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On the Aim of Scientific Theories in Relating to the World: A Defence of the Semantic Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Michael Baur
Michael Baur
Affiliation:
Trinity College, University of Toronto
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Extract

According to the received view of scientific theories, a scientific theory is an axiomatic-deductive linguistic structure which must include some set of guidelines (“correspondence rules”) for interpreting its theoretical terms with reference to the world of observable phenomena. According to the semantic view, a scientific theory need not be formulated as an axiomatic-deductive structure with correspondence rules, but need only specify models which are said to be “isomorphic” with actual phenomenal systems. In this paper, I consider both the received and semantic views as they bear on the issue of how a theory relates to the world (Section 1). Then I offer a critique of some arguments frequently put forth in support of the semantic view (Section 2). Finally, I suggest a more convincing “meta-methodological” argument (based on the thought of Bernard Lonergan) in favour of the semantic view (Section 3).

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , Summer 1990 , pp. 323 - 334
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990

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References

Notes

1 Putnam, H., “What Theories Are Not,” in Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the 1960 International Congress, edited by Nagel, Ernest, Suppes, Patrick and Tarski, Alfred (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 240–251.Google Scholar

2 I use this terminology deliberately, since the received and the semantic views are compatible with both realism and anti-realism. What is asserted by each view is that a scientific theory attempts to provide an explanation for what takes place in the world of observable phenomena – and not necessarily in the “real world” per se. The crucial issue separating the two views centres on the question of how a theory is supposed to be related to the phenomena it seeks to explain, and not whether or not these phenomena are part of the “really real world.”

3 Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), p. 97–105.Google Scholar

4 Hempel, Carl G., Philosophy of Natural Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 72–75.Google Scholar

5 Suppes, Patrick, “What Is a Scientific Theory?” in Philosophy of Science Today, edited by Morgenbesser, Sidney (New York: Basic Books, 1967), p. 56.Google Scholar Patrick Suppes is not a proponent of the received view, but makes allusion to these last two ways of speaking in his criticism of the received view.

6 Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, p. 74.

7 Ibid., p. 73.

8 In fact, Campbell uses the term “dictionary” to denote roughly what is meant here by the term “correspondence rules.” See Campbell, N. R., Foundations of Science (New York: Dover Publications, 1957)Google Scholar.

9 Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, p. 74.

10 On the problematic nature of the so-called “observational-theoretical distinction,” see the following: Achinstein, Peter, “The Problem of Theoretical Terms,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 2, 3 (July 1965): 193–203Google Scholar; Achinstein, Peter, Concepts of Science (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968), chaps. 5 and 6Google Scholar; Hanson, N. R., Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), passimGoogle Scholar; and Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, enlarged ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), esp. chap. 10.Google Scholar

11 Nagel, The Structure of Science, p. 97.

12 Carnap, Rudolf, “Testability and Meaning,” Philosophy of Science, 3, 4 (October 1936): 419–471; and 4, 1 (January 1937): 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 By this I mean the received view as it has been developed by Carnap and Hempel. See Suppe, Frederick, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,” in The Structure of Scientific Theories, edited by Suppe, Frederick (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 50–53.Google Scholar

14 Hempel, Carl G., “Empiricist Criteria of Cognitive Significance,” in Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: The Free Press, 1965), p. 109.Google Scholar

15 van Fraassen, Bas, “A Formal Approach to the Philosophy of Science,” in Paradigms and Paradoxes, edited by Colodny, R. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972), p. 310.Google Scholar

16 Beatty, John, “What's Wrong with the Received View of Evolutionary Theory?” in PSA 1980, Vol. 2, edited by Asquith, P. D. and Giere, R. N. (East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 1981), p. 410.Google Scholar

17 Ibid.

18 Suppe, Frederick, “What's Wrong with the Received View on the Structure of Scientific Theories?” Philosophy of Science, 39, 1 (March 1972): 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This article is reprinted in Suppe, Frederick, The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific Realism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989).Google Scholar

19 Suppe, “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,” p. 45.

20 Suppe, “What's Wrong with the Received View on the Structure of Scientific Theories?” p. 12.

21 Giere, Ronald, Understanding Scientific Reasoning (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), p. 81.Google Scholar

22 For more on the notion of isomorphism, see van Fraassen, Bas, The Scientific Image (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 41–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 This is precisely the kind of argument urged by Frederick Suppe in his discussion of the observational-theoretical distinction (a distinction which is implied by the received view's notion of correspondence rules). See Suppe, “What's Wrong with the Received View on the Structure of Scientific Theories?” esp. p. 9f.

24 These examples are suggested by Beatty in “What's Wrong with the Received View of Evolutionary Theory?” p. 419.

25 Even this is a disputed point, since a number of philosophers of science would want to argue that the kinds of theories sometimes used as counter-examples to the received view can, in fact, be adequately axiomatized with correspondence rules. On the axiomatization of evolutionary theory, for example, see Ruse, Michael, The Philosophy of Biology (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973), chaps. 3 and 4Google Scholar; and Williams, Mary B., “Deducing the Consequences of Evolution,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 29, 3 (December 1970): 343–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Some proponents of the semantic view have gone so far as to say that – on the received view – a change in something relatively unimportant, such as the method of applying a theory, would necessarily entail a corresponding change in the theory itself. (See, for example, Suppe, “What's Wrong with the Received View on the Structure of Scientific Theories?” p. 17).

Now, strictly speaking, this is not true. For contemporary proponents of the received view do acknowledge the necessary role played by intermediate theories and assumptions in the application of particular theories to actual phenomenal systems. (For example, see Nagel, The Structure of Science, p. 97–105, and Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, p. 74.) Thus a change in the method of applying a particular theory – even on the received view – need not necessarily entail a change in the theory itself (i.e., trivial differences remain trivial).

Of course, it is a further question whether the received view is really capable of accounting for all of the subtlety involved in the application of theories to actual phenomena via intermediate theories and assumptions.

27 Lonergan's philosophy of science should not be identified with the semantic account. Nevertheless, many ideas which underlie the semantic account in its present form were quite current in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Lonergan was formulating his own philosophy of science.

28 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), p. 48.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 41.

30 Ibid., p. 79–80. It is important to note that Lonergan's distinction between experiential and explanatory conjugates parallels neither (1) Galileo's distinction between “secondary” and “primary” qualities (see p. 84–85); nor (2) the “observational-theoretical” distinction implied by the received view. The “theoretical” term “unexpectedness” would be included among experiential conjugates (since this term has meaning only in relation to our expectations); and the observed priority or posteriority of events in a temporal sequence would be included among explanatory conjugates (since such priority or posteriority pertains to the relations of events to one another, and not to us).

31 Ibid., p. 41.

32 Ibid.

33 This, of course, is not to imply that Galileo's law of falling bodies can hold anywhere except for in a perfect vacuum, which is unrealizable in nature. But the more closely one does approximate to the conditions of a vacuum, the more accurate the law of constant acceleration is found to be.

34 I would like to thank the reviewers of Dialogue for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to Colin Rust for his helpful suggestions. Of course, I remain solely responsible for the shortcomings of this paper.