From owner-bhaskar Mon Jan 20 02:09:19 1997
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 00:02:40 -0700
Message-Id: <199701200702.AAA06968@marx.econ.utah.edu.utah.edu>
From: Hans Ehrbar
Subject: BHA: rts2-23
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 79
3. THE CLASSICAL PARADIGM OF ACTION
In developing the critical conditions for a closure I
have argued that epistemological considerations tilt them
in favour of the cases of atomicity and additivity,
i.e. cases B1 and C1 in Table 2.1 above. I now want to
bring out the concept of action implied by these
conditions, which will be seen to be as special as the
conditions themselves.
If individuals are atomistic, then all causes must
be extrinsic. And if systems are lacking in intrinsic
structure (i.e. are exhausted by the properties of the
individuals composing them), then there can be no action
at a distance (nor can distance be a variable in action),
so all action must be by contact. But as atomistic
individuals cannot contribute to or be affected by the
action, it must consist in the communication of received
properties. But as the only property possessed by such
individuals is their position in space at a moment in
time, the only property they can communicate is their
motion, i.e. their movement through space in time.
Thus a particular physical conception of action,
involving a corpuscularian view of matter and a
mechanical view of causality, in which all causes are
regarded as efficient and external to the thing in which
the change occurs, is implied by the limit conditions for
a closure. These form the twin pivots of what I am going
to call the classical paradigm of action.
Now this paradigm has three variations: a physical
one; a metaphysical one; and a distinctively positivistic
epistemological one. It is important to keep them
distinct. For the prestige of the epistemological
variation, which underpins the Humean theory of laws, has
stemmed in large part from its misidentification, by
Locke and Newton among others, with the physical one.
On the physical concept, matter is viewed as
composed of rigid corpuscles whose motion accounts for
the aggregative and
80 A Realist Theory of Science
observed behaviour of things. These corpuscles exchange
momenta and redistribute velocities among themselves by
impact; and they move through space according to the
strict laws of mechanics. Action is seen as consisting
in the impression of external forces upon these
corpuscles, which merely pass on their received motion by
direct impact. Events are nothing but the displacement
of these basic units of matter in space and time, they
are not the transformation of pre-formed substances.
Large scale events or macroscopic changes are merely the
surface effects of such displacements; qualitative
variety and change are similarly the effects of different
arrangements and motions of the corpuscles and their
aggregates. The properties of aggregates are essentially
the same as those of their component parts, though they
can manifest themselves to observers in different,
i.e. genuinely emergent ways (as in the case of secondary
qualities).
Now this physical concept of action encourages,
though it does not imply, a metaphysical concept, which
was especially prominent in seventeenth century
rationalist thought. On it, matter is viewed as
essentially passive and inert (which is strictly speaking
irreconcilable with the role played in classical
mechanics by the concept of inertia); and causation is
viewed as a process which is linear and unidirectional,
as well as external and inconsistent with real novelty.
In contrast to matter is mind. As matter is passive,
mind is active. And qualitative variety and change,
denied a place in the sphere of matter, are seen as
contributions of the human mind.
Historically associated with this ensemble of
physical and metaphysical ideas is another distinctively
positivistic epistemological concept. On this concept,
things are viewed as ultimately resolvable into simple
qualities apprehended in sense-experience, rather than as
aggregates of elementary units of matter in motion. The
ontology is one of atomistic (and independent) events
rather than one of atomistic (and rigid) corpuscles. And
causality is seen as the regular concommitance of such
events, rather than the impression of external forces
upon such individuals. For the positivist, the concept
of action is but a gloss put on our apprehension of such
sequences. It can have no application in a world of
independent events.
It should be noted that the epistemological
variation on the
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 81
classical paradigm only makes full sense if it is given a
phenomenalistic interpretation. For if and only if we
start from punctiform sense-experiences and reconstruct
the world from them, is it at all plausible to suppose
that the world consists of independent and atomistic
events and states of affairs, constituting the surrogates
of such sense-experiences, with relations that are as
external to one another as the sense-experiences that
ground them are held to be distinct. Conversely, if we
reverse this presupposition and situate sense-experience
as a natural process occurring in the world then it
always makes sense, on being told that some event or
happening occurred, to ask: `to what thing ?' (One could
then of course go on to explain the change, along the
lines of the corpuscularian/mechanical programme, in
terms of the arrangements and motions of the basic
individuals.)
On the physical concept it is the principles of
action (the strict laws of mechanics) that explain
macroscopic behaviour, including observed regularities;
i.e. the relationship between individuals and systems is
one of explanation, not analysis. Now I have argued in
Section 1 that these laws cannot be plausibly construed
as empirical regularities or constant conjunctions of
events. Moreover, if it is the behaviour of the
individuals that is required to account for the constant
conjunctions of events rather than the other way round
the point of the Humean analysis of cause and the
Hempelian analysis of explanation is lost. If the laws
cannot be regarded as empirical regularities, the
concepts in them cannot be regarded as given in or
abstracted from experience. Firstly, because we
ordinarily experience motion in terms of transitive verbs
such as `pushing' and `pulling' which cannot be
explicated ostensively.19 Secondly, because the concepts
that figure in them demanded a radical break with the
pre-existing Aristotelian scheme which certainly was
then, and may still be now, closer to our ordinary way of
thinking.20 Consider, for example, the radical change
embodied in the principle of inertia, that only change in
motion and not motion itself (i.e. change in position)
requires explanation. Thus the notion that `the concepts
of classical physics are just a refinement
19 Cf. J. R. Aronson, `Explanation without Laws', The
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66, (1969), pp. 541-57.
20 See e.g. A. Koyre, op. cit., Chaps 1-2
82 A Realist Theory of Science
of the concepts of daily life'21 must be rejected, and
with it the notion that laws are inductive
generalizations from everyday experiences or at any rate
descriptions of them or instruments for predicting therm
abandoned. For the experiences are literally different -
an idea which will only seem paradoxical to someone who
is implicitly misusing the category of experience to
define the world.
The key concept of atomicity is given radically
different interpretations in the physical and
epistemological variations. In the physical variation
its primary identification is size; in the
epistemological one simplicity. Physical atoms are (or
were) necessarily unobservable, theoretical entities;
epistemological ones were the raw data of experience.
The former were the ultimate entities of the world, the
latter the basic building blocks of knowledge. Physical
atoms were explainers; epistemological ones justifiers.
Physical atoms were Parmenidean individuals,
epistemological ones Heraclitean instants.
Epistemic atomicity requires that events should be
apprehended in raw sense-experience. Hence it restricts
the possible numbers of a cause and an effect set to one.
But the constant conjunction analysis of cause requires
that the cause and effect properly so-called should be
constantly conjoined. The requirements of epistemic
atomicity and empirical invariance can only be reconciled
if the sequence of events is a linear process and each
event is a member of a homogeneous series of
determinations. If this were the case then the
apprehension of the cause event would indeed license the
expectation of the effect event. But this leaves the odd
assumption of the linearity of processes to be justified.
In the formula `whenever x then y', it is only if `x' and
`y' are taken to refer to the objects of actual or
possible experiences that we have an empiricist (in the
broad sense) analysis of the causal modality; and it is
only if these experiences are taken to be atomistic that
we have a specifically Humean one. But it is only if `x'
and `y' constitute complete as well as atomistic
state-descriptions that the conjunction between x and y
will (supposing regularity determinism to be true) be
constant. These desiderata can only be reconciled if all
causal sequences are linear processes; an idea which it
would seem extraordinarily difficult to defend. Finally,
it should be noted that whereas the
21 W. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 83
constant conjunctions are for the most part unknown (as
the regularity determinist will be bound to concede), the
events they are supposed to conjoin are regarded on the
Humean analysis as being intuitively ascertainable!
I have dwelt at some length on the differences
between the physical and epistemological concepts; as
well as hinting in the last paragraph at internal
difficulties in the latter (which will be developed in
Chapter 3). I now want to say something about the
general character of the paradigm as such and the
limitations of its various ingredients. The essential
features of the classical corpuscularian/mechanical
world-view can be summarized as follows: -
(i) the externality of causation;
(ii) the passivity of matter, and the immediacy of effects;
(iii) the atomicity of fundamental entities (whether
corpuscles, events or sense-data);
(iv) the absence of internal structure and complexity;
(v) the absence of pre-formation, and of material
continuity;
(vi) the subjectivity of transformation and of apparent
variety in nature (i.e. metaphysically, qualitative
diversity and change are `secondary qualities').
It has already been seen that at the limit
conditions for a closure the distinction between
intrinsic and extrinsic conditions collapses. For atoms
possess no intrinsic conditions. An atom is
distinguishable only with respect to its position (or
some higher order derivative of position such as motion,
acceleration etc.) in space at a moment in time.
Consider now the old mechanistic prejudice crystallized
in Hobbes' dictum that `nothing taketh a beginning from
itself'.22 Does this mean that nothing taketh any part of
its beginning from itself; i.e. that none of the total
set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an event
is intrinsic to the thing (whether or not the trigger
that sets it off, so to speak - what we should ordinarily
call `the cause' - is intrinsic)? If it does, this is
tantamount to assuming that the event occurs, on the
satisfaction of certain antecedent conditions, whatever
the thing. It encourages, as it were, a picture of a
cloud of smoke every time we pour out a drop from the
bottle marked `ACID',
22 T. Hobbes, On Human Nature, reprinted in Body, Man
and Citizen, ed. R. S. Peters.
84 A Realist Theory of Science
irrespective of the nature of the substance or material
onto which it is poured; or the sound of breaking glass
every time a cricket ball hits a stationary target at 30
m.p.h., irrespective of whether it hits a greenhouse, a
sand pit or a granite wall. Such `explanations' border
of course on the fatalistic; or rather we could say that
they are fatalistic with respect to things. For if there
were substance or material conditions for the event such
that were they not satisfied it would not have occurred,
then they must be included as part of the total cause (in
Mill's sense) of the event. Once we allow that an event
would have occurred, whatever the intrinsic conditions,
we are bound to end up denying the principle of material
continuity. This is the principle that events are
changes in things, never replacements of one kind of
thing by an entirely new kind of thing.23 But if all
causes are extrinsic there can be no material continuity
through change: either because there is no continuity
(positivism) or because there is no change
(corpuscularianism).
Ordinarily we think of the world as consisting of
things which endure through some but not other changes.
Events we think of primarily as changes in things,
i.e. as the transformation of substances, rather than the
displacement of physical masses in space and time. What
is transformed is already given as complex and
pre-formed. If it is partially transformed, material
continuity is preserved through the change. If it is
totally transformed, we seek for a new kind of substance,
or level of `thing', which will allow us to preserve this
principle.24 A chemical atom preserves continuity through
chemical reactions; a gene-pool through species change;
and historically, physicists have tended to treat as
`substantive' precisely that which tends to be conserved,
e.g. matter or energy. In our ordinary ascriptions of
change then a material as well as an efficient cause is
normally essential. The classical paradigm directs
exclusive attention to the latter. And yet in scientific
contexts it is often the search for hidden entities,
leading to the identification of novel kinds, set
23 Cf. M. Bunge's genetic principle or principle of
productivity: `nothing can arise out of nothing or pass
into nothing', op. Cit., pp. 25-6. Cf. also Kant's 1st
Analogy of Experience, op. cit.; and W. H. Walsh,
`categories', Kant-studien Band 45 (1954), reprinted in
Kant, ed. R. P. Wolff, pp. 54-70.
24 Cf. S. Korner, `Substance', P.A.S. Supp. Vol. 38
(1964), pp. 79-90.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 85
off by what appears prima facie to be a case of ex nihilo
production, that is most important. (Cf. the discovery of
the neutrino.) It is the absence of the notion of
material continuity through change, as it is manifest in
the epistemological variation of the classical paradigm,
where it results in the generation of an ontology of
atomistic and independent events, that underpins the idea
of the contingency of the causal connection, which we
turn to in the next chapter after rejecting the idea of
its actuality here.
Perhaps under the influence of the classical
paradigm we tend to view events as happenings to passive
things. But events are also the results of actions.
Panes of glass do not shatter without being hit by things
such as cricket balls; nothing could be magnetized unless
there were magnets. Thus some things must be agents as
well as patients; just as some conditions must be
intrinsic as well as extrinsic. Yet we feel the source,
the stimulus, the trigger is always extrinsic. But this
is a pure prejudice. For not all efficient causes are
extrinsic and not all extrinsic causes are mechanical.
Thus the structure of a field or the organization of an
environment may be the cause of what happens within it.
There is no reason why the properties of wholes should
not explain those of their component parts. But neither
is there any reason why all things should be conceived as
either wholes or parts. I am going to suggest later that
we are radically misled by spatial metaphor and imagery
here. Societies, people and machines are not
collectivities, wholes or aggregates of simpler or
smaller constituents (just as intentionality is not an
inner urge or push). In the classical world view it was
the function of matter to occupy space;25 so it was
natural to assume that all `things' properly so-called
were just more or less highly differentiated aggregates
of matter, and so could be viewed either as wholes or
parts (or as both).
The victories of the corpuscularian/mechanical
programme were never as complete as its propagandists
made out. Neither gravity positing action at a distance
nor magnetism in which distance was a variable in action
could be assimilated to the paradigm. The fact that
Newton could not find a contact explanation for gravity
provided the basis for much early criticism of his work;
and the theory of a connecting medium -
26 Cf. M. Capek, op. cit., p. 54.
86 A Realist Theory of Science
the aether - has its post-relativistic advocates even
today.26 Paradoxically the very fact that Newton could
not find an explanation for gravity strengthened the
positivist variant of the paradigm - for it gave a degree
of credibility to the belief that science eschews
`hypotheses'.27 Nevertheless the prestige of Newtonian
mechanics was such that from Hume's time onward
scientific explanation came to be identified with
mechanical explanation; and a reduction of all other
branches of learning to mechanics was loudly proclaimed
by Helvetius and its other propagandists to be at hand.
Of course we know that after mechanics had been fully
developed and applied successfully in domain after domain
there was bound to come a time when, under the stimulus
of internal inconsistencies and irrefutable
counter-instances, the principles of mechanics would
themselves have to be explained non-mechanistically.
Moreover we know as a matter of fact that the Newtonian
system has been replaced and not just subsumed;28 and
that in one respect after another the classical world
view has been abandoned by modern physics.29 But given
this, it is still important to ask (in view of its
perennially attractive features) whether it provided a
logically coherent schema for the conceiving of
fundamental explanations in physics or indeed any other
science.
Now both Boscovitch and Kant argued, anticipating
later developments in physics, that contact explanations
could not be fundamental; but that they themselves
required explanation in terms of forces - of attraction
and repulsion - acting at a distance.30 For, they argued,
since action by contact proceeds by compression, the
bodies involved cannot be absolutely rigid. If they are,
then there cannot be any transfer of motion. For a
26 see e.g. I. Dirac, Is there an aether?', Nature 168,
pp. 906-7
27 Cf: `Hitherto we have explained the phenomena of the
heavens and our sea by the power of gravity, but we have
not yet assigned the cause of this power.... To us it is
enough that gravity does really exist, and act according
to the laws we have explained, and abundantly serves to
account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and
of our sea.' I. Newton, op. cit, Book III, General
Scholium.
28 See e.g. P. K. Feyerabend, `Problems of Empiricism',
Beyond the Edge of Certainty, ed. R. G. Colodny,
esp. pp. 168-70, and T. S. Kuhn op. cit.,
esp. pp. 99-103.
29 See e.g. M. Capek, op. cit., Pt. II.
30 R. J. Boscovitch, A Theory of Natural Philosophy,
pp. 10-13 and 19-68 and I. Kant, The Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 87
transfer depends upon the individuals being deformed to
some extent. But basic individuals cannot be deformed.
For to be deformed is to lose a property once possessed,
but atoms have no properties to lose. Thus the most
fundamental interactions cannot be by contact between
corpuscles or atoms. But could there be non-mechanical,
i.e. non-contact, interactions between atoms? If there
could, atoms might still be the ultimate `things'. Now
any such action would of necessity have to be at a
distance. But aside from spatio-temporal location (and
its derivatives), the only attribute such `atoms' could
possess would be the power of affecting things at a
distance. In short `atoms' would be playing a purely
nominal role. Such atoms would not be `atoms' at all,
but potentials or bare powers; that is, point-centres of
mutual influence distributed in space.31
So far I have not discussed one important aspect of
our normal concept of action; and that is the idea that
things possess powers and liabilities32 to do and suffer
things that they are not actually doing and suffering and
that they may never actually do or suffer. It remains
true to say of a Boeing 727 that it can (has the power
to) fly 600 m.p.h. even if it is safely locked up in its
hangar; just as it would remain true to say of a person
that he could (would be liable to) get hurt if he
happened to be in the way of a herd of stampeding
buffaloes, even if as a matter of fact we knew he had no
intention of ever going to the Prairies. The elucidation
of this concept will occupy us much later on, so I will
be brief with it here. It is sufficient for our purpose
to note that it depends not only upon the idea of the
complexity and pre-formation of things, which we found to
be necessary to understand change, but upon the further
idea of the stratification of their properties.
Now if things are at any moment of time complex and
pre-formed then it always makes sense to suppose that
they might have behaved in ways that they did not. But
the `might' here is susceptible of a purely conditional
analysis, viz. as meaning merely that they would have
behaved in those ways, if the actual conjunction of
intrinsic and extrinsic conditions had in fact been
different. The potentiality involved remains purely
epistemic: it is still predicated essentially of events
and only
31 Cf. R. Harre, op. cit., p. 308.
32 By a `liability' I mean simply what Hobbes called a
`passive power'.
88 A Realist Theory of Science
derivatively of things. To say that a thing has a power
to do something is, by contrast, to say that it possesses
a structure or is of such a kind that it would do it, if
the appropriate conditions obtained. It is to make a
claim first and foremost about the thing; and only
subsidiarily, if at all, about events. It is to say
something essentially about what the thing is, and only
derivatively about what it will do. It is to ascribe a
natural possibility to the thing, whose actualization
will depend upon the flux of conditions. An old Austin 7
can go 105 m.p.h. if it is towed by a Jaguar; but it does
not possess the power to do so. And yet, if it did, the
two events if conceived in themselves (without reference
to the intrinsic structure of the thing) would be the
same.
The ascription of powers differs from the simple
ascription of complexity to things in that it presupposes
a non-conventional distinction between those properties
of the thing which are essential to it and those which
are not. The essence of hydrogen is its electronic
structure because it is by reference to it that its
powers of chemical reaction are explained; the essence of
money is its function as a medium of exchange because it
is by reference to this that e.g. the demand for it is
explained. Not all properties of a thing are equally
important because it is by reference to some but not
others that its causal powers are explained. In general
it is these that constitute its identity and allow us to
talk of the same thing persisting through change.
Now Locke was wrong to construe the fundamental
distinction on which the corpuscularian/mechanical world
view was based, viz. between the manifested qualities of
things and the configuration and motion of their parts
(by which the former were explained), as one between two
types of qualities. For, in the first place, though some
properties of the explanatory stratum, such a solidity
and motion, could plausibly be modelled on the properties
of observed things (so that one might say their ideas
`corresponded'), others, such as a point mass or a
frictionless surface, had no such analogues. Thus Locke
did not sufficiently appreciate that their concepts could
not be read directly onto experience, but rather had to
be produced as a result of the theoretical work of
science (when they might subsequently come to inform and
direct experience). Secondly, Locke should have
articulated the distinction as one between the causal
powers that material things possess in virtue of their
hypothesized internal
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure
structure and the manifestation of those powers,
including their manifestation as the qualities of
observed things in sense- experience. If he had done
this, it would have obviated the need to find an
immediate reflection in sense-experience of the
hypothesized basic or `primary' properties of the world -
a move which provided the grist for Berkeley's attack on
his ontology and has been the staple diet of
phenomenalists ever since. At the same time, it would
have both left open the possibility of a qualitative
account of primary properties and removed the necessity
to view the latter as ultimate. This would also have
undermined the basis of his scepticism over a knowledge
of real essences. Locke's pessimism about the
possibility of future technological and theoretical
advance is really the inverse of his philosophical
under-statement, implied by his theory of ideas, of the
conceptual advances made by the corpuscularian/mechanical
world-view. For unless a philosophy of science
acknowledges the existence of a past and the possibility
of a future, it cannot pay tribute to the achievements of
the present.
Science has travelled far since Bacon could take it
as axiomatic that `nature knows only mechanical
causation, to the investigation of which all our efforts
should be directed' and Boyle roundly declare that `the
phenomena of nature are caused by the local motion of one
part of matter hitting against another'. Philosophy
unfortunately has lagged behind. We have seen how the
two basic interactions of the Newtonian system
contributed - the one by its success, the other by its
failure - to the grip of positivistic epistemology.
Paradoxically, the very breakdown of the system
coincided with, and indeed contributed to, a revival of
positivistic-sensationalist and operationist thought.
For one thing the new `fundamental entities' seemed both
event-like and statistical in character. And the
apprehension of scientific change seemed merely to
underline the necessity for a subjectivist
ontology. (Later I shall show how, on the contrary,
scientific change provides in fact the best possible
argument for the objectivity of things.) As for the
programme of reduction, historically associated with the
corpuscularian/mechanical world-view, two questions
raised by it survive the eclipse of that world-view:
First, whatever the nature of the basic entities
postulated by physics at any time, how are we to
understand the status of apparently emergent things and
properties? (Are
90 A Realist Theory of Science
people, for example, metaphysically `secondary
qualities'?) And how are we to understand the phenomena
of diversity and change? Secondly, what does it mean to
say that the subject matter of one science can be
`reduced to' (in the sense of `explained in terms of')
that of another? How does such a reduction proceed? And
how, if at all, does it affect the ontological status of
the entities of the reduced science?
Finally, something should be said about the
significance of the psychological studies of Piaget,
Michotte and others for the classical paradigm.33 These
studies show that we ordinarily experience mechanical
causation, i.e. the displacement of physical masses in
space and time, in terms of transitive verbs such as
`pushing' and `pulling' which cannot be explicated
ostensively; but rather embody an intensional
relationship between cause and effect. Such verbs take
an objective complement: We understand `pushing' as
`pushing away', `pulling' as `pulling towards'. Jack
does not just fall, he falls down; and the `down' is an
essential part of what the `falling' means. Ink bottles
do not only get knocked, they get knocked over; doors do
not only get slammed, they get slammed shut. And this is
how we come to understand the meaning of these verbs.34
Now it seems to me that this raises points against Hume,
though not against Newton. In the first place, it
undermines Hume's psychological account of the genesis of
our idea of `connection'. For it is now not regular
comcommitances, but completed movements, transitively
understood, that provide the source of the latter.
Secondly, it shows that the concepts in terms of which
scientists come to understand motion could not have been
given in or abstracted from sense-experience (a) because
our ordinary concepts cannot be explicated ostensively;
(b) because Newtonian ones cannot either; and (c) because
the concepts are radically different anyway. Thirdly, it
shows the poverty of the Humean account of our
understanding of the basic interactions of mechanics.
Because we have to ask why for three hundred years
scientists and philosophers found this paradigm so
compelling. And if today we must resist this compulsion,
it is as well to be aware of the source of its power.
33 See J. Piaget, The Child's Perception of Physical
Causality, and A. Michotte, The Perception of Causality.
34 Cf. J. R. Aronson, op. cit., pp. 551-5.
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