Theory-Ladenness of Observation and Fact

Paul Feyerabend once made a remark to the effect that his pragmatic theory of observation can be traced back to proposals put forward by leading Logical Empiricists during the height of the protocol sentence debate. In this paper I want to vindicate the systematic side of Feyerabend's remark and show that a pragmatic theory of observation can in fact be found in Rudolf Carnap's writings of 1932. I first proceed to dispel a misunderstanding concerning the term "pragmatic" raised by Thomas Oberdan. Following Morris' and Carnap's documented usage, I show that the intended meaning of "pragmatic" refers to a specific semiotic relation between users of a language and their environment describable by empirical means (specifically, the causal relation between the verbal behavior of language users and their environment). I reconstruct such a pragmatic theory in terms of a detector model that interprets observation sentences as bodily dispositions indicating physical events in the surroundings of the detector. I then proceed to show how Feyerabend's later theory of observation picks up central features of Carnap's account and also shares some of the motivations. I conclude by noting how an empirical theory of observation sentences offers a bootstrapping solution to the "basis problem".

ABSTRACT. The act of observing is crucial for constructive empiricism, Bas van Fraassen’s celebrated position on the aim of science. As Buekens and Muller noted in 2012, the Dutch philosopher should
have characterized observation as an intentional act, because observation in science has a purpose. In the present article, which will also address the distinction between observing and observing that,
introduced by Hanson and Dretske, it will be shown that considerations about the intentionality of the act of observing are, on the contrary, unnecessary for drawing the distinction between observable and unobservable entities on which constructive empiricism depends.

RESUMO: No âmbito do empirismo construtivo, a célebre posição acerca dos objetivos da ciência de Bas van Fraassen, o ato de observar desempenha um papel crucial. Segundo Buekens e Muller defendem, em um artigo de 2012, o filósofo holandês deveria caracterizá-lo como um ato intencional, porque, na ciência, as observações são realizadas com um propósito. Nesta análise, que abordará também a distinção entre observar e observar que, introduzida por Hanson e Dretske, será mostrado que, ao contrário, considerações ligadas à intencionalidade do ato de observar são supérfluas para traçar a distinção entre entidades observáveis e inobserváveis da qual o empirismo construtivo depende.

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Citation information: Feldbacher-Escamilla, C. J., Gebharter, A., Brössel, B., & Werning, M. (2020). Introduction to the special issue “Logical perspectives on science and cognition” [Introduction]. Synthese. Synthese, 197(4), 1381-1390. doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02334-2

In 1985, Alan Musgrave raised a serious objection against the possibility that a constructive empiricist could coherently draw the distinction – crucial to her – between observables and unobservables. In his brief response, in the same year, Bas van Fraassen claimed that Musgrave’s argument only works within the so-called “syntactic view” of theories, while it loses its force in the context of the “semantic view”. But that was not enough, or so claimed F. A. Muller, who published two articles (2004 and 2005) in order to extend the epistemic policy of constructive empiricism. In order to do so, Muller provided a rigorous characterization of observability, but this could only be accomplished by using modal logic. The outcome was a new (extended) epistemic policy for constructive empiricism, which van Fraassen apparently endorsed (cf. MULLER; VAN FRAASSEN, 2008). As it will be shown in this article, however, Muller’s extended epistemic policy is superfluous. Moreover, and more importantly, Musgrave’s argument seems to be a pseudo-problem.

2020 is the year of the fortieth anniversary of Bas van Fraassen’s seminal book The Scientific Image. It is quite surprising, after such a long time, and considering how much the author’s proposal was debated during the last four decades, to find a new review of it on the March issue of Metascience. In “Concluding Unscientific Image”, Hans Halvorson claims that, in the work of the founder of constructive empiricism, not only is there a defense of an anti-realist perspective on science—and, at the same time, a critique of scientific realism—, but also a revolt against the way of doing philosophy that, since Quine, seemed to be hegemonic in analytical philosophy. The present study focuses on Halvorson’s allegations about what maintaining the empirical adequacy of a theory would encompass—and that, according to him, van Fraassen has in mind—and aims at showing that, perhaps, they do not correspond to what van Fraassen actually defends in his book.

Tradução de "Bas van Fraassen’s Philosophy of Science and His Epistemic Voluntarism", de Kathleen Okruhlik (2014).

Bas van Fraassen’s anti-realist account of science has played a major role in shaping recent philosophy of science. His constructive empiricism, in particular, has been widely discussed and criticized in the journal literature and is a standard topic in philosophy of science course curricula. Other aspects of his empiricism are less well known, including his empiricist account of scientific laws, his relatively recent re-evaluation of what it is to be an empiricist, and his empiricist structuralism. This essay attempts to provide an overview of these diverse aspects of van Fraassen’s empiricism and to show how they relate to one another. It also focuses on the nature of van Fraassens’s epistemic voluntarism and its relationship to his empiricist philosophy of science.

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.

If what we believe can directly modify our (visual) experience, our experience is doxastically variable. If so, the following seems possible: our false and irrational background beliefs can modify our experience such that in it, things look distorted, or that it conforms with and appears to confirm the false and irrational beliefs that helped bring it about in the first place. If experience is doxastically variable, it seems, its epistemic function can be undermined.
However, in this dissertation, I argue that we can devise accounts of (visual) experience that meet two requirements: they are fully compatible with all kinds of doxastic variation and on them, even doxastically variable experience serves to rationally constrain our beliefs. I begin with a novel interpretation of Hanson’s account of theory-laden observation—a valiant, yet ultimately unsuccessful attempt to meet both these requirements. Next, I analyze and reject various contemporary relationalist accounts of experience and the most sophisticated recent representationalist attempt to accommodate phenomena of doxastic variation: Siegel’s (Rich) Content View. Then, based on the lessons learned and drawing on Hanson’s and Gupta’s work, I show what
shape a successful account may take.
Ultimately, I argue for the following theses: 1) Neither of the two dominant accounts of experience—relationalism and standard representationalism—currently succeeds in satisfactorily meeting both requirements. 2) To arrive at accounts that do meet them, we should drop both the restrictive relationalist conception of experience as a relation to mind-independent items and the standard representationalist conception of experience as justifying beliefs. 3) We make progress by adopting both the general conception of experience as making rational transitions to beliefs, judgments,  and  actions  and  a  (slightly) modified  version  of  Gupta’s  presentationalist account of experiential phenomenology. Finally, 4) the possibility of devising successful accounts is independent of a major issue dividing relationalists and representationalists: whether experience has content. In the final chapters, I address various follow-up questions concerning the nature of views, conceptual capacities, conceptual content, and linkages between  a subject’s experience and her responses. In concluding, I show that the account of experience I recommend is widely applicable in philosophy and beyond.

Most inferentialists hope to bypass givenness by tracking the conditionals claimants are implicitly committed to. I argue that this approach is underdetermined because one can always construct parallel trees of conditionals. I illustrate this using the Müller-Lyer illusion and touching a table. In the former case, the lines are either even or uneven; in the latter case, a moving hand will either sweep through or be halted. For each possibility, we can rationally foresee consequents. However, I argue that, until and unless we benefit from what is given in experience, we cannot know whether to affirm the antecedents of those conditionals.

One of the key aspects of constructivism is the role of the observer. As Scholl shows in his article, Luhmann shares this perspective, and beyond that opens up the concept of observation by transferring it from the micro level of individuals to the macro level of society. Luhmann goes even further by stating that all autopoietic and self-referential systems, i.e., all living, psychic, and social systems, can observe, leaving an anthropological view behind. With this, the question of the “who” in “who observes” gains new insights that, surprisingly, touch on one of the central research questions in quantum physics.

I discuss Mary Hess’s interaction-view of scientific metaphor, outline an alternative view and show how it may prove fruitful when applied to chapters of the history of science.
I start with a reconstruction of  the discussion on the nature of scientific models and on their relationship to metaphors that has taken place in the Anglo-Saxon philosophy of Science starting from the Fifties; the discovery started with Stephen Pepper and Kenneth Burke, reaching Thomas Kuhn, Marx Wartofsky, and George Lakoff via Max Black's and Mary Hesse's interaction view.
I argue that Hesse's view has a number of weak points: uncritically accepting Black's idea of "interaction", for keeping too much of a logical empiricist view of observation language, and for keeping too much of a Scholastic distinction between formal and material analogy.
I argue that a few insights from Kuhn and Wartofsky seem to go in the same direction as Granger's view of metaphor as opposed to metonymy, thus severing the link between metaphor and the "qualitative".
I argue that the Cartesian legacy and its implicit ideal of a "mirroring" relationship between the world and the mind is the main obstacle to be eventually overcome if we are to work out a satisfactory account of the language of science and that suggestions from pragmatism as well as from French epistemology may be used in order to work out a post-Cartesian view of science.

This interview offers a historical reconstruction of Eviatar Zerubavel's work, from his pioneering studies of time to his not-yet-published analysis of "concept-driven sociology," running the gamut of Zerubavel's career and embracing a period of more than forty years of sociological research. The interview encompasses several major topics: the beginnings of Zerubavel's own intellectual path and his move from Israel to the United States; the nuts and bolts of sociology of time and cognitive sociology; the underlying theoretical framework of a transcontextual and comparative mode of social inquiry; an in-depth analysis of the last books which Zerubavel has devoted to the study of phenomena such as backgroundness and taken-for-grantedness; the range of his academic and intellectual relationships (especially the one with his mentor Goffman, but also his rapport with Peter Berger, Lewis Coser, Renée Fox, and Murray Davis, among others); the polymorphic connection between sociological theory and politics; the development of the so-called "Rutgers School of Sociology"; the issue of "public sociology"; the future of sociology and academic research.

Constructive empiricism is a prominent anti-realist position whose aim is to make sense of science. As is well known, it also crucially depends on the distinction between what is observable and what scientific theories postulate but is unobservable to us. Accordingly, adopting an adequate notion of observability is in order, on pain of failing to achieve the goal of grasping science and its aim. Bas van Fraassen, the originator of constructive empiricism, identifies observation with unaided (at least in principle) human perception. So far, though, he has not put forward any convincing argument to support this (unpopular) stand. He did it on the grounds that it is (allegedly) a matter for empirical investigation and not for philosophical analysis. Nonetheless, he seems to have introduced a criterion for observability that is not the result of any scientific research and is not supported by any scientific theory. Countering his own words, he seems to have instead reflected qua philosopher on how an empiricist should interpret the meaning of the verb " to observe. " And then he has tried to defend his point of view by means of metaphors and analogies. But the very same metaphors and analogies van Fraassen has put forward could be used to back up the opposite position. Worse, not only does his criterion counter common sense, it does not work either. Perhaps the time has come for van Fraassen to put forward or endorse alternative criteria of observability.

Martin Kusch has recently defended Bas van Fraassen's controversial view on microscopes, according to which these devices are not "windows on an invisible world", but rather "image generators". Both authors also claim that, since in a microscopic detection it is not possible to empirically investigate the geometrical relations between all the elements involved, one is entitled to maintain an agnostic view about the reality of the entity allegedly represented by the produced image. In this paper I argue that, contrary to what Kusch maintains, this might not be a neutral way to render scientific evidence. Moreover, a constructive empiricist can support a realist interpretation of microscopic images. In fact, constructive empiricism and van Fraassen's own anti-realism do not necessarily amount to the same thing.

In a recent work published in this journal, "Van Fraassen e a inferência da melhor explicação" (2016), Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva identify four critical lines proposed by Bas van Fraassen against the form of abductive reasoning known as 'inference to the best explanation' (IBE). The first one, put forward by the Dutch philosopher in his seminal book The Scientific Image (1980), concerns the distinction between observable and unobservable entities. Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva consider that the distinction is of no relevance to the scientific practice. For this reason, they address van Fraassen's allegations against IBE qua justification of the existence of unobservable entities in a couple of pages and prefer focusing on the other lines they identified. The aim of this work is to pour over the analysis that the two authors perform about van Fraassen's mentioned argument and some realists' replies, particularly in the section that Minikoski and Rodrigues da Silva devote to this topic. This will allow us to clarify van Fraassen's vision on scientific practice and on the 'immersion in the theoretical world-picture'. The importance and the relevance of the distinction between observables and unobservables will also be reaffirmed.

In his last book (2008), Bas van Fraassen, the originator of constructive empiricism, put forward a table containing a categorization of images. His aim, however, was to discuss the reality of what they represent and not addressing the issue of images per se. One of the consequences is that it remained an open question what 'public hallucinations'-reflections in the water, rainbows and the like-are. In this paper it will be defended that only images in the relevant (representational) sense should be considered as such. For this and other reasons, van Fraassen's diagram should be amended. Moreover, as Physics teaches us, the class of the so-called 'images' that are actually objects is wider than van Fraassen reckons. The set of the observable objects do not contain only concrete things, but goes beyond what 'common sense realism' suggests. In addition to rocks, oceans and bicycles, we can also see rainbows, reflections in the water and the like.

The emphasis on the role of observation, one of the hallmarks of Empiricism, is
reaffirmed by the primacy of the distinction between observable and
unobservable in Bas van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism. In this paper it
will be showed that, despite being one the main topics of discussion in
contemporary philosophy of science, particularly thanks to van Fraassen, the
question of observation and observability is actually so old as philosophy itself
and has to do with the willingness, that defines empiricism, to keep ‘within the
limits’.

The concept of observability is of key importance for a consistent defense of Constructive Empiricism. This anti-realist position, originally presented in 1980 by Bas van Fraassen in his book The Scientific Image, crucially depends on the observable/ unobservable dichotomy. Nevertheless, the question of what it means to observe has been faced in an unsatisfactory and inadequate manner by van Fraassen and this represents an important lacuna in his philosophical position. The aim of this work is to propose a characterization of the act of observation able to give the necessary support to the ‘rough guide’ of ‘observable’ that can be found in the aforementioned book.
Countering van Fraassen’s own statements, that observability is not a matter for philosophy, but for scientific inquiry only, we maintain that any attempt to deal with this subject by the philosophers is legitimate. We will show that van Fraassen ended up doing a philosophical analysis of observation himself, albeit in a fragmentary way. We believe that this question should be dealt with methodically, though, ‘following the rules’ of a ‘proper’ philosophical analysis, as we attempted to do in this work. We will propose a way of conceiving the act of observation, different from van Fraassen’s one, that can help not only to ground the distinction between observable and unobservable, upon which Constructive Empiricism rests, but to get this anti-realist position closer to scientific practice as well, which is one of its desiderata. Without neglecting the philosophical dimension of the issue, though. However, this proposal does not represent an ad hoc ‘solution’ for Constructive Empiricism, but a characterization aspiring to have a universal reach.

Die Beiträge dieses Bandes beschäftigen sich mit verschiedenartigen Risiken, ihrer sozialen Konstruktion und ihren Raumbezügen. Sie gehen der Frage nach, was wir durch die Beobachtung und Analyse von Risiken und ihren Verräumlichungen an Einsichten über die Entstehung und den Umgang mit Risiken sowie die Gesellschaft, in der all dies geschieht, lernen können. Damit reiht sich der Sammelband in das schnell wachsende und fast schon unübersichtliche Feld der interdisziplinären Risikoforschung ein. Zugleich erprobt er eine besondere analytische Perspektive, die in der wissenschaftlichen Risikodebatte bisher kaum und nur selten konsequent eingenommen wird. Diese Perspektive interessiert sich nicht direkt für Risiken, sondern beobachtet, wie Risiken konstruiert und von (anderen) Beobachtern beobachtet werden. Fast überrascht, wie wenig verbreitet dieser beobachtungstheoretisch fundierte Ansatz in der Risikoforschung ist. Dabei führt die Auseinandersetzung mit Risiken in der modernen Gesellschaft (1) und mit der Beteiligung der Risikoforschung am gesellschaftlichen, oft raumbezogenen Risikodiskurs (2) fast geradlinig zu einer Reflexion der Beobachtungsabhängigkeit der Risikothematik (3), die zur Einnahme eines Beobachtungsmodus, den man Beobachtung zweiter Ordnung nennen könnte, auffordert (4). Mit der nachfolgenden Entfaltung dieses Argumentes sollen Anlass, Rahmen und Ziele dieses Bandes dargelegt werden.

Evidence has been inconsistent and at times conflicting with little data focusing on how predictive and effective serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) as a marker of poor pregnancy outcome. In addition, no definite protocol has been developed on how to approach women found to have high level of serum AFP and hCG. The purpose of this study is to assess the association between the raised serum AFP on its own or combined with raised hCG with the adverse pregnancy outcome. At University Hospital Lewisham, all pregnant women are offered a second trimester  quadruple test if they miss their first trimester screening due to late presentation. 281 women had raised serum AFP of >2 MoM and in 70 cases both serum AFP and beta-hCG  were raised ( >2MoM). The result of this study demonstrates that pregnancy complications were increased in women with unexplained abnormal quadruple screen analytes (high AFP and beta hCG levels of >2MoM). Although caution must be undertaken not to cause unnecessary anxiety, we feel that increased awareness and patient education could prevent certain pregnancy complications. Serum markers, in combination with other modalities such as ultrasound and Doppler, may improve detection rates of abnormal pregnancy outcomes.