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Realism and Its Problems
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Messages: 1 - 4 (44 total)
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Faustus5
9/27/2003 4:37 PM
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1 out of 44 |
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Over in the Atheist Debate section, both Clardan and myself have made disparaging remarks directed at the philosophy of Realism, specifically something we’ve been calling “naïve realism” or “naïve scientific realism.” QW1212 wanted to know why anyone would be against such a thing. I didn’t have time or inclination then to respond in depth, but I promised to start a thread on the subject, and although it’s a bit late, here it is.
One thing I should be up front about is though my initial descriptions of Realism will be based on the conceptions of others, the criticisms I have reflect my own personal take on Realism. Specifically, the problems I have with Realism, for the most part, arise from my own fascination with the philosophy of pragmatism and the way it breezily dismisses the tortured vocabularies of philosophers which give rise to doctrines like Realism or Idealism. I’m not about to try to give an exhaustive survey of all the reasons other people don’t like Realism, only the reasons why I’ve turned away from it, having once been a mild mannered Realist.
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Faustus5
9/27/2003 4:40 PM
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2 out of 44 |
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Accurate definitions are important, so here are a few I found:
Naïve Realism is defined thusly in my dictionary of philosophy:
The belief that the world is as we perceive it. There is no distinction between what the world appears to be like (appearances) and what the world is reality like (reality). Sense data impart correct (accurate, true) information about things.
It also provides further definitions of realism: there’s Platonic Realism, personal Realism, epistemological Realism, commonsense Realism, and Aristotelian Realism.
Epistemological Realism seems the most relevant:
1. The theory that universals (essences, abstract concepts, general terms, relations) exist in reality independently of our consciousness—or of any consciousness. Universals exist in the external world even when not perceived. Opposite to NOMINALISM. For most realists, these externally objectively existing universals have more reality than the concrete, particular objects in which they are seen, or from which they are abstracted. 2. The theory that that which is known about a thing exists (in essential respects the same way) in the thing known and would exist without the knower.
Some other definitions from the internet:
Belief that universals exist independently of the particulars that instantiate them. Realists hold that each general term signifies a real feature or quality, which is numerically the same in all the things to which that term applies. Thus, opposed to nominalism.
This was under the heading “Realism, perceptual”:
Belief that material objects exist independently of our perception of them. (Thus, opposed to idealism.) Realistic theories of perception include both representationalism, in which awareness of objects is mediated by our ideas of them, and direct realism, which presumes an immediate relation between observer and observed.
This was under “Scientific Realism” and formed the introduction of a paper on the topic:
It is easier to define scientific realism than it is to identify its role as a distinctly philosophical doctrine. Scientific realists hold that the characteristic product of successful scientific research is knowledge of largely theory-independent phenomena and that such knowledge is possible (indeed actual) even in those cases in which the relevant phenomena are not, in any non-question-begging sense, observable. According to scientific realists, for example, if you obtain a good contemporary chemistry textbook you will have good reason to believe (because the scientists whose work the book reports had good scientific evidence for) the (approximate) truth of the claims it contains about the existence and properties of atoms, molecules, sub-atomic particles, energy levels, reaction mechanisms, etc. Moreover, you have good reason to think that such phenomena have the properties attributed to them in the textbook independently of our theoretical conceptions in chemistry. Scientific realism is thus the common sense (or common science) conception that, subject to a recognition that scientific methods are fallible and that most scientific knowledge is approximate, we are justified in accepting the most secure findings of scientists "at face value."
And here we have qw1212, who offers something which strikes me as very similar to the last entry:
Maybe my understanding of scientific realism is incorrect. I thought realism means that the laws of physics are actually correct. Help me out here with a better definition. As an example, lets take Newton law of gravity F=G*M1*M2/D^2. It has been shown to be exactly correct, especially when you incorporate relativity. Now, a realist like me says that Newton's law describes the way the universe really is. I certainly concede that it may be an approximation to some more complex law, maybe with some negligible terms omitted. But it is a damn good approximation, and it got us to the moon, predicts astronomical events, and so on.
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Faustus5
9/27/2003 4:42 PM
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3 out of 44 |
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Now, when you go searching for a clear definition of something and find so many categories and qualifications, this should tell you that apparently, a lot of people want to believe in something called Realism, but they have been made sensitive by criticism, so they have fallen into different camps based on their reactions to such criticism. So if you meet a Realist on the street (or the virtual streets of the Internet) it’s probably best not to assume too much about his or her beliefs. I don’t think it’s my job to tell Realists what they ought to believe the “actual” definition of Realism is. That is up to individual Realists, who no doubt would endorse much of what I’ve copied and have qualms and qualifications for some of the ideas. The point of posting so many definitions is to show some of the diverse range covered by the concept, in an attempt to be fair to all the nuances and sides.
When it comes to Realism, I like to “speak with the vulgar, think with the wise.” By this, I mean that I have no problem with the following beliefs, which I think are purely innocuous, safe, and immune from rational criticism so long as they are taken at face value as ordinary, conversational speech and not as segments of a philosophical theory:
There were mountains before there were living creatures to perceive them.
Scientists study the real world and scientific laws are about the principles and properties of nature.
A well verified scientific law is true regardless of whether I believe in it or not.
I have no doubt that the rare anti-Realist philosopher might find reasons to object to such sentences, though I think in most cases they will be reacting to (real or imagined) theoretical implications behind them, not to what is meant by the more “vulgar” interpretations of their meanings. So when I express dismay with Realism, I should not be taken to be having genuine doubts about realist intuitions as they occur in everyday conversation. When I lose my wallet, I truly have no doubt that it exists at a certain location in space and time whether or not I ever come around to looking there.
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Faustus5
9/27/2003 4:44 PM
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4 out of 44 |
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My own problems with Realism come about when philosophers take ordinary ways of talking, as above, and attempt to construct metaphysical systems designed to justify or explain them. Because I am a philosophical pragmatist about these kinds of things, I have certain requirements of a theory or method before I’ll start to think I need to take it seriously. The biggest requirement I have is that if I am to choose a side in the debate between Realists and anti-Realists like Idealists, that side must be able to recommend that I do something I didn’t used to do and show me what I’ll get if I buy and use their product. To a pragmatist, in effect, a difference that makes no difference to practice is no difference at all.
And this is why I’m suspicious of the whole program: it doesn’t seem that either side could make a falsifiable prediction or wants to recommend that I do anything different, other than identify with one set of philosophical heroes and concepts over another. It seems to me that Realism is a hangover from the West’s past, from a time when we were trying to put together an epistemology that could avoid the problems of religion and ancient metaphysics. That problem was essentially solved when we came up with the modern scientific method. What remains is just the nagging urge that somehow, we have to be able to put together a system that justifies on grounds of pure philosophy what we have already justified to ourselves in practical terms. And I say that once you have practical reasons to believe in something, you have the only reasons that matter.
So basically, my anti-Realist leanings also lead me against Idealism, or philosophical epistemology in general. But I’ll concentrate on Realism.
Larger problems aside, notice the backsliding which occurs in the two paragraphs on scientific realism. Both the author of the paper and QW1212 want us to share their respect for what science has achieved, but feel the need to remind us that the truth claims of science are “approximate” or “fallible”. Good enough. But what are we supposed to contrast the “approximate” truth of science with? Mathematics, perhaps? If this is the only sense of approximate here, then the truth claims of science, at least in this regard, aren’t much different from the approximate truths of literary theory, ethics, and sports analysis. Are we to be realists concerning the truth claims of announcers of soccer games? If not, then what is it about scientific truth that makes us want to say something special about its relation to reality?
There’s an interesting tension here that I’d like to look at. On the one hand, QW1212 wants us to believe that “the laws of physics are actually correct.” The intro to the paper stresses that scientific theories are those of “a largely theory-independent phenomena” and that we are justified in accepting the claims of science textbooks. On the other hand, we have the nervous realization that sometimes, the best and brightest of an age are just plain wrong, that sometimes the textbooks have falsehoods (I have in my possession a medical text from the 1800’s which discusses the germ theory of disease as a controversy and recommends using a twig to prop open the mouth of a victim of choking). So what, then, does it mean to say that “the laws of physics are actually correct”? The laws of physics circa 1200? 1850? 1923? Or is there something special about our own age, which permits us to relax and realize that finally, we have it all right?
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