It's Only A Theory

As Brian Leiter reported http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/the-ny-times-philosophy-blog-again.html. The New Times has recruited Timothy Williamson for its online blog, the Stone. In a recent entry (perhaps his first?) he writes about the role of the imagination in science: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/reclaiming-the-imagination/

The main point of the entry is revealed in its closing paragraph. It is to answer unnamed "Critics of contemporary philosophy" who "sometimes complain that in using thought experiments it loses touch with reality...Once imagining is recognized as a normal means of learning, contemporary philosophers’ use of such techniques can be seen as just extraordinarily systematic and persistent applications of our ordinary cognitive apparatus."

I offer four observations:
1. First, Williamson makes it easy on himself by simply asserting without evidence that contemporary philosophers’ use of imagination can be seen as just extraordinarily systematic and persistent applications of our ordinary cognitive apparatus. The blog clearly implies that if the imagination is good enough for science it is good enough for philosophy. But Williamson makes no effort to show that contemporary philosophers systematically constrain the use of the imagination in the manner that scientists (perhaps?) do. He just asserts philosophers' systematicity and persistence. (The piece ends a line later.) This is an argument from authority.

2. Nevertheless, my reason for blogging about this entry is not to continue to harping about the tendency of leading analytic philosophers to claim the mantle of science when it suits them. Rather, it is to note the surprising (to me!) impact of recent (well, post-Kuhnian!) history and philosophy of science on Williamson's thought in at least two ways. First, Williamson takes the context of discovery very seriously. It is what grounds his appeal to the authority and use of the imagination. Second, he asserts that even in the context of justification the imagination plays a very important role, and this is a good thing.

3. So, perhaps philosophers of science can engage Williamson on these two previous points in constructive fashion? The recent methodological turn of my leading (and young) analytic metaphysicians should be an opportunity in this respect.

4. I end with a historical note. Williamson's position is a rediscovery of David Hume's and especially his friend's Adam Smith's understanding of science. In Smith's "The History of Astronomy," the imagination plays a positive constructive and justificatory role in natural science and philosophy: "Philosophy, therefore, may be regarded as one of those arts which address themselves to the imagination." As Smith writes, "For, though it is the end of Philosophy, to allay that wonder, which either the unusual or seemingly disjointed appearances of nature excite, yet she never
triumphs so much, as when, in order to connect together a few, in themselves,
perhaps, inconsiderable objects, she has, if I may so, created another
constitution of things, more easily attended to, but more new, more contrary
to common opinion and expectation, than any of those appearances themselves."
(IV.33, 75)

A recurring theme on this blog is the relationship between (general) philosophy of science and contemporary (analytic) metaphysics. For those interested in the topic, the following review by Anjan Chakravartty of Brian Ellis, The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism, 2009, might be of interest:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=20347
The review appeared a few weeks ago, but it fell between the cracks.

I was quite taken by these lines:
"The need for ontological explanations of this sort, exemplifying metaphysical necessitation no less, is not universally accepted among philosophers of science, and Ellis does not defend this need in the face of alternative (for example, empiricist and pragmatist) approaches to scientific knowledge. The motivation for the project of the book must, therefore, be taken as preaching to the already converted."