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Going local: a defense of methodological localism about scientific realism

  • S.I.: Scientific Realism
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Abstract

Scientific realism and anti-realism are most frequently discussed as global theses: theses that apply equally well across the board to all the various sciences. Against this status quo I defend the localist alternative, a methodological stance on scientific realism that approaches debates on realism at the level of individual sciences, rather than at science itself. After identifying the localist view, I provide a number of arguments in its defense, drawing on the diversity and disunity found in the sciences, as well as problems with other approaches (such as basing realism debates on the aim of science). I also show how the view is already at work, explicitly or implicitly, in the work of several philosophers of science. After meeting the objections that localism collapses either into globalism or hyperlocalism, I conclude by sketching what sorts of impacts localism can have in the philosophy of science.

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Notes

  1. See, for instance, Faust and Meehl (2002), Saatsi (2010, 2012, and 2015b), and Egg (2016).

  2. Note that my methodological localism is distinct from the “methodological pluralism” defended by Sankey (2000, p. 211). Sankey’s pluralism maintains that there are a variety of rules and methods for evaluating science that apply differentially across scientific disciplines and eras. My pluralism, by contrast, concerns debates over scientific realism, and how they should be conducted on a localized basis. I do see my pluralism as a natural outgrowth of the kind of pluralism that Sankey defends: once we reject global perspectives on the nature of science, we should reject global perspectives on the nature of scientific realism.

  3. See also Miller (1987), which defends a kind of localism that is more partial toward realism than my methodological view.

  4. Stanford actually presents a difficult case vis-à-vis localism and globalism. At one point, he suggests that underdetermination arguments might affect some disciplines more strongly than others (2001, p. S6). Magnus detects a tension in Stanford’s presentation of his underdetermination argument, arguing that although he presents it “as a retail argument when he is being careful, he has wholesale aspirations” (2010, p. 809). Magnus argues that Stanford’s argument is most effective when deployed locally. See also Egg (2016).

  5. At least nowadays. But each kind of number has had to earn its ontological keep, and some mathematicians (such as Leopold Kronecker) have been skeptical about only some kinds of numbers (Ferreirós 2007). So perhaps localism can identify a useful precedent in mathematics. Thanks to Johanna Wolff on this point.

  6. Cf. this admirably clear statement of localism from Magnus: “the question of scientific realism is not one that can be decided for science simpliciter. Perhaps we should believe in some of the unobservable entities posited by our best scientific theories but not in others” (2013, p. 50).

  7. One salient place for localists to start might be particularism in metaethics (e.g., Dancy 2004), which is its own kind of (ethical) localism.

  8. Though not necessarily. One might be pushed to the view, say, that realism was appropriate only for fundamental physics, since other sciences are derivative and therefore not fully realist. How the realism/anti-realism divide connects to the fundamental/derivative divide is an independent matter not to be decided here.

  9. See also Rowbottom (2014) for further critiques of the “aim” approach to scientific realism.

  10. Thanks go to Johanna Wolff for this sort of example.

  11. Literally everything: “objects are pragmatic devices used by agents to orient themselves in regions of spacetime, and to construct approximate representations of the world” (2007, p. 130).

  12. A subtler take on structuralism can be found in French (2011), which considers the independent merits of a structuralist treatment of biology. French’s approach is implicitly localist, as it does not assume from the outset that structuralism must hold across all domains of scientific inquiry.

  13. Fine’s criticisms of “piecemeal realism” (1991) appear to apply only to the piecemeal (i.e., localized) approach gone globally realist, and then only to Miller’s (1987) particular view of that sort. Fine offers no specific objection to localism as a methodological view, aside from referring to his preferred non-realist stance (e.g., Fine 1984), which I criticize in Asay (2013).

  14. Commitment (iii) is in place to accommodate projectivist and expressivist views, which are common in metaethics but not the philosophy of science. The idea is that realists take the relationship to be one we discover, whereas expressivists take it to be one that we project onto the world.

  15. Given this commitment, it might be thought that the localist is just “doing science”, not philosophy (cf. Magnus 2013, p. 50). I suspect that such a response depends on either assuming that “doing science” is possible in a metaphysically and epistemologically neutral way (with no immediate implications for realism), or that views about scientific realism are somehow independent from the first-order evidence provided by the sciences. The remainder of this paragraph should demonstrate why I reject both suggestions. Thanks to Kyle Stanford for raising this issue.

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Acknowledgments

A version of this paper was prepared for and presented at the conference “Science: The Real Thing?” at Lingnan University in Hong Kong in May 2014. My thanks go to all the participants for their questions and comments throughout the conference, and especially to Darrell Rowbottom, Johanna Wolff, Felipe De Brigard, and several anonymous readers and referees for their many helpful suggestions. The work described in this paper was substantially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (HKU 23400014).

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    Jamin Asay

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Asay, J. Going local: a defense of methodological localism about scientific realism. Synthese 196, 587–609 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1072-6

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