Paul Dicken

Constructive Empiricism and the Metaphysics of Modality

James Ladyman ([2000]) argues that constructive empiricism is untenable because it cannot adequately account for modal statements about observability. In this paper, I attempt to resist Ladymans conclusion, arguing that the constructive empiricist can grant his modal discourse objective, theory-independent truth-conditions, yet without compromising his empiricism. 1. Ladymans dilemma2. Constructive empiricism and modal agnosticism3. Conclusion Ladymans dilemma Constructive empiricism and modal agnosticism Conclusion

Epistemic Voluntarism: Rationality, Inference and Empiricism

The work of Chapter 1 was to bring to the fore the importance of van Fraassen’s broader epistemological framework in understanding his articulation and defence of constructive empiricism. To put the point as succinctly as possible, since constructive empiricism is merely a view about the aim of science — rather than a substantive thesis about its epistemological limits — it is consistent with being a constructive empiricist to recognise any possible position with respect to the success of science in giving us knowledge about the physical world: that it aims for empirical adequacy does not in itself tell us to what extent scientific inquiry realises, falls short of or even exceeds this goal. Consequently, any argument that attempts to discredit constructive empiricism on the grounds that we have good reasons to believe that our contemporary scientific theories tell us a great deal beyond the empirically adequate simply fails to engage with the position.

Conclusion: What Is This Thing Called ‘Constructive Empiricism’?

Since its inception, constructive empiricism has sought to challenge the received wisdom that is scientific realism — the view that in order to make best sense of contemporary scientific practice, one must assume that our scientific theories offer literally true depictions of the unobservable reaches of reality. Yet the precise nature of this opposition has been frequently misunderstood. For while it is generally recognised that constructive empiricism is in essence a philosophical view regarding the epistemology of science — as opposed to, say, a semantic view regarding the language of science — it is usually supposed that this must mean that constructive empiricism is in essence a sceptical view regarding the epistemology of science. The challenge posed by the constructive empiricist is however far more radical, and far more interesting, than such a caricature allows. For the constructive empiricist doesn’t simply challenge the conclusions drawn by the scientific realist, he challenges the epistemological framework in which such arguments proceed: not with whether or not the truth of our scientific theories provides the best explanation for their success, but with whether or not our best explanations have any epistemological relevance; not with whether or not our methods of instrumental detection are just as reliable as our unaided observations, but with whether or not questions of reliability are the most important factor in belief revision; not with whether or not we can make extrapolative inferences about the future, but with whether or not we have to.

Arguments Concerning Constructive Empiricism

Should scientists believe everything they say? Ought they to believe the claims of their mature scientific theories, and in the existence of the various microscopic exotica that are now said to populate the unobservable reaches of reality? Or would a more modest attitude towards scientific inquiry be preferable? On first reflection, there is certainly a strong intuition that our current scientific theories are (at least approximately) true: after all, contemporary scientific practice is enormously successful in terms of both the prediction and the manipulation of empirical phenomena, and — so the thought goes — this fact would simply be miraculous if it was not the case that our current scientific theories provide us with more or less accurate descriptions of the way the world is. Whatever else one may think about it, science works; therefore we should believe that it is true.

On the Nature and Norms of Acceptance and Belief

Constructive empiricism — as articulated and defended by van Fraassen — is intended as but a component of a broader picture of our epistemic lives; it is a conservative assessment of the aim of science motivated not so much by scepticism at our ability to acquire knowledge about the unobservable as it is by a particular orientation towards explanation, a visceral disinclination for speculative metaphysics and a permissive conception of rationality that demands no greater license for a philosophical position than its logical consistency. And initially, this voluntarist framework appeared to provide the ideal habitat for van Fraassen’s empiricism. The most pressing objection facing a position that claims that the acceptance of a scientific theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate is that, since there appears to be no principled epistemological distinction between what our theories say about the very large (but extraordinarily distant) and what they say about the very small (but routinely detected), any justification we may have for believing a theory to be empirically adequate will also be justification for believing that theory to be true. But the constructive empiricist is not offering us an argument concerning the warrant of our various scientific beliefs — he is offering us an alternative conception of the scientific enterprise against a background epistemological framework that rejects all questions of justification as ultimately an expression of taste.

Against Epistemic Voluntarism: Musgrave, Modality and Mathematics

At its heart, constructive empiricism consists of a fundamental distinction between the claims that our accepted scientific theories make regarding observable and unobservable phenomena; and this in turn divides criticisms of the position into two broad categories. The first, discussed in detail in Chapter 1, concerns the epistemic relevance of such a distinction: and we have seen how van Fraassen’s voluntarist framework provides the resources for resolving — or perhaps better, dissolving — objections of this kind (even if we have subsequently seen reasons to doubt the attractiveness of such an epistemological perspective in Chapter 2). The second category of criticisms concerns the internal coherence of constructive empiricism, that is, with whether or not the constructive empiricist can consistently maintain his own distinction between the observable and the unobservable. This second category of criticism is to my mind the more serious, for not only does it charge constructive empiricism with being untenable (rather than merely unattractive), it is also clear that the epistemic relevance of the constructive empiricist’s distinction can only be brought into question once it has been established that such a distinction can be coherently drawn in the first place.