Bas C. Van Fraasen

by Marcos Rodrigues da Silva and Debora Minikoski

Resumo: o breve artigo é uma réplica à resposta de Alessio Gava ao artigo "Van Fraassen e a inferência da melhor explicação", publicado em Problemata (v. 7. n. 1, 2016), de autoria de Marcos Rodrigues da Silva e Debora Minikoski.

Palavras-chave: Alessio Gava; empirismo construtivo; realismo.

Contents:

Bas C. van Fraassen, Introduction

Miloš Arsenijević, Avoiding Logical Determinism and Retaining the Principle of Bivalence within Temporal Modal Logic: Time as a Line-in-Drawing

Allan Bäck, The Reality of the Statement and the Now in Aristotle

Hans Burkhardt, Aristotle on Memory and Remembering and McTaggart’s A-Time and B-Time Series

Stamatios Gerogiorgakis, Late Ancient Paradoxes concerning Tense Revisited

Sonja Schierbaum, Ockham on Tense and Truth

Hylarie Kochiras, Newton’s Absolute Time

Christina Schneider, Monads, Perceptions, Phenomena – Leibniz on Space-Time

Oliver Thorndike, Kant’s Philosophy of Time in the Transcendental Aesthetic

William Lane Craig, Bergson Was Right about Relativity (well, partly)!

Brigitte Falkenburg & Gregor Schiemann, Too Many Conceptions of Time? McTaggart’s Views Revisited

Nikos Psarros, The Ontology of Time – A Phenomenological Approach

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.

According to Roy Sorensen, when one looks at the Moon, during a solar eclipse, what she sees is its inner (concave) part of the farther, reflective one, and not the always-facing-Earth side of our natural satellite. To make his point clearer, he put forward the famous example of a double eclipse involving the fictional planets Far and Near. From the observer's vantage point, the two planets have the same apparent diameter and overlap. What the agent sees is a dark disk, but believes that what she is seeing is Near, because Far is behind it. Sorensen claims that what she actually sees is planet Far and that the causal theory of perception explains why this is the case. Of course, this position stands against common sense. Sorensen shows that it counters Alvin Goldman's renowned observation criteria too. Nonetheless, he maintains, since Near is causally idle and the agent does see something, the only possible conclusion is that she sees Far, pace Goldman – and common sense. In this paper, I try to demonstrate that Sorensen is wrong and that the correct solution to the eclipse riddle is that the observer sees Near. As a matter of fact, besides meeting common sense and Goldman's observability criteria (along with others), Near can be legitimately be considered the object of a successful perceptual discrimination even in the light of the causal theory of perception .

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’.

This book is a defence of scientific realism. It contains chapters on inference to the best explanation, underdetermination of sceintific theories, novel predictions, common cause principle, intervening argument, etc. I reject the instrumentalistic construal of scientific theories and argue that the realist construal is the right one.

Microscopes - not only the optic ones - are commonly considered, particularly by scientists and laboratory technicians, as devices that allow to widen the scope of our limited sensory system and see entities that would otherwise be unobservable. A notorious exception is Bas van Fraassen’s interpretation. This important and well-known philosopher of science sees these instruments as ‘engines of creation’ (of images), thus rejecting the ‘window onto the unobservable world’ metaphor. In this paper I will present, under the perspective of the realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy of science, the Dutch author’s position and show that, despite being a peculiar and isolated stand, it does not exhibit flaws or contradictions - from a strictly logical point of view, at least. The case of the mesosome, a folded invagination in the plasma membrane of bacteria that is produced by chemical fixation (for electron microscopy), is particularly instructive in this respect.

Observation and observability represent a crucial topic in the philosophy of science, as the huge production of papers and books on the subject attests. Philosophy of perception, on the other hand, is a field of study that took root effectively in the last decades. Even then, apparently, the main theories on observation have neglected the issue of determining which is the object of a successful perception. As a consequence, some theses that have recently been proposed are actually paradoxical, despite deriving from renowned and, prima facie, satisfactory and complete theories. This is the situation of van Fraassen’s assertions on the (putative?) observation of images and rainbows (see 2001 and 2008) and of Sorensen’s claims on what one actually sees during a solar eclipse (see 2008). After putting forward a possible characterization of the object of perception, with no need of discussing the issue of intentionality, in this paper it will be shown that devoting adequate attention to this topic, together with acknowledging that observation is an action, in which the subject plays an indeed active role, would make it possible to avoid drawing conclusions that do not seem to be correct, such as the ones just mentioned. Any theory about observation will only be complete and adequate provided the object of perception is taken into account.

Constructive Empiricism, the anti-realist position about science proposed by the Dutch philosopher Bas van Fraassen in 1980, heavily relies upon the distinction between observable and unobservable entities. In 2004 and 2005, F. A. Muller provided a rigorous characterization of observability, later endorsed, apparently, by van Fraassen (cf. Muller & van Fraassen 2008). However, an analysis of what it means to observe is needed to secure Muller’s ‘definition’. Van Fraassen always maintained that observation is an empirical matter, but I argue that a philosophical analysis is also needed and that van Fraassen himself relied on philosophical principles to address the issue of observability.