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Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 105
...
5. AUTONOMY AND REDUCTION
Laws we already know do not describe the patterns of
events. But how do they stand to the world of our
everyday action and of perceived things?
Reflect for a moment on the world as we know it. It
seems to be a world in which all manner of things happen
and are done, which we are capable of explaining in
various ways, and yet for which a deductively-justified
prediction is seldom, if ever, possible. It seems, on
the face of it at least, to be an *incompletely described
world of agents*. A world of winds and seas, in which
ink bottles get knocked over and doors pushed open, in
which dogs bark and children play; a criss-cross world of
zebras and zebra-crossings, cricket matches and games of
chess, meteorites and logic classes, assembly lines and
deep sea turtles, soil erosion and river banks bursting.
Now none of this is described by any laws of nature.
More shockingly perhaps none of it seems even governed by
them. It is true that the path of my pen does not
*violate* any laws of physics. But it is not determined*
by any either. Laws do not describe the patterns or
legitimate the predictions of kinds of events. Rather it
seems they must be conceived, at least as regards the
ordinary things of the world, as situating limits and
imposing constraints on the types of action possible for
a given kind of thing.
106 A Realist Theory of Science
Laws then not only predicate tendencies (which when
exercised constitute the normic behaviour) of novel kinds
(or of familiar things in novel or limit situations);
they impose (more or less absolute) constraints on
familiar things. In this section I want to reconcile
these aspects of laws by arguing that familiar things are
comprehensive entities which may be controlled by (or
subject to the control of) several different principles
at once; and that they may be said to be agents. Laws
ascribe possibilities which may not be realized and
impose necessities which constrain but do not determine;
they ascribe the former to novel kinds and impose the
latter on familiar things. These features cannot be
explained away as an imperfection of knowledge; but must
be seen as rooted in the nature of our world. They are
therefore inconsistent with the thesis of regularity
determinism which underpins the doctrine of the actuality
of causal laws, and to which I must now return.
So far I have discussed regularity determinism
merely as an epistemological thesis to the effect that
our knowledge of the world can be cast in a certain form.
But of course this presupposes that the world is such
that our knowledge of it can be cast in that form. To
deal with regularity determinism I must thus draw out
this ontological presupposition; i.e. cast the thesis
itself in ontological form. The main work for this has
already been done. For I have already shown in sections
2 and 3 that regularity determinism makes a claim about
what would happen (and the way it would happen) if
certain highly restrictive conditions were satisfied.
These were, it will be remembered, conditions such that
*if* we knew they were satisfied and the constant
conjunction formula was not vindicated, the regularity
determinist would be bound to admit his thesis refuted.
Now regularity determinism's ontological claim is simply
that the world is such that these conditions are
satisfied and his thesis is not refuted. Now of course
because we can never know that these conditions are
satisfied we can never refute regularity determinism in
this way. But I have also asserted that regularity
determinism is metaphysically refutable. How can this be
done? In the only way open to transcendental realism:
that is by showing that if the world were as claimed by
regularity determinism science would be impossible. But
as science is possible (which we know, because as a
matter of fact it occurs) the world
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 107
must be such that either the critical conditions are not
satisfied and/or the constant conjunction formula is
abrogated. In short, the ontological untruth of
regularity determinism is a condition of the possibility
of science.
Close to the appeal of determinism lies the
following error: to think that because something happened
and because it was caused to happen, it had to happen
before it was caused. Now if we take determinism to
assert that all events are determined before they happen
and conceive their determination as lying in the
satisfaction of antecedent sufficient conditions for them
then we have a picture of a chain of antecedent
sufficient conditions for events stretching back
infinitely into the past (assuming that conditions can be
analysed as events or vice-versa). So if we ask how
long is an event determined before it actually happens
the answer must be at any (i.e. at every) time before it
happens. And so if we now take cause in the ordinary
sense, we have the result that every event is determined
before it was caused (or made) to happen. At play here
are of course two concepts of cause: qua causal agent
(cause_1) and qua antecedent condition (cause_2). I am
going to argue that the former is irreducible to the
latter and essential to science. To say that something
is *determined* before it has been caused to happen is
either to say that it can be *known* before it has been
caused_1 to happen (epistemic determinism) or that it has
been *caused_2* before it has been caused_1 to happen
(ontological determinism). The former depends upon a
closure, the latter depends upon the critical conditions
for it being satisfied. Now I want to argue that at any
(and every) time the world consists of things which are
already complexly structured and pre-formed wholes;
which may be simultaneously constituted at different
levels and simultaneously controlled by different
principles. It is because things cannot be reduced to
the conditions of their formation that events are not
determined before they are caused to happen. This fact
accounts for both the temporal asymmetry of causes and
effects and the irreversibility of causal processes in
time. And it is because things cannot be reduced to
atomistic components that when events are caused to
happen it is by the thing which acts (i.e. the agent),
the event being produced in the circumstances that
prevail.
Now I want to argue that determinism is
ontologically false
108 A Realist Theory of Science
(it is not true that events are determined before they
are caused to happen, whether in a regularly recurring or
non-recurring way) and epistemically vacuous (there are
no significant descriptions that satisfy the formula of
regularity determinism). This has the methodological
corollary that the search for such descriptions is likely
to be unrewarding. (And here once again it is necessary
to counterpose the investigation of complex preformed
things to the search for the complete atomistic
state-descriptions that it is supposed would enable us to
predict their behaviour.) The only sense in which
science presupposes `determinism' is the sense in which
it presupposes the ubiquity of causes_1 and hence the
possibility of explanations. And the only sense in which
it presupposes `regularity determinism' is the sense in
which it presupposes the ubiquity of causes_1 for
differences and hence the possibility of their
explanation. But it is probably better not to use
`determinism' in this way (nb. cause_1 is not the same as
cause_2). Now any refutation of regularity determinism
as an ontological thesis must depend upon establishing
the autonomy of things, in the sense of the impossibility
of carrying out the reductions implicit in the vital
conditions B1 and C1 of Table 2.1 on page 76 (their being
a clear asymmetry, for the realist, between the subjects
and the condition of action, and the constancy
alternative being recessive). It is here that I will
pitch my attack. Thus I am not going to argue that if
the critical conditions were satisfied the constant
conjunction formula would not be vindicated. Rather, I
am going to argue that the critical conditions could not
be satisfied in any world containing science. The
question of whether or not history would repeat itself is
one that need not detain us here. A nagging doubt may
remain: surely, it might be felt, in the (very) last
instance regularity determinism must be true. But this
is not so. For once we have established an ontology of
structures there is no earthly reason why events should
[have to] be constantly conjoined. There are indeed
principles of indifference (as we shall see in Chapter
3). But they do not apply, nor is there any reason why
they should, to events, states-of-affairs and the like.
In establishing the autonomy of things I will follow
the normal procedure of transcendental realism; that is,
I will first analyse some more or less underanalysed
feature of science and then ask what the world must be
like for this feature to be possible.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 109
The feature I am concerned with are two aspects of
scientific laws, viz:-
(i) their normic and non-empirical character; and
(ii) their consistency with situations of dual (and
multiple) control.
I will argue that for these features to be possible the
world must be composed of agents. Agents are particulars
which are the centres of powers. In an incompletely
described world of other agents powers must be analysed
as tendencies. And laws are nothing but the tendencies
or ways of acting of kinds of thing. By an agent 1 mean
simply anything which is capable of bringing about a
change in something (including itself). A hydrogen atom
is, in virtue of its electronic structure, an agent. For
it possesses the power to combine with an atom of
chlorine to produce, under suitable conditions, a
molecule of hydrochloric acid. It should perhaps be said
at the outset that I am not going to refer to quantum
mechanics in my argument. It seems to me to be always a
mistake, in philosophy, to argue from the current state
of a science (and especially physics). In general, I
have refrained from scoring points against determinism
and actualism which turn on the inaccuracy (or
imprecision) of our descriptions or the indeterminacy of
our measures. This is because they do not in general
raise important ontological questions. It is debatable
whether quantum mechanics does - but if it in fact
requires a reinterpretation of the category of causality
in fundamental physics it will not be in the Humean
direction and can only strengthen the anti-determinist's
hand.
I have already discussed (i) at some length so I
will be brief with it here. Contrast the law of
conservation of energy or of mass action with a simple
empirical generalization like `all pillar-boxes are red'
or `all blue-eyed white tom cats are deaf'. Whereas the
latter, at least so long as they remain unattached to any
theory, could be defeated by a single counter-instance,
the truth of the former is consistent with almost
anything that might happen in the world of material
objects and human beings. For they do not attempt to
describe this world; i.e. they cannot be interpreted as
undifferentiated empirical generalizations. Rather they
must be interpreted as principles of theories - of
physics and chemistry - which tell us something about the
110 A Realist Theory of Science
way things act and interact in the world. As such they
specify conditions which we presume are not contravened
but rather continually satisfied in the countless
different actions and interactions of the world,
including those of which we have direct experience. And
they are manifest in certain impossibilities, e.g. that
of building a perpetual motion machine. Nevertheless
they are principles for which any test would require not
only fine measurement but closed conditions. As such
they are not normally empirically manifest to us or
actually satisfied. (For the scientist this feature
appears as a difference between the real or corrected and
the actual or measured values of the variables he is
concerned with.) Thus we could say that relative to
these vantage points, viz. of experience and actuality,
these principles specify levels of deep structure or
(metaphorically) place conditions on the inner workings
of the world.
Now it might be said that laws, such as those of
mechanics or electricity, do not describe the world as
such, but only those aspects or parts of it which fall
within their domain, i.e. the mechanical or electrical
aspects of it. But this concedes my point. For one can
only say which aspects are mechanical or electrical by
reference to the antecedently established laws of
mechanics and electricity, and such aspects are real.
Clockwork soldiers and robots do not more nearly observe
the laws of mechanics than real people. Rather their
peculiarity stems from the fact that if wound up and left
alone their intrinsic structure ensures that for each set
of antecedent conditions only one result is possible.
But outside the domain of a closure the laws of mechanics
are, as Anscombe has put it, rather like the rules of
chess; the play is seldom determined, though nobody
breaks the rules'.46
Closely connected with this feature of laws is their
consistency with situations of `dual control'. A game of
cricket is only partially controlled by the rules of
cricket, language-using by those of grammar. Chemical
reactions are only partially controlled by Dulong and
Petit's law, black bodies behave in all kinds of ways
that are not specified by the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
Coulomb's law does not completely describe the action of
charged particles, or Faraday's law all that happens to
an electrode. Similarly the `boundary conditions' for
the laws of
46 G. E. M. Anscombe, op. cit., p. 21.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 111
mechanics, the domain within which they apply, are
controlled by the operating principles defining a
machine.47 Laws leave the field of the ordinary phenomena
of life at least partially open. They impose constraints
on the type of action possible for a given kind of thing.
But they do not say which out of the possible actions
will actually be performed. They situate limits but do
not dictate what happens within them. In short, there is
a distance between the laws of science and the ordinary
phenomena of the world, including the phenomena of our
actual and possible experience. And it is with the
investigation of this distance that I am here concerned.
To say that laws situate limits but do not dictate
what happens within them does not mean that it is not
possible to completely explain what happens within them.
The question `how is constraint without determination
possible?' is equivalent to the question how `can a
thing, event or process be controlled by several
different kinds of principle at once?' To completely
account for an event would be to describe all the
different principles involved in its generation. A
complete explanation in this sense is clearly a limit
concept. In an historical explanation of an event, for
example, we are not normally interested in (or capable of
giving an account of) its physical structure.
In deciding to write `!' on this piece of paper I
select the conditions under which the laws of physiology
and physics are to apply. So that it is absurd to hold
that the latter might account for my `!'; or that it
might have been predicted in the basis of a knowledge of
a physical state-description prior to my writing it. On
the other hand my neuro-physiological state and the
physical conditions must be such that I can write it;
they could prevent it (e.g. if I were suddenly to fall
asleep or be propelled into orbit around the moon).
There is a space between the laws of physics and
physiology and what I do within which deliberation,
choice and voluntary behaviour have room to apply. The
theory of complex determination, in situating persons as
comprehensive entities whose behaviour is subject to the
control of several different principles at once, allows
the possibility of genuine self-determination (subject to
constraints) and the special power of acting in
accordance with a plan or in the light of reasons.
47 Cf. M. Polanyi, `The Structure of Consciousness', The
Anatomy of Knowledge, ed. M. Grene, p. 321.
112 A Realist Theory of Science
Human freedom, on this view, *if* it exists, would not
be something that somehow cheats science (as it is
normally conceived) or, on the other hand, something that
belongs in a realm apart from science; but something
whose basis would have to be scientifically understood.
As freedom would be ana1ysed as a power of men and
science is, for us, non-predictive there is nothing
inconsistent or absurd about such an assertion; any more
than to say that purposefulness in animals, which is no
doubt not the same as intentionality in men, has (still)
to be scientifically understood. I suggest that only the
theory of complex determination is compatible with
agency; and that there are no grounds for assimilating
intentional action to the classical paradigm or supposing
that intentionality is not a real attribute of men.
However, this is peripheral to my main concerns here.
Dogs cannot fly or turn into stones, but they can move
about the world and bark in all kinds of ways. To deny
the latter possibility is as absurd as to deny the former
necessity. But the reasons why they behave in canine
ways is an open question for a putative science of animal
ethology to answer.
The difference between laws of nature and empirical
generalizations is analogous to the difference between
the rules of cricket and a television recording of the
actual play on some particular occasion. Whether or not
Boycott scores a century is not determined by the rules
of cricket; but by how he bats and how the opposition
play. Now it is clearly necessary for the
intelligibility of the idea of dual (or multiple) control
that the higher-order level is open with respect to, in
the special sense of irreducible to, the principles and
descriptions of the lower-order level. It is easy to see
why this must be so. For it is the operations of the
higher-order level that control the boundary conditions
of the lower-order level, and so determine the conditions
under which the laws of that level apply. It is the
state of the weather that determines, in England, when
and where the rules of cricket can apply; the state of
the conversation that determines the ways in which we can
express ourselves in speech; the state of the market that
determines the use of machines, the use of machines that
determines the conditions under which certain physical
laws apply. The use of machines is thus subject to dual
control: by the laws of mechanics and those of economics.
But it is the latter that determine the boundary
conditions of the former.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 113
It follows from this that the operations of the
higher level cannot be accounted for solely by the laws
governing the lower-order level in which we might say the
higher-order level is `rooted' and from which we might
say it was `emergent'. Now an historical explanation of
how a new level came to be formed would not, it is
important to see, undermine this principle. Let us
suppose that we could explain the emergence of organic
life in terms of the physical and chemical elements out
of which organic things were formed and perhaps even
reproduce this process in the laboratory. Now would
biologists lose their object of inquiry? Would living
things cease to be real? Our apprehension of them
unmasked as an illusion? No, for in as much as living
things were capable of acting back on the materials out
of which they were formed, biology would not be otiose.
For a knowledge of biological structures and principles
would still be necessary to account for any determinate
state of the physical world. Whatever is capable of
producing a physical effect is real and a proper object
of scientific study. It would be the task of biologists
to investigate the causal powers of living things in
virtue of the exercise of which inter alia they brought
about various determinate states of the physical world.
Living creatures qua causal agents determine the
conditions under which physical laws apply; they cannot
therefore already be manifest in the latter. Sentience
determines the conditions of applicability of physical
laws, but it is also subject to them. If the elements of
the lower-order are real then so must be the causes that
determine the conditions of their operation, i.e. the
comprehensive entities formed out of them. If black
bodies are real then so are physicists, if charged
particles are real then so are thunderstorms. In short,
emergence is an irreducible feature of our world, i.e. it
has an irreducibly ontological character.
Reflect once more on the distinctiveness of laws of
nature and empirical generalizations. The laws of nature
leave the conditions under which they operate open, so
the field of phenomena is not closed: it is subject to
the possibility of dual and multiple control, including
control by human agents. What I can do is constrained by
the operation of natural laws. But I can hack my way all
over the physical world, defeating empirical
generalizations. I can interrupt the operations or break
the mechanism of a machine and so falsify any prediction
made on the basis of
114 A Realist Theory of Science
its past behaviour. But I cannot change the laws that
governed and so explained its mode of operation. And I
can come, in science, to have a knowledge of such normic
and non-empirical statements; and perhaps in time begin
to recognize analogous principles at work controlling my
own behaviour (marking the site of a possible
psychology).
I have argued that complex objects are real (and
that the complexity of objects is real); and that the
concept of their agency is irreducible. Complex objects
are real because they are causal agents capable of acting
back on the materials out of which they are formed. Thus
the behaviour of e.g. animate things is not determined by
physical laws alone. But that does not mean that their
behaviour is not completely determined: only that an area
of autonomy is marked out which is the site of a
putatively independent science. And because the forms of
determination need not fall under the classical paradigm
this in turn situates the possibility of various kinds of
self-determination (including the possibility that the
behaviour of men may be governed by rational principles
of action).
From the normic and non-empirical nature of laws and
their consistency with situations of dual control I
conclude that the world is a world of agents incompletely
described. Laws neither undifferentially describe nor
uniquely govern the phenomena of our world. And this is
accounted for by the fact that it is an incompletely
described world of agents which are constituted at
different levels of complexity and organization.48
However it might be objected here that all I have shown
is that the laws that we currently possess do not
describe the world as we currently know it. And that I
have not shown that if we were in fact able to reduce
(apparently) complex things to complete atomistic
state-descriptions that we would be unable to predict
future physical states of the world without referring to
comprehensive entities and principles of behaviour
special to them. The final stage of my argument against
actualism must thus constitute a critique of strong
actualism in which the incoherence of the programme of
reduction it envisages for science is demonstrated.
It is important to be clear about the different
senses of `reduction'. There are three distinct ways in
which a science
48 Cf. M. Bunge, The Myth of Simplicity, Chap. 3; and
M. Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Chap. 2.
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 115
might be said to be `reducible' to a more basic one,
which ought not to be confused. There is first the idea
of some lower-order or microscopic domain providing a
basis for the existence of some higher-order property or
power; as for example, the neurophysiological
organization of human beings may be said to provide a
basis for their power of speech. There is secondly the
idea that one might be able to explain the principles of
the higher-order science in terms of those of the
lower-order one. This depends upon being able to
undertake at least a partial translation of the terms of
the two domains; though it is conceivable that they may
retain substantially independent meanings and overlap
only in some of their reference states. Such a
`reduction' may of course result in modifications of the
laws of the higher-order domain.49 There is finally the
sense in which it is suggested that from a knowledge of
the states and principles of the lower-order science we
might be able to predict behaviour in the higher-order
domain. It is important to see that it is to this claim
that the strong actualist is committed, if he is to
eliminate complex behaviour in favour of its atomistic
surrogates. It depends not only upon the establishment
of a complete parallelism between the two domains, but
upon a closure, i.e. the attainment of a complete
atomistic state-description of all the systems within
which the events covered by the descriptions of the
higher-order science occur.
Now it is especially important to keep the second
and third senses distinct. For though it is clear that
we can explain the principles and laws of chemistry in
terms of those of physics or of classical mechanics in
terms of quantum mechanics, we cannot predict physical
and chemical events such as the next eruption of Vesuvius
on the basis of that knowledge alone. For that we would
need an antecedent complete atomistic state-description,
i.e. a closure, as well. Now the strong actualist,
claiming that the world is in the end closed, must,
unless he is to limit himself merely to a dogmatic
reassertion of this claim, presumably map out a strategy
for the sciences to attain such a closure. The fact that
a successful reduction in science does nothing in itself
to achieve empirical invariances is something
49 Cf. P. K. Feyerabend, `Explanation. Reduction and
Empiricism', Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of
Science Vol. III, eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell,
pp. 28-95.
116 A Realist Theory of Science
of a blow to the programme (as distinct from dogma) of
strong actualism. But even if it did there is an even
more damaging objection at hand (which carries a more
general moral for all those who see in `reduction' the
hope of the `less developed' sciences). For every
historically successful reduction of one science to
another has depended upon the prior existence of an
established corpus of scientific principles and laws in
the domain of the reduced science. It is easy to
appreciate why this must be so: for without the
specification of some already more or less clearly
demarcated and well charted domain no programme of
reduction could possibly get to work. But this means
that as a means of discovery, i.e. of achieving such a
body of knowledge reductionism must fail. For it
presupposes precisely what is to be discovered.
I still have not refuted strong actualism as a
possible account of the world. This I shall now do by
arguing that it is inconsistent with any world containing
science, and thus in any world in which science is
possible. The only way of reconciling experimental
activity with the empiricist notion of law is to regard
it as an illusion; that is, to regard the actions
performed in it as subsumable in principle under a
complete atomistic state-description. In principle this
applies not only to experimental activity but to all
scientific activity (including theory-construction) in as
much as it involves physical effects. Now this has the
absurd consequence that the apparent discovery of natural
laws depends upon the prior reduction of social to
natural science. Or to put it another way, in an
actualist world there would be no way of discovering laws
which did not already presuppose a knowledge of them. So
a closed world entails either a completed or no science.
But as `completion' is a process in time the former
possibility is ruled out: so a closed world entails the
impossibility of science. But as science occurs the
world must be open. This is not the reason why the world
is open (though it is the reason for my justified belief
that it is). Rather it is because the world is open that
science, whether or not (and for how long) it actually
occurs, is possible. In an open world all laws must be
of normic form; and this is quite independent of our
knowledge of them. In short, the complexity of agents
and the normic character of laws are irreducible
ontological features of the world; that is, they are
necessary
Actualism and the Concept of a Closure 117
features of our world established as such by
philosophical
It is relatively easy to show that all (and not just
scientific) action depends upon our capacity to identify
causes in open systems. For all action depends upon our
capacity to bring about changes in our physical
environment. Hence we must belong to the same system of
objects (nature) on which we act. But we not only act on
it, in the sense of bringing about changes that would not
otherwise have occurred; we act on it purposefully and
intentionally, i.e. so as to bring about these changes
(as the results and consequences of our actions) and
knowing that we are acting in that way. This depends
upon our being able to identify features of our
environment as the objects of our causal attention and as
part of the system to which causality applies. Thus we
must be capable of identifying and ascribing causes in
our environment, and knowing ourselves as a causal agent
among others. Unless we could do this, we could not act
intentionally at all. Thus all human action depends upon
our capacity to identify causes in open systems (to which
of course the Humean theory cannot apply).
I suggested earlier that human freedom is not only
compatible with science, but had to be scientifically
understood. This is important because it is inter alia a
precondition for science. For science to be possible men
must be free in the specific sense of being able to act
according to a plan e.g. in the experimental testing of a
scientific hypothesis. Human freedom is not something
that stands opposed to or apart from science; but rather
something that is presupposed by it. The idea that
freedom is opposed to or apart from science stems from
the empiricist conception of scientific experience as
consisting in the passive observation of repeated
sequences rather than in the active intervention of men
in the world of things in an endeavour to grasp the
principles of their behaviour. Men are not passive
spectators of a given world, but active agents in a
complex one.
The view of the world as open and the view of the
world as closed lead to totally different conceptions of
science. The laws of nature, which are painstakingly
uncovered by the theoretical work of science supplemented
wherever possible by experimental investigation, do not
seek to describe the myriad phenomena
118 A Realist Theory of Science
of the world, the contents of a biscuit tin or the junk
in the builder's yard. They do not seek to trace the
path of a squirrel, predict which rafter a sparrow will
light on or how many buns the vicar will have for tea.50
They can indeed come to explain such things in a certain
way, but only on the condition that they are not
interpreted as describing them.
50 A caricature of such an empiricism exists in some of
the early experiments conducted under the august
auspices of the Royal Society. The following is an
example: '1661, July 24: a circle was made with a powder
of unicorn's horn, and a spider set in the middle of it,
but it immediately ran out several times repeated. The
spider once made some stay upon the powder', C. R. Weld,
History of the Royal Society, Vol. I, p. 113. Among the
items of allegedly scientific interest collected by the
Society were 'the skin of a moor, tanned with the beard
and hair white' and 'an herb which grew in the stomach
of a thrush', ibid, p. 219. Quoted in P. K. Feyerabend,
'Problems of Empiricism', op. cit., p. 156.
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