3. Arguments Against Constructive Empiricism
3.1 The Miracle Argument
One way that the constructive empiricist might indirectly support constructive empiricism is by taking issue with Hilary Putnam’s miracle argument for scientific realism. This argument holds that scientific realism “is the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle” (Putnam 1975, 73). Putnam goes on to argue that the statements that a scientific realist would make about our mature scientific theories are “part of the only scientific explanation of the success of science.” To give an adequate scientific description of science, scientific realism needs to be assumed.
Putnam’s basic idea is as follows: if the scientific theories are false, why would they be so successful? Van Fraassen famously replies with an evolutionary analogy:
I claim that the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched on to actual regularities in nature. (van Fraassen 1980, 40)
Van Fraassen’s point is that a theory can be empirically adequate, and hence latch on to the observable regularities in nature, without being true. The scientific competition between theories hinges on which theory accurately describes the observable world; it does not hinge on which theory is actually true. Thus, it would not be miraculous for science to arrive at an empirically adequate, scientifically successful, yet false theory. (See the discussion of the Miracle Argument in the entry on scientific realism for more on the miracle argument as a consideration in favor of scientific realism.)
3.2 Inference to the Best Explanation
Inference to the Best Explanation is the controversial rule of inference which basically holds that, out of the class of potential explanations we have of some phenomena, we should infer that the best explanation is the true one. If Inference to the Best Explanation is a rule we do (or ought) to follow, then it looks as if scientific realism is an accurate description (or prescription) of the aims of science—we should acknowledge the reality of the entities our best explanatory theories postulate, even if those entities are unobservable.
The constructive empiricist might offer several responses to this challenge:
Inference to the Best Explanation doesn’t automatically win as a description of scientists’ actual inferential practice, since that practice may be equally well described by saying that scientists believe our best explanatory theories to be empirically adequate (rather than true) (van Fraassen 1980, 20–21). Note, though, that the constructive empiricist does not actually endorse the rule that we should believe that the best explanation is empirically adequate (contrary to how van Fraassen, for instance, has sometimes been read; see, e.g., Bandyopadhyay 1997).
The scientific realist thinks that theories can only adequately explain regularities in nature if we take the theories to be true. But theories can explain if we merely take the theories to be empirically adequate. So even if we allow Inference to the Best Explanation as a legitimate rule of inference, the realist has to offer some additional reason to think “T is true” is a better explanation than “T is empirically adequate” (van Fraassen 1980, 21).
It may be that all the potential explanations we have are bad, and hence we would be unwise to believe that one of those explanations is the true one (van Fraassen 1989, 143–145). It’s plausible to think any argument is mistaken that suggests that we are privileged to hit on the right range of potential explanations to begin with.
Any probabilistic formulation of Inference to the Best Explanation is probabilistically incoherent. A Bayesian will coherently update in light of new evidence, but then the proponent of Inference to the Best Explanation wants the Bayesian to unwarrantedly give extra probabilistic weight to the hypothesis that is the best explanation (van Fraassen 1989, 160–70).
In sum, because the constructive empiricist rejects Inference to the Best Explanation, she is not moved by arguments for scientific realism that make use of that rule of inference. (See the discussion of skepticism about inference to the best explanation in the entry on scientific realism for an elaboration of doubts about the use of inference to the best explanation as a motivating consideration in favor of scientific realism.)
3.3 The Observable/Unobservable Distinction
A standard type of objection to constructive empiricism, one that was especially prevalent soon after The Scientific Image was published, is the type of objection that takes issue with the clarity or cogency of the observable/unobservable distinction. A few examples of this type of objection will be presented in this section, along with constructive empiricist replies.
By the constructive empiricist’s lights, distant macroscopic objects are observable, since if we were nearby we could see them. Paul Churchland (1985, 39–40) takes issue with the importance the constructive empiricist attaches to size, as opposed to spatiotemporal proximity. Churchland points out that it is just a contingent fact that humans have control over their spatiotemporal location, but not over their size. Churchland concludes that the distinction between things that are unobserved but observable, and things that are unobservable, “is only very feebly principled and is wholly inadequate to bear the great weight that van Fraassen puts on it” (Churchland 1985, 40).
Van Fraassen replies with the recognition that “scientific realists tend to feel baffled by the idea that our opinion about the limits of perception should play a role in arriving at our epistemic attitudes toward science” (1985, 258). Constructive empiricists are not asserting any metaphysical difference in the world on the basis of the observable/unobservable distinction; they are just saying that that distinction is relevant to the epistemic attitudes we take. Since “experience is the sole legitimate source of information about the world” (van Fraassen 1985, 258), it makes sense that what we can experience influences our epistemic attitudes. (Note that in his 2002 book The Empirical Stance, van Fraassen calls into question his 1985 statement about experience.)
A different argument by Churchland (1985, 44–45) asks what the constructive empiricist would say about beings who are like us except that they are born with electron microscopes permanently attached to their left eyes. Churchland says that the electron-microscope-eye humanoids would count viruses as part of their ontology, and yet by the constructive empiricist’s lights we can’t, even though we are functionally the same as the humanoids when we put our left eye against the viewfinder of an electron microscope.
The constructive empiricist might reply that we are not warranted in saying that the humanoids have the experience of viruses unless we already treat the humanoids as being part of our epistemic community (van Fraassen 1985, 256–257). If we do expand our epistemic community to include them, then the constructive empiricist is happy to say that in that situation viruses are observable. But if we do not accept them as part of our epistemic community, then we will simply analyze them as like us, except having electron microscopes attached to themselves, and we will say that they are “reliable indicators of whatever the usual combination of human with electron microscope reliably indicates” (van Fraassen 1985, 257). In that case the extension of ‘observable’ is unchanged.
Another argument calling into question the significance of the observable/unobservable distinction is presented by Ian Hacking (1985, 146–147). Hacking considers a machine which makes grids of the same shape but various sizes. We can see grids with the same overall shape of smaller and smaller size, but the machine makes some grids that are too small to be seen with the unaided eye. When looked at through a microscope, however, the unobservable grids are seen to have the same shape as the observable ones. Hacking writes:
I know that what I see through the microscope is veridical because we made the grid to be just that way. I know that the process of manufacture is reliable, because we can check the results with the microscope. Moreover we can check the results with any kind of microscope, using any of a dozen unrelated physical processes to produce an image. Can we entertain the possibility that, all the same, this is some gigantic coincidence? (Hacking 1985, 146–147)
Hacking concludes that it would be unreasonable to be an anti-realist about the unobservable grid, and hence we should at least sometimes believe what science tells us about unobservables.
Van Fraassen (1985, 298) replies by pointing out an unwarranted supposition in Hacking’s argument: the claim that we made the grid to be that way implies what is under dispute, that the grid was successfully made to be that way. Regarding the argument that, if different types of microscopes make similar observations, then the observations must be veridical, van Fraassen replies that that argument
reveals only the unstated premise that the persistent similarities in the relevant phenomena require, must have, a true explanation. (van Fraassen 1985, 298)
But this is a premise that the constructive empiricist rejects.
Here van Fraassen is allowing for the possibility that the constructive empiricist can reasonably be agnostic about the grid. Van Fraassen replies in a similar fashion to an objection that Paul Teller puts forth about the immediacy of objects viewed through a microscope.
Teller (2007) claims that the images produced by many scientific instruments require some interpretative effort for us to make assertions about what it is that we are seeing. What we see through optical microscopes, on the other hand, is importantly different. In such an observation, we take ourselves to see the object being magnified itself, immediately and without interpretative effort.
The conclusion Teller draws is that contrary to what van Fraassen claims, what is observable extends beyond what members of our epistemic community can observe unaided by measuring instruments. What is observable minimally also includes the objects viewed through optical microscopes, as well as other objects whose observation is similarly unmediated by interpretation (132–134).
In reply, van Fraassen (2001) suggests that what we see through a microscope is akin to reflections seen in mirrors and other reflective surfaces—the reflection of a tree in a body of water, for instance. In both the case of the observation via the microscope and the object viewed in a reflection, we might assert that what we are seeing is a real object. But van Fraassen points out an important difference between the reflected object and our observation through the microscope. We are confident that the reflection is of a real object because we can observe certain invariances between the object purportedly being observed (the tree), the reflective image, and our vantage point. We can, for instance, see that the tree maintains a certain fixed position relative to the reflective body, and we can see that the angle subtended by the lines between us and the two bodies is a particular function of the observer’s position. The observation of these invariances is possible, in part, because the tree is itself observable without the aid of instruments (van Fraassen 2001, 160).
That, however, is not true of the objects—the paramecia, say—that are purportedly being observed through the microscope. Because the paramecia are not directly observable without instruments, we can only hypothesize that there are objects being observed for which the invariant geometric relations hold. It is possible for us, then, to maintain an agnosticism about the paramecia that we can’t about the tree (160). We can regard our observations via the microscope the same way we regard our observations of rainbows—namely, as observations of phenomena that are public (even capable of being captured by photographic equipment) without at the same time being observations of some existent object (162). (We say that the rainbow is not an actual physical object because it does not participate in the invariant geometric relations we expect of actual physical objects: “If the rainbow were a thing, the various observations and photos would all locate it in the same place in space, at any given time” (157) ).
Alspector-Kelly (2004) claims that there is not the difference described here between aided and unaided perception. If the constructive empiricist insists that rainbows, reflections, and the like constitute publicly observable phenomena despite not amounting to actually existing objects, then what we experience in the case of unaided veridical perception is also some kind of image-like observable phenomena:
…when we look directly at the tree we are also postulating an appropriate relation between object, image, and vantage point, namely, between the tree itself, our perceptual experience of the tree, and the vantage point of our bodily location. (Alspector-Kelly 2004, 336)
Insofar as it is appropriate to speak of a perceptual image when characterizing the view through the microscope—even when, so far as the science of microscopy informs us, that view is veridical—it is appropriate to speak of a perceptual image when characterizing naked-eye visualization, even when that view is veridical. (Alspector-Kelly 2004, 338)
If this is true, then unaided veridical perception is not distinguished from aided perception in the way van Fraassen suggests. Unaided veridical perception is as much mediated by image-like observable phenomena as aided perception is.
As we will see in §3.6, the constructive empiricist might naturally express skepticism, in the case of unaided veridical perception, about the existence of anything like image-like phenomena. Kusch (2015) points out one reason for skepticism: the phenomena in question exhibit fewer of the invariant relations—“unlike, say, rainbows, visual experience cannot be photographed” (177)—that would allow us to characterize the phenomena as public, verifiable ones capable of empirical study.
A constructive empiricist might also respond to Alspector-Kelly by advocating something like a disjunctivist view of perception, denying that what is observed in the disparate cases really is the same. On such a view, unaided veridical perception really is of actual physical objects, whereas perception with instrumentation results only in the experience of some kind of publicly observable phenomena akin to rainbows and reflections. It remains to be seen whether independent motivation for such a view can help recommend it over the alternative offered by the defender of microscopic observables.
3.4 Observable versus Observed
According to the constructive empiricist, “there is no purely epistemic warrant for going beyond our evidence” (van Fraassen 2007, 343). But then why does the constructive empiricist hold that the aim of science involves going beyond our evidence? Empiricism wants to be epistemically modest, but belief that a theory is empirically adequate goes well beyond the deliverances of experience. Hence, one can object to constructive empiricism by suggesting that it is not sufficiently epistemically modest: the doctrine that the aim of science is truth about what is observable should be replaced with the doctrine that the aim of science is truth about what’s actually been observed. (For versions of this criticism, see for example Gutting 1985, Railton 1990, Rosen 1994, and Alspector-Kelly 2001.)
The constructive empiricist’s reply, as presented by Monton and van Fraassen (2003, 407–408), is as follows. Constructive empiricism incorporates a prior commitment to the rationality of science—it is a doctrine about what the aim of science actually is; it is not attempting to present a revisionary account of how science should be done. According to the doctrine that the aim of science is truth about what’s been observed,
there would be no scientific reason for someone to do an experiment which would generate a phenomenon that had never been observed before. But one of the hallmarks of good scientists is that they perform experiments pushing beyond the limits of what has been observed so far. (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 407)
The constructive empiricist can hence conclude that the doctrine that the aim of science is truth about what’s been observed “fails to capture our idea of what it is to do good science” (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 407).
3.5 Commitments to modal realism in talk of observability?
So the constructive empiricist is firm in her construal of the aim of science as truth about the observable. One might worry, though, as James Ladyman (2000) does, that such a view brings with it a commitment to modal realism and belief in whatever entities such a commitment may require. So, for instance, talk of observability might commit the constructive empiricist to belief in the existence of possible worlds, a commitment that an empiricist would prefer not to make.
To understand why one might think this way, consider the following. As noted in section 1.6 above, one natural way of understanding “x is observable” is in the following counterfactual manner:
x is observable iff if a suitably constituted observer were in relevant circumstances C, she would observe x.
If the truth conditions of counterfactuals are understood in terms of possible worlds, it is easy to see how beliefs about what is observable entail commitments to the existence of such worlds.
One reply to this threat of modal realism is that contrary to the initial impression provided by the counterfactual characterization of observability, observability is not a modal property, after all (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 411). As explained in section 2.5 above, van Fraassen takes the truth of counterfactuals to be context-dependent. Once a context is fixed, counterfactuals can be expressed as non-modal conditionals. In the case of the counterfactuals that explicate observability, then, fixing the epistemic community of the “suitably constituted observer” transforms the counterfactuals into straightforward non-modal conditionals whose truth or lack thereof we can empirically investigate (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 413–414). Belief in the truth of some claim of the form ’x is observable’ amounts simply to belief in the truth of such a context-fixed, non-modal conditional.
Whether such conditionals are true is an empirical question to which our best scientific theories may provide an answer. So even though observability represents some objective, theory-independent property of the world (van Fraassen 1980, 57), we can use our best scientific theories to answer the question, “What is observable?” (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 415–416):
Consider the claim ‘if the moons of Jupiter were present to us (in the right kind of circumstances) then we would observe them’. The way to understand the claim is to note that, even though it is a counterfactual, it is entailed by facts about the world: facts that the moons of Jupiter are constituted in a certain way, and facts that we are constituted in a certain way. These facts can be disclosed by empirical research. In practice, not all the empirical research has been done, so we have to rely on our current best theories to determine what these facts are.
For worries about methodological circularity in using our accepted theories to supply facts about observability—facts that bear on the theories’ own empirical adequacy—see section 3.7 below.
One additional worry about Monton and van Fraassen’s non-modal characterization of observability is given by Ladyman (2004). Consider the claim ‘x is observable’ for some x that is never actually observed. Ladyman asserts that no empirical investigation will be sufficient to establish the truth of the relevant non-modal conditional “unless we take it that the specification by science of some regularities among the actual facts as laws … is latching onto objective features of the world” (Ladyman 2004, 762). As Ladyman sees it, only objectively existing laws, and not pragmatically selected empirical regularities, can underwrite claims about the observability of objects never actually observed.
Paul Dicken (2007) offers another promising way for the constructive empiricist to resist the threat of a commitment to modal realism that is posed by talk of observability. He suggests that the constructive empiricist take the same attitude toward the truth of observability counterfactuals that she takes toward other claims of endorsed scientific theories: namely, acceptance of the counterfactuals rather than belief in them (608).
Indeed, given that observability is itself supposed to be a subject of scientific theory (as noted above), acceptance is the natural attitude for a constructive empiricist to take toward the counterfactuals that explicate observability. She relies on those counterfactuals in the way she relies on the other elements of the theories she accepts, even (in certain contexts) talking as if the counterfactuals are true. In this way, according to Dicken, she can make use of claims about what is observable while at the same time being agnostic about possible worlds whose existence is purportedly entailed by the truth of the counterfactuals explicating observability.
3.6 Why Not Just Believe in Sense Data?
An objection related to the one from section 3.4 is the following. The constructive empiricist errs not just in believing claims about what is unobservable-but-not-actually-observed, but also in believing claims about actually observed entities the likes of macroscopic physical objects. If one really takes to heart the advice that one’s beliefs should not extend beyond one’s evidence, then one should limit belief to claims about the mental experiences that one is having.
A constructive empiricist might reply to the objection as follows:
Such events as experiences, and such entities as sense-data, when they are not already understood in the framework of observable phenomena ordinarily recognized, are theoretical entities. They are, what is worse, the theoretical entities of an armchair psychology that cannot even rightfully claim to be scientific. I wish merely to be agnostic about the existence of the unobservable aspects of the world described by science—but sense-data, I am sure, do not exist. (van Fraassen 1980, 72)
3.7 The Hermeneutic Circle
As noted in Section 1.6 above, the constructive empiricist says that what counts as observable is relative to who the observer is and what epistemic community that observer is part of. Since the observer is her- or himself the subject of scientific theory, what counts as observable is also the subject of scientific theory. Here are two worries about the use of scientific theory as the determiner of observability:
Relativity: If a theory of observability determines what is observable, and empirical adequacy is assessed in terms of what is observable, then a theory of observability can name the terms of its own empirical adequacy. Empirical adequacy becomes radically relative. With no objective, theory-independent constraints on empirical adequacy, it’s “anything goes” when it comes to theory acceptance: one simply adopts the theory of observability that underwrites the empirical adequacy of whichever theory one is interested in accepting.
Circularity: if scientific theory is the arbiter of observability, then an individual has no choice but to use the theory of observability she accepts as a guide to observability, and hence as a guide to empirical adequacy, and hence as a guide to whether or not to accept that very theory. But to use the theory as a guide to whether or not to accept that theory involves the individual in epistemic circularity.
The constructive empiricist might reply to Relativity by insisting that while we must look to science for an account of observability, observability is not a theory-dependent notion. What counts as observable is an objective, theory-independent fact. So there’s no danger of relativism about empirical adequacy (van Fraassen 1980, 57–58).
This response only addresses Relativity; the objectivity of observability does not save us from the epistemic circularity that comes about from our having to use a theory of observability as the standard of empirical adequacy by which we assess that theory’s own empirical adequacy. The epistemic circularity has to do with how we come to certain beliefs about observability, not with the objectivity of the observability facts.
If such circularity were avoidable, then it would be good for us to avoid it. Unfortunately for us, the constructive empiricist might say, it is not avoidable (Monton and van Fraassen 2003, 415–416, maintains this line). Advocates of constructive empiricism might insist that any search for a Cartesian-style guarantee of the correctness of our theory of observability is a search in vain. We have to accept some such theory, imperfect though it may be, and modify our acceptance if experience proves that acceptance to be misplaced.
3.8 Observability of the Microscopic
The Hermeneutic Circle objection was prefaced on the claim that what counts as observable is, according to the constructive empiricist, determined by scientific theory. Another worry based on that presupposition, raised by Alspector-Kelly (2004), is that scientific theory determines much more to be observable than the constructive empiricist typically allows. On Alspector-Kelly’s view, we should countenance as observable whatever science says we can have reliable information about on the basis of perceptual experience, and science says we can have reliable information about what is perceptually revealed to us via microscopes.
The electron microscope is a window on the microcosm because it generates reliable images… We know of that reliability in virtue of knowing the science behind it, just as the constructive empiricist knows the limits of unaided human observation by knowing the science behind the perceptual process. (Alspector-Kelly 2004, 347)
Given what it is for experience to provide us with information about the world, electron microscopes and the rest do precisely that for our community… even a relatively conservative estimation of our perceptual abilities, concerned with both reliability and fidelity, has them extending much farther into the microcosm than the overly conservative constructive empiricist is willing to recognize. (Alspector-Kelly 2004, 348)
In response to Alspector-Kelly, Kusch (2015) insists that the constructive empiricist can rely on science to determine what counts as observable, without at the same time countenancing the microscopic as observable. That’s because “the phenomenon of naked-eye observation calls for one (kind of) theory; the phenomenon of instrumentally-aided eye-use calls for at least two (kinds of) theories: the theory covering naked-eye observation and theories of the instrument and its interaction with our naked eyes” (179). As noted earlier, constructive empiricists value epistemic modesty. If a constructive empiricist can rely on science to give us an account of the kind of unaided observation in which all science is grounded, without at the same time having to make use of scientific theories that go farther afield, then by the constructive empiricist’s lights, that more modest invocation of science is to be preferred in deciding the question of observability.
3.9 Commitment to the Existence of Abstract Objects?
Rosen (1994, 164–169) contends that a scientist cannot remain faithful both to the epistemic standards of the empiricist at the same time that she accepts various scientific theories in the way that the constructive empiricist describes. If what Rosen says is correct, then constructive empiricism fails as an explanation of how a committed empiricist can endorse the activity of science as rational.
Rosen’s argument goes as follows. Using the terminology of van Fraassen’s semantic view of theories (described in Sec. 1.5 above), Rosen says an individual believing a theory to be empirically adequate
is thereby committed to at least three sorts of abstract objects: models of the phenomena (data structures), the models that comprise T, and functions from the one to the other. To suspend judgment on the existence of abstract objects is therefore to suspend judgment on whether any theory is empirically adequate, and this just [is] to give up acceptance altogether. (166)
Indeed, we would naturally suspect that a constructive empiricist would suspend belief about the existence of abstract objects, which are unobservable entities if anything is. So it looks as if an empiricist cannot accept any scientific theories, if acceptance amounts to what the constructive empiricist says it does.
One possible response the constructive empiricist might give here is a fictionalist account of mathematical objects. Embracing such a fictionalist view, an individual could use the theoretical apparatus of mathematics without committing herself to the existence of the objects that are the alleged subject matter of mathematical theories. Rosen (1994) considers this response but contends that it is not one that a constructive empiricist may want to accept. The problem, Rosen says, is that to embrace fictionalism about a theory T that one accepts commits one to believing claims of the following form:
(T ′) the world is such that if there were such a thing as T, it would be empirically adequate (167).
Such a counterfactual-involving belief appears to commit the believer to the truth of certain modal facts, a commitment eschewed by the typical Hume-inspired empiricist. Perhaps the constructive empiricist can view the relevant counterfactuals as reducible to non-modal conditionals, in the spirit of the context-dependent reduction of counterfactuals to non-modal conditionals entertained in section 3.5 above. If such a reduction can be successfully undertaken, the constructive empiricist can avoid commitment to belief in the truth of the relevant modal facts.
Whether the constructive empiricist would ultimately want to endorse some fictionalist view about mathematical objects is an open question. For an attempt at developing a constructive empiricist philosophy of mathematics, see Bueno 1999.
3.10 Resistance to characterizing science in terms of aims
Rowbottom (2019) contends that it would be wrong to characterize the disagreement between the constructive empiricist and the scientific realist as a debate about the aims of science. In extending his critique, we might also be persuaded that constructive empiricism is mistaken in thinking that any philosophy of science ought centrally to be about aims at all. In characterizing what science is, we should instead focus on the many disparate activities and products of science itself, independent of any general aim or “point” to the activity. As Rowbottom says,
One can learn how to perform various scientific tasks, and perform them well, without any explicit or implicit reference to an ultimate or central ‘point’ of the exercise—the overarching process—of which they are a part. One may focus instead on the immediate products of these tasks… ‘What is science?’ can be answered by pointing to those processes, how they interact, and so forth. And what science can achieve may be (largely or wholly) independent of what its practitioners think it can achieve, or any rather mystical ‘point’ of the exercise (454–455).
A defender of constructive empiricism might suggest that unless we think of the activity of science in relation to some aim or other, we cannot properly understand that activity; and unless we understand as united under some general aim all the disparate many ways that science is undertaken, we cannot understand those many practices as parts of science (as opposed to, say, parts of religion or politics or …). The activity is rendered intelligible only in light of the point and purpose of undertaking it, and it is rendered intelligible as science only in light of a point or purpose shared with other activities regarded as scientific.
As van Fraassen (1994) puts it,
[S]cientists with their very different motives and convictions participate in a common enterprise, defined by its own internal criteria of success, and this success is their common aim ‘inside’ this cluster of diverging personal aim [sic]. How else could they be said to be collaborating in a common enterprise? The question is only what that defining criterion of success is (182).
Still, even if we can offer an interpretation of science and its activity as animated by a particular aim, which aim that is may be less important in characterizing science than the activity itself. Rowbottom presses this point with the following thought experiment:
Imagine members of an alien species, for whom acceptance—or if you prefer to reserve ‘acceptance’ for humans, call it ‘a-acceptance’—involves belief neither in (approximate) truth nor empirical adequacy. (This might be due to psychological constraints. A-acceptance could instead involve belief in significant truth content, high problem-solving power, approximate empirical adequacy, and so on.) Would we want to say that they were incapable of doing science? Or failing that, would we want to insist that they couldn’t do anything with the ‘character’ of science? That would be strange. For they could have institutions similar to our universities, and have theories similar to our scientific theories, arrived at by the use of similar procedures. They could also use these theories for exactly the same purposes for which we use our scientific theories: to explain the origins of the universe, to build spacecraft, and so forth (456).
Rowbottom here is, of course, describing theory acceptance. Insofar, though, as a theory’s acceptability is determined by the degree of the theory’s success at achieving a particular aim or aims, we can take the point to be equally about aims. We can understand, that is, the aliens as engaging in science even if they are not aiming for empirically adequate, or true, theories. In comparison to the activity itself, aims appear to be the less important thing to focus on in characterizing the activity as distinctively scientific.
