Abstract
Van Fraassen has presented in Scientific Representation an attractive notion of measurement as an important part of the empiricist structuralism that he endorses. However, he has been criticized on the grounds that both his notion of measurement and his empiricist structuralism force him to do the very thing he objects to in other philosophical projects—to endorse a controversial metaphysics. This paper proposes a defense of van Fraassen by arguing that his project is indeed a ‘metaphysical’ project, but one which is very similar to Strawson’s ‘descriptive metaphysics’; if this is the case, van Fraassen’s project may be taken, following recent suggestions made by Ney and Paul, as a form of metaphysics that can potentially make a crucial contribution to scientific inquiry.
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Notes
Van Fraassen has further developed this notion of measurement in more recent works (e.g., van Fraassen 2012), where he discusses which criteria such an assignment must satisfy in order to count as a measurement. However, given that this discussion goes beyond what I aim to do here, I will focus exclusively in this paper on the notion of measurement presented and defended in his (2008).
A brief but excellent discussion of the problem of coordination can be found in Tal (2013: 1159–1163).
Though van Fraassen’s opposes in several works the excesses of speculative metaphysicians, his most trenchant objections are presented in my opinion in the first chapter of The Empirical Stance (van Fraassen 2002).
Although there is little consensus on a unified notion of measurement in the recent literature, there are general lines of inquiry that are pursued by most contemporary philosophers working on issues in metrology. In particular, many philosophers of measurement are currently involved in research projects that investigate the use of models to measure physical features. For a detailed discussion of this current trend and references, see Tal (2013: 1166–1168).
Galileo constitutes probably the best example of this view, as he wrote in the Assayer (Drake 1957: 238) that the universe is a book that ‘cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.’
For more details on van Fraassen’s conception of time as a logical space, see van Fraassen (1970: 100–104).
Kuhn has been interpreted as endorsing a radical or constructivist form of neo-Kantianism since he (1962: 150) wrote that ‘in a sense I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds.’ However, it is important to remark that Kuhn himself has rejected attempts to link his views to constructivism (which puts into question Belot’s characterization of his views as a form of wild neo-Kantianism).
Though Lewis admits the laws of nature depend on our cognitive capacities, it is important to emphasize that he resists (very much like Kuhn) any attempt to identify his view with a form of constructivism since he (1986: 123) claims that: ‘The standards of simplicity, of strength and of balance between them are to be those that guide us in assessing the credibility of rival hypotheses as to what the laws are. In a way, that makes lawhood depend on us—a feature of the approach that I do not welcome at all! But, at least, it does not follow that lawhood depends on us in the most straightforward way: namely, that if our standards were suitably different, then the laws would be different.’ This passage makes quite clear that, even if Lewis adopts a version of Neo-Kantianism, his version is very far from wild.
For a brief and recent characterization of the great variety of views on the subject matter, goals and methods of metaphysics, see the introduction in Le Poidevin et al. (2009).
Van Fraassen is not the only philosopher that aims to give a connective analysis of the notion of representation. In particular, when Walton (1990: 51–54) characterizes the notion of (artistic) representation, he describes it as a ‘thing with the function of being used as a prop in make-believe games’. And, considering that he (1990: 12) also characterizes games of make-believe as ‘exercises of the imagination involving props’ and that imaginings are acts which are often coordinated through the use of a representational work (1990: 21), it is then patent that Walton provides a connective analysis of the notion of (artistic) representation.
I thank Johanna Wolff for pressing this question in conversation. What follows is an attempt to address it from van Fraassen’s perspective.
It is important to make a clarification here: I do not think that, in order to be contribute to our understanding, all metaphysical projects must be descriptive through and through. I believe that some metaphysical projects that contain both descriptive and revisionary parts (I have in mind in particular that of David Lewis) can be extremely useful in principle, but only if, following Strawson, the revisionary parts are at the service of the descriptive parts. Indeed, the problem that projects that focus either exclusively or primarily on revisionary metaphysics (at the expense of descriptive metaphysics) face is that, insofar as revisionary metaphysics is chiefly concerned (as Strawson claims) with producing a better structure of our thought about the world, pursuing these projects feeds the assumption that philosophy can, in the fullness of time, provide a value- and attitude-free description of the world. But this leads, according to van Fraassen (2002: 17), to a false consciousness because ‘philosophy itself is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise.’
In virtue of this, I believe that the main value of using Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics to interpret van Fraassen’s views is that it allows us to distinguish more clearly between the kind of ‘metaphysical’ project he is supposed to approve of and the kind that he rejects. van Fraassen rejects projects that, insofar as they rely on the assumption that one should develop first and foremost a better structure of our thought about the world, end up succumbing to the main problem that seventeenth-century metaphysics faced according to him (2002: 28), which is that ‘it replaced its own real subjects of inquiry with simulacra.’ And van Fraassen is supposed to approve of a project that, insofar as it assumes that we should describe first and foremost the actual structure of our thought about the world, explicitly acknowledges that what it provides in the end are, as he eloquently (2007: 380) puts it, ‘answers about nature as represented, not about nature.’ (I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing on me the question of how Strawson’s distinction relates to what van Fraassen says).
For a recent critique of various speculative metaphysical projects in the analytic tradition, see Ladyman and Ross (2007), chap. 1.
If we take these hypothetical models that save the phenomena as interpretations, is clear that developing as many of them as we can provides a valuable contribution to the ‘metaphysical’ project of making the world and ourselves intelligible to our ourselves considering that, as van Fraassen (2007: 380) maintains, ‘while understanding [the world and ourselves] is the aim, we understand better with every interpretation we can accept as adequate’.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for pressing this question to me. What follows is an attempt to address it from van Fraassen’s perspective.
Indeed, just as Kant’s way of doing (descriptive) metaphysics involved a revolt against his predecessors, so did analytic philosophy emerge as a revolt led by figures such as Moore, Russell and Carnap against the excesses of metaphysicians such as Bradley or Heidegger.
I believe that a good way to interpret what van Fraassen says, suggested to me by Brian Hutchinson, is the following. Before Kant, philosophers thought of themselves incorrectly as offering (possibly) true accounts of the structure of the world. What Kant showed them really to be doing was seeking to enrich our understanding by testing where the boundaries of our understanding of the world are to be found. Some analytic philosophers have forgotten or refused to learn from Kant, and so are seeking to pursue what can no longer honestly or reasonably be pursued, i.e., a deeper understanding of the world as such that goes beyond our established conceptual scheme. But, to do valuable work, they do not need to think of themselves in this way. They may instead think of themselves as pushing from within against the limits of our understanding. If so, then van Fraassen’s criticism of post-Kantian revisionary metaphysicians that have reverted to seventeeth-century ways of doing metaphysics is the Socratic one—i.e., they lack self-understanding. This interpretation is, I think, well supported by van Fraassen’s (2002: 50) claim that ‘[contemporary] materialism may be a prime example of false consciousness in philosophy’.
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Acknowledgments
Prior versions of this article were presented at the 29th Boulder Conference on History and Philosophy of Science and at the Second International Lisbon Conference Philosophy of Science in the 21st century: Challenges and Tasks. I want to thank for critical feedback Paul Teller, Bradley Monton, Johanna Wolff and Wagner Sanz among others. Special thanks are also due to my colleagues Brian Hutchinson, Antonio Chu and Daniel Krasner. Finally, I thank Metropolitan State University of Denver for providing the funding that made possible my attendance to the Second International Lisbon Conference and my wife Alejandra for her patience and support.
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Gallegos, S.A. Measurement and Metaphysics in van Fraassen’s Scientific Representation . Axiomathes 25, 117–131 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-014-9254-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-014-9254-7