Locating theoretical invariance

I’ve been posting long passages from Michael H. McCarthy’s excellent analysis of 20th century epistemology, The Crisis of Philosophy. The following, guiding question has been in my mind as I read McCarthy’s work: can one account for the dynamic nature of modern science through logical, systematic analysis alone?

I believe the answer to this question is ‘No’. I also believe that’s one of the reasons that logical positivism failed. Additionally, I believe that any philosophy of science which adopts, whether wittingly or unwittingly, the assumptions of logicism, is destined to fail as well.

I want to quote McCarthy at length again, this time on the divergent concepts of foundational inquiry that classical and historical consciousness engage in. McCarthy juxtaposes the concepts of each type of consciousness by discussing where they look for theoretical invariance:

Judgments about the existence and location of invariance within the matrix of cognitive meaning tend to dictate philosophic strategies in epistemology. Philosophers committed to the classical theory of science anticipate invariance at the level of full terms of meaning, the level of propositional truth. Since they think of theoretical science as a permanent achievement, their foundational quest is for the primitive terms and axioms that shall serve as the logical ground of an axiomatized theoretical system. Their foundational research has two correlative moments; they seek to eradicate all obscurity and uncertainty about the foundational terms of meaning, the quest for clarity and apodicticity, and then they logically reconstruct the remainder of the theory on this absolute and evident epistemic base.

Historically sensitive epistemologists, by contrast, acknowledge a succession of competing theoretical systems in the history of science and, thus, treat presently accepted terms of meaning as provisional rather than invariant. They do not refuse the logical demand for clarity and rigor in the systematization of knowledge, but they recognize that logical operations and insufficient to generate higher theoretical viewpoints and to resolve fundamental heuristic disagreements. Logic consolidates and refines existing theoretical achievement but by itself it cannot be the source of new levels of categorical and heuristic development. What, then, is the ground of continuity and consistency within an historically evolving scientific discipline? The intratheoretic constant is the methodological and heuristic structure of the discipline that serves as the thread of identity through systematic categorical change; at a deeper level, the regulative theoretical ideal provides a basis for continuity during revolutionary changes in both method and heuristic structure. When the ideal of science itself changes, as it has in the third stage of cognitive meaning, the philosophical understanding of human knowledge is profoundly disrupted. This is our situation today in the domain of epistemology. (1)

Despite the fact that the logical positivist were performing their logical analysis on modern scientific theories, it seems their particular method of analysis was still modeled on the classical/Aristotelian theory of science. McCarthy continues:

Epistemic analysis of particular theoretical disciplines has an exclusively logical cast when the anticipated invariance is at the level of propositional truth, whether the propositions in question are axiomatic principles or observation sentences. (2)

That logicists and those influenced by their program seek theoretical invariance at the level of propositional truth is uncontroversial. In fact, locating theoretical invariance in propositional truth is more or less the line in the sand between logicist and non-logicist philosophers in the 20th century:

Followers of the linguistic turn, although committed to the priority of semiotic analysis in the architecture of philosophy, are themselves divided into partisans of classical and historical consciousness. Frege and the early Wittgenstein, as representatives of the classical ideal, anticipated theoretical invariance either at the object-linguistic level of scientific terms of meaning or at the level of transcendental logic (universal and invariant syntactical laws) underpinning all conceivable object languages. Quine, Sellars, Rorty, and the later Wittgenstein have abandoned the anticipation of theoretical permanence and of epistemically prior terms of meaning and have fallen back on various pragmatic strategies for choosing between competitive object languages and theories as a whole. These pragmatic canons of selection became the ultimate court of appeal in the adjudication of reputed theoretical conflict. (3)

Logical structure vs methodical structure

The sort of logical systematization logicists engage in can only be performed on final science.

As it stood then, and stands today, science is still on the move, still developing, still changing and may continue to change in ways that we cannot currently imagine. This means that any attempts at systematization at the level of propositional truth will necessarily be revised and from the perspective of future attempts, may be fundamentally inaccurate. Theoretical invariance must be sought somewhere other than at the level of propositional truth.

To take a recent example of logicist-influenced philosophy of science, James Ladyman and Don Ross recognize the same plight for their attempts to formulate metaphysical statements as consilience claims regarding current scientific descriptions: “we expect that our particular positive account of the nature of the world will be deemed mainly or perhaps even entirely incorrect by future philosophers who will know future science.” (2)

Ladyman and Ross, then, acknowledge that their current attempts at logical systematization of current science are likely futile, yet, in a move that puzzles me more each day, they reject any attempt to find “continuity and consistency” in the methodological and heuristic structure of science.

They have acknowledged the failure of the classical theory of science, but have not yet understood that there is a methodical and heuristic structure underlying the success of the modern theory of science. Instead, they seek continuity and consistency in the mathematical formulation of evolving theories, which is, to my eyes, simply a return to the classical efforts at systematization.

I hope to prove McCarthy right in his assessment that logic alone is insufficient to ground a thorough analysis of modern science through future examinations of two example cases from logicism: Carnap’s failure to provide a justification of science via rational reconstruction and the failure of Hempel’s deductive-nomological account of scientific explanation. In both these cases, logical analysis proved insufficient to capture the dynamic and heuristic structure of contemporary science.

Further, it becomes clear that the logicists excluded tools necessary for the task through the anti-psychologism they inherited from Frege. By restoring the link between logic and psychology in a non-associativist manner, we get back the tools necessary to ground the continuity and consistency of science on its methodological and heuristic structure. And when we generalize on this structure in science, we begin to solve the epistemological problems of modern philosophy.

Notes:

1. Michael H. McCarthy, The Crisis of Philosophy, p. 26.
2. ibid., p. 27.
3. ibid., p. 18.