BOOK ONE:

 

 "Rationality and Science" (Can science explain everything?)

 

 Author: Roger Trigg

 

 Copyright:  1993

 

 Publisher:  Blackwell Publishers

             108 Cowley Road

             Oxford  0X4 1JF, UK

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

This book was largely written in the course of study leave granted to me by the University of Warwick. I spent a year as a Visiting Fellow at St Cross College, Oxford, and wish to record my gratitude to the Master and Fellows of St Cross for their kind hospitality. I much value my association with the College. I am also grateful to the British Academy for the personal research grant I was awarded to help me with some of my costs.

    I have discussed the contents of this book with too many people to acknowledge individually. I am, however, especially grateful to Charles Taliaferro, whose sabbatical leave in Oxford coincided with mine. His advice and comments have been invaluable, and I am sure that the book has been greatly improved as a result.

 

Introduction

 

The Public Arena

 

In the Middle Ages in Europe the Christian Church was the guardian of truth, or at least of what was accepted as truth. Yet the doctrines of the Church gained their apparent potency not simply because of the political power of the institutions proclaiming them. Rather, their authority was believed to have been grounded in the very nature of things. Ultimately everything was alleged to be traced back to God the Creator. The Pope's authority was a devolved one, since as Vicar of Christ he could claim to be representing God's own revelation to humanity. The Church's hold on truth was alleged to stem from its insights into a reality that was totally independent. Cynics would claim that an appeal to objective reality was no more than a subtle move in its lust for power. With God on one's side, one hardly needs any further legitimation. Yet, as we shall see in this book, it still remains the case that any claim to knowledge must be grounded in the way things are.

    The Reformation and the growth of modern science together began to undermine the Church's appeal to authority. Even Christians became suspicious of the abuse of power in the Church, seen as a human institution, and it fragmented. Gradually it was recognized that there were other ways of establishing truth. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries human

 

 

2                             Introduction

 

reason came to be seen as capable of discovering the truth about the world we live in, and the methods of the new science were thought to be particularly appropriate. Above all they seemed capable of producing agreement though accepted procedures. It was hard, for instance, to view a telescope as an instrument of social control by anyone eager for power. It merely enabled people to see what they previously could not. Furthermore it was possible for anyone to look as long as they had access to the instrument. Knowledge could not be restricted to a privileged few. Anyone could see the mountains of the moon as Galileo did. Inevitably many began to distrust large metaphysical schemes, devised by a few, to tell the rest of us what had to exist. Instead they preferred to start with what could be shown to be knowledge through piece-meal investigation of the world around us. Experience gradually became the touch-stone of truth, but it was not private experience. It could be shared. Science was well and truly in the public sphere, dealing with apparently objective matters which could be rationally established. The scientific and the objective became so associated as to seem virtually synonymous. What was objective could be publicly shared. A corollary was that scientists dealt with 'facts' while everything else was consigned to the personal, indeed the subjective, realm.

    The empiricist, David Hume, was able in the eighteenth century to make the distinction between what is the case and what ought to be the case. He went on to say that 'morality is more properly felt than judged of'. Questions about virtue and vice were thus consigned to the private, subjective world. It was no accident that Hume was also unable to make any room for the notion of the self. The paradox was that with the emphasis on the public role of reason, soon to be modified in modern scientific method, anything private or personal would inevitably become problematic and dismissed as subjective, at best, and non-existent at worst. The more that everything of importance was thought to be objective, the less grip was left on the idea of individuals exercising their reason. With the modern conception of objectivity goes the view that what is objective must, in principle, be agreed. The idea is that people in similar situations will experience the same things and should have no difficulty in

 

Introduction                             3

 

reaching agreement. What is contentious and cannot be settled by publicly acknowledged procedures is hence thought to be subjective.

    The public arena is thought to be the preserve of science where truth can be objectively established. Reason and scientific method become progressively identified, and all else is swept into the category of the subjective. 'Values' become of questionable status. When the world was seen as God's creation, the idea of an ultimate split between facts and values would be unthinkable. In God, what is and what ought to be were seen to meet. Yet if judgements about what ought to be the case are merely personal preferences, they are clearly beyond the scope of science. Morality, aesthetics and religion are thus matters of subjective concern, because they could make no claim to scientific validity nor command general agreement. Indeed it was ironic that the more that the subjective world was populated with judgements that had previously been regarded as of immense importance, the less the concept of the subject was emphasized. By definition science cannot cope with the subject, since it is not accessible to the public examination demanded by the constraints of scientific objectivity. The impersonal, detached view of the scientist might provide a model for truth, but it left no room at all for any understanding of the individual consciousness that made it possible in the first place. Rationality came to be identified with the path to public agreement. It followed that when there was apparently irresolvable disagreement, reason was obviously not part of the picture.

    The subjective, therefore, was not just unscientific but beyond the scope of reason, and perhaps positively irrational. Science presided over the public arena where truth could be rationally established, if not by general agreement, at least by experts who were generally accepted as much. The irony of this was that it could so easily lead to the development of a new priestly caste. Science with all its modern complexity, was in the end going to be no more democratic than the Church it had seemed to supplant. Individual judgements and preferences which varied between people were, at a theoretical level, excluded from its concern. Nevertheless they still had to be taken account of in

 

 

Introduction                             5

 

4                             Introduction

 

society, and so such differing values were tolerated in the democracies which were growing up as science advanced. At first in England, it was just a question of tolerating 'dissenters' from the Established Church, but as time went on a more radical pluralism set in. The United States, for example, was wary about allowing religion in the public sphere at all. As long as science remained neutral about 'values', it could rise above such social tensions. Indeed many thought that science itself was the key to real progress, and that anything else was a distraction.

    Facts and values, however, are not so easily sundered. Nothing could be more 'value-laden' than the idea of progress, and yet opposition to such progress seems to many not just intelligible but positively desirable. Science has been pushed off its pedestal. Far from being value-neutral, the whole-hearted pursuit of knowledge in physical science, and its unthinking application, has been the dominant value of recent generationS. There is now no guaranteed public acceptance of the role of empirical science. It no longer commands universal respect, and inevitably its monopoly claims to knowledge are being questioned. It is now blamed for everything from arms races to the pollution of the planet, and the erosion of the ozone layer. The question of justification has to be faced. It is not enough simply to practise science.

    Once this is acknowledged, it is not enough to rely on the bare fact of acceptance within the public sphere. Appeals to the 'objectivity' of science merely beg the question. Too much has been consigned to the realm of the private and the subjective. For example, the prevalent view that morality is a private matter must be connected with the implicit connection between the public, the scientific and what can be agreed. Once doubts arise even in the public realm about the worth of science, this whole way of thinking must be questioned. Science cannot simply rely on the contingent fact that. it has acquired and enjoyed social prestige. It cannot be self-contained, but like the medieval Church, it must rest its claims to authority in something beyond itself. It is the argument of this book that science has itself to appeal to a metaphysical basis. So far from science, being the enemy of metaphysics, it stands in urgent need of its assistance. Much, of

 

course, depends on what is meant by metaphysics. Science cannot, however simply be accepted on its own terms. It is not enough to be told that the world of science is our world, that scientific rationality/s rationaF^ty. We need to be told why this is so. Above all, when people grow cynical of the world of science, we need to be able to give reasons as to why science should not be ignored. Too many philosophers and scientists are willing to take science at face value. It is so obvious to them that physicial science sets the standards for truth, that they do not allow the question of justification even to be raised. That is, however, an insecure position to be in, and it is too dependent on social factors. Once the assumptions of the modern world cease to be generally shared, science will find it stands in need of rational justification. That this is in fact necessary is the theme of this book.

 

Reason and Anti-Realism

 

The story will begin, as it must, in Vienna between the wars. It was then that the philosophy which was to sweep over the English-speaking world was fashioned in the so-called Vienna C'trcle. The methods and discoveries of modern science dominated it, and philosophy could be regarded as the mere handmaiden of the sciences. Scientific success and progress could be taken for granted, and 'science' was taken to be virtually synonymous with 'knowledge'. The ' scientific world-conception' dictated what was to be philosophically acceptable. Yet just because philosophy was relegated to a secondary role, the task of justifying the practice of science was no longer thought essential. Science defined what is meant by truth, and there was no room for wondering whether it was the only path to truth, or a path to it at all. Metaphysics became a term of abuse.

     This wholesale identification of human reasoning with the methods of science was bound to be questioned. One reaction is to recognize the importance of science but to insist that rationality should not simply be identified with it. It could be argued that science itself stands in need of a rational underpinning.

 

 

6                             Introduction                                                                          In trodu ction                           7

 

That is the programme of this book. The other reaction possible is much more radical, since it questions the very notion of rationality as a path to truth. Instead' of making science the measure of truth, it will say that there can be no such overarching standard. Human activity is divided into many different practices and each develops its own standards and way of dealing with matters. The practice of physical science will then be seen as one such way of life. Its criteria for what is to count as a reason are only internal, and it will be regarded as profoundly mistaken to apply those relevant to science to other ways of thinking and acting. Neither ethics nor religion would then be despised merely because they are not science. They, too, it will be said, have criteria of reasonableness. A moral judgement is not a scientific one, and neither are the same as religious claims, but none, it seems, will be better or worse for that. They are merely different.

    The fragmentation of reason and its division into different compartments is a powerful way of resisting the scientifistic claim that science is all that matters. It is less impressive as a way of providing any form of justification. Reason always appears as internal to a practice or way of life. It can then never be abstracted from a particular context and used in more free-floating manner to justify or condemn whole patterns of life. We have instead to take the appropriateness of an activity for granted without examining its presuppositions. This mode of argument appears regularly in contemporary philosophy. It is particularly associated with the later views of Wittgenstein, who himself explicitly reacted against the views of the Vienna Circle. It is also readily associated with various strands of American pragmatism, which believe that we should always begin with actual practices, rather than the abstractions of metaphysics.

    An underlying battle rages between realists who believe that there is a world to be investigated which exists independently of human belief and language, and anti-realists. The latter wish to build our conceptions of truth and reality on the way human language is integrated with a particular way of acting. Truth is constructed and not discovered, they would maintain. We start, not surprisingly, where we are and, build ,up our understanding of the nature of things from what we already take for granted.

 

There is always, therefore, a hidden reference to human understanding and human capabilities in the anti-realist approach. This argument always turns on the difficulty of having a conception of something beyond our conceptions. Reality is still something being conceptualized by us even when it is understood as being beyond our reach. Again and again we shall return in this book to the implications of various versions of this argument. Anti-realism appears in many different forms, even though often the same issues are at stake. In the same way, the problem of reflexivity will constantly appear. Anti-realist claims can never be finally grounded in reality. By definition, they must always stop with how we can envisage reality. This lack of grounding, however, can produce problems when global claims about human reasoning are made. To take a simple example, if all reasoning only takes place within particular social practices, what is the status of any reasoning about social practices as such? Is it merely the product of another social practice? If it is, it must be of little interest, since whatever force it may seem to have comes from its being understood to be making a claim about what is the case. The fragmentation of reason alluded to would mean that wide claims about reason, even those about its fragmentation, cannot be made.

    This kind of example recurs as a regular theme throughout the book. There is a pattern of argument prevalent which seems to relish giving reasons as to why reason is impossible. The contradiction should be obvious, but the persistent temptation to fall into it demonstrates how the very possibility of rationality is held by many to be in question. In part this is because they also reject the idea of an objective reality which is the same for everybody, whether they recognize it or not. The physical sciences provide a test case for the application of rationality, but it is not just a question of being suspicious of the claims of science. Some deride all reasoning on the grounds that it is the product of particular historical periods, and intelligible only in its own context. This attack on reason is so penzasive in our culture that it can masquerade as a constituent part of our contemporary understanding of ourselves. 'Post-modernism', we are told, has rejected 'modern' conceptions of reason.

A paradox is that similar conclusions about reason can be

 

 

Introduction                             9

 

8                             Introduction

 

reached even from within science. A preoccupation with scientific method can result in rejecting any notion of rationality which cannot be fully translated into physical terms. The nature of consciousness becomes problematic, and thus the idea of a rationality that cannot be reduced to the description of physical processes is made highly suspect. We apparently arrive at scientific reasons for rejecting the possibility of reason as it has been traditionally understood. This kind of fully-fledged naturalism or physicalism restricts reality to what can be fully described by the natural sciences. Yet in so doing, it too makes the practice of science ungrounded in any rational way. The problem of reasoning about rationality will be constantly referred to in this book. An inability to reason about the nature of reality in a way that can transcend the immediate constraints of history, society and our physical make-up undermines the very possibility of physical science. It is always possible to define rationality so that it implies no such abstraction from a particular context. The question, though, of the warrant of such a definition will immediately arise, and we are then plunged straight back into questions of rational acceptability.

    Human nature must be related to reality. If the gap between the two is made too wide, scepticism soon arises about the possibility of any knowledge. If, on the other hand, the gap is closed so that we can be sure of knowledge, the effect is bound to make reality anthropocentric. Various philosophical and scientific theories have arisen to try to bridge what seems an uncomfortably wide chasm. Evolutionary epistemology has tried to give an explanation for the way our beliefs and theories appear to fit the world. In the same way, in cosmology various versions of the socalled 'anthropic principle' have been canvassed to show a link between our existence as humans and the character of the universe. There are different methods of demonstrating a link between us and our scientific beliefs on the one hand, and reality on the other. The urge for a complete scientific explanation of everything remains strong. At best it can be a stimulus to further scientific investigation. At worst, however, it can be merely a contemporary example of the urge to make science the final arbiter of what is real. Yet without some explanation as to why

 

the human mind should be capable of such a feat, this must remain somewhat unconvincing. For science to explain everything, we need a reason for trusting science. This once again brings us back to the question of a rational grounding in reality.

 

The Character of Reality

 

Religion has undoubtedly played its part historically in providing an intellectual climate in which modern science could flourish. This may seem surprising to those who have been brought up to assume that science and religion were rivals. Nevertheless, a belief in a God who is the source of reason and the ultimate explanation for an inherent rational structure in the world does provide an instructive alternative model to that of a science which has to be accepted at face value. Certainly the apparent regularity and order of the world is thereby explained, though clearly it is not the kind of explanation that is acceptable to everyone. Resistance to such metaphysics was a motive for much of the avowedly atheistic work of the Vienna Circle. It is not part of the task of this book to argue for theism. The point is rather that there are some possible ways of validating science.

     There is not an automatic choice between an ungrounded trust in science as the only source of truth and a relativist acceptance of science as one of many alternative forms of life. Other views can and do exist which give science a metaphysical basis. They seek to ground science without letting it have monopoly rights over our life. It is in this connection that belief in God is relevant. Whether true or false, it provides an interesting example of one of several ways in which science can be seen as a fairly trustworthy product of a human rationality, which is set in a reality that is not of its own making.

     The quest for a justification of physical science is more pressing than it once was because it is no longer obvious that the development of science is to be equated with human progress. The benefits of scientific discovery are often overshadowed by the undoubted costs. Environmentalists become ever more hostile to what they see as a source of danger not only to humans

 

 

10                             Introduction

 

but to the whole planet on which we live. They are not going to be convinced by a demand that we trust science, or that science is to set the standard for what is to count as knowledge. The risk is that they resist science by acquiescing in the notion that it is just one interpretation of the world amongst many. It is merely yet another form of life. This may cut science down to size, but it does nothing to enhance the claims of environmentalism. They too can easily be dismissed by others as members of some eccentric way of life. They must, instead, appeal to a concept of a nature which exists in itself, independently of human conceptions. In other words, environmentalists can only claim to be heard and only present a coherent theory by being realists. Antirealists are in no position to talk of any nature that is radically independent of us. Their vision will always in the end relate all reality logically to human understanding. In fact, the very reverse approach is necessary. Physical reality is so far from being constituted by our concepts, that in fact we do not properly realize just what we are doing to the whole ecosystem of which we are part.

    Human actions produce many direct and indirect consequences in the physical world, which arise largely as a result of scientific and technological advance. We may not choose to notice some of them, but others are difficult to ascertain. Those who are concerned for what humans are doing to the global environment have to take seriously the fact that what we think we are doing and what we are doing may be very different. Nature may well have the last word, but, if so, it is a nature that is totally independent of human concepts. It is not an unstructured chaos waiting for the human mind arbitrarily to arrange it. It has characteristics, even a life, of its own. Human interference may disrupt it and even destroy it, but it is certainly not constructing or creating it. We can have a crucial influence on it, but it is in no sense logically related to us or our practices. An anti-realist concept of nature is in effect a contradiction in terms. Environmentalists dare not oppose science under the banner of some form of anti-realism. Because science claims to deal with reality, it may seem a promising strategy to challenge the former by attacking the latter. This will always be mistaken, and never more

 

Introduction                            11

 

so when done in the name of an alternative vision. Visions that cannot themselves be grounded in reality are mere dreams.

    We can only do science because of the nature of the world. We must not only be realists, but we have to suppose that the physical world contains a certain order and regularity. Science and reason cannot be identified because science itself depends on a rational understanding of the world. Many contemporary philosophers hold that there must be some 'neutral' ground on which we can stand, or a God's-eye view to aspire to, if something like the justification of science is to be attempted. We must somehow be able to step beyond our ordinary human rationality in order to judge its efficiency. How far reason, and the idea of reality, can be upheld in the face of such criticism is one topic of this book. Science needs legitimation, since the only alternative is a stultifying relativism, according to which the sciences, or even particular scientific theories, set their own standards. The snag then is that there is no point in adopting any of them. In many ways, science is a test case for rationality. If it cannot survive here, it will survive nowhere. For many, science is still the paradigm of human rationality, and must be concerned with the character of reality. Yet it has to be shown how this is possible. Even the physical sciences cannot be taken for granted. They rest on metaphysical foundations which must be made explicit.

    This book builds on work I have done in previous books to defend the interlocked questions of rationality and reality against the onslaught of relativism and anti-realism. In 1973 my Reason and Commitment attacked relativism in science and elsewhere. I was particularly concerned in it with the influence of the later Wittgenstein and of T. S. Kuhn. Since then I have argued for a metaphysical realism which safeguards reality as a goal for all our intellectual endearour, and particularly that in the sciences. That was the theme of Reality at Risk (second edition 1989). Over the last twenty years, relativism has become ever more respectable philosophically. In particular, attacks on the possibility of a reason which can even partially detach itself from its historical and social context have become ever more virulent. I have written about the place of rationality in society and in the social sciences in Understanding Social Science (1985).

 

 

12                             Introduction

 

    It is common now to see science as a social practice, or as a language game, as something 'we' do (whoever 'we' are) and which cannot be given any further rational justification. This is all part of the repudiation of human reason as a guide to truth, and hence of the possibility of any kind of metaphysics. When confronted with a flourishing, even dominant, activity like science, this may not seem very threatening. Yet it removes the possibility of giving any kind of justification for continuing with the practice. Attacks on rationality put in jeopardy the very activities that are often being taken for granted. Without an ability to see what is true and to separate it from what is false, we cannot continue to practise the physical sciences as they have been traditionally understood. Our reasoning has to be rooted in the character of the world, whatever it may be. Otherwise the idea that science can explain anything, let alone everything, is sheer illusion.

 

1

 

Science and Reason

 

The Dominance of Science

 

Can science explain everything? Many assume that the only possible kind of explanation must be a scientific one, couched in causal terms. They see modern science, with its distinctive empirical method, as the exemplar of rationality. The undoubted success of the physical sciences in enabling us to predict and control much of our environment has persuaded us, it seems, that success in reasoning can only be obtained through science. There are, it appears, public standards of truth and falsity in science which in principle enable agreement to be reached. This seems far from the case in other aspects of human activity. Deep seated and, indeed, apparently irresolvable disagreement seems to be the norm once we depart from accepted procedures of checking, testing and proving. The position is not very good in would-be sciences such as economics. The inability of economists to give accurate predictions even of the effects of budgetary measures is notorious. Once we move into more controversial areas such as politics, morality and religion, notions of prediction and control are totally inappropriate. It is easy to conclude that there can be no tests of truth and hence no place for rationality in such areas.

    The dominance of science in our culture is undoubted, and for much of the twentieth century its dominance in the field of

 

 

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philosophy has been complete. This may seem paradoxical as philosophy itself is far from being an empirical discipline. Yet for many philosophers the function of their subject has been to act as a handmaid to science. No longer has philosophy, let alone theology, been able to aspire to the title of 'queen of the sciences'. If the only path to truth is that of empirical discovery, it follows that philosophers sitting in their arm-chairs are unable to contribute anything of substance. Unless they get among the testtubes of a laboratory, or the expensive gadgets of modern particle physics, it seems that they have no right to tell anyone anything about the world. All they have is their reason, and if human reason only works properly when schooled in the empirical methods of science, philosophical reasoning either has to be harnessed to the discoveries of science, or it is of illusory importance.

    Things were not always so. The philosophical discipline of metaphysics often appeared to provide the basis on which all human intellectual enquiry, including empirical investigation, finally rested. This is a project dating from the days of Plato and Aristotle. Indeed the word 'metaphysics' was given by the editors of Aristotle's work to the books which came 'after the books on nature' (meta ta physika). The content and method of those books then became the exemplar of a whole way of thinking. Metaphysics has always been particularly concerned with what there is, with the nature of reality. That problem lies at the root of all questions, and it follows that metaphysical problems are the most fundamental and comprehensive that we face. We have to deal with the most basic presuppositions of our thought, which, just because they are so basic and pervasive, may easily be taken for granted and be totally unexamined. We may not even be conscious of what we are assuming. Yet because the issues are so central, they profoundly affect the way we live. It is not surprising that, despite its abstract nature, metaphysics has always been a battle-field on which each person's .most cherished beliefs may seem ultimately to be at stake.

    The entry on 'the nature of metaphysics' in The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (vol. 5, 1967, p. 300) reads: 'Almost everything in metaphysics is controversial, and it is therefore not surprising that there is little agreement among thos^ who call themselves

 

Science and Reason                         15

 

metaphysicians about what precisely it is that they are attempting.'

    In view of this, it is perhaps not surprising that many have taken refuge in the apparent certainties of science. When the practitioners of a discipline cannot even agree about what their subject is, it may not be surprising that 'metaphysics' can sink into becoming a word of abuse, applied to anything that is vacuous and incapable of proof. Much the same thing has happened to the idea of 'theology', which on some politicians' lips has come to mean anything that is too abstruse to be related to everyday life. Such an attitude of mind has in a sense been institutionalized in philosophy through the influence of the Vienna Circle. Its members met regularly in Vienna from 1925 to 1936 and propagated what they termed 'the scientific conception of the world'. Composed of philosophically inclined scientists and others, the Circle believed that everything had to be able to be reduced to the simplest statements about the 'empirically given'. As a result, their manifesto crisply states that 'the scientific worldconception rejects metaphysical philosophy' (Neurath and Cohen, 1973, p. 309). One example of a prime metaphysical statement is 'there is a God' and this would be rejected as 'devoid of meaning' because it cannot be reduced to a statement about what can be experienced. Knowledge, they would hold, is derivable only from experience, and 'this sets the limits for the content of legitimate science'. The Circle was not, however, only making a target of theological statements, nor did it consider metaphysics and theology to be synonymous. They may have thought metaphysical statements a 'residue' of theology, but all global statements referring to reality in general were treated with suspicion. Otto Neurath, one of the foremost members of the Circle, and inventor of its name, characterized the 'modern scientific conception of the world' as 'the interconnection of empirical individual facts, with systematic testing by experiment' (Neurath, 1983, p. 42). The idea was, with the help of logic, to create a unified science. The importance of experience in building up a scientific picture meant that sweeping generalizations, going far beyond the bounds of the empirically accessible, had to be ruled out. He said:

 

 

16                         Science and Reason                                                                       Science and Reason                          17

 

Theological residues in science can be suspected wherever empirical statements are related to a postulated or 'complete' insight ... The determinism of Laplace's formulation is untenable, for the assumption of knowledge of an unlimited cross-section of the world is totally meaningless. (p. 42)

 

    Laplace had believed in a global determinism and thought that only our ignorance of initial conditions makes successful prediction and complete knowledge of the world unattainable. Such an assertion is characteristically metaphysical in that it goes far beyond anything we can experience and yet is comprehensive in its scope. The Vienna Circle's reflex reaction to such claims would always be to dismiss them as untranslatable into experience and hence as literally meaningless. They would always start with specific experience, so that the general is logically connected to the particular, and comes after it. Neurath himself (1983, p. 47) explicitly contrasts this approach with the traditional methods of philosophy and metaphysics, which would start with the general. He echoes the Circle manifesto when he proclaims: 'Wherever there is a clear question, there is also a clear answer: it makes no sense to speak of unsolvable riddles.' This is not as reassuring as it sounds. If you can only ask questions which can be answered, there can be nothing which we cannot solve. This, though, is only because all other questions are ruled out of order as not being clear, or having proper empirical content.

    The notion of experience to which this view of science appealed was one which depended on a view of raw, uninterpreted sensation presented to us by the external world. These 'sense-data' were supposed to form the foundation of all our knowledge. Colour patches, sounds, smells and touch, were all combined so that we could build up a view of the world. As the Circle's manifesto claimed, 'something is "real" through being incorporated into the total structure of experience' (Neurath and Cohen, 1973, p. 308). With this statement, the Circle's members explicitly denounced rival metaphysical views about the status of the real world. Realism holds that reality is independent of human conceptions and the human mind. Idealism,, on the other hand,

 

typically stresses the logical dependence of what is real on our minds. A simple illustration comes from our reaction to the question whether a clock ticks when no one hears it. If we hesitate about the way to reply, idealism, as a theory, can begin to gain a grip. Both realism and idealism, however, are global doctrines about the status of reality, and, as such, were dismissed by the Circle. The verdict was that, like all metaphysical claims, they were meaningless because without empirical content, and hence unverifiable.

    The very nature of an empiricist approach, which begins with the experience of individuals, means that the resulting view of the world must be anthropocentric. What is beyond the reach of human beings can be safely dismissed. This is diagrammatically opposed to a metaphysics which starts from a conception of reality and then locates humanity in it. Part of what is at issue is the major difference in method. The Circle built their philosophy on the success of scientific method, allied to logic. They were thus 'logical empiricists', and were vehemently opposed to any idea that thinking on its own could lead to knowledge. Knowledge was gained through experience, they felt, and logical investigation proved that new information could not be produced by thought and inference. It is possible to deduce one set of statements from another, but everything in the one had already to be in the other. Logic or reasoning deals in tautologies, while our senses receive the main material we need for our understanding. This was the classic division between synthetic, or empirical, statements and analytic, or tautologous, ones, such as that all bachelors are unmarried. A major effect of making these linguistic distinctions was that it left no room for metaphysics.

     The views of the Vienna Circle were popularized in English by A. J. Ayer, who was a participant in it. He summed up the position as follows:

 

We may accordingly define a metaphysical sentence as a sentence which purports to express a genuine proposition, but does, in fact, express neither a tautology nor an empirical hypothesis. And as tautologies and empirical hypotheses form the entire class of

 

 

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18

 

Science and Reason

 

significant propositions, we are justified in concluding that all metaphysical assertions are nonsensical. (Ayer, 1946, p. 41)

 

Such an outlook appears to give science firm foundations. The demand for verification and falsification by actual and possible experience does indeed lead to the epistemological doctrine of foundationalism, according to which our knowledge can be based on an incorrigible and certain starting-point. Reason is tamed and put in the senrice of the information which we passively receive. It can help us to systematize our experience, but cannot transcend it. Philosophy may help in the task of clarifying scientific concepts, but cannot legislate for science. There is no ground left for it to stand on. The downgrading of the power of human reason thus goes hand in hand with a diminished view of philosophy. The dismissal of metaphysics as meaningless does not just result in giving up high-sounding phrases with no 'cash-value in the real world'. It also means that we cannot reflect on the nature of science. In particular we cannot justify it.

    Why should anyone do science in the first place? Why should we adopt 'scientific method', ff there is such a thing? A natural answer to these questions is that science tells us the truth, and, indeed, science is the source of truth, if we take the Vienna Circle's logical positivism as our guide. This approach can be termed 'scientific', but it is still in need of justification. We may be impressed by Western science simply because the technology derived from it literally delivers the goods. Without it we could not have colour television, aircraft and all the gadgets of modern life. A cynic might add that without it we would not have nuclear weapons, missiles and the gadgets of modern warfare. There is no longer the assurance that science can be linked to the idea of inevitable progress. The scientific knowledge that produced the gas ovens of concentration camps or the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be unequivocally welcomed. The world at the end of the twentieth century is not obviously an improvement on the world at the beginning. Every medical advance can be counterbalanced by some more clever method discovered by science of inflicting suffering pn humanity.

 

Difficulties for Empiricism

 

We are bound to be affected by the general doubts arising in our culture about the worth of science. This makes it all the more dangerous if we take science for granted and only allow philosophy to reflect on its findings. The question why we should rely on science, and particularly why we should rely only on it, arises naturally from the state of the world we live in. When the Vienna Circle ended their manifesto with the ringing proclamation that 'the scientific world-conception serves life' (Neurath and Cohen, p. 318), they were saying somering that perhaps rang true in 1929. Yet Wittgenstein, who was at first received by the Vienna Circle as one of their own, commented in 1947 that it was not in the least absurd to believe the age of science 'is the beginning of the end of humanity' (1980, p. 56). He was expF^citly wilYrag to entertain the possibility that 'the idea of great progress is a delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known'.

     The bitter experiences of the twentieth century have predisposed many to distrust science. Far from being the engine of progress, it can appear to be an instrument of oppression. The air we breathe and our rivers and seas become more polluted as a result of the very technology which was intended to transform our world for the better. An intellectual climate is arising which is unwilling to take the products of science on trust. Science is forced to justify itself. What justification for science did empiro icists and positivists produce? They allowed physical science no metaphysical foundation. That did not worry them as they believed that metaphysics was nonsense, but it does mean that science can claim no rational basis. Reason is left with no scope for standing outside science to justify it. Logical positivism was in effect an attack on the possibility of human reason outside the strict constraints of deductive logic. It had distinguished forbears such as Hume, but he too was unable to give any justification for the practice of science.

      The most glaring example of the undermining of rationality is provided by the verification principle itself. We can certainly rule

 

 

20                         Science and Reason                                                                      Science and Reason                         21

 

out a great many statements as nonsensical if we make our ability to verify a proposition the criterion of its being meaningful. It has, however, been notorious that the verification principle itself cannot be verified. The starting-point of logical positivism cannot itself be justified and indeed by its own lights should be regarded as meaningless. Ayer claimed that the principle could be regarded as an axiom, but this fails to meet the challenge of why we should adopt such an axiom. The very fact that it stops us saying what we might wish to say suggests that it is a controversial criterion of meaning. This problem of reflexivity arises in dramatic form here. The principle when applied to itself, as it must be, undermines itself. It cannot meet its own demands. Sawing off the branch one is sitting on is not generally regarded as good practice in human life, and such damaging reflexivity must always be seen as a warning that something is going wrong with our reasoning.

    The Vienna Circle also found difficulties in justifying the practice of science, which typically searches for regularities in the physical world and tries to discover order. Science would be impossible if everything were absolutely chaotic. Indeed, as we shall see, one of the fascinating aspects of contemporary science is the way it shows how chaos is itself ordered. No two snowflakes may be identical but that does not make the behaviour of snow unpredictable. This problem of order in the physical world, and the question of the uniformity of nature, goes hand in hand with that of the comprehensibility of nature. One solution is to indulge in metaphysics and give a rational explanation why the world is intelligible and orderly. Another is to deny that the solution lies in the world at all, or alternatively to say that there is no solution. Hume took the latter course and pointed out that there could be no demonstrative argument to prove 'that those instances, of which we have had no experience, resemble those of which we have had experience'. His diagnosis was that our supposition that the future resembles the past is 'derived entirely from habit.' (1888, pp. 89, 134). For Hume, human custom replaced the possibility of rational justification. Kant, on the other hand, was much more willing to embrace metaphysics but claimed that it 'is taken from the essential nature of the thinldng faculty' (1970, p.

 

9). In other words, we order the world not because of its inherent nature, but because that is how we naturally see things. The ordering is a product of our intellect, not of reality. Kant thus introduced the idea of a 'synthetic a priori' principle, which organised our experience and was not derived from it. He claimed that 'the understanding does not draw its laws a pr/or/from nature, but prescribes them to nature' (1955, p. 82).

    This idea of a itm0r/synthetic judgements, which demolished the basic empiricist idea that the physical world provides us with all the information we need, was, needless to say, resisted by the Vienna Circle. Its members argued that we do not obtain knowledge through the impress of human reason on informed material, perhaps like the stamp of a signet ring in wax (Neurath and Cohen, p. 312). They were sure that the material itself was ordered in a certain way, but escaped the need for metaphysical explanation by taking the empiricist view that such order cannot be known beforehand. They said: 'The world might be ordered more strictly than it is: but it might equally be ordered much less without jeopardizing the possibility of knowledge.' The Circle accepted that induction, defined as 'the inference from yesterday to tomorrow, from here to there', is only valid if there is regularity. Their position is that regularity does not have to be presupposed in some a pr/or/way, but can be derived empirically. Science thus may depend on regularity, and will itself discover it. It pulls itself up by its own boot-straps. If we do not discover much regularity, our science cannot progress.

    It is taken as obvious that we should pursue science as our sole source of knowledge. If the world proves sufficiently ordered for us to find it intelligible, that appears to be a lucky chance. It is, however, the chance on which our whole system of knowledge rests. We are told that the method of induction may be applied 'wherever it leads to fruitful results, whether or not it be adequately rounded' (Neurath and Cohen, p. 313). The important point is that all inductive inferences have to be tested empirically. A positivist would hold that there could be no other kind of test. The notion, however, of obtaining fruitful results from a method that is not properly founded is curious. It seems that every inductive inference is a leap in the dark, which is justified only if

 

 

22                         Science and Reason                                                                    Science and Reason                         23

 

we land safely. As a way of giving us confidence to leap, this has it flaws. One difficulty is recognizing the difference between results that are fruitful as opposed to those that only appear so. We may think we are discovering regularity when all we find is a series of coincidences. The latter indeed is perhaps more likely if we have no right to expect regularity. Since Hume, empiricists have found it very difficult to distinguish patterns of phenomena which merely happen to appear together from those which possess some causal link between them. Regular coincidences merge into causally linked events for an empiricist, since there is nothing other than apparent regularity for experience to discover. The idea of underlying causal connections as an explanation of regularity is not an empiricist one.

    The perennial problem with testing induction empirically is that even when predictions prove successful this will only support the principle of induction if we already accept it. We still face the question why the success of past predictions should be a guide to the future. There is an endemic circularity here. We may wish to appeal to previous empirical successes as a guarantee of the regularity of the world, and hence as the justification of induction. Yet that presupposes that the apparent regularity will continue, which is the point at issue. Empiricists must predict future experience without any metaphysical underpinning. No appeals to the nature of reality and the fact of physical causation can be consistent with the empiricists' outlook. The latter deliberately leaves reason with little scope, and any notion of justification must fail to get a grip. Experience is everything.

 

Wittgenstein's Attack on Metaphysics

 

The Vienna Circle's manifesto concluded with a list of names which included that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who was identified as a 'leading representation of the scientific world-conception'. Yet it is a gross simplification to suppose that his early philosophy was narrowly positivist. In the Tractatus he sums up what he saw as the correct method in philosophy: '

 

To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science... and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. (1916, 6.53)

 

This may look like the Vienna Circle's condemnation of metaphysics, but there is a catch. Wittgenstein had pointed out in his previous section (6.523) that there are things that cannot be put into words. He continues: 'They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.' He certainly thought that what can be said must be said clearly and 'what we cannot speak about, we must consign to silence' (7). There is much to indicate that Wittgenstein thought that what lay beyond language, so far from being nonsensical and of no importance, was actually more important than what could be confined within its limits. Yet in stressing the limits of language, he also meant to limit the power of reason to get to grips with issues such as the justification of science.

    Wittgenstein in the Tractatus did explicitly deal with the problem of the principles of science on which its methods depend. Questions about causality and induction are presupposed by science, he thought, and could not be a matter of empirical discovery. They are, he believed insights 'about the forms in which the propositions of science can be cast' (6.341). His problem was that if science did not discover such truths as facts about the world, and if they were not necessary truths or laws of logic, it was difficult to see a third way. He had abandoned metaphysics and accepted that metaphysical statements could not claim meaning. He used an analogy to elucidate the position, suggesting that we imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. By covering it with a fine, square mesh, we could say of every square whether it was white or black, thus improving 'a unified form on the description of the surface' (6.341). It is perhaps significant that he insists that the form is optional. We could have used different kinds of mesh, and he points out that 'it might be that we could describe the surface more accurately with a coarse triangular mesh'. The presuppositions of science are like the mesh or net, telling us nothing about the world but enabling us to describe it.

 

 

24

 

Science and Reason

 

    One might seize on the term 'optional' and think that Wittgenstein contends that it does not matter which set of principles we adopt to enable us to do science. The choice would then appear arbitrary or conventional. In the Tractatus, however, with its picture theory of meaning, Wittgenstein was concerned with the relation of words to the world; he thought that truth mattered. Wittgenstein's own example was Newtonian mechanics, and he believed that scientific schema was an attempt to construct according to a single plan all the true propositions we need to describe the world. Different nets will divide up the world differently and it is important how this is done. Nevertheless, they are not themselves part of natural science, and do not themselves tell us about the nature of the world. What they picture is the formal structure of reality, and not any particular fact.

    Wittgenstein's problem is the status of the presuppositions of science, given that he has ruled out the meaningfulness of metaphysics. As a result, we cannot give reasons for such principles. Science cannot justify its own assumptions and we cannot step back from say physics to metaphysics in order to give physics a rational foundation. The scientific assumption that there are laws of nature, so that things occur in a regular manner, is something that, according to Wittgenstein, 'cannot be said' (6.36). Instead, he says, 'it makes itseft manifest' or shows itseft. A structural property, like logical form, is only indicated in the fact of something being structured. Wittgenstein uses the same phrase about the presuppositions of science making themselves manifest, as when he refers to the 'mystical', which shows itseft but cannot be put into words. Whatever he meant to include in that category, his restriction of meaningful language to the subject-matter of science is extraordinary. Not only does it rule out much of importance that may lie beyond science, but it robs science of a ration ale that can be explained and justified within the confines of language. Too much is consigned to the category of the ineffable.

    The word 'mystical' is important for Wittgenstein, as can be illustrated by his use of it when he said: 'It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists' (6.44). Nothing could demonstrate more his feeling of tlie inadequacy of physical

 

Salenee and Reason                         25

 

science as a total explanation of the world. That things exist at all is a fact which science cannot explain. While Wittgenstein appears to agree with the logical positivists about the meaninglessness of such cosmic questions, he also paradoxically felt that the questions mattered. Science can in fact only be relied on to explain everything if there is an arbitrary restriction on what can count as real and what is to count as a proper explanation. The continuing problem is why such restrictions should be made. The price of saying there are no unsolvable riddles left is to limit severely what can count as a genuine riddle. Only what is accessible to science will be counted as real. Yet this merely shifts the issue to the question of the scope of science. Do we mean, for example, science as it happens now to be, or science as it might one day develop? The positivists recognized that they had to talk of possible sense-experience, and this made it possible for Ayer in 1936 to accept the meaningfulness of the proposition that there are mountains on the farther side of the moon (1946, p. 36). In fact this could be checked some thirty years later. Many propositions, even within science, cannot even in principle be checked in such a direct way. Are claims about the other side of the universe to be ruled out as unscientific? Scientific theory increases its scope year by year. The meaningfulness of theories about the far reaches of the universe, or, at the other extreme, sub-atomic particles, cannot be linked too closely with the possibility of human observers gaining access to them. Indeed as the importance of theory has been stressed more and more in the philosophy of science, it has been recognized, even by those influenced by empiricism, that a straightforward cashing out of theory in terms of its empiricial relevance is too simple. There cannot be a close correspondence between theoretical terms and empirical observations. The idea of unobservable entities is no longer an embarrassment as it was for the verificationists.

    The idea that science is the source of all explanation runs deep in the modern world. Wittgenstein shows the distance between himself and the Vienna Circle when he expresses reservations about the scope of causal explanations. He clearly means to be critical of modernity when he comments that 'the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained' (1961,

 

 

26                         Sdence and Reason                                                                Sdence and Reason                          27

 

6.372). Modernity and science certainly sit very happily together. Indeed confidence in science as the arbiter and exemplar of human rationality lies at the very heart of the modern world. Only in recent years has this confidence begun to crack.

    The Tractatus accepted that the presuppositions of science were neither logical truths nor empiricial discoveries. Their status seems somewhat anomalous. When Wittgenstein changed his whole outlook, he was still faced with the same problem. He no longer believed that language functioned in only one way, by picturing reality. The propositions of natural science could no longer claim a monopoly of meaning. Instead he came to believe that the meaning of a word is the way it is used. Language can be used in a multiplicity of ways and meaning depends on context (Trigg, 1991). We are often tempted to transfer the meaning of a word in one context to its use in another. Our failure to recognize the different uses suggests to Wittgenstein a source of the philosophical confusion he wished to lay bare. Metaphysics was a particular target, since he thought it arose simply because of an insistence on using language appropriate to one context in a totally different one.

    It is intriguing that despite the latter Wittgenstein's radically different approach to the question of meaning from that of a positivist, metaphysics is still anathema. For example he lists words such as 'knowledge', 'being', 'I' or 'object' which characteristically appear in the writings of those who deal in metaphysics (1953, 116). His sharp question to philosophers using them is: 'Is the word actually ever used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?' This comparison with games is meant to invoke their rule-governed character. Wittgenstein's point would be that a word like 'object' gains it meaning from the context in which it is generally learned. It has no special meaning over and above what a child could grasp. Yet once it is torn from the everyday world and takes on a rarefied usage, we run the risk of talking nonsense without realizing it. We have ignored the rules.

    Wittgenstein therefore claims: 'What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.' He is here explicitly attacking the language and assumptions of the Tractatus. For example, he refers to his statement In that book of the general

 

form of propositions as being 'This is how things are'. He has become dissatisfied with such sweeping generalities and says, in an analogy reminiscent of the net: 'One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it' (1953, 114). Yet what makes us choose one frame rather than another? We are left with the problem that if metaphysics is merely the science of language, we seem to have no resources for rationally justifying our most basic stances.

    When Wittgenstein talks of the necessity of returning metaphysical language to its everyday use, it is hardly surprising that he regards his own Traaatus as badly in need of such a return. In it he had, for example, claimed: 'Generally speaking, objects are colourless' (1916, 2.0232). To make sense at all, that has to be understood as use of language in a highly technical way. The later Wittgenstein is content with 'the language of everyday' (1953, 120). Philosophy cannot then legislate about the use of language, but should only describe what is said. Philosophy cannot give language any foundation. He says: 'It leaves everything as it is'. Once again we arrive at the conclusion that the possibility of rational justification is illusory. Instead, our reasoning finds its place in the way we live. It cannot, he holds, abstract itself from the situation in which we find ourselves and function outside all contexts in a complete vacuum. Yet that is what metaphysics would have us do. A traditional metaphysical view is one of the self reasoning about truth in a manner that can be detached from place and time. Since for Wittgenstein the context is the source of meaning, he finds this an impossible picture. Language will lose all claim to meaning once it is abstracted from its normal role in the activities of our life.

    Wittgenstein made much of the term 'language-game' and through it he tried to stress the intimate connection between language and the way we live. He says: 'The speaking of a language is part of an activity or of a form of life' (1953, 23). Our understanding has to be rooted in particular practices. The idea of a detached reason establishing, however tentatively, what had to be true of the world, was anathema to him. Instead, he emphasized 'grammatical' issues about the nature' of concepts. In effect, he

 

 

28                         Science and Reason                                                               Science and Reason                         29

 

was unwilling to allow philosophy, with all its deficiencies, to try to get to grips with the real world. Yet it can be fairly pointed that this charge presupposes that the words 'real world' have ^ determinate meaning. Wittgenstein pursues this point with vigour, arguirag that our very concept of reality will be rooted in the form of life in which we are situated. He still uses the word 'picture' ^vhich he had used in the Tractatus to link with reality. He had held there that 'a proposition can be true or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality' (1961, 4.06). Yet in the last year or so of his life he was saying: 'I do not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness' (1969, 94). Instead, he claims 'it is the inherited background against which^ I distinguish between true and false'. What is the status of this: kind of framework which gives me my standards of truth? This is not such a, very different question from that about the status of the net. We are still searching for justification.

    The later Wittgenstein seems willing to subordinate questions of truth, and of what counts as a good reason, to particular conceptual syatems. (See my Reason and Commitment for a discussion of Wittgenstein and relativism.) In this, he lays himself open to the charge of relativism. Truth is no longer, it seems, to be associated directly with the world. In fact he does not hesitate to say that description of a world-picture could be part of 'a kind of mythok^gy' (1969, 95). Their role is to be like the rules of a game. This conception of rules is central to the thought of the later Wittgenstein. They are public and social in character, and the use of language will only make sense in public contexts. Yet faced with different, and possibly incompatible, language-games, we may well wonder why we should play this game rather than that, or incleed any game at all. If we pursue the analogy we may wonder what arguments could be presented to someone who fails to appreciate the game of cricket. Cricket can be described, but can on e show others the error of their ways in not playing or watching it? Are they wrong? One can in fact do no more than explain thatt this is how the game is played, and that is precisely Wittgenstein's retort to anyone searching for justification, or for reasons and grounds, for taking part^ in a particular languageĝ game. It seems that language-games as such are not true or false.

 

Their rules cannot be justified and they rest on no foundation. They cannot be 'tested' since what counts as an adequate test has to be a matter internal to the language-game (1969, 82). As Wittgenstein says: 'The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference' (1969, 83). The frame may dictate how we see things, but, F^ke the net, it can be displayed but not justified. There is nowhere else for us to stand in order for us to pass judgement.

 

The Removal of Reason

 

Reason and philosophy itself are put in jeopardy by the later Wittgenstein. In fact, so is any notion of reality. The Tractatus had a robust sense of reality, even though language was restricted in it to what was assessible to science. Once, however, everything becomes internal to language-games and forms of life, reference to reality or the world has to gain its meaning from a particular context in a particular human practice. When everything depends on our frame of reference and there is no way of testing or reasoning about the frame, our most fundamental beliefs about reality will have an arbitrary starting point. Even if our practices are based on certain general facts of human nature, these are irrelevant to the question of justification. As Wittgenstein points out, speculation about which facts of nature give rise to our concepts is a causal investigation and 'we are not doing natural science' (1953, xii). The bedrock of our concepts may lie in the 'natural history of human beings', but that lies beyond the scope of philosophical justification (1953, 415).

     The later Wittgenstein was convinced that we cannot discuss how far one view or another may 'agree with reality'. He says that 'with this question you are already going round in a circle' (1969, 191). What one counts as real depends on our basic stance towards the world. Empiricists will say that experience will teach us what reality is, and to some extent the early Wittgenstein accepted this, by tying the meaningfulness of language to what was within the scope of science. There is still, though, the problem of justifying our reliance on experience. As he says at the end of his

 

 

30                         Salenee and Reason                                                                Science and Reason                         31

 

life, 'experience does not direct us to derive anything from experience' (1969, 130). He says: 'If it is the ground of our judging like this, and not just the cause, still we do not have a ground for seeing this in turn as a ground.' All justification has to come to an end. Otherwise we are involved in an infinite regress. This is a recurring problem in any theory of rationality. We can have a reason y for having a reason z, but we must then provide a reason for adopting reason y. Do we retreat to reason x and so on for ever? This is not a trivial point, and it leads many to believe that we might as well stop the whole process of justification sooner rather than later. He adopts a holistic approach, which stresses the way in which beliefs form a system and give each other natural support (1969, 142). Within the system, everything is coherent and hangs together. The problem arises when the whole system is put in question. As Wittgenstein remarks: 'The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our believing' (1969, 166). This means that he is unable to defend even those who trust cono temporary physics rather than oracles (1969, 499). The later Wittgenstein's whole approach is precarious precisely because of its lack of any proper foundation. The Vienna Circle had claimed to provide foundations for knowledge, but themselves failed because of their repudiation of the grounding afforded by metaphysics.

    The basic principles of science certainly cannot be given a rational justification by the later Wittgenstein. He finds that even more problematic than in the Tractatus. He admits that 'the "law of induction" can no more be grounded than certain particular propositions concerning the material of experience' (1969, 499). Yet he cannot say it is true. In the end, everything comes down to human practices. Language-games are just there and depend on some prior trust in something (1969, 9). Dealing with the question of our knowledge of the boiling point of water, he concedes that the behaviour of water could change in the future. He thus for a moment implicitly allows that there is a world to which language has to conform. Nevertheless he explains that 'we know that up to now it has behaved thus in innumerable instances'. 'This fact,' he continues, 'is fused into the foundations of our languagegames'. Yet any idea that reality could act as some kind of

 

constraint on our language-games is swiftly denied. There can be no external standard, providing a basis for justification. Once more he insists that our language-game is not based on grounds, nor can it be reasonable or unreasonable (1969, 559). He says of it, 'It is there - like our life.'

    Wittgenstein links the idea of certainty with his notion of a form of life (1969, 358). It, too, lies beyond being justified or unjustified, but is 'something animal'. We just do naturally expect certain things and live in a particular way. Both Wittgenstein and Hume, having rejected the possibility of metaphysical justification, have to turn back to appeal to human nature, or something very much like it. Metaphysics is replaced by brute facts about human existence. Some may wish to explain such facts by turning to neo-Darwinian doctrines of evolution and natural selection, but this is in no way a justification for our behaviour. As we shall see later, it is a causal explanation and entirely different from giving reasons. Whether reasons are forthcoming is an important question, but it is not one that can be answered by changing the subject.

    The division by the Vienna Circle between logic and empirical statements was a simple way of disposing of metaphysics.' Wittgenstein, in his later period, proved to be no more in love with metaphysics than earlier. He did recognize, though, that there could be no sharp boundary between logic and empirical propositions (1969, 319). He enlarges on this by saying that 'the lack of sharpness is that of the boundary between rule and empirical proposition'. Rules constitute language-games and determine what we take to be evidence. The rules that are implicit in our practices govern what we consider reasonable and unreasonable, but cannot themselves be rationally defended. The principles of science are rules of the scientific language-game. The game may change over time, but cannot be grounded.

    The notions of language-game and form of life are central to Wittgenstein's later philosophy but are hard to define clearly. Indeed his philosophical method encouraged him to resist defining the 'essences' of things, and he was much happier with the idea of family resemblance. One of the clearest messages to come from the later Wittgenstein was his opposition to the possibility

 

 

32

 

Sdence and Reason

 

of metaphysics and the idea of a free-floating reason, transcending its local circumstances. His earlier view of the principles of science as a net became transmuted into the idea of rules governing different language-games. Our rational understanding can only be seen as rooted in our social practices. Indeed there may even be a faint echo of Nietzsche in his attack on the very possibility of reason (see Trigg, 1988, chapter 10). His emphasis on the nature of concepts, and on the social setting which gave them their meaning, left no way in which philosophy, in general, and metaphysics in particular, could get to grips with the real world.

    All this has a shattering impact on the status of science. It can no longer itself be seen as an arbiter of truth, but becomes one system amongst others. It can only be justified in its own terms, but there can be no rational basis left for upholding it in the face of opposition. We may go on being scientists because that is the way we have been educated, but faced with alternative societies preferring to put their trust in oracles, astrology or whatever, we can only indulge in name-calling. We may not expect to convert or persuade those from a different background, but more disturbing is the fact that, once challenged, scientists have no means of justifying even to themselves the practice of science. It is what they do, and that is all. Perhaps this is not a genuine criticism if such justification is in principle impossible. It seems unlikely, however, that the questions why we should practise science at all or trust its pronouncements, perhaps to the exclusion of other views to which we may be attracted, can be shrugged off so easily.

    The Vienna Circle would have been horrified by the way in which Wittgenstein's later philosophy allows religion back on the scene. It cannot, it seems, claim objective truth, whatever that may be, but as an undoubted human practice it generates its own rule-governed activities and its own meaning. It is deprived of any metaphysical grounding, and many religious believers could feel that this inability to claim truth itself undermines religion. However there is also the point that in such circumstances religious practices can claim to be meaningful and cannot be shown to be false. D. Z. Phillips, for example, has systematically applied Wittgensteinian views to Christianity. He maintains that 'The

 

Sdence and Reason

 

33

 

meaning of what agreement to reality comes to is itself determined by the language-games we play and the forms of life they enter into' (1988, p. 55). His point is that we cannot talk of a reality external to our beliefs and practices. Language cannot be viewed as a screen which may hide God (p. 289). Opposing the view (expressed in my Reason and Commitment) that belief in God is distinct from the commitment that may follow it, and is the justification for it, Phillips quotes with approval a remark by N0rman Malcolm that this desire for justification, the desire to ground religious belief in some kind of ontology, is 'one of the primary pathologies of philosophy' (p- 267).

    The issue is once again the meaningfulness of metaphysics, just as it was in logical positivism. Yet the question of the very intelligibility of the concept of objective reality marks a radical departure from the limited certainties of empiricism. The argument has become one about the possibility of transcendence, and not just the transcendence of God. The existence of anything in and by itseft, apart frorn our practices, appears to be put into question. Indeed at times the later Wittgenstein has been accused of linguistic idealism. Yet without an ontological anchor not only religious practices are cut free from their moorings. Each human way of life has to be accepted in its own terms, since there is nothing against which they can be measured. No languagegame can make global claims to truth. The very idea of the rational justification of whole practices is dismissed as an impossibility. Human reason, except in its local manifestations, is left with no role. Our thinking is too firmly rooted, it is alleged, in particular linguistic practices.

     One may indeed idly wonder why metaphysics, as well as physics, could not count as a rule-governed language-game. Wittgenstein could presumably deny any connection between metaphysics and ordinary human life. The concepts of metaphysics, it would be alleged, are too far removed from the contexts in which they could be given any application. Physics rests on genuine expectations about the regularity of physical events. The question is where metaphysics could gain a hold. Perhaps it does answer genuine human needs, as we reflect on the apparent contingency of things, and on our own place in the world. Wittgenstein

 

 

34                         Science and Reason

 

would have none of this, however, and his willingness to disqualify some ways of talking as genuine language-games serves to raise again the issue of what is to count as one. The matter is graphically illustrated by D. Z. Phillips' treatment of religion. According to him, there can be no way of rationally resolving the dispute between theists and atheists. Yet he goes further and accepts that even within Christian theology there are warring conceptions which reflect 'deep religious differences' which cannot be rationally resolved (1988, p. 240).

    In such contexts, it seems, appeals to truth and falsity, and to such notions as heresy, are mere slogans. All we may be left with is the fact of lack of agreement. Even Christianity, then, cannot be regarded as one form of life, but seems to be composed of an indefinite number of overlapping ones. Indeed, if insoluble disagreement is the sign of a clash of forms of life, we may each in the end find we belong to a form of life with one member, and that is emphatically not what Wittgenstein meant. At times he appears to be claiming that human life as a whole constitutes a form of life. The ideal of a form of life cannot in fact be given a clear content. Any account of human activity is liable to lapse into incoherence without such notions as reason, truth and reality. Certainly without them, all human belief, and not just religious belief, will lose its point. Science is as much at risk as any religion.

 

2

 

Science and Pragmatism

 

'Science Works'

 

Any discussion about the possible justification of science is likely to be met by the conviction that whatever its rational foundations, it certainly works. Scientists seem progressively more able to control the physical world. It has made more difference to the lives of ordinary people than any other human activity. Modern life is dominated, even cocooned, by the products of this century's physical science. Every time we turn a switch to obtain light or heat, every time we watch television or get a cool drink out of the refrigerator, we affirm the obvious success of science. Our transport by road, rail, air or sea depends on modern inventions. Life, in short, would be unimaginable without the benefits of modern science. What need do we have of philosophic theories which claim to give an underpinning to scientific theory? Science works.

    This might seem to be the reaction of the ordinary person whose feet are planted firmly on the ground, the gut feeling of the individual called in a slightly earlier age 'the man on the Clapham omnibus'. Yet it is also the starting point for a sophisticated philosophic position, pragmatism, which has flourished primarily in the United States since the end of the nineteenth century. Philosophers such as William James, C. S. Peirce,

 

 

Science and Pragmatism                        37

 

36

 

Science and Pragmatism

 

and John Dewey, have helped to mould a distinctive outlook. According to Peirce, the maxim of pragmatism is that one conception could have no difference in 'logical effect or input' from another, except in so far as 'it might conceivably modify our practical conduct differently from that of our second conception' (1957, p. 252). The whole weight of attention should be on the way in which people's behaviour is modified. For the pragmatists, as for Wittgenstein, metaphysical speculation should be ruled out. Instead of reasoning about the nature of reality, or searching for firm foundations of knowledge, the pragmatist typically believes that we should start from where we are and build up our conception of knowledge out of our present practices. Because metaphysics tends to point to a reality beyond our knowledge, it can open up the possibility of scepticism. If something is beyond our grasp, it might appear that we have no very great reason for believing it is there, and it is easy for anyone to deny its existence. Pragmatism begins with our actions and our actual purposes, and so avoids this.