Imagine

As Brian Leiter reported http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/the-ny-times-philosophy-blog-again.html. The New Times has recruited Timothy Williamson for its online blog, the Stone. In a recent entry (perhaps his first?) he writes about the role of the imagination in science: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/reclaiming-the-imagination/

The main point of the entry is revealed in its closing paragraph. It is to answer unnamed "Critics of contemporary philosophy" who "sometimes complain that in using thought experiments it loses touch with reality...Once imagining is recognized as a normal means of learning, contemporary philosophers’ use of such techniques can be seen as just extraordinarily systematic and persistent applications of our ordinary cognitive apparatus."

I offer four observations:
1. First, Williamson makes it easy on himself by simply asserting without evidence that contemporary philosophers’ use of imagination can be seen as just extraordinarily systematic and persistent applications of our ordinary cognitive apparatus. The blog clearly implies that if the imagination is good enough for science it is good enough for philosophy. But Williamson makes no effort to show that contemporary philosophers systematically constrain the use of the imagination in the manner that scientists (perhaps?) do. He just asserts philosophers' systematicity and persistence. (The piece ends a line later.) This is an argument from authority.

2. Nevertheless, my reason for blogging about this entry is not to continue to harping about the tendency of leading analytic philosophers to claim the mantle of science when it suits them. Rather, it is to note the surprising (to me!) impact of recent (well, post-Kuhnian!) history and philosophy of science on Williamson's thought in at least two ways. First, Williamson takes the context of discovery very seriously. It is what grounds his appeal to the authority and use of the imagination. Second, he asserts that even in the context of justification the imagination plays a very important role, and this is a good thing.

3. So, perhaps philosophers of science can engage Williamson on these two previous points in constructive fashion? The recent methodological turn of my leading (and young) analytic metaphysicians should be an opportunity in this respect.

4. I end with a historical note. Williamson's position is a rediscovery of David Hume's and especially his friend's Adam Smith's understanding of science. In Smith's "The History of Astronomy," the imagination plays a positive constructive and justificatory role in natural science and philosophy: "Philosophy, therefore, may be regarded as one of those arts which address themselves to the imagination." As Smith writes, "For, though it is the end of Philosophy, to allay that wonder, which either the unusual or seemingly disjointed appearances of nature excite, yet she never
triumphs so much, as when, in order to connect together a few, in themselves,
perhaps, inconsiderable objects, she has, if I may so, created another
constitution of things, more easily attended to, but more new, more contrary
to common opinion and expectation, than any of those appearances themselves."
(IV.33, 75)

Metaphysics and the General Philosophy of Science

Let me articulate what I find problematic about mainstream contemporary metaphysics from the point of view of philosophy that wishes to be scientifically informed and open to learning from and be surprised by science. I will discuss one of the central player of that scene, Ted Sider, and point to its debt in David Lewis.

Sider writes this:
"The ontological realist draws the line in a certain place: part of the world’s distinguished structure is its quanticational [sic--it's a pre-print so maybe not in final version]structure. Those who regard ontological realism as “overly metaphysical” should remember that they too must draw a line.
And in fact, the ontological realist can give a pretty convincing argument
for his choice of where to draw the line. Quine’s (1948) criterion for ontological commitment is good as far as it goes: believe in those entities that your best theory says exists. But in trying to decide how much structure there is in the world, I can think of no better strategy than this extension of Quine’s criterion: believe in as much structure as your best theory of the world posits. The structure posited by a theory corresponds to its primitive notions—its “ideology” in Quine’s (1951) terminology—which includes its logical notions as well as its predicates.
This criterion is as vague..."
http://tedsider.org/papers/ontological_realism.pdf [It's in the Chalmers, Manley volume discussed on this blog recently]

So, the story go like this: in Quine (first order) logic is a) a tool in regimenting our scientific language so that we can generate a perspicuous scheme to articulate or read off our ontology. Moreover, given Quine's linguistic idealism [Jody Azzouni's characterization] (I mean, of course, his semantic holism), logic plays a second role of b) holding together the core of the whole scheme. It's this two-fold function that we may call its "ideology." In principle, Quine is open to whole-scale revolutions of the general web, including giving up standard logic, but these are extremely rare occurrences in principle. (No Carnapian principle of tolerance.)

Now, Sider comes along and says, why separate the underlying logic (quantificational structure) from the scientific theories? All scientific theories have an underlying logic (see the second role of logic in Quine), and we are committed to this. Moreover, this underlying logic captures what David Lewis calls 'natural properties.' So, once one gives up on Quine-ean holism and returns to realism, then there really is no reason to call the underlying logic/quantificational structure an ideology--it just is the way nature is carved up, etc. (Moreover, Seider also seems to argue that having an underlying logic is indispensable to science--I found this argument a bit hazy.)

Sider relies on David Lewis' argument in favor of natural properties, which is really a kind of transcendental argument--if reference is possible the world must have natural properties; there is reference, ergo, future/final scientific language must include natural properties (and, thus, have a classical logic).

If I get this right, then this would explain the general hostility among 'core' metaphysicians to non-classical logics (as I was surprised to discover this during my stay at Syracuse); if pluralism about logic gets a beach-head, then claims about natural properties and shared underlying logic (or a general quantificational structure) don't get off the ground.

So, what's wrong with Sider's view? I can think of six proposals:
i) it throws away Occam's razor unnecessarily. Even if there is an underlying logic, quantificational structure really isn't indispensable in science or in justifying science;
ii) it is dogmatic about logic (in this sense of, can't take alternative logics seriously)
iii) it is dogmatic about (future) science; it can't take conventionalism in science seriously, (and takes the mere possibility of quantification way too seriously);
iva) quantificational structure is too coarse-grained to have any connection with the content of the sciences.
IVb) the sciences don't and won't exhibit natural properties. (Here I am with Ladyman & Ross!).
[iva-b, alternatively claim that Sider's metaphysics is constructed in such a way as to make appeals from science unrewarding.]
ivc) There is a conflict between first-order and second-order axiomatizers, which is the preferred one? [It sometimes seems that Sider's quantificational structures are part of a future, unspeakable language.]
V) Why can't there be non trivial different axiomatizations (constructive, non constructive) of particular sciences? (Start making Cartwright/Dupre style noises.)
VI) Deny that the sciences refer in the way this is understood by Lewis/Sider--argue that science is operationalism all the way down.

No doubt not all of these proposals are equally promising or popular. No doubt Sider and his fans have responses...I want to thank Erik Curiel, Jody Azzouni, Matt Frank, Graham Priest, and Mark Barber for discussing some of these reflections in emails with me this week.

Use of proxies in science

I am working on Chicago economics of the 1940s and 50s. One interesting methodological feature of the program is that it was eager to connect empirical-statistical research to theoretical development. This meant it was suspicious of (among other things) overly formal mathematical (general equilibrium) models and over reliance of econometric technique. Now when faced with the (large) gap between general theory and messy or theoretically malformed data, they did not turn (primarily) to modeling (the focus of much recent philosophy of science). Instead, the Chicago economists developed empirical proxy measures on a case by case basis. Obviously, the application and reliance of proxies involves many complications. Yet it seems to be a standard practice in science. (I am aware of use of proxies in 17th century physics and 18th century economics.) Now my question to readers of this blog is this: can anybody recommend any philosophical work on proxies? Anybody have any interesting ideas on proxies? I would be much obliged.

Analytic Metaphysics and Methodology

The Leiter Reports is running a poll many of you will have seen on who is the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. I find it both incredible and appalling that David Lewis makes the shortlist but not Carnap (mind you the list is silly on other grounds too). I always thought I was interested in all areas of philosophy but increasingly I find the questions and methodology of contemporary analytic metaphysics largely uninteresting and ridiculous, and maybe wrongly I blame Lewis' influence for a lot of that. I am interested to know whether my disdain for the way analytic metaphysics is going is shared by many philosophers of science. Or perhaps someone can explain to me why I should care, for example, how many regions of spacetime there are, and why I should think it is the job of philosophers to speculate about such matters.