same tasks as scientists and carry out search through similar problem spaces. This much might also be said of the linguistic-analysis approach.
The academic philosopher Paul Thagard, who follows Simon’s interpretation, originated the name “computational philosophy of science” in 1988 in his book Computational Philosophy of Science. Hickey admits that it is more descriptive than the name “metascience” that Hickey had proposed in his Introduction to Metascience: An Information Science Approach to Methodology of Scientific Research in 1976. Thagard defines computational philosophy of science as “normative cognitive psychology”. The cognitive-psychology systems have successfully replicated developmental episodes in history of science, but the relation of their system designs to systematically observed human cognitive processes is still unexamined. And their outputted theories to date have not yet contributed to the current state of any science.
The phrase “computational philosophy of science” does not commit one to either interpretation. Which interpretation prevails in academia will likely depend on which academic department productively takes up the movement. If the psychologists develop new and useful systems, the psychologistic interpretation will prevail. If the philosophers take it up successfully, their linguistic-analysis interpretation will prevail.
Readers wishing to know more about Simon, Langley and Thagard, and about discovery systems and computational philosophy of science are referred to BOOK VIII below.
C. ONTOLOGY
3.35 Ontological Dimension
Ontology is the aspects of mind-independent reality revealed by semantics.
Ontology is the metalinguistic dimension after syntax and semantics, and it presumes both of them. Ontology is the reality correlative to what is signified by semantics. Semantically interpreted syntax describes ontology most realistically, when the statement is warranted empirically by repeated nonfalsifying test outcomes. In science ontology is more adequately represented when described by the semantics of either a scientific law or an observation report having its semantics defined by a law. The semantics of falsified theories display ontology less realistically due to the falsified theories’ demonstrated lesser empirical adequacy.
3.36 Metaphysical and Scientific Realism
Metaphysical realism is the thesis that there exists mind-independent reality, which is accessible to and accessed by human cognition.
In the section titled “Is There Any Justification for External Realism” in his Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World University of California realist philosopher John R. Searle refers to metaphysical realism as “external realism”, by which he means that the world exists independently of our representations of it. He says that realism does not say how things are, but only that there is a way that they are. Thus the way that they are would include Heisenberg’s “potentia” as the quantum theory describes reality with its indeterminacy relations and duality thesis. The theory describes microphysical reality as being that certain way and not otherwise, such that the theory is testable and falsifiable.
Searle denies that realism can be justified, because any attempt at justification presupposes what it attempts to justify. In other words all arguments for metaphysical realism are circular, because realism must firstly be accepted. Any attempt to find out about the real world at all presupposes that there is a way that things are. He goes on to affirm the picture of science as giving us objective knowledge of an independently existing reality, and that this picture is taken for granted in the sciences.
Similarly in “Scope and Language of Science” in Ways of Paradox Harvard University realist philosopher Willard van Quine writes that we cannot significantly question the reality of the external world or deny that there is evidence of external objects in the testimony of our senses, because to do so is to dissociate the terms “reality” and “evidence” from the very application that originally did most to invest these terms with whatever intelligibility they may have for us. And to emphasize the primal origin of realism Quine writes that we imbibe this primordial awareness “with our mother’s milk”. He thus affirms what he calls his “unregenerate realism”. These statements by Searle, Quine and others of their ilk are not logical arguments or inferences; they are affirmations.
Hickey joins these contemporary realist philosophers. He maintains that metaphysical realism, the thesis that there exists mind-independent reality accessible to and accessed by cognition, is the “primal prejudice” that can only be affirmed or denied. And he affirms that it is a correct and universal prejudice, even though there are delusional psychotics and sophistic academics that are in denial. Contrary to Descartes and latter-day rationalists, metaphysical realism is neither a conclusion nor an inference nor an extrapolation. It cannot be proved logically, established by philosophy or science, validated or justified in any discursive manner including figures of speech such as analogy or metaphor. Hickey regards misguided pedantics who say otherwise as “closet Cartesians”, because they never admit they are neo-Cartesians. The imposing, intruding, recalcitrant, obdurate otherness of mind-independent reality is immediately self-evident at the dawn of consciousness; it is a most rudimentary experience. Dogs and cats are infra-articulate and nonreflective realists. To dispute realism is to step through the looking glass into Alice’s labyrinth of logomanchy, of metaphysical jabberwocky where, as Schopenhauer believed, the world is a dream. It is to indulge in the philosophers’ hallucinatory narcotic.
Scientific realism is the thesis that a tested and currently nonfalsified theory offers the most empirically adequate and thus most realistic description of reality at the current time.
After stating that the notion of reality independent of language is in our earliest impressions, Quine adds that it is then carried over into science as a matter of course. He writes that realism is the robust state of mind of the scientist, who has never felt any qualms beyond the negotiable uncertainties internal to his science.
Note that contrary to Feyerabend the phrase “scientific realism” does not mean scientism, the thesis that only science describes reality.
3.37 Ontological Relativity Defined
When metaphysical realism is joined with relativized semantics, the result is ontological relativity.
Ontological relativity in science is the thesis that the semantics of a theory or law and its constituent descriptive terms describe aspects of reality.
A scientific law is a tested and nonfalsified universally quantified statement that prior to its decisive testing had been a theory.
The ontology of a theory or law is as realistic as it is empirically adequate.
Understanding scientific realism requires consideration of ontological relativity. Ontological relativity is the subordination of ontology to empiricism. We cannot separate ontology from semantics, because we cannot step outside of our knowledge and compare our knowledge with reality, in order to validate a correspondence. But we can distinguish our semantics from the ontology it reveals, as we do when we distinguish logical and real suppositions respectively in statements. We describe mind-independent reality with our perspectivist semantics, and ontology is reality as it is revealed empirically more or less adequately by our semantics. Our semantics and thus ontologies cannot be exhaustive, but ontologies are more or less adequately realistic, as the semantics of descriptive language is more or less adequately empirical.
Prior to the evolution of contemporary pragmatism philosophers had identified realism as such with one or another particular ontology, which they erroneously viewed as the only ontology on the assumption that there can
