Abstract
The article focuses on the unifying and explanatory power of the selective realism defended by Anjan Chakravartty. Our main aim is twofold. First, we critically analyse the purported synthesis between entity realism and structural realism offered by the author. We give reasons to think that this unification is an inconvenient marriage. In the second step, we deal with certain controversial aspects of the intended unification among three metaphysical concepts: causation, laws of nature and natural kinds. After pointing out that Chakravartty’s conception of laws is a plausible view that a scientific realist might endorse, we contend, on the contrary, that the concept of natural kind is dispensable in the framework of Chakravartty’s realism.
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Notes
In recent writings, Nancy Cartwright has defended a conception of laws based on the postulation of powers or capacities. Laws arise as causal regularities that emerge from the nomological machines. These consist of particular arrangements formed by the contribution of causal powers whose canonical effects are combined in the context of the experiment (Cartwright 2013). Laws, understood in this way, have the function of predicting facts, whether singular occurrence or a range of events; besides, they do not need to be universal or deterministic. In her view, causal laws are compatible with the contingency in the world, they can be permissive and limited, that is, admit events that are not covered by law (Cartwright and Merlussi 2018). Cartwright continues emphasizing the role of causality in science. She wrote “This paper [2009] was one of the early forays in a growing movement to reinstate causality as a respectable member of our ontology” (Cartwright 2009, 5). Furthermore, she seems to have subordinated the role of explanation in favour of prediction as an important goal of laws.
Chakravartty acknowledges that both Kitcher and Psillos have advanced criteria to identify the parts of a theory that are preserved in successor theories. In effect, Kitcher distinguishes between “working posits (the putative referents of terms that occur in problem-solving schemata) and presuppositional posits (those entities that apparently have to exist if the instances of the schemata are to be true)” (1993, 149). From his part, Psillos makes a difference between idle and essentially contributing constituents (1999, 108ff). But, in Chakravartty’s opinion, although they are oriented towards the right objective, both leave their approach open to the charge of rationalization post hoc. His own strategy, on the other hand, has the advantage of improving on the weaknesses of those proposals (Chakravartty 2007, 46).
The bending of light is another interesting example. Einstein’s General Relativity Theory published in 1915 predicted the phenomenon of the bending of light near a massive body. The light beams would not follow a Euclidian straight line but would show some bending. This hypothesis explained a number of anomalies that threatened Newtonian theory. In 1915 the bending of light should be considered an auxiliary property. But in 1919, when an eclipse occurred, astronomers were able to establish the bending of light rays near the Sun from two observatories located on Earth. So, if we apply the Chakravartty’s classification to this case, we will find that what was previously considered an auxiliary property postulated by the General Relativity Theory, after 1919 entered the set of detection properties.
We thank an anonymous reviewer for providing this insightful comment.
We believe that the notion of particulars as cohesive groups of dispositions is at least a constitutive part of Chakravartty’s conception of dispositional realism, although perhaps it is not a feature of all dispositional views. Chakravartty does think of objects as bundles of powers. Thus, there is an intimate connection between the dispositions that compose particulars and the properties they exhibit when manifesting themselves.
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We would like to thank Professors David Miller and Rodolfo Gaeta for their deep comments on an earlier version of this article, as well as the suggestions from the editorial staff of the journal. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for their insightful observations on some important issues of the work. All the criticisms and suggestions have been of great help to improve our manuscript.
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Gentile, N., Lucero, S. On the Explanatory Power of Dispositional Realism. J Gen Philos Sci (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-020-09539-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-020-09539-x