Why I’m an ontic structural realist
Scientific realism vs instrumentalism
A long standing debate in the philosophy of science is about what our best scientific theories tell us. Some argue that they reveal true reality, that is, they are real. Others that scientific theories are only useful prediction frameworks, instruments useful in the creation of technology, but that taking any further implications from them is misguided.
In practice, most people are a mix, taking a realist attitude toward theories whose implications they like, and an antireal or instrumentalist one toward those they dislike. For example, it’s pretty common for people to take an antireal stance toward the quantum wave function, while being realist toward much of the rest of science.
The most common argument for instrumentalism is the pessimistic meta-induction, the observation that a theory can be predictive of current observations yet later still turn out to be very wrong, with the Ptolemaic earth centered model of the cosmos being the most famous example. For centuries it predicted naked eye astronomical observations, yet its view of reality was completely overturned by the post-Copernican models.
The most common realist response is the no miracles argument, that if our best successive theories aren’t give us at least an increasingly closer approximation of reality, it amounts to a miracle.
Theory scope
As someone whose take on reality is that the real is what leads to more accurate predictions, I’ve long thought the above description misses the core difference between these stances, which is the scope of current theories. Instrumentalists tend to regard the scope as only pertaining to current observables. Scientific realists tend view it as broader.
Maybe the biggest practical difference is a realist expects our best theories to eventually converge and reconcile. Albert Einstein, perhaps the most famous realist, made a lot of progress just figuring out ways to reconcile different successful theories. Although he was the first person to struggle to do that with quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Structural realism
Structural realism somewhat straddles the fence between instrumentalism and traditional scientific realism, with the observation that what does get preserved across theory change, at least approximately, is the core structure and relations of the old theory. Ptolemy’s mathematical structure still works, just in a much narrower scope than he might have imagined. And Isaac Newton’s model of motion and gravity remain very useful for many purposes (including most NASA missions), even though general relativity has to be used for more exotic scenarios.
Structural realism seems to get the instrumentalist benefit of minimizing assumptions while accepting that scientific theories are telling us something about reality. It’s worth noting that the difference between structural realism and traditional scientific realism is most prominent in fundamental physics. It’s easier to be a straight realist for much of the rest of science. Although structural realism seems useful in evaluating psychophysical theories. Maybe another way of putting this, structuralism seems most useful at the current boundaries of knowledge.
Epistemic vs ontic structural realism
Epistemic structural realism (ESR) is the stance that while science can tell us about the structure and relations of entities in the world, as well as what they do (relations across time), it doesn’t tell us what they are. In other words, science can’t tell us about their intrinsic nature. Ontic structural realism (OSR) rejects this distinction, arguing that all of the structure and relations of an entity amount to its full nature.
Some variations of ESR resonate with Immanuel Kant’s transcendental idealism philosophy, that while we can know phenomena, there remains a reality beyond our observations, the noumena. Noumena may or may not be related to the notion of “things in themselves”, considered unknowable by Kantians. It’s commonly noted that with this move, Kant seems to make room for concepts that seemed threatened by the enlightenment of his day: God, the soul, free will, moral realism, etc.
Why ontic structural realism?
When I first discovered the structural realist view, the epistemic option seemed plausible. It seemed like a responsible acknowledgement on the limits of what we can know. But I now realize I was making a very common mistake. It’s completely rational to assume that the structures and relations we know about aren’t the final story, that there remain underlying structures we haven’t discovered yet.
For example, when scientists discovered atoms, they gave them the ancient Greek name for the ultimate building blocks of matter. However, they didn’t know about subatomic particles like electrons, protons, and neutrons. And of course it was later discovered that protons and neutrons are themselves composed of quarks and gluons. It seems entirely appropriate to be cautious about accepting that these entities, which we currently call “elemental particles”, are the final story.
However, these possible hidden underlying components are not the intrinsic nature that ESR is arguing for. They are just more structure, relations, and functions. What then does ESR mean? The only example of an intrinsic nature I’ve seen presented are the quiddities of Russellian monism, which are often taken in panpsychism as the proto-phenomenal properties that make up the phenomenal properties of conscious experience.
But it’s not clear to me what an intrinsic nature might amount to. Whenever I attempt to imagine it, I always end up with something having some kind of structure and relations. Even conscious experience to me seems structural. People often argue that phenomenal properties, like the redness of red or the painfulness of pain, aren’t structural, even if they serve as elements in the overall structures of experience.
But to me this just bring us back to the point above, that it makes sense to be cautious in assuming there aren’t underlying structures and relations. The idea that there aren’t is an assumption of fundamental consciousness, which I argued against a few posts back. Interestingly, the notion that phenomenal properties are composed of proto-phenomenal properties seems to imply an underlying structure, albeit one separate from the normal structure accessible to science.
So my issue with ESR is I don’t know what it could mean by an intrinsic non-relational non-structural nature. Of course, my inability to conceive it doesn’t mean it isn’t reality (see quantum spin, for instance). But then without some kind of evidence for that reality, it leaves me with no reason to assume they exist. Leaving OSR as the only option. At least for now.
What do you think?
- Are there issues with ontic structural realism I’m overlooking?
- Is the concept of intrinsic nature more coherent than I’m currently seeing?
- Or is the whole structural realist view defective in some sense?
#antirealism #instrumentalism #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfScience #Science #scientificRealism #structuralRealism
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Jim Donegan 🎵 ✅