 All right, so yes, welcome back For day two much appreciated everyone who made it out for 9 a.m. In the wet and the Belgian Gray dark Sorry, sorry. Sorry. I know I'm making us look bad on the internet. Sorry. Sorry. Everything here is great And you should all everyone online you should come visit Sorry So without further without further without further delay our our first talk for today is our our dear friend and colleague Now at the Just say I've known quantity around these parts dear dear dear friend and To be talking to us about entity realism, which Well a bit appropriate given given given hackings passing Lecture so without further ado, please Okay Okay, so My talk is about Co-tenants of scientific realism so one of the continent of realism is that the entities postulated by scientific series by scientists really exist and And what What I hope is to convey the idea that this idea of really existing which is often cast in terms of mining dependence is not that trivial and Yeah, and it's not necessarily I mean the sense and totaled by scientific realist is not necessarily the one the common sense meaning of Existing of reality and I will do this by defending a position which is known as entity realism so you've probably heard of entity realism it's a position that was proposed in slightly different way by Nancy Cartwright and by young hacking Who who just died a few days ago? So I hope I will do justice to his to his view and Well, these two philosophers are held responsible for mainly for What is sometimes called a practical term in philosophy of science? So focusing more on scientific practice instead of abstract theories and abstract framers for thinking about science What they have in common in particular is That they are a bit suspicious about the kind of explanatory influence that that scientific release often put forth and one One way to defend this this suspicion this idea is To observe that well released often put emphasis on the unscientific progress say your scientific science is so successful So we have to be really somehow But if you if you think about what kind of progress science is impressive in science. Well You could say that the the most obvious the most impressive progress is a kind of technical progress scientific development gives us Plains various technology computers and so on and but the third equal progress is not It's not as obvious. Let's say that the the practical progress offered by science. So what's this philosopher? Having mine. Well, I think is that we should focus when doing inference. We should put emphasis on Inference is not from abstract theories to reality But rather from practice from the success of scientific practice in order to make inference with that physical inference Inference to what what's really is like and This goes with the general suspicions against inference to the best explanation. So as you probably know more the The debate on scientific realism really turns around whether inference is the best explanation. Well, no realist can agree that scientists use kind of abduction, but generally what they would say that The term abduction was introduced by John Peirce and what Peirce had in mind had in mind is that action is a kind of heuristic process by which scientists find Hypothesis and then they put their hypothesis to test to empirically confront the various hypothesis that they Come to with through abduction, but what really matters for justification is Empirical test basically and so this This kind of idea is against the realist view that abduction process is some kind of Justification that an explanation is Justified only there because it is a good explanation of this. This is kind of inference that Non-realist will resist and entity released as well. So you have a chapter in Nancy Cartwright's book How the laws of physics lie you have a chapter dedicated to a criticism of abduction inference to the best explanation so the idea that Basically is that well if you look at practice we can be realist about the kind of thing that we Interacted with directly if we have causal relations with so Yeah, hacking for example was taking the example of electrons you say I want to in the laboratory I said I saw that the scientists say I'll be where we are we are projecting electron They don't go this way and say, okay If we are projecting electron if we are using electron to do something then electron exists Sure, and it sounds like common sense. So they want to go back to common sense. It's some sense and According to them according to Cartwright in particular theories are mere guides for successful practice empirical practice we shouldn't take theories too seriously in particular because of the The traditional arguments against realism that theories change with time pessimistic meta-intuition So anti-terrorism is often dismissed in the literature my impression is that a Lot of people who talk about debate on scientific realism say, oh, you know, you have these various options, but Anti-terrorism is just Well, yeah, it has been proposed, but it's not serious. It doesn't work really work. And here is a caricature. It's it was It's not really an argument that was put against Anti-terrorism it's a caricature by someone who wants to defend realism, which is Musgrave and It's cited by by Clark who also defends anti-terrorism So Musgrave said I tell you that I believe in of Goblins So you'll reply. Oh, you think there are little people who creep into houses at night and do the housework Oh, no Say I do not believe that hobgoblins do that actually have no beliefs at all about hobgoblins About what got hobgoblins do or what they're like. I just believe in them So, yeah, this is silly and But it's not what anti-terrorists say but it's often like the The dismissal that you find in literature is a bit like if that's what that's what they were saying but it's it's not It's not really what they're saying. So but the idea that the main criticism is that Theories would be indispensable. We cannot believe in entities if we don't believe in the theories that describe this these entities You'll have many articles mostly published in the 90s or beginning of 2000 That's in this line of criticism but Here I want to defend a bit more anti-terrorism By taking like a lot of you at what what's in particular Nancy Cartwright's philosophy of science. Yes, so Cartwright has a second be credited for for Putting force the practical term and a way of putting this idea is that she's promoting a pragmatic view of scientific theories, so Maybe you know that there are there have been some switches in how we understand scientific theories with those offer understand scientific theories The classical view in the first half or 20th century was a syntactic view. That's theories are statements basically, there are laws expressing 30 core categories They express laws of nature Or 30 close and then people study saying well theories Yeah, they are important, but there are nothing with that model the important units for scientists to represent 30 are models This is what scientists use and this is called a semantic view. This is the idea. That's scientific theories are families of models families of theoretical structure that can be used to represent the world and then come the Pragmatic term who say well sure theory models are important, but models are nothing without their users and the context in which they are Users put a lot of things into models that do not come from the theory and not They do not either come directly from the Situation to which the model is applied there are these are adobe postulate that scientists made for example There are articles about supra conduction other history of Supra models of supra condition where we can see that well what scientists do is that they make Domain specific postulate and they put this into their models and they also put in Idealizations and distorts the laws of the theory in order to build their model and All this is sensitive to the context to the kind of application that they they have in view So if we accept this pragmatic view then a way of Fleshing out and terrorism that I find personally convincing is Basically and terrorism is realism about applied models and It's instrumentalism about scientific theories So when you successfully apply a model with all the things that scientists put in the model and When it's successful for practical purpose pose or for explanatory purpose, maybe we will come to this later then You can be realist about this model and what these what apply model What the structure of applying model in general is something like a causal structure of entities so It's in general scientific model can easily be interpreted as a kind of causal structure of entities we with which we can interact and so basically, this is the idea so Stereocool laws are tools that we can use to be modeled we will we postulate causal structures we We test the model and when they are efficient when we are there a good empirical Stability then we can be confident that We can be realist about what there are these causal structures and these entities and they exist But now here come This is a kind of you that a bit of self promotion a Kind of you that is very close to what I defended in a book that I published two years ago. It's called model empiricism Except for caveats Come to now, which is What do we mean by exist and this is precisely the topic of my thought what what do we mean when you say these entities exist? and Is it true that everything that we can manipulate exists and in what sense of exist and here the main problem? I think for entity realists is that It's not clear that they can get to the kind of existence that's Metaphysis after which is generally gets as I said Start of my talk in terms of mind independence So just to take an example money does money exist in a mind independent sense Well, it's not obviously the case that money exists because it depends on trusting the money that we can buy things that we can Exchange it and so on Just to say a bit more about my independence the term is a bit misleading somehow because You have some things that some entities that we would say that are my independent in one sense But that are not my independent in the sense that the realists want for example mental states beliefs desires mental diseases These are kinds of entities that are my independent cut out about the mind. They wouldn't exist without the mind But they do not depend for their existence on the way we will present it And that's the main point that the metaphysis want to put for that the way we will present these entities is We'll present it accurately, but it's Exists in this way in the way we represent it independently of the fact that we were presented in this way so Maybe it would be more accurate to say representation independence something like that concept independence independently of our concept of it or something like that and then another important point is what kind of dependence and metaphysis What they want is not Necessarily causal independence because we can interact causally with Think that are considered natural kinds we can for example we can create diamonds But diamond is supposed to be a natural kind it's a chemical kind But it's created by us so it wouldn't exist without us And on the other hand if you take constellations there are clearly not real for in a metaphysical sense constellations are just arbitrary grouping of stars, but we do not causally interact with the stars that are referred to group of stars that is Referred to by the constellation so it's not causal dependence that matters but constitutive independence and Just to be more precise about what we are after I think that The main criteria that we can use is Externalism about meaning. I think that's that's where it What it boils down to in the end so the idea is that of Independence from the mind that these entities have some kind of essence that does not depend of the way we'll present this essence And so there is this idea that there is some kind of Necessity some kind of explanation for the similarities in the causal patterns that we observe for example, there are causal patterns associated with water and We can explain these causal patterns because all water stuff has a common nature So this this is the idea and this is Associated there is a strong association between these and of course a creepy and semantics and the externalism about Meaning the idea that we can point to water without knowing its constitution its nature But we postulate that all these stuff that behave in a similar way has a common nature a common constitution and so I Will I will use this criteria for mind independence, which is externalism which can be expressed in this way we could be wrong about The criteria for belonging to a category if we could be wrong if we can point to a category But in principle we could be wrong about its nature if nature is discovered apostatory then this category can be considered mind-independent in the sense that is relevant for For the realist for the metaphysics for metaphysics and then the problem We we come to the problem for entity realism is that all the things that we can manipulate are not necessarily Mind-independent in this sense So for example trivial example Chairs we can manipulate chairs. We can make inferences about chairs They are kind of projectable. We can assume that in general they will have a certain features We there are patterns associated with chairs and With artifacts in general you so a hammer for example you can make inferences about the hammer what Is able to do or not? involving a hammer But if you look at the accounts of artifacts in the philosophical literature What you find is that In general people are Drown to say that the essence of artifacts is mind-dependent it depends in particular in the on the intentions of creatives Why this is so because You could you could think you could say well a tool you can just be reduced to it's a functional kind You could have this idea hammer is something that can do such thing as a hitting Everything you could do with a hammer the problem is that there are these functioning hammers, but they're still hammers So it doesn't work very well to say well hammers just kind of functions I think that feels as a kind of function because there are dysfunctional hammers and also you could attempt to reduce chairs for example to some Necessary and sufficient features, but in general it's the variety of chairs is too Is too important to really find some Definite a real definition of what a chair is so what what feels of us such as Thomas Thomas and for example, I propose is that the essence what if we go back to what we after the explanation for the patterns associated with chairs Is that all the creators of chair have intention that are rooted in the same Norms about what the chair should be like a kind of comprehension of by manufacturers of chess that what chess are supposed to do and this is the essence of Chess, but it's a mind-dependent essence because it depends on the intentions of creators So all this to say basically that There is a we have a problem for entity realism Which is that the kind of causal inferences that they want to use for to To assume that something exists something is real what it would also make us assume that chairs or Artifacts are real and they end that they exist But they do not they are not real and they do not exist in the sense that the metaphysicists won't because they are not independent Okay, so Now maybe if I ask our elections artifacts of experimental practice where Maybe not it's not very intuitive to say that elections are artifacts of our experimental practices But a non-realist could could bite the bullet maybe But in any case the main point that I want to make is whether you agree or not that it's Intuitive or not. It's that it's not ruled out by causal inference So the entity really see the entity really wants to have like a robust notion of existence then More is needed that just the kind of causal inference that they put forth. That's the main point Now Maybe a Way to save Entity realism is to say, okay, we should not limit ourselves to experimental practice. Maybe Young hacking put a lot of emphasis on Interaction on using electrons as tools to to making other kind of Experiments and so on but catch right a bit less. So and we could say well the important point is What I say is realism about applied models, but models can be applied even if there is no interaction We can have models of remote starts for example And we can say well this model is very successful for a prediction and so we can say that it represents correctly The phenomena that we want to explain even if there is no direct interaction But I think that even making this this line is not enough to to save the entity realism And the main reason is that If we do that In the end what we are saying is that electrons or whatever entity is just There are the nodes in causal structures in the causal structures the causal patterns that we identify there are the then the Yeah, the point the notes in these patterns and the and this amounts to to Have a functional kind to say that electrons are functional kinds. They have a certain causal functions and There are several interesting articles that argue that Functional kinds and externalism do not work very well together. There's this article by Weber in particular that is about genes and What they will say is that the first notion of gene that scientists had is the kind of thing that obey Mendelian patterns, but then with Scientific progress with more development Why it occurred that there are various notion of genes and not only one you have the combinational unit you have the Mutational unit and they're not necessarily the same and then it was extended to bacteria and there were debates about whether The same term should be used or not and we could say well Basically, it was a pragmatic issue whether we should use gene for bacteria that don't have chromosome Don't have the Mendelian patterns that were used to identify genes the first place. It's a pragmatic matter whether we use the same word or not Laporte as the same kind of argument what he says is that externalism does not really work so well with scientific terms actually What happens is that meaning change when theory change, but it gets generally it gets more precise And you have a choice between various meanings. You could say the same about the same about mass for example, Newtonian mass in relativity it can be divided into various different slightly different concept of mass that's That overlaps sometimes that are not exactly the same And in the end what Weber says is that when you have a functional kind such as the modern concept of gene as a Protein a unit for protein product protection Well in this case Scientists know exactly what the definition is and they cannot be wrong because they define gene as The kind of thing that has this function. So It's not really So externalism does not work And so why it seemed that the kind you don't have the kind of mind independence that the metaphysicists would like to have And in particular we could argue that Electron or genes or Newtonian forces for example are kind of epistemic artifacts So they depend on the intention of the creator of the concept who wants to capture some pattern and define genes or Well, at least one conception of gene or Newtonian forces as what Realize such or such function And the case of Newtonian forces I think is quite convincing because a lot of forces are taken to be artifact of calculus you have resultant forces that Physicists would say well, they do not really exist. They're kind of kind of an artifact of the calculus So and if you take Newtonian theory from the point of view of relativity theory You could say that in the end all gravitational forces are still these kind of artifacts for models in flat space time Okay So in the end you have a dilemma for the entity realist, which is that causal inferences Do not track mind independence and so they still need the argument that they don't like Which is the kind of meta abduction proposed by release that These entities best explain such phenomena and so we can infer that they exist in a mind independence That well if they want real mind independence They should use some kind of meta abduction and it's not even clear to me what role will play mind independence in What explanatory role plays my independence in there in this kind of arguments, but In any case, I don't think that they can get to mind independence with only with the kind of causal inference even applying models being realized about most outside of Experimental concrete experiment or practice and on the other hand Well money tables tools all exist in a common sense of Existence you can ask your neighbors or non-philosophers Of the non-philosophers, you know, they would say yes chairs exist Money exists why you have real money and you have fake money if you cannot pay me with the coins of fuel toy Oh, I don't know This is fake money if you can pay me with it. It's real money But it's my independence so So I think that the point I want to make is that in this debate there's kind of ambiguity and realism sometime trade on this ambiguity, so They want to be along with common sense a of course it exists. So In his book I'm sure yesterday say well if you see something the microscope You can understand the frustration of the really see of course. I could see it exist Yes, it exists, but In the common sense surely it exists, but does it exist as the Metaphysicists would like it to exist in the mind independent sense as a category of nature as that is not Imposed by our explanatory project And I think that's always this ambiguity and at least I really should be clear that They should decide they want to side with common sense. They should take on a deflationary approach and say well existence In the deflationary say in the common sense my independence doesn't matter But if they want to say that yes, it exists money independently because it's our best science and so They shouldn't claim to be on the side of common sense or other side or even on the side of scientists because I believe that scientists use exist and real in the In a sense in a common sense of real existence and not in the sense of philosophy. So So they shouldn't claim that they are on the side of scientists and that's in the non-realist on the side of Defending counter-intuitive you but is that I want to put this this deflationary stance and So, yeah, basically that's it I think we should embrace my point of view that we should embrace common sense existence and forget about my independence It's not clear that it plays a role in explanations So an interesting point is that it's relative to the community if you can you could imagine an alien civilization studying chairs and Trying to find out the essence of chairs and obviously it would there with there would be a kind of Externalism you would say what explain this pattern we can refer to the subject the look alike and For them it would be externalism because it depends on our Intention as a community, but for us. It's not my independent So my independence is relative and so we could wonder if it's really if it really matters There are so there are artifacts that are my independent in the sense that this category of object is not is not Depend on our intentions, but we can study it with physics We can study the physical property of this kind of objects and diamond is supposed to be a natural kind But we can study the social characteristic of diamonds if you want so Why impose this kind of distinction between social and natural stuff? I would say as a conclusion that if a category is Interesting and projectable and I think that's I think that's more or less an idea defended by article Last chance I was for natural kind reason that if a category is interesting and projectable then we can do science with it And it doesn't matter if it's mine dependent or not before. Yes I'm missing a link maybe it's just because I've got from there enough with entity realism, but I'm missing the link between the like accepting the existence of entities and Accepting the existence of natural kinds. So is it like is it is just a common thing for entity realists to do They don't realize they do that they just go from like being well Electrons exist in terms of like instances of electrons that we can actually manipulate and then they go from that to the the like the claim that Electrons exist as a natural kind or is it just a future very Here Yeah, that's a good question Yeah, it might be a way that Antiteriors could respond maybe they would say yes electron exists, but not as a natural kind But then what kind of object is it? It's not clear to me what I mean saying that something exists usually you have to classify it No, you are at least they need a very vague category it exists as an object and Then the object must be some kind of natural mine independent kinds If we want mine independent existence, I think we have to say something like that But yeah, but surely the my independence of objects as a general category is much less problematic than Particular kinds, right? That could be a line of difference Okay, I should think about it. Thank you Thanks a lot Quentin I'm very very sympathetic to where you end up and I just had a question about that because there's a sense of which Cartwright and Hacking and smothered entity realists sit kind of uneasily under the heading of scientific realism Because they're very hard to pin down on exactly the question What sense are we realist and hacking in particular it's kind of allergic to any kind of you know, it calls them elevator words I mean like talking about mind independence or these high-fluid philosophical concepts So he would want to use the words, you know existence and real I think exactly the way you wrote which is just part of other things But if we go that route then it sounds very much like this To you it sounds a lot like Arthur fine and natural logical Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with that. So the idea is that look it really doesn't make sense Or there's no coherent way in which you can really talk about Things being real in a way other than the common sense notion of things being real and so anti realists and realists alike are Guilty of doing what Hacking doesn't want them to do Just use these elevator words because they're pounding the tables, you know, they really really exist Yeah, I was saying no, they don't really exist. It just really exists But then it sounds like Arthur fine was generally not considered a realist Yes, precisely because it's so so do you think that they're real I think I think at the end it's a matter of label what we want to call realism because My feeling that a lot of people want to say are you a realist because precisely because it sounds like good sense common sense to be a realist and weird to be non-realist and But in the end It's a matter of how we define realism if we if we want to stick to the strict definition That is put forth by many realists in terms of my independent them. This is not a kind of But now my impression is that a lot of people who are pragmatically oriented and The fashion on spirit. They want to say that they are realists. I don't know why An example of this Putnam School his position internal real. So why is it in one sense? It's true. I'm not sure But it's he wants it to be a kind of realism. So I think it's yeah It's a matter for a label how we want to go on Thank you for your tough content yeah, I do agree with you on the point of You know targeting against entity realism with a criterion of my independence I don't think I'll be fair. They wanted to avoid these statements of DCs of my independence and they go for manipulation experimentation so forth But on another thought would you say that common sense perhaps could be a criterion for You know having a view about that scientific release getting close scientific realism and common sense, but in there it will have a very hard job to specify what common sense is Yeah, what consensus and what's the relationship between common sense and scientific realism some people could go In that piece about using common sense when they are theoretical Some people will try to go for a conservative approach saying that we are trying to serve as much as possible from common sense It comes to practical matters, not theoretical ones. So what would be your? Understanding or preliminary understanding of common sense That's a best question For my mouth for example Well, I tend to think to think that we should be faithful to common sense in the same that when we're using words as philosophers at some point we will have to express our views in To make popularization If we express ourselves in terms that are really just syncretic it's more a primatic matter I think it doesn't it's not necessarily good for philosophy to use two technical terms that are too far apart for common sense Yeah, I think to to some extent Yes, common sense can be revised when it's not very coherent or It's not the best way of Understanding the world it can we can revise our concepts, but Yeah, it's complex question to which one we should Yeah, to be more straight straightforward I don't think there is anything like common sense Remember that passage at the beginning of the college. I mean common Common sense is the most I mean the way the way world are used in general. That's what I would call common sense the way people use words so basically we could We could just make linguistic studies to find out what people mean by existing I mean favor of the kind of experimental philosophy of approach for Specifically for this kind of project to find out what what are the common sense common usage of words Yeah I Many things for that was really great. Um, I mean I am following your argument This is for the point. I can imagine that some metaphysicists say, okay, exit and it's complicated probably we have To a strict definition of existence many things are not an axis and you have this also this issue with the common sense But probably many metaphysicists could say something like okay, probably system is not the important question Probably we should be too liberal Quite liberal about existence everything can enter the ontology as a ontological pre-lunch But now that the question is about how different things exist, right? We can start to distinguish between a lot of existence. So now we have something our fundamental something not everybody But okay money exists, but it's not fundamental common sense entities exist, but they are not fundamental and they are just I mean they are following the argument until some point You go the flationary, but other people could say no we should go Metaphysically more I mean how to raise a physics instead of it. I want to hear your comments on something Because I mean at some point they are quite similar, but I mean the Diagnostic is quite similar, but after that they draw different conclusions But I think I Have nothing against this I think okay just Yeah I mean it's kind of the kind of metaphysical project of trying to reduce stuff to other stuff Yeah, I mean it if it works if it's useful I'm all pragmatist Jonathan Shaffer all these guys, okay now existence of course is Then the question whether they think it's really my Yeah, yeah, thanks perfect time. Thanks so much