Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 13:50:04 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Explanatory Power


Hi Doug, Colin

>the search for truth
>does not require epistemological foundations.  Instead, truth emerges from
>open, ongoing argument about the object with criteria that emerge relevant
>to that object.
This is getting close to a formulation I can accept. 

I think I've been caught in cross-fire in the discussion to some extent,
doubtless at least partly through my own fault. I haven't been wanting
to espouse foundationalism or empiricism or algorithms, merely the
explanatory power rule. (As Colin says, if you strip away the
rhetoric...). I would locate the explanatory power rule, not within a
Lakatosian problematic, but within the epistemological dialectic (or
logic of scientific discovery) Roy adapts from Hegel (which has a
Lakatosian moment among many - a Feyerabendian one too!): when the
scientific community goes over to a new theory it does so on the basis
of an assessment of greater explanatory power (the assessment being
made, as you say, in a very complex and context-specific way; it would
of course include addressing any 'conceptual problems').  I find it
interesting that this dialectic hasn't figured in the present
discussion. I wonder whether you were perhaps thinking of it, Doug, when
you said we haven't fully realized all that CR gives us?

Very briefly, Roy's account highlights for me two features often missing
from the Colin/Doug position. (I've made both points before but don't
think they've really been answered or taken on board.)

1. The 'criteria that emerge relevant to [the] object' do so of course
as a result of *interaction* between the transitive processes of science
and the intransitive objects - your formulations often make it seem as
though the object determines the criteria in a somewhat one-way fashion
('it can determine the criteria for assessing truth claims about it').
Doubtless this is partly a matter of emphasis, but I do think it
important not to *sound* as though you're committing the ontic fallacy
or doing away with the 'relative autonomy' of the transitive dimension. 

2. Your account often lacks a universal dimension - it stresses the
particular, the difference (Colin especially) among the objects which we
are to 'follow' for epistemological guidance. I think this needs to be
explicitly complemented a) with the notions of a 'shared' ontology of
causal powers and ontological depth - the latter is ultimately what
gives bite to the explanatory power rule and explains why there seems to
be 'a' logic of scientific discovery in some sense regardless of the
object domain; and b) with the notion of a 'shared' epistemology in some
sense - after all, if the various scientific communities are to accept
your epistemological advice and 'follow the (differing) objects', there
must be some common standards eg logical principles in terms of which
they can recognise that that's what they're doing. (This is in effect
Tobin's point to Doug, I think, and I see from Doug's reponse that he
has conceded it; see also Doug's argument that science and theology are
based on 'the same way of knowing' - it's the content that differs.)

Mervyn



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