Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 12:02:16 -0700 (MST)
Subject: rts2-02b


         In science there is a kind of dialectic in which a
regularity is identified, a plausible explanation for it is
invented, and the reality of the entities and processes
postulated in the explanation is then checked.  This
dialectic is illustrated in Diagram 0.1 below.



                                Result/regularity
events; sequences; invariances       (1) *classical empiricism*
          |                           |
          |
     generative                       |
     mechanisms                       v model-building
     in models
          |                           |
       +--+-----------------------+
     /                              \ |
    (3)- - <- - - - - - - - - - - - -(2) *transcendental idealism*
   real  empirical-testing    imagined/imaginary

      Diagram 0.1.   The Logic of Scientific Discovery



If a classical empiricist tradition in the philosophy of
science stops at the first stage, a rival neo-Kantian or
transcendental idealist tradition (discernible in the
history of the philosophy of science) stops at the second.
If and only if the third step is taken and developed in the
way indicated above can there be an adequate rationale for
the use of laws to explain phenomena in open systems, where
no constant conjunctions prevail.  It is the unthinking
presupposition of closed systems together with the failure
to analyse experimental activity (which presupposes open
systems) that accounts for the most glaring <RTS2:15>
weakness of orthodox philosophy of science: viz. the
nonexistence in science of Humean causal laws, i.e. of
universal empirical generalizations, and hence the
inadequacy of the criteria of explanation, confirmation (or
falsification), scientific rationality etc., that are based
on the assumption that a closure is the universal rule
rather than the rare and (for the most part) artificially
generated exception that I contend it is. It is because our
activity is (normally) a necessary condition of constant
conjunctions of events that the philosophy of science needs
an ontology of structures and transfactually active things.

         The position advanced here is characterized as
transcendental realism, in opposition to the empirical
realism common to the other two traditions.  Both the
neo-Kantian or transcendental idealist tradition and
transcendental realism see the step between (1) and (2) in
Diagram 0.1 as involving creative model building, in which
plausible generative mechanisms are imagined to produce the
phenomena in question.  But transcendental realism sees the
need for the step between (2) and (3) also, in which the
reality of the mechanisms postulated are subjected to
empirical scrutiny.  Transcendental realism differs from
empirical realism in interpreting (1) as the invariance of
an (experimentally produced) result rather than a
regularity; and from transcendental idealism in allowing the
possibility that what is imagined in (2) need not be
imaginary but may be (and come to be known as) real.
Without such an interpretation it is impossible to sustain
the rationality of scientific growth and change.

         A conception of science is argued for in which it
is seen as a <RTS2:16> process-in-motion, with the dialectic
mentioned above in principle having no foreseable end.  Thus
when a new stratum or level of reality has been discovered
and adequately described science moves immediately to the
construction and testing of possible explanations for what
happens at that level.  This will involve drawing on
whatever cognitive equipment is available and perhaps the
design of new experimental techniques and the invention of
new sense-extending equipment.  Once the explanation is
discovered science then moves on to the construction and
testing of possible explanations for it.  At each level of
reality law-like behaviour has to be interpreted normically,
i.e. as involving the exercise of tendencies which may not
be realised.


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