Agazzi: Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts

Evandro Agazzi in his works (Agazzi 1969, 2012, 2014), while adhering to the traditional interpretation of Kantian metaphysics (comprehended as the fruit of the Cartesian “dualistic gnoseology”), however, on the epistemological and philo­sophical level has always defended a substantial (strong)conception of the objec­tivity of scientific knowledge, which has since led him to elaborate a coherent form of scientific realism (Agazzi 1989 and 2014).

We must remember that, according to our view, operations determine the nature of the scientific object - or its ontological status as we shall call it later - (as they ‘clip it out’ of reality, and determine the basic attributes that constitute it), while logical and mathematical construction determine its structure (that is, the structure of the set of operational and non-operational attributes involved) (Agazzi 2014, p. 109).

Therefore, the delineation of the mathematical model of a particular aspect of reality gives us only a structure, but does still not provide us with a defined range of objects to which we can attribute this same structure. On the other hand if we consider only operating criteria, we can certainly obtain a specific collection of empirical data, thus constituting a material whose natureis determined, defining also its belonging to a particular scientific discipline, although its specific structure is still unknown. Therefore the nature and structure of a particular scientific object may legitimately be distinguished, since we can also have mathematical structures which adapt to different empirical fields, while, on the other hand, a specific con­stellation of empirical data can be compatible with different mathematical models.

To use a traditional distinction, the concretely existing things, which are immediately present to us in an intentio prima (knowledge by acquaintance), cannot be investigated without the elaboration of a conceptual picture of them which can be intellectual scrutinised and is universal and abstract (intentio secunda). However, the results of our scrutiny do not concern the conceptual picture, but the concrete referents of the intentio prima. In the case of modern science, the intentio prima does not properly consist in perpeptual acts, but in operational procedures, starting from which we elaborate a conceptual model which we then proceed to study (intentio secunda). As a result of our study we attribute to certain referents those properties which are compatible with the operational procedures constituting the real tools of our intentio prima, and which do not necessarily meet the usual requirements of the perceptual (typically, visual) structure of this intentio (Agazzi 2014: 113-114, italics in the text).

For Agazzi it is therefore imperative to clearly separate the notion of “thing” from that of “object”, maintaining the epistemological awareness that the second term is obtained, through certain operational procedures, which enable us, in fact, to “cut out”, from among the things of the world, a series of “objects” belonging to different scientific disciplines. In this sense, the “object” is different from the “thing”, because some specific properties of “objects” are not “inherent” to “things”. Or rather, to bring out an “object”, science must be able to identify a specific set of properties by which a particular cognitive objectification of reality is realised. Therefore, in Agazzi's opinion, the scope of reality turns out to be much broader than the horizon of objectivity, because everything pertaining to an “object” is always real, while not everything which is “real” is also an “object”.

This epistemological approach, in addition to its intrinsic merit, can also over­come some common misinterpretations which are often supported by many epis- temologists. For example, it is often claimed that classical mechanics might be falsified by quantum mechanics, not realising that the two mechanics in question do not refer to the same object at all. Only in this case there would, in fact, be a direct antonymic conflict between the two theories, while, in reality, classical mechanics and quantum mechanics deal with different objects and, therefore, quantum mechanics produces no falsification of classical mechanics, since the two theories allow us to investigate different features of different objects which refer to the world of real things, while configuring different objectifications of the world.

And if we refer to the history of philosophical thought, paying specific attention to the issues of realism that originated in the field of epistemological dualism of Cartesian origin, it is then easy to realise how Agazzi eludes the classical, much debated, dualistic (and metaphysical) problem of modern epistemology, regaining a perspective already discussed by medieval scholasticism, which on the one hand dates back to Aristotle's teaching, while on the other it was recovered and devel­oped in the course of the philosophical debate of the last century, mainly due to the genesis of the research programme on phenomenology delineated by Husserl's early work. Because if, according to the epistemology of Cartesian orientation, things are only known through their representation elaborated by our minds, Agazzi refers instead to the classical approach (which, albeit in different forms, is present both in Greek reflection and in medieval philosophy), according to which knowledge arises from the fact that things are present to our minds.

In a perception, or in own intellectual intuition, our cognitive capacities ‘identify’ them­selves with objects, thought remaining ontologically distinct from them. This ontological distinction furnishes the correct meaning of “the ‘external’ world”, which, otherwise, would mean everything ‘outside my skin’. The representation of modern epistemology, from this ‘classical’ point of view, is simply a thing’s ‘way of being present’ to our cognitive capacities, and is ontologically depend on both, though not produced by either. Modern epistemology, having lost the notion of the intentional identity, gives to representations the status of being direct objects of knowledge that we encounter in our mind (Agazzi 2014: 246, italics in the text).

From Agazzi’s perspective the success of the idealistic tradition, especially during the last centuries of modernity, derives from the gnoseological orientation of dualism which undoubtedly favoured the reduction of reality to thought, while, on the contrary, even the classical tradition of the intentional identity of thought and reality can still be blamed for not being able to better define the specific nature of intentional identity. This situation has however changed both with the rediscovery of the classical notion of intentionality made by Husserl’s phenomenology, and also with many researches resulting in the philosophy of the mind and also in the field of all cognitive sciences

aiming at understanding in what this marvellous process (i.e. knowledge) consist, a process throughout which certain beings are able to ‘interiorise’ the external world without destroying it in order to ‘assimilate’ it (Agazzi 2014: 246-247).

Certainly, precisely on the basis of these considerations, Agazzi, as already mentioned, however, inclined to consider Kantian reflection as a specific result of the tradition of epistemological dualism, because, in his opinion, the phenomena mentioned by Kant would be equivalent to the secondary qualities mentioned by Galileo, contrasting them with the measurable primary qualities (see Agazzi 2014: 249).

In any case, this highly original philosophical and epistemological anti-Cartesian approach allows Agazzi to assume an epistemological stance according to which scientific realism is based on a different understanding of the role and the heuristic function of scientific theories and which can be well summarised by the following assumptions:

However, these sentences do not express the Gestalt simply as result of logical connections. Thus: (a) the aim of theories is far from that of telling a ‘literally true story' concerning the world, but is rather of giving the most faithful depiction of a certain (partial) vision of the world under a specific point of view, usually in order to explain - often by indicating causal relations between the constituents of the picture - certain empirically accessible features of the world; (b) theories are therefore neither true nor false, but only more or less ‘adequate' or ‘tenable': (c) nevertheless, certain singles sentences of a theory ma bed true or false, and this implies [...] that the objects referred to in these sentences exist and have the properties ascribed to them (if sentence is true), or do not exist, or do not possess these properties (if the sentence is false). Clearly, we can agree that theories do not tell a ‘literally true story? About the constitution of the world, but this does not commit us to rejecting the several sentences in theories are true or false, nor that this has consequences for our appreciation of the real constitution of the world (Agazzi n 2014: 256-257, italics in the text).

From this perspective it is possible to propose a different and innovative image of scientific theories because

Theories are proposed as hypothetical constructs intentionally directed towards the world (i.e. a domain of referents); and if we have good reason for accepting a theory, for the same good reason we must accept that their referents exist (Agazzi 2014: 257).

In other words it can be argued that a theory can never be conceived, in a Cartesian way, as a mere representation in itself, because this theory, if anything, can only be a representation thanks to an intentionality which refers directly to the sense (what a logician as Gottlob Frege termed Sinn) which is always connected, in turn, with a precise Bedeutung (see Frege 1892). Using Husserl's terminology, we could say that it is only thanks to noemata that the theory may refer, according to a precise intentionality, to the hyletic world we want to learn and study. In fact these theoretical constructs, intentionally oriented towards the world, can then be more or less “filled” by a hyletic-material component, subsumed within a particular func­tion, that is, within a peculiar morfe. Therefore all these different theories turn out to be always oriented towards a particular field of referents: “their objects have a kind of intentional or noematic reality, and may at best be approximated by concrete objects which sufficiently accurately instantiate the properties these abstracts objects encode” (Agazzi 2014: 259).

Thus, again in this case, Agazzi shows he is the intelligent heir to a classical philosophical tradition which, also through Husserl's phenomenology and the pre­vious reflection in logic by Gottlob Frege, draws directly from Aristotle's Organon (1955), because in this way Agazzi fully recovers the fundamental Aristotelian distinction between semantic logos and apophantic logos. The first limits itself in fact merely to “meaning”, while the second “states”, i.e. affirms or denies. The semantic logos is therefore limited to affirming meanings, without ever posing the problem of the truth or falsity of its utterances, while the apophantic logos neces­sarily and always implies the affirmation or denial of the truth or falsity of a given statement (Agazzi 2012: 109-130). So if the semantic logos has to do solely with the meaning of linguistic expressions and therefore investigates the precise under­standing of sentences, on the contrary the apophantic logos mainly studies the reference associated with these expressions and then there arises a question relating to their truth or falsity. In Frege’s reflection this Aristotelian distinction returns to play a precise role, especially to the extent that for each linguistic expression or sign [Zeichen], the German logician distinguishes, in fact, the meaning [Sinn] from the referent [Bedeutung]. Frege intended to study above all the objective contents of thought [Gedanken], so that his semantics highlighted the objective scope of the meaning which referred to objective conceptual contents, through which the refer­ents are addressed, according to a certain conceptual mode. Or rather: for Frege, referents can only and exclusively be grasped through the fundamental heuristic mediation of meaning. But this fundamental level of conceptual mediation was gradually lost sight of by extensional semantics for formal systems which, from Russell to Tarski, have come to reduce the meaning of linguistic signs to their referents or denotational meanings, ignoring the fundamental function of conceptual mediation exerted by Sinn. In this way the three-layer semantics of Frege was gradually reduced to a two-level semantics which neglected the fundamental con­ceptual component of knowledge. And this has occurred precisely because, while the crucial semantically fundamental problem concerns meaning as such, on the con­trary the problem regarding reference is not reduced to the semantic dimension (although, of course, it is linked to semantics), because it implies precisely the capacity to grasp the referent, a capacity which takes place outside the scope of semantics, as it involves access to an operational and pragmatic dimension through which theories “grasp” their referents. So Agazzi’s epistemology stems also from the need to understand the relationship established between meaning and reference, bearing in mind that semantics is not really connected with reference, because it is concerned first of all with meaning (Minazzi 2012). Therefore it is necessary to study the correlation of these three different levels (sign, meaning and reference), as well as understanding the relative autonomy which characterises both the moment of semantic logos and that of apophantic logos. Nor is this all: because for Agazzi semantic analysis then has to be integrated with epistemological analysis, which finally expands to ontological analysis (see Agazzi 2012: 243-264), because he holds that “the thesis of the referentiality of scientific language is the expression of the thesis of scientific realism when one moves from the epistemological level to that of the philosophy of language” (Agazzi 2014: 270). Thus we can justifiably criticise the excessive claims of contemporary epistemological contextualism, and at the same time equally dissociate ourselves from the so-called “linguistic breakthrough” in epistemological analysis, which has typically sought to unilaterally reduce sci­entific theories to the sole semantic logos. On the contrary, Agazzi writes,

we recognised then that any science necessarily studies abstract objects, but with the intention of knowing an extra mental reality to which it ‘refers’, and in which it intends to find ‘concrete objects’ that are ‘referents’ exemplifying its abstract objects (Agazzi 2014: 279).

Consequently, in line with this epistemological approach, in each scientific discipline objects cannot but coincide with a set—more or less structured, depending on the degree of accuracy of this same discipline—of attributes which are recognised operationally within a given reality, precisely because they are

operationally related to the objects themselves. So these attributes are attributed to these objects through an operational mediation (not based on a mere operation of thought). Which, however, does not preclude a particular referent from possessing also other and different properties, which can be studied by other sciences, or which might be the subject of other possible discourses.

This means that the referent one is reaching thought being ‘encountered’ by means of certain operational procedures, is much richer than the bundle of operationally defined characteristics or attributes that those procedures are able to demonstrate and ‘sum up’ in the objects. This does not mean, however, that this same referent cannot be further investigated by means of other criteria of referentiality and become in such a way the subject-matter (the object) of other objectification procedures. Our position could be expressed by saying that there is a distinction (but not a separation 9 between the realm of objectivity and that of reality in this precise sense: the domain of objectivity is always much more restricted than the domain of reality (do not forget that, according to our definition, reality coincides with existence, and therefore encompasses the total domain of being), and it can never be brought coincide with it. Indeed any objectification depends on a point of view within another point of view (that is, the broader point of view in which ‘things’ are given, which is in itself ‘contingent’ upon a certain historical situation and never encom­passes ‘the whole’ of reality). This must not be understood however, as if there were secluded parts of reality perpetually immune to any objectification. On the contrary, there is no part of reality which may be thought of as not being able in principle to undergo objectification (such a claim would be a concealed form of epistemological dualism) (Agazzi 2014: 282, italics in the text).

In other words, we fall back into epistemological dualism if we think that behind an electron—identified by its properties—there is a mythical substance which we are never able to know because we can only know its specific properties. Thus we can no longer conceive an electron as a thing to which some properties are attributed, because it is necessary instead to understand an electron as an object which is being built thanks to and through these properties.

An object is to be considered as the ‘structured’ totality of the objectively affirmable properties and not as a mysterious substratum of these properties. This might sound as a Humean positivism, but it is not, since we do not maintain that such properties are exclusively our perceptions: they are ontological aspects of reality, and may even be perceptually unattainable (Agazzi 2014: 283).

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