Reading: Notes Chapter 4

1.     For example: E. Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace  & World, 1961), 1-28; K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 216; J. Kemeny, A Philosopher Looks at Science (New York: Van Nostrand Rienhold, 1959), 156 ff.; R. Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning (New York: Holt, Reinhart & Watson, 1979), 61, 80, 163; M. Martin, Concepts of Science in Education (New York: Scott, Foresman, 1972), 50-58; N. Rescher, Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1970), 8-24; J. J. C. Smart, Between Philosophy and Science (New York: Random House, 1968), 53-88; M. Wartofski, Conceptual Foundations of Scientific Thought (London: Macmillan, 1968), 35, 240; G. Gale, Theory of Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 193-235; W. Balzer and C. U. Moulines, eds., Structuralist Theory of Science: Focal Issues, New Results (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 1-13; Margaret Morrison and Mary S. Morgan, eds., Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 10- 37; U. Mäki, “Isolation, Idealization and Truth in Economics,” in B. Hamminga and N. B. de Marchi, eds., Idealization VI: Idealization in Economics. Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, vol. 38 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 147-68.

2.    The main points offered here are a summary of the account Dooyeweerd gives in the New Critique of Theoretical Thought, see esp. vol. 1, 38 ff. Dooyeweerd uses his analysis of abstraction as the basis for a “transcendental critique” of theories. By this he means that abstraction is (part of) the answer to the transcendental question: “What makes theories possible?” While he acknowledges that this approach owes a debt to Kant, his own development of it (and his own subsequent theories) are substantively non-Kantian. Briefly: Dooyeweerd emphasizes that while Kant asked the transcendental question “What makes experience possible?” he then immediately offered a theory to answer it without having asked the next, obvious, critical question “What makes theories possible?” As a result, says Dooyeweerd, Kant failed to maintain a genuinely critical attitude. In this respect Kant’s attempt failed in just the way R. Chisholm has accused all past transcendental arguments of failing in chapter 8 of his The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 95-99. By contrast, Dooyeweerd maintains the transcendental stance by offering a de- scriptive analysis of the activity of high abstraction which is subject to confirmation in one’s own self-reflection. By being confirmed in this way, the description of abstraction is what Dooyeweerd calls “transcendental empirical” in that it does not depend on a priori assumptions nor is it an inference whose premises may be denied. Furthermore, rather than being the basis for any specific theory, his account of high abstraction is employed to derive criteria of coherency for all theories. Thus he doesn’t use it to prove, e.g., that there is a world independent of human thought as Kant attempted to do — and which Stroud showed transcendental arguments can’t do (“Transcendental Arguments,” Journal of Philosophy 65, no. 9 [1968]: 241-56). Dooyeweerd’s criteria do, however, show why any theory attempting to justify the denial of a world external to humans violates his criteria, and thus falls into one or more of the incoherencies they expose. These criteria are formulated later in this chapter, and their application to the theory of Kant is summarized below in note 18.

3.    Nagel, Structure of Science, 4, 11.

4.    Examples of the three ways high abstraction can be involved in theories are as follows: (1) It does not take high abstraction to wonder whether water always puts out fire, but it does to ask how heat is transferred from one object to another. (2) It does not take high abstraction to propose the hypothesis that water will not put out every sort of fire, but it does to frame the theory that heat is transferred by the collision of more rapidly vibrating molecules with molecules vibrating more slowly. (3) It does not take high abstraction to think of the test of throwing water on fires until one is found that is not quenched by water. But it does take high abstraction to conceive of arguments and tests for the molecular theory of heat transfer.

5.   Sociology tends to be a mixed bag. Some of its theories deal with the social aspect of life, that is, with properties, norms, and relations having to do with prestige, respect, status, custom, tradition, styles of dress, etc. Other theories take social communities as their field and deal with one or more aspects of them. In chapter 12, I will take the position that the communities are best understood as resulting from the different ways the social relation of authority gets organized.

6.    G. Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 13.

7.    J. Piaget, Main Trends in Interdisciplinary Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 12-13.

8.   The claim that all theories are regulated by some divinity belief will be developed in later chapters for theories of reality, but there is not the room to do the same for epistemologies. I offer a brief account of some of the ways it is also true of epistemologies in Knowing with the Heart, cited earlier.

9.    If a theory proposed the existence of an entity that could possibly be experienced directly although it has not yet been found, then finding it would prove the theory true. For example, the astronomers who theorized that there is a ninth planet in our solar system were proven correct when Pluto was discovered in 1930. The germ theory of disease is another example. Whenever what is proposed by a theory is actually found, the theory’s proposal ceases to be a guess and so is no longer a hypothesis. Needless to say, however, the vast majority of theories in philosophy and the sciences are not ones that propose the existence of entities that are directly discoverable.

10.     This is not intended to take either side in the current realist vs. anti-realist controversy concerning theoretical entities, since each is too extreme as they stand. But it is closer to the realist by insisting that entity theories surely intend to discover hitherto unsuspected realities; though at the same time it holds that we cannot justifiably claim to have done so beyond all doubt (with the exception acknowledged in the previous note). The main factor in theory justification is the one already emphasized: the reason for believing a theory is how well it explains what it is proposed to explain. So while “extent beyond intent” and “convergence of evidence” may justifiably lead to the acceptance of a theory, it can still be the case that what it is in a theory that corresponds to reality (the reason that it works) is different from what the theory proposes it to be. Moreover, the conclusion as to which theory — or which interpretation of a theory — provides the best explanation, will continue to differ according to the view of reality taken by a given thinker, and thus also differ according to the thinker’s divinity belief. The upshot is, as Dooyeweerd often reminds us, “there is no certainty in the realm of theory” except the certainties we bring to it from pre-theoretical experience.

11.      My speaking of regarding an aspect as divine is an elliptical expression. More precisely, an aspect is believed to qualify the nature of what is divine. Older theories of reality were careful to specify not only what kind of thing is divine, but exactly what it is that has that nature. But more recent theories of reality seem loath to be so forthcoming. For example, contemporary materialists are sure the ultimate nature of reality (and therefore the nature of ultimate reality) is physical, but not one of them will commit to exactly which ( supposedly) purely physical things or processes have independent existence and are thus the ones all else depends on.

12.      It is the inequality of reality conveyed by a priority assignment that is objectionable because it reflects a pagan religious belief. In this connection a point made in chapter 2 needs to be borne in mind, namely, that if an explanation traces everything back to some source(s) and then simply stops without explicitly saying that source has independent reality, independent status is thereby conferred on the source(s) by default. So far as we’re told, then, the such sources are divine. This is not to deny, however, that certain properties included in a concept (or in a thing) can be more important to it than others. But I will show later why the greater importance certain properties can have in a concept or a thing is better able to be explained without enthroning the aspect qualifying them as divine, and without any corresponding reduction in the ontological status of the remaining aspects. The very fact that such an account is possible serves to reinforce the point that the persistence of ontological reduction in Western thought stems not from any theoretical necessity but from a pagan religious outlook.

13.     Michael Polanyi has made the same point with respect to rules for science that I have just made for theoretical concepts in Personal Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1962): “All formal rules for scientific procedure must prove ambiguous, for they will be interpreted quite differently according to the particular conceptions about the nature of things by which the scientist is guided ” (167, italics mine). It should    be added that in making this point I have been speaking of highly abstract concepts  of both objects perceived and of entities invented as hypotheses, i.e., concepts such  as arise in science and philosophy. In concepts that are not highly abstract and which occur in the setting of ordinary thought and experience, people are hardly ever aware of which kinds of properties they see as dependent on which other kind(s). So in a nontheoretical context, if people are asked which of the kinds of properties included in their concept of something is the one on which all other kinds depend, they could honestly answer: “I don’t know.” That does not show, however, that they hold no divinity belief whatever, but only that it remains an unconscious presupposition. Further inquiry into people’s concepts of, say, what it is to be human (rather than a saltshaker) is often more revealing of their tacit divinity beliefs.

14.     I’m here trying to make it clear that this does not mean that a scientist’s proposing, defending, or adopting an entity hypothesis need be due to the influence of any particular philosopher. The claim is not that some overview of the nature of reality as elaborated in a philosophical theory necessarily exerts a regulatory influence on theories in science. Rather, it is the issue of the nature of reality that cannot be avoided, whether or not what a scientist presupposes about it was derived from a philosopher or has ever been elaborated as a theory in the history of philosophy.

15.     “[In cases of theory disputes] it appears that the two sides do not accept the same ‘facts’ as facts, and still less the same ‘evidence’ as evidence. . . . For within two different conceptual frameworks the same range of experience takes the shape of different facts and different evidence” (Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 167).

16.     Some critics have objected that there is no point in my offering criteria for theories if they are all interpreted under the control of some divinity belief. “Won’t the criteria only have force for those who share your divinity belief ?” they ask. Others have raised the same sort of objection to my definition of religious belief, and one has even suggested that the claim of religious control of theories is self-referentially incoherent. 

Let’s dispense with the latter criticism first. Our claim is not that all theories are produced or forced on us by some divinity belief, so there is no self-referential incoherence. The claim is that the nature of a theory’s postulates is always interpreted in the light of what is presupposed as divine.

In the cases of beliefs that are not hypotheses: I have all along tried to make clear that there are innumerable states of affairs that are recognized at a level of experience and thought which is shared by all alike (cf. my comments in chapter 1). Everyone can recognize that, say, the stop light shows red or there is a tree in the garden, etc. This remains the case even though at a deeper level of analysis the concepts of these states of affairs display differences relative to the divinity belief presupposed (I earlier illustrated this with the example of two people passing a shaltshaker at dinner.) This is also true of the criteria offered here for theories, along with the definition of religious belief, and the claim about the religious control of theories. They are such states of affairs and are not themselves hypotheses; they are not educated guesses proposed to fill explanatory gaps.

In that respect they have a status with respect to our central claim analogous to that of the law of non-contradiction. It, too, is not a theory but is abstracted from the logical aspect of our experience. As such it can be recognized by anyone regardless of his or her religious orientation. It will, of course, then be interpreted in the light of whatever belief a person holds, which is why it has been variously construed as: an accidental product of the way our brains happen to have evolved, applicable to our thought but not to extra-mental reality, applicable to language but not to mathematics, applicable to the world of everyday perception but not to the subatomic level, part of the illusory world we must reject to be released from the cycle of birth, etc.

Just so, the claim about the religious control of theories, along with the definition of religious belief and the criteria offered for theories, are also states of affairs derivable from experience. To be sure, they will be interpreted from various religious points of view, but that will serve only to confirm our point, not undercut it. (Cf. New Critique, vol. 1, 34-37, 82-86, 545-66; vol. 2, 366-80, 429-34, 466-71; vol. 3, 1-53, 145.)

17.     This criterion yields a criticism quite different from the usual criticism of eliminative materialism, which is that it denies the existence of beliefs and other propositional attitudes. Churchland has argued that the latter criticism assumes a “folk psychology” that begs the question (A Neuro-Computational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT-Bradford, 1989], 111-27). But rather than assuming a folk psychology which holds that beliefs must be nonphysical, my criterion shows why eliminativists must assume their own claims to have non-physical properties and be governed by non-physical laws if they are to have meaning and be true. And that includes their claims about folk psychology.

18.      This is the criterion Dooyeweerd regards as the key to a fully transcendental critique of theory making, and which he accuses Kant of having missed. In fact he argues that when it is applied to Kant’s own theories, they are disqualified. Dooyeweerd says: