Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Lange’s (Philos Stud 101:213–51, 2000) argument in support of Sellars’ scientific realism (i.e. against ’the layer-cake picture’ of theoretical explanation), which, if successful, surprisingly, undermines Sellars’ scientia mensura principle and justifies the anti-Sellarsian view to the effect that certain domains of discourse which use irreducibly normative descriptions and explanations (e.g. folk-psychological discourse) are explanatorily autonomous. (However, interestingly enough, Lange takes himself to be a Sellarsian and does not put forward his claim as an explicitly anti-Sellarsian one.) It will be argued that Lange’s argument against the layer-cake view is not strictly speaking Sellarsian, since Lange interprets Sellars’ argument in an overly abstract or formal manner. Moreover, I will suggest that, within a properly Sellarsian context, Lange’s argument against the layer-cake picture can actually be used for quite un- Langean purposes, namely in order to show that folk-psychological descriptions and explanations are not if fact autonomous. However, Lange could insist that his reconstruction of Sellars’ argument is substantially correct (irrespectively of how Sellars himself understood it) and he does have the resources to do so. I will propose that the substantial issue between Lange and Sellars turns on their different views on the function of ceteris-paribus clauses, and ultimately, on issues about the unity of science. Finally, it will be suggested that the Sellarsian framework for tackling these issues constitutes a viable alternative to Lange’s picture of theoretical explanation, while at the same time incorporating be the sound insights of the latter.
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Notes
Here it can be objected that in the ‘space of reasons’ thesis normative discourse is to be contrasted with empirical descriptions, not with descriptive discourse in general. This is indeed so, but I think that this point can be granted without in the least downplaying the importance of Sellars’ distinction between the descriptive-explanatory and the prescriptive-evaluative level for reconciling the space of reasons thesis with the scientia mensura principle. More specifically, the above distinction can be understood as a distinction between two radically different kinds of descriptions, namely empirical (or, better, ontologically committal) and non-empirical (ontologically non-committal) descriptions. Empirical descriptions are internally connected to explanations, i.e. to certain counterfactually robust inferences which are necessary for licensing the applicability of one empirical description on the basis of another (and in this domain of discourse, the scientific image has the last word) while non-empirical descriptions are individuated on the basis of prescriptive and evaluative considerations (which are not inferior but just (irreducibly) different from explanatory considerations). Hence, we can reformulate Sellars’ basic strategy in his attempt to reconcile the space of reasons thesis with the scientia mensura principle as follows: although normative discourse can be indeed descriptive just like explanatory discourse, it is descriptive in a sense that is to be sharply contrasted to the way that explanatory discourse is descriptive.
The application of the distinction between the descriptive-explanatory and the prescriptive-evaluative dimensions of discourse to normative discourse itself enables us to recognise and properly disentangle a confusion between two different ways of understanding the normativity of our behaviour. On the one hand, we can understand the latter as something that explains why an intentional state or action is rational (in the sense of placing this behaviour within the sphere of what Davidson calls ‘the constitutive ideal of rationality’); this constitutes the evaluative dimension of normativity, but since we can also view the latter as itself having an essentially expressive function, i.e. as an expression (not description or explanation) of commitments and entitlements, this dimension of normativity can be also understood as having a prescriptive function -i.e. as something expressing settled attitudes of viewing the world which are internally related to certain courses of action. On the other hand, an ascription of normative status to an intentional state or action can be understood as an explanation that explains why the latter occur or take place. This is the descriptive and explanatory dimension (or understanding) of normativity and, as we shall see, in this descriptive and explanatory sense, the justification of normative explanations has to do with whether the latter can inductively confirm certain (e.g. folk-psychological) empirical generalizations and project them to new, unexamined, cases, on the basis of a network of counterfactually robust inferences (which constitute the content of the normative explanans). The important thing here to note is that this distinction between two ways of understanding the normative force of our behaviour -namely, a third-personal as opposed to a first-personal one- is methodological, not substantive. What is more, those two distinct dimensions of the normative appraisal of our behaviour are internally (or, shall I say, ‘dialectically’?) related as follows: As Lange puts it (in the case of folk-psychological explanations): “It may be that folk-psychological generalizations are salient only from a perspective that recognizes certain patterns of behaviour as required by ideal rationality” (Lange 2000, p. 248). I contend that this, translated in properly Sellarsian terms, can be understood as follows: The process of the revision and gradual abandonment of manifest-image normative explanations in favour of scientific-image non-normative explanations is justified to the extent that it brings actual human behaviour (the descriptive-explanatory dimension of normativity) in gradual conformity with what is considered to be ideally rational human behaviour (i.e. what one ought to do in order to be ideally rational). (See also Sect. 4.)
Interestingly, Lange himself does not seem to be aware of the potentially devastating effect of his Sellarsian argument to the coherence of the Sellarsian project as a whole (i.e. the stereoscopic fusion of the manifest and the scientific image).
According to Sellars, theory-laden reports such as those about electrons observed in a cloud chamber can function as perceptual observations insofar as they are reliable non-inferential classificatory responses to an object. The distinction between observation and theory is methodological, not substantive, and has to do with whether, at a given stage of our knowledge, justified beliefs about a certain kind of entity can be supported only by means of inferences from other beliefs or whether such beliefs have themselves come to function as reliable non-inferential perceptual judgments about the presence of an object in the environment. However, Sellars also holds that there is a stricter sense of perceptual observations (what we see of the object, as opposed to what kind we see the object to be) according to which molecules or electrons (or, in general, the micro-structural, causal and dispositional properties of objects) are unobservable (but this, of course, does not mean that those ‘stricter’ perceptual observations of ‘occurrent’ proper and common sensible properties are epistemically privileged in any sense that would involve committing the myth of the Given). This latter distinction will prove useful for distinguishing ‘scientifically’ contaminated empirical generalizations from ‘manifest’ observable empirical generalizations and for demonstrating the ultimate instability (non-lawful character) of the latter (see also O’Shea 2007, pp. 34–35).
This line of thought has been pursued by van Fraassen and his constructive empiricism (1975; 1977; 1980). It can also be ascribed to irenic instrumentalism (or, what comes down to the same thing, irenic realism) (see e.g. Nagel 1961, p. 152; Hempel 1965; Carnap 1966, p. 256; Strawson 1979, pp. 57–59; Fine 1984). According to Strawson’s reconciliation, for instance, since the observable phenomena can be saved by both realists (i.e. those who are committed to the existence of the unobservable entities posited by the scientific image) and antirealists (i.e. those who take it that we do not have good epistemic reasons to believe in the literal existence of unobservable entities insofar as the observable phenomena are saved equally well without the supposition that unobservable entities really exist) it can be argued that both viewpoints can be understood as different and incommensurable descriptions of the same things, in the sense that each of these is valid from its own point of view, i.e. relative to the purposes it serves. They are alternative manners of speaking or seeing the world that are convenient for certain purposes. We just have to realize that the meaning of the concept of existence does not remain the same from one viewpoint to the other. Our standards for what really exists shift in the process of the change of frameworks (from the manifest to the scientific image). Hence, those two different ways of understanding the world and our place in it are not in conflict with one another but can peacefully coexist, provided of course that we give up the demand for a unified, fully comprehensive categorial account of the structure of reality. As we have already seen, and shall see in more detail in a moment, Sellars rejects this reconciliatory move in the debate between the realist and the antirealist as regards the ontological status of unobservable entities, holding instead that the ‘manifest’ empirical generalizations licensed by the observational framework do not (and cannot) ‘save the phenomena’ independently of the use of unobservable theoretical entities of the scientific image (that is, he holds that the former do not have the same empirical consequences (predictive power) as the theoretically contaminated empirical generalizations licensed by the scientific image).
Moreover, it is precisely because empirical generalizations are capable of being projected lawfully to fresh cases only if they are formulated in unobservable theoretical terms that we can be led to formulate new testable empirical generalizations (as well as new kinds of experiments and instruments to use in our observations). A theory is capable of formulating new empirical generalizations (i.e. making novel predictions) just because it is in a position to restore the lawful character of unstable, ‘anomalous’ empirical generalizations only through the essential use of terms about unobservable entities.
It is important, in this connection, to note that, for Sellars, the empirical laws that govern the entities to which our empirical concepts refer are an integral part of the very meaning of the latter. This is because empirical laws are what is made explicit by counterfactually robust ‘material rules of inference’, which, in turn, are constitutive of the very meaning of empirical concepts. According to Sellars, an integral part of what one is committed to in applying any determinate concept in empirical circumstances is drawing a distinction between counterfactual differences in circumstances that would and those that would not affect the truth of the judgement one is making (Brandom 2015, pp. 66–68). That is to say, the application of empirical concepts (including, importantly, folk-psychological concepts) essentially involves counterfactual-supporting dispositional commitments to what would happen if... For example, one cannot be said to have mastered the use of the empirical concept ‘lion’ unless one knows such things as that a lion would still be a mammal if the lighting were slightly different, it were a different day of the week, it was transported to a zoo, we clipped its hair etc. Accordingly, it seems that Sellars’ argument about the unstable, non-lawful character of the behaviour of observable facts if the latter are construed as belonging within the ‘manifest’ observational framework can also be used to show that the very meaning of empirical concepts becomes similarly unstable if we take it that the latter is constituted by conceptual recourses belonging exclusively within the observational framework. In that case, we would be unable to consistently apply (project) an empirical concept to fresh, unobserved, cases -at least insofar as the latter involve cases in which the usual, expected behaviour of empirical objects (as delineated by our empirical concepts) is violated in an unpredictable manner. In other words, no rule in this case could be formulated to guide the concept’s non-random application to the above, genuinely fresh, cases -i.e. there would be no distinction between what seems to be the right application and what actually is one. It is exactly in order to secure that minimal semantic distinction, necessary for the very stability (i.e. the possibility of inductive projectibility) of our empirical concepts, that we have to view the non-observational, postulational, scientific-image vocabulary as essentially involved in the determination of the very meaning of empirical terms. (Another interesting thing to note here is that, if the above line of thought is correct, it seems that an essentially Wittgensteinian argument can be used for radically anti-Wittgensteinian purposes. However, we cannot earn our right to that conclusion until after we have examined how Lange’s argument, which precisely purports to restore the properly Wittgensteinian (pluralist, anti-naturalistic) spirit of this line of thought, fails to establish its purported conclusion.)
This idea comes from McDowell in his arguments against projectivism in ethics (1981). Of course, in the context of McDowell’s argument, the idea of connecting a natural kind’s identity and individuation conditions with its salience from a theoretical outlook is used to support McDowell’s own view to the effect that ethical discourse is not only normatively but also descriptively and explanatory autonomous (i.e. it cannot be explanatorily reduced to non-moral, naturalistic, discourse). This patently goes against the Sellarsian scientia mensura principle, and, as we shall see in a moment, it is precisely by finding a common structure in Sellars’ argument against the layer-cake picture and McDowell’s argument against moral projectivism (e.g. in the fact that in the latter, moral projectivism is seen to involve its own layer-cake, with a lower layer of naturalistic kinds and an upper level of moral kinds) that Lange is in a position to argue for an anti-Sellarsian conclusion from fully Sellarsian premises (i.e. Sellars’ own arguments for scientific realism).
But how exactly could moral (or, for that matter folk-psychological) statements function as natural laws or analogues thereof? Lange offers some examples of moral statements which express lawlike moral generalizations and can be formulated either in explicitly evaluative terms (e.g. “all actions in which someone faces danger bravely, without flinching, are (ceteris paribus) courageous”) or by reference to particular examples (“an action is courageous if it is like rushing into a burning building to rescue the children trapped inside (ceteris paribus)”). Lange admits that these moral generalizations are not laws of nature, at least as natural laws are usually understood, but are intended to express explicitly certain norms governing the proper application of certain evaluative terms. Still, he is right to claim that the analogy is appropriate, since as he puts it “we justify such a generalization by an analogue of induction: by showing how the generalization results from taking our intuitions regarding the evaluative term’s application to certain examples and projecting them onto ‘unexamined cases’ so that its extension goes on in the same way” (Lange 2000, p. 226). (Notice that, in this sense there can be natural laws that govern distinctively normative or intentional phenomena, and these laws cannot be explanatorily reduced to natural laws that govern non-normative phenomena.) And, as Lange correctly sees, Sellars’ own view is extremely congenial to Lange’s viewpoint since Sellars himself understands induction as a meta-conceptual tool for making explicit, in the form of law-statements, the norms implicitly governing our use of our ‘first-order’ empirical concepts (see e.g. Sellars 1964; 1970).
As we shall see in the next section, the substantial issue between Lange and Sellars turns on their different views on postulational explanation, on the function of ceteris-paribus clauses, and ultimately, on such large and complicated issues as that of the (explanatory) unity or disunity of science. I will suggest that the Sellarsian framework for tackling these issues constitutes a viable alternative to Lange’s picture of theoretical explanation, while at the same time incorporating what it considers to be the sound insights of the latter.
Here it should be noted that Sellars, in his famous ‘myth of Jones’ (1956), was one of first philosophers to notice the resemblance of folk-psychological concepts (e.g. thought, desire, belief, intention) to theoretical concepts, in that the former are not epistemically accessible independently of a certain categorial framework and are in fact introduced as (normative) descriptions and explanations -that is, as salient causal factors- of hitherto inscrutable behavioural phenomena (in this case, of the phenomenon of silent intelligent behaviour). On the other hand, Sellars also stresses the fact that although folk-psychological concepts are like theoretical concepts (in the above respects), they are not theoretical concepts, since we have internalized them since time immemorial and, therefore, unlike theoretical concepts, we do not have to infer them from observing our overt behaviour in order to form reliable beliefs about the psychological states they stand for. Hence, since folk-psychological concepts have come to be used in reliable non-inferential judgments about the presence of a psychological state in a person, they can be properly called ‘observational’ from a Sellarsian point of view. It is also important to stress that, for Sellars, folk-psychological concepts along with concepts about macroscopic spatiotemporal objects and their perceptible (i.e. observable) physical properties are constitutive of the categorial framework of the manifest image of man-in-the-world, i.e. the very framework in terms of which “man came to be aware of himself as man-in-the-world” (Sellars 1963a; b, p. 6). And, as Sellars makes clear, although the manifest image is not only disciplined and critical, but makes use of those aspects of scientific method which might be lumped together under the heading of ‘correlational induction’ (e.g. Millian canons of inductive inference, supplemented by canons of statistical inference) it differs from the scientific image in that it does not include postulational methods of explanation (i.e. it does not have the resources to postulate imperceptible entities and principles pertaining to them to explain the behaviour of perceptible things). Interestingly enough, this radical difference in the descriptive and explanatory resources of the manifest and the scientific image can be mapped in the structure of the layer-cake argument, and this is no accident on Sellars’ part: pace Lange, I take it that Sellars would place the descriptive and explanatory resources of the manifest image as a whole (i.e. including ‘folk-psychological’ explanations) at the middle-level of observational generalizations (since manifest image explanations are ‘correlational’, not postulational), while the explanatory resources of the scientific image (including micro-theories about psychological phenomena) would be placed to the ‘upper’, postulational level of the layer-cake.
Let me stress here that what follows is not a further development or extension of Sellars’ Jonesian ‘theory’ (as was mentioned above, the latter provides a functional-normative enrichment of the manifest image focusing on inner thinkings as rational). What is about to be described is not Jones’ theory per se but a further related strand of what I take to be Sellars’ position on the matter, namely a possible down-the-road theoretical replacement of the ‘realizing’ micro-psychological states of those inner psychological phenomena. Be that as it may, it is still the case that this further strand of Sellars’ position is internally connected to Jones’ ‘theory’ as follows: The functional-normative explanation of silent intelligent behaviour in terms of inner rational thinkings presupposes (as part of its very content) that there are determinate causal connections between our internal mental states that realize our thoughts (desires, intentions) which enable those states to relate to each other in ways that conform to their functional (semantic) characterization. Yet, functional-normative folk-psychological explanations do not specify what those causal relations are (or it only specifies them in a ‘tautological’ manner: the ‘internal structures’ recognized in Jonesian psychology are almost completely parasitic on the structure of the language Jones and its fellows speak): Precisely how those causal connections work, what kinds of mechanisms instantiate them, how they might develop and how they might break down, is left completely undetermined. (This more determinate specification can be avoided without significant practical loss due to the fact that the individuation of the content of our thoughts (desires, intentions) is based on an inarticulate sense or command that every competent speaker has -‘at the level of ‘know-how’- of the functional role that an expression (e.g. ‘it is raining’) plays in language (see e.g. deVries 2006, pp. 77–78).) And it is precisely in this latter project, namely that of the possible replacement of the realizing micro-psychological states of ‘Jonesian’ inner psychological states, that the Sellarsian layer-cake style argument can be applied to psychological phenomena -thereby reversing Lange’s allegedly Sellarsian argument for the explanatory autonomy of the folk-psychological framework.
An interesting thing to note here is that in the context of the folk-psychological framework (and, I would argue, in the categorial framework of the manifest image as a whole), abnormal behaviour is, as it were, passed over without comment, in the sense that it is not held to yield data that is relevant to the general characteristic features of the common-sense, folk-psychological ‘lifeworld’ (i.e. not such as to give rise to the need to change our global understanding in the dimension of describing and explaining our intelligent behaviour or rationality). The folk psychological framework can and does subject itself to local but not to global (descriptive and explanatory) revision; judgements as to individual matters of fact can be overturned in the course of time, but the general beliefs which stand fast at the heart of the framework simply cannot. This is because human (verbal and non-verbal) behavioural patterns which fall outside the realm of what is normal are taken by the ‘common sense’/folk-psychological framework as secondary to or as deformations of that optimal behavioural patterns which alone count as real (as really expressive of our thoughts, intentions, desires, beliefs, and, above all, as ‘really’ rational). (For a similar analysis of Husserl’s ‘lifeworld’, which in these respects is almost identical to the Sellarsian manifest image, see Smith 1995, pp. 408–410.)
Notice that Lange does not even discuss the possibility of there being unstable folk-psychological generalizations.
Indeed, the pragmatic success of manifest-image categories explains why, since time immemorial, they are taken to be true representations of the physical and social reality, although they are strictly speaking false. Accordingly, Sellars points out that the scientific image cannot account for this success of living, thinking and acting in terms of the manifest-image framework unless it posits the existence of sufficient structural similarities between the manifest-image (descriptive and explanatory) categories and their scientific counterparts (Sellars 1963a; b, pp. 20–21, 28).
In my view, this is precisely the element of truth in Churchland’s eliminative materialism (1981). For a view along similar lines see also Bermudez (2006, pp. 32–65). Indeed, Bermudez rightly highlights the fact that eliminative materialism can avoid self-refutation only if it is understood as a thesis that challenges the folk-psychological framework in the dimension of describing and explaining our behaviour towards ourselves and others and not as a view that puts into question the existence of a normative dimension of language or meaning in general. Sellars clearly holds such a view (not only about meaning, but about the whole framework of folk-psychological concepts), and, in this regard, his position is certainly different from Churchland’s view, according to which normative concepts do not survive in any sense (other than as pragmatically useful fictions) after their elimination from our descriptive and explanatory vocabulary. For this reason, Sellars’ position on the issue of the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of folk-psychological concepts should perhaps be better understood as a revisionary, rather than as an eliminativist view.
More precisely, my proposal here, inspired by the above early Sellarsian account of normativity, is that if this regulative ideal of rationality were to be materially realized, that is, if the (factually false) folk-psychological generalizations which lie at the core of the fundamental normative rules of the folk-psychological framework were to become factually true, then the normativity and ‘rulishness’ of the framework would, strictly speaking be eliminated (or, better, rendered dispensable, optional), albeit not in the sense of having disappeared from existence, but rather in the sense of having lost its ‘ideal’ status precisely because of its material realization in reality (which, remember, is the raison d’être of normative discourse). And this, interestingly, means that the raison d’être of normative discourse is to be ‘other than itself’; that is to say, its status as a regulative ideal points beyond itself, namely, beyond its status as an ideal, to its material realization in certain empirical/factual generalizations. I think that this picture, far from draining normativity (or personhood) from the world, in fact, has the exact opposite consequence, namely infusing the world with normativity, i.e. making the world a living embodiment of capacities and abilities of persons and of normative ideals.
I think that, for Sellars, this regulative ideal ultimately has to do with our liberation, at the individual as well as the collective level, from natural, biological, anthropological and social constraints or limitations (in the widest sense of the term), which result either out of pure ignorance about the structure of physical and human nature or from socially ‘non-optimal’ material distribution of already existing intellectual and material resources.
It can be objected here that Sellars himself (1957) holds that it is essential to concepts of (ordinary and scientific) kinds involved in empirical laws that they are qualified by ceteris-paribus clauses, where this is a conceptual point (rather than signifying an anomaly, or be ‘inherently problematic’). Although the issue is a huge one and I obviously cannot do justice to the complexities involved, here is a first response: Although Sellars does indeed hold that it is essential to concepts of thing-kinds that they are qualified by ceteris-paribus generalizations (where the latter qualify as laws in virtue of being counterfactually robust), this is compatible with the view that a mode of explanation (namely, ordinary causal explanation in terms of thing-kinds, which enables us to give satisfactory answers to one family of questions) can be such that by its very nature leads us to new horizons, to new questions calling for new answers of a different kind (ultimately leading to an ontology of pure processes, where explanation based on ceteris-paribus laws gives way to pure -non-causal and non-‘thingish’- description of exceptionless (strict) regularities understood in terms of ‘lawfully evolving processes’). I think Sellars (contra Brandom) espouses this latter view as well in his (1957). See, for example, Sellars (1957, pp. 262–265), where Sellars says that “thing-kind generalizations by bunching rather than ex-plaining causal properties point beyond themselves to a more pene-trating level of description and explanation” (263); “the picture of the world in terms of molar things and their causal properties points beyond itself to a picture of the world as pure episode [i.e. as a ‘lawfully evolving process’]” (263–264). This is a picture of the world in which the primary ‘objects’ are no longer substances (things) that endure through change, belong to kinds, and have conditional (e.g. causal/dispositional) properties as criteria for belonging to the latter. In this sense, ceteris-paribus qualifications (and explanation based on ceteris-paribus laws) could well be (1) indispensable for all concepts of thing-kinds, and at the same time be (2) ‘inherently problematic’, ultimately giving way to a pure description of exceptionless (strict) regularities, provided that this latter ‘pure description’ would be in non-thing-like, non-causal/dispositional terms (for example, it could be in ‘purely episodic’ terms) (263). In the remainder of this section, I will argue that this radical view can get off the ground only if we can make sense of the idea that the scientific image can ideally be explanatorily integrated.
As we shall shortly see, the above Sellarsian analysis of ceteris-paribus clauses does not commit him to the view that they are false for the simple reason that he does not view them as regularities at all. In this respect, Sellars’ position is closer to Lange’s.
Potential disturbing factors in this case include another falling body colliding with the given falling body, air resistance, an electric field (where the falling body is electrically charged), a parachute slowing the fall, or something like that. Notice, importantly, that, according to Lange, grasping the (open-ended) range of facts that could qualify as ‘disturbing factors’ (i.e. recognizing what counts as being ‘like’ the already listed cases of disturbing factors) amounts to grasping an implicit norm governing the range of appropriate application of the law of falling bodies and, in this sense, it is essentially involved in understanding the very meaning of the law in question (Lange 2000, p. 227; 2002, pp. 407–411).
Sellars contrasts the scientific image of man-in-the-world with the manifest image of man-in-the-world, i.e. with man as he appears to himself in sophisticated common sense. Of course, according to this Sellarsian terminology, the folk-psychological framework belongs to the manifest, rather than the scientific, image of man. But, as we have seen, Sellars simultaneously believes (and in this he is in complete agreement with Lange) that the manifest image, at least in its descriptive and explanatory dimension, is itself scientific (e.g. it essentially uses theoretical concepts, canons of inductive and statistical inference, it formulates and constantly refines empirical generalizations about perceptible phenomena etc.). Thus, for the purposes of this paper, the folk-psychological framework, which is a refinement of our commonsense understanding of the behaviour of ourselves and others, can itself be viewed, at least in its descriptive and explanatory dimension, as a relatively autonomous ‘special science’ with its own principles and (ceteris-paribus) laws.
It is interesting, in this connection, to note that even Sellars, who, as we shall see, believes that special sciences can be explanatorily unified (at least in principle) in an ideal scientific image, does not think that this entails the unification of the sciences themselves, i.e. of their specific subject-matter; neither does it entail the unification of their theoretical principles and methods, at least to the extent to which the latter may be practically indispensable means for discovering the laws and principles that are obeyed by the entities and processes ‘disclosed’ from the theoretical standpoint of each special science (Sellars 1963a, p. 21) .
Moreover, interestingly enough, the Sellarsian view of the role of theoretical terms in the special sciences can throw light to contemporary controversies over the status of ceteris-paribus laws -e.g. between Lange (2002) and Earman et al. (2002). According to Lange, the counterfactual robustness of ceteris-paribus clauses is a sign of their expressing normative features of our scientific practice (rather than describing non-normative worldly regularities). On the other hand, Earman, Roberts and Smith offer a non-cognitive, pragmatic account of ceteris-paribus clauses according to which, pace Lange, (1) their function should not be assimilated to that of law-statements, and (2) they are not indispensable features of scientific explanation (at least not at the level of fundamental physics); rather, from this ‘ideal’ point of view they are understood as pragmatically useful fictions/falsehoods (see also Earman and Roberts 1999). Now, the above Sellarsian analysis can locate an element of truth in both these seemingly conflicting viewpoints: pace Earman, Roberts and Smith, we do not have to choose between the thesis that ceteris-paribus clauses function as laws (i.e. support counterfactuals) and the view that their function is ultimately pragmatic; all we need to do (following Lange) is to construe them as having normative function (i.e. as background conditions necessary for the very formation of the ‘domain of discourse’ of each special science or as expressions of our conception, at the practical level of ‘know-how’, of the function of the laws, principles and methods of a special science), and not as describing (falsely) strict worldly regularities. Yet, pace Lange, it does not follow from the above normative-pragmatic Langean-Sellarsian analysis of ceteris-paribus laws that we must be pluralists all the way down as regards the explanatory power (autonomy) of the special sciences, or, in general, of any theoretical framework whose ceteris-paribus clauses are stable enough to support counterfactuals. On the contrary, it can be argued, on Sellarsian grounds (in line with Earman, Roberts and Smith’s view), that while the plurality in question can indeed exist at a practical level and be useful and even methodologically indispensable, there is another dimension of the use of theoretical terms of special sciences, namely their role as candidates for integration in the ‘total picture’ of the human organism, from which the scientific image (in this ‘ideal’ sense) can be considered as capable of being explanatorily unified (i.e. of forming a coherent -single, complex and stratified- picture of man-in-the-world) and at the bottom explanatory level of which explanation based on ceteris-paribus laws will give way to a level of ‘pure description’ of exceptional (strict) regularities. Again, in line with Earman, Roberts and Smith’s view, it does not follow from this that ceteris-paribus laws do not play a significant ‘orientating’ role in the special sciences. For example, as was mentioned earlier, it may well be the case that the behaviour of very complex patterns of entities (studied by a ‘higher’ level special science) is related in no simple way to the behaviour of less complex entities (studied by ‘lower’ level special sciences or fundamental physics) (Sellars 1963a, p. 21).
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Christias, D. Can Sellars’ argument for scientific realism be used against his own scientia mensura principle?. Synthese 193, 2837–2863 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0890-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0890-2