Scientific realism: a fragment. posted by Richard Seymour

Just a thought, really. A while ago, I posted on the misrepresentation of the resistance in Iraq, and how this related to Baudrillard's notion of the simulacrum. For Baudrillard, in postmodernity, the reality principle had 'collapsed'. Wimp. It never existed.

I was in a discussion recently with someone who argued for a strong Scientific Realism. I've never been convinced by such arguments, although in this case it was put very adeptly. My objection usually begins by listing the problems with the 'correspondence' theory of truth - how do theories 'correspond' to truth? In what way do they 'represent' reality? Is there an isomorphic equivalence? Even a simple proposition such as “the cat is on the mat” does not necessarily 'reflect' the reality it designates (unfortunately my namesake was given to the thought that theory 'reflected' reality). There are two kinds of things – a cat and a mat – and a third thing which is different entirely – that is, the relationship between the cat and the mat. Does the statement really pictorially resemble the reality? And it may be the components do not match the number of objects in the state-of-affairs described – in a different language one morpheme (linguistic unit) may suffice to describe the same state-of-affairs. Austin tried to generate a different way in which such a 'correspondence' might work - he suggested that there were conventions regulating the relationship between the word and the world, and ‘demonstrative conventions’ regulating the relationship between the word and states of affairs. But his rule only works with indexical statements - different kinds of statements may also be true of the world, but would have nothing to do with Austin's conventions - "bats only come out at night", for instance. Similarly, e=mc2 may well describe a scientific law, but does it ‘resemble’ how that law works in reality?

Part of the problem I have always had with scientific-realism is the following simple thought: why should reality be as it appears to us? That word 'appears' is very interesting. For it privileges the visual, whereas reality strikes us on many sensuous surfaces. For instance, if I eat a blueberry muffin (and I just might eat three or four on a lazy Sunday lunchtime), I get a great deal of pleasure from the taste. But I don't kid myself that this is really how it tastes, that the taste tells me something essential about what I am eating. In fact, my guess is that the taste is a result of the reaction of taste-buds to some ingredients in the cake. Taste is a production.

Similarly, is not sight, hearing, smell, touch also a production? Why should the world be as it seems? Isn't reality also a production? And here is where I have a problem with Baudrillard's simulacrum - not with the idea itself, just with its ramifications. He suggests that the 'reality principle' - the distance between what we imagine happens and what really happens - has collapsed, and that the 'world' is a simulacrum. But I think it is necessary to preserve that distance - philosophical and scientific scepticism relies on this, whereas I think Baudrillard is inclined to stoically accept that we can never regain that gap.

Anyway, as the title says, this is a fragment - it's an open-ended thought process, and one which I'd be delighted to have you finish for me on account of me being a lazy, ale-guzzling, pie-munching fatso. Plus, there's a fight starting outside the pub opposite, and I want to go watch.