Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism 9781442672857

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CHASING REALITY: STRIFE OVER REALISM

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MARIO BUNGE

Chasing Reality: Strife over Realism

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2006 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN-13 978-08020-9075-1 ISBN-10 0-8020-9075-3 Toronto Studies in Philosophy Editors: Amy Mullin and Donald Ainslie

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Bunge, Mario, 1919– Chasing reality : strife over realism / Mario Bunge. (Toronto studies in philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-9075-3 1. Realism.

I. Title.

B835.B87 2006

II. Series.

1499.2

C2005-903842-X

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

In grateful memory of my teachers Guido Beck (1903–1988) who initiated me into scientific research and Kanenas T. Pota (1890–1957) who taught me how to philosophize

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Contents

preface

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Introduction 3 1 Reality and Hylorealism 9 1/ Thing 9 2/ Fact 15 3/ The World: The Totality of Facts or the Maximal Thing? 4/ Enter the Knower 21 5/ Subject / Object Separability 24 6/ Materialism 26 7/ Reality 27 8/ Realism 29 9/ Objectivity and Impartiality 31 10/ Concluding Remarks 33 2 Phenomena, Phenomenalism, and Science 34 1/ Phenomenon and Noumenon 35 2/ Primary and Secondary Properties 37 3/ Phenomenalisms: Ontological and Epistemological 38 4/ Qualia in Materialism 40 5/ From the Scientific Revolution to Locke 40 6/ The Counter-Revolution, Phase 1: Berkeley 43 7/ The Counter-Revolution, Phase 2: Hume 47 8/ The Counter-Revolution, Phase 3: Kant 50 9/ Kant Concluded: Neither Nature nor God 51 10/ Concluding Remarks 53

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3 Antirealism Today: Positivism, Phenomenology, Constructivism 56 1/ Logical Positivism 59 2/ Worldmaking 63 3/ Phenomenalism and Quanta 67 4/ Ptolemy Redux 72 5/ To Phenomena through Noumena 72 6/ Interlude: Reduction 77 7/ Psychological and Social Appearances 79 8/ Scientists in the Crib? 82 9/ Science and Technology Are Realist 85 10/ Concluding Remarks 87 4 Causation and Chance: Apparent or Real? 88 1/ Causation 90 2/ Chance: Types 94 3/ Objective Probability 100 4/ Probability in Science and Technology 103 5/ Chance as Ignorance 106 6/ Uncertainty 109 7/ Bayesianism Is Confused 110 8/ Beliefs Are Not Bayesian 111 9/ Bayesianism Is Hazardous 114 10/ Concluding Remarks 118 5 Behind Screens: Mechanisms 119 1/ A Handful of Examples 119 2/ System and Systemism 124 3/ Mechanism 129 4/ Causal and Stochastic Mechanisms 132 5/ Mechanism and Function 133 6/ Mechanism and Law 134 7/ Guessing Mechanisms 137 8/ Explanation: Subsumptive and Mechanismic 9/ Realism versus Descriptivism 142 10/ Concluding Remarks 143 6 From Z to A: Inverse Problems 145 1/ Preliminary Sample 147 2/ The Direct–Inverse Relation: Generalities 3/ Logic and Mathematics 150

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4/ Interlude: Induction 152 5/ Mathematical Problems to Find and Problems to Prove 153 6/ Astronomy and Microphysics 155 7/ Reading Diffraction Patterns 157 8/ Invertibility 159 9/ Inverse Probabilities 162 10/ Concluding Remarks 163 7 Bridging Fact and Theory 165 1/ Induction Again 165 2/ Abduction Again 167 3/ Biology: Evolution 168 4/ Medicine: From Symptoms to Diagnosis 170 5/ Psychology: Behind Behaviour 171 6/ Social Studies: From Individual to Society and Back 7/ Figuring Out Social Mechanisms 175 8/ Reverse Engineering 178 9/ Bridging Theory to Fact 182 10/ Concluding Remarks 182 8 To Reality through Fiction 188 1/ The Need for Abstraction 189 2/ Fictionism 191 3/ Four Kinds of Truth 193 4/ Mathematics Is Ontologically Neutral 196 5/ Mathematics, Brains, and Society 198 6/ How to Make Ontological Commitments 200 7/ Responding to Some Objections 203 8/ Conventionalism and Physicalism 205 9/ Metaphysical Fictions: Parallel Worlds 209 10/ Concluding Remarks 214 9 Transcendentals Are Of This World 218 1/ Universal 218 2/ Kind 223 3/ Possibility 226 4/ A Surfeit of Worlds 228 5/ Many-Worlds Metaphysics Is Inexact 232 6/ Counterfactuals 236 7/ Disposition 239

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8/ Space and Time 244 9/ Free Will and Liberty 247 10/ Concluding Remarks 249 10 From Plato’s Cave to Galileo’s Hill: Realism Vindicated 250 1/ Ontological Realism: Brain and History 251 2/ Epistemological Realism: Kicking and Exploring 254 3/ Semantic Realism: Reference and Correspondence 257 4/ Methodological Realism: Reality Check and Scientism 263 5/ Axiological Realism: Objective Values 266 6/ Ethical Realism I: Moral Facts and Moral Truths 267 7/ Ethical Realism II: Testability of Moral Norms 273 8/ Practical Realism: Efficiency and Responsibility 277 9/ Scientific Hylorealism 279 10/ Concluding Remarks 280 Appendix: Fact and Pattern 283 1/ Thing, Property, and Predicate 284 2/ State and State Function 287 3/ State Space and Event 290 4/ Process 293 5/ Objective Pattern and Law-Statement 295 6/ Lawful State Space 297 7/ Concluding Remarks 300 references 303 index of names 327 index of subjects 335

Preface

Nowadays billions of us spend long hours watching screens of various kinds. But of course we all know that the most interesting and important facts and ideas are behind screens. This is why we look for objective fact behind appearance, for cause or chance below event, for mechanism behind behaviour, and for system and pattern underneath particulars. All these tasks require rigorous imagination – in particular, disciplined fiction rather than myth making. Although we are immersed in reality, our knowledge of it is not immediate. The ancient atomists and the founders of modern science and philosophy, in particular Galileo and Descartes, knew that the senses deliver superficial appearances rather than deep realities. They went after real things with primary or mind-independent properties; and some of them made use of mathematical fictions, such as functions and equations, to account for facts. Not that the secondary properties or qualia, such as colour, taste, and smell, are unimportant for organisms: quite the contrary. But qualia reside in nervous systems, not in the physical world around them: the universe is colourless, soundless, insipid, and inodorous. Besides, the scientific investigation of qualia, in particular their explanation in terms of primary properties, had to wait for the emergence of cognitive neuroscience in the twentieth century. For instance, it has only recently been learned that optical and auditory illusions are dysfunctions of the corresponding brain subsystems. And yet some of the most influential early modern philosophers, namely, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as well as their neo-Kantian, positivist, neopositivist, phenomenological, hermeneuticist, conventionalist, and constructivist-relativist heirs, have been teaching exactly the opposite. Thus, the phenomenalists claim that only appearances count, and the hermeneuticists or textualists (or general semioticians) that only symbols matter. Indeed, the

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former repeat Ptolemy’s contention that the goal of science is “to save the phenomena”; the textualists claim that “the word is the abode of Being” (Heidegger), whence “there is nothing outside the text” (Derrida); and that facts, or at least the social facts, “are texts or like texts” (Charles Taylor). And neither the phenomenalists nor the textualists know where to place the mathematical objects – for which they have no use anyway. Given these serious lacunae in contemporary philosophy, it is clear that the nature of facts, appearances, and fictions deserves further investigation. This book is about hard facts, superficial appearances, and fictions both tame like the number ␲ and wild like Cockaigne. The concepts of fact, appearance, and fiction constitute a family, since neither of them makes full sense in isolation from the other members of the triad. Indeed, appearances are facts as perceived by sentient beings; and fictions are either large distortions of facts or inventions unrelated to facts. Facts, in turn, occur whether or not someone perceives them or fantasizes about them. This is a realist postulate, which everyone presupposes but few philosophers adopt explicitly and consistently. I will argue that this postulate underlies, albeit tacitly in most cases, the exploration and deliberate alteration of the real world. I will also argue that, paradoxically, no such exploration succeeds without fictions, particularly those of mathematics. The fact-appearance-fiction triad occurs in all walks of life. Indeed, when trying to understand or control a piece of the world, one must often distinguish and interrelate three layers: those of fact, appearance, and fiction. For instance, some politicians and media invent fictions about the public life, and these fictions contribute to shaping our perceptions of society. Meanwhile, the political and economic currents continue to flow underneath fictions and appearances, largely unaffected and undetected, and therefore beyond our control. The unwary citizen may thus unwittingly become a casualty of what have been called weapons of mass deception. By contrast, the alert and responsible citizens are constructive sceptics: They start by peeling off superficial layers of reality, so as to uncover the hidden social mechanisms and so be able to act upon them. They are philosophical realists. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the fact-appearance-fiction triad is at the centre of some of the oldest and toughest philosophical problems. For instance, how can we know that there are things outside our minds? How are we to proceed from observable fact to conjectured cause? How did Newton solve the so-called problem of induction, of jumping from data to hypothesis – a problem usually attributed to Hume? Does appearance differ from reality, and if so how? Are “raw feels” (or qualia), such as scents and tastes, irreducible to processes describable in terms of primary properties, such as those of odour molecules

Preface

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and olfactory receptors? Can possibility and disposition be real? What if any is the ontological status of mathematical objects? How do they differ from mythical and artistic characters? Are causation, possibility, and chance real despite being unobservable? Is probability a measure of the strength of belief, or else a measure of real possibility? And are there objective laws, or only data packages? In addition to the above ontological and epistemological problems, we shall tackle the following methodological ones. How may we find out the way things actually work behind appearances? What is the use of speculating about alternative worlds? Why wonder about the truth-value of contrary-to-fact statements? How can we best handle inverse problems, such as going from desired output to both requisite input and mechanism? Is there more to explaining than subsuming particulars under generalities? Can scientific theories be directly confronted with facts? What is the status of indicators such as vital signs and pointer readings? And why is it still respectable for philosophers to question the independent reality of the external world at the same time that scientists are discovering ever deeper layers of it, and practical men are altering it for better or for worse? We shall also ask whether it makes any sense to extend realism to embrace values and moral principles. In other words, we shall ask whether there are objective values, moral facts, and moral truths. Besides, we shall ask how far realism can be advanced without making certain assumptions about the nature of things. In general, is epistemology independent of ontology? In particular, can scientific realism thrive independently of materialism? And can their synthesis – which I call hylorealism – account for mathematics and other imperceptible cultural objects? Finally, in the course of our investigation we shall meet a few historical problems. In particular, we shall ask whether it is true that, as most historians of philosophy have assured us, Hume and Kant were the philosophers of the Newtonian revolution. Next: Have the modern-day subjectivists added anything to Berkeley’s teaching? And have the social constructivists succeeded in constructing anything resembling real life? Another such question is whether the logical positivists’ professed love of science has been reciprocated, and did they solve any of the philosophical problems raised by contemporary science and technology? For that matter, did any other contemporary philosophical schools, in particular dialectical materialism, phenomenology, and linguistic philosophy, improve on the ways to chase reality? If not, why not relearn the lesson that the ancient Greek and Indian atomists taught two and a half millennia ago: that the familiar is best explained by the unfamiliar, data by constructs, and facts by ficta, rather than the other way round? In

xiv Preface

short, why not chase reality instead of either taking it for granted or attempting to elude it? This book is part of a lifelong effort to update philosophy with the help of science, and to unmask unsound philosophy posing as science. What started me on this road, as I was finishing high school, were some of the best-selling popular science books in the 1930s – those of the famous astrophysicists Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans. Eddington, the first to confirm Einstein’s theory of gravitation, was a subjective idealist: He claimed that we only find what is already in our minds. And Jeans was an objective idealist: He taught that the universe is a mathematical text written by God. I wished to refute them, but was unable to for lack of the requisite knowledge: this is why I decided to study physics. However, at the beginning of my research work in quantum physics, in the early 1940s, I swallowed the standard or Copenhagen interpretation, which is operationist, hence semi-subjectivist. My realist epiphany came only a decade later, during a break of a meeting of the Argentine Physical Society: I suddenly realized that, when describing a free electron, or calculating the energy levels of an atom, one uses exclusively variables describing properties of a thing that is not being observed by anyone – that is, a thing-initself. That experience suggested to me that much of what passes for the philosophical output of science is actually stale philosophy that plays only a decorative role in scientific research. I thank Joseph Agassi, Carlos F. Bunge, Eric R. Bunge, Silvia A. Bunge, Marta C. Bunge, Carmen Dragonetti, Bernard Dubrovsky, Michael Kary, Richard L. Hall, Martin Mahner, Michael Matthews, the late Robert K. Merton, Greg Mikkelson, Martin Morgenstern, Storrs McCall, Andreas Pickel, Héctor Vucetich, Sérgio B. Volchan, and Per-Olof Wikström for interesting questions, insightful remarks, sharp criticisms, or pertinent information. I am particularly indebted to Martin Mahner, who read the whole of an earlier version and lodged many complaints, many of which I listened to. I am also grateful to John St James for his patient copy-editing, and to Lennart Husband and Frances Mundy for their diligent editing.

CHASING REALITY: STRIFE OVER REALISM

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Introduction

The central theme of this book, namely, the search for reality, may be introduced through three short stories. The first is this. The Sun sunk beyond the horizon, and all animal life seemed to come to a standstill. The little girl asked: Did the Sun really sink, and did all the animals die? Teacher: No, it just looked that way. What really happened was that the Earth spun eastward until we were no longer facing the Sun. It also happened that, because of the ensuing darkness, the diurnal animals went to sleep. In sum, sundown, just like sunrise, are only in the eyes of the beholder: the Sun takes no notice of the Earth’s spin. Incidentally, did you know that the Aztecs believed that they had to kill some people to ensure that the gods would make the sun rise the next day? And do you think they would have abandoned this custom had they learned the truth? Wait. Before answering, let me warn you that some famous people still believe that all we can know is the way things look, never the ways things really are. The second story concerns a little boy who, one summer night, tried to catch a firefly between flashes. One may conjecture that, not having heard of Berkeley, Kant, Bohr, or the logical positivists, the child assumed that the insect kept moving between flashes. And, being not only a spontaneous realist but also curious, the child chased the insect with a flashlight, to try and spot it between flashes. Eventually he caught the bug and took it to school. The teacher told him that the intermittent light emission is involved in the firefly’s mating ritual. And his uncle the chemist tried to explain to him the chemical reaction involving an enzyme that emits light. But of course not even the brightest fifth-grader knows enough organic chemistry to understand that reaction. The third and last story is a realistic one, and it concerns the ambiguities and deceptions of social life. When the Nazis seized power, Max Planck, the grandfather of quantum physics, kept his job as the top German science

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administrator. Once, during a state ceremony, he was seen to timidly raise his right arm in the Nazi salute (Heilbron 1986). True, Planck did not join the Nazi party, and he never denounced “Jewish science.” Moreover, he protected what little good science had been left, and defended both rationality and realism. Yet again, Planck rebuked Einstein for resigning his membership in the Prussian Academy of Sciences; and during the war he lectured around the country and in the occupied territories. So, he legitimated the regime by his mere presence in visible places. In sum, Planck, along with millions of fellow Germans, looked nearly black outside, but seems to have been nearly white inside. What colour was he then actually, in fact, really? Or is this an ill-conceived question since colour, far from being a primary property, is in the eye of the beholder? At all events, we all know that appearance, simulation, and dissimulation, as well as misperception and self-deception, are part of social reality. The preceding stories involve not only the ontological concepts of appearance and reality, but also an ill-disguised preference for scientific realism over phenomenalism. The first two stories also involve the methodological concepts of observation, assumption, reality check, and explanation by way of unveiling mechanisms. All of this is quite normal for smart children, craftsmen, scientists, and technologists. It takes a philosopher with his head in the clouds to hold that observation is unnecessary (Plato, Leibniz, Hegel); that there is nothing behind phenomena (Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Renouvier); that no hypotheses should ever be framed (Bacon, Comte, Mach); that guesses need not be checked (Bergson, Husserl, Goodman); or that explaining is just subsuming particulars under generalities (Mill, Popper, Hempel). It may be objected that I am poised to beat a dead horse, since most philosophers are at least as smart as the little boy who chased fireflies. However, such optimism is unwarranted, since antirealism is still alive and well in academia. The following random sample of highly regarded contemporary views should show why. 1 In a much-quoted book, Bas van Fraassen (1980) tells us that the aim of science is “to save the phenomena [appearances]” rather than to account for an independently existing reality – something he places in “metaphysical baggage” to be jettisoned. Likewise David Lewis (1986), an influential philosopher famous for assuming a plurality of real worlds, adopted Hume’s view that there are neither objective connections nor laws proper: that the universe is a vast mosaic of disjointed phenomena. 2 Nelson Goodman’s (1978) fantasies about “worldmaking,” and in particular “star-making,” have been commented on respectfully and profusely, if

Introduction

3

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at times critically, as if they were important contributions to knowledge– and as if Berkeley had written in vain. Most textbooks on quantum mechanics still pay lip service to the BohrHeisenberg or Copenhagen interpretation, according to which that theory refers only to facts under experimental control, in particular phenomena. As the physicist d’Espagnat (1981: 22) said approvingly, one of the consequences of this view is that it destroyed what Copernicus had accomplished: “It has put man back at the center of his own representation of the universe, from which Copernicus had expelled him.” Most biologists, psychologists, and social scientists teach that every scientific project starts from some theory-free observation, that data alone drive research and exude hypotheses, and that theoretical speculation is dangerous. The Nobel laureate Gerard Debreu (1991) claimed that the moment he axiomatized the theory of general economic equilibrium, this theory became part of mathematics, and is therefore impregnable to empirical data. The practical moral is obvious: Economists must be trusted just as much as Euclid, regardless of economic reality. The Bayesian statisticians and philosophers believe that all probability assignments must be subjective, so that none of them can be said to be either true or false. In fact, they hold that a probability value is a measure of the strength of someone’s belief in something, rather than either a pure number or the measure of real possibility, such as the probability an atom will jump between given states within the next minute, whether or not it is being observed. Most mathematicians believe Plato’s thesis that the mathematical objects, such as numbers, sets, functions, and the statements about them, exist on their own and are therefore discovered rather than invented. The social constructivist-relativists deny the difference between thing and idea, fact and fiction, law and convention, research and conversation, empirical test and horse-trading with colleagues. Likewise, the hermeneuticists claim that everything social is a text or “like a text” to be interpreted rather than a fact to be observed, described, explained, or altered. Obviously, neither school has any use for the dual concepts of truth and error – without which scientific research would be pointless. “Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the [Vienna] Circle rejected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements” (Carnap 1950b: 32–3). Yet, Wittgenstein is as influential as ever.

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10 The radical relativists, fictionists, and conventionalists deny the existence of objective and therefore cross-cultural truths, such as those of mathematics, chemistry, and genetics. The very idea of an objective test is alien to them. Which allows them to state whatever they please. The preceding sample should convince anyone that ontology and epistemology are going through a crisis (see Bunge 2001). What can one do in a crisis but either flee or fight? Upon despairing of solving certain crucial philosophical problems, the famous Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam (1990: 118) wrote: “[T]he time has come for a moratorium on Ontology and a moratorium on Epistemology.” Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger concurred (Rorty 1979: 6). I prefer to keep on doing ontology and epistemology, because I believe that a philosophy without them is like a body with neither trunk nor head. Philosophy can and must be criticized and reconstructed unceasingly. Criticism is never enough, for we need constructive ideas in addition to weeding out falsities if we care for truth. Here are some of the theses to be expanded upon and defended in this book. 1 Scientific realism – the thesis that the universe exists on its own, can be explored, and is best explored scientifically – is not just one epistemology among many: it is the one presupposed and confirmed by scientific and technological research. By contrast, phenomenalism, that is, the view that “the world is a sum of appearances” (Kant 1787: B724), or at least that only appearances can be known, is shallow and false. In fact, light emission, chemical reactions, infections, biological evolution, intentions, political tricks, and almost everything else, occur even though they are imperceptible. It is therefore no accident that Galileo and Descartes, two of the founders of modern science, emphasized the difference between primary and secondary properties, and proposed that science should focus on the former. Ironically, the phenomenalists – notably Hume, Kant, and the positivists and logical positivists – in their eagerness to refute supernaturalism and speculative metaphysics, would have killed science as well had they been taken seriously. 2 Although appearances are only skin-deep, they are part of reality rather than its opposite, for they occur in the subject’s brain, which is part of the total world. Inner experiences (qualia), such as feeling cold, seeing blue, hearing a creak, or smelling mint, are not basic but derived: they are processes in the central nervous system, not in the external world. Yet they are not to be discarded, because they are real and moreover indispensable for animal life.

Introduction

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3 An intelligible, scientific, and useful phenomenology, like the one sketched one generation before Kant by the polymath Johann Heinrich Lambert (1764), would explain the secondary (sensory) properties in terms of primary properties. As a matter of fact, this is one of the tasks that cognitive neuroscience is currently performing: it has begun to explain appearances in a scientific way and as brain processes. 4 To explain a fact is to exhibit the law-abiding mechanism(s) that caused it, as when blushing is explained as the last link in the chain Stimulus Perception Conception Activation of an emotion organ such as the amygdala Stimulation of the motor strip in the brain cortex Relaxation of facial muscles Dilation of the capillaries that irrigate the cheeks. Because it overlooks mechanism, the so-called covering-law model of scientific explanation, though not incorrect, is only partial: it just accounts for the logical aspect of explanation. 5 Causation and chance, though not manifest, are objective modes of becoming. And, though neither is reducible to the other, they are related to one another, as when an increase in gas pressure is explained as an increase in the frequency of the random molecular impacts on the walls of the gas container. 6 The sciences and technologies use the realist (often misnamed “propensity”) interpretation of probability, namely, as a measure of real possibility. By contrast, Bayesianism, which interprets probability as credence, is conceptually fuzzy and has no empirical support in psychology. And the realist interpretation of probability necessitates a broadening of determinism, to include probabilistic laws. 7 The inverse problems, such as “inferring” (guessing) axioms from theorems, causes from effects, and mechanisms from functions, have been sadly neglected in the philosophical literature, with the sole exception of the so-called Hume’s problem (Data Hypothesis). Yet, they are far more challenging and rewarding than the corresponding direct problems. The most promising strategy for tackling inverse problems is to try and transform them into direct problems, as when Newton postulated his laws of motion to deduce the orbits of bodies. 8 Induction is neither everything nor nothing. It occurs in low-level (empirical) generalizations as well as in the confrontation of theoretical predictions with relevant data. This confrontation involves some statistical processing. But there is no such thing as probabilistic inductive logic (or probabilistic epistemology), because propositions, not being random items, cannot be assigned probabilities except arbitrarily; and also because hypothesizing is not a rule-directed activity but an art.

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Chasing Reality REALITY THEORIES REALITY

PHENOMENA

PHEN OM ENA

(a)

(b)

Figure I.1M(a) Ontological perspective: Phenomena (appearances) constitute but a small part of reality. Theorists are a part of reality, but the theories they construct are not in the outer world if conceived of in themselves, that is, apart from the processes of thinking and applying them. (b) Epistemological perspective: Reality can be understood and altered efficiently only through theories prompted and checked by phenomena.

9 Scientific theories are seldom if ever contrasted directly with the relevant empirical data: one must first enrich them with indicators, such as fever as an indicator of infection, and GDP as an indicator of economic activity. Indicators are independently checked hypotheses that relate hypothetical variables to observables. To be reliable, the underlying mechanism must be unveiled. This is why ammeters and brain-imaging devices are reliable, whereas crystal balls and dream almanacs are not. Yet indicators are seldom examined in the philosophical literature. 10 Although fiction is not fact, paradoxically we need some fictions, particularly mathematical ideas and highly idealized models, to describe, explain, and predict facts. This is not because the universe is mathematical, but because our brains invent or use refined and law-abiding fictions, not only for intellectual pleasure but also to construct conceptual models of reality. Hence, moderate mathematical fictionism – the view that, although mathematical objects have no independent existence, we may feign that they do. This restricted version of fictionism, unrelated to instrumentalism, is inconsistent with naive realism but compatible with scientific realism. The preceding theses may be compressed into figure I.1. So much for the aperitif.

1 Reality and Hylorealism

We deal with facts all the time, yet there is no consensus on the meaning of the very word ‘fact,’ particularly since in ordinary language it is often confused with either ‘datum’ or ‘truth.’ This confusion is likely to stem from Sanskrit, whose word satya means both “existent” and “true.” So, there is room for puzzling. Are laws and rules facts? Are there general facts? Are social constructions, such as legal codes, facts? Is it a fact that 2 + 2 = 4? How do propositions relate to facts in the external world? And what did Wittgenstein (1922: 1.13) mean when he wrote that “[t]he facts in logical space [?] are the world”? Such puzzles about the meaning of the term ‘fact’ are not just lexicographic quibbles, because the right way of dealing with an item X depends crucially on the nature of X. If X is in the outer world, we may have to act upon X, whereas if X is a construct, we may have to subject X to conceptual analysis. In this chapter we shall only deal with a few of the many problems centred on the concept of a fact, namely, some of those that relate to the central theme of the book. (More on ontology and semantics in the author’s Treatise, 1974a, 1974b, 1977a, 1979a.) More precisely, we shall examine briefly the concepts of thing, property, state, change of state, law, and appearance, as well as the materialist and realist doctrines and their contraries. 1 Thing In dealing with facts we must start by examining the concept of a thing, because a fact is anything involving a thing. This is why, as the great sociologist Durkheim (1988: 78) put it, “every scientific object is a thing, save perhaps the mathematical objects.” In a scientific worldview, then, the world is constituted by things. This was also the view of the ancient Greek and Indian atomists, the medieval nominalists, and the Enlightenment materialists.

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The statement that the world is the collection of things is hardly controversial. However, no word is more vague than ‘thing.’ It is therefore advisable to try and elucidate it. Let us start with the broadest of all nouns, the neutral term object. It is generally admitted that objects can be either material (concrete), like birds and schools, or immaterial (abstract), like concepts and theories. Concrete objects are also called ‘things’ or ‘existents,’ and abstract objects ‘ideal’ or ‘constructs.’ Correspondingly, the properties of concrete objects, such as viscosity and productivity, may be said to be substantive, whereas those of ideal objects, such as consistency and transitivity, may be said to be formal. However, the thing/construct and substantive/formal distinctions may be taken to be methodological rather than ontological. This is because, in a nonPlatonic philosophy, constructs are human creations, hence dependent on the concrete things called ‘thinkers.’ Besides, whereas some constructs, such as those of deity, cloven knight, and parallel universe, are wild fictions, others, such as the concepts of set and function, are tame fictions, and moreover indispensable to understand and handle concrete things. For instance, the natural kinds, such as the chemical and biological species, may be regarded as sets; and many properties of concrete things, such as speed and population, can be analysed as functions. Thus, we face the paradox that we need fictions (of the tame kind) to account for real things, just as we may use wild fictions to create the illusion of escaping from reality. In short, fiction is the path to and from reality. (More on fiction in chapter 8.) So far we have used the word ‘thing’ as if it designated a clear and distinct idea, but it is not, since it is often confused with ‘object.’ We must therefore attempt to define it with some precision. The traditional view is of course that of Descartes: A concrete thing, unlike an abstract one, is a res extensa. But, while spatial extension applies to solid bodies, it does not to electrons, fields, biopopulations, families, corporations, and many other things. Neither of them has a precise position, volume, and shape. Besides, in a relational theory of physical space, the latter is the structure of the totality of things. As for the vulgar characterization of “material” in terms of shape, mass, and solidity, it is even less adequate, because solids are exceptional in the universe. I submit that Plato got it right in this case. According to him, whereas ideas are immutable (when considered in themselves), material entities are “corruptible” (changeable). But of course he was mistaken in restricting changeability to the sublunary world: change is universal. In other words, I submit that mutability is the one property shared by all concrete things, whether natural or artificial, physical or chemical, biological or social, perceptible or imperceptible. In other words, I assume Postulate 1.1 For all x: (x is material = x is changeable).

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Note that materiality is not predicated exclusively of things or entities: properties too qualify. For instance, position in spacetime, density, and productivity may be said to be material properties because they are properties of concrete objects. Likewise relations, whether binding such as “attraction” or non-binding such as “above,” can be said to be material if they hold among material objects. However, properties and relations can be material only derivatively, that is, by virtue of the materiality of the things involved: there are neither properties nor relations in themselves, except by abstraction. The same holds for events and processes: the changes of these kinds may be said to be material if they occur in material things. Thus, heat propagation, metabolism, and ideation qualify as material since they are processes in material things. By contrast, logical consistency, commutativity, and differentiability can only be predicated of mathematical objects; likewise, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience apply exclusively to certain gods. However, whereas an entity is either material or ideal, some properties are possessed by entities of both kinds. Thus, finiteness and countability apply to abstract sets as well as to collections of pebbles; and continuity is a property of both certain functions and the trajectories of bodies. In other words, the set of material properties overlaps partially with that of formal properties. Equivalently: Whereas the domains of certain predicates are homogeneous, those of other predicates consist in unions of sets of material and ideal objects. Incidentally, Joseph Dietzgen (1906: 300ff.), the tanner and self-taught philosopher highly praised by Marx, held that thought is material. Lenin (1947: 251) criticized this statement, arguing that, if it were true, then there would be no difference between materialism and idealism. This argument may have originated in Lenin’s conflation of materiality with reality: since he defined “material” as whatever exists independently of any subject, he could not accept that thinking, which is private, is also material. Lenin’s criticism of Dietzgen seems to have been the root of the dualist philosophy of mind official throughout the Soviet empire. This amazing deviation from the materialist tradition was added to the further dualistic division of every society into its material infrastructure and its ideal superstructure previously postulated by Marx and Engels (e.g., Engels 1954). Such double dualism might have been avoided if Marxists had bothered to think clearly instead of imitating Hegel’s convoluted prose. They might then have realized that it is possible to distinguish thought processes and cultural processes from others without dematerializing them. However, let us go back to the peculiarity shared by all material entities. Like all universals, changeability (or materiality) can be conceived of in an extensional way. That is, we can define “matter” as the set of all material objects present, past, and future:

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Definition 1.1 Matter = {x Î W x is material} = {x Î W x is changeable}, where W denotes the collection of objects of all kinds. Being a collection, matter (the concept) is immaterial. So are hydrogen, the collection of all hydrogen molecules, and humankind, the set of all humans. (More on species in chapter 9.) Since the technical word for ‘changeability’ is energy, formula (1) can be rewritten as Postulate 1.2 For all x: (x is material = x has energy). Depending on the scale, which is conventional, an energy value may be positive, negative, or null. Besides, there are many kinds of energy: mechanical and thermal, kinetic and potential, electric and magnetic, nuclear and atomic, gravitational, chemical, elastic, and so on. This variety is such that it overflows every single chapter of physics. Indeed, physics does not define the general concept of energy. This is why Richard Feynman claimed that physics does not know what energy is. Which suggests that the general concept of energy, like the general concepts of thing, fact, and law, is ontological (Bunge 2000a). To repeat, energy is not just a property among many. Energy is the universal property, the universal par excellence. Moreover, energy is a universal in re: it inheres in things instead of being either ante rem (prior to them) or post rem (after them). My view is then neither idealist (in particular Platonist) nor nominalist (vulgar materialist). In the Middle Ages it would have been characterized as immanentist realism. (More in chapter 9.) Parenthetically, energy, the property of all things, must not be confused with the various concepts (predicates) used in science and technology to represent it on the conceptual plane. We shall come back to the property-predicate distinction in section 4. Because energy is a universal, it is just as insufficient as “being,” “existent,” or “thing” to characterize any particular thing. To this end, further properties are needed. In fact, every time we describe a particular thing we list some of its properties, as when characterizing a certain fruit as round, juicy, and of colour orange when illuminated by white light. Moreover, properties do not conjoin haphazardly. Thus, in the preceding example, roundness and juiciness are concomitant with solidity: liquid and gaseous fruits are impossible. Likewise, democracy works best with equity and liberty, and not at all with extreme inequality and tyranny. In sum, properties cluster. More precisely: Every property conjoins with some other properties. In other words, properties come in bundles or systems. However, the properties in a property-cluster are not all on a par: whereas some of them are essential, others are accidental; whereas some are basic, )

)

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others are derived (or dependent upon basic properties); and whereas some properties are primary (or inherent in things), others are secondary (or dependent upon some sentient being). For example, having cylinders and a transmission are essential to a standard car, whereas its colour and price are both accidental and secondary, because they can be altered without the thing ceasing to be a car. In other words, the accidental properties of a thing can, unlike its essential properties, be added or subtracted one-by-one. Again: The essential properties of a thing constitute a system; they come in bundles. Equivalently: Every one of them is related to at least one other property of this kind. Hence, any change in one of them is bound to alter some of the others. Another philosophically interesting distinction is that between invariant (or absolute) and non-invariant (or relative) properties. The former are the same in (relative to) all reference frames, such as laboratories and star constellations. Therefore these properties are also the same for all observers moving relative to one another. Paradigmatic examples are real existence, the electric charge and entropy of a physical thing, and the composition and structure of a system. Other properties, such as mass and frequency, as well as position and velocity, depend on the reference system. For example, the mass of a body increases with its velocity; and the frequency of light decreases as its source moves away from the reference frame (Doppler effect). Frame-dependence is objective: it occurs whether or not the reference frame in question is inhabited by a sentient being. Moreover, although some quantitative properties are frame-dependent, their corresponding qualities are not. Thus, being localized, in motion, or massive, and having an age are absolute. Only having certain coordinates, moving with a given speed, possessing a certain mass, and being so many years old, are relative – but the relation in question is to a physical reference frame, not to an observer. In short, relativity does not involve subjectivity. Does having different velocities relative to different frames of reference count as so many facts or as a single fact? If we decide on the former, we will have to put up with an unnecessary multiplication of facts. It seems more reasonable to relativize fact to reference frame and say, for instance, that my walking around the block is a single fact with as many projections as reference frames – by analogy with the shades projected by a body on different surfaces by different light beams. On the other hand, the secondary properties, such as taste, smell, colour, and heat, are subject-dependent: The world in itself is neither coloured nor hot, and it neither tastes nor smells. Another obvious example is social order, which is “perceived” differently by different people, even if some of its features, such as the distribution of wealth and the degree of citizen participation, are per-

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fectly objective. Likewise, values are subject-dependent, even though some of them have objective roots. For example, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but nutritive power and peace are not. As with properties, so with their changes. Whereas some changes, such as displacement and mixing, are quantitative, others, like the chemical combination and the formation of new organizations, are qualitative. Equivalently: These changes involve the emergence (gain) or the submergence (loss) of certain properties. Regrettably, most dictionaries misinform us that ‘emergence’ means impossibility of explaining qualitative novelty in terms of the constituents of the whole in question and their bonds. In fact, this is only the irrationalist (in particular holist and intuitionist) version of the emergence doctrine. Such epistemic pessimism is certainly not countenanced by the physicist who investigates phase transitions (such as from liquid to solid, and from magnetic to non-magnetic); the chemist who studies the formation or dissociation of molecules; the neuroscientist who wishes to understand the genesis and death of neurons; or the historian intent on explaining the emergence or dissolution of social systems and the norms inherent in them. All such cases point to the promise of emergentism as the corrective and complement (not necessarily the enemy) of reductionism (Bunge 2003a). Now, the laws of nature and the social norms are invariant relations among properties and their changes. Here, ‘invariant’ means both constant in time and independent of any particular choice of reference frame. (Strictly speaking, only the basic laws are the same relative to all reference frames of some kind: see Bunge 1967b.) Hence, to say that the essential properties of any thing come in bundles, or constitute systems, amounts to saying that every one of them is lawfully related to other properties. And, since laws conjoin properties, they are (complex) properties themselves. It is therefore to be expected that they will be formalized by more or less complex propositions, such as the postulates of electrodynamics, which relate such properties of the electromagnetic field as its electric and magnetic intensities, and the intensity of the electric charges and currents that accompany the said field. Because properties cluster, it has sometimes been suggested that things are nothing but bundles of properties. This view, reminiscent of Plato’s Theory of Ideas (or Forms), is mistaken for two reasons. The first is that, as Aristotle argued against his teacher, there are no properties without substrata: Every property is a feature, trait, or aspect of some object or other. This is why we measure or calculate the metabolic rate of organisms, the population densities of cities, and so on. And this is why energetism, the doctrine that all is energy, and nothing material, is false.

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The same holds for informationism, or the thesis that the world is the maximal computer: that every concrete thing is made from bits (Wheeler 1996). Indeed, all the information-processing systems, such as computers, are material. By contrast, bits – the amount of information content – are properties of signals or symbols, not entities. This is why computer hardware is designed with the help of physics, not information theory. Hence Wheeler’s cute maxim, “it from bit,” is every bit as wrong as both traditional (individualist) subjectivism (“it from me”) and social constructivism (“it from us”). (More in Deutsch 2004.) A second reason that the bundle-theory of things is false is that it suggests writing formulas such as P{P,Q}, where P and Q stand for two (substantive) properties, such as price and quantity. This formula is not well formed because the set {P,Q} has only mathematical properties, such as that of having two elements. Sets can have no substantive properties, such as that of being able to move. The usual way of characterizing a particular thing is to list its salient properties, such as sex, age, and occupation in the case of persons. (Actually what we list when individuating or identifying an individual is property instances or “tropes,” such as thirty years of age.) This procedure is at variance with Quine’s celebrated formula “No entity without identity.” This formula is suitable for sets and for the mathematical objects constructed with sets, by virtue of the axiom of extensionality: “Two sets are identical if and only if they have the same members.” But Quine’s formula is irrelevant to the study and handling of material objects, for no two such things can be exactly identical, although the elementary particles may be exchangeable. This result should not be surprising because logic, even when enriched with set theory, is insufficient to build ontology, since it does not describe the world. In sum, a reasonable ontology must start with the concepts of thing and its properties. And if it is to be compatible with modern science and technology, that ontology will conceive of concrete things as changeable. Consequently, it will be able to give a reasonable account of facts, such as a thing being in a given state or going over to a different state. 2 Fact In ordinary language the word ‘fact’ denotes pretty well anything. Even some famous philosophers have used it carelessly. For instance, the idealist Husserl proposed the slogan “Zurück zu den Sachen,” that is, “Back to facts.” But, since Husserl (1931) “bracketed out” the external world, and regarded realism as absurd, presumably what he meant by ‘facts’ were phenomena such as

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sights and smells, rather than either physical objects such as atoms, or social ones such as families. In any event, given the ambiguity of the word ‘fact,’ it will be convenient to try and elucidate its meaning. Suppose this cat is in fact (actually, really) on that mat. That the cat is on that mat is a fact that involves at least three concrete (or material) things: the cat, its mat, and the floor underneath. (If the environment does not change appreciably during the time of interest, or if its changes are of no significant consequence to cat, mat, or floor, we need not refer to it explicitly.) A moment later the cat gets up and walks away. The first fact, that the cat is on the mat, pivots on the state of the cat, whereas the second fact revolves around the animal’s motion, which is a particular change of state. We call such changes events if swift, processes if protracted. In sum, we ordinarily distinguish facts of two kinds: Static fact = Thing(s) in a given state. Kinetic fact = Change(s) of state of thing(s). Note that in both cases the facts in question consist in either states or changes of state of concrete things. No such things, no facts. Thus, the analysis of any fact should start by identifying the thing(s) involved, such as reagents in the case of a chemical reaction, and brains in that of a mental process. What holds for empirical analyses also holds for conceptual, in particular semantic, analyses. This analysis starts by identifying the referents of the constructs in question. That is, we begin by stating what is being talked about. For example, the referents of the statement “Buildings are taller than people” are buildings and people. And the statement describes a fact, or rather a whole collection of facts, even though the relation “taller than” is non-binding. In general, the statement that thing b stands in R-relation to thing c, or Rbc for short, describes a fact if the statement is true. Neither the relation nor the corresponding relata are independently real: what is real is the fact that Rbc. To paraphrase Hegel, in cases like this, das wirkliche ist das Ganze: the whole is real. This is not to be taken as a profession of holistic faith but as a warning against the temptation of reifying relations and unrelated individuals: these are only analytical devices. However, the fact-thing distinction is only an analytical device since, as stated above, in reality there are neither states nor changes of state in themselves. Nor are there things that fail to be in some state or other, or that undergo no changes. (The fact that many a thing, such as a plucked guitar string or an electron, may be in a superposition of elementary states, such as harmonics and eigenstates respectively, constitutes no counter-example. Whether simple or complex, all states are states of concrete things.) Likewise, the distinction between static and kinetic facts is rather coarse,

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because nothing stays forever in the same state. For instance, the cat mentioned above undergoes thousands of chemical and physiological processes while sleeping on its mat, and the latter changes too as it interacts with the cat, the floor, and the air – as we find out when cleaning it. Another distinction that should not be confused with a dichotomy is that between natural and social facts – or between “brute” and “institutional” according to Searle (1995: 27). True, there are purely natural facts, such as earthquakes, that happen independently of the state of society, and whether or not we perceive them. Likewise, there are purely social facts, such as economic downturns and crusades. All such facts are macrosocial; moreover, they are “brute” in the sense that they are beyond the control of the individuals involved. But at the level of the individual there are only (a) natural facts, such as breathing and eating, and (b) biosocial facts, such as walking on a public street and buying a newspaper. We can distinguish the biological from the social aspects of an individual action, but we must not detach them, because they come together, for the simple reason that everything social is the work of animals. Finally, the event/process distinction, though clear in ordinary knowledge, is not obvious in science. Here one attempts to analyse events into processes. In principle, even quantum jumps can be regarded as swift processes. In sum, a fact is the being of a concrete thing in a certain state, or changing from one state into another. There are neither states nor events in themselves for the simple reason that, by definition, every state (or state of affairs) is a state of some thing or other, and every event is a change in the state of a concrete individual. Therefore, Armstrong (1997) notwithstanding, the concept of a state of affairs is not an independent category. We have known this since Aristotle criticized Plato for writing about movement in itself rather than about moving bodies. All of the preceding may suffice for everyday life and ordinary-knowledge ontology, but it is too imprecise for science, technology, and scientific metaphysics. In these domains we need more precise concepts of state, event, and process. Now, the most exact and general analysis of these concepts is the one inherent in the state (or phase) space approach, familiar to natural scientists and engineers (e.g., Bunge 1977a). It is the most general because, being stuffindependent, it can be used in any discipline dealing with facts, from physics to ecology to sociology to ontology. However, the reader uninterested in formal matters may skip the balance of the present section, whereas the reader interested in learning more about it may wish to consult the appendix. To introduce the state space approach, consider the simplest possible case: that of a thing with only two salient properties, such as position and momen-

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N2

q

p

N1 (b)

(a)

Figure 1.1M(a) The state (or phase) space for a classical linear oscillator with position q and momentum p. Each ellipse represents a possible motion with constant energy. (b) The possible states of a system composed of a prey in numbers N1 and a predator in numbers N2.

tum, blood pressure and heartbeat, population and GDP, or quantity and price. Call them P1 and P2, and represent these by mathematical functions F1 and F2 respectively, called ‘state functions.’ For definiteness, these may be regarded as depending only on the time variable t. Next, form the ordered pair F(t) = . This point may be pictured as the tip of a vector in a twodimensional Cartesian space, namely, the Cartesian product of the codomains of F1 and F2. As time goes by, F(t) moves in this space, generating a trajectory that summarizes the history of the thing represented. This motion is constrained by the law(s) that relate F1 to F2. For example, if the thing is a linear oscillator, such as the tip of a pendulum, the abstract point in the state space represents a possible state. The state space is S = {F(t) t Î }, where designates the real line. The corresponding lawful state space is the proper subset SL of S of all the points that satisfy the constraint “Energy = constant.” For each value of the energy, SL is an ellipse. That is, SL = { E(q,p) = const.}. See figure 1.1a. Figure 1.1b represents the possible states of an ecosystem constituted by two populations of organisms, one of which preys on the other. Caution: Since the state space is abstract, so is every trajectory in it; it represents a process but not a trajectory in physical space. The generalization of the above to things with n properties, where n > 2, is immediate: SL = {, where g: S ® S is compatible with the laws in question. For a particular transformation g we may focus on the end points of the net change, that is, on the initial and final states of the process. The ordered pairs