> On May 20, 2016, at 2:56 PM, John Collier <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > There are versions of what science is supposed to do that don’t worry about > causation, but just try to find regularities. The more extreme forms of this > are instrumentalism (like Mach) or Pierre Duhem’s antirealist view of physics > in Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Duhem thought that the real causes > were supernatural (he was very religious) and were not captured by physics, > which merely “saves the appearances”. > > I prefer the causal view of scientific explanation because it puts on a > stronger constraint (though Bas van Fraassen, another believer, would argue > that it doesn’t really). In any case, testing scientific theories typically > requires interacting with their objects, which can only be done causally – > our connection to the natural world is causal. If there is no difference in > detectable causes, then there is no real difference in the theories. This is > not quite the same as Peirce, but not so different to his pragmaticism either.
It’s worth asking how Peirce would have seen Dewey’s particular form of instrumentalism. Of course Dewey’s tendency to deny that truth was relevant for such instruments goes against Peirce’s particular conceptions. But I think once we break out the ideas of “in the long run” as Peirce’s conception of truth from more short term facets of instrumental use that perhaps Dewey and Peirce are more compatible here than many assume. I confess I get skeptical about the way causation tends to get thrown around in descriptions. Perhaps it’s just from calculating far too many Hamiltonians in my undergraduate education. With the Hamiltonian it’s just harder to think in terms of causation rather than evolution of the wave function.
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