazzi
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Correspondence to Evandro Agazzi.

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Agazzi, E. Scientific Realism Within Perspectivism and Perspectivism Within Scientific Realism. Axiomathes 26, 349–365 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-016-9304-4

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