Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology

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Series on the Foundations of Natural Science and Technology - Vol. 5

Hans Lenk

QjgEfjftpg 03gfJ0^7 An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology

World Scientific

Science is constructive and realistic at the same time. The modern epistemology and philosophy of science has to take this into account. The present work develops an interpretationist methodological approach by using the concept of schemeinterpretation in a nevertheless realistic setting. In particular, the idea is that the preparationism and interpretationism as highlighted by quantum theory is to be generalized to other sciences and their philosophy as well. The cartoon ironically illustrates the situation of constructing and designing with the structure of the interpreting subject: The interpreter interprets the interpreter himself as a constructing and interpreting being. Nevertheless, the world is real, though it can only be "grasped" and conceived of by interpretive approaches, methods and theories.

Grasping Reality An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology

Series on the Foundations of Natural Science and Technology Series Editors: C. Politis (University of Patras, Greece) W. Schommers (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany)

Vol. 1:

Space and Time, Matter and Mind: The Relationship between Reality and Space-Time by W. Schommers

Vol. 2:

Symbols, Pictures and Quantum Reality: On the Theoretical Foundations of the Physical Universe by W. Schommers

Vol. 3:

The Visible and the Invisible: Matter and Mind in Physics by W. Schommers

Vol. 4:

What is Life? Scientific Approaches and Philosophical Positions by H.-P. Durr, F.-A. Popp and W. Schommers

Vol. 5:

Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology byH. Lenk

Vol. 6:

Nano-Engineering in Science and Technology: An Introduction to the World of Nano-Design by M. Rieth

Grasping Reality An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology

Hans Lenk Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany

v

V> World Scientific

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GRASPING REALITY An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology Copyright © 2003 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

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Preface

"If quantum mechanics were right, the world must be mad", thus that was what Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists of humankind, used to say. By this — and many other arguments and Gedanken experiments — he wanted to criticize the completeness of quantum theory claimed by the so-called Copenhague School, notably by Niels Bohr. More recently, some physicists like Daniel Greenberger and Richard Feynman would add that Einstein was right — yet only with regards to his conclusion: "The world is mad" (Greenberger) and "nobody" — not even a most eminent theoretical physicist would "really understand quantum mechanics" (Feynman). At least, the most impressive experimental success of quantum mechanics thwarted any attempts thus far to falsify quantum theory. (Einstein, however, turned out not to be right in his conceiving of a reality, separably to be captured by us — independently of our acting, grasping or theorizing.) Yet, perhaps the world is still not that "mad" if we take into account not only our mathematical and scientific talents proper, but also take our pragmatical ones more seriously, i.e. action-shaping and activity-based, as well as our interpretative talents in dealing with general methodology (including a methodological interpretation of quantum theory and its measurement problems). With the onset and ever-growing confirmation of quantum theory the traditional V

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology

problems of realism and of knowing and grasping reality took on new fascinating facets and a quite novel relief. May the circumstances governing the understanding and devising of quantum experiments turn out to be rather the general case characterizing to some degree all the ways of capturing and grasping, knowing and manipulating "realities"? In this book, I shall outline an action- and interpretation-oriented epistemological approach by trying in a sense to reconcile realism and a sort of constructivism relying on what I call a methodological scheme-interpretationism centering around the concept of "grasping"'. The meaning of this concept is explicitly intended to combine the rather active as well as passive connotations implied. (We actively "grasp" a thing or an abstract object(ive); or we rather passively "grasp" the latter's content, reference, or meaning.) Such a duplicity or intended double meaning seems to me to characterize most phenomena of knowledge and actions. Both are necessarily structured, i.e. schematic or schematized. They can be understood and have to be interpreted by ourselves as knowing and acting subjects or in same such ways as observers. From a rather general methodological point of view I shall try indeed to tackle the tenacious problems of knowledge and of scientific theories as well as of theoretical concepts etc. by using the methodological concepts of schemata or scheme-interpretation. The main insight is that any theoretical and practical knowledge whatsoever is structured by means of schemata or schemes which may be interpreted as (being materialized by or supervening on) activated neuronal assemblies leading to a new at the same time realist and constructivist approach in epistemology. Some philosophical roots of such a scheme-interpretationism are to be found in Kant's epistemology and Nietzsche's interpretationism as well as in hypothetical realistic views entertained by critical rationalism (after Kuelpe, Popper and others) and by interactionism (after Harre regarding and "hunting" references in nature) as well as by a technology-oriented view of theoretical instrumentation and the meaning of concepts and theories (like Hacking and Giere). In some sense the present approach is action- and technology-oriented,

Preface

vu

i.e. not only an interpretationism, but an interpretive interactionism. The approach combines passive and active meanings of conceptualizing by using the concept and metaphor of "grasping" reality. Indeed, a critical review of many recent realistic approaches is supplemented by this schema-interpretationist and action- as well as technology-oriented realism of a new provenance combining fundamental structures of structuring action and knowledge with the same or at least a quite similar perspective. An intriguing idea to be followed will simultaneously cover epistemological problems of the natural and social sciences from a unified vantage point as well as maintaining a realistic approach, though a methodologically speaking indirect ("non-directistic") and sophisticated one. By sketching out an interpretation of the meaning of "reality" and the interpretive interactionism in quantum theory it will be argued that such an approach can be considered an extant example of general scientific and epistemological importance. The idea is that the characteristic experimentalistic preparation of the experimental situation in quantum mechanics is not a very special and rare case but rather the usual and common situation in gaining, structuring, and interpreting experiential and especially experimental knowledge. Thus, schema-interpretationism in its interactionist and action-oriented as well as its technology-oriented form can be combined with realism and also with an understanding of theoretical approaches in any science and systematic discipline whatsoever including even day-to-day knowledge. But what about the usual understanding of knowing, manipulating, shaping, or making reality? Here, the quite general and at first sight rather abstract methodological approach should also turn out to be feasible indeed. Common-sense realism already played a significant role in the history of philosophy in and since antiquity — particularly in rejecting skeptical arguments criticizing "the" naively hypostatized ontological "real". These arguments have been pretty successful to date. Indeed, there is no absolute logical or conceptually analytical proof for the existence of a real external world: The existence of the external world cannot be conjured up by magic out of the sorcerer's hat so to speak by pure logics and logical or analytical semantics alone.

Vlll


With regards to the traditional problem(s) of realism we may and should however distinguish from ontological realism the rather epistemological question of epistemological realism properly characterized by the claim that we do reliably know something about reality. The epistemological question therefore is whether or not we can gain and develop "true" or at least reliable and acceptable or even exact and precise information about reality and the really existing world. One may imagine something like reality as being described and explained by the natural sciences like many natural scientists do, if they think that the world as such is structured in the same manner or in congruence to how science tries to recognize and explain reality by means of "true" or truth-oriented theories. An epistemological realism may amount to a far-fetched realism claiming to be able to gain a comprehensive recognition of die world as such, or it may represent but a partial epistemological realism implying that we are only to a certain degree in a condition to gain reliable or precise information about (external) reality. (Here, we shall confront the problems of the so-called scientific realism also to be addressed in this book.) We have indeed no absolutely description-free, language-free and interpretation-free access to reality as such to test the adequacy of descriptions and statements of truth with respect to different approaches by referring to an independent method not availing itself of any theory, language etc. i.e. of schematization and interpretation of whatever sorts. Natural scientists today have given up die naive mirror theory regarding the description of reality. In addition, most scientists gave up the claim of deducing all statements from just one ultimate principle of matter which traditionally amounted to an explicit reduction to statements of pure physics. Instead, nowadays many people defend a sort of non-reductionist physicalism or eliminative materialism, claiming that all statements or knowledge as well as recognition of mental and psychical phenomena could be eliminated without being explicitly definable in terms of materialistic or directly physicalist expressions. This is not necessarily implied by our more abstract i.e. higher-level, metatheoretical, methodologically more sophisticated epistemological approach as we shall see.

Preface

IX

The more refined doctrine of critical realism like the one defended by Karl Popper and his disciples and followers is indeed closely related to the methodological and pragmatic realism to be sketched out here. Certainly, they are both indirect realisms, since they intersperse the formation of (theoretical) hypotheses between sense perception, the respective experience and the testing or confirmation (corroboration) of recognition and knowledge. Furthermore procedures, preparations, and action structures of experimentations take on a greater significance than ever considered by the mainly theory-minded Popperians. Stimulated by a modernized version of the Kantian epistemology, by the insights of neuroscience, neuropsychology and by a pragmatic interpretation of the active and interactive gaining of knowledge in quantum mechanics I shall try to develop an "activistic" pragmatic epistemology combining an ontologically realistic with an interactionist constructivist and interpretationist methodology. To be sure, it is claimed that we may in some sense correctly recognize the world and its "structures". One would not only presuppose the existence of a human- and mind-independent world, but also state that we would be able to recognize and know it or its structured reactions or part of its basic constitutional set-up or "framework" to be rather reliably captured by our schematizations and interpretations (both theoretical and practical), if only in an approximate but ever-improving manner. According to the rather sophisticated epistemological and differentiated methodological interpretationist approach taken here the established — well established! — facons de parler of "the reality", of "the reference" of expressions to "the reality" or "the real" are to be seen as stylized and shaped not only by the necessary pragmatic preparation and "make-up" of the arrangement and somewhat pefabricated "situation" of the extant experiments but also by interpretational constructs on a higher level of theorizing, interpreting and action forming. One could and should integrate the different conceptions of a sort of quasi "direct" reference to the world and the epistemological insight of a methodologically speaking necessary "indirectism". Also any conceiving and distancing of "world" patterns

X


of the respective order (structured or reconstructed by us) would have to be integrated into the hierarchy of metalevels of interpretation and on the different levels involved. (These will be presented and discussed in due course.) In this way, the well-established everyday talk regarding a "directistic" reference to things on the one hand and also the acknowledgment of the unavoidably interpretational character of the respective interpretative model constructs will be combined in a rather sophisticated manner. From a higher methodological (meta)level we see references and relationships from the vantage point of a more differentiated perspective. Nevertheless, it will be shown that a realistic interpretationism may be pragmatically defended, if mainly, but not only, for lifepractical reasons. We all have to take off from a realistic model by using everyday language, but even this is to be conceived of as a sort of model construct from a higher methodological level. Any restrictive realism of whatever kind is epistemologically speaking (from a higher level), always to be understood as interpretation-mediated, scheme-bound or as an interpretation or (reConstruction only to be "grasped" as such. This is true in any case for the kind of pragmatic realism to be developed here. However, we can with good reasons defend a realistic interpretation of epistemological approaches and the respective requirements of a meaningful background realism, if we combine both of them with a language-analytic and sophisticated (i.e. scheme-interpretationist) methodological critique. One may indeed be at the same time a realist and an interpretative constructionist. Therefore, in what follows I shall speak about and develop a scheme-interpretationally moderated, i.e. limited, pragmatic realism.

Contents

Preface

v

1. "Grasping" as Interpretation and Impregnation

1

2. Methodological Outline of the Systematic Scheme-Interpretationism

6

3. Short Note about "Grasping" in Traditional Philosophy

38

4. "Truth" as a Metatheoretic Interpretative Construct

47

5. A Reappraisal Regarding "Theories" and "Theoretical Concepts": Towards an Action-Theoretical and Technology-Oriented Philosophy of Science and Epistemology

72

6. Reality Constructs and Different "Realisms"

90

7. From a Kantian Towards a ProblematisticInterpretationist Approach

115

8. Referential Realism as an Interactionist Interpretationism

132

XI

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemolojuy

9. Interpretation of Reality and Quantum Theory

150

10. Resume: "Grasping" as Acting in (Re)cognizing

184

Appendix — Progress and Characteristics of Traditional and New Technologies: Regarding a Realistic and Pragmatic Philosophy of Technology

217

Literature + References

241

Name Index

255

Subject Index

259

1 "Grasping" as Interpretation and Impregnation

It is received wisdom in traditional philosophy that within this discipline we move along the frontiers and borderlines of what is susceptible to saying and insight. We would continuously fight with expressions and attempts to represent or sketch out something in philosophy which can only be stated or imagined in a rather limited sense. To my mind this is in part due to the fact that language — at least any language of standard European type — has a specific function of realistically reifying abstract "objects". By words we always mean something i.e. some thing, an object somehow existing if not in reality then in a kind of abstract realm of ideal objects, ideas etc. This seems to be a widely held interpretation comprehensively applied to any sayable content whatsoever. This interpretation or, rather, misinterpretation if extended to an all too comprehensive realm of applicability seems to be notorious in philosophy, at least in most of Western philosophies and languages. We somehow project an interpretation about the functioning of language into any conceiving of contents (even the projection of a "content" is but an instance of such a projection!) thinking that we may be able to see or refer by means of language and its "substantiating" function (its nouns and

1

2

Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Rpistemology

related hypostatizing substances) things, their essences, abstract structures etc. Language has a specific and specious transparency. We think we might somehow grasp things immediately by language without taking into consideration that these matters are in reality much more complex. Language developed mainly as an instrument for preparing actions which we use in a similar vein like other means and instruments. Therefore, what words, statements and languages in general would represent, the so-called "meaninjj", are at least in part something rather fictional or artificial, only to be constituted by linguistic rules and their applications. Such rules often engender the meaningfulness or significance or even the fact, "property" or function that something has meaning, or rather is significant to us and our actions as well as our lives. This is notoriously relevant for the sciences if we have different theories relating to the same realm of application and these theories are almost equally successful i.e. corroborated or confirmed by empirical evidence to an almost equal extent or admitting the same theoretical unification auspices. Then, it is not easy to decide which one of these turns out to be the better theory. This is, in part, difficult because linguistic and mathematical (e.g. formal-linguistic) means of structuring and "in-formation" are involved in the very conception of theories, their theoretical concepts and hierarchy etc. Concepts, laws, hypotheses involved in and used by theories are all theoryladen and constructive, as the philosophy of science has come to know in the last half century. All these "constructs" or concepts are at times rather differently constructed in rival theories; think of classical mechanics and relativistic kinetics or mechanics, dynamics and quantum mechanics in microphysics. These approaches depend on rather different basic ideas though there are in some sense correspondences, overlappings or even "transitions" to be spelled out e.g. in specific measurement results in overlapping areas of application. But nevertheless, theoretically speaking, any two of those theories are rather differently conceived of; they represent different theoretical "worlds" or versions of basic theoretical designs not reducible to each other. One theory may not be derived from the other one. In a strict logical sense they are incompatible, even if empirical measurements

"Grasping" as Interpretation and Impregnation

3

of correlated magnitudes are the same up to particular limits of precision. Generally speaking, it is similar with our cultural designs and developments and with the structuring of our world representations by means of our languages. We can even speak of a sort of theory ladenness in our everyday knowledge — similar to the theoryimpregnatedness in science before mentioned. This, most importantly, is not only true for our "Erkenntnis" (theoretical (re)cognition and knowledge) but also for our actions and their interpretation etc. We have methodologically spoken similar circumstances and conditions as in the case of scientific theories. Also in everyday connections, conceptions, constructs and accepted rules play a similar role for structuring and ordering phenomena as in the case of forming hypotheses in the natural or social sciences. In the latter disciplines this seems to be particularly relevant and plausible: In everyday interpretation it seems to be more familiar to us because social scientists in some sense have to meet and explain everyday phenomena in a manner to be understood beyond their professional enterprise. Indeed, however, in a sense here it seems to be even more complicated than in natural science because the "object of the social sciences", the "social" itself, is something fictional, construed or constituted by humans gaining only a kind of "reality", namely "social reality", in a secondary manner. The "social" is not something "given" like the moon as a natural satellite of the earth in the solar system. The "social" is human- made or produced by humans, constituted by a complex of human activities, interpretations and structuring processes of many kinds. It is therefore dependent on human interpretations, fictions, constitutions and validations ("Geltungen") i.e. on the acceptance of social rules in society in a much more intriguing sense than in the case of natural and cosmic objects: Even "society" itself is conceptually speaking a sort of "construct(ion) of interpretations" shared by all the members of a particular culture. (To be sure, "culture" is also such a construct!) The complex interdependencies are engendered or co-evolved by language, culture, attitudes, social rules, conventions or norms i.e. expectations which are rules more or less shared, controlled or sanctioned. Customs and valuations,

4


shared processes of structuring many a behavior, notably actions, and interpretations by values and valuations (which are also typically shared constructs!) is one characteristic feature of what is called the social. More than in other areas we find here an active imprinting or shaping, a constitutive structuring and ordering of processes of "grasping" and perceiving or knowing the respective phenomena and "objects" by our very theories, constructions, conceptions, societal and cultural rules, norms and standards — in short by our schematized forms of representation and active formation which we have inherited, taken over or consciously constructed ourselves. Social constructs are almost totally human-made and thus of a second-hand "reality". However, they are "real" in this secondary sense being estimated and accepted as "real" by all pertinent individuals on the basis of shared norms, values etc. held valid. Validity again is a second-hand property relevant in a social sense as which most people regard as valid. On the other hand we have the realm of natural, real things and of the natural sciences. Here, something seems to be "grasped" or discovered which is "already there" — only calling for description and explanation. However these endeavors of describing and explaining are certainly also dependent on our theoretical constructions i.e. on theories which are susceptible to changes in the course of the history of science. Theories change or improve in part even by basic theoretical "revolutions". We find also dependencies here: Any view of reality depends on theoretical conceptions which are involved in our basic scientific convictions or fundamental intuitions including the formation of concepts, axioms, formal and linguistic instruments etc. This seems to be valid on a rather general scale — not only for science. It seems to be true both for the mentioned human-made engendered social and its second-hand reality and for the grasping of "the real" in natural science. This complex phenomenon and the interdependencies between theoretical and action-oriented shapings will be the topic of the following book. The concepts of how we "grasp" these "realities" of different sorts and levels will be one main focus. Therefore, we will need a modern discussion of what can be conceived of as "real", and, methodologically speaking, we need a systematic approach to

"Grasping" as Interpretation and. Impregnation

5

the processes of how the phenomena of knowledge and (re)cognition, perception, action and meaning can be analyzed from a systematic point of view. [All of this will not be discussed here from a rather historical standpoint, but from a systematical vantage point entertaining only some short historical retrospectives just for systematical reasons: Therefore I shall not delve into the long history of philosophical realism and its problems in the history of philosophy, but just resume some recent debates (Chap. 6).] The general methodological approach to be chosen here can be called a constructive interpretationism or a schema-interpretive methodology, more explicitly, a scheme-interpretive constructionism with a sophisticated realistic epistemological characteristic. Basically, the results of interpretive constructions and representative patterns to be activated and reactivated in a relatively stabilized manner will be called interpretative constructs, scheme- or schemainterpretations (schematic interpretata, rather). For short, I will call them interpre(ta)tive constructs or schema-interpretations. These may be rather abstract to be read off from concrete perceptions or actions etc. But in any case the concept of interpretive constructs is of course a rather abstract, methodological or epistemological one. I should like to start with an outline of this approach of systematic schema-interpretationism.

Methodological Outline of the Systematic Scheme-Interpretationism1

In cognition of any kind, we are obliged to use frames, forms, shapes, and constructs, as well as schemata or schemes. This is true for all sorts of cognitive grasping, whether by a process of recognition and categorization, or by normative structuring or planned acting. Applications of forms and frames are schematizations or schema interpretations, as I would like to call these interpre(ta)tive constructs and their activation, in order to distinguish them from text interpretation in the hermeneutical sense. Schemata might be used consciously or activated subconsciously. Any kind of interpretation whatsoever is connected with or bound to an activation of such schemata. This connection might be characterized by core features and core stimuli, the selection of which is necessary, even though some of these are conducted subconsciously. Even here, on the subconscious level, cognitive quasi-constructs are used to render the profiles of contrast and the structural differentiation by activating the functions of the respective sense organs, or their processing units of perception and

^ h e first part of this section has been presented to the World Congress of Philosophy in Boston 1998 and is published in the Proceedings Volume 8 (Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Dahlstrom, 2000, 121-132). 6

Methodological Outline of the Systematic Scheme-Interpretationism

7

cognition in the brain, as well as their integrating polymodal and combining yet hypothetical centers. They are partly due to hereditary and evolutionary development, partly developed by early ontogenetic interaction with the world, and partly learned by experience and instruction. Generally speaking, I call these abstract constructs of frame character schemata. Schemata are developed and applied on different representational levels in order to integrate individual experiences, single activities, and sense data or stimulations into a more general frame, pattern, or similarity structure. In any case, whenever we try to combine phenomena and the results of categorizing under generic perspectives, concepts, equalities of form or shape, and similarities, as well as analogues (analoga) of all these, whenever we try to identify, retrieve, recognize shapes transcending the individual phenomenality of the so-called qualitatively given, we rely on the activation of such schemata. Any recognizing and generalizing, particular conceptual knowledge, is thus bound to cognitive schemata that can be understood as more or less abstract constructs that are projected onto and into seemingly direct sense perception and respective experiences by recognizing Gestalten or constituting objects, processes, events, and so forth. Any seeing and recognizing of shapes and forms is dependent on and guided by schemata. Any cognition whatsoever is thus schematic. This is true not only for recognition, but also for actions i.e. not only for rather passive sorts of "grasping", but also for rather active kinds of grasping. It was Kant who developed, in his Critique of Pure Reason, the concept of schema for epistemology by conducting quasi operational procedures of instantiating, as well as developing schematic connections between sense reception, on one hand, and conceptual recognition on the other. Kant defined a schema as "...product of the power of imagination {Einbildungskmft), which is not attending to individual images or imaginations, but towards the "unity" of sensations and intuitions (Anschauunjjen) and the determination of sensuality... which is rather the imagination of a method to imagine according to a certain concept in an image than the image itself... . Now, this

8


imagination (Vorstellung) of a general procedure of the power of imagination to render an image for a concept, I call the schema connected with this concept." (CpRB 179f) 2 Kant related the concept of schema as a concept of such an operation of the sensual and conceptual shaping and framing n o t only t o sense perception like the sensing and seeing of figures in visual space, but also to the imaginative substantiation of the "pure concepts of reason" (categories). The respective abstract — "transcendental" — schema is " b u t the pure synthesis, according to a rule of the unity following concepts in general..." (category): "In fact, at the foundation of our pure sensual concepts there are n o t pictures of the objects, but schemata", (ibid. B 181) H e terms the procedure, t o render t o the categories their "image" or mental image, a transcendental schema and calls the respective mechanism of coordination transcendental schematism. However, Kant also applied this procedure of coordination — and therefore also the concept of schema — t o "imaginative" and mental representation of any objects of experience whatsoever i.e. t o images: "The image is a product of the empirical capacity of the productive power of imagination, the schema of sensual concepts (being of the figures in space) is a product and so to say a monogram of the pure power of imagination a priori, by which and according to which the images are rendered possible at all, which however have always to be connected with the concept only by using the schema which they designate and with which they per se are not totally congruent." (ibid. B 181) Kant anticipated the process of developing and establishing as well as applying cognitive constructs for the imaginative visualisation of mental configurations and models i.e. of cognitions. Only in the last few decades, in the wake of theories and concepts of Gestalt psychology, has cognitive psychology rediscovered this concept of

2

Kant, Kritik Aer reinen Vernunft (= CpR), 2nd ed. (= B), quoted as B 179f (my translations of all the Kantian texts to follow).


9

schemata as "imaginative" cognitive constructs.3 Rumelhart calls schemata "the building blocks of cognition". Psychology has discovered that not only visual conception and sense perception are general, but also that conceptual and common sense (or naive theoretical cognition) operate in terms of developing and applying schemata. In other words, any cognitions, interpretations, or knowledge whatsoever are bound to the application, selection and activation, as well as checking of, schemata. 4 The process of interpretation is basically to be seen in the selection and activation of possible configurations of schemata that are verified under the perspective of their congruence or incongruence with thought datafragments of memory. Beyond that, this process is an active process of searching for and structuring information. In general, we use mental representations of frames or data features or contents, which are typified, generically distinguished and concentrated to relevant features that are retrievable from memory. One may well ask whether or not the expressions and concepts of "structure", "construct", and similar concepts like "strategy", "script", 5 "frames", "configuration", "conceptual schema", and so forth, are essentially referring to the same concept, namely schema. There is no explicit, really non-circular definition of "schema"; therefore Rumelhart concentrates on developing a schema theory which proceeds by giving essential features within hypotheses and thereby an implicit or functional or "operational" definition of the functional concept of "schema". Rumelhart compares the concept, role, activation, and function of a schema with similar concepts of structured activities: for example,

3

Cf. e.g. D. E. Rumelhart, Schemata: The Building Blocks of Cognition (Center for Human Information Processing, University of California, San-Diego), quoted after CHIP-Report 79 (1978). (Rumelhart's text can also be found in Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension, ed. R. Spiro, B. Bruce, and W. Brewer [Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1980].) 4 See e.g. U. Neisser, Cognitive Psychology (1966), and Cognition and Reality (1976), and for methodological and epistemological aspects Lenk 1993, 1993a, 2001, 2001a. 5 My use of "script" here — and in Lenk 1993a, 1995, 1998, 2001, 2001a —follows R. C. Schank and R. Abelson (1977).

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schemata are like theater stagings — the instantiation or activation of a schema is like the staging of a drama; the internal structure of the schema referring to the script or plot. Similarly, schemata can be compared with theories, computer programs, parsing analyses in linguistics, and so forth. In all these cases we have procedures and functional shaping of reconstructions which comprise variations, checks, ramifications, and extensions, as well as a judgement about fitting or falsification, substitution or modification of a construct by another one. It is characteristic that schemata are connected with other schemata and subschemata in a certain hierarchical architecture, and that schemata have variables connected with different aspects of the environment and the diverse instantiations of the schema. For instance, the schema BUYING admits of the functional roles and schemata of BUYER and SELLER as well as the media MONEY and GOODS as well as the subschema BARGAINING. The instantiation of such a schema may indeed be considered as an analogue of the staging of a drama whereby, however, the concretization and instantiation of the variables allow for a greater flexibility and openness than the interpretation of a plot by the actor or director. Schemata, however, are more abstract and general than a drama or its plot and script. Schemata can also refer to things, objects, shapes, and events as well as any spacial, static, or functional relationships and constellations. It is important that schemata consist of subschemata. The activation of a subschema is usually immediately related with the activation of the schema itself and the other way around. The comparison of schemata with programs, networks, and so forth is certainly fruitful and can be visualized in flow charts and related structural means admitting of state and point identification of the constituents and the ramifications of such structures. The total set of the schemata we use to interpret our world comprises, in some sense, our private theory of the nature of reality. Schemata represent, so to speak, our internal model of the respective situations in the world. Methodologically speaking, (schema) interpretation is but the (re) activation of schemata. It is true that according to modern cognitive psychology, the interpretative structuring of sense perception, the comprehension of texts


11

as well as memorizing and the solution of problems is essentially dependent on the selection, (re)activation and instantiation of schemata. But not only the interpretation of a situation, but also active information seeking as well as the integration into contexts and the development of strategies for problem solving will follow the lead of partly concept-guided, partly data-guided, application of schemata. The mutual activation of schemata and subschemata is essential. In general, the concept of schema or cognitive construct or even interpretational construct is a rather fruitful instrument for developing a cognitive psychological theory, but beyond that it is also useful for developing for a new methodological epistemology. Cognitive constructs, schemata, and interpretational constructs are really "the building blocks of cognition" and of any mental representation or information manipulation". As Kant recognized, the dynamical and structural, as well as functional visualization of abstract constructs, is schema-dependent; and this is not only true for empirical procedures of grasping i.e. cognition and action, but also for methodological constructs. One may develop a sort of non-foundational transcendental philosophy of the fundamental conditions of any development, application, and stabilization of any procedures of structuring by any kind of representation, be it by frames, concepts, orders, unifications, configurations, and so forth. Generally speaking, interpretation is the development, stabilization and activation (application) of mentally representing constructs or schemata. Interpretation (in a wide sense) is basically schema interpretation founded on, as well as grounded in, schema activation. Therefore, I talk of schema interpretation. We can conceive of a basic axiom or principle of methodological interpretation stating that all kinds of grasping, cognition, and action are interpretation dependent i.e. founded on the activation of schemata. True far beyond psychological theories and epistemological perspectives, this is a totally general methodological and comprehensive approach comprising the philosophy of knowledge (traditionally called epistemology), as well as philosophy of action and representation. Methodological and transcendental construct or schema interpretationism overarches even the modern split between natural and social sciences as well the

12

Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemolojjy

humanities, since all these disciplines would structure their fields and objects according to the activation of schemata by using procedures of establishing, stabilizing, and activating schemata as cognitive constructs in order to structure the respective world versions and sets of objects or events, structures, and procedures, as well as projections. It is interesting that schema interpretation admits to levels of categorization as well as variability of the respective schemata i.e. whether or not they are hereditarily fixed or conventionalized or flexible, whether they are subconsciously developed and activated or consciously conceived and used. I developed a hierarchy of levels of interpretation consisting of six different levels or plains of interpretation. Figure 2.1 shows the respective six levels.

ISj: practically unchangeable productive primary interpretation ( Urinterpretation) (primary constitution or schematization, respectively). IS 2 : habit-shaping, (equal) forms-constituting pattern interpretation (ontogenetically habitual(ized) form and schema categori(ali)zation and preverbal conceptformation). IS 3 : conventional concept formation transmitted by social, cultural and normregulated tradition. IS 3a : ... by non-verbal cultural gestures, rules, norms, forms, conventions, implicit communicative symbols. IS31,: ...by verbal forms and explicitly representing communicative symbols, metasymbols, metaschemata, and so forth. IS 4 : applied, consciously shaped and accepted as well as transmitted classificatory interpretation (classification, subsumption, description by "sortals", generic formation of kinds, directed concept-formation). IS5: explanatory and in the narrow sense "comprehending" (verstehende), justifying, theoretically or argumentatively substantiating interpretation, justificatory interpretation. IS 6 : epistemological (methodological) meta-interpretation (plus meta-metainterpretation, and so forth) of methods, results, instruments, conception of establishing and analyzing interpretative constructs diemselves. Fig. 2 . 1 . Diagram of the levels of interpretation.


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The different levels of interpretation are the following ones: ISi comprises the practically unchangeable productive primary interpretations of primary constitution which might be represented by subconscious schema instantiation. They comprise the hereditarily fixed or genetically founded activation of selective schemata of sense perception (e.g. contrasts of dark and light) as well as the interactive, selective activations of early ontogenetic developments like the stages of developmental psychology discussed by Piaget. Also comprised are the biologically hardwired primary theories which we cannot alter at will, but which we can (only) problematize in principle. For instance, we have no magnetic sense or capacity to trace ultrasound like bats. But we can conceive of conditions in which we could have these senses or at least devise technological means for substituting these. On the second level we have the habitual, quality forming frame interpretations and schema categorizations as well as categorizations which are abstracted from prelinguistic discriminatory activities, experiences of equality of shape, similarity of presentation and experience, and so forth. Establishment and discriminatory capacity of prelinguistic conceptualization and development of concepts about language is to be formed on this level. On level IS3 we have conventional concept formation, namely, socially and culturally traditional conventions and norms for representation and forms of discriminatory activities like the explicit conceptualization of framing the world according to natural kinds, etc. Insofar as this is not already related to language differentiation we can think of a sublevel (IS3a) on which prelinguistic conventionalizations are characteristic. On the other hand (on IS3b), we have the explicitly linguistic conventionalization or the differentiation of concepts by means of language. Level IS4 would comprise the consciously formed interpretations of embedding and subsuming as well as classifying and describing according to generic terms, kinds, etc. It is the level of ordered concept formation and classification, as well as ordering and subsumption. Level IS5 would go beyond that by rendering explanatory, or in the narrower sense comprehending (Verstehcn) interpretations as well as justifying theoretically argumentative interpretations in a sense of looking for reasons and grounds of justification.

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemolq/jy

These activities are certainly not only advanced in science and intellectual disciplines, but also in every day life and common sense. Any kind of a systematic comprehension within the compounds of theories, systems and overarching perspectives of integration is important here. Beyond that however, we also have a level (ISg) of the epistemological and philosophical as well as methodological interpretations of a meta-character, overarching and integrating the procedures of theory building and theory interpretation, methodology and the models of interpretation in the sense of methodological schema interpretationism, itself. One could call this a metalevel of interpretativity and talk about epistemological meta-interpretations. However, this level is cumulative and can be considered as being open towards further meta-levels. The model and approach of epistemological interpretationism is itself certainly an interpretative one and can be described and developed only on a certain respective meta-level which is to be seen within the level IS^. Therefore, we have the possibility of a self-application of the interpretational method to interpretatory procedures itself. The philosophy of schema interpretation is a philosophy of interpretational constructs as an epistemological model which admits of a certain kind of metatheoretical and metasemantical self-application in the form of a sort of "meta-interpretation". This is certainly an asset and epistemological advantage compared to a few other epistemological approaches including critical rationalism after Popper, a theory which does not admit to or conceive of the precise conditions of being falsified itself. The human being is indeed the "meta-interpreting being", capable of ascending to ever higher metalevels of (schema) interpretation. If we use these levels and metalevels of interpretational constructs we can reinterpret many of the traditional philosophical problems and reformulate them with respect to the relationship between different interpretational levels as mentioned. This is true e.g. for the concept of truth according to the correspondence theory as well as the consensus or pragmatic theory, as well as many other central problems like the problem of meaning, the problem of reference, and even the problem of content and intentionality, as well as the


15

old-fashioned problem of realism. The latter one can be solved now with respect to what may be called a pragmatic interpretational realism on which we have to rely for practical and common sense life reasons. In addition, we can speak so as to interpretationally relativize the problem of the reality of the world by discussing it under the perspectives of the different levels of interpretation as sketched out above. Certainly we have to dispense with absolute foundationalism in philosophy and epistemology. But in any case, the differentiation between reality and the interpretational representation of it is still relevant under the auspices of die above-mentioned axiom of the all-pervasive interpretativity and interpretation-impregnatedness of everything which is "grasped" or even conceived by delineating an interpretative relationship between the respective level or meta-level of interpretational constructs and post-interpretationist distinction between the concepts, framings, etc. on the one hand, and "things", "objects", and so on, on the other hand. We can talk of a certain pragmatic or practical realism not only for common sense reasons, but also from the perspective of a methodological interpretationism of a quasi-transcendental character, which allows a relativized realistic position. This realism is certainly not a naive one, but a critically and interpretationally broken schema, or an interpretation-impregnated one. Any realism whatsoever is to be restricted from an interpretational perspective insofar as we have no pure unbiased knowledge of the hypostatized world (any hypostatizing is necessarily schema interpretative). We have to recognize that all our graspings of reality are shaped, impregnated, established, and prestructured by our different sorts of schema interpretations starting from primary ones to more conventional ones (this might be considered a Kantian approach which also is to be found in internal realism as developed by Putnam). Secondly, we have to acknowledge that, methodologically speaking, even the distinction and differentiation between the "real" world and the interpreting being, the interpreting "self" or traditional transcendental subject, are per se a result of such an epistemological interpretation. The quasi dualistic model of distinguishing and differentiating between "world" and the "self" — judged from a

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higher level (e.g. IS 4 through IS6) — is an interpretational model. The same is true for the distinction and differentiation between knowledge and action, etc. We can only represent "something" and operate within our interpretational bounds, so to speak, from certain interpretational perspectives, under the auspices of applying and using interpretational methods and methodologies. In short, the indispensability of schema interpretation is beyond doubt. Any knowledge and grasping in the active and passive sense of the term, any comprehension of something as something — be it ideal or real or whatever — is dependent on interpretational forms and structures, that is, on interpretational constructs and schema interpretations. Any reality whatsoever, any ideal object and object of the activity of meaning something, can only be captured or grasped in schema-interpretative forms and frames and is therefore necessarily to some degree interpretation-dependent, interpretation-imbued, constituted and only constitutable by interpretational means. It is perspectival without — as in the case of impregnations 6 — necessarily being totally relativistic. However, schema interpretation itself is an epistemological means of interpreting. It is itself an interpretative construct or activity, namely under the auspices of a pragmatic interpretational methodology, which can possibly be combined with pragmatic realism. Schema interpretation is not everything, but anything conceivable is perspectivally interpretation-dependent or in the more specific sense, interpretation-laden, if not even — as again in the case of direct perception—schema interpretation-impregnated in the narrower sense. Everything can only be grasped by means of schema interpretation i.e. by constituting schema and developing as well as activating and reactivating schemata, in short, by schema interpretation. Any "grasping" of anything whatsoever (be it seemingly passive in the form of perception or "impregnation" in the narrower sense by 6

From the viewpoint of a specific higher epistemological interpretative level, "real" world factors might be interpreted as affecting, influencing, even co-"causing" schemata activation (as e.g. in direct perception). I more specifically call the schema activations thus mediated by "world factors" impregnations, i.e. factors that more or less direcdy impregnate (themselves on the respective) sensory receptor organs (e.g. visual ones like the retina or the eyes).


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factors of the ("external world") or be it more active by framing thoughts and actions) is formed, influenced, or externally impregnated by schema selection and activation. Interestingly, modern neuroscience is on the brink of giving a naturalized theory of schema development, schema activation, and stabilization, as well as schema reactivation. Brain researchers think of the brain as an "interpretative system"7 or as "brain constructs" (Himkonstruktef which are based on the establishment and development of plastic (i.e. flexible though relatively stabilized) neuronal assemblies.9 The forming and the establishment of neuronal assemblies is hypothesized as being a building-up and stabilization of the frequency phases of oscillatory reactions of different overlapping covarying and co-oscillating neuronal entities and the neuronal assemblies or networks that are activated simultaneously and selectively on adapting to a certain rhythmic ground oscillation of 40 Hertz, and a respective process of synchronization of these oscillations, which are starting to oscillate in common phase. Such a theory of the synchronicity of building up and dynamically stabilizing a certain kind of oscillation pattern and initiated impulses in the physical sense seems to be a potential explanation for the recognition of patterns, representations of forms, and recognition of mental states of activities, as well as mental imaginations and retrievals from memory. Therefore, we have special grounds to hypothesize about the neural biological and neurophysiological foundations of the schematization processes and establishment of constructs within the

7

See Gerhard Roth who explicitly calls the brain an "interpretative system" {"Interpretative* System") in his 1992, 120; cf. also his 1994, 92ff, 98, 107-112, 174). 8 To my knowledge it was Wolf Singer (1989, 1990) who first used this terminology, although already J. Z. Young (1978,1987) had earlier talked of "brain programmes" to be constructed and established (cf. also Lenk 2001a, b). 9 Cf. e.g. Ch. von der Malsburg, "Am I Thinking Assemblies?" In: Palm — Aertson (eds.) 1986, 161-176. Already in the seventies of the last century Von der Malsburg forwarded the hypothesis that there are dynamic and flexible ("plastisch") neuronal assemblies which would be dynamically established pretty fast by coherent neuron firings. This has meanwhile been experimentally confirmed (cf. Engel et al. 1993, Singer 1990). See also below Chap. 4.

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brain and in interaction with the external environment of stimuli and representational ("encodings") as well as "active" interaction and intervention with it. This can also be related to the development of neurons and perceptual as well as cognitive capacities in developmental psychology and physiology, cognitive science, and neuroscience and may potentially render a naturalized basis to the processes of formation of knowledge, perception, and cognition in general. I do not think that all semantical programs of meaning and epistemological problems of intentionality can be. naturalized in the strict sense. We are not yet able to fully straddle the "semantic lacuna" — not even in teleologicalfunctional approaches like Millikan's (1984) well-elaborated one. Even natural scientists in modern fields like microphysics, in dealing with theoretical entities, avail themselves of interpretational constructs as we all do in our everyday life. Therefore, the cleavage between natural sciences and interpretative disciplines, the gap between reality and representation, between knowledge and action, between experimental results and the pre-experimental setup, between concept formation, on the one hand, and referents of concepts, on the other, is not as wide as we would traditionally think. Knowledge and action are connected and overlapping, they are but perspectival differentiations of one another under a certain emphasis. Intervention into the world is always dependent on interpretation and the other way around. Interpretation in general and the capacity to interpret is dependent on impregnation in the narrower sense, that is on the fact that hypostasized "real" worldly structures have an impact on our actions and reactions, as well as our modes and means of representation. Intervention, interpretation, and impregnation are mutually related, even the distancing of "the world" from our acting and recognizing, from cognition and knowledge is gradual, relativized, itself in a sense interpretation-dependent, at least from an epistemological perspective. Basically, methodological schemainterpretationism is, I think unavoidably, combined with a kind of pragmatic and internal realism. To epitomize again we might state the general principle of realist-pragmatist scheme-interpretation: Any grasping whatsoever is dependent on scheme-interpretation in the sense that it is shaped by


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schema-interpretations directly (as in the case of social or mental constructs) or indirectly or externally (as in the case of coacting world factors or external entities, processes etc.). In the latter case I propose to speak of scheme-impregnations in the narrower sense (whereas "schema-impregnation" in the wider sense may be considered as synonymous with schema-interpretedness or schemainterpretation in general). Indeed, schema-interpretation or schemedependence in the comprehensive sense (including the variants of narrowly understood interpretivity and impregnatedness) is also necessary for any conception, thinking, and action as (in the form of impregnation) for sense perception. Any symbolic representational form of "grasping" anything by meaningful symbols is still dependent on interpretation in the traditional hermeneutical as well as by interpretation in the structural-methodological sense used here too. Even recent models in neuroscience and neurophilosophy would coincide in this respect: Any (re)cognition and knowledge ("Erkenneri") and action are shaped and structured by schemeinterpretation in the mentioned sense. This means that the principle of schema-interpretation in the wider and narrower sense is suitable to cover all schematizing-interpretative activities. Generally speaking, any scheme-interpretation and scheme-impregnation whether conscious or unconscious is action-bound and dependent on activities which are or ought to be embedded in action contexts in interaction with the external and also the social environment, but also shaped by interventions of ours, the interpreters or agents. These interventions and interactions with the environment occur in part below the level of consciousness, in part consciously, in a planned and conceptualized or established manner or by explicitly performed operations. Interactions and interventions are basically as necessary in order that a development of schemata and consequently activities of schemeinterpretation are stabilized, systematically exercised in practice. In parallel fashion with regard to Kant's famous statement "intuition without concepts is vacant, concepts without intuition are blind" one may formulate: scheme-interpretation without interaction and intervention is idling or vacant, interactions and interventions without scheme-interpretations are blind. Even sense perception or structured

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reception is already schematized from the start, but it becomes a full-scale seeing or sensing (in the sense of "apperception" after Kant) only if it is connected with activities and actions of an interpretative character including such activities which basically or potentially refer to something external. Thus, interpretation in general is also dependent on the capability of the agent and interpreter to interact and intervene with parts of the environmental world. Interpretation in general presupposes the embeddedness in a world to interact with and to intervene into. The agent and interpreter is not an extra-mundane center, but an interacting part of the relevant and respective section of his or her world which is called his (external and/or social or cultural) environment. This fundamental interactionism and interventionism may be a topic of a new practice- as well as action-oriented epistemology (cf. the author's 1998) including technical and experimental interaction and intervention. This is explicitly highlighted by the special terminology of impregnation: The so called "real" (externally and really existing world factors or entities commonly called "objects" or external processes or events) interacts in a neutral interplay with the respective structures of interpretation. As seen above, interpreting is the establishing, activating and stabilizing of cognitive and/or action-forming and -orienting (including normative) constructs, patterns, constituta. It is the process(es) constituting and (relative) stabilizing and the performance, applying and reapplying of schemes (schemata). Interpretation in this comprehensive sense is schemaactivation. The establishment and activation as well as reactivation of schemata might well be understood as semantically meaningful offsprings or byproducts of specifically established plastic neuronal assemblies (neuroassemblies or neuroensembles) and the respective activation or reactivation of these relatively stabilized neuroassemblies. Schema-interpretation is neurologically speaking the activation or reactivation of relatively stabilized neuronal assemblies. Different neuronal assemblies are activated in the case of direct perception i.e. visual sensing, and in the case of higher-order conceiving, in particular with consciously representing mental contents. As evidenced by experimental results (cf. e.g. Hubel 1988) special parts of the


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brain like the visual primary and secondary centers of many upgrading levels (ca. 30 in the brain are pertaining to vision!) and the respective higher-order association centers are specifically activated. As yet, there is no comprehensive theory of systematic character to order and overview all of these neuronal (re)activations. Clearly, the activation process is dependent on repetition: Hebb had already in 1949 postulated that repetition is the mother of learning in the most elementary connections between neurons, namely in bridging the synaptic cleavage. This means however that activation and reactivation are but the same process: A frequently repeated activation, a reactivation, will lead to a stabilization of the respective connection and more generally to the very establishment and continuance of the neuronal assembly stabilized or involved. In turn, the establishment and the concretization or realization of schemata is respectively the very activation of the corresponding neuronal assemblies. The first activations are part of the constitution, the reactivation of stabilized neuronal assemblies may be repetition and representation of the first activations. Therefore, the relative stabilizing of neuronal assemblies on the one hand and the establishment of schemata on the other are "the same" or narrowly connected parallel activities ongoing in specific relevant parts of the neocortex. Repetition of activation means dynamical fixation, a stabilized disposition of patterning or activating the same underlying neuronal assembly. Schema-activation is neuronal assembly activation. Therefore scheme-interpretation (as being schema-activation) is also the result of interpretative-schematizing activities. We might perhaps speak better of activation processes which might mostly be subconscious; the term "activities" is also to be understood very widely comprising any patterning and selective activations — not necessarily conscious selections in the narrower intentional sense. The "product" of such interpretative and schematizing activities on and higher than the neuronal assembly level is a constitutive result of these mostly unconscious selective activation and stabilization processes. It is the result of a gradually growing or habitual build-up process within the pertinent neuronal assemblies. Schemata in this sense are but constitute of selective activation processes. These

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processes comprise constitutive as well as stabilizing, constructive, differentiating build-up processes. Constitutor are products of constitution processes, schemata as well. Schemata are apt to give contrast and structure or pattern to processual stabilizations and selectively reactivated characteristic oscillations of and in the respective neuronal assemblies which may even be characterized by the timely structure of these oscillations by functionally binding these neuronal assemblies together. The present model of schema-interpretation understands this dynamics of activations and reactivations of neuronal assemblies on the next higher level as the activation and application of schemata. Schemata are also constituted and activated as well as reactivated. The terminology is simple. We have the basic process of activation and/or reactivation as being the same process. In the first phases, the activation stand for constitution in the scheme-theoretical sense; reactivations are constructive patternings or conceived of as reactivations of already stabilized patterns. We may distinguish between "construction" in a wider and in the traditional narrower sense (e.g. as conscious scheme-activation or reactivation). The mentioned characteristic sameness or equality of constitution, construction and reactivation processes allows to develop a general scheme comprising all or many of the respective activities covered by intellectual and perceptual as well as action-bound processes seen from the level of schema-interpretation. Thus, specific subactivities of schemeinterpreting are listed in the following diagram of schematicinterpretative activities reaching from inconscious schematization to explicitly conscious conceptual processes (cf. Fig. 2.2). The rationale is the identity of the underlying processes as mentioned, reaching from constitutional towards constructive or reconstructive as well as reactivation processes. Neurologically and methodologically speaking, these patterning processes are but the same activation and reactivation processes of neuronal assemblies or schemata, respectively. The dynamics of neuronal assembly building and reactivating underlies the dynamics of schema-establishment and -reactivation.

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constitutive

constructive or constructing

reconstructing activities

•

1

activating constituting inconscious triggering forming developing differentiating establishing primary stabilizing

1

conscious activating and triggering distinguishing contrasting comparing identifying representing selecting refining

of and by schemata

designing attributing projecting onto varying combining organizing and conscious structuring integrating

1

applying (re-)projecting carrying over carrying out explicit structuring and reconstructing representing imagining cognizing depicting

1

(re-)identifying (re-)cognizing reorganizing and reattributing instantiating subsuming sorting classifying understanding reapplying

by or according to schemata (structures or patterns etc.) with regard to interpretation of texts: reading, understanding (in the narrower sense) reidentifying meanings recognizing

Fig. 2.2. Interpretive-schematizing activities: (scheme- interpretations.

All these processes are constructive in a wider sense, although many or even most of these may not be (conscious or intentional) constructions in the narrower sense. There is obviously a continuum and overlapping between the left side of the diagram (first establishments are constitutions) up to the middle (explicit constructions) or to the reconstructions (routine reactivations) of schema activations. On the left side we have the processes of constitutive stabilizing and establishing connections as well as assemblies or schemata including subconscious triggering of impregnations dependent on world factors in direct sense perception. The middle columns are dominated by discriminating, contrasting and comparing or selecting, conscious

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varying, combining, organizing and integrating whereas the right column is characterized by applying routine structures, sorting, classifying, instantiating, subsuming by and according to schemata. Symbolic and explicit (re)cognizing as well as identifying and understanding or knowledge processes are but a special instance of these schematizing-interpretative activities as represented mostly in the middle or at the right side. Text interpretation as e.g. studied by hermeneutics is but an instance of recognizing and reidentifying schematic-interpretative activities. All of what has been said is necessarily also involved in the interpretative establishing and reidentifying or "grasping" of a repmesmtatum, an interpretive construct, not necessarily material but by symbolic interpretation and the respective mental "Vorstellungen" (mental representations). This is even true for "imagery", i.e. phantasy products of a quasi pictorial provenance mirroring or even constituting pictorial structures in the mind. Similar insights are to be gained for human action and agency in the narrower sense. As I have stressed elsewhere (1978), human actions can only be conceived of and "grasped" by such interpretive constructs, they are only to be realized (in the double sense of "realizing") by schematic-interpretive activity and as interpretative constructs. They are intricately connected with world interaction and human agency i.e. the capacity of active intervening (in the sense of behavioral or experimental or whatever active manipulation of elements and conditions in respective world situations). Human actions as societally oriented or originating activities might even be omissions i.e. the intentional neglect of an action which would usually be expected in the respective situation and condition. In general, being active and human agency presuppose a real and a social world. We cannot deny this or reject this kind of embedding without implicitly already hypostatizing such a world in applying goal orientation, external symbols and/or language representations. We can only act within the world, not from outside of it. In acting we always interpret implicitly presupposing the model of a real world, external and social. We may however logically entertain a traditional radical skepticism, but pragmatically speaking we cannot really carry through such a


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rejection of an external world without being entangled in performative paradoxes. Hypostatizing reality is insofar pragmatically necessary (we will come back to that later on), but distinguishing reality and interpretation and the respective representational schematic activities in interpreting is itself interpretation-dependent, interpretationimpregnated in the methodologically wider as well as in the epistemologically speaking narrower sense as covered by the above mentioned highest levels of interpretations (as e.g. IS5 and IS<s). We cannot not interpret, we cannot not schematize as we cannot possibly decide not to be active interpreting and schematizing beings. (We could commit suicide though to end or stop our interpreting and schematizing activities, but even this would be the tragical result of an interpretive decision!) Does all this complicated epistemological situation lead to a total interpretation idealism or interpretative absolutism? I think not necessarily. If we ask where in the world of interpretations and the complex interplay of factors and patterning processes (schematizations and interpretations) the real anchor of reality remains, one may point to the experiences of reality as a kind of resistance (We cannot run our head through a wall!). This is possible without fixing an archimedic point as required in foundational and rationalistic epistemologies of the past. We may not have just one real fixpoint, but with all the necessary pragmatic taking into account of an external reality (which can in turn only be "grasped" in an interpretative manner!) it is not necessary to have a permanent fixpoint of action and interpretation as a certain kind of fundamentum inconcussum as traditional rationalistic philosophy would presuppose. Instead, we know that we may successfully act, recognize, gain knowledge and even anticipate events or types of processes by such knowledge. But it is true that we cannot do this without interpreting and schematizing, that we cannot act nor know without interpretation and schematization. We can and may just construct a non-archimedean philosophy of relative and pragmatic kinds of tentative foundations without going back to an epistemologically speaking absolutely last and safe ground. Nevertheless, we can and must presuppose in real life connections the external world as "real", as supplying a context

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of situations and conditions for actions and as a constellation and collection of opposing "ob-jects" (displaying a limiting and confronting power) for our behavior and actions. This is true even if we may not be able to undoubtedly separate objective "things" in an interpretation-free manner from our routines and dispositions of "grasping" situations, establishing and reactivating models — all of this being shaped by interpretative constructs in turn. We move so to speak in "interpretation circles" and cannot get out of the spectrum and horizon or symbolic universe of interpretations. This does not mean that only interpretations do exist and that there would be no real corresponding world factors to be separated from interpretations and interpretative constructs. By contrast, pragmatically speaking we are practically dependent in a world of actions and unavoidable interpretativity on hypostatizing "real entities" (be they processes or events or constant chunks in reality). Action is in principle worldbound, world impregnated. Interpretation is not everything, though interpretation may be the only way of grasping everything. Without schema-interpretation nothing can be "grasped" at all. However, it is like the African proverb which reads "words are fine, but hens lay eggs" which must be modified to "interpretation is fine, but hens lay eggs" (real events occur, a real world is there independent of our human interpretation processes and epistemology etc.). Of course we have to start from everyday experience and everyday action even if we already know from the start that both will be interpretation-impregnated in the wider and narrower sense, respectively. We cannot found our interpretations on a last and highest principle of knowledge or interpretation, we are used, and routinely accustomed to acting and interpreting. Basically, we are interpreting and acting beings who have to predesign, plan and anticipate future states, have to entertain and follow goals etc. Indeed, we are not only interpreting beings, but also epistemological beings capable of interpreting our interpretations and insights. Elsewhere I have characterized the human being as the metainterpreting or superinterpreting being (1995a). This is true even if we know that such a self-interpretation is in turn dependent on interpretative constructs of an anthropological and epistemological provenance. In a quasi


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Wittgensteinian manner we may say, thus we are used to interpret: so we interpret and act by and insofar as we interpret and act. This, however, to my mind is too easy a way out, a sort of appeasement philosophy without really having experimental evidence or further argumentation. What then is traditionally called "the real"? First of all we should take a metaphilosophical or methodological perspective with regard to terminology and basic ideas. Philosophy has traditionally devoted itself to questions of the forms "what is such and such (where this variable should be substituted by some abstract noun)?": "What is the good or even the highest good (summum bonum)V\ "What is the beautiful?", and most notoriously, "What is truth (the true)?" (cf. Chap. 4). These questions regarding the essential characteristics, the "essence" of important cognitive, moral and aesthetic ideas already instigated Socrates ("What is virtue?") and mainly Plato. Plato — as is well known — had a rather comprehensive vision and theory trying to answer these questions in just one stroke by identifying the abstract "objects": the "Good", "the True" and "the Beautiful" as one and tiie same, although the idea of "the Good" would be the highest ideal of all. Certainly, nowadays we cannot take such a comprehensive perspective. In any case, these "what is" questions in philosophy enjoy a millennium tradition. Only much later philosophers discovered how difficult these questions regarding essences are — already only for methodological reasons, if we still stick to a rational ultimate foundation of our basic insights or visions regarding ideas. Questions of essences are very involved because they refer on one hand to the alleged "objects" they refer to, but on the other hand they are dependent on our conceptualizing by means of language expressions and their capability of referring to the so called reality and also meaning problems regarding abstract nouns, sortals characterizing natural or artificial kinds as well as theories of meaning and mental representation, of causal influences etc. Thus, extremely central problems of important controversial areas of modern analytic and epistemological as well as methodological philosophy are touched: Besides methodology and epistemology in

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general, also philosophy of language, natural philosophy, philosophy of science and even philosophical analyses of culture and society as well as the philosophy of mind. Asking for the essence of a concept or an expression is a very complicated and controversial topic referring to the mentioned problem of establishing and passing on traditional expressions and their usages, of their reference to so called reality (and its alleged parts or relational or structural interconnections as well as of how we mentally represent such relata and relations in everyday conceptions and in scientific theories). The traditional essentialism cannot be upheld any longer: Seeing the essence or ideas with the eye of the mind which was the Ancient Greek, notably Plato's basic philosophical metaphor — has been rendered rather problematic, to say the least. These essentialistic questions of "what is"-type though well known in everyday usage would rather provoke an ongoing research program requiring to look for theories of how the respective concepts relate to objects they refer to or how they can characterize and express their meaning. (Even "meaning" is an abstract concept in question: Does it characterize any abstract or ideal "object"? Apparently not, at least not that simply.) Traditionally, philosophy has usually decided in a kind of excathedra decision about the essences or submitted arguments without ultimate foundations or by ignoring the philosophy of mind or the philosophy of language or even by begging questions. We cannot anymore think that it is enough to define "the beautiful" and to contend that by definition of an expression one already has gained knowledge, (re)cognition or evidence regarding anything beautiful; but an aesthetics, a theory of beauty or the beautiful nowadays, has to be much more complicated comprising not only the questions and problems about experience, judgments, the grasping of meanings and evaluations from the aesthetic perspective, but many methodological and epistemological questions of the mentioned core fields of philosophy. The traditional ideal that by answering essentialistic "what is"-questions one would cover substantial insight or knowledge in a so called "real definition" (Real definition) has proved wrong. You cannot gather substantial knowledge of contents (be it empirical or maybe a priori knowledge) by just providing definitions, since


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definitions are just stipulations. Therefore, the so called "real definitions" at the end of an essentialistic philosophical investigation would usually themselves comprise a condensed theory made up as an essentialistic definition. In addition, you cannot undoubtedly derive definitions from ultimate axioms or certainties. The essentialistic search for "essences" (the same is true for looking for fundamental, unchangeable or eternal substances) was successfully criticized by modern philosophers of science. Here even the positivists of the Vienna Circle and critical rationalism after Karl Popper agreed: The questions for essences have to be substituted by explanatory questions, problems of the interconnection between theory and experience (or even experiments) by approaches covering theoretical designs and their respective proofs or tests (be they methodological or empirical). Questions of construction and criticism are important. Constructions are always tentative, not absolutely founded, but they might be given up or may be modified in the process of argumentation, confirmation or falsification. Statements about essences do not perse already comprehensively answer why-questions in science. Only in an analytical fashion can questions regarding the use of expressions, definitions, conceptual relationships within theoretical or practical hierarchies of concepts and rules or laws be meaningfully answered. It was in particular Popper who scathingly criticized methodological essentialism (in his The Open Society and its Enemies). Generally speaking analytic philosophies scrutinized important concepts regarding their role in theories and laws, how they function within a hierarchical system of knowledge epitomizing that concepts per se or as such would have no simple meaning independently of the theoretical system within which they occur, but there is a structural partial meaning of concepts even in exact scientific theories — a meaning which could be called structural meaning or "surplus meaning" (Carnap). Theoretical concepts thus derive part of their meaning from the laws and the theories within which they figure. The location of the concepts within theories and laws determines in part this additional structural meaning. In philosophy of science one used to talk (after Putnam) of "law cluster concepts". This may be respectively generalized to general epistemology.

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An example in point would be, say, the concept "momentum" in physics: The classical concept of momentum differs from a relativistic one because it obeys another set of theoretical laws in which it occurs and figures in a logically different theory, although there are overlappings in the limiting areas of measurements (e.g. regarding magnitudes which are small compared to the velocity of light). The genuine conceptual basic structure of classical mechanics and relativistic kinetics and dynamics is different. Therefore the "law cluster" meanings of the respective theoretical concepts are different too. One has to go to the theories and hypotheses in order to make sure of the structural location (and therefore the additional structural meaning) of the concept within the theory and to ascertain the functions within the laws or the theory to analyze the very meaning of the concepts. This is to my mind also true with regard to our language and the usage of expressions in general — and particularly also in philosophy, though structural meaning is not as easily known as in the case of exact natural sciences. (Also in social science it is much more difficult to bring to light the conceptual differences in different theoretical approaches.) If we pay tribute to the later Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, we have to take into account that meanings are roughly determined by the correct usages of the respective linguistic expressions or words in everyday language. The way and how a language community would use the expressions and concepts in a regulated manner i.e. correctly, determines what the meaning of the respective expressions or concepts within the language community and on the side of individual speakers would consist in. The accordance to rules ( " « ^ « J f " ) would in the last analysis be determined by the usual usage, by how a language expression is in fact regularly used ("'regelm&fiiif): The factual usage decides about the normative correctness. This concept of meaning has certainly outdated the traditional essentialistic Platonic idea that there are some meanings in the heaven of ideas figuring independently of the world or even enjoying the more "real" existence which would only weakly or somehow deficiently be mirrored by our expressions in language. However, this interpretations of Plato's had a great


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impact on the development of philosophy and methodology regarding concepts and theories. Even in traditional and in a way also modern physics you still find reverberations of that fundamental metaphorical vision e.g. in the traditionally obtaining mathematical Pythagoreanism ("all what is real — is number" or today rather: Symmetry structure or the respective mathematical group transformations). Of course, Plato's elementary regular bodies consisting of simple ideal mathematical forms like cubes and tetrahedrons has become much more abstract today; Thus according to new theoretical conceptions transformation groups, symmetry conditions and notably breaching these are nowadays the decisive structural characterizing elements. But basically it is the same idea as within Plato's and the Pythagorean approach — even in recent superstring theories trying to decipher pure mathematical ways of "real" fundamental structures of our real world. Even today many physicists think that mathematics or mathematical structures are built into the world, into nature, that the world is built up in and by just mathematical structures. It is an old metaphor by Galileo Galilei that "the book of nature" would be written in "mathematical letters" — a conviction which already Nicholas of Cusa entertained but which goes certainly back to Plato's Timaeus. Such a conviction however is a very prepotent attitude: One would think that instruments and human-made forms like mathematics (as an "instrument" of structural forms and concepts) allow for a direct "grasp" of our intervention into nature as such, as it really is. But this is simplifying or in a sense presumptuous, pretending that humans can directly experience the structure (the "essence" still?) of the world per se and as such. Why could we come to think that way? Has evolution selected us as (re)cognizing and knowing beings par exellence who really know the essences and substances or structures of the world as such? This is highly improbable since evolution has put a premium on quite other functions namely survival of the gene pool, maybe survival of the species (as biologists of old used to claim), survival of the individual under specific perspectives of food, procreation, shelter, etc. (maybe that fun is figuring as another such function beyond the notorious well-known four Fs!). It is clear nowadays that our total experiential and conceptual world is pretty

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much codetermined by such evolutionary premises. It is thus rather action-oriented (notably to augment procreation and survival) than knowledge- and theory- as well as concept-oriented in a narrower sense. (Some decades ago neurophysiologists like McLean thought that the human brain would consist of three brains in a union, it is "the triune brain''' composed of a reptile brain (dominating the vital and aggressive instincts from the limbic system), the small mammalian brain (e.g. responsible for the immediate anticipatory coordination of movements) and finally the primate brain, the neocortex. These partial brains would develop tensions between one another, and most of the difficulties humans develop within their own personalities in regard to the natural and social environment would be caused by tensions and conflicts between these partial subbrains. Meanwhile, this approach is considered very controversial from a neurobiological point of view (Roth 1994). But in any case, recent biological and neurobiological knowledge convincingly shows that it is not that simple that human knowledge would just mirror the structure of external reality as such. So, we will be obliged to stay with the question what "the real" really is, if we do not change the direction of questioning. In this volume a rather methodological turn of a pragmatic character will be elaborated. It is certainly not allowed to simply define "the real" according to traditional essentialistic approaches as that what is externally independent of humankind — in spite of all the plausibility of the underlying idea; Since human beings themselves are certainly also "real", the human race — and in a sense humanity, too — is part of nature and must be understood as such. You cannot project "reality" just outside and exaggerate the difference between internal and external reality. Even thinking about reality in some sense has to be quasi "located" within reality. The "subjective", the "self" or " I " has to be part of the world, even if figuring and mirroring within a certain kind of "inner" self-model we use to "grasp" the world from the perspective of our subjectively elaborated representational structures. You might conceive of such modeling as a sort of map of internal models of the world and the self within it, to be able to represent and analyze the relationships between the subject


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(which indeed is — or is to be conceived of and "grasped" as — an interpretative construct!) and the world, to locate this self (as body and subject) in specific situations within the world and to experience our self as our own person. This self also is therefore a secondarily constituted entity, an interpretative construct dependent on our schematizations and interpretations such as die establishment and elaboration of the self-model. After an old idea by William James according to Metzinger (1993) our brain engenders the phenomenal self-interpretation for a subject in a very similar fashion like a flight simulator; the ego experience would be a sort of controlling simulation. However, we have to add the insight that it is just my self-model and self-modeling by which the ego as sort of "controller" agency would in a (metaphorical?) sense "grasp" "reality" or intervene into reality by using tiiis simulator model — in a usually transparent manner. (We don't feel the model itself when we refer to and act witii regard to real things or events or processes. The subject model by itself is not enough, we also need a certain kind of correct location within a respective mental map of the world in which we have to locate ourselves and our bodies at the same time.) Therefore, we have to be able to climb up to metalevels of self-reference and selfmodeling as well as -descriptions. The apparent direct "grasping of reality" by the subject is but an illusion (as already James knew). Maybe the old Dubliner was right when he said, "reality is but an illusion originating from too little alcohol in the blood". Certainly we should not relate this insight only to alcohol but to other intellectual drugs of conceptual orientation which we have in part developed and taken over in our culture and by our thingand noun-oriented languages putting a privilege on essentialism. The direct transparency, the direct view of the real as such (whatever that means) certainly is an illusion. Transparency is itself a sort of appearance or fiction. Indeed, the real is always only to be grasped under (and as a result of) an interpretation, it is only to be conceived of and grasped as, in or under schematic interpretations. We can only (indirectly) "grasp", even mean, the "real" in terms of theoretical, descriptive, structuring, even action-shaping as well as valuing schematic-interpretative activities.

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Even if we separate "the real" from a hypothetical something describing it, the reference can only be achieved by theoretical structuring i.e. by construction dependent on schematization and interpretations as worked out above. What was said about the self, its interpretative model character and secondary constitution, is certainly also true for distinguishing between the traditional philosophical "subject" on the one hand and "object" (whether external or our own bodies). The traditional separation of idealistic philosophies after Descartes to sever the pure "thinking thing" from the external extended thing or matter is certainly dependent on analytical perspectives. Like the "self" or " I " the subject itself is an analytical construct of an abstract interpretative character, a constitutum of analysis. The traditional dualism between subject and object, between thinking and being (or nature, the external, reality or the world) is in a sense outdated, because thinking and consciousness are also phenomena in the world. The gist of what we said is that we have to come back to a much more stringent connection between preliminary (mainly biological) structures and evolutionary factors and functions making knowledge possible in the first place and the intervening actions under perspectives of survival etc. (as mentioned before) due to the evolutionary history of the forerunner species of humanity. Indeed, the interaction between evolutionary challenges on the one hand and the environment and the geographical, climate and ecosystematic changes have to be assessed together: Geographical separation, geological and climate changes as well as competition in narrowly restricted ecological niches are according to Darwin one main factor for imposing the challenge for evolutionary mutations and successive selection processes gradually engendering a proliferation of new species widiin restricted ecosystems. In general, this insight has to be much more than hitherto respected in a history of human mentality, consciousness, action and knowledge structures including cognitive capacities. Indeed, knowledge, (re)cognition and actions are much more interconnected than usually expected to date. It follows that we cannot separate purely scientific, theoretical cognition and knowledge from experimental or everyday actions, from situations of risk understanding in dangerous


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situations, from survival problems etc. In short, man is not only the cognitive being, not only the purely mental mind, but at the same time always the acting, world perceiving and manipulating being, shaping world versions in and by his representations and anticipations. Freud was right: Thinking is but probational acting ("Probehemildri'''). In any case, action, (re)cognition and knowledge are intricately connected with each other including the description and interpretation of the three of them. The separation of being and knowledge, of subject and object cannot be separated from the methodologically necessary preformations by special structures or schemata or schematicinterpretative activities necessary to be able to represent and order phenomena in the first place. Even these separations are also artificial, analytical ones. The separations are human-made, in a way secondarily shaped by modeling or interpretation, if mostiy pre- or subconscious. Conscious analytical distinctions and differentiations are also results or constructs of scheme-interpretations and/or impregnations. Even "natural reality" can only be grasped and be represented in knowledge by being shaped via theories, specific preshapings — always including and presupposing schematizations and theoretical interpretations. We can only sever "the real" from "the non-real" by quasi theoretical construction which does not mean that it would not make sense to conceive of external or cosmic reality as independent of human conception. But in any case we can only conceive of it and experience it in the light and under the schemes of our interpretational constructs. Indeed, it is necessary that for practical reasons and life orientation we have to hypostatize nature and natural reality. Otherwise we could not be acting beings at all. Action is dependent on the capability of virtual acting, thinking is probational acting as G. H. Mead stressed after Freud. Probational acting is only possible if we can also act in an environment. Therefore, we have to presuppose for practical reasons a "real" world and environment even if we cannot convincingly criticize total skepticism (like the tradition from Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus through Hume and others would have it) by stringent logical arguments. However, there are not only pragmatic and practical but also theoretical good reasons to reject comprehensive or absolute skepticism. (In fact, the absolute skeptic would always

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end up in a performative paradox or a logical question begging, if he tries theoretically i.e. by arguments, to convince somebody else and not just sit down and wave with the finger as Cratylus allegedly did. You cannot totally defy or reject reality and the real — and nevertheless go for lunch. You cannot eat the pudding and still have it.) Of course, the "something" to be hypostatized as "real" need not in the traditional sense be a "thing" or "object" in the everyday sense. It can be e.g. and will be frequently something processual, events etc. It may also be a mental phenomenon like an experience of conscious character or some structure or event. As mentioned before, we ourselves have to understand ourselves also as "real"; the "social" phenomena would be real in a secondary sense. But the external real was traditionally and legitimately conceived of as opposing us. The experience of physical resistance was discussed as a criterion of reality by Dilthey and Scheler. This is certainly plausible if you run your head against the wall, the bruises will convince you that there is something physically impenetrable there i.e. impenetrable for you. (Regarded as a cloud of molecules the wall is physically speaking not impenetrable at all — particularly not for neutrinos!) This shows that the opposition as a criterion for reality is strictly speaking not a factum brutum given, but also dependent on certain descriptions and their categories and levels i.e. on schemata and structural modeling, in short schema-interpretations from certain perspectives (the science perspective differs from the everyday one). The purely "given" is not to be grasped or conceived of as independent of theoretical or practical prestructurings. The interpretation-free "given" was a seductive and dangerous myth to which even the analytically minded critical positivists had surrendered, as W. Sellars and later on Quine and others saw. The opposition however in everyday connections is obvious and cannot be doubted, but the idea of "grasping" what this "opposition" means and consists of or what the opposing reality is can certainly only be known in terms of respective preschematizations, perspectival interpretations etc. Even the physical opposition is in this sense only to be "grasped" in a theory-impregnated and interpretation-dependent manner.


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Generally speaking, however, if we take the side of a realism (meaning that some natural "real" would exist independent of our subjective capturing it) we have to somehow moderate or limit this realism in some sense, namely to develop an indirect or "weak" realism (see Chap. 6): We can grasp and conceive of the independent real only in terms of our schematic-interpretative forms and constructs which are interconnected with our biological hereditary fixations but also stemming from conceptual and conventional ways of representing or grasping something by linguistic and theoretical means as well as by our capacity to act. There are good practical and also some rather convincing (though not logically absolutely stringent) theoretical reasons to combine an epistemological as well as an ontological realism of an indirect moderated sort with our methodological approach of scheme-interpretation and -impregnation. Thus, I would like to speak of a pragmatic schema-interpretationist realism to be elaborated and defended in the following chapters.

Short Note about "Grasping" in Traditional Philosophy

In traditional epistemological philosophy sometimes the concept of "grasping" objects in reality or in imagery takes center stage as e.g. in the approach by some authors like Alexius Meinong and Nicolai Hartmann. This was true notably with philosophers of a critical realistic brand. Meinong conceives of his epistemology as a specific theory of "grasping" objects in reality or imagery. In this case (as the objects need not really exist but are referred to by judgments) he talked about "objectives" (" Objektive") which are mea-nt ("jjemeint") as "objectives" (abstract objects referred to as e.g. state of affairs which are judged by judgments or statements). This "objective" is different from the usual "object" about which judgments may be uttered: The "objective" in Meinong's sense is that which is judged and is correlative to the state of affairs designed by the judgment from the point of view of a "supposition" ("Annahme"). A judgment may usually display not only this objective, but also an object both of which might occasionally fall together (Meinong 1910, 44). In a way Meinong's terminology is similar Bolzano's concept of a "statement as such" ("Satz an sich"), but also what later on had been called "propositions" or "potential states of affairs" (ibid. 99ff). 38


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Meinong however thinks that propositions are but an important special instance of "factual objectives" i.e. of realized states of affairs (ibid. 101), later on in Wittgenstein's Tmctatus called "facts" ("Tatsachen"). Propositions and these "objectives" are neither psychic nor physical entities as Meinong explicitly states (1910, 101). Therefore he concentrates his terminological and methodological ideas in the summary: "Objectives may except by judgments possibly also be captured by suppositions, but not by representations ("Vorstellungen"), and otherwise there is no means of grasping them at hand" (ibid. 143f). This means that grasping objectives is essentially the projecting or hypostatizing suppositions about certain states of affairs and their properties i.e. hypothetical suppositions in the form of interpretations or results of interpretations (interpretata); like "suppositions" "objectives" are hypothetical constructs. Although these are not physical nor psychical entities, "grasping in any case is a doing ("Tun")" (ibid. 235). "Doing" however can only be conceived of as action which seems hardly possible in or by means of nonphysical and non-psychical entities. The objectives therefore have to be conceived of as methodologically speaking metatheoretical constructs. The objects of judgments may be potential objects which may be grasped and meant nevertheless. Grasping in that sense would be an "activity", not "passivity" (ibid. 238f). Meinong's epistemology of the suppositions, the capability to mean and grasp "objectives" is based on the fundamental thesis "that to mean is either judging or supposing, more precisely judging to be ("' SeinsurteilerC) or supposing to be ("Seinsannehmen"), because "any meaning (something) is supposing" (ibid. 241). Non-factual, non-real objects would not be really "recognized" ("erkannt"), but can only be "grasped" and "meant". "In recognizing one thinks ...preferably of grasping of a reality"" indeed, ...,: The intellectual grasping of reality is a characteristic accomplishment of our recognizing reality or, respectively, where the conditions for recognizing in the strict sense are not conducive, at least of the right reality-judgment ("WirklichkeitsurteiV) (ibid. 239). That means that we may be also to grasp non-existing objects and objectives. This sort of "grasping" has to be added to "pure representation" {"-blofies

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Vorstelleri") in order to be successfully able to "mean the respective object" (ibid. 240). In any case, the metaphoric talk of "grasping by pervading the objective" is certainly not very clear. In addition, imagining {"Vorstelleri") as a neither merely psychical nor physical, but as a purely epistemological "activity" has a difficult status as a methodologicalmetatheoretic "activity" which however should nevertheless be performed by the meaning agent indeed. Insofar it necessarily should have at least psychical reality of some sort. This certainly remains somewhat ambiguous and unsatisfying, whereas Meinong has clearly seen that suppositions ("'Annahmeri'') invade in any mental and psychical process of imagining and play a decisive role in any cognitive or mental referring to something. According to our terminology that which is meant or referred to has to be schematized or schema interpreted in the first place. Hypothetical presuppositions have necessarily to be involved in order that potential states of affairs can be "meant" (in Meinong's sense) at all. However, Meinong oscillates between a processual conception of the "suppositions" (as psychical entities or processes) and "Annahmen" as results of a methodological character i.e. interpretive constructs in our terminology. There is a similar ambiguity of the activity called "grasping". Also here it is not clear whether or not it is depicted as a psychical activity or only methodologically as a necessary relation between the subject and potential states of affairs. Or is it even conceived of as a transcendental presupposition or any "Meineri"> One has to more clearly distinguish between the methodological aspects of cognitive representation, the psychical processes of "imagining grasping" and the epistemological or even ontological levels of reference to existing objects. For Meinong any potential being is somehow ontologically present, so to speak, in the modus of being "potentially grasped". However, the pseudoontologizing perspective of non-factual objects including contradictory objects (like notorious "round squares") thwarted Meinong's objectifying theory of "objectives" and potential objects of imagining. Meinong however clearly saw the supposition-dependent hypothetical character and the problem of potential intentional objects like potential states of affairs (not yet existing).


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Elaborating Brentano's concept of existence in intentionality or within the realm of intended objects Edmund Husserl developed in his (posthumously published) Erfahrung und Urteil {Experience and Judgment, 1938, 1948 2 = 1954) a concept of "grasping" "intentional objects" i.e. abstract objects or states of affairs which need not really exist as objects or facts. Husserl wants to combine the pre-predicative evidences of senseperception with his interest in going back to the "life-world" ("Lebenswelt") as well as with his conception of any constitutive and predicative experiences or insights as being active outcomes i.e. results of constituting and attributing as well as comparing and abstracting activities. Even plain and simple, seemingly purely passive receptions are always dependent on activities: "Any grasping, attending, fixing the given within the flux of sensual experience by attending to it and reflectively penetrating into its specialties is already an active performance (), an activity of (re)cognition of the lowest level, for which we even can already talk of a judgment" (1954, 62) though in a "pre-predicative" sense of the " objectifying attending" to the respective "being". This Husserl would already call "a judgment in the wider sense" (ibid.). Even the "most simple experience" i.e. that of the "sensual substrates, of the natural stratum () of the whole concrete world" (ibid. 66) via "external perception and the reflective-perceiving interest" would be active "that much that in it the things are grasped in that way, that thereby the tendency towards fixing by judging can be most easily fulfilled" (ibid. 67). Nevertheless, "the active grasping of the object" becomes as a rule soon consideration (); the I oriented at taking notice would tend to penetrate into the object, by considering it not only from all sides, but also in all its details i.e. considering it in an "explicative manner" ("explizierend") (ibid. 113). Besides, the "plain grasping and consideration (<schlichte Erfassung und Betrachtung>) is the lowest step of a lower objectifying activity" originating from the interest of perception. This is distinguished from the "higher level of the resulting interest" in terms of "the proper explicating consideration of the object" (ibid. 114). (In addition, "another level" of perception "performances" or activities is oriented at the objects

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemolqgy

beyond the "inner horizon of the object towards the objects copresent in the outer horizon" and leading to "relative determinations''' (ibid. 115). As an example Husserl analyzes the plain grasping in the form of "hearing a continuing sound" which — though "being passively pregiven as a unity" — can only be actively (receptively) grasped by the respective grasping activity of the I directing "the primary grasping beam" towards this "continuing presently enduring sound" (ibid. 117). It is necessary to distinguish between the active components of this continued focusing activity regarding this "beam of grasping" and a rather "fixed passive law-likeness being one of the activity itself'' (ibid. 119). Even the "synthetic grasping of... different objects" (ibid. 120), the keeping on of "a modified activity, as passivity in activity" and the "impressional" "holding-in-grip" ("Im-Griffbehalten") of an object in order to relate it to some other object in a combination or comparison is a special activity "to be distinguished from the keeping of the retention, frequently so called memory" (ibid. 121f). "Any such synthesis''' whether serving to perceive or consider different objects or "partial" aspects of them is dependent on some superpositional or "superposing" activity ("Uberschiebunjf) (ibid. 128, 130fi). Even the upholding of such an activity and the respective "keeping the substrate in grip" are already in any process of "continuing plain grasping" as well as in any "step of explication" or even the identifying integration of comprehension or "all the emphasized details" would comprise such activities, (ibid. 132) (The same would a fortiori be true if we try to grasp and capture a plurality (" Mehrheitserfassunpj") by successive attempts of attending to and connecting diverse objects (ibid. 134ff.)). "Any habitualization of the result of an originally intuitive grasping" ("urspriinglich anschauliche(r) Erfassung"), even if without explicit intention or developed in passing, would nevertheless necessarily presuppose such activities. This is all the more true when we try to explicate contours in or by "features''' ("Merkmalen) to "grasp the object as a whole and keep it as a unity of features" (ibid. 138f). For Husserl even in this preliminary phase of attending to substrates and background as well as protruding contours of the direct simple perception processes is necessarily a sort of activity relying on what


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he calls "plain grasping" ("schlichte Erfassunjj"). Of course, the activity-dependence is all the more true and relevant in combining and explicitly predicating features to render judgments by combining or relating such results of "plain graspings" with one another in terms of connecting explicit predicative judgments of the traditional subject-object form or character. Although Husserl is certainly well aware of his psychological terminology covering his descriptive language of phenomenology regarding all perceptive and intellectual processes, he certainly would rather understand this in a transcendental interpretation, namely as the epistemologically speaking necessary conditions for the origin and development of (re)cognition as well as, at a later stage after objectivation and judging, knowledge. What he later on calls "intentional objects" are "noemata" (i.e. the abstract form of an object... within the How of its modi of givenness (1992, 304) or even "noematic cores1'' ("noematische Kerne''') (the unity points ("Einheitspunkte"), "noematic contents''' characterizing the "meant as such") are thus to be conceived of as interpretative constructs of an epistemological provenance, namely as constructs by the very "phenomenological grasping" of the essential content of intentional experiences and acts. This is certainly activity-impregnated as well as interpretation-dependent amounting to the (claim of a) transcendental (epistemologically necessary) constitution and grasping of interpretational constructs. The "intentional objects" as of Husserl's are therefore clearly "interpretative constructs" as I elaborated elsewhere (1993, 140-146, cf. also ibid. 446ff., 572f.). Even the reflections on the meta-noetic acts in Husserl's epistemology itself do indeed use meta-interpretational constructs, theoretical concepts of the epistemological phenomenology from a transcendental perspective. Again Nicolai Hartmann in his book Grundziige einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis (Basics of a Metaphysics of Recognition, 1949) developed an objectifying and rather ontological than epistemological concept of grasping if for a perspective or a relational-formal approach. Hartmann (ibid. 44) sees "(re)cognition" ("Erkenntnif) as a relation between a "subject" and an "object" displaying "the character of mutual pristine separateness ("Urgeschiedenheit'''') or "transcendency".

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Subject and object "stand in strict mutual relation and mutual conditioning" ("Wechselbedingtheit"). Their relation would be a "correlation" although a "non-invertible" one. Hartmann thinks the subject's "function" consists in "a grasping'' of the object, the "function of the object" in its " being graspable ("Erfassbarseiri") for the subject and in being grasped by it". "Seen from the subject's point of view, "Erfassen" ("grasping") can be described as a reaching ("Hinausgreifen") by the subject beyond its sphere, and as a (process of) reaching or extending over into the heterogeneous sphere of the object, transcendent to him (notably the subject, H. L.), the gripping of the determinations of the object in this sphere and an inclusion or hauling-in of the captured determined features into the subject's sphere (ibid. 44). "Hauling-in of the grasped ("des Erfassteri") does not mean the hauling-in of the object into the subject, but only the recuperation ("Wiederkehr''') of the determined features (" Bestimmtheiten") of the object at a content-bearing structure/formation ("Gebilde") within the subject, the recognitionformation), or the "image" of the object" ("nur die Wiederkehr der Bestimmtheiten des Objekts an einem inhaltlichen Gebilde im Subjekt, dem Erkenntnisgebilde, oder dem "Bilde" des Objekts'''). Here, the object would remain an external entity ("Auflenstehendes") for the subject i.e. "it remains "ob-ject", that means "opposing" ("Gegenstehendes")". For Hartmann recognition "as a conscious phenomenon is "pure object consciousness''' i.e. neither subject- nor act- nor image-consciousness: The object alone is "grasped", not also its being grasped besides" nor other "functional and contentful moments..." (ibid. 45). In some sense also the object should "transcend" into the subject's sphere, being the converse relation of the "grasping" mentioned above. "Both are but aspects of one and the same act of touching or determining". But Hartmann stresses that now "the object obviously has the superiority'" or "preponderance" (" Ubergewicht") "over the subject": "Both sorts of transcending as... not equal value". Therefore Hartmann states by quoting Fichte: "Recognition is determination of the subject by the object" (ibid. 47). "The subject within the recognition relation remains basically receptive towards the object"


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(ibid. 48). However, it need not be passive: "Its grasping of the object can comprise spontaneity. But this does not relate to the object as such... but aims back towards the image within the subject. In establishing the image, that means (by working) at its own "objective" content, consciousness may very well participate in a creative manner." Therefore: "Receptivity towards the object and spontaneity regarding the image do not exclude each other" (ibid. 48). Hartmann again mixes up a purely ontological-formal and at the same time a psychical activity and methodological rationality essentially underestimating the structuring interpretative or schematizing activity. "Recognition" according to Hartmann is primarily not characterized by spontaneity. This was the gnoseological basic pattern of neo-Kantianism and phenomenology stressing the active part of the subject. But Hartmann would rather emphasize receptivity: "Recognition remains "receptive" with regard to its object" (Schneider 1998, 78). (Note however that Hartmann (1949, 48) at least recognizes the active part of the subject in establishing the image in representation.) Generally speaking however, we can indeed conclude that again Hartmann's interpretation is somehow leaning towards receptivism and passivism; it seems to be a receptivistic misinterpretation of the recognition process and cognition in general. In fact, cognitive psychology of perception and sensing has meanwhile undoubtedly proven that even visual perception — as any cognition whatsoever — is "constructed" i.e. the result of a constructive process or activity (cf. Neisser 1966, 1976): "Perception is (mainly, H. L.) construction", "cognition is construction" (Neisser). Like Meinong Hartmann also sees in a somewhat ambiguous manner the methodological-relational interconnection between subject and object as an activity yet consisting in "reaching beyond" and in "grasping" of the object and as "the subject's transcending into the object" (1949, 47, 44). Pure rationality would just mean a formal relativity of the mutual coordination of subject and object — and not more: In any case no real act of "reaching beyond?'' or grasping the properties or "determinant features of the object" nor a "hauling-in" of these into the subject's sphere as quoted. Purely

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relational coordination remains to be mainly formal and is no activity. "Reaching beyond", "hauling-in", "grasping", are activities though. Thus, the subject (as also in part the object) has an ambiguous status in Hartmann's approach, on the one hand methodologicalepistemological and at the same time psychic-homunculus-like as an agent of sorts — at least according to the terminology used. In some sense the traditional notion of the mental realm within the subject and the transcendent object to be depicted with its properties and structures would still dominate Hartmann's neorealistic approach in a somewhat simplistic manner. On the one side Hartmann reduces perception and the respective perceptive recognition erroneously to a passivistic reception, on the other hand the "hauling-in of the grasped" object is taken over in an oversimplified manner from traditional mirroring theory of recognition. In general, the traditional philosophical authors discussed here certainly developed some refined new intuitions regarding "intentional objects" and abstract states of affairs or "objectives" playing a role in recognition and respective judging, somehow highlighting the methodological and epistemological as well as mentally representational character of "grasping". All of them however do not found recognition deeply enough in acting within a world or embed recognition into the mental capabilities for and necessities of agency. Insofar epistemology and methodology of recognition and sophisticated realistic approaches have to go beyond these traditional epistemologies. First of all, they have more clearly to distinguish between methodological and psychological aspects while maintaining a realistic and pragmatic approach, but defying naive realisms of mirror theories etc.

4 "Truth" as a Metatheoretic Interpretative Construct

"Truth resides in the act of engaged interpreting itself..." H. Mainusch stated and commented as a congenial recuperation of Oscar Wilde's causal slogan, "All interpretations are true — and none is final" (quoted in Spinnen 1991, 274). However, by contrast we can equally well say, "All interpretations are equally wrong — because none is final". This insight which is far from trivial reminds of Lessing's attempt to limit the endeavors in searching truth without getting a guarantee of final possession of the truth, even without being able to think oneself in possession of the truth: The whole truth would only be accessible to God. 10 Wilde as Lessing would likewise not connotate by "truth" descriptive-theoretical true statements as such, but truths of life, existential truths as covered by traditional religions, including Christianity. (Think of Jesus's word "I am the way, the truth and life".) Pilatus's question "What is truth?" is originally not a question addressing a search for theoretical truth. However in traditional 10

Lessings's statement from Eine Duplik, I is well known: "If God had enclosed in his right hand all truth and in his left hand the unique, always active drive for trudi, although by adding that I have always and eternally to err, and if he said to me: Choose! I would humbly fall into his left hand and say: Fadier give (to me)! The pure trutii is only for you alone!" 47

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philosophy the same question has been a focal point of theoretical analyses. Even both theses by Wilde and Lessing could be used for theoretical debates on truth as an instigation: Lessing's answer in the last analysis mirrors the impossibility for humans to recognize absolute truth, a statement that would then be represented by the modern epistemological thesis of potential search for truth and coming closer to truth {"'verisimilitude''') in the hypothetical and repetitive endeavor to progress in the direction towards truth. This could be seen as similar to a conception of truth as presented in Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery (1935) as the thesis of hypothetical "verisimilitude": You can only have a certainty to come closer to truth without being able at any time to guarantee or know to have reached it. Wilde's thesis certainly reminds of Nietzsche's insight that truth would be "a sort of error" rather: "illusion" or an interpretative strategy, pragmatically and variably to shape and differentiate as well as fix dispositions towards unification and domination of the world in terms of our interests, needs and will: Truth would be systematically connected with "the will to power" being only another word for that (Works VIII, 9:91): "Truth is the sort of error ("illusion") without which a certain kind of living beings could not live". Is truth "only the most efficient error" ("der zweckmdfiigste Irrtum") as Vaihinger wrote, "only a well masked untruth" (Farquhar)? Or is it "but a thought outline separating error into two parts" (A. Hubbard, an American essayist) — meaning this certainly not without irony. "Closer to it would indeed come the very contrary of that which is held for it" (H. Arntzen): "Truth, a suspicion with permanence?" (as the Spanish poet Campoamor y Campoosorio had it). Or is it just an idealizing orientation, an ideal guidance like M. Kessel thinks: "truth is a polar star" — the unreachable but guiding star of theories? Such bonmots regarding "truth" certainly have their difficulties. Nietzsche e.g. thinks that truth is pragmatized, so to speak "perspectivized": It is not any more time-independent, but variable, in a way human-made: Verum et factum convertuntur: "The "true" and "the factual" are confounded in a true sense, if we remember

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that '•'•factum" originally means "being made". According to Nietzsche, truth is produced or engendered, "a kind of artifice", it is not any more absolute, not per se or as such a priori, but relational i.e. related towards a center or will to power. Also regarding the other idea of truth remaining in Utopian distance (after Popper) truth is interpreted as a certain kind of regulative idea in the Kantian sense necessarily motivating researchers. Yet there can never be a guarantee to reach truth or even "the Truth". (We may well ask how should a principally unreachable state motivate our search for it and instigate or motivate research: reaching for the impossible?) Not even "verisimilitude" (Popper's favorite), the approximation of truth or endless progress towards truth can be as a rule assessed or measured: The "distance" from truth as such of the current recognitions amounting just to knowledge at a given time would only be recognizable or estimable if one could presuppose a separate successful alley to truth as such. Similar difficulties result as is well known from the idea of "correspondence" of thoughts or statements with reality or its structures i.e. for the so-called '•'•correspondence theory of truth" already devised by Aristotle. How should one know and recognize the correspondence of thought or mentally represented states of affairs comprised in statements (or even propositions) with "the reality" or its structure(s), if there is no alternative or independent way of approaching or "having" reality? You cannot eat the pudding twice. Any conception and representation of reality or real structures is dependent on the mediation by representations, by external symbols or statements or mental imagination or imagery, thus being mediated by interpretative intermediate levels. We have no interpretation-free or non-schematized approach to reality as such being able to test the adequacy to reality of the respective mediating representations. So called "structures of reality" are always only structures represented by combinations of symbols, statements, meanings of language or formula or pictures — or by mental representations. We cannot presuppose as Wittgenstein did in his Tractatus that logical connectives are but simple pictures of the ontological connection structures in the world. This would be a "projecting realism" of relations and structures along the lines of

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logical atomism which has been refuted long since. Logical structures do not simply per se exist in the external reality, they are not ontological and directly grasped but only "exist" as and by constructions; they are theory-, operations- and language-dependent. To talk of "the logical", "the mathematical" or in any sense about real-relational structures pregiven in reality cannot be conceptually reconstructed in a precise and operational manner without again going back to interpretational means by statements, symbols and signs and other interpretative modeling conceptions and/or instruments. The idea of an adnequatio rei et intellectus, the correspondence or even congruence of structures in thinking and reality cannot be concretized in an elementary way without additional interpretative means. Are we to presuppose logical structures as ontological ones projected to reality as such? Indeed not; they are in principle only to be operationally grasped by interpretational, conceptual or even experimental approaches. Moreover, it is far from clear what the concept of "correspondence" or "congruence" between logics and world would mean, because "structures" in the world can certainly not be logically connected with each other in the same sense as contents or meanings in linguistic, mathematical or mental representations. The problem of adequation and/or correspondence needs an explicit and differentiated precision; the idea of "adaequatio" by itself cannot be a solution, but just a tentative, rather unprecise outline of the theoretical problem of truth, not yet the answer. The same would be true for the semantic interpretation of the concept of truth as developed by Tarski and his successors regarding the formal semantics of formalized systems and any epistemology oriented at that (e.g. Davidson's basic extension of Tarski's idea). We cannot use formal definitions of truth concepts apt for the interpretation of formal languages just for everyday languages or empirical disciplines without essentially involving interpretations of another, rather ordinary language-, action- or practice-oriented sort. The formal approaches to the interpretation of empirical truths along the lines of interpreting logical truths or truths in formal systems (after Tarski) certainly have one advantage: Thus the talk of "true" and "truth" would be delineated and restricted to the


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cognitive-theoretical usage without involving religious, existential and normative overtones of "truth". Instead of speaking of "truths" and "true" in general one should speak of "(theoretical-)cognitively true" or "cognitive truth" in this restricted sense of applying these predicates to descriptive sentences, statements, judgments, claims or even theories. Indeed, this theoretical usage of truth predicates as a metalanguage concept ("true" as a higher-order meta-language concept ranging over cognitive sentences, theoretical hypotheses etc.) has been the prototypical usage relevant in modern epistemology and philosophy of science which gave rise to the ongoing discussions between proponents of the correspondence theory and coherence theory of truth or pragmatical or even pragmatist truth theories. Therefore, it seems meaningful to sketch the respective state of the art. "True" is basically a semantical and meta-language predicate as Tarski had proposed. A definition of the concept of truth must according to his school and many other successors not only be consistent (contradiction-free); i.e. "formally correct", but also "adequate with regard to content" ("inhaltlich adaquaf): that is it has to imply all meta-meta-linguistic statements and sentences of the form: " "x" is true if and only if p " where " p " is a meta-linguistic translation of any sentence x of the object language and "x" a meta-language name of this sentence/statement. I would not like here to give an extensive historical description of the development of modern theories of truth as W. Franzen (1982) did in a meticulous treatise discussing in particular correspondence theory, redundancy theory and the so called "resentential theory of truth" of his own. (Representatives of the latter position claim that "truth" would not be a real predicate (cf. Grover-Camp-Belnap 1975, cit. Franzen 1982, 170).) Franzen shows however that the predicate "true" is not superfluous, but has a function which he called "resententialization", by which "from the quotation of a sentence" "the sentence itself is reconstituted''' (ibid. 175), i.e. from naming the statement the claim is restituted, "from the reference to a state of affairs the claim of this state of affairs" is reinstalled (ibid. 174). This

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would be the linguistic-functional task to be solved in the most simple way by the expression "...is true". This seems to me to be a right and important insight which however just shoves the traditional epistemological problem of truth further away. Even if the whole meaning of the expression "true" (or "truth") is to be seen in this language-related pragmatical function, the problem still remains on a different level. One has still to ask for the role of a justified and correctly applying, namely "true", judgment or claim. What is the distinction between any arbitrary claim from justifiedly correct ones? By linguistic-functionalistic tricks we may perhaps explain some typical manner or role of functioning of language expressions or even theoretically eliminate them, but the epistemological problem behind that (according to the above mentioned rather ironic establishment of borders between diverse "errors" or illusions and justified judgments) cannot be solved in this manner. It does not seem to be realistic just to look for modern variants of coherence or consensus theories of truth. A coherence theory can never be enough, since it only amounts to a necessary condition of factual truth. It can never be a criterion i.e. a necessary and sufficient condition — except in the case of logical-formal truths where consistency (non-contradictoriness) and logical-formal validity always coincide. (Yet, here we are dealing with quite another concept, namely of necessary validity or necessary truths being very different from factual or empirical truths.) Moreover, logically consistent theories with empirical content can nevertheless be empirically rejected or factually falsified—-they may still be "wrong". The same is true all the more for a consensus theory of truth. Here, we have not even a necessary condition, not to mention a sufficient one: One may develop a high consensus about wrong theses. For millennia statements about the earth being a plane plate in the middle of the cosmos were represented as "truths". In addition, the danger of rendering a concept of truth in a way ideological would be implied by a consensus theory. Ideally and exactly speaking truth can in any case not be time- and consensus-depending or even only be correctly interpreted or meant as that. Moreover, consenting


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or consensus already presuppose a criterion of comparison if you don't want to plainly politically generate "truths" e.g. by voting or decree. To be sure, relating truths to an ultimate consensus with respect to an ideal universal community of communication of truthsearching scientists at the very end of times also is a trick to avoid any real criterial operational approach and test by interpreting the concept of truth as an ideal "limiting concept" (see below). The idea entertained already by S. Ch. Peirce and later on by Putnam (1981) as well as Apel (1973) is certainly an illusionary way out of the real epistemological problem. Problems of the correspondence theory of truth have been discussed in the tradition very frequently. I need not delve into the details here. The strong version of a one-to-one correspondence between sentences/statements and facts (or propositions) is discussed in Wittgenstein's Tmctatus as a quasi ontological and epistemological approach and has been often criticized (cf. The overview Franzen gave 1982, 49ff, 52ff). In a weakened or modified version however, a sort of correspondence theory may be upheld (also according to Franzen's conclusion) being compatible with other theories of truth. Even Peirce's original classical pragmatist methodology as e.g. Reseller's methodological pragmatism (1977) are well compatible with such a weakened or modified correspondence theory of truth (cf. Also Franzen 1982, 266f). One has only to give up the one-toone correspondence of sentences and states of affairs (Mackie 1973, 43) and/or to introduce a weakened version of the relationship between statements (sentences) and facts (Franzen 1982, 59ff, 256ff). "Truth" (or "true") is neither an isolated real "predicate" to be projected to reality nor a hyperrealistic (meta-)relation between language forms and real facts or states of affairs which would function in a quasi magical reference — according perhaps to a magical reference theory as it was successfully criticized by Putnam (1981). The reference between statements and facts is as Franzen righdy states, indeed weaker. The "comparison", the "correspondence", with reality consists simply in correct tests and positive confirmations regarding singular factual statements or sentences describing states of affairs. The question just is whether these statements/sentences

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describe states of affairs which are the case admitting of confirmation or even empirical verification (which is no problem with singular statements). (However it is still a question of analysis whether these circumscriptions as "...is the case", "...is confirmed (with respect to singular statements)" are but linguistically different formulations of the idea of truth itself— thus begging the questing of the truth problem again.) In such a weak sense of "comparing" and "correspondence" even the Aristotelian form of a correspondence theory of truth (Metaphysics 1011b:26f) remains unproblematic (Franzen 1982, 254f). Instead of an extended discussion of the diverse approaches to a modified version of a weakened correspondence theory of truth and other truth theories I would like here to concentrate on the epistemological questions regarding operationalization, application, of a modified correspondence-theoretical conception of the general concept of truth. I think that the necessity of another differentiation of the concept of truth will be the outcome being certainly of theoretical significance. I would like to start with some insights by Putnam (1981) where he criticizes a. o. the correspondence theory of truth — in its strong version of one-to-one correspondence — by showing that there would be by far too many correspondences if we would take the strong correspondence theory seriously. Incompatible theories may both be true if we would not presuppose an overreaching quasi divine point of view ("God's eye"), namely the one from the perspective of the unique truth theory. But there is no realistic-metaphysical external standpoint from which to doubtlessly guarantee knowledge and recognition of truth. Putnam therefore develops his concept of "truth" as acceptability (in the long run) within his model of "internal realism" (entities are dependent on methodological presuppositions, valuations, theoretically founded typifications and classifications) in connection with rationality, more explicitly: rational acceptability. He does not identify "truth" with rational acceptability in the strong sense — truth would not be simply rational acceptability because truth is a relational property of a sentence or a statement which cannot be lost whereas the justification and acceptability can be given up. Rational acceptability therefore is a pragmatic concept.

"Truth" as a Metatbeoretic Interpretative Construct

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It is relative to time and subject and also with respect to a community of scientists or even of a culture. If someone still aims at the traditional concept of truth to give it a certain meaning, it can certainly not be a totally relativized and pragmatized concept. Therefore Putnam postulates that "truth" would be "an idealization of rational acceptability" to note under "epistemologically ideal conditions". It is a "limiting concept" of rationality or rational acceptability: "Idealization" means that a statement may be true independently of a justificational procedure here and now, but not independent of any justification whatsoever. If you claim a statement to be true you imply thereby that it can be justified — at least in principle and under epistemologically ideal conditions. In addition, it is expected that truth is stable or "convergent", respectively i.e. it does not lead to inconsistencies. Putnam also criticizes the idea of mental representation, the similarity theory of reference (in particular the "magical theory of reference" not to be discussed here) and tries to develop criteria of rational acceptability taking over from Nelson Goodman the condition of "fitting together". According to Goodman (1978) the truth of statements and the correctness of descriptions, representations etc. would in the first analysis be a question of "fitting" i.e. of fitting to different representations or formulations or to kinds of formations. Putnam however understands the "fitting" as an idealized rationally justified acception of truth as being an internal non-correspondence-theoretical definition of the concept of truth: "Truth is ultimately the quality of fitting together". — This however, also leads to some difficulties — even admitting the internal-realistic presupposition: The quality of "fitting together''' is a comparative concept: truth would then become a comparative or gradual concept to be differentiated according to "better" ("higher") and "worse" ("lower") truthfulness or similar gradations (if we would not introduce a quantitative concept by a metric). In both cases we would have a higher-order relational concept of an implied or even "hidden" presupposition of "validity" — at least in a strong version of correspondence with regard to comparability or quantitative measurability — if only in the limiting ideal. Moreover, truth then would naturally be pragmatically relativized: "Fitting" — and still

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the assessment "fitting in the limiting ideal"!—is a matter of estimation, dependent on interpretative points of view, aims, hypostatized historical development of theories and series of them etc. That means that even from the point of view of internal realism "truth" as idealized acceptability would not be totally invariant with regard to time or different perspectives. Although Putnam wanted to evade such relativity by using the rather vague concept of idealization this certainly would not be successful because idealization is just introduced as a linguistic trick. Idealization is and remains a fiction. As a fictional "limiting concept" the concept of truth may hover over and beyond any actual processes of recognition, but it certainly will not be operational, it cannot methodologically be grasped in a precise nor pragmatically conducive manner. Just talking about such an universal idealized rational acceptability regarding theories does not in the last analysis solve the problem of truth. Moreover, several incompatible theories may be equally rationally acceptable: The stipulation that just one theory would be the unique best one as regards rational acceptability in the long run is certainly an unfounded and unjustified suggestion if not insinuation. Logically speaking however only one of two incompatible theories can be claimed to be true: not both of them can be true — if we possibly attribute the predicate "true" to total theories at all. Already a quarter of a century ago I stated that it would be useless, to ascribe to "natural laws and theoretical principles" a timeless character of "truth", if and insofar Popper and critical rationalism are right that truth of theories could in principle not be guaranteed, never be recognized as ultimate, but can be only presumed and tentatively be accepted for the time being (Popper 1935). One cannot be absolutely certain about possessing the truth if "true" and "truth" are attributed to universal and general empirical theories or even empirical laws. Indeed, perhaps even the search for an ultimate truth — if in the far and ideal Utopia of the community of scientists at the end of times — may not be a virtue at all (cf. Lessing's insight quoted above). "A high degree of confirmation or corroboration seems to be the ultimate regarding such universal principles and laws which can be


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reached. True or false can only be sentences/statements which state details of facts. In addition, both "truth" and the confirmation of empirical-scientific laws are dependent on conventions about the logical-formal and mathematical system in unison with the respective theoretical principles of the empirical theory itself (as stressed by Poincare, Duhem and Einstein)" (Lenk 1972, 18). We know meanwhile that theoretical concepts within (the framework of) logically more or less connected and integrated theories are "theoryladen", "theory-impregnated" as Hanson (1958) and Ryle had stressed; in addition, they are not exactly apt to provide a total meaning, but they are only partially interpretable (Carnap) i.e. they have structural partial meaning (see Chap. 5). This, by the way, does not only hold for exact axiomatized formalized theories, but all the more so for general empirical, even for everyday theories and, in less manner, also for concepts of typification and classification in observation statements and procedures. Conventions, preclassifications or pre-sortings, model designs or even world designs, also for constitutive decisions of methodological provenance and about the framework of theories and rules or concepts which are necessarily involved in the establishment and make-up of an empirical theory. Thus it is not possible to speak of "the truth" of a theory at one time independently of these methodological presuppositions and prestructurings. Reality cannot be described or explained or grasped independently of theoretical drafts or presuppositions including methodological ones. This is even true for statements about variables, magnitudes, observations etc. There is not the one and only relationship of truth between sentences and facts and all the more not the unique relation between universal or general theories on the one hand and described states of affairs on the other to be doubtlessly discovered, just found or be stated in a unique manner. Theories may be rationally acceptable without being true — at least if we understand "truth" as independent of human theoretical activities and the respective structural prefabricating operations by means of classificatory, sorting and descriptive instruments like concepts, expressions, mathematical structures etc.

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Using the concepts "truth" and "true" with regard to theories as a whole would itself depend on a certain kind of metatheoretic "God's view" if we presuppose a Putnam-like idealization in the long run. It would be better to dispense with a guaranteed attribution of the predicate "true" to universal {general) theories and comprehensive natural laws in the sense of unconditionalized universal hypotheses. We can only justify and confirm claims regarding singular cases of truthlike instantiations in experimental cases or groups of them i.e. truth claims pertaining to respective detailed descriptions. Empirical theories and universal laws can only be more or less confirmed, corroborated more likely or successfully than their predecessors — they are tentative (as Popper held) but not absolutely and provably "true". Would then a concept of "versimilitude" in Popper's sense be operationally possible and meaningful? Truth would then remain the ultimate Utopian goal to serve as a permanent justification for searching for it and strengthening the permanent motivation of scientists but it would usually not be reachable even though one thinks or hypostatizes that it would be approximated better and better. (However, this could never be guaranteed by an operational procedure or measurement.) Wouldn't this be — psychologically speaking — even a "perverse" motivational dynamics? An admittedly Utopian goal which can never be reached could not possibly be a goal or guideline of endeavors if it is not at all possible only in principle to get near(er) to it. Thus far Popper's idea of verisimilitude does not seem to be very promising. But this theory was frustrated already for methodological reasons: In order to be able to measure truth-approximation one would have to be in the position of knowing or assessing truth already. Only this way the distance from truth, the difference of approximating it could operationally be measured or assessed or estimated. Even this would be presuppose a certain kind of "God's view" in Putnam's sense. Only in a rather simple everyday sense "truth" may (pragmatically) serve as a kind of polar star for orientation with regard to confirmation or rejection of singular observation statements or rather restricted hypotheses of minor scopes.

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By contradistinction to Popper's approach, the later development of critical rationalism e.g. in Lakatos, focused on the successive gradual amplification of knowledge instead of verisimilitude: He would not operate with the Utopian ideal goal at the very end of history, but would rather work on departing and progressing from already gained ground: instead of gripping to the stars (say, the polar star of absolute truth) and trying to reduce or minimize the distance by the way of approximation, one rather concentrates on hightening or augmenting empirical content by e.g. explaining novel facts, minimizing anomalies and their frequency or probability etc. (Even the progress in theoretical integration with no empirical confirmation or corroboration would count as a kind of yet only "theoretical progress" without being an empirical progress already.) In this approach we only arrive at an ideal of the ongoing "progress of knowledge", but never at the ultimate recognition of truth, nor would we be able to claim a guaranteed "approximation" to truth. We build, so to speak, on from what we already have. (Certainly, in a way of linguistic trick we can call this idea of "progressing" by raising empirical content also a certain non-operational "approximation to truth", however this is not methodologically — or in a traditional-logical sense inductively — guaranteed at all.) We have to concede that there is not the one and only true theory, the unique theoretical truth — nor a one-way avenue leading towards such a thing. That can only be a superhuman Utopian fiction. The idea of a "limiting concept" of truth as idealized rational acceptability can and may be a Utopian fixed point (similar to the role of the concept of truth in Popper), but it is certainly not to be gained in an operational practice or approximated by a conducive procedure with methodological guarantees. On the other hand it is still possible ir everyday contexts and with respect to scientific measurements, observations, and experiments indeed to judge and assess the respective details of description as being the case or not being the case. There are certainly "true" statements about details, detailed facts or observations which can be called (empirically) "true" within the respective sufficient limits of

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ascertainability or exactness. Truth is so to speak not "the whole" as Hegel claimed, but lies in the details.11 With regard to singular statements we may sufficiently reliably and exactly state whether or not they are true. The formulation of singular statements however is in some sense also impregnated by theory, concepts, language, methods (including methodology), culture. However even considering the semantical and theoretical relativity of stating "truth" regarding general theories in its rather weakened form we may here speak of a certain kind of common content of truth with respect to observation statements in particular e.g. perceptual experiences (under normal conditions). In addition, this idea might be extended to refer to the empirical content(s) of theories or the other way around. The idea of conditionalizing in the very linguistic and methodological presentation of theories and general statements regarding the inclusion of conventional presuppositions, preparations of experimental setups or instruments of representation is an idea in point. We are used to conditionalize representations in including theoretical or instrumental or whatever conditions in the premises of general statements. The conventionalized part or instrumental presuppositions etc. may be included in the premises of a respective conditional law (in form of a general if-then hypothesis). Thus, the respective empirical content may be expressed as staying the same under different conditions which are explicitly mentioned and included in the premises of the respective implicational general law statement. One may think of Mephisto's slogan from Goethe's FausP. "Das Erste steht uns fret, beim zweiten sind wir Knechte" ("regarding the first, we are free, with respect to the second we are servants"). Earlier I used that idea for an overriding concept of empirical content of theories with respect to different presuppositions or methodological make-ups in order to overcome methodological and epistemological conventionalism (Lenk

1

'Didn't Adorno with his statement: "The whole is the untrue" (Minima moralia 1951) mean this? If we stay with an ironical jocological philosophy (cf. Lenk 1987) one could at least think: "Truth is after all only the half", or even better: the singular or particular.


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1968; 1973, 109; 1975): Different theories can empirically achieve the same output or measurement results; they may in this sense in principle display the same empirical content — even though they take off from different basic presuppositions and conventions regarding frameworks etc. If these basic presuppositions and framework conventions are included in the premises, this sort of conditionalizing might lead to the same empirical content of different theories rendering a comparability and solving the problem of relativism as provided by radical conventionalism and incommensurability theses (after Feyerabend or the early Kuhn). This idea might be transferred to the discussion of truth-content of theories with a certain weakening factor. By this, the idealization of which Putnam speaks, might become more operational. Truth in such a weakened form can as a long range guideline and orientation not only be meaningful, but also practically relevant. Even if truth in the narrower sense can only be attributed to singular statements/sentences (and conjunctions of such ones), to constatations etc. and possibly also to basic hypotheses (which are in part also tentative and relying on methodologically guided, but contingent conventions), the idea of a relatively high "truth content" may be delineated pretty much like a high "empirical content" of theories and nomological universal general statements. Regarding this I would like to propose the idea of a "potential of truth generation" ("Wahrbeitsgenerierungspotential") representing so to speak an ideal construct of "truth content" in a pragmatic operationalizable form. As in the mentioned case of empirical content we have also here a metatheoretic, metalinguistic and semantically higher-order concept: The predicate "... is true" itself is, to be sure, a semantical, metaliguistic predicate as we have seen; therefore here we have only to add another semantic level for the respective predicates. If only statements/sentences or basis hypotheses may be called "true" or "false" one may still attribute to general theories or laws a more or less great disposition (and correlatively the respective truth-engendering claim) to render "true" singular statements or "basis hypotheses" (after Popper) in a specific conditionalized makeup of concepts, within a constitutive framework (under certain, in

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part instrumental and conceptual presuppositions) which are all included in the respective conditionalized premises. Hereby both Putnam's "God's eye view" as well as total relativism and ultimate pragmatism of the concept of truth are being avoided. By developing a medium construct indeed simultaneously paying tribute to the idealization and relativization (e.g. by conditionalizing without any absolutistic extensions) Goodman's nominalist statement "Here is no truth to be found — "true" is just a name for what a bunch of people can agree on" is so to speak confirmed in its first part but rejected in its second. Putnam is right insofar as there is no archimedic take-off point from which to guarantee general truth or "the reality" or even true existing objects in an absolute manner — and yet not to be misunderstood" and/or to be guaranteed in the sense of ultimate rationality as such. The viewpoint of "God's eye" after all is an illusion. Consequently, there is no theory-independent external viewpoint from which to draw absolute comparisons: The strong version of correspondence theory cannot be upheld any longer. "Truth" itself is not a really existing property or relation in reality, but only a pragmatically instantiable construct, interpretation-shaped, dependent on methods, methodological presuppositions and experimental as well as conceptual set-ups. Truth is after all an interpretative construct, but one of a character of a constructum bene supportatum {in praxi fundatum). The construct-impregnation is also to be found with all general statements and theories. It can be represented by conditionalizing as mentioned before. The same conditionalizing effect might be seen with respect to singular statements and basis hypotheses which are usually not totally, but partially independent of general theoretical drafts and theories — as e.g. — to be found in simple observation sentences and respective reliable experiences. We have to go back to everyday categorization and the respective customs as well as practices and to language descriptions whenever we accept singular statements as "basis hypotheses" or "protocol statements" etc. (Only from the conditions of acceptance regarding different cultures, languages and social practices is for the time being abstracted here.)

"Truth" us a. Metatheoretic Interpretative Construct

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With regard to the truth of theories to my mind the most decisive feature of theories is the truth-generating potential, indeed. It is a pragmatic concept oriented at proving the "disposition" to engender true singular statements or "basis hypotheses". (Certainly the truthgenerating potential is itself an interpretive construct concept of a higher order, residing on levels IS 4 through IS 6 in the diagram of interpretation levels (see above Chap. 2, Fig. 2.1): As a methodological idea it is certainly on the latter sixth level of die highest epistemological provenance. Even the idealizing tendency we talked about along the lines proposed by Peirce and Putnam is built into the pragmatic concept.) Moreover, theories are the better, the higher their truthgenerating potential is i.e. the more (reliably and frequendy as well as quantitatively in terms of numbers) they allow to engender singular statements (or conjunctions of such ones) which are true in the elementary and colloquial sense, if they comprise empirical content in the first place, meaning that they are confirmable (verifiable on the lowest object language level) or falsifiable. Of course, a parallel discussion would be possible or even necessary as conducted by Popper regarding the degrees or grading falsifiability (according to, say, a comparative concept). Otherwise, theories of tautological character would epistemologically speaking be the best ones, because they trivially have a maximum truth generating potential, since every deductive consequence of them is true, however only formally true — they are not empirically speaking or factually true. Theories therefore have to have a high truth generation potential and at the same time a high falsifiability potential. Instead of "true theories" or really measurable or recognizable truth-approximations with regard to theories or historical series of theories I propose to speak of a greater or minor truth generation potential of confirmable and falsifiable theories. By that concept, it seems to me, the pragmatic tendency of actually judging the recognition value of theories on the one hand and the idea of idealization of truth on the other (e.g. in the sense of an ideal rational acceptability after Putnam) is meaningful and nevertheless operationally conceivable as well as applicable. All these important features of epistemological and methodological acceptability

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seem plausibly to be combined here. (Certainly, the idea is in need of further elaboration, this enterprise must be left for future studies.) The conception of a truth-generating potential of falsifiable theories in the sense sketched out is of course a methodological interpretative construction — similarly as the attribution of the property "true" to whole theories was or would be (if one still sticks to this strategy). (I shall deal with the concept of theories later on, see Chap. 5) Generally speaking after Popper's insights as well as due to debates by other philosophers of science like van Fraassen, Lakatos, Putnam, Giere, etc., theories can only be secondarily characterized as "presumably true" (better now: as bearing a high truth generation potential) — on a higher interpretative level, as mentioned. The truth of a falsifiable theory as such can at best be a regulative idea (in the sense of Kant's terminology), but can never be finally reached or guaranteed. Most empirical theories in the course of history of science have been overridden, proved outdated or, strictly expressed, "wrong". The probability that any of the latest fashionable or most progressive theories would be "the one and only true one" is empirically speaking (from a higher, historical viewpoint) inductively very low — and neither measurable nor precisely conceivable as an idea. (Even the idea of verisimilitude, the approximation of truth in the long run is as we saw operationally not precise nor materializable in practice.) If two mutually incompatible theories do in fact accomplish empirically pretty much the same measurable results in terms of predictions of novel facts, explanations of old facts and the avoidance of anomalies should they both be attributed the predicate "true"? Obviously this would not seem possible, since if one of these theories is or is considered "true" the other one being logically incompatible with it must be false. Skeptical remarks with regard to attributing the predicate "true" to total theories are in order. The above-mentioned proposal to reduce the attribution to the concept of truth-generating potentials of falsifiable theories is however recommendable, since it allows to attribute the same amount or degree of this dispositional property to equally successful theories. The proposal still allows to speak of the truth of statements/sentences and judgments — though primarily of singular statements (or of low-level "basis hypotheses").

"Truth" as a Metatbeoretit Interpretative Construct

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Is "truth" therefore to be considered "a business secret" as an ironic aphorism (by H. Nahr) would have it? Apparently indeed truth may neither characterize theories as a whole nor be given absolutely or in a fixed manner to conceive or apply operationally; nor is it just pragmatist applicability or fruitfulness or usefulness alone. Again, neither the elimination approach nor coherence nor consensus conceptions of truth are apt to support a defendable conception of the truth of empirical knowledge without difficulties. Obviously, the conception of truth needs a more differentiated treatment. This however seems to be possible if one would in a more refined and sophisticated way analyze the attribution of the predicate "true" within the framework of a methodological schemeinterpretationist approach. The conception of truth as a regulative idea remains still in operation, then, but it has to be differentiated according to different levels (the levels of interpretation as mentioned above) and by the respective relations between these interpretation levels. Here even correspondence and coherence-theoretical convictions may be combined at times. Important is that methodological aspects are clearly distinguished from semantical and ontological ones. In what follows I will only discuss a bit the methodological aspect. The take-off point is the methodological-interpretationist insight that all recognitions and actions, including experimental interventions in world connections, are structured, more precisely: they are schematized and interpretation-dependent. In any activity of "grasping" — be it primarily in the sense of recognition or be it in the rather literally "grasping" sense as agency-bound — available schemata or schemes are activated and/or reactivated, as shown by the methodology of scheme-interpretation above. We saw that schemata are structural patterns of activation (or can at least be conceived of as such). They might be inherited or developed in interaction with the environment (on the basis of a dispositional inheritance) or they might be conventionally taken over and specifically learned by stabilization, i.e. frequent reactivation of schemata or the respective correlated neuronal assemblies (which are built up or attuned according to a 40 H Z oscillation within a neuronal assembly constituted thereby as Singer (1990), Engel et al. (1993) interpreted

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Von der Malsburg's hypothesis about the frequency-dependent stabilization of plastic synapses: Frequent immediate successions of activations of presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons would according to Hebb's learning rule be stabilized, if this is frequently repeated almost simultaneously. Von der Malsburg (1986) generalized that to plastic neuronal networks (neuronal assemblies); meanwhile this has been empirically confirmed and was worked out to an oscillationstabilization theory of neuronal assemblies (Singer 1987, Eckhorn et ctl. 1988, Crick-Koch 1990, Engel et al 1993). 12 As we saw above, scheme-interpretations would admit of different levels and metalevels surpassing the lowest level of primary or original interpretations. We distinguished six levels of interpretative constructs upgrading regarding flexibility and language- as well as argumentationdependence including metatheoretical and metalinguistic perspectives (see Chap. 2). In this approach as developed by methodological scheme interpretationism concepts and theories of truth conceptions may now be described or classified in a rather differentiated manner. The idea of truth may then be interpreted as a fitting relationship between different interpretative levels, in particular between higher ones and basic ones (Abel 1989). Thus, interpretative constructs on level IS3 may either be understood and represented (on level IS4, say) as connections of prelinguistic concepts (IS3a) or as judgments or statements in language format (IS3t,). These may quasi 12

Thus, as we saw above, we may at least correlatively understand schemeinterpretations as the activation and frequent reaction of the respected coordinated neuronal assemblies. The result of such schematic-interpretational activities are generally speaking schema-interpretative constructs, the results or products of schematization processes and activities which might be called "schematisates" ("Schematisate" in German). As worked out above (Chap. 2) they cover interpretative productions (as in the case of social phenomena etc.) or impregnations in the narrower sense (essentially engendered, triggered or codetermined by world factors, e.g. in direct sense perception). (The results of die latter impregnation activities we might call "impregnates" ("Impregnate" in German) where the effects of world factors — usually captured on level ISi — are overridden or moderated by activities on level IS 2 or even IS3a. Impregnations thus are a realistic connection to "the world" in recognition (notably in the case of perception) as also in behavior and action.)


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correspondence-theoretically be compatible or harmonized with or attribute to the respective impregnating, constitutive or habitually "categorizing" (" kategorialisierenderi"', Abel) interpretations of levels ISj and IS2 displaying a structural congruence or correspondence with these or with a combination of these, in order to figure as a higher-order "representation" or a reactivation of a higher-level schema (as e.g. on IS 3 or IS 4 , respectively). Insofar as Abel's "interpretation! structures" (regarding "constitutive" and "categorizing" interpretations) would correspond to the primary schematizations of my hierarchy of levels, it is possible to make (a new) sense of the thesis of correspondence theory of truth: The higher-level interpretations or combinations of interpretive constructs are related in the sense of a "correspondence" to the primary schematizations, in particular primary impregnations codetermined by world factors. Higher-order interpretations thus are in correspondence "or by fitting" coordinated with the basic primary interpretations and impregnations partly determined by "world factors". This is the relatively reduced and in a way "weakened" but still essential residual idea of a correspondence theory of truth in methodological terms; it is nevertheless compatible with a sophisticated and "weak" ontological realism though sophisticated and moderated in the sense of a minimum realism (see Chap. 7 below). We can only in an indirect sense talk about the "structure" of the world or of world factors respectively, namely in the sense that we can only from higher levels of interpretation (say, in an ontological higher-order interpretation) project or describe the respective attributed constitution of hypostatized world factors determining the impregnations and impregnates. There are so to speak "verificators" or truth-makers codetermining the special kind of impregnations, essentially fixating or limiting the overriding higher-order schematizations and interpretations. It is important that on higher levels as well as on the level of primary interpretations and impregnations there are only prima facie truths as a matter of "fitting": The more, the more variable, the richer in alternatives and the more complex — the higher in terms of levels interpretations are. The prima facie attribution of "true" is

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somehow similar to the prima facie attributions of duties in ethics (therefore the label "'prima facie'''). Whereas prima facie duties in ethics may eventually be displaced or overridden by higher-order or more urgent duties, in prima facie truth attributions (or in attributing truth generating potential grades) the conditions of the respective theory-formation or methodological schemata and interpretation requirements might be taken into consideration. Truth-attribution is in this sense — similarly as the empirical content of theories, as mentioned above — a concept of interpretation of a higher order. In particular, this is the case with scientific and philosophical theories: Here truth is a higher-order conditional interpretive construct which may depend on potential conditionalization restrictions, requirements or strategies: If we presuppose a specific theory or perspective integrating this fact into the condition, we would get this or that result. This can be considered as a conditional "truth" of higher order. Hereby we have still the possibility to get an equal or equally ranked truth by entertaining another perspective or another theory with different but comparable empirical success; this may then be seen and labeled as also "conditionally true", if we had integrated the respective theoretical and methodological differences into the conditional premise. Thus, different theories may have the same empirical content (as mentioned above with regard to conventionalism since Poincare). Equally, different theories and perspectives may allow the same truth ascriptions by this conditional procedure; they may be tentatively, hypothetically or prima facie be considered as equally "true" (having an equal "prima facie truth (value)" or truth-generating potential). Attributions and ascriptions of truth or truth values are therefore generally speaking interpretative constructs of predicates (or dispositional properties of higher order) applied to interpretive constructs and their combinations on a lower level. They are thus methodological-theoretical model constructs, which may at first be ascribed in a prima facie manner, but (may) abide by a regulative idea of theoretical-cognitive truth without guaranteeing this truth in a transcendent or absolute sense. With such a conception, at least rudimentary or in some sense sophisticated and weak(ened) realistic


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approaches can be combined. Also, requirements of fitting and even of evolutionary epistemology may successfully be invoked here. Combining the ideas of theoretical "fitting" and some valuable (methodological as well as historical) insights of evolutionary epistemology in a sort of indirect realism may epistemologically — and even ontologically, in a sense! — be defended. If "true" is conceived of as a result of an interpretive construction under methodological or impregnative (worldly) conditions and truths are relational constructs of different levels (prima facie truths, higher level theoretical, truths engendering potentials etc.), it follows that schematizing interpretation is more fundamental for epistemological and methodological approaches than the very concept of "truth" (notably in the reconstructed sense). The predicates "true" and "prima facie true" as well as "fitting-true" may now be differentiated as relational concepts between different interpretive constructs of different levels within the respective hierarchy of interpretations. They are therefore of secondary character, themselves shaped by interpretation with regard to the basic schematization activities, say, the primary or lower levels. Therefore, schematization and interpretation are more fundamental than truth itself, because conceptual differentiation and ascriptions of "true", "prima facie fitting-true" etc. become possible only in terms of presupposed schematizations and interpretations. There is a theoretical pluralism of interpretation perspectives which is purely theoretically speaking possible, though not practically capable of being totally carried through with respect to primary interpretations and impregnations. This pluralism might on higher interpretive levels lead to the mentioned relativity of conditional provenance with respect to higher order truth claims or prima facie truths or fitting attributions without necessarily falling back into total relativism of different or even incompatible truth ascriptions. "Truth" to my mind is methodologically speaking indeed a higherorder interpretive construction or a constructive interpretation oriented at a certain unification of truth claims and truth generating potentials ("truth" also itself being an interpretative construct). Especially according to primary impregnations there are however

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certain unavoidable fixings or fixations on levels IS\ and IS 2 which are far from any arbitrariness of the respective basic truth claims. The conditionalization of truth ascriptions as mentioned would therefore amount to a convincing argument against unlimited pluralism or total relativism of arbitrary "truths", say, in Nietzsche's sense. To be sure, truths, the concepts of truth and the grasping of truths are dependent on and shaped by interpretations, but nevertheless they are neither totally arbitrary nor strictly relativistic. In summary: The conceptions of "true", "truth" as well as "truth relations" or "truth-generating potentials" (cf. above, page 63) are to be conceived of in their basically interpretive character. They are connected with primary and higher order schematizations and methodological mutual relationships between different interpretation levels and may be still related via impregnations to the independent external world though any recognition or "grasping" of such a relation can only be materialized by interpretational and schematizing activities. There is no interpretation-free or theory-free access to the world as such; even primary perceptions and actions as well as experimental manipulations etc. are bound to and by interpretative constructs. Thus the interpretative approach to the "world" seems to be methodologically more basic than the problem of truth and truth assignment. Thus "the question of truth would lose its traditional position for the benefit of interpretation problems" (Abel 1992, 328). Yet with all rejection of an absolutist truth-realism the interpretationist approach may be still compatible with an ontological as well as epistemological realism which however have to be developed themselves as epistemological constructs from an interpretationist and methodological point of view. Indeed, the respective result of a process or activity of "grasping", a schematisate or interpretate or impregnate, respectively ("'Schematisaf', "Interpretaf or "Impmjjnaf in German) has to be distinguished from the world and its "factors". The activity of "grasping" and the result of the respective processes has to be distinguished from the referents or relata which can be only conceived of, meant, and represented on higher-order levels by higher-order interpretations. Without such interpretative activities of schematizing and "grasping something" we would have no opportunity to develop

"Truth" as a Metatbeoretic Interpretative Construct

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cognition, recognition and options of actions with regard to the world and objects, processes and events in the world, yet we can and must (see Chaps. 6 and 7) for theoretical as well as practical reasons presuppose or hypostatize an independentiy existing world which to a certain degree may itself also be "grasped" or recognized. It would certainly amount to a kind of presumptuous intellectual arrogance to deny that the world already existed for milliards of years without humans, without interpretation or interpreted world versions if we are to take seriously the current state of knowledge in cosmology and evolutionary biology. This is certainly — at least practically speaking — received wisdom which cannot be denied without leading to performative paradoxes and theoretical difficulties.

A Reappraisal Regarding "Theories" and "Theoretical Concepts": Towards an Action-Theoretical and Technology-Oriented Philosophy of Science and Epistemology 13

Let me start with some rather ironic aphorisms: "A theory is nothing but the skin of truth — propped and stuffed" (Henry Ward Beecher, my retransl.). We may infer from this that theory has something to do with truth and should be related to practical applications — as stated in the second bon-mot: "Theory should never forget that it is nothing but applied practice" — that is the late Gabriel Laub's rather pointed ironic version of the proverbial insight that nothing would be more practical than a good theory. Or does A. J. Carter's sarcastic remark apply: truth is but a surmise with academic qualification? In some sense, all of these aphoristic insights occasionally make sense and may lead to different conceptions of theories.

13 This chapter is based on an invited overview lecture in the international workshop on "Universal Design Theory" at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany (Inst, for Applied Computer Science in Mechanical Engineering) 1998.

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A Reappraisal Regarding "Theories" and "Theoretical Concepts"

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Substantive vs. Operative Theories It seems to me to be most important to distinguish between substantive theories and operative or instrumental or technological theories (after Bunge, II, 122,1, 502ff): whereas the first ones would comprise empirical content (notably to be found in science) and are empirical, informative, and testable, the latter ones mainly consist of instrumental or operative concepts or methods representing consistent methodologies. They represent structural concepts as e.g. mathematical "theories" do which may only later on be applied in a kind of instrumental manner to specific realms e.g. of empirical or ideal or even normative provenance. While substantive theories imply empirical content and relevant substantial information necessary for scientific explanations and predictions, operative or instrumental theories do not avail themselves of the respective explanatory nomological or content covering law hypotheses, but are used for the precision and explanation or prediction only in a secondary manner by being applied for practical reasons to given theoretical or empirical or experiential presuppositions. They are but instrumental calculi or formal and procedural structures usually represented by mathematical operations or systems of operators. Operative theories thus are formal constructions of rules, calculi, structural interconnections which in their instrumental character are like language forms or mathematical formulae which do not represent substantial nomological hypotheses with empirical content although they are usually indispensable for formulating laws in precise scientific form. They have to be supplemented by nomological hypotheses with content: a calculus per se has no empirical content. Only by attributing to it observation statements, measurement procedures and testing techniques as well as application procedures will a formal operative theory together with these sustantive ingredients have an empirical content and become so to speak a substantial or substantive total (of an operative and, substantive theory). Substantive and operative theories are also models of quite different kinds and multiple usage. In the narrower sense one should speak of genuine theories only with regard to substantive theories. The so-called operative theories are but instrumental models

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or frameworks of models and procedures or procedural rules. (Most of the traditional mathematical "instruments" and "theories" are of this operative character. This also applies to almost all of the axiomatized theories as far as their structural framework and the formalised basic axioms are concerned. Also, formal systems theories, axiom systems of logics and mathematics are to be conceived of in this manner as instrumental or operative theories.) This distinction between operative and substantive theories is rather frequently not understood nor acknowledged clear enough in axiomatically oriented natural science or in practice-oriented variants of applied disciplines (like technology and organization or management sciences). An important practical maxim to be taken into account would derive therefrom: it is necessary clearly to distinguish between substantive (substantial or contentful e.g. empirically contentful) theories and operative or instrumental "theories" (which would rather figure as instrumental concepts of methodologies and methods). This is advisable even though the latter somehow "penetrate" the first ones by providing their "logical framework". Only the first ones (or some in connection with the latter ones) can claim for (empirical or contentful) truth. The latter ones are rather like instruments selected and taken from a cupboard of more or less useful instruments or appliances for structuring and formalizing or handling statements with substantial content.

Truth or Fitting/Feasibility? From what was said we can gain another insight which is wellknown in traditional conceptions of philosophy of science: genuine theories have to be testable and truth-oriented i.e. they have to be tested by confirmation or corroboration (total verification of universal hypotheses is not possible!) or by falsification (empirical rejection) taking into account the relevant criteria of truth. Theories not oriented at factual truth are not theories of empirical science. ("Logical" or "mathematical truth" is another concept: such formal theories are exclusively proved as "valid" ("formally true" or "logically true") by


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proving their consistency i.e. non-availability of contradictions. For empirically contentful theories non-contradiction is but a necessary, though not a sufficient condition for truth.) As a special note for theories at large (say of normative stature e.g. of construction or design, or economical or action planning) — which need not necessarily be truth-oriented ones in the narrow sense — let me state: in so far as "theory" does not deal with truth or empirical or factual truth claims, but e.g. with "goodness" or fit, it cannot be an empirical scientific or science-based theory, but must rather consist of methodical or even meta-methodical or methodological principles i.e. of general structural maxims of actions. These would structure the processes and steps of actions at times even functioning normatively, but they would not be related to just nomological truths in the empirical sense. Axiomatic theories of such kind are actually rather normative instructions or maxims. More precisely, they are generalized and abstract(ed) models of interpretive constructs of procedural provenance which are to be seen or applied under specific normative criteria like "goodness", "optimizing", "adequate problem solution", "satisfaction of functional requirements" as well as "simplicity", "feasibility", "cost" etc. (Other external constraints may be obtained as well.)

Understanding "Theories" in Science In current approaches to the philosophy of science we can distinguish between different conceptions of theories and their interpretations which are all derived from the traditional approaches by analytic philosophers of science (like the positivists of the Vienna Circle, but also from Popper's critical rationalism). Traditional

Approaches

1. The traditional interpretation conceives of theories as logically interconnected systems of statements or sentences consisting of universal lawlike hypotheses which are taken as perfect or completed theories represented in an axiomatized form. Their reference to

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistetnolojjy

reality or experience is realized by attributing to the concepts of the theories the corresponding observation statements abiding by special correspondence rules or attribution rules, connecting the theoretical concepts with observation predicates of a lower level which in turn can be satisfied or fulfilled by observation or measurement. However, this traditional two-level conception of empirical scientific theories is today assessed very critically — or at least controversely — and has to be supplemented or substituted by several other conceptions. (It is common knowledge now that even observation statements or statements about measurements and their results are theoretically "infested", "theory-laden", "theory-impregnated" — at least by a theory of measurement.) 2. Intricately connected with at least such a traditional conception of theories is the primacy or paragon function of mathematical theories in the form of axiomatization (as it was devised by mathematical logical formalism (Hilbert) at the beginning of the last century. Accordingly, mathematical theories are such axiom systems which would define their uninterpreted theoretical concepts "implicitly" (by their respective structural axioms themselves) and which are able completely to cover a realm to be comprised by the theory (e.g. classical algebra). (Through the well-known metamathematical results by Godel und Church these expectations have been proven to be impossible: highly complex axiomatizations14 comprise a kind of incompleteness and the provability of their consistency is severely restricted: in addition, there are no absolute guarantees and mechanisms or algorithms of proofs even for some logically or mathematically valid theorems within the formal system.) Attempts of total axiomatization of theories have therefore proved definitely unsuccessful. The axiomatic method can generally only be conceived of as a didactical useful construction. As such it is certainly still important and widely applied, especially with regard to purely formal e.g. mathematical, theories. But axiomatization and "scientificness" cannot be identified, neither in the purely

14

Being at least of the complexity of number theory and quantified logic (predicate logic) of first order including identity.


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formal sense nor in the empirical scientific sense. Axiomatic systems are but aids — maybe practically necessary ones —, but they are not the real empirical scientific theories themselves. This leads to the interesting conclusion: axiomatizations cannot be the only criteria of being or going scientific, as necessary as they might be in the practice of teaching science. In particular, formal axiomatization by itself, that is the mathematical structure of the calculus, of a theory must not be mistaken as "the whole theory" in its scientific as well as in its practical sense. (This, to be sure, should be taken into consideration by construction engineers and theorists of design oriented at formal axiomatization.) Dynamics

of Theories and their Historical

Succession

3. Since 40 years or so, the so-called historization of the conception of science has become characteristic for philosophy of science. After Feyerabend and Kuhn (1962) philosophers of science started to take seriously into account the factual history of science. The real development of the sciences is largely shaped by the groups of the respective relevant scientists and by the values and the respective changes of the relevant conceptions: the so-called "normal science" is distinguished from "revolutionary" phases (Kuhn 1962). The latter ones can lead towards a new "paradigm" within a special realm of research: the consequence is a certain (or even absolute) incommensurability of paradigms or the respective theoretical basic interpretations (e.g. classical mechanics vs. quantum mechanics). From this a third conception of theories as group-supported basic paradigms was developed according to which the "normal" internal development of a scientific paradigm is so to speak sciencepolitically supported and authoritatively got or put through, only to be again later on superseded by a new paradigm. Comparisons of theories, competing results and data as well as scientific progress in such an extreme sociological or even sociologistic version of the approach like (e.g. according to the "strong" conception of the so-called Edinburgh School of the Sociology and History of Science) may lead to a theoretically insolvable dilemma between

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a rational assessment of theoretical progress and but rational scientific change. 4. Imre Lakatos (like Feyerabend a creatively deviant disciple of Popper's) developed a concept of the historical succession of theories consisting of "research programmes" which supersede another according to criteria. This conception replaces Popper's original "naive" falsificationalism by a "sophisticated" one (as he calls it). Theories are still systems of universal hypotheses ("laws") in their logical-deductive interconnection, but they are only indirectly falsified, insofar as the interplay between the so-called "explanatory" theory and the theoretically impregnated observation statements will only lead to a statement of inconsistency or, rather, incompatibility (e.g. between measurement theory and the explanatory theory). Theories are always to be assessed within the historical succession of predecessors and successors: successor theories are "better" than their predecessors, if and only if they have more empirical content i.e. allow to predict some novel facts, or contribute to the avoidance of some anomalies of the old theory (although any theory whatsoever would comprise some anomalies still) and/or render an integrating theory-fusing process of generalization. Transition to a "better" theory in this sense is called "theoretically progressive" if it allows to predict novel facts which are not yet empirically confirmed. (A change is called "empirically progressive" if some of these predicted novel facts are really confirmed.) An example would be the transition from Newton's theory of gravitation to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity due to Eddington's experiments regarding the deviation of light rays close to the sun (1919).

Model-Theoretic

Approaches

The Structuralist Non-Statement View 5. The so-called non-statement view of theories as sets of settheoretical predicates or sets of models was mainly developed by Sneed and Stegmuller — after ideas by Suppes. This approach


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which is also called a "structuralist" view of theories understands a "theory" as a totality or net of theory elements which are partially ordered 15 by specialized relations or constraints i.e. by adding special laws. (Occasionally and originally the ordered pair of the mathematical structural core K and the set of partial potential models being the "intended" possible applications — the ordered pair {K, 1} — is called a "theory" — or nowadays "theory-element". The partial potential models of a theory comprise all the applications conceived of which are not yet described by theoretical functions and observables, namely the models of intended applications.) By definition, the theory comprises the structural core (defined only by mathematical relations) and the potential and partial models as well as constraints (i.e. theoretically required interconnections between the partially overlapping partial potential models) and the models themselves (i.e. the factual systems which are really successfully described by the theory). Empirical statements and hypotheses of a theory are now represented in the statement that the respective intended applications of the theory belong to the applications of the net (or the structural core) fulfilling the constraints. The set of partial potential models (i.e. the real systems which are intended for application of the theory without theoretical functions) are supplemented by the respective theoretical functions leading to this set of potential models. To be sure, the adding of theoretical functions and specializations (by added special laws) has to lead to a partial set of "fulfilled" models (M) such that the whole sequence of theoretical functions has to satisfy the constraints. According to the structuralist non-statement approach a theory now consists simply of an ordered pair of a mathematical framework of formulae (structural core) and a set of possible intended applications and constraints. The possible applications are object systems or real systems which are up for application of the theory and which are usually given by certain paradigmatic initial models usually proposed by the founder of the theory. The 15

In the sense of a logically mathematical partial ordering relation i.e. reflexive, asymmetric, transitive and identitive relation.

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theory then is an ordered set of theoretical predicates (after Sneed and Stegmiiller).16 The total theory might be considered as an extended core leading to a theory-net by adding specialized laws and respective new constraints, restriction functions and new intended models to be inserted into the set of potential models and fulfilled models. In short, a theory is therefore a relation predicate defined over the set of potential models of applications. CLASSICAL MECHANICAL MODELS

II

m 111

IV

CONSERVATIVE MODELS

RECTILINEAR MOTION CONSTANT FORCE Fsk

FREE FALL

INCLINE PLANE

NONCONSERVATIVE MODELS

HARMONIC MOTION LINEAR RESTORING FORCE F=-kx

PENDULUM

SPRING

ORBITAL MOTION INVERSE SQUARE FORCE1 F-k/r

CIRCULAR ORBIT

ELLIPTICAL ORBIT

/ (Source: Giere 1994, p. 288) Fig. 5.1. A partial "model map" of classical mechanics exhibiting a multiple hierarchy of models. 16 "Formally, a core K may be represented either as a quadrupel K = [M p , M pp , M, C] or as a quintupel K = [M p , M pp , r, M, C]. Here, M p , M pp , and M are the sets mentioned... C is a set of constraints i.e. a subset of the power set of M; and the restriction function r: M p —» M p p transforms an element of M p i.e. the potential model, into an element of M p p i.e. into a partial potential model by "lopping off" all theoretical functions" (Stegmiiller 1979, 25).

A Reappraisal Regarding 'Theories9 and "Theoretical Concepts"

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The predicate "... is a theory" states the existence of a relation between the mathematical structural core and the set of at the time specified set of intended applications of a theory, the set of potential models being expandable: further potential, previously not intended applications can be integrated (e.g. the extension of Newtonian classical mechanics and dynamics to include gravitational systems by adding a law of gravitation or the extension by adding Hook's law of a linear repulling force to include harmonic motion) (see Fig. 5.1). A whole series of interesting results can be derived from this new conception: it is possible to speak of one and the same theory, even though the set of special laws of the theory and the set of intended models is expanded, as long as the structural core (the mathematical basic laws) of the theory is maintained e.g. Newtonian mechanics of the Newton's first three axioms is specialized by adding special laws like Hook's law or the law of gravitation while still remaining the same theory, but now a differentiated and specified one.

Relativism^ Theoreticality and (T-)theoretical Concepts In addition, the property of being a theoretical concept is now relativized to the respective theory and may be governed and checked by a criterion independent of the traditional (nowadays principally thwarted) distinction between observable and non-observable variables or magnitudes. Beside the opposition of "theoretical" vs. "observable" (amounting to the distinction of theory-language and observationlanguage according to logical positivists like Carnap) now a relativized conception of "pre-theoretic" concepts and "theoretic" concepts of the respective theory T (more precisely, T-theoretic concepts) is introduced: for instance, the concepts of "mass" and "force" in Newtonian mechanics and theory of gravitation are theoretical concepts, whereas "space" and "time" are not (they might however be theoretical concepts in a more basic physical geometry of Euclidean structure). A T-theoretical concept is distinguished by the fact, that it can only be instantiated or attributed and measured by using the theory

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itself i.e. by measuring the respective variable. It is now possible pragmatically to define the concepts of "using a theory" as an action concept which is not only logically characterized, but also impregnated by pragmatic, action-theoretical and agent-related aspects (cf. Stegmiiller, e.g. 1980). Possible Expansions of Structural Cores Progress in handling or using theories by expanding their structural cores via adding further intended models can be realized in various manners: by extending or modifying the extant set of the relevant intended applications i.e. partial potential models, by refining the net or the structural core itself as well as by ramification with respect to mutually exclusive intended potential models characterized by non-compatible special laws. The structural approach renders a certain autonomy of the structural core as regards ramifications and extensions as well as a certain immunity with regard to relativized falsifications. From T-theoriticity (the relativity with respect to the theory T) of die theoretical concepts and due to the theory-impregnatedness of observations a theory defines, so to speak, its own facts to be governed and covered by it leading to a sort of "holism" of falsifications and confirmations in such a manner that only a theory-net in total is confronted with experience or experiment and confirmed, corroborated or falsified by it. Regarding Practical Modeling and

Axiomatization

As regards axiomatizing and applying the respective models we may arrive again at a piece of advice for design theorists: the structuralist approach of the theoretical structure consisting of structural cores seems to be at first view rather abstract and far-fetched, at least from practical considerations. It has, however, a considerable advantage insofar as theories are conceived of as a set of mathematical structural frameworks and models and that one and the same structural core (the same basic axioms) can be related to new intended models (or


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sets of these, respectively), without us being urged to talk of a new theory in each case of core extension. In addition one may transfer the constitutive connection between mathematical structural cores and intended applications (partial potential models) also t o contexts in which one cannot speak of the "truth" of a substantive theory: for instance, this would apply t o general principles of technological fields t o be described, characterized, covered and designed from the point of view of a criterium of "fitting" or "goodness" or functional requirements etc., and the respective specializations by adding further, more specific "laws" or "rules of t h u m b " . In fact, normative theories e.g. axiomatic design theory after Suh and Chang, may be presented as a set of precise fundamental principles ("axioms") characterizing a structural core supplemented by plurifunctional requirements (FR) instead of "truth". The structural view of theories would favour this combination of an axiomatic approach regarding and maintaining the mathematical structural core on the one hand and the practical selection of models from an open and extendable set of partial potential models on the other. (This approach can also be rendered compatible with historical developments of some of the extent principles and their specializations.) Generally speaking the structural view of theories would support the interpretation by design theorists that "theories" (more exactly: methodological general design principles and their structural interconnections) can be conceived of as precise (or to be made more precise) structural cores including a plurality of functional requirements of satisfaction and different models etc. Axiomatic design theory is rather a normative generalized methodology respecting specific functional requirements and design parameters which are characterized by multiple and changing optimum-seeking or satisfactory model solutions than a substantive scientific theory with empirical content in the narrower sense. Such pragmatic approaches of the relation between structural cores and models seem to be especially suited for technological "methodologies" in the sense of a set of systematically interconnected methods and the intimate relationship between technological rules on the one hand and scientific substantive basic theories on the other. (Unfortunately, engineering sciences have traditionally as yet not developed a general methodology in the philosophy of science sense with clear criteria for theoretical justification, although the development of a "General Technology" ("Allgemeine Technologie") and its methodology has been asked for by some philosophers of technology (Ropohl 1991, Lenk/Moser 1973).

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Towards Technology-oriented and Action-theoretic Approaches 6. The model-theoretic approach can be extended in order to better cover technological models. Ronald Giere, in his book Explaining Science (1988), developed an interpretation which combined the structural view with technological approaches (similarly also already Hacking 1983). Giere (1988, 85f) understands "theory as comprising two elements: (1) a population of models, and (2) various hypotheses linking those models with systems in the real world. Thus, what one finds in the textbooks is not literally the theory itself, but statements defining the models that are part of the theory". Important is the relation of similarity between the models and their real systems to which the models relate as cases of their application: "the links between models and the real world... are nothing like correspondence rules linking terms with things or terms with other terms. Rather, they are again relations of similarity between the whole model and some real system. A real system is identified as being similar to one of the models", (ibid. 86) Giere conceives of a theory "as a family of models", or still better, "a family of families of models" (ibid. 82, 91) which can be related to the world by similarity and fitting of the models with the respective real system as mentioned above. Theories in that sense are no linguistic entities or just frameworks of formulae but heterogeneous sets consisting of abstract constructs, the theoretical models, and linguistic entities like hypotheses about the fitting character of these models and their similarity with reality susceptible to grading and perspectives: "a real system is identified as being similar to one of the models. The interpretation of terms used to define the models does not appear in the picture; neither do the defining linguistic entities, such as equations" (ibid. 86). "When approaching a theory, look first for the models and (only, H. L.) then for the hypotheses employing those models. Don't look for general principles, axioms, or the like", (ibid. 89) This means with respect to the above-mentioned example that one has to look for the models and their similarity with real systems regarding pre-theoretically characterized representations of the model of the

A Reappraisal Regarding 'Theories3' and "Theoretical Concepts"

planetary system or the model of the earth-moon system as original or primary models of the Newtonian theory of gravitation. With respect to relating and combining theoretical models with real systems to be covered now technology plays a decisive role. Like Hacking (1983) Giere's constructive realism sees a proof of reality in the successfully managed technologies in handling entities (e.g. electrons) which earlier had the status of a theoretical entity, if they are applied to cover and characterize new models or other theoretical entities. (If we routinely use nowadays electron rays in accelerators or in electronic microscopes successfully to resolve other scientific tasks, we understand in this technological sense the theoretically postulated electrons which were earlier mere theoretical entities now as scientific-technological real entities.) Insofar as electrons and protons are manipulated and applied in big technology measurement instruments and appliances to probe and prove the structure of other elementary particles like gluons, quarks etc., these electrons and protons now are "real" indeed (Hacking 1983): thus "some of what we learned today becomes embodied in the research tools of tomorrow" (Giere 1988, 140). "Satisficing" Giere states that scientists are constructive realists who relate models by technological applications and interventions to reality. Thereby they are led to an experimentalistic-realistic conception of improved models in the sense of a relativized or qualified (not necessarily optimally) fitting or suiting after H. A. Simon called "satisficing": one does not (need to) maximize the model adjustment, but would optimize it in the sense of rendering a satisfying result, the relative optimization of goal attainment so that a satisfying result for experimental and somehow functionally restricted but relatively "best" accordance of models with reality would occur. Scientists are according to Giere optimizers or "satisficers", but no absolute maximizers with regard to a correspondence of their models to reality. Regarding the methodology of construction Giere states explicitly (1988, 137), "The main connector between our evolved cognitive

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capacities and the micro world of nuclear physics is technology". Certainly this is valid on a more generally scale: "The development of science depends at least as much on new machines as it does on new ideas". "It is technology that provides the connection between our evolved sensory capacities and the world of science" (ibid. 138). Technology is conceived of as examplary ways of experimenting, development of instruments that are man-made extensions of the senses, and all our capacities including the instruments and procedures as well as operations which are, metaphorically speaking, concretized "embodied knowledge", i.e. "embodied in the technology used in performing experiments" (ibid. 140). We have to add to the technological developments of new instruments, procedures, technological systems also the interface between these latter ones and action systems, if not today social and socio-technological systems in sociotechnical networks. Therefore we have to add the essential reference to structured actions and action systems in their worldly and social embeddings. Even experimenting and the devising and developing of theories as also the utilizing of theories is a sort of acting, a kind of action.

Experiments, Actions and Knowledge In the treatises of epistemology and the philosophy of scientific theories as well as knowledge in general the present author (1998) shows the insoluble interconnection between knowledge, experimenting and action. Insofar Giere's combination of scientific models and their relation to real systems through technology and technological manipulation and intermediate operators like measurement instruments and machines has indeed to be extended by an action-theoretical interpretation. This would also be of utmost interest for theoretical technologists and technological theory like e.g. design theorists, since the design of hardware structures and real systems and the respective structuring manipulations as well as die design of software in software models should and could be covered by such a view. The pragmatic model-theoretic approach with respect to technical instruments has to be supplemented or expanded by an action-theoretical

A Reappraisal Regarding "Theories" and Theoretical Concepts"

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perspective which is notably suitable for technological e.g. design theories. Whereas traditional conceptions of theories in science emphasized too strongly the rather pure theoretical elements and hypotheses as linguistic entities, traditional axiomatic as well as the pure structuralistic conception suffered from too formalistic an orientation conceiving of theories and their structures exclusively as mathematical structures or even set theoretical complex predicates. The philosophy of this at times so-called new experimentalism, of a pragmatic technology-oriented provenance and the action-theoretic perspective may avoid these over-simplifications and at the same time refine the structural interconnection between idealized cognitive models or intented partial potential models of theories by stressing technological realizations and materializations and action-theoretical as well as operative procedures and operational sequences (as to be found in the design of operations and experiments etc.).

A n Interpretationist and Schematheoretic Approach Pragmatic philosophy of science has much to learn from technological and action-theoretical approaches. In a similar vein, also the methodology of the engineering sciences or the general technology still to be developed may gain much from insights of methodological character and from the differentiated consideration of refined developments as well as novel insights in the philosophy of science and from general methodology including theories of action. Epistemologically speaking, these methodological approaches can be embedded in a general "theory" or methodology of schema-interpretation or schemeinterpretation (Lenk 1993, 1995). This approach understands any grasping of real systems as methodologically and epistemologically dependent on specific perspectives, teleofunctional requirements, theoretical constructions and approaches as well as practical action routines or social conventions and institutions, respectively. A new unity of the sciences and technologies as well as of the understanding and knowledge of the world and of the manipulations as well as interpretations of reality by acting and utilizing theoretical

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and (schema-)interpretational as well as experimental and actionpractical models indeed gains relief on a metatheoretical level characterized by general methodological requirements for any active processes of "grasping" external or mental entities as well as ideal structures. Acting, grasping and realizing as well as forming, shaping and rendering normative structures is in this sense to be understood and analyzed from the point of view of schematizations (the development and activation as well as utilization of schemas of partially hereditary, mostly however learned provenance) and by interpretations, manners and patterns of "grasping" something, an object or an event, in a rather active or passive sense under specific perspectives. The main question — generally and ironically speaking — seems not to be "Dasein oder Design" ("being or design") — to put it in a pun not translatable to English! —, but that, as we saw, any "grasp" of structured real "beings" (real entities and their relational patterns) is always also dependent on a kind of "design" of in part primarily biological or hereditary, in part conventional and higherlevel interpretations (cf. Chap. 2, Fig. 2.1). To come back to Beecher's statement on truth quoted at the beginning of this chapter: a theory is more than "the skin of truth — propped and stuffed": beyond fitting and satisficing as well as fulfilling some correspondence conditions for reality-based restrictions it is a complex interpretational construct (based on and consisting in many schemata and interpretations mutually subordinated or coordinated), a way of dealing by procedures and operations, actions and techniques in more or less practical concrete steps and measures (or even measurements) with external world sections, world factors (entities and processes), potential models, real systems17 as well as meaningful semantic entities (mental entities, ideal constructs etc.). Theories and, more generally speaking, methodical and methodological concepts as well as normative structures of actions and procedures would guide us in the form of patterned interpretations 17

To be sure, "real" systems can also only be grasped and even conceived of by using (schema-)interpretational means!


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and schematizations. Methodological interpretative constructivism or constructionism (schema-interpretationism) was developed by the present author as a higher-level methodological as well as epistemological concept comprising the special cases of scientific theories, technological designing, blue-printing and prototyping as well as all other kinds of procedures to structure actions and thought patterns. Interpretations are but constructions in a narrower or a wider sense (cf. Lenk 1995). Theories are interpretational constructs which as substantive theories claim for truth, at least approximate truth or for empirical validity — or as operative or instrumental theories for methodical or methodological validity. Norms and values are interpretative constructs, too. So, there are normative interpretative constructs in any process of designing and decision making. Designing and problem-solving in design are completely of an interpretative character. In short: there is nothing more practical than clear-sighted interpretations.

6 Reality Constructs and Different "Realisms"

In the text above I had quoted the funny statement by an old sage of Dublin, "reality is but the illusion stemming from too little alcohol in the blood!" Objectively, there may be something right in such a claim, although even alcohol has to come from somewhere i.e. the Dublin man hypostasizes or presupposes in a certain sense something like a background reality apparently determining his modes of conceiving what "real" is or means. Realistic approaches obviously comprise not only one position, but usually a complex mixture of different focal or background presuppositions and/or allegations. Again, there are many different variants of realistic positions which may be ordered according to diverse criteria. Even here it is important at first to distinguish clearly between methodological, epistemological, semantical or semiological as well as ontological approaches. Methodological and epistemological interpretations are for instance compatible with ontological-realistic ones as well as with ontologically speaking anti-realistic ones. The question of realism does only pose itself in a so to speak secondary manner after presupposing a certain methodological vantage point e.g. the methodological scheme-interpretationist point of view. Ontological

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Reality Constructs and Different "Realisms"

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conceptions are themselves always interpretive, i.e. interpretationshaped. Methodology is meta-methodologically speaking prior to ontology. A specific ontological approach cannot be derived from methodology nor a comprehensive methodology from a special brand of ontology. The methodology of scheme-interpretation goes in front of the distinctions between realism, essentialism and the respective opposite positions (cf. also Abel 1993). Thus it is in order to give a survey of typical modern variants of realistic positions. I would like first to distinguish subdisciplinary levels: First of all we can speak of a realism in an ontological or metaphysical perspective i.e. of the presupposition that the world exists independentiy of us and our capacities for cognition, recognition and action, being as it were independent of our mind, interpretation and descriptions, even our scientific theories — in short the world as such or per se, as an existent "something" (entity or framework or whatever) does not depend on our ways and modes of grasping it. Indeed, we are ourselves part of the real world. This ontological and metaphysical realism is a traditional and very old theory much discussed and also criticized; however, in a certain sense it still makes much sense, if only for practical reasons relevant for our lives. Even the anti-realist will hardly dispense with his dinner: Insofar he practically hypostatizes a real world even if he e.g. as an epistemological idealist, would think that we could not directly have reality, could not reliably grasp or recognize it and would only engender our concepts of it ourselves. (The latter idea might really make sense, indeed.) This kind of realism alluded to here is but everyday realism. This common-sense realism already played a great role in the history of philosophy in antiquity — particularly in rejecting skeptical arguments criticizing die naively hypostatized ontological real. These arguments have been pretty successful to date since David Hume. There is no absolute logical or meaning-analytical proof for die existence of a real external world: The existence of the external world cannot be conjured up by magic out of the sorcerer's hat so to speak by logics and logical semantics. This argumentation which was used in antiquity by Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus has in modern philosophy particularly and successfully

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been entertained by David Hume. He ended up with a generally speaking pretty skeptical epistemology (e.g. in his Treatise of Human Understanding I, 4. or in the Inquiry, Chap. 12); he would conceive of epistemology but as a critical or negativistic discipline changing it somehow towards a sort of psychology of recognition and knowledge: Really at stake would not anymore be the justification of the presupposition of a real world, but the justification of our psychical or psychological belief for such a reality. This would run parallel with his skeptical empiristic-sensualistic and psychologistic (meta-)theory of causality and induction. We may and should separate from ontological realism the rather epistemological question of epistemological realism proper characterized by the claim that we do reliably know something about reality. The epistemological question therefore is whether or not we can gain and develop reliable or "true" (see above Chap. 4) or at least acceptable or even exact and precise information about reality and possibly the putative "essence" of the really existing world. One may imagine something like the reality as described and explained by the natural sciences like many natural scientists do, when they think that the world as such is structured in the same manner or in congruence to how science tries to recognize and explain reality by means of "true" or truth-oriented theories. An epistemological realism may be a comprehensive realism claiming to be able to gain a comprehensive recognition of the world as such. Or it may represent a partial epistemological realism implying that we are only partially in a condition to gain reliable or precise information about (external) reality. To be separated from this epistemological realism is what can be called semantic realism pertaining to language as our instrument of describing reality: Semantic realism claims only that there are facts in the world independent of our descriptions, in particular our linguistic expressions for describing facts and states of affairs. That means language would describe something which itself has to be independent of language and the modes of descriptions of any sort — e.g. of mathematical or configurational, pictorial or conceptual kind. This


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can cum grano sails also be related to our conception of schemeconstitutions: We may ask whether or not our modes of interpretation as discussed above are such that they reliably and truly "grasp" something existing independently from us — or whether anything to be addressed by an investigation would be nothing else than an concrete instantiation of our own activity e.g. produced by our scheme-interpretations or their results. Is world recognition just a production or constitution, or does it relate to something independent of such descriptions and alternative modes of these? Semantic (epistemological) realism would claim that any correct description in fact refers to something existing independently of the mode and manner of description. The description would be adequate, correct, "true" in the sense that the described state of affairs does in some sense "correspond" or is congruent with the presupposed or hypostatized "real". This is the old idea of the correspondence theory of truth we discussed above. Semantic realism frequently is identified or equalized (following Dummett's opinion) — with correspondence theory and the principle of two-valuedness of truth ("each cognitive statement is either true or false"). However, to my mind this is a too specific conception of semantic realism. I would rather follow von Kutschera's (1989, 1993) understanding that semantic realism claims the existence of a language and theory-independent reality — notably independent from our means and modes of descriptions. Indeed, there is a great problem how can one recognize reality in the first place independently of (modes of) descriptions and of presupposed language and interpretation, schemata etc., in order to gain a comparison regulated and checked for the mentioned correspondence or congruence? Indeed, we will find that this is not to be achieved at all. We have no descriptionfree, language-free and interpretation-free access to reality as such to test the adequacy of descriptions and statements of truth with respect to different approaches by referring to an independent vantage point. One has so to speak purely hypothetically to postulate these potential tests of correspondence insofar as they are practically presupposed or hypostatized in thinking that by using technical or other successful manipulations in experiments, predictions, explanations we are yet able

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to reliably gain such a thing like a descriptive content of statements about reality. But again here we encounter a great methodological problem of so-called scientific realism to be addressed shortly. Nicholas Rescher in his book about Scientific Realism (1987) tries to present the variants of realism in three successive steps — however totally ignoring semantic realism. He thinks that realism might be characterized by three theses with three postulates growing more specific accordingly. Rescher distinguishes "metaphysical realism" from "cognitive" and in turn "descriptive realism" the latter both being epistemological kinds of realism. The first metaphysical or ontological postulate reads, "There is a mind-independent physical reality which, as such, has a descriptive nature of some sort"; this according to Rescher would characterize metaphysical realism. (The clause "has a descriptive nature 1 8 ..." certainly is problematic. It should read: "...may be susceptible to descriptions from our side". However, even this improved clause would already reach into the realm of epistemological realism regarding the capacities of humans to grasp or describe the independent reality. The second characteristic of cognitive (epistemological) realism beyond accepting postulate one is characterized by Rescher's opinion, "We can know something about it (the mind-independent physical reality, H. L.) — we can acquire (a substantial volume of) accurate information about the nature of the real". (Again, the second part seems to be problematic: "accurate 19 information" should more properly be substituted by "relatively reliable information"; again, "the nature of the real" seems to be an unnecessarily essentialistic formulation and may be changed to "basic elements, elementary factors and/or features".)

18

How could a subject- or mind-independent physical reality as such have "a descriptive nature or character"? This seems to be a category mistake. Reality as such cannot be descriptive, maybe it is susceptible to being described. 19 Does that mean that we have a certain kind of mirror theory of recognition? Obviously not, but this shows the inaccurate formulation of the postulate (2).


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Thus far Rescher thinks that realism as he would defend it "is plausible through point (2)" (ibid. 154). Beyond that Rescher would not underwrite the postulate of "scientific realism" in the strict sense which according to his formulation reads as (3), "This descriptive knowledge of reality characterizes it exactly as it is in itself — in terms of reference that are absolute (non-relative) and in no way hinge on some particular cognitive perspective, being independent of the particular ways and means used by inquirers in forming the picture of the real" (ibid. 154). According to Rescher here the possibility of realism and thus scientific realism ends because the structure and gaining as well as shaping of knowledge certainly depends on particular ways and means used by theorists and inquirers in the course of history physics or natural science. Rescher brings in a moderate sort of idealism according to which "in investigating the real we are clearly constrained to use our own concepts to address our own issues": "We can only learn about the real in our own terms of reference. All that reality will ever provide us with are answers to the questions we put to it" (ibid. 154). However, "intelligence proposes but reality disposes" (ibid. 155): "...what is right about realism is that the answers to the questions we put to the real are provided by reality itself— whatever the answers may be, they are what they are because it is reality itself that determines them to be that way" (ibid. 154f). Also- the third postulate is not very precise: It does not make sense in the first place to think at all that descriptive knowledge of whatever kind could "in no way hinge on some particular cognitive perspective", because description just and always is in a sense perspectival. (We might however conditionalize the necessitude of a special description in the way mentioned above (in Chaps. 2, 5).) — That reality itself should give the answers we are putting to it is certainly a metaphorical way of saying which turns out to be ambiguous. Just factors of reality ("world factors" so to speak) may codetermine the truth of the conditionalized statements as mentioned in Chap. 4 about truth; thus reality certainly plays a co-determining role in deciding the respective questions put by us — but only in a very indirect manner. Rescher rejects the third postulate or descriptive or scientific realism

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thinking that a sort of idealism has to come in, namely by the way of our own concepts and constructions to shape the make-up of theories and knowledge. Thus he opts for "the middle ground... to combine a plausible version of realism with a plausible version of idealism", a sort of "compromise in the interests of a fruitful collaboration between these historically warring positions" (ibid. 155). Again, I think that even the terminology is too much dichotomous now, because both realism and idealism are here used in very moderate or "weakened" manner: Indeed, instead of idealism we could talk of constructivism of concepts or interpretationism with regard to concepts and theories etc. (But this seems only to be a terminological point of view.) With regard to the third option and postulate Rescher is certainly right in rejecting strict scientific realism as defined by him. However, I think that even the second postulate as mentioned is not quite right, not only in terminology, but also regarding the role and structure of knowledge: Already here interpretationism comes in, because any knowledge whatsoever is dependent on interpretative constructs as we saw. It is true, that this variant of realism is doubtlessly already an epistemolo£fical one relating to knowledge of the world which we can gain about the mind-independent real. (We should forget about the essentialistic accent of the formulation "the nature of the real".) With regard to postulate number one Reseller's formulation does not characterize metaphysical realism as such but a certain kind of physicalist realism because one could also think that a reality, even if independent of our minds, could be itself spiritual or somehow "non-physical"; it may even be Pythagorean. The main feature however is the independence of the real from our mind or language and descriptive or explanatory requirements i.e. a combination of an ontological realism with semantic realism as defined above. In fact, natural scientists today have given up the naive mirror theory regarding description of reality. In addition, most scientists gave up the claim of deducing all statements from just one ultimate principle of matter which traditionally amounted to an explicit reduction to statements of pure physics. Instead, nowadays many people defend a sort of non-reductionist or eliminative materialism,


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claiming that all statements or knowledge as well as recognition of mental and psychical phenomena could be eliminated without being explicitly definable in terms of materialistic or directly physicalist expressions. The mentioned three theses or postulates would characterize according to Rescher the spectrum of possible realistic positions, in particular with regard to science. (As mentioned above he did not take into consideration the subvariant of cognitive realism as constituted by semantic realism.) If anybody just accepts the first postulate he would be a metaphysical realist. Indeed, we all in practice of our lives do that. So we are all metaphysical realists of sorts. If we, secondly, postulate actually not "strictly accurate information" about "the real" or the world or even its "nature", but just relatively reliable and projectable information, then we would be cognitive or epistemological realists. (The above-mentioned problems of independently testing the correspondence or congruence with the constitutional elements of reality as such is not really addressed by Rescher: There is no interpretation-free access to the alleged "structure" or basic "constitution" of the real which would be acquired independently in order to test the comparison or correspondence. Nevertheless, reliable knowledge and extension of knowledge in terms of theories and our models and language formations — in short: by using our schematizations and interpretations as well as constructed theories — are apparently possible indeed. And that is enough for a hypothetical epistemological realistic position, even if skeptical arguments cannot be definitively rejected. In practice however, we are all not only metaphysical, but also epistemological realists of sorts. Strict scientific realism ("descriptive realism" after Rescher) is a specific realistic position comprising the claim that theoretical entities of natural science do really exist as such and strictly so as science describes them or conceives of them. The "furniture of the world" would be indeed structured in just that way as physical science delineates it. We would possess the capability to present knowledge of the world by correctly grasping the constitution of the world, the nature of "the real" and its constituents. Barring the essentialistic terminology we also may add the critical remark that if something is

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ascribed or attributed or described, then it is not just a repetition of the original referent but always already a reconstruction in terms of theoretical and interpretational means of structuring, dependent on approaches, strategies and modes of interpretation or even — as e.g. regarding perceptions — primary schematizations. Rescher does not discuss this more closely, since he only talks about a sort of "idealism" coming in and compromising the strictly realistic position. However, we need not use this traditional dichotomous terminology if we apply our methodological interpretationist approach. In that sense theoretical entities in science like e.g. the concept of quarks or the psi-function in quantum mechanics, are always interpretationshaped and theory-impregnated or theory-laden. That means, that strictly speaking the theoretical concepts or "theoretical entities" (as the instances or referents of these theoretical concepts are usually called) are not to be conceived independently of the theories in which they do occur. Even the theoretical constructs of "electron" would be dependent on the respective development of the theories and maybe even on the historical series thereof (as worked out in Chap. 5). It is a problem whether or not the concept of "electron" as of 1900 it is still pretty much the same concept as the equally labeled "electron" in quantum field theory of nowadays since this "entity" is integrated in pretty different law connections and theories. (If we take into account the theory-dependence and surplus or structural meaning of theoretical concepts as mentioned in the previous chapter — and this is really common knowledge in philosophy of science by now! —, then it is problematic to identify theoretical entities from different theories. Compare for instance the different concepts of momentum in classical and relativistic mechanics.) According to traditional philosophy of science after Carnap it is common wisdom that concepts also have a structural meaning insofar as part of their meaning is determined by the position within theories and laws in which they occur and figure; see also the methodological concept of "law cluster"-meaning of theoretical concepts. Therefore, it is not possible simply to claim that the world is just so as science "absolutely correctly" would describe it, say in 1900 and in 2001. Even compatibility problems between different theories of logically


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speaking indifferent structures are to be taken into account (as we saw) — even if measurement result within special limited ranges may coincide. This is not only true for classical mechanics and relativistic theories of special and general theory of relativity, but all the more for quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics as well as quantum field theory and chromodynamics or even superstring theories: All of these are much more unclassical than e.g. the theory of special relativity. Usually the unity of physics is overestimated still today. Indeed, some future progress(es) may occur in which some parts of physical theory may be altered considerably. It is even conceivable that special theory of relativity may be falsified in the future (Already some experiments seem to insinuate that as e.g. the experiments by Nimtz et al., Marengos, Wang et al. (but also Steinberg) and also in some sense quantum teleportation (Zeilinger) admitting of not energy-bound signal transmissions faster than light.) Again, as we saw in Chap. 4 the truth of total theories seems to be after all not only methodologically speaking meaningless (any empirical theory whatsoever is only tentatively accepted and may be considered "true" — or rather: display a potential for generating singular true statements — ) . Generally speaking truths strictly understood cannot be dependent on the relative and timerestricted state of scientific knowledge. This semantic concept is time-independent and universal: Either some statement or theory is true or not. Therefore one has to be very cautious with applying expressions like "truth" or "true" to whole theories. We may however distinguish in a relative unproblematical manner between the truth of statements within the object-language of a theory relating to specific event descriptions or particular instantiations or cases covered by the theory. Here, an objective comparison with perceptions, observations, reading pointers etc. and the respective statements to be derived by instantiating from the relevant theory are possible and empirically confirmable or falsifiable beyond any doubt. But we have to be very cautious or restrictive in according the predicate "true" to a theory as a whole, as long as we — as usually — understand "truth" and "true" as time-independent predicates. (In most cases "presumably true" or "well-corroborated" would do, too.) As regards

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empirical theories which are all tentative constructions to be accepted as valid for the time being as long as they are corroborated and not falsified one has to expect that with a high degree of probability practically all extant theories will be falsified or overridden at some time in the future; so, according to the traditional time-independent concept of "truth" they cannot be true. All this has consequences for strict scientific realism being indeed a very strong and bold theory which may be estimated as being too bold to be realistic. Even regarding realisms we have to be not only pragmatic- and practiceoriented, but also in a way "realistic". Therefore, we should so to speak look for a "realistic" version of realism: scientific realism in the strict sense is not of that sort, indeed. In what follows some variants of realism are discussed which are still topical today. Indeed, a distinction frequently made these days is one between direct and indirect realistic theories. Direct realistic theories are characterized by the presupposition that the external world may be perceived or recognized immediately or by a direct connection between (re)cognition and external reality. Such a directlyrealistic opinion is e.g. any version of naive everyday realism, but also the mentioned naive scientific realism. (Direct sense-experiential realistic versions were in the last decade rediscovered by Putnam (1994) and supported by Schantz (1996).) An object which may be "grasped" or described from different perspectives cannot directly represent what is just perceived in the respective perspective: Otherwise, any object would be composed of almost unlimited many real things. Indeed, it is necessary to bring in a sort of perspectival or perspectivistic mediation i.e. something like a "perspectivistic" interpretation of perception leading to an understanding of the combination as a particular object seen or more generally (to be) perceived. Here, we need not deal any longer with direct- realistic approaches of recognition since they have been criticized successfully (pace Putnam and Schantz). Traditional mirroring or mapping-realism constitutes in some sense a transition towards indirect realistic positions, since any opinion that we "mirror" or recognize reality by an isomorphic mapping in our imagining and (re)cognition is already dependent on that mapping

Reality Constructs and Different "Realisms*

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i.e. on a certain kind of reflecting interpretation. Dialectic materialism for instance used to defend this position in a rather naive way. But there are also other, more topical or interesting variants of direct realism entertaining the metaphor of mirrors, namely positions that we by our sense perception would represent external things in our imagining faculty or even in imagery (with respect to non-existent things not really confronted) — all this instead of primarily general connections, structures or law-like features. It was claimed that we in our mind would "have" or rather, construct, a certain isomorphic copy or replica of external things or the external world, as already the English sensualists and empiricists like Locke did. Here we may talk of a representationalist copy-realism. Locke thought that humans would construct a reproduction of the external world via sense perception and things would be thus constructed from primary qualities stemming from the senses (to be traced) in a relatively reliable way, though in certain sense subjectively colored. Many empiricists and sensualists thought that this activity of representation would be a certain kind of mirroring via sense stimulation and reception of signals in a rather passive manner. Basically it would be an establishment of complexes of perception and perceptive phenomena representing in some sense the structure of reality by this complexion or combination and the connection of different simple impressions or perceptive ideas. However, we may conclude from these descriptions that the combination cannot be thus passive as strict sensualist empiricists thought. Our reception and combination of percepts is certainly an activity. For many arguments, notably raised by Kant's epistemology and again by modern empirical investigations in the physiology and psychology of perception amounting to an elaborate compositional construction of percepts as well as in recent neuroscience it follows that perception and sense recognition is by no means as passive as the tradition thought. Instead, internal complex processes and activities are so to speak working on the material already in reception (or on the level of their receptors) rendering any perception process a kind of complex "construction" so to speak including a certain kind of stylizing or constituting of the respective perceived "object" (or rather: of its representation). There is no

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic ~Epistemology

such thing like a pure passive reception or strict mirroring, but recognition would already in the phase and on the stage of perception be an active processing and integrating activity which — as we have seen — is in part mediated by primary interpretation schemata, in part by habitualized routines and schemes in its origin and mostly developed by interactively developed stabilized dynamics which we have practically developed on the basis of a genetic hereditary foundation, elaborated and stabilized by interaction with the environment. (Even in traditional ancient and medieval Buddhist epistemology theories of causality and recognition were based on the idea of a dependent origin or development (pratitya samutpada).) Finally, conventional agreements or harmonizations of socio-cultural character e.g. linguistic origin, come in and are taken over by implicit accustoming or routinization yet having an important secondary validity. This certainly is a much more intrigued interpretation process overlaying itself, but interactively also structuring, even the representations of perceptions etc. We see that a much more complex process of active processing plays a role even in sense perception and (re)cognition. Insofar activistic epistemological points of view on which Kant already focused are still valid. For Kant, the idea took center stage that man or the recognizing subject would get the "material" in a certain sense from the sense organs. This "material" would then only later be processed by the forms of (perceptive) intuition and by the forms of the understanding thus being introduced to consciousness. The "material" would have to be brought into some form or structure in which only it can be part of conscious recognition. Kant thought that recognition would be intuition and thinking; neither could possibly exist without the other: "intuitions without concepts are blind", "thoughts without contents are vacant", that is to say also: "concepts without intuition are vacant!" (cf. Critique of Pure Reason (CpR) B 75). Contentbearing (re)cognition would be possible only by the formal processing of the sense material given by the sense organs. But what does "given" mean here? Only something ("some thing" or so) can be "given" — which is already delineated and not really a chaotic flux of activation or stimulation or just an overactivity in the brain. Even


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signals and data are in some sense already structured by contours; they are — as I say — already schematized, as e.g. G. Herder even then critically remarked as against Kant's opinion regarding the material of the senses: It would be presented or "given" already in "schematized" (Herder's words!) form to our "soul". Only something which is in a way constituted before, delineated by "Gestalt" or some contours — at least rudimentarily — can be put to the processing by the "pure" forms of the "Understanding" ("reine Verstandesformeri") which according to Kant as the so-called "categories" would accomplish this function of structuring the sense material. Thus, the "given" must in the first place be present in a certain kind of preformation of schematized shape. One must already have something as constituted prior to processing it by the connecting forms of the understanding. This certainly is a difficult point within Kant's theoretical philosophy. But it is absolutely clear that Kant defended a rather strict separation: First of all it would be the "material" which from the world or "reality" as such, from the "thing in itself" ("Ding an skh"), via the sense organs would "affect" ("Affizieren" is Kant's expression) the epistemological subject from outside. And secondly, it is the understanding or the actively processing subject which processes this material, shapes its structure and construes or reconstructs it to meet the requirements of becoming conscious or a structured recognition. Indeed, one would be obliged first of all to construe (or reconstruct) the material within the realm of "intuition", and only after that it may be conceptually shaped according to Kant. But intuition as such has to occur or be already in some format, has to be formed or shaped in the first place if even (as with Kant) by the forms of spatial and timely formation. (For Kant, "space" and "time" are but forms of sensuality, external or internal respectively. "Spatiality" or "timeimpregnatedness" or "succession-dependence" would to my mind figure as better terms!) Transcendental idealism according to Kant just comes in with forms and format. Thus, Kant's transcendental idealism is but one of forms, whereas a kind "realism" would relate to the respective "stuff" from the senses, to the "material". (Kant himself talks about "realism" with respect to objective and general validity of recognitions, entertaining another terminology.) However,

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it is clear that epistemologically speaking Kant's approach is an indirect realism which may be combined and is compatible with his (methodological) transcendental idealism meaning that the forms of (re)cognition, in particular of experience, are prescribed to "nature" by us (as epistemological subjects): The "subjective" forms (that is to say, originated from and brought in by the subject) are projected onto the "material" and on "nature" so to speak availing itself, then, of a law-like connection. This is Kant's concept of "nature", namely the structured material insofar as it is connected and hangs together by law-like general interconnections under the forms of "space" (spatial ordering) and "time" ("succession"). These forms of intuitions, called "space" and "time", are general forms involved in any sense perception and (re)cognition. (External perception is denned by spatiality, internal by time-dependence only, though external events are also intuited under time conditions.) Indeed, I would say even here we have a certain kind of form-scheme-impregnation of external and internal sense perception and (re)cognition. Kant's activism of processing any (re)cognition (including recognition stemming from sense perception) is certainly an interactive interpretationism: His transcendental idealism is a methodological and transcendental interpretationism. Kant's epistemological activism is beyond any doubt and may be still defended today even if we would not stick to fixed categories of the processing for any recognition and cognition whatsoever in science or everyday connections — and also not for any rational being whatsoever. (Kant's rigorous forms have so to speak to be liberated— even in science we have now laws of probability or trend projections e.g. in social science; we may have some, maybe even many, possibilities to structure knowledge and (re)cognition by additional forms than only by categories in the Kantian sense; in addition, it is certain that also the "original material" of the sense perception is already schematized or structured in some sense; Herder was right!) Kant's activism in epistemology however stands, even if it has to be liberated or modified in several respects. He calls it a transcendental idealism. To my mind however, it is much more a methodological idea of a transcendental interpretationism or an interactional structural


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activism or "formatism". Kant explicitly states that he also would defend a kind of realism at the same time, in two senses of the word: "Realism" — at first relates to the universal validity of recognitions and statements in the realm of "appearances" (" Erscheinungen" is Kant's expression), of the perceived and recognized objects, and secondly he defends a certain kind of metaphysical realism regarding the existence of the "Thing in itself" ("Ding an sich"), the world "as such in itself" which according to his argument against absolute idealism (CpR B 275) does exist, but would not be directly recognizable as such, but only by our forms of intuition and of the "Understanding". I think therefore that Kant is a forerunner of a methodological and epistemological scheme-interpretationism (even if some of the presuppositions have to be modified, like e.g. the missing schematization of sense "material"). As a "realism" it is a form of indirect realism. Such forms of indirect realisms are still topical since many thinkers e.g. Putnam with his so called "internal realism", are not too far from Kant's approach. (Unfortunately, Putnam (1994) has recently given up internal realism to return to a direct realistic theory of sense perception and cognition). In Germany, Wolfgang Rod, a meticulous historian of modern philosophy including Kant and Hume, tries to revive and revitalize in his book on Experience and Reflection (1991) the idea of Kantian transcendental realism, calling it a "rudimentary realism" or a hypothetic ("problematistic") transcendental realism. "Rudimentary" means, one would presuppose such a thing as a "world in itself" as existing, but that we can basically only by our forms (as of the "Understanding" in Kant's terminology) say something about it or even get any (re)cognition of it. Rod would also reinterpret Kant's epistemology along new lines, namely as a "theory of interpretation" rather than as a "theory of constitution" of things and objects. This is a very interesting point of view not only revolutionizing the interpretation of Kant's epistemology, but also touching methodological interpretationism very closely. (I shall come back to Rod's approach in the next chapter...) A traditional and prominent variant of realism is critical realism. There were different historical forms e.g. following the school of

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Gestalt-psychology of the Wiirzburg tradition. O. Kulpe defended this indirect realism as well as A. Messer in the twenties of the last century. (Undeservedly these philosophers are mostly not known any more.) Later on this approach was defended and developed by K. R. Popper. However also the position taken by W. Sellars was a critical realism of sorts. The deductive-hypothetical model of theories is basic for this approach regarding scientific descriptions and explanations. For Popper it is essential that the empirical theories should be able to be thwarted or frustrated by experience or experiments. Only insofar as they may in principle be falsified, they would comprise empirical content. The idea is that as long as a theory is not falsified it can be taken tentatively as corroborated or presumably "close to truth". This is the famous hypothetical interpretation of (re)cognition in general and of theories in particular. Certainly this epistemological thesis (widely spread in current philosophy of science) has not been discovered by Popper himself, but dates back to the Indian Jains (roughly 600 BC) who in their epistemology already interpreted (re)cognition as hypothetical and tentative. By the way, the falsification model is also mentioned in Aristotle's Nicomachian Ethics (1172 b2). Critical realism certainly is an indirect realism, since it intersperses the formation of hypotheses between sense perception, the respective experience and the testing or confirmation (corroboration) of recognition and knowledge. To be sure it is claimed that we may correctly recognize the world and its "structures". One would not only presuppose the existence of a human- and mind-independent world, but also state that we would be able to recognize and know it, if only in an approximate manner, maybe even in the long run of the future history of theories — hoping that gradually one will come closer to the truth or the best theory by a quasi Darwinistic procedure or "rather controlled" selection (competition between theories), by successive falsifications augmenting the respective "verisimilitude" (approximation to truth). However, as we saw above (see above Chap. 4), even Popper gets entangled into some methodological and even metatheoretical difficulties regarding the possibility of measurement of verisimilitude, regarding the scientists' motivation for research facing the impossible (knowledge of truth) etc.


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In the nineteenth century we already had a critical and indirect realism developed by Helmholtz, the great physiologist and psychologist and philosopher of visual sense perception, who developed a certain kind of quasi empirical brand of Kantian epistemology by seeing cognition and recognition as something like a hypothetical variant of Kantian transcendentalism. Helmholtz stated that presupposing and hypostatizing external reality would be a useful, precise and at the same time the simplest hypothesis entertained by scientists and everyday humans. This hypothetical realism is described by Helmholtz in particular in connection with visual perception: Visual sense perception would engender conscious acts by supposing this realistic hypothesis of a real world of external things. One would so to speak hypothetically hypostatize that there is a real world "out there" and claim that the results of sense perception and recognition would continuously render this methodological hypothesis as correct — in short, reality would react as if it is existent so that we are correct with our general hypothetical hypostatization. To be sure, the hypothesis is a presumed assumption but it would rest on good reasons; one could understand this kind of indirect hypothetical realism as an as-if-realism in this sense. (By the way, Kantian philosophy was generally interpreted as such an "as-if-construction" of epistemological sorts by Vaihinger a little bit later on: Indeed, as-if-constructions may be methodologically understood as interpretive constructs.) Nowadays this kind of epistemological hypothetical realism is mostly defended by new variants of evolutionary epistemology in the form of an evolutionary realism e.g. by G. Vollmer (1975, 1985, I, II) but also by other biological researchers and thinkers e.g. M. Grene. In these approaches Kant's "pregiven" forms of shaping knowledge, namely forms of intuition and categories, are provided by the biologically inherited dispositions, factors, and functions stabilized and reinforced by evolution to contribute to the survival of the species or of the gene pool, respectively. In other words, the structures of (re)cognitions are — as our brain itself — valued under the aspect and criterion of "survival" (of the species or gene pool) in order to engender good or even optimal adaptation to

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the respective environment or ecological niche. Sense organs and even the forms of memory, conscious processing, (re)cognition and knowledge are seen as biological categories. In some sense, even symbolic systems like language are interpreted occasionally as but "biological categories" (Millikan 1984). This kind of indirect realism coincides usually today with teleo-functional biological approaches to the philosophy of (re)cognition and mind — opening a vast field of publications and research (cf. my 2001, 2001a). It seems to be today the most discussed variant of an indirect realism — at least in the community of scientists (not so much amongst rather traditional philosophers though). This epistemological approach would presuppose a background realism or rudimentary realism as mentioned, meaning that a metaphysical realism usually is defended that the world in itself does not only exist, but it is as the "natural" world not only independent of humans, but also of our minds. There are phenomena, phenotypes and genotypes as well as processes of evolution in this world (according to Darwin's and Wallace's evolutionary theory — now only in modernized form) which are used to found or explain the naturalistic epistemology. In some sense this attempt may be a little bit too "tricky" and can lead to circular arguments or question-begging; there is an empirical biological theory to be considered as the basic take-off point, however it is itself again dependent on epistemological basic presuppositions — as any empirical theory would be! Therefore the debate about these basic presuppositions cannot just naively be the outcome or output of an empirical theory itself. That would beg the question indeed. It is not possible just to discuss basic epistemological presuppositions just by recurring to an empirical theory which in turn would presuppose these epistemological basics. (This circularity is also found in other areas e.g. when C.-F. von Weizsacker (1943, 1954 6 , 1988) tries to found epistemology on quantum theory again involving such a method(olog)ical circle of sorts.) Vollmer claims that these methodical or methodological circles are not vicious, but rather "virtuosi? or even "virtuous"] The main concept in evolutionary epistemology would be the concept of "fitting" ("Passung") or "adaptation" between different realms and capacities regarding one


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and the same basic phenomenon. For instance, it is not just by chance that our capacity of visual seeing is based on a segment of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation just also allowing the greatest transparence in the atmosphere and being adapted to a special "optic window". This according to Vollmer can only be explained by and as an evolutionary adaptation (The eyes have so to speak developed themselves into such a niche of maximum intake, namely in processes of gradual fitting-in or adaptations.) In some sense this might remind us even of the metaphor of antiquity (e.g. in Plato) that phenomena are only recognized by like or similar instrumentation and organs. Only equals can be recognized. It also reminds of Goethe's famous saying "W#r' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, die Sonne konnt'es nie erblicken" ("Would not the eye be sunlike, it could never sight the sun"). There are many other variants of a weakened realism in the sense that the representatives are metaphysical realists claiming that the world exists mind-independently, that there would be something independent of us, but that we are not in a state of claiming how this world is constituted or structured. Some say that our cognition and (re)cognition is always in some certain sense limited, reduced, hypothetical etc. Mary Hesse talked about variants of a "lukewarm realism™ later called by her ""moderate realism" whereby reality as background presupposition is hypostatized in a quasi-Kantian way, but that we can only develop and construe our recognition and knowledge in the light of theories which we have constructed ourselves: Cognition and recognition ("Erkenntnis") would always comprise models, views, metaphors and concepts which are human- made. Even the as-if-realism of the post Kantian era is fashionable again e.g. defended by Jennings and Blacksburne who talk of a quasi realism meaning that we in everyday connections and similarly in science speak as if things would exist in such a way as represented, but we would be able to defend that only as an zs-if-fagon-de-parler since we cannot really absolutely found or in our recognition explicitly spell out the reference towards reality in a differentiated manner. We successfully speak as if the world would be of such shape as we imagine it to be in our language, representations and imaginations as

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well as in our theoretical approaches. One certainly recognizes this similarity with hypothetical realism as of Helmholtz's and the as-ifinterpretation of Kant's philosophy by Vaihinger. R. Almeder (1987) even talked about "blind realism", the blindness consisting in necessarily hypostatizing a world as such and in itself even when (by constrast e.g. to Rescher and Hesse) the correspondence theory of truth is rejected. We might however qualify opinions about states and relationships in the external world as correct or incorrect showing that we can in a remarkable measure talk about "how the world is" (whatever that means, Almeder does not explain this more closely — and this might be the critical point). Blind realism leads to the consequence that we cannot really justifiably say or somehow pick out which of our current equally figuring opinions would correctly describe the external world, but we would know that there is that external world, we could only not determine which theory is the correct one, since we have no independent possibility to select the one which guarantees a correct access to reality. A blind realist would say that we are not able to state or select or characterize which of our authorized or equally relatively justified opinions will be the one correctly describing the external world, since we would have no way to analyze these opinions according to the requirement of their potential modifications in the future. The changeability and outdatedness of many theories in the history of science leads to a certain modesty regarding truth claims and correctness of theoretical descriptions. The background realism however is also present here — as in many other weakened and modified or moderate versions of realistic positions including "internal realism" (Putnam). Instead of going into some more details I would like to mention a variant of a moderate or modest realism as presented by Franz von Kutschera in discussing different realistic approaches in analytic philosophy. Kutschera speaks somewhat ironically (1989) of a "realistic realism", a realism corresponding to the everyday conception and yet scientifically and analytically to be defended. He would call this realism an "immanent realism" (1993) — indeed in some sense leaning to Putnam's "internal realism". What does he mean by that? At first, he states that the traditional distinction between ontological


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and epistemological realism(s) would be meaningful, but that also semantic realism (see above, page 92) would be justified, namely the thesis that there is a language-independent as well as mindindependent reality which in some sense might be "grasped" by linguistic description nevertheless. Language therefore is an instrument to describe language-independent reality. The reference of expressions to reality is also interpreted as a relationship between linguistic expressions and the language-independent reality. Kutschera thinks that names in language or in respective theories (constituted by language) would objectively designate real objects and their predicates in language, in particular predicates for properties, also for relations, which correspondingly characterize attributes of such real objects or relations. Semantical realism in that sense is but a negation of antirealistic linguistic relativity theses (e.g. after Sapir and Whorf who had insinuated that world will only be constituted by our linguistic forms and could only be grasped relatively to our linguistically structured modes of perception and of "grasping" or forming expressions.). (In a way, the latter insight regarding the forms of "grasping" is of course trivially correct.) But the main idea is that there are language-independent entities which can only be described indirectly, by means of the instrument(s) of language. Now, semantical realism and ontological or physical realism are basically independent from each other, one could also combine a semantic realism with an idealism of existence of language-independent entities in form of ideas, spiritual essences or whatever as for instance developed in the philosophical idealist tradition of old. Even regarding Kant's transcendental representationalism representations {"VorstellungerF) are conceived of as language-independent; apparently Kant thought that there are such things as states and facts of representation {"Vorstellunjjssachverhcilte") existing independently of language which may subsequently be described by linguistic means. (And according to recent neuropsychology and neuroscience he was right in that!) Vice versa one could even conceive of materialistic and physical-realistic approaches not availing themselves of semantic realism, but then one would have to give up some other requirements of language e.g. the correctness of description by linguistic means.

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One could also accept Kant's opinion of an unknowledgeable world as such, entertaining an ontological background realism or rudimentary realism and combine it with semantic realism. The same would be possible regarding variants of epistemological realism e.g. the pragmatist cognitive realism after Rescher. Kutschera finally ends up with a modest "realistic realism" (1989, 512ff) to be identified with "immanent realism" (1993). On the one hand the independence of the world is acknowledged as an ontological realism. On the other the language-dependence and theory-impregnatedness of recognition and knowledge and all modes of "grasping" this independent world are defended, the world being but an open set of states of affairs allowing respective descriptions accordingly. The world certainly is "open" with regard to potential future (re)cognitions and descriptions. "Graspings" are revisable. One would understand the "world" as "comprising kinds of objects" with respective "properties" "which we in our language as it currently is cannot describe" yet, "something which could be otherwise than current theories can represent" (1989, 514). On the other hand there still is something like a reference between linguistic expressions to language-independent states of affairs, while theory-impregatedness and language-dependence of the categorizing, i.e. the modes of "grasping", by means of selecting forms and functions of language are nevertheless acknowledged. The conceptual co-determinacy or co-determinateness e.g. theory-ladenness, theory-impregnatedness, etc., cannot be circumvented in principle. We would and can always determine (only) by using our theoretical and linguistic instruments, we don't only label, but also necessarily "structure" by means of these structural instrumentations. Nevertheless, the languageimpregnatedness or theory-ladenness should not and may not be interpreted in an absolute sense, e.g. in the sense that no description of language-independent states of affairs would be possible as conceived in linguistic relativism, but the contention rather is that only by means or in the dressing of respective language and theories the characterizing of independent states of affairs by sentences and statements would be possible in the first place. "Semantical realism thus is to formulate in such a way that it is compatible with the


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conception of language as an instrument of understanding and "grasping" ("begreifen"). This requirement is fulfilled if languageindependent reality, about which one speaks by using an empirical language in the sense of the thesis of semantical realism, is understood as a world according to the above-mentioned requirements; for, to be sure, we "grasp" and understand the world by means of language, but in a revisable, preliminary manner, so that "you cannot say the world would be determined by language and thus be dependent on it" (ibid. 515). Language-dependence thus is not understood as a total determinateness by language but as a relative co-determinacy, while the determining influence is restricted exclusively to the forms and the "dressing" of their representation, not to the content and reference itself still figuring as the relationship between linguistic expressions on the one hand and reality on the other. Reference has to be constructed and realized by respective referential actions or processes accordingly. Reference is certainly only to be interpreted as mediated by language and concepts, but it is not just exclusively produced by language or engendered by theories alone. The same is according to Kutschera true for truths. He thinks that the conception of an anti-realistic linguistic thesis of relativity should be and can be rejected: Language would not after all produce or engender the world grasped by us: Indeed, he is right that too frequently simply the contrast or even dichotomy between a language-dependence of the forms on the one hand and an independent existence of reality on the other somehow codetermined by our theories has been ventilated. Kutschera sees language neither only as an instrument of describing nor as one of an exclusive determination of reality, but both functions would frequently be illegitimately exaggerated in such extreme radical formulations as by the linguistic Relativity Thesis. Thus, we have to compromise between the extremes of linguistic idealism and relativism and direct realism in this so-called "immanent realism". Indeed, immanent realism is a sort of modified variant of Kant's connection between acknowledging the world or thing in itself on the one hand and the forms of subject- or language-engendered dependence of (re)cognition on the other hand. The hypostatizing

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of a "real" (?) relation between language expressions and the world, the talk of "the world" and the direct hypostasis of "the reality''' is still method(olog)ically speaking a bit naive. According to a more sophisticated epistemological and differentiated methodological interpretationist approach even these facons de parler of "the reality", of "the reference" of expressions to "the reality" or "the real" is again to be seen as stylized by interpretational constructs on a higher level of interpretations. One could and should integrate the different conceptions of direct reference to the world and the epistemological insight that also conceiving and distancing of "world" patterns of the respective order (structured by us) would have to be integrated into the hierarchy of metalevels of interpretation and on the different levels distinguished above. In this way, the justified everyday talk regarding a "directistic" reference to things on the one hand and also the acknowledgment of the interpretational character of the respective interpretative model constructs may be combined in a most sophisticated manner. From a higher metalevel we see references and relationships from a more differentiated perspective. Thus we can say that a realistic interpretationism may be pragmatically defended, if only for life-practical reasons. You have to take off from a realistic model by using everyday language, but even this is still to be conceived of as a model construct from a higher level of interpretation. Any restrictive realism of whatever kind is from a higher level epistemologically speaking always to be understood as interpretation-mediated, scheme-bound or as an interpretation model. This is true also for a pragmatic realism. However, we can with good reasons defend a realistic interpretation of epistemological approaches and the respective requirements of the meaningful background realism, if we combine both of them with language-analytic and sophisticated (i.e. interpretationist) critiques. One may be at same time a realist and an interpretative constructionist, one need not and should not extend this methodological interpretationism to an absolute interpretative idealism. Perhaps we should speak about a schemeinterpretationistically moderated or limited pragmatic realism.

7 From a Kantian Towards a Problematistic-Interpretationist Approach

In what follows I would like to discuss a modern transcendental philosophical approach coming close to my own interpretationist methodology. As yet I have dealt primarily with different types of a moderate, limited or refined or "weak" realism. However, we must take into account that most of the approaches sketched thus far would remain in some sense a bit naive, namely insofar as they don't problematize the direct reference by language expression to the world and reality in itself from a more sophisticated and metalevel point of view. Usually, we just take over the dichotomy or disjunctive separation of language and world without methodologically problematizing or meta-analyzing this separation from a higher methodological level. (We will see that this is in a sense also the case with the transcendental philosophical epistemology to be discussed in this chapter.) We have seen that our own hypostatizations within an epistemological approach are usually model-bound or figure as and by models which in turn may be interpretationistically problematized. Such models with content are so to speak per se interpretation-laden. But this does not mean that we would not be justified to label entities

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as in everyday language by alleged direct referential usage of our words like "the reality", "a reality in itself", "nature", "the objective world", "material things", "the given" etc. However, we have to understand that these words according to special situations, contexts and aims of application are used under different points of views — at times rather scientifically, but more loosely in everyday connections. We usually think — despite the theoretical constructions and interpretations or maybe indeed via these — to refer with our expressions somehow directly to something independently "given". This is certainly the case in unreflected, everyday common-sense reference to "things", "events" etc. On the other hand, one has to distinguish therefrom and from theoretical constructions the viewpoint of what can be called a "transcendental" perspective, namely the perspective of the question: What is really a necessary condition of the possibility to scientifically or in common-sense use of linguistic expressions referring to "things", "objects", "the world", "reality" in the first place? This formal questioning "the condition of a possibility of..." is according to Kant a prototypically transcendental question. In Kant, however mostly this formulation is a bit ambiguous or less than precise, because in these words it is not clear whether or not we deal with necessary or sufficient conditions; indeed, usually necessary conditions of a methodical or methodological kind are looked for which have to be presupposed as given in order to fulfill the functions of (re)cognition i.e. epistemology in the Kantian sense primarily deals with presuppositions and necessary requirements as well as forms which make (re)cognition and knowledge possible at all. What is independent of and in a logical sense prior to our (re)cognition, in particular experiential and empirical (re)cognition, what is independently of experience to be presupposed as a necessary condition — in order that recognition and knowledge ("Erkenntnis") — to be sure in an objective sense i.e. with claim to general validity — become possible in the first place? This is the question with which Kant performed the transcendental turn by which he modified the usual guiding questions of traditional metaphysics. After he had criticized substanceoriented traditional metaphysics from such a methodological and

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transcendental point of view (practically dissolving it) he would replace it by an epistemological perspective, namely by a kind of analysis of the necessary formal conditions to be presupposed in order that analysis and experiential knowledge of nature, reality-oriented science is possible again. (It is not so important, but certainly to be noted, that Kant in his epistemology frequently uses a kind of rather psychologistic vocabulary, sometimes even homuncular metaphors; but his theory can be easily reformulated without such psychologistic leanings.) Moreover, he divides reality in itself or as such ("Ding an sich") from the reality in the scientific or everyday sense. For reality in this latter sense he has worked out certain conditions and definitions as e.g. "what hangs together with the material conditions of experience (sensitivity) is real" (CpR B 266). "Sensitivity" ("Empfindung") is for Kant what comes from sense reception and would not yet be shaped by the understanding and its forms (categories): "All that is real, which is in context with a perception according to the laws of empirical progress" (ibid. B 521). Similarly (ibid. A 376): "What is connected with a perception according to empirical laws is real" (italicized in the original). The empirical law-likeness, the unification by connections through laws, is produced by the understanding thus being the characteristic feature of all that which is finally called "real"; real are indeed things which we see, which we are confronted with, with which we deal. "Real" is a predicate relating to the world of appearances. Kant does not see and discuss the problem that the thing in itself or reality as such (which lies according to his opinion — at least in the first edition A of the Critique of Pure Reason — so to speak "behind" the appearances and does not obey the (empirical) laws within the realm of appearances) is also called "real", indeed "real in itself": Basically, he would here use another concept of reality than for everyday realities. The usual "real things" are according to Kant (notably in edition A) throughout members of the realm of appearances: The "real things" are for the earlier Kant "appearances" and "behind" them has to lie something else, namely that which would appear. One cannot talk of appearance without something

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which appears. Kant however did not simply mean this in a trivial everyday-language connotation, but he indeed postulated this in a theoretical and systematic epistemological foundation. His model would presuppose "reality in itself" which would gain "reality of appearance" by affecting in a certain way our senses i.e. "everything connected with a sense perception according to laws" or what is given in experience or sensitivity, respectively. In addition, there is the claim for objective general validity that it (to note, what is connected with sense-perception) should be repeatable, reproductible, intersubjectively testable etc.: This is pretty similar to how a scientist nowadays would determine his concept of objectivity, by postulating that something is testable by tests, probing, checks, repetition etc. It is interesting that Kant also hypostatizes in a relatively problematic manner a certain influence by affecting ("affizieren") — a process or just relation (?) by which reality "in itself" (the "thing in itself") would have an effect or impact on our sense organs and by that then also (under cooperation with the understanding) on the usual reality of things, objects of appearance etc.: The "thing in itself" would thus influence ("affect") our sense organs and our faculty of sense-perception. (The expression "affect" ("affectio") in Kant is certainly a technical term.) This process of affection would somehow instigate the faculty of understanding to construct, combine, compose these materials of the senses to constitute things in the realm of appearance. The idea is therefore that Kant has a certain kind of theory for the constitution of experience and "things" (in the empirical realm of appearances) somehow triggered or instigated by a quasi causal influence of the world in itself onto our reception and sensitivity. This is certainly a problematic idea, since according to Kant causality, the connection of causes and effects or physical influences are for him only possible within the realm of appearances, but not between the "thing in itself" and apparent things in the realm of appearances. "Causality" is a category only applicable to experiential objects and can of course never be applied to the relationship between the thing in itself and objects in experience or in the realm of appearances. (Jacobi after Pistorius stated with some

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justification that this would amount to a contradiction in Kant's epistemological system: Kant however answered that one could not know or recognize this process of " Affiziereri" in a true sense, but one can and must (only) think it as such a quasi causal influence beyond the realm of applicability of the category of causality.) Thinking and recognition are not the same for Kant: According to Kant, recognition is only instantiated if thought and intuition come together, if they are combined or integrated: the fulfillment of the pure forms of thinking (categories) in application to a certain object under a central cooperation of intuition is a necessary condition for "(re)cognition" ("Erkennen") and true knowledge. Recognition has to be satiated by intuition using sense material. The thing itself, reality as such and in itself are not represented in intuition; they are pure thought-objects. Another important point which was already mentioned before and is a rather critical one is that Kant presupposes we would have in sensitivity, in sense reception, something "given", namely sensematerial which only (temporarily and/or logically) later is structured by the understanding. In a sense, he thought that "the given" would be a chaotic fluctuating sense-material. But as the very concept "given" connotes, it is only possible that something is "given" if it is a limited or fixated or fixable "something" and not a chaotic fluctuating manifold of unlimited phenomena. Basically, something can only be presupposed as "given" and be labeled as such if it is already formed or constituted. (The concept "given" or "the given" is an ambiguous and problematic concept not only in Kant.) Kant did not really discuss how to understand this concept of "the given" in sensematerial at all. Such questions lead to an in-depth analysis like the one mentioned above regarding the necessity of schematization already on the level of sense perception and mere non-conceptual perception. (Herder was right against Kant emphasizing that any sense-material to be provided for operations of the understanding should already be schematized in some format.) Therefore, we have to modify Kant's epistemology with regard to schematization and constitutive interpretation processes or — as

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W. Rod did it (1991, 1995) by modifying Kant's meta-theory of the constitution of things and elements within the realm of appearances to what may be called a theory of interpretation insofar as the things in themselves are interpreted by our recognition. Generally speaking Rod discusses the problem of reality and transcendental philosophy starting from Kant, but somehow liberalizing and problematizing his approach: Rod speaks of a "problematistic transcendental philosophy" ("problematizistische Transzendentalphilosophie"): He heavily leans on Kant, but he does not claim anymore that there is a necessary foundation of unique forms of (re)cognition and experience to be derived with absolute certainty from a highest principle of the activity of the Understanding (Kant's principle of original transcendental apperception, the original self-consciousness in an epistemological connotation), which would combine imaginations (uVorstellunlc), so that A\ and B\ hit Aig as also A2 and Bj hit Z>ld. By this "mixture" it is guaranteed that each of the both detectors would register a signal independently of whether originally the respective photon would travel the 36

For further details see for instance Zou-Wang-Mandel 1991 or Scully-Zubairy 1997, 603f.

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path A or B. (One detector, say Djd> can be considered as only documenting the so-called "idler beams" A2 and B2, the other beams Ax and Bi being the "signal beams" to be documented at Aig) The first remarkable result of this and similar experiments is that both detectors would register an interference pattern if several individual photons are successively sent through the apparatus. That can be interpreted in a similar way as the double-slit experiment by stating that each photon would travel both ways A and B whereby the split partial waves would finally interfere with one another in the respective detectors. By sophisticated mixing of the partial ray paths Ai, A2, B\, Bi it is not possible to check backwards or backtrack which way (namely, A or B) an individual signal photon had traveled. Since the arrangement does not disclose "which path" the photon had traveled — i.e. there is no explicit nor "potential" "which path" information —, it does not lead to any (knowledge of) particle character, consequently, the photon behaves like a wave. The process of "mixing" the idler beams — used only for coincidence detection — can be however interrupted by the switch or "beamstop": Scully and Zubairy (1997, 604f.) commented on one similar version of MandePs experiment. "In other words", now "one has which-path information with the beamstop inserted and therefore the signal beams do not show interference. Without the beamstop, however, there is no way of telling which crystal sent out a signal (ital. added, H. L.) photon measured at Dsig, because D^ will record a photon in any case. So without the beamstop we do not have which-path information and therefore have to add probability amplitudes instead of probabilities, hence giving rise to interference. Note, however, that the inference Mandel and co-workers reported is due to first-order coherence of the signal beams. In other words, the detector Dsjg could as well have been absent in the experiment. It is only the potential for which-path information that impacts on the question of interference." The most important and new as well as surprising result is gained whenever one of the four partial paths e.g. A2 by means of the switch, is interrupted. (To note, since detector Djd is n o w o n l y reached or reachable via path B, the interference pattern disappears

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as is certainly expected.) However, it is rather astonishing that the interference pattern also disappears on detector Ds;g, although both paths leading there are still open. The explanation by Mandel et al. emphasizes that now the path of each individual original photon can be uniquely reconstrued from the registering process: either both detectors would register a signal simultaneously or only detector D sig . In the first case, path B must have been chosen, in the second case, path A, for via A there is no path leading any more to Ad — due to the interruption at and by the switch. Mandel would interpret that this way: Whenever the potential knowledge is changed that much that uniqueness is reached regarding the photon paths, then there is no superposition wave for the probability of hitting the detectors. Indeed: the interference pattern was in each case destroyed by closing one of the paths. That means one has not actually encroached into the other partial system in that way that one would have manipulated anything in or at the path of the photons, but one has only changed something in the documentation process. Mandel goes that far to say that "the mere "threatening"" that one would or could get an information about the path taken would oblige the photon just to take one way. (This seems to be formulated in a slightly exaggerated manner.) The quantum state would not mirror just that what we know about the system, but that which can be experienced in principle (after Horgan 1992). As mentioned before, in another, similar experiment by Kwiat and Chiao not to be discussed here in detail one may even undo this destruction of the interference pattern and regain it subsequently. All of this is pretty peculiar and not to be understood by everyday common sense. Heisenberg had even said that elementary particles would be no "things" indeed. Some authors as, e.g. the physicist Nick Herbert in his nice book Quantum Reality (1985), speak of "quones", i.e. quantum objects not being objects in the real sense, but entities having "properties" totally different from common objects. These would only under special experimental conditions react as if they would be "things". The interpretations of quantum mechanics and quantum theory refer to such entities which have no real "thing" character but which


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are according to Bohr to be understood as relational or relation-bound entities or "realities". It is necessary to ask oneself what "reality" should mean here: Is it not a made or prepared reality) This world of quantum phenomena would also comprise the correlation of distant quones as addressed in the EPR-experiments. Here we have the phenomenon that the very measuring of the value of a magnitude at one entity would simultaneously (without any transmission process) fix the respective value at the distant other entity. Such systems cannot be traditionally understood in a "local" sense; locality is infringed. Also separability, the possibility to separate the systems in a classical understanding is not given any more. Both electrons in such an EPR-Gedankenexperiment or a respective real experiment are an inseparable system even if and as long as they remain rather distant from one another and are not disturbed. However, in a sense one has to go beyond that and to say that even the world in general and as such would be a holistical interconnected total system in that die separation or dividing processes to render independent partial systems (which are separately to be described) would not be possible in the last analysis, but can only be approximately carried through, though that is in a certain sense justified, and even unavoidable (see below). One has so to speak to work with clippings from reality and out of such systems. We cannot say something simultaneously about all systems and work with all of them at the same time. This amounts to a certain exacerbation of die dilemma situation regarding superposition phenomena also with respect to total atoms, molecules and even small organisms. Physicists would expect some kind of wave-like behavior with respect to the state changes there, too. Pritchard (after Horgan 1992) even thought in a sort of science fiction projection that one day one would be able to carry out such experiments with biologically relevant molecules37 or even amoebae. However, these amoebae would be obliged to move very slowly and would have to last for approximately three years until they would have passed the interferometer. Some physicists even go on speculating 37

Note that we have the first macrocosmic, though not yet macroscopic, experimental results with Bose-Einstein condensates (see above).

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regarding the interference behavior of bigger or even intelligent organisms like a philosopher which would be more complicated: The necessary time would according to Pritchard be longer than the age of the universe. Even if physicists would never be able to transfer a philosopher into a superposition of states they would in any case be keen to stimulate even visual objects to a wave-like behavior. (Recently, it was experimentally confirmed (by the new Nobel prize winners Cornell, Wieman, Ketterle) that the so-called Bose-Einstein condensates as mentioned above show quantum mechanical behavior with even thousands and thousands of individual particles or molecules under the stricture of a common joint wave function.) Research therefore has never lost interest in Schrodinger's Gedankenexperiment with the cat (which turned out not to be just an ironical absurdity, as Schrodinger thought), on the contrary: By results Bell derived regarding the non-locality and non-separability of quantum mechanical systems in a sense the Gedankenexperiment is reactivated since the sixties and in particular becoming relevant again, e.g. by the mentioned real experiments from Aspect through Mandel and Kwiat-Chiao. One may still speculate what would be the case if we generally extend quantum mechanical results to systems of supermicrocosmic dimensions. Would also then in a certain sense a sort of superposition of states be characteristic for our knowledge of systems, states and their couplings or entanglements like the one conceived of with respect to Schrodinger's cat? John Wheeler thinks that our universe would be in a certain sense a "participatory universe"; the basic element of reality would accordingly perhaps not be the quantum or a quone (remaining a physical phenomenon despite its uncertainty), but an answer to a yes-no question: "'the bif would be the basic unity of information called by Wheeler "the it from bif. This sounds similar to the speculations by Carl Friedrich von Weizsacker about the " J7r"-decisions which should in the last analysis be the (rather speculative) fundamental elements of quantum mechanics. All this cannot be discussed here in any more detail. An open question remains: How is the "reality" of quantum properties or quantum entities ("quones") to be conceived of? Are they "real" although relation-dependent? They are certainly not


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"things" in a classical physical sense, since they would not possess a location and a momentum at the same time, but these would concretize only then if they are measured. Again, quantum entities infringe with traditional locality requirements. Obviously, physical reality is different from what traditional and classical conceptions liked to have it. There is no possibility to establish a local (or comprehensive locality-oriented) total theory. Nevertheless, one has to work with and come to some separable objects to be distinguished and delimited from other objects: One has to work with things and all-to-day mesocosmic objects as we know them in everyday life, and even every physicist has to do that whenever he wants to prepare and establish an experiment or measurement apparatus. The observed entities of quone character themselves seem to be something like interpretative constructs within and as a result of theoretical conceptions. Bohr thought that isolated material particles are but abstractions: Their properties would only be definable and observable by their interactions with other systems. Traditionally Bohr was — I think together with Stockier — frequently misinterpreted as a positivist who would only restrict himself to say something about what we can observe and measure allegedly stating that anything else would not exist at all.38 However, all this can also be interpreted along the lines of our philosophy of interpretative constructs insofar as we can say: in working with such microphysical entities we are fundamentally obliged to rely on our theories and constructs: we would in principle work with abstractions or rather theoretical constructs displaying their values and delimitations of magnitudes in any case only in theoretical approaches, concretizing values only in measurement processes. One may well ask with Stockier (in a letter to the author) "Whenever we construe, why don't we succeed in constructing in such a way that we do not incur the problems of the measurement process?" People have gone thus far to invent "many worlds" equally resulting in a real separation process with any quantum event (after 38

Recently however Bohr's position seems to be interpretable along the lines of a pragmatist orientation (see above).

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Everett and Wheeler). I will not go into the details to discuss this rather eccentric and extravagant, though theoretically speaking rather elegant, solution. Instead, we may rely on a much more realistic and pragmatic solution of the problem of quantum mechanical measurement by taking into account the decoherence approach by Zeh (1970) and Zurek (1981, 1991). 39 It seems fair to discuss this rather down-to-earth solution as the best one available at this time to explain the collapse of the state vector and wave function. Zeh started from the idea that macroscopic quantum systems including measurement instruments can never be totally decoupled from their environment: They are open and not closed systems in contradistinction to the approximately closed microphysical systems which may be successfully described by Schrodinger's equations. The only exactly closed system would be the universe as such. The coherence of superposed states of quantum mechanics is practically always destroyed by the unavoidable interaction of macroscopic objects with the environment. Coherence and superponability disappear and decoherence emerges. The onset of decoherence would "substitute" the collapse of the wave function (Sauter 2000). Quantum theory is supposed to be universally valid, but the measurement problem can be solved within quantum theory itself if we take into account decoherence facts. Quantum theory would be the complete theory indeed. Mathematically speaking the more complex description of a genuine mixture out of pure states would rely on multiplying the tensor product of measurement object and measurement instrument by an additional state vector describing the environment. One has to establish a sum over the environmental states. That can be interpreted in such a way that by an environmentally induced super-selection rule the superposition of states in open systems is excluded. Additional terms would describe dissipative effects and Brownian movements. This model indeed provides a time constant for the exponential decrease of the coherence of the order of magnitude of 10 -17 seconds, 39

My summary of this approach gratefully profits from Prof. Elmar Sauter's M.A. thesis (Karlsruhe 2000, unpublished).


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given a mass of 1 microgram. (This, by the way, is a reason why quantum theory would not be of real importance for brain processes, since neurons already are macroscopic objects.) With respect to macroscopic things or bodies like Schrodinger's cat, the time constant is much smaller which means that coherence can practically not be observed any more. (An exception would be Bose-Einstein condensates displaying a common wave function under very special environment conditions.) Only with respect to small microcosmic (far below microscopic!) bodies like electrons or any elementary particles a time constant of roughly three hours would emerge. That means that e.g. an electron passing through the slit of the double-slit experiment would be capable of showing interference effects for approximately three hours if the distance between die slits is less than one centimeter. According to Zurek, this decoherence model is responsible for our trusting classical mechanics or, more generally, for belief in classical reality. It would according to Sauter (2000) be wrong to talk about the decoherence interpretation as "a quantum theory" with an interpretation of the observer as part of the environment. Instead, we could speak about the interpretation of quantum theory including assessable effects of the environment. In any case, still the question remains: Who provides the (rather artificial?) division and classification into microphysical system, detector and environment? If we regard the total universe, again there is no environment any more by which superpositions may be reduced or decohered. In contradistinction to the classical interpretation by von Neumann and the Copenhague group the collapse of the wave function is then not instantaneous, but abides in the decoherence model by a time succession if a very, very short one for macroscopic bodies. I would agree with Sauter (2000) that the decoherence model is for the time being the best interpretation for the difficulties and problems of the measurement dilemma in quantum physics. In addition, it nicely coincides with an epistemology of interpretative constructs as developed here. It is by way of our constructs in theoretical constructions as well as in experimental preparations and make-ups of related measurement decisions by which we distinguish between

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the measured microsystem on the one hand and the experimental preparation as well as interpretation on the other in a rather secondary and "artificial" sense depending on interpretative presuppositions and procedural requirements. The lesson to be derived from that later on would indeed be that this methodological requirement and necessity in regard to quantum entities is not the exceptional case, but rather the overall condition in any research and interpretation of our world whatsoever (see below this chapter and resume). To come back to quantum entities and their character, we have to stress again that they are not objects in an everyday (common) sense: Quones are not objects, but nevertheless they are in a sense "objectively" (or intersubjectively) conceived of, notified or measured. One may use a simile or imaginative picture here brought in by Herbert (1985) which seems to be very plausible. It is the image of a rainbow: A rainbow is no object, but a phenomenon, a phenomenon though which is throughout an objective one. It cannot only be visually perceived, but it can be photographed. It is "something" representing an objective phenomenon although it is not a given thing or object, since nobody has ever touched a rainbow and whenever one comes near to it it would disappear. Nevertheless it behaves similarly in its appearance and manner of representation like intersubjectively perceptible objects or, rather, phenomena. If we use the terminology of relation-dependent reality used by Bohr we have to include "rainbow properties": The rainbow is dependent on perspectives: One would only see it from a particular perspective, and any observer from this or a similar viewpoint would see it, but it does not avail itself of characteristic phenomenal conditions which are independent of a perspectival view or condition. (Certainly there are objective physical and phenomenal conditions for light dispersion etc. to engender a rainbow.) A rainbow is a perspectival and insofar relation-dependent "entity" ("something", although not a thing), not an object, but an objective phenomenon. Similarly one can conceive of quantum objects or quones as such entities which are objective results of measurements but not objects in themselves in the traditional sense. After Bell's results about non-locality and non-separability of quantum entities we can no longer conceive


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of a universe with locality and separability but only of a holistic entanglement embedded in a quasi holistic connected world. Herbert states that a universe showing local phenomena based on a non-local reality is a world which can be reconciled with known facts and Bell's proof. Such a rainbow world could be the world in which we live. Instead of talking about a rainbow world with objective phenomena I would even prefer tJie idea and image of a kaleidoscope insofar as we are active participants in rearranging and shaking the kaleidoscopic picture. The same what is true for rainbows regarding objectivity and perspectival dependence is certainly also valid for kaleidoscopic phenomena. It is only the active involvement of experimenting and manipulating human beings that is rather emphasized by this simile of kaleidoscope instead of rainbow images. Does all of this now mean that we have to say goodbye to our general interpretation of the world as being independent of us and being real, separated and divided in objects and systems, partial systems etc. which are independent from us and develop independently of us? Has everything now to be just holistically interpreted? Some physicists even developed some Hegelian associations thinking that it is only the total connection of totality which is decisive and everything else would be of only secondary importance. I think instead, that one should and could indeed try to uphold realistic interpretations without the locality principle and requirement. I claim that the respective approach relying on the interpretationist and schematization methodology as developed above allows to put in a layer of theoretical designs and practical constructs and the respective methodological requirements still regarding a quasi human-independent "nature". This layer of interpretative and schematization constructs is decisive for characterizing relation-dependent realities and entities as Bohr understood them. Only by this, however, the paradoxical phenomena of the quantum world will not be lifted e.g. the problem of EPRcorrelations without mutual interaction mechanisms is not resolved by that, but it is only explicitly related to the level of descriptions and constructs as well as preparations and manipulations. Of course, we can think that such paradoxes would only be constituted on the

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level of the choice of descriptions and perspectives, e.g. in the case of particle-wave dualism. But the explicit emphasis renders the dependence on interpretative constructs in any "grasping" of whatever real entity rather obvious. Paradoxes are not real in a general sense independent of descriptions, but they are always interpretation-bound. Paradoxical interpretations of reality are much more plausible than a logically impossible reality itself. A similar interpretative opinion is that published by Hans Primas (1984, 1990) who used to distinguish different kinds of systems, socalled ontic or classical Newtonian systems, respectively, and epistemic system states. After Schrodinger he talks about the entanglement {Verschrdnkung) of these systems. In epistemic systems the results of measurements are basically integrated in system-states. He thinks it necessary to give up the classical concept of the object and the traditional subject-object-division: Man would be quasi "a maker of nature" whenever he wants to recognize nature by necessarily always encroaching on or in it, e.g. by manipulating, structuring, dissecting nature in an almost automatic or necessary manner in all processes of dividing systems, separating subsystems and imposing structures, interpretations etc. In a certain sense, this even reminds of Goethe's Farbenlehre {Doctrine of Colors) who would understand this dissecting of natural connections and complexions by classical physics as a certain kind of quasi "raping" enterprise. According to Primas, one has to give up the idea of finalized and completed dissection and subdivision of the world in segments, "compartments" etc.; the world would hang together in a rather holistic manner, it is only to be recognized and grasped in holistic ways. On the other hand it can only be described and recognized in detail or even manipulated in parts by using and executing dissections, subdivisions etc. Therefore, one has to dissect, interfere or even intervene, to apply instruments and theoretical dissections as well as subdivisions in order to be able to recognize and "grasp" (parts of) the world in the first place. But the world {universe) as a totality would on the other hand be an entangled indivisible object. According to Primas, there would finally a certain kind of paradox be occurring here: On the one hand the


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world is a totally entangled system only to be "grasped" in an holistic manner which turns out in a precise sense not really to be susceptible to a dissecting analysis because everything would hang together with anything (doesn't this allude to Hegel?); on the other hand, in any partial description, knowledge as well as in any physical experiment the existence of partial systems and "compartments" is practically presupposed, required and used. One would use constructs of these divisions which are actually unrealistic and cannot be executed to the very last end in a total or strict manner: One would always work with limited constructs within a finally entangled world. How these processes of subdividing and dissecting are to be consummated in the last analysis and in practice is not really highlighted by Primas. In a later publication (1990) he tries to use the distinction between "endo-physics" and "exo-physics" drawing on a work by the chaos theoretician Rossler. The (re)cognition and "grasping" of a physical system without an external observer is called the perspective of the "endo-system"', whereas an "exo-physical description" (the observer being outside the observed system) is methodologically speaking the external viewpoint reflecting "the observer's world and his means of communication" (1990, 235) thus amounting to the "exo-system". The language of experimental measurement arrangements about measuring instruments etc. has of course to be classical and Boolean, i.e. exophysical, while in the endo-physical account no strict and conclusive subject-object separation of the closed systems is possible any more, but we just have entangled system contexts in Schrodinger's sense. In the mathematical formalism of an extended algebraic quantum theory one would just refer to the endo-physical systems, eventually to an entangled total system of the whole universe. Any quantum theoretic endo-system in this sense can be described by using the state function provided by Schrodinger's equation(s). (Would we in the last analysis have to develop a wave or a state function of the whole universe?) The special unique operationalization by means of classical measurement arrangements and measuring instruments has then always to be introduced by additional "strong extra physical normative requirements", so to speak exo-physically, in order to choose or

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"select" from the multiplicity of possible exo-physical representations of the endo-world that one which corresponds to our equipmentoriented or even "craftsmanship-bound" (handwerklichen) activity or our traditional world view" (1990, 238). The so-called "Heisenberg cut" (Heisenberjjscher Schnitt) between the endo-system (i.e. the quantum "objecf) and the "exo-system" (i.e. the measuring instrument and the observer) is but variable, can be displaced — metaphorically speaking "in the direction of the final measuring instrument as far as we like" (ibid. 236). Primas calls these unifying and operationalizing requirements rendering a unique exo-physical representation from all the possible endo-physical, mathematically describable (though possibly not operationally experimentally realizable) states "extraphysical normative requirements" by which the superpositions of states and entangled systems and mixtures (Schrodinger's cat is never a strictly closed system!) are reduced to a unique state description. According to Primas, this is a "normative1'' constitutive process relying on normative postulates. By this he obviously understands some presuppositions shaping the ways of conceiving and dissecting in order to render a unique description of the system by means of classical instruments and the respective observational statements, meta-statements and rules. (However, this has nothing to do with "normativity" in the traditional sense, but would just pay attention to the necessity of taking a choice or fixation prior to or in the course of the process of operationalizing the preparation of measurement situations or the respective instruments etc. thereby fixing the necessary perspectival conditions.) This can certainly be very well conceived of and described by the necessity of an epistemologically indispensable interrelation of "acting", "grasping" and any knowledge whatsoever along the lines of methodological constructive schemainterpretationism as developed above. This can be even generalized as will be summarized again in the resume chapter: Any "grasping" of the world is necessarily only possible relative to a presupposed interpretative perspective, so to speak within the framework of such a perspective or on a higher epistemological level with regard to the comparison of such perspectives. Any capturing, "grasping" or knowledge of the external world — but also any knowledge of


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so-called internal differentiations! — is dependent on such a choice or fixation or presupposition of interpretative perspectives, i.e. on specific means of interpretations as e.g. the schematization of and in perception. The so-called reality as such or per se can only be grasped in dependence on or within the framework of such given presuppositions rendered by interpretative schemata, patterns etc. (Some of these schematizations may even be "Ur"- or primary interpretations or schematizations being biologically fixed for our senses or even hereditary, others may be variable according to the above mentioned levels of interpretations.) As we saw above the idea of a "rainbow reality" of quantum entities or of a kaleidoscopic interpretation is suited to depict the interaction between active preparations and relative fixations of the respective knowledge situation or experimental make-up (the socalled "preparation", "Preparation") highlighting in a concentrated manner the results or the epistemological approach of schemeinterpretations developed here. It is not only very similar, but an instance of such a methodological and epistemological view rendering a vantage point for understanding scientific and everyday knowledge in general. Generally speaking we may interpret "objects" or "events", phenomena, even all selections and delineations of (sub)systems as interpretative constructs displaying a character pretty similar to this kind of rainbow or kaleidoscope reality. Certainly, we quickly reach the limit of imagination: Even a physicist will traditionally like any other normal human being conceive of a table as a day-to-day object instead of a special cloud of molecules or even a vast mixture of entangled wave functions of the elementary particles more or less involved. We easily see that even in everyday knowledge and perception perspectival viewpoints play a role, certainly depending on the depth of analysis to be taken. With respect to such a kaleidoscopic or rainbow-reality view one may arrive at a theory of perspectival, interpretation-impregnated doctrine of knowledge, (re)cognition and perception etc. which may take up some of the elements of the holistic interpretation by Primas and the artificial dissection between exo- and endo-systematical accents. Quantum entities would then necessarily be embedded in measurement contacts and the respective

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systematic and epistemological connections. This, however can be extended to any mode of "grasping" structured "entities" or phenomena, be they objects, events or whatever. One has only to be sure that one does not just project the human-made structures of interpretative constructs simply into external reality (if it is and can be at all conceived of as still being separated from the way of "grasping" it). (A naive realism of relations — e.g. just identifying mathematical structures in underlying corresponding objective relations within nature or the cosmos would not be compatible with the interpretative constructionism developed here: mathematics is always a human enterprise covering structures of concepts and relations by using symbols, formal languages etc. — nevertheless they may be highly useful to "depict" and structure knowledge of and predictions about a so-called reality as such.) At most — but also essentially at least — we can say, that reality as such (if we still speak of that and may be able to distance it from ourselves — and we are indeed!) has to have in a certain sense the inner "constitution" of making our "structuring" attempts and approaches via our theories and interpretative constructs rather successfully applicable, repeatable and even intersubjectively checkable. This is pretty similar to Kant's "metaphysics of nature": The present approach is only now not just restricted to the establishment of judgments and categories in a certain form totally fixed by the structure of "pure reason", but pertains to any structurings, theoretizations, and to the designing and applying constructs in science as well as in everyday connections quite generally. If we conceive of such a modified and liberalized Kantian epistemological approach, we may indeed understand and interpret the special existence of quantum entities in dependence on theories, on preparations of experimental arrangements with regard to possible states of systems and the respective knowledge about systems (including their potential entanglement) from such an epistemological vantage point of methodological interpretationism. We may even on a higher level ontologically go beyond the mere methodological plane and say that the world as such has, so to say, the property (if we can indirectly speak like that) that our constructions and interpretations in a specific form are successfully possible and


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may be reliably and continuously applied. But we know, experience and "grasp" anything about the world always just under such constructions and interpretations, always in dependence from our own schematizations, pattern, theories, and interpretations (primary and sophisticated as well as variable ones). In short, our epistemological solution consists in interspersing actively developed or indispensably used interpretative constructs and schemata between reality as such (as it is naively conceived of) and "mere" observational phenomena in the sense, that the realities or entities "grasped" are always dependent on perspectives, experimental arrangements or preparations etc. bearing a sort of patterned or constructive character to be represented by quasi imprinted schemata, patterns — i.e. impregnations by constructs and schemata. As we saw, knowledge is indeed always and fundamentally dependent on such interpretations, schematizations and impregnations. This is particularly true, whenever we deal with knowledge of the so-called external world or of material objects ("ob-jects" in the sense of "standing against" us). All this can only be conceived of as being impregnated or structured, or patterned. Our patterns of specific signals which we indeed "receive" only within the framework of interpretation-bound shapes of patterns are to be "imprinted" in a sense on the respective signal processes and the corresponding interactions. Impregnations in the narrower sense are constructs resulting from interactions between "factors" in the world and our sense organs or measuring instruments etc. In experimental set-ups usually an explicit interaction comes in, i.e. a real mutual interaction, be it in the process of experimenting, measuring, observing or be it a methodical, constructive influence in the establishing, constituting of schemata and structures as well as patterns, respectively. (We have even a farther-reaching influence, e.g. in the interpretation of social phenomena being interpretationdependent to a much higher degree, because they are not just interpretation-bound but actually produced by interpretation!) The idea of a fundamentally present "reality as such" which can be "given" in an interpretation-free manner or independently of perspectives and interpretations has to be given up itself or to be

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic

Epistemolojy

decreased that much as to amount to a limit concept or analogy. To repeat, any reality whatsoever can only be understood and conceived of in dependence on perspectives, interpretative viewpoints and the respective formations as well as schemata. Even thinking and meaning the independent reality is just possible within the framework of interpretative basic patterns and assumptions (as we see with respect to quantum entities in quantum mechanics and the quantum theoretical measurement problem). But as interpreting beings we ourselves are also part of the world. We do not just interpret from outside, from an external or exo-physical God's view: The world is not just opposing us or standing somehow apart from us, but we as knowing and recognizing as well as interpreting subjects are ourselves part of the world and of the class of interacting organisms — we are acting beings in the world. We would embed ourselves by establishing interpretative constructs in the world itself (by e.g. developing internal models of it, ourselves, and of this very embeddedness). Using this epistemological and methodological approach we can nevertheless uphold a minimum realistic basic approach. We can say that it would be meaningful and practically successful, even unavoidable, if we presuppose and experience the world which in a basic sense is "external" and independent of us. An absolutist structural projectionism and a respective relational or structural realism maintaining that the structures of the world as such could possibly — or even really — be conceived of and "grasped" independently of any interpretation is however excluded by the present epistemological approach. But nevertheless, there is objectivity, if dependent on relevant perspectives. (That means that objectivity is conditionalized somehow.) Of course we can say that to the usual everyday mind the independent external world would comprise "something" corresponding to the structures of our interpretative and theoretical constructs. If we would like to call that "real structures", we can do that, but we must take into consideration that we then involve two different concepts of "structures". Access to the world is only possible by and via interpretative constructs. The world and (only) parts of it are merely to be grasped by such interpretative constructs: Any approach to it, any intervention in it, any "grasping" of it — if only


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in knowledge — is interpretation-dependent. But since we are also part of the world, we are also (as organisms and subjects) in the world: We have to embed ourselves with our interpretations in the world: thus we necessarily require such a world and the respective models of it — even internal models of ourselves in it — to be able to live, recognize, and act in the world in the first place. The question would still remain whether or not one can say like Heisenberg that the first time in the course of human history man would only confront himself in natural science.40 This seems to be exaggerated: Heisenberg was right in thinking that we can only "grasp" parts of the world as being always interpreted or at times impregnated, if not at least theoretically manipulated. The world can be "grasped", even conceived of or "meant", indeed merely within and via human forms of constructions, conceptions etc. Humans somehow would always encounter some "things" which are already shaped by constructs or schemata. Humans cannot just get out of the realm of interpretative constructs. We have no interpretation-independent access to the world "as such". Even conceiving such a real independent world is methodologically speaking necessarily colored by interpretations. We cannot not interpret (we cannot get rid of scheme- and construct-interpretations). Interpretari indispensabilel 40

Heisenberg maintained (1971, 122) that man would not be confronted any more to "nature as such, but only to nature as it is exposed to human questioning". This is certainly in a sense generally true, but on the other hand it does not get far enough: He himself (ibid. 126) would acknowledge that "the grip (Zugriff) of method" would be able to change and shape the object, that method cannot be distanced from the object any more: "The scientific (naturwissenschaftliches) world view thereby ceases to be a general natural scientific one". According to Heisenberg's interactionist interpretation measurement itself is always encroaching onto the object and nature. Yet, this restriction to such a method of encroaching does not suffice, but we have also to take into account the perspective, the decision about the respective viewpoint and preparation or the way of knowledge (as seen by the sophisticated experiments of Mandel and Kwiat-Chiao recendy, see above) and also generally speaking the insights about dependence on mediods, actions, arrangements, structures and correlations of and between the chosen experimental set-up — not to speak of interpretations and theoretical constructs making up for the perspectives and the relevant methodological decisions as such.

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The basic idea is that we cannot without interpreting or schematizing talk about or even conceive of states of the world or subsystems without some prevalent perspectives and the respective selections regarding measurement and decisions about arrangements and preparations of apparatus and situation contexts. (Generally, this might even occur in an unconscious manner — at least in everyday connections.) What we normally understand is that the state of a system at a certain time has to be conceived of as a state relative to the given, chosen states and as relative to the observation and measurement situation which might even be interpreted as being "designated" (Lockwood 1989, 214) by consciousness or some capability of the knowing subject to structure or schematize or interpret phenomena, entities or events and forms from a methodological vantage point or an epistemological perspective.41 In sum, the quantum-theoretical dependence of real knowledge and measurement results from experimental preparations, arrangements of the respective apparatuses as well as on actions, interventions, situations, contexts, and "mixtures" of pure states, even on a holistical interconnection of entangled systems (if even the universe) seems to stand beyond doubt. That can well be abstractly "understood" by our approach of methodological scheme-interpretationism as the very conceiving of, establishing or selecting specific interpretative stances or perspectives (rendering interpretative constructs in turn). Thus tliere 41

I would not say with Lockwood that it is the "brain" which would combine the contents of "awareness" with the respective measurement values, eigenvalues, observation values within a set of compatible observables in a corresponding subsystem — not nature but consciousness would do the selection of the respective correlated subsystems and the decision to measurement. This is certainly a homunculus language. And it is far from clear that this kind of "designation" — e.g. in Mandel's experiment deciding about the knowledge of the way of the photons — is resulting from a decision by "consciousness" or whatever mental agency. We can only say that tiiis kind of "designation" is methodologically dependent on perspectives or the selective presuppositions, prestructured or activated schematizations or selections whether conscious or not. Like Wheeler and others also Lockwood seems to rely on a quantum mystification of consciousness as a kind of inner agent or at least a homuncular agency. Nevertheless, the idea of an interpretative "designation" requirement or process is a nice one, though not to be psychologically mystified.


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is methodologically or philosophically speaking a new epistemological way of interpreting the seemingly "odd" phenomena of quantum theory, and microphysics in general, from a somewhat overarching (methodological-epistemological) vantage point. Since quantum mechanics is a (or even the) best-confirmed theory in all natural science and not restricted to just special areas, it is — in principle — generally valid (even in everyday mesocosmic contexts or even regarding the universe holistically understood along the lines sketched by Primas). Therefore, it seems fair also to generalize the epistemological and methodological implications and considerations — as by our schemeinterpretationist approach developed independently above. Indeed, the perspectives and methodological as well as epistemological conclusions are the same — or closely parallel, to say the least (even though now generalized to any contexts whatsoever, including mesocosmic ones). Albeit the nice proverb or pun in English reads, "He who generalizes, generally lies", I am going to draw the general conclusion in the resume chapter to follow that this interpretation-dependence of quantum theory is not, as it were, a specialization for a particular realm of phenomena (the quones), as against, say, classical physics, but rather the general case. Turning around the perspectives from a scheme-interpretationist vantage point classical physics and its traditional determinism and alleged predictability come out as a rather specific, special, and at times even specious mold. (Even in the "inner circles" of classical deterministic dynamics the theories of non-linear complex systems, e.g. chaos theory, would render the total predictiveness and linear superpositions outdated!) Although quantum theory also is a linearity-shaped theory (and the very theoretical Schrodinger equations are indeed deterministic which however describe probability amplitudes), its overall dependence on preparations and perspectives, on measurement and interaction contexts as well as on the fixing of interpretations can and should be generalized — in the wake and vein of methodological interpretationism. Here indeed, he who generalizes, would not generally lie!

10 Resume: "Grasping" as Acting in (Re)cognizing

We found out that in quantum theory and its interpretations the classical concept of "object" would dissolve into a quasi interpretationist "rainbow reality" — or even "kaleidoscopic" conception of reality comprising, to be sure, objective though interpretation-dependent phenomena. In the last analysis, it seems indeed that not only quantum objects have this character of "rainbow" or "kaleidoscope" reality,42 but also everyday objects of our usual perception of and action with things and their respective projections regarding their kinds, forms and schemes. The same mutatis mutandis applies to perceiving and conceiving events — indeed for any "grasping" whatsoever. The dependence on interpretations and the process character (like in quantum theory the dependence from the circumstances of measurements, on preparations of the situation actively brought about) are obvious. Thus, we can — guided by or 42

A rainbow is an objective phenomenon you may take a photographic picture of, but which disappears if you come closer. The metaphor of a kaleidoscope is in some sense better than the one of the rainbow because as mentioned in the last chapter we are active in preparing the respective observation and measurement situation: We make and naively shake a kaleidoscope, whereas a rainbow is just passively being observed and not human-made. 184

Resume: "Grasping" as Acting in (Re)cognizing

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stimulated by certain interpretational procedures and quantum theory regarding the indispensability of a sort of holistic interpretation — infer that postulating normal "objects" including their integration into and the delimitation of the systems in which they occur is also interpretation-shaped. Even the description and grasping of dynamical and comprehensive whole systems is itself dependent on possibilities of action and interpretation (the preparation of situations e.g. of measurements and observations, the decision regarding these preparations and actions on the respective manipulation and delineation of the situation). But holistic interpretations are indeed interpretations proper, i.e. human-made constructs necessary even for an objective description as for any agent-related or subjective projection in the first place. Any recognition or identification of objects or events as "entities" confronting us is certainly interpretation-dependent, essentially coconstituted or in part influenced by schematic and structural modeling and the respective modeling activity, even though they are impregnated in the above-mentioned sense, i.e. co-determined by "world factors". The dependence of measurements and their procedures and preparations of quantum theoretical results shows that in this realm active (i.e. here, manipulative) intervening and "shaping" of the respective situation and the form of addressing it by projections and co-determining structuring procedures between alternatives of measurement is characteristic. This can be generalized to cover basically any recognition of the world to some degree. Any recognition whatsoever is dependent on using and having constituted schemes and structures and ways of "grasping" the world or parts of it by the acting and designing human being. In acting, measuring, "grasping", applying structures and projections we usually have alternatives, possibilities of a deviating or modified design or decision — and yet we can get relatively good and objective i.e. intersubjectively valid and testable, results. In the following paragraphs I would like further to dwell on such epistemological generalizations of this insight about the preparation of situations and measurements as well as observation procedures in quantum mechanics. H. Primas (1984, 254ff) would even go much further and say that not only the Cartesian split of

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subject and object has to be given up in (a philosophy of) physics, but even the old dream of a monistic natural science describing something occurring outside of the subject and being as well as changing independent of it — at least with regard to engendering of phenomena and any observational "grasping" —. Indeed, the dream of a purely mechanistic natural science being independent of any delineation, theoretical integration etc. is outdated. (But this to my mind does not contradict in any sense the indispensable objectivity and intersubjectivity in natural science.) "The theory of entangled systems leads us to a new holistic seeing" of the things of the world "which was alien to classical physics and its systems theory" (Primas, ibid. 258): "The world is no longer seen as an aggregation of particular mutually interacting things existing just for themselves, but as a unity in which objects only exist in connection with their relationships to the observer and his abstractions. There is no possibility of describing phenomena without prejudice" and (in this sense) totally "objectively", we cannot "grasp" them as such without taking or having chosen a specific perspective. "Entangled systems would represent a whole or a totality." "Whole" in this sense is any thing, "of which no other description can be given than a complementary one". Rather interestingly Primas even infers: "Reality is a relationship between observer and the observed" (ibid.). 43 Instead, one can say that "grasping" reality is inevitably interpretation-impregnated, an

43

However what is "the observed"? This question is put by M. Stockier (in a letter to the author), if no theory and measurement independent access to the hypostatized observed is possible. Hypostatizing and distancing the observed as a in some sense independent being in itself is already the result of an interpretation of a principally methodological coordination to an abstracting projection conditioned by the measurement processes and the respective prepared modes of access. "Grasping" reality, even die conception of reality ("grasping" here only in die sense of "meaning" or referring to) is always interpretative, can indeed in principle not ignore the necessary (interpretation-dependent) mode of grasping — except only in abstracted However, on anodier level of interpretation (be it the everyday one or one of a scientific realism) you may abstract from such a necessary interpretativity, but this is explicitly the result of another, indeed higher-level interpretation as the levels of scheme interpretations would show (see above Chap. 2).


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impregnation being defined as above and necessarily being or at least implying indeed an interpretative approach. This is an important statement for pragmatic interpretative realism (of course of an indirect provenance). Sentences about matter would always be statements about relationships, about "our relationships toward the external world; the laws of the natural sciences are not laws of nature, but orders summoning (instructions for) actions to the natural scientists" (ibid. 258). 44 Phenomena are but "context-dependent" and interpretationladen, i.e. indeed dependent on a special choice of a perspective required by any observation and measurement whatsoever. This choice of perspectives in some sense — at least methodologically speaking as an abstract structure of necessary predeterminations or prior or implied decisions — is certainly also (to be interpreted as) an action. In the same vein, performing e.g. an observational measurement would also signify an (however minute) intervention into the system displaying more or less important consequences impacting or modifying the state of the system. "Only the totality of all complementary descriptions would represent the unseparated reality" (Primas, ibid. 258). Whatever this "unseparated reality" may be and the term may designate or mean, in any case the conception is a construct, an idea to be conceived of integrating all wholes or totalities of potential descriptions in a unitary (metaphoric) picture. Any experience of world and reality is therefore interpretation-dependent not regarding whether it is quantum states or macroscopic "graspings". Always we have to imply perspectival predeterminations about the interpretation approach to be taken, about the presuppositions, circumstances and context, about the instruments of measurement, the apparatus(es), and means of observing, about the delineation of the analyzed system as well as about the requirements and ways of action by which we would design

44

The mathematical formulation including physical interpretation of a basic equation of course cannot as such in detail be called an "instruction for action", this may be understood only in the overall connection of representation in models, theoretical systems and the experimental possibilities and situations of applicability by which a reference to action is gained in a pretty indirect or contextual manner.

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and perform a specific representation, observation, measurement etc. of a system. According to Lockwood (1989, 214) the very consciousness itself would select these perspectives, would "designate" them; but I would not like to understand this in any ontological sense or supposition. Important is the methodological aspect: We necessarily need something like a starting or take-off point given by a sort of interpretational perspective either pragmatically, at times tentatively given by our modes of seeing and understanding as mediated by our culture and language or assumed by a conscious choice: Only then a representation of so-called reality is possible. Reality is always (only) to be grasped and even conceived of in a relative manner, namely with respect to this taken perspective, "grasping" it is insofar interpretation-dependent, with regard to external reality even interpretation-impregnated in the narrower sense. The "real" is (part and parcel, process and prior prompting of) impregnation. (More exactly, the "grasping" of the real is the result of impregnation processes.) One may proceed in analogue fashion to the EPR-correlated partial system of, say, a pair of electrons with their respective entanglements of quantum states relative to the respective fixation of possible measurement processes and the necessary interdependence by which the measuring intervention into one part (e.g. measuring the spin of one entangled electron of a pair) the quantum state of the other is automatically decided upon ("designated", if you wish, or "fixed"). All this corresponds in a certain sense — mutatis mutandis — with the interpretational perspective as developed here. There is only one important difference: I do not relate directly to consciousness and its faculties, but I would like to understand the connections rather in a methodological or even (quasi) transcendental manner — as a necessary interconnection of conditions. Lockwood so to speak understands this probably horizontally: The choice e.g. to measure the momentum of one of pairwise entangled electrons would restrict and determine the correlated magnitude on the side of the other electron (may however be observed by another observer). This is so to speak a horizontal relativization of states. But I think that they might also be vertically understood in a more general sense, namely

Resume: "Grasping" as Acting in (Re) cognizing

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as the precondition of implying perspectivity in the first place and the necessary decisions about assuming one of the respective perspectives. This may in part be by an individual decisional choice (as exemplified in the EPR example of an electron pair) but it can also be determined by a more general interpretational prestructuring or preschematization by language, culture, history, by presuming the previous (observed or theoretically interpreted) interactions with the system etc. The perspectivistic, intepretation-constructivistic understanding of the quantum-mechanical measurement problem does of course not lead to a solution of this problem on the object-level (in quantum theory itself) nor even just in an experimental-methodical manner, but nevertheless it would put the whole situation in regard to constituting and perceiving of objects and their delineations in everyday contexts in a new perspective. By this, of course, the interpretation of quantum-mechanical entities and of the measurement problem are also to be considered in a new light: The situation so to speak turns around as more generally illustrated in the last paragraph below: It is a consequence of the interpretationistic approach that quantum-mechanical "objects" ("quantones" or "quones" after Herbert, 1987) are not necessarily to be totally confronted to common sense or also scientific mesocosmic conceptions of objects, but that due to the methodologically speaking primary schemeinterpretation-ladenness of all modes of perceiving and conceiving — even in everyday situations and generally certainly in science and in the humanities — the situation usually confronted in the measurement problem of quantum mechanics is not extraordinary, but rather the regular case. Everywhere, in any normal instances of recognition and action, even abstract cognition — we are bound to perspectives and interpretative constructs. To interpret and "grasp" objects in an interpretationist or perspectivistic manner as a sort of overlapping(s) dependent on orientations of actions and conceptions which are methodologically presupposed is the more basic case — being characteristic not only in quantum mechanics where it sprang to eyes, but anywhere in any discipline or field in which we try to "grasp" reality or real "world"-factors and even beyond experimental

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science with regard to abstract "objects". Only in naive-realistic projections of common sense and everyday as well as in our mesocosmic pre-orientation this has thus far not come to our attention clearly enough. Of course, the circumstances in quantum mechanics may instigate such a generalization of the situation encountered. Indeed, with respect to mesocosmic and other recognitional and action-related environments we see that even here interpretationconstructive, quasi theoretically structured modes of "grasping" and recognizing are essentially pre-shaped by schematic requirements of action, intervention in interpretational structures to be generally seen everywhere in the mesocosmic interaction with our environment, physical as well as socio-cultural. On the one hand, the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the respective overlapping phenomena with respect to the "constitution" of "objects" and results may suggest the relevant analogue conceptions regarding the role of constructs, interpretations, etc. in epistemology general, but also even in the conceiving of the general shape and constitution of objects and everyday-conceptions. On the other hand, by this now changed relationship between macro- and micro-objects — amounting to a veritable turnabout — also the presuppositions, perspectives and methodological attention regarding micro-objects themselves will be modified in general, too. It is then not thus extraordinary any more if perspectival and interpretation- or construct-bound modes of "grasping" micro-entities are so to speak "read" into micro-entities, since a respective understanding is already at hand in mesocosmic interpretations of objects and reality. These insights therefore may be used from a double vantage point: First for a modified and novel construct-interpretationist conception of micro-entities implying consequences regarding the overlapping problem in quantum theory and secondly for the generalization of respective topics engendering constructs under perspectivistic or interpretationist preconditions in usual mesocosmic everyday world situations — or rather in a respective epistemological interpretation. Any "grasping" of world factors or "the world" whatsoever is therefore necessarily not only relative to presupposed interpretational perspectives, but only possible from within such a perspective. Thus,


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we have only the possibility of attending to or grasping states relative to interpretive perspectives. That means any actions and recognitions whatsoever are dependent on methodological schematizations and perspectives preciously taken over or methodologically implied. All this also relates to the interpretative interconnection of action, actionorientation and formation, cognition and recognition, interpretation in representing, depicting or cognitional modeling or even abstract modeling — not to speak of active interventions e.g. in experiments or everyday agency. Recognition and action cannot be totally separated from each other, but can only be analytically distinguished in a certain sense. Any conception of "world" (or "world factors"), any experience of the external world, but also any recognition of other connections (say e.g. of social origin) is certainly dependent on presupposed, predetermined or chosen perspectives of interpretation, on specific means of interpretation, like e.g. forms and activation routines of schematization as developed above. One can only "grasp" the socalled "reality in itself" in connection with and via dependence on the respective frameworks of previous perspectives shaped by such interpretation schemata, patterns etc. Some of these are primary interpretations or " Urinterpretationeri" (original hereditary interpretation schemata) which are biologically, even possibly genetically fixed; others are variable as regarding the different levels we have distinguished above. These levels are also levels of flexibility and variability of schemes and interpretative constructs as we have seen. Important however is it to distinguish between what is accepted as ontic or ontologically important and what is only methodologicalepistemological. This is all the more also decisive for the problems of realism — or different realisms (see Chap. 6) — i.e. for the conception of reality and what is called "real" (be it "in itself" and independent of humans or be it "real" in a secondary, e.g. socio-cultural or even virtual, sense). What does all this now mean for realisms and the respective conception of reality? Certainly, grasping reality is only possible from perspectives, by taking some interpretational perspectives of maybe inconsciously implied primary or consciously developed habitual or other higher-level conventional or normative forms of interpretation. Thus one may indeed defend a hypothetical-pragmatic

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residual realism or minimal realism only being concretized in interactions within the forms of interpretations by contact with respective systems, so to speak in interactional interpretations, notably by our actions, by our theoretical and scientific representations, by choosing perspectives for descriptions and actions. With regard to external perception this is mediated by what I have called "impregnation in the narrower sense". 45 However, even if we presuppose primary interpretations (biologically fixed, e.g.) with respect to direct sense perception such a recognition of "world factors" impregnating themselves on our sense organs and faculty of perception can only be conceived of and recognized by interpretatively colored concepts and processes (activities). Any direct recognitional "grasping" whatsoever is also interpretational. "Reality in itself" is then only indirectly recognized in the sense of methodologically "entangled" systems potentials no matter whether strictly quantum-mechanically understood or in a classical interpretation. Impregnations are always results of interactions and can thus be represented and conceived of only in action-dependent interpretation, in short: interactional interpretations. Even the concept of reality in itself is methodologically speaking an epistemological higher-level construction, but a practically and pragmatically well-founded one. By our categorial schematizations and interpretations any "grasping" of reality is so to speak concretized in active and interactive processes (activities in the wider sense) or procedures. If we would take a transcendental epistemological point of view, we would not like to talk about the activities as such, but about the basic dependence on such schematic activities and also the respective interactions. The classical picture of an object as forwarded by determinism and classical physics — is but only a very simple special case, easy to understand and apparently easily accessible, but indeed dependent on an idealizing view and also relatively seldom encountered in

45

Even pure "impregnations" in direct perception may be considered in a weak sense to be interventions from the perspective of schematic ordering — at least in a rather restricted methodological sense.


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the world. 46 Classical deterministic systems are a special case, since locality and separability of the entangled systems is presupposed or hypostatized there admitting of no unlimited generalization, but to be only approximately instantiated. Locality and separability of systems (notably entangled ones) is not generally guaranteed, but is to be presupposed to a certain degree and any individual concrete observation or measurement in the process of isolating a specific variable and measuring result. This is even true in quantum mechanics if we undertake a definitive process of measurement of, say, the location of a photon. In this sense classical deterministic and commonsense approaches seem to be the exceptional cases, whereas quantum-mechanical holistic entanglements of states are rather usual. Included is the chaos-theoretical inseparability and unpredictability of phase-state descriptions regarding chaotic systems characterized by three and more degrees of freedom and the respective sensitivity with regard to initial conditions. In general, what we were or are still used to see as the normal condition, is in some sense the exception. This seems to be a very important insight for any (re)cognition of reality whatsoever — in particular with the traditional classical projection of classical mechanistic descriptions to the external world of material objects and the respective systems. Our attempts to structure and pattern the world by using concepts of objects and processes are certainly dependent on interpretative, perspectivistic frameworks and schematizations: They are dependent also on actions, interactions, forms of intervention. (In a sense, this even applies to the respective forms of ordering phenomena and

46 This is true for classical deterministic (better: deterministically interpreted) systems with but very few, less than three variables. Even the classical example of the moonearth system (embedded in the solar system) is certainly an idealized case in point eventually and finally admitting of unpredictable, so-called chaotic phenomena of development. Any system with three and more degrees freedom displaying a growing sensitivity on initial constellations of the respective system variables would in principle show such chaotic phenomena (the description of which necessarily has to use "chaotic" or "strange attractors"). In the long run, this is even true for our solar system.

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observations.) We can even say, interpreting is finally (under special circumstances very weak) intervening and impregnating (or being impregnated) as far as it refers to "external" objects, their "makeup" and constitution or classification. Theoretically speaking also usual objects and processes are even in everyday connections to be conceived of as consisting in some sort of states of overlapping — analogously to the possibility of overlapping states or the respective linear combinations of state functions in quantum theory. At least conceptual ways of sorting out, classifying, developing and applying theories are generally speaking (at least methodologically) to be understood as the delimitation and analytical segregation of subsystems from the everyday-"entanglement" of phenomena. (One need not adhere to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics as developed by Everett, but one may claim for a relativized interconnection of state designations and combine this with a perspectivistic-interpretationist approach as developed here.) This interpretation is but pragmatic, allowing the classical-objectifying (object-isolating) simplification of common sense as an approximation by ignoring the strong correlations (implying non-locality and non-separability of the respective entangled systems). The unitary holistic comprehensive description does not seem possible without respecting restrictions similar to Bohrean restrictions of complementarity — even if generalized to an epistemological approach (as also Bohr would have it). In any case, one could understand such choices of one out of complementary perspectives in such a way that basically the possibility of relativized interpretations is acknowledged by which other possible approaches of different interpretations are for the time being "excluded" in the special situation, but in general being supposed as alternative possibilities. This seems to be relevant in everyday connections — even with a doctor approaching his patient as a biological-physiological organism on the one hand and complementarily — and hopefully, complimentarily! — as a person on the other. Usually then only both approaches in systematic relationship (although not compatible under a single complete description of the situation) are to be acknowledged as representative (e.g. the patient is at the same time an organism and a person and to be treated according to both!).


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Interactional interpretationism allows for and requires the choices of respective observation perspectives and makes room for integrating complementarities (complementary interpretations) and to overarch isolating perspectives and at the same time to use and approximate restrictive subclassifications of disciplinary model instantiations. This is true not only for the realm of quanta, but for reality in general (although the mutual exclusion of perspectives as regarded by Bohr may be different in the mesocosmic connections, they are only tentatively and preliminarily exclusive). Any perception and conception and "grasping" of reality is only possible by using the respective forms of interactions, impregnations etc. in terms of interpretations and schematizations methodologically presupposing or implying the respective choices of perspectives etc. Even subjects as agents or epistemological recognizing instances can themselves only be understood as a certain kind of interpretative construct. Also the recognizing subject is an epistemological construct and already result of interpretation procedures on different mostly higher levels. Already William James saw this, but from a methodological interpretationist point of view we have also to take this into account (Lenk 1992). Nevertheless, we as persons and organisms may also run with our head against the wall: There is a certain experience of resistance, an impenetrability of real "ob-jects" in the true sense ("throwing against": "obicere"). Such experiences of confrontation and opposition show that "reality" does play an influential role in impregnating our interpretations of experiences of e.g. resistance. Thus, the constructs are not only of our making, but mediated by a certain kind of interplay between "world factors" and our patterns of interpretations and schematizations. These latter need in application to reality in itself (to such experiences of external reality or resistance experiences) the "something" which is being interpreted as the "opposing entity or event" (although this need not only be constituted in a permanent object form). The "opposing other part" ("das Andere") of interpretation has to be preconceived, somehow (though interpretationally) "distanced" or already constituted in order that interpretation may get "a grip" on this something. In this sense, as in referencing,

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"objectifying interpretation" as a kind of impregnation presupposes something which it can "grasp" in an active sense. Interpretation therefore is not just ideal production (a la Fichte and a comprehensive action-oriented or even subjective idealism) — at least not with regard to the object world, to be experienced and represented. Theories of objects would presuppose something as already being in some sense independently existent. The very representative constitution of experiential objects is certainly schematized, but not by just fictional productions on the side of the epistemological subject alone, but by schematized, interpretation-dependent processes interacting (in the sense of impregnation in the narrower understanding). Impregnation makes only sense with to something which is presupposed as a "fundamentum" at which (scheme-interpretation may somehow operate. There has to be this opposing "Other" of interpretation which in our reflection is hypostatized as being itself interpretationfree (see Chap. 7). As Rod (1991) turned Descartes' vision around: I interpret, therefore there is reality: interpreter ergo realitas est. This is certainly the idea of a minimalized pragmatical hypothetical residual realism. Here, this reality in itself may indeed be identified with Rod's "residuum of experiential analysis" (1991, 171, 174f, 178ff). This interpretation-free elementary residuum of reality has to be presupposed and may be somehow, if not identified, but intriguingly connected with reality in itself. Reality in itself and object reality are so to speak complementary modes of apprehending "things" (Rod 1995). I would not like to talk of "things" here, but I would agree insofar as the perspectivistic choices and restrictions do shape our modes of apprehensions and recognitions if we attend to reality in itself or as such or to more specifically individual "things in the realm of appearance" a la Kant. It is even compatible with a quasi Kantian interpretation that the "residuum of experiential analysis", the fundamentum reale, so to speak, "the Other of the interpretation in a certain sense may be conceived as something, which again — from another or slightly modified perspective — may be interpreted" (e.g. epistemologically speaking) "as reality in itself. Indeed, something which is interpretation-free and in no way interpreted or


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produced by interpretation would amount to a Utopian limiting concept. It is a concept having only methodological valence, a limiting concept being necessary because one can only interpret something. Any interpretation has to get a hold or fix at some entity or point to take off from. Interpretation — and in particular impregnation as interpretation — has to concretize at something. That means that such a limiting concept of what is not available to recognition and interpretation is at least methodologically speaking meaningful, if not even necessary. The "Other" of interpretation could according to Rod also be identified with Kant's "thing in itself". However, for Kant the foundation runs in the other direction: "The thing in itself or presupposing "the world in itself" is considered as being a necessary condition for continuity, for the unity of the self and of the subject in the first place: The I, the self or subject — thus Kant's "rejection of idealism" (CpR B 275) — can only be constituted by presupposing something permanent (" Beharrendes"), being distanced or separated from itself: The "thing in itself" would then in a certain sense be considered as interpretation-free, as only being hypothetically existent. This is for Kant necessary. But understanding this from a higher level of interpretation certainly also the concept of "the thing in itself" or "the world in itself" can epistemologically speaking only be conceived of and "grasped" as and by an interpretative construct, that is to say, from an epistemological point of view or perspective. If we interpret Kant's approach as a hypothetical realism of sorts, his theory is certainly compatible with this epistemological modeling of his concepts of "thing in itself" etc. from a higher level — and even this modeling from an ever-higher perspective or meta-level (e.g. IS6) again. "The thing in itself" is so to speak — conceived on a higher or the highest (cumulatively understood) meta-level — itself as interpretation-dependent. (The separation and segmentation of "the thing in itself" from a totally entangled point of departure prior to epistemological specializing and concretizing may be understood in terms of complementarities not only between perspectives on the same level, but also between meta-levels.) The interpretational levels and meta-levels we have discussed above are themselves models,

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constructions and interpretive higher-level representations coming into play here. The relationships between the different levels and models regarding what is necessary for taking the respective perspective for interpreting the "entities" which are accepted as ontologically "real" is certainly shaped and schematized by what is methodologically necessary as a requirement of recognition. All this has so to speak to be again interpreted as model-dependent, as interpretatively colored on a higher level or meta-level. There is no direct access, nor a directistic projection of structures into the external world without any interpreting from a perspective whatsoever. This is a point of a slight disagreement of mine from Rod's opinion that one would have basic structures within reality in itself which can be recognized in a topological, not yet metrical order. I think, whenever we talk in everyday connections about the external reality of "things", "events", "processes" etc. — possibly in a special "order" — we would attribute to reality in itself a certain kind of quasi "constitution" facilitating and making possible to describe and represent it by our respective patterns of interpretations and reconstructions. The basic or ground "structures" within reality in itself as alleged by Rod are themselves only to be represented by interpretation patterns. That means that the total constellation and interplay between the "world factors" and the conceptual representational make-up are problematized according to my interpretation-realistic approach in a methodologically speaking more sophisticated and differentiated manner. Indeed, perhaps it is necessary here to emphasize especially the transcendental perspective as Rod would primarily do, namely instead of looking for activities and action processes involved in psychological and biological preconditions of recognition to stress the question for necessary preconditions for grasping something, so to speak of "graspability" and the forms of recognizability and rather formal schemata of recognition and knowledge to be presupposed as "given" or developed in order to make the grasping of something possible in the first place. "Grasping" does not mean only recognition, but recognizing and acting! That is the reason why I talk of "grasping" ("Erfasset? in German, even linguistically containing the "Fassen") which means


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that to grasp is not only passive recognition, but active structuring, maybe re-structuring or reconstruction at times. The basic idea is that any "grasping" and activity as well as a recognitional faculty is at the same time not only interpretation-dependent (or interpretationimpregnated in the narrower sense as in the case of sense perception) but also action- and interaction-dependent. Our main principle of the interpretative formation of or recognition and action, any "grasping" in this wide sense, just amounted to that insight. We cannot recognize or "grasp" anything at all without interpretive preformations, presuppositions etc. All processes of recognition and "grasping" are co-shaped by our patterns and forms of interpretations, our schemes and schematizations both in the biological and cultural sense. Schopenhauer related his bonmot to health: "Health is not everything, but without health everything is (worth) nothing" — likewise we can say: Interpretation is not everything (not everything is interpretative), but without interpretation nothing isgraspMe (nothing can be grasped)! "Grasping" (in a wide as well as in a narrow, even common-sensical, sense) is always an interpretative procedure or relational transcendental structuring. Anything can only be interpreted as being something ("Jifwvw"), and something can only be represented and grasped in interpretations in the first place. We might and should for practical and theoretical reasons hypostatize, even realistically postulate, a reality in itself but nevertheless this can only be conceived of and captured or referred to in an interpretative manner: Even the ideal limiting-concept of it would only be an interpretational concept as seen from a higher level. Still for the mentioned practical, pragmatic and even hypothetical-realistic reasons existence and constitution of reality in itself may be and should be conceived of as the interpretation-independent "Other of interpretation" — to be sure in necessarily interpretative make-up. In no activity or process of "grasping" we can transcend beyond the horizon of our interpretations; we cannot leave our "universe of interpretativity" so to speak — metaphorically. We have to work with our interpretative forms, patterns, even with our biological inherited, pregiven schemes of e.g. sense perceptions etc., lending themselves to primary interpretations. Indeed, we may mean and refer to a "reality in itself",

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nevertheless only in an interpretatively structured pattern or mode of shaping. We have, however, to be clear that even this is, methodologically and epistemologically speaking, a model, even though applied throughout in practical life to resistant realities. It is our interpretative constructs based on schematization, schematic-interpretive activities, rather fixed impregnations and even interventions which would in some sense function as a bridge between our "universe of interpretations" and the "world in itself" which however can only be referred to in an interpretative manner. We thus metaphorically speaking "live" therefore in our "interpretation worlds" (Abel 1993): we have to assume the perspective of interpretational recognition and can only in this way — built into these extant perspectives — perform a certain kind of "access" (which we pragmatically speaking have necessarily to assume) by a representing interpretational system to the interpretation-transcendent world in itself. This would sound relatively complicated, but the basic idea is very simple. It figures under the transcendental meta-perspective or — more generally — a methodological one along the lines of the question: What have we to presuppose as faculties of formation on our side and what schematization and scheme-stabilizations are to be activated or developed, respectively, in order to (re)cognize the (accessible "realms" of the) world and even to manipulate or influence part of it by our actions? This is certainly the question regarding necessary presuppositions as already focused on by Kant; a characteristic difference is only that Kant believed that there is a general fixed pattern of presuppositions built into the "Reason" (" Vernunjf) and the "Understanding" ("Verstand") of any rational being, namely the categories which might (according to Kant) already be derived from the logical forms of judgment (i.e. of propositional statements). This cannot be upheld in the very specific Kantian presentation. Not only are the forms modifiable (recognition may follow a probabilistic form or just empirical trends instead of logical exceptionless determination), and humans as active beings do not only avail themselves of some biologically fixed primary schematizations and interpretational patterns, but they have to develop many of them parallel to the development of language and culture as


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well as enculturation, socialization etc. Secondly, these patterns of interpretation and schematization are not only presuppositions for any representation and description of theoretical-cognitive provenance, but of any form of action whatsoever, too. And, thirdly, pragmatically and (life-)practically we have to pre-suppose something interpretationtranscendent which is independent of our interpretative processing, but which we can only on our side "grasp", even designate and conceive of by interpretative models or constructs. (This is also agreed on by Kant in a way — particularly in his later phase where he apparently (according to Hossenfelder and Rod) thinks of "spelling out" or "interpreting" "objects in themselves" (CpR B 69, Prolegomena § 30) as "experiential appearances". This — and insofar both quoted authors are right — would render a non-contradictory possibility to abide by a minimal or residual or rudimentary realism also in a Kantian approach. You cannot dissolve everything in a pure internalism of interpretations, although you cannot only "grasp" anything by using interpretation and by conceiving of it in interpretative constructs and forms. In addition, Kant's epistemological activism is even taken seriously here in a stronger sense than he himself had in mind: any recognition and cognitive process whatsoever is an activity (not just connecting representations ("Vorstellungeri") in theoretical-cognitive judgments, but in a rather general sense) and any action whatsoever is in turn schematically structured, dependent on interpretative constructs, too. In understanding ourselves as existing beings, we can do that only if we also have a counterpart, a world from which we would distance us, if by way of interpreting (i.e. using interpretative forms) again, or which epistemologically speaking we distance from our subject-dependent unity of representations and subject-constituting activities (schematizations). Indeed, we ourselves are compelled to understand us as part of this external world, to embed our body and in some sense also the subjective self — into this world. Indeed, again this is certainly dependent on internal models of the world and of (a representation of) the subject itself and its body within such a world model. Natural philosophically speaking it may be perhaps the most interesting point here to ask: How does it come to be that in nature

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a being did occur which would in a relatively reliable manner represent and recognize the world and is able to embed and recognize itself within this world attempting to bring to light "what connects the world in its most inner constitution" or at least entertaining a consciousness of this attitude towards nature and the modeling of "nature". Thus, the fact that humans develop theoretical consciousness, knowledge, cognition and recognition means that one part of nature, namely the sentient and cognitive human being is so to speak able as pars pro toto to recognize not only nature but also herself or himself. Only in humans in a certain sense (and this is a very basic natural philosophical idea) nature would have developed a certain concrete being which is able at least partially to recognize nature "in itself". This is on the one hand a very high and valuable faculty as admired by Kant in the famous closing section of his Critique of Practical Reason: On the other hand, it also would impose the responsibility and obligation, to use this recognitional faculty in an adequate manner. Humans are therefore in a special situation within nature: They have special faculties, but also special obligations to develop these talents for recognition and knowledge — and also necessarily obligations and responsibilities for acting, say, from a moral point of view with regard to any other such beings or even other living creatures. Designing, acting, recognizing, knowing are indeed essentially interpretative and interpretation-dependent activities, at times interactionally impregnated ones. But the human being can certainly not only be characterized as the cognitively recognizing being as traditional theoretical philosophy would have it {animal rationale) and also not merely as the acting being as philosophical anthropology in the last century thought, but as the being of construing and constituting interpretations both in the cognitive as well as in the practical actionoriented realm. It is the being which does not only act goal- and aim-oriented, but which would also in turn judge and evaluate the goals, means and the procedural strategies — and finally also the very interpretations and interpretation products as well as interpretative constructs being used. Thus, the acting being is also the being evaluating actions and performances, indeed the valuating and


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normative as well as goal-oriented performing being capable of selfreflection: The human being is the actively designing, interpreting and meta-interpreting as well as reflecting and reflexively reflecting being encroaching necessarily by its constructed and reconstructed models into "reality", in part modifying, manipulating and reshaping part of it. It does not only structure the representation and interpretation of this reality, but also restructure and change it by manipulating, by interacting with the world and with social partners in it. Anything procedural in all these connections is intricately, even intimately shaped by scheme-interpretations. Humans are the interpreting beings par excellence (as Nietzsche already would have said). Beyond that they are also capable of distancing and reanalyzing, reconstructing their interpretations from a higher level of interpretation or perspective: Thus they are not only the interpreting beings par excellence, but also the meta-interpreting or supra.- or super-interpreting ones (cf. Lenk 1995b). 47 In the previous chapters we have interpreted the human being in a certain implicitly anthropological perspective as the meta-interpreting being par excellence, necessarily availing itself of constructions and reconstructions in recognition and action i.e. interpretative constructs of descriptive or normative kind, reflecting not only the external world, but also society, culture and its own subjectivity in permanently ongoing interpretative activities. We cannot do and live without schematization and interpretation. Action, living, recognition, knowledge and any cognition are necessarily interpretation-dependent: Interpreting is inevitable, this being a fundamental insight for any topical epistemology and action theory. We cannot not interpret. We cannot possibly evade from or avoid schematizations and interpretations. Any sort of experiencing, "grasping" and shaping as well as acting would figure under these necessary conditions of being interpretation-dependent, schematically structured or shaped according to the structures of the "graspable" for us. One could even speak of a "universe of interpretations"

47

By necessity, the normative and judging as well as evaluating being has to be the meta-interpreting being, using not only cognitive-descriptive interpretations, but normative interpretative constructs, too.

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which we could not possibly leave or of a "horizon of interpretations" which we could not possibly transcend. But still the horizon is open or — to use the metaphor a bit further — recedes if we come closer to it: We may extend what we can grasp by our theoretical and interpretational means — as is obvious in any understanding of scientific progress and progressing knowledge. If we epistemologically try to understand this very model, we have to emphasize that we might focus on the activity or agency orientation (any recognition whatsoever is active designing or constructing or reconstructing of interpretational models) or on the transcendental necessary prerequisites for any systematic knowledge and recognition as well as systematic action. There is no "directism", pure sense perception without interpretation or schematization, no directly "givenness", no wow-interpretive access to "reality". Directisms like entertained by Pollock or some traditional positivistic or stricdy phenomenological philosophies of the "given" have been excluded by internal and external criticisms. (The same might be defended also as against a direct realism of the later Putnam and R. Schantz.) Instead, we could talk about a necessarily interpretationist "indirectism" of a methodological provenance. In general however, it has to be taken into account, that the model of this scheme-interpretational (re Constructive realism of a pragmatic sort is itself an epistemolqgical model which is in turn interpretatively (or for that: meta-interpretatively) shaped. The model and methods of applying interpretative constructs are themselves but interpretative constructs or even -products, they are so to speak interpretative meta-constructs. The interpretationist approach certainly has the advantage of possibly being reflexively applied to itself on the highest level of the interpretation hierarchy. (Certainly the highest meta-level of interpretative types has to be considered as a cumulative category somehow, if potentially, containing the higher levels of meta-interpretations already.) Thus, methodologically speaking we do not end up in a contradiction or performative paradox or an epistemological circular argument. This is avoided by the very fact of providing the levels of interpretations in differentiating the perspectives.


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By providing the levels of interpretation and the respective levelconnected perspectives as mentioned above (Chap. 2) it is possible to avoid a vicious reflective circle of argumentation regarding the meta-interpretation of interpretations. Thus there is no trilemma of interpretations like Agrippa's skeptical dilemma in antiquity (later on called the "Miinchhausen Trilemma" in critical rationalism (cf. Albert 1968)). Such a trilemma could only originate if we would conceive of a foundationalist philosophy but not as a hypothetical methodology of epistemological constructions of a basically "prometheic" 4 8 discipline predesigning, constructive or anticipatory provenance. No trilemma of foundation would occur, possibly just a pragmatic indispensability and inevitability in the mentioned sense that we always can only recognize and act in an interpretation-dependent manner. Thus, we do not end up in a vicious circle — not even in a virtuous circle at all, but rather in a spiral leveling itself up the steps to higher planes of interpretation types. Like acting also interpreting is a set of routines and customs or rules, routines, being anchored in society and shaped by cultural norms, institutionalizations etc. (at least this refers to interpretative levels of IS3 through IS(,). Any social phenomenon and regulation whatsoever is itself interpretative. Indeed and again, this does not lead to a circular foundation because the respective model of constructive and reconstructive philosophizing bound to levels of interpretations may be pragmatically interpreted — again and again — from a higher level respectively. This is true for a pragmatic shaping of actions as well as for the understanding of any cognition and recognition in science, philosophy and everyday circumstances. Indeed, philosophy should not operate on a remote plane separate from a common-sense understanding in everyday acting, even if it would critically reflect the extant hypostatizations of everyday conceptions, the respective objectifying, at times illusionary and skewed as well as manipulative ideological distortions or misrepresentations. Philosophy devotes itself to critically further

'meaning "thinking ahead" in ancient Greek.

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developing constructive thought in a pragmatical context and feedback. It should in this colloquial sense also remain "realistic". This is true for thinking, recognizing as well as for acting. We have to pragmatically and inevitably hypostatize a real world in which we act as against potential resisting events, "things" or processes. To reject such a world of objects in themselves would render a performative paradox analogous to the petitio tollendi in the foundation of logics (as I called it more than 30 years ago independently of P. Strawson): You cannot reasonably — i.e. by arguments — reject certain strategies or principles in logics (like the Principle of Non-contradiction) without using it or functional equivalents of it on a higher level. Without rules of criticism it is not possible to reject a strategy of criticism or a rule (so, you have to have meta(level)-rules).49 There is a methodological entanglement and mutual interconnectedness between real actions and the necessary interpretationdependence: Insofar as action is interpretation-shaped, even consisting of or only being conceivable by the mediation of interpretative constructs (actions can only be interpretatively "grasped" — actions are themselves dependent on a real world or the respective higher-level hypostatization of reality in itself). One cannot by interpretation — acting, interpreting on a specific level — reject the hypostatization of a "real" within the world without implicitly hypostatizing itself already. Action is always concretized at and in something plus by someone, the agent. This is also a similar methodological necessity as presented by the mentioned petitio tollendi in logics — here only in the interdependence of performances and necessary requirements of action 49

Cf. Lenk 1970, reprinted 1973. K.-0. Apel has later on (1973) used this argument for what he calls a "transcendental-pragmatic ultimate foundation" of rules of argumentation etc. It is however problematic whether or not such a circular structure of this petitio tollendi must or need be used to as sort of ultimate foundation: It is only a methodical-reflective interpretation of a methodological inevitability in order to render or illustrate the indispensability of specific rules like the Principle of Excluded Contradictions or a respective functional equivalent in logics. It is much more a normative postulate for the purity of construction and methodical progressing in developing and regulating the strategies of structuring arguments and constructions as well as interpretations than an ultimate rational foundation in the traditional absolute sense.


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per se. We can only act within, not outside of the world. By our very acting — insofar as we necessarily act in an interpretative manner, guided by interpretative constructs of maybe a normative provenance— we would automatically and necessarily presuppose the model of a real world: We may however draw this in doubt along the lines of a traditional radical skepticism (of Pyrrhonian or Agrippian provenance) but we cannot pragmatically, performatively carry through this rejection in a radical manner. Presupposing and hypostatizing "reality" is insofar pragmatically "necessary". This does not mean that it would not be also interpretative in make-up or shaping. The distinction between "reality" and "interpretation" or "the activity" in interpreting is itself already interpretation-dependent: reality itself is to be "grasped" only by interpretative constructs, can only be "grasped" within the horizon of interpretations; the modes of "grasping" are always interpretation-shaped or -laden as we have seen. Reality cannot be conceived of without such modes. Insofar as something is to be "grasped" as something it is necessarily interpretation-shaped only to be "grasped" as such by interpretational means. That does not mean that it must be interpretation-dependent also in any other sense of being existent or so. We can and have to think external reality as being independent of us (at least in part) even if we know that any "grasping" or cognition and recognition of it whatsoever is certainly indispensably and irrevocably interpretation-laden. We can think "reality" as being independent of us and being independent of interpretation, but any thinking or representation of reality — even the mental distancing of a real external world as opposed to the epistemological subject — is indeed interpretative. Any concept of reality is epistemologically and methodologically speaking interpretation-constituted, interpretationshaped, indissolvably connected with interpretativity, even in some sense produced or engendered by interpretation. This certainly does only refer to the mode of "grasping" or reflecting, not necessarily to reality as such and in itself. Even the model of referring to real referents (by expressions of designation or so) is, to be sure on another level of meta-interpretations, interpretation-dependent. The distinction between different levels, types and planes of schematizations and interpretations allows us to work with relative differentiations: We

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may and can mean something as interpretation-independent, but the very meaning itself is interpretative and any concept whatsoever in which the "grasped" "something" is being presented or represented is always interpretation-bound. Thus, the very intricate interconnection between representation and interpretations on the one hand and the represented or interpreted something on the other does not amount to an absolute methodological interpretational idealism or interpretation absolutism. We may and could stay with realizing interpretations, we may remain indirect and moderate or rudimentary realists of sorts, even if only for practical, pragmatic reasons. One might ask, where in the last analysis is "the real anchoring" of this interplay in the turbulence of interpretations? Do we need a fixed ground, so to speak an Archimedean point of philosophizing, from which to start off? Indeed, we do not — except the feedback to everyday language and our respective instruments of our theoretical, symbolic, socio-cultural constructions and media residing in a quasi Wittgensteinian manner in social practices and institutions. It is not necessary to have a fixed Archimedean point of action and interpretation as a fundamentum inconcussum of philosophizing. (This would indeed amount to a rationalist foundational philosophizing in an outdated absolute-rationalistic sense.) Instead, we know that we can successfully act and recognize as well as in part even anticipate reality in a relatively reliable manner. We know that without schemeinterpretation we can neither (re)cognize nor act. We may thus design a non-Archimedean philosophy of pragmatic relative foundational procedures without recurring to an epistemologically speaking ultimate and absolute, wow-interpretative ground or a last fundamental security. Nevertheless, we can and must in "real" life connections pragmatically treat the "external world" as "real" (in a sense) constituting the context for our actions and as a counterpart to goal-oriented behavior even though we sometimes cannot absolutely and without doubt sever objective and interpretation-free "objects" independently of our interpretative constructs — which are in turn related to activities and potential actions. We cannot as we saw do without schemeinterpreting.

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In a sense, we move in interpretation circles, we usually do not consciously conceive of the respective levels and meta-levels: In acting and grasping we cannot get out of the "horizon" or "universe of interpretation". But again, this does not mean that only interpretations would exist or be conceived of as the only real processes. On the contrary, we could not think of a viable procedure and successful applying interpretative constructs without locating our actions and the very processes of interpreting in a real world. As we saw, even cognizing and recognizing as a sort of action is always embedded in and bound to a world, even a world in itself. To repeat, interpretation is not everything, but without interpreting and world embedding nothing could be possibly grasped. (Even formal procedures of thinking and representations are in the last analysis dependent on the development of action capabilities of a living being i.e. on the embedding in a real world constellation.) Of course we have always to start from everyday experience and everyday acting. We know that even this is deeply interpretationladen. We might with Abel modify Wittgenstein: Thus we interpret as we (are used to or accustomed to) interpret: we are in a deep sense the designing, interpreting, meta-interpreting and acting as well as valuating beings — even if we know that this self-interpretation is again interpretative in an anthropological and epistemological context. To be true, Wittgenstein would say: Thus we interpret in and how we act (we are accustomed to act). This does not exclude an insight about the interpretation-dependence of this very model and of all activities including everyday (re)cognitions and theoretical constructions in science (and also philosophy). Such conditions and restrictions would be valid for any conceptual and linguistic foundations in the Wittgensteinian sense. Also language as a quasi "transcendental"-epistemological basis is interwoven with conceptual and factual potentials of "grasping" and acting. Thus, we have to go beyond Wittgenstein's transcendental lingualism not only in digging deeper to the very forms and requirements of acting, but also more basically to the forms and requirements of schematizing and non-linguistic interpreting in the first place. In my book on

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"Schema-Games" (1995) I extended the Wittgensteinian model of "language games" to the schematic forms of "grasping" or shaping any representations and actions whatsoever. We have to go beyond Wittgensteinian restrictions to just ordinary language formations. Transcendental lingualism (as E. Stenius interpreted Wittgenstein's philosophy) has to be superseded. Language is not the last and only basis for everything. Even the usage of language is necessarily dependent on the forms of actions and schematizations as well as non-linguistic interpretations in the elementary sense of \S\ and IS 2 as well as IS 3a . Language only comes in later, though as a very important means of additional interpretative differentiation. Language is itself however actualized, it does only exist in acting and interpreting and resides, as the later Wittgenstein indeed saw, in socially conventionalized institutions, societal structures and customs, in rules, norms, symbols (as conventional signs or gestures etc.). "World" cannot be dissolved in or reduced just to language and signs and also not, as Nietzsche and earlier G. Abel (1984) had it, to an ontologically hypostatized interpretative "happening". As we saw, we cannot just produce from our interpretativity anything existing at all. Not everything is a total result of interpretation, although anything whatsoever can only be "grasped" in an interpretation-dependent manner — or even indeed be conceived that way. "The world", wrote the artist Claes Oldenbourg (cit. Die Zeit, March 1, 1996), "cannot possibly hope (sic! H. L.) to exist in fact and so it exclusively exists by illusion, but this illusion is applied in a manner as revolutionary as possible". Indeed? Or would this only be valid for world representations or the processes of "grasping" world versions? Indeed projections of meanings, hypostatizations are themselves interpretative, in some sense they are "world-producing" insofar as the manipulation of linguistic and symbolic signs as well as the respective systems of applications and embeddings in sociocultural contexts are dependent on such interpretations. But this is only a projective, "secondary" relationship of constituting not a really extremely radical one as Goodman for instance would postulate: To be sure, we "have" only world versions i.e. we can only refer to "the world" in the light of our interpretational perspectives and


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interpretative constructs. Any world concept whatsoever is an interpretative construct. However, the world does not totally consist in such constructs; it is not disjunctively separated into incompatible "worlds" (or the "world versions" the late Goodman had in mind, misleadingly calling them "worlds"), i.e. special restricted world perspectives or related interpretative constructs are to be taken seriously instead of a global talk about "incompatible" and "disjunctive", if not even "many worlds". Any "grasping" of "the world" or "worlds" or, for that, "world versions" is certainly interpretation-dependent; therefore, any world version in Goodman's sense is interpretatively constituted. This does not exclude that we do, for pragmatic and practical reasons, hypostatize a common world of actions and interpretations: We act, to be sure, in one and the same world like our neighbor or partner — even at times including an interaction partner from another culture. As we saw in the case of the interpretation of quantum theory, there is no multitude of incompatible or disjunct many worlds only — at least this is not a realistic or not the only viable approach —, but any world versions we would avail ourselves of are indeed to be embedded — at least in practice and practical interacting — in a common world (to be represented in a comprehensive model of suchlike). Even the Indians of the recently discovered tribes in Bolivia and Brazil which had never to date been confronted with the so-called (Western) "civilization" would necessarily act (thus we are obliged to hypostatize) in one and the same world — "our" common world as we have to stipulate — when (and even before) the first encounter took place. This is true even regarding the fact that no common language or symbolic or representational world version does thus far exist. In spite of distinct and different world versions we necessarily have to hypostatize one common and "real" world. We yet know that "grasping" world versions of it would always be interpretative — and that would a fortiori also apply to the hypostatized basic common world. We do not however live in totally different worlds: There are overlapping zones of confrontation, action and interaction contacts in a situation which has to be located in one and the same world despite all differing perspectives with regard to differing projections and

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interpretations — maybe from both sides. Even if inhabitants of different world regions, cultures or even remote planets never would encounter each other or get into contact living in or under totally distinct world versions h la Goodman, nevertheless they are as acting and interacting beings to be located as existing in the same world. (At least thus we have to understand it, and similarly the other side has correspondingly mutatis mutandis to conceive of it also.) The many-worlds interpretation as of Goodman's is practically equally absurd as the many-worlds interpretation developed in interpreting quantum mechanics. It's a long way and walk to Tipperary indeed! The surveying of the epistemological and methodological as well as anthropological areas of recognition, cognition in general and acting as well as deciding, valuing etc. from the vantage point of an interpretative pragmatic realism and methodological schema-interpretationism leads to a rather multi-leveled and manifold picture: We have no last, ultimate foundation which cannot be doubted at all, which would render a conceptual or linguistic formative basis to build a safe intellectual construction on it. We however do not operate like a rope artist without net, but we ourselves — on the basis of biological fixed genetic dispositions and formal-operational necessities for example involved in the fundamental rules of logics as methodologically interpreted by Lorenzen (1955) we ourselves would knit or construct our nets in which we try to catch or capture elements and parts of the world. Thus, we elaborate our own net including the rope on which we try to balance ourselves. These nets and ropes may be extended and modified. We work to a large extent with self-constructed classifications, shapes, symbols, representational instruments and in most (not all!) cases rather flexible possibilities of "grasping" external phenomena and objects we are confronted with — and also reflecting ourselves as subjects, bodies and persons. We know that the nets are means and instruments of schematizing and ordering as well as structuring; they are interpretation-engendered as representative media and instruments, constituted on different interpretational levels, in part socially conventionalized and linguistically or symbolically differentiated. Any form of "grasping" the world is unavoidably and

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indispensably deeply per se interwoven with interpretations — including not only elementary and refined schematizations, but also theories, everyday theoretical — and practical! — suppositions as well as conceptual and linguistic coloring, if not even soaking. Nevertheless, from any necessarily interpretation-laden perspective it is practically inevitable (in order to avoid pragmatic performative paradoxes and contradictions) to hypostatize "the world" independent of us as "real" — even if we may not be able to objectify and identify elements in it independently of any pre-schematization or interpretation. Any identification of objects is per se already interpretative. To repeat the obvious for a last time: Any ^graspabilitf whatsoever is interpretation-laden. The world is real, but "grasping the world is always interpretative. We have to reject interpretational idealisms, absolutisms or even imperialisms as well as direct, allegedly interpretation-free realistic objectivisms of, say, naive naturalistic or other provenance; we have good practical and theoretical reasons for this rejection. The argumentation in this respect can — as any possibility of "grasping" and representing — of course only be performed within the "universe of interpretations" and meta-interpretations (over interpretations) themselves. Moreover, this is also valid for our subjectivity proper: We have to understand ourselves as acting, as "real" beings, as responsible and even causally manipulating beings always by way of working out conceptions and interpretations. We are necessarily and all the time interpreting and meta-interpreting beings. In any case, even the subject as such — in experience and as a center of agency as well as in its being "grasped" as an epistemological subject from a methodological point of view — is to be conceived of, methodologically speaking, as an interpretative construct: Even here we cannot evade interpretativity. Any "grasping", action and understanding — even of our own selves or subjects — is interpretation-dependent, can only be performed and designated in and by interpretative constructs. However, as repeatedly stressed this does not mean that everything being interpreted would merely be a product of our interpretations. Reality in itself and objects in themselves would exist independently of our interpretations, even

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if we know that we can only "grasp" them within the realm of our interpretative nets and constructions of conceptual and theoretical provenance and in (as well as under) action constellations. We finally gained the insight that even this process of interpreting does not capture reality in a sufficient and absolute manner. We also found out that the very model of realistic and pragmatic interpretations from an epistemological perspective is itself an interpretative conception. This would in a sense even apply to the self-understanding of man by the philosophical anthropological model of man as the ever-interpreting and meta-interpreting being. We may even illustrate the situation with Saul Steinberg's nice drawing about the drawer who draws the drawing drawer himself which I have in my Critique of Little Reason (1987, 28) commented on by saying: "Self-artist,

Source: S. Steinberg (1945) There was a young man who said, "Though It seems that I know that I know, What I would like to see, I the "Is that knows "me" When I know that I know that I know.

There was a thinker, who said Think?! I thought I had a thinking link to think-tanks in a wink: As a dinky rinky-dink at least I think I think I think.

{Alan Watts)

(H.L.]


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self-thinker? The thinking being (or artist, for that) would think the thinker as being a thinker thinking the thinking being". A nice English additional variant of this would be the cartoon:

"7 think? Ah, at least I think I think I thinkF'

These ironical versions certainly also apply to the interpreting interpreter: The interpreter interprets the interpreter as an interpreter interpreting the interpreter!

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Appendix Progress and Characteristics of Traditional and New Technologies: Regarding a Realistic and Pragmatic Philosophy of Technology 50

"Advances" means progressing, progress at times or changing locations towards another and "better" place, goal, goal state, or objective. Thus, the overall topic of our workshop would appear to mean two things: "progress and advances in and by technology" according to the purview of the philosophy of technology or, secondly, intellectual steps towards a new state of the art within the field of philosophy of technology proper. I would like to deal in this appendix with both of these tasks in turn: the first part then would address itself to the concept of progress with special regard to methodology, sociotechnical systems and social values. Certainly, this has to be a conceptual analysis of the principle, 50

Paper presented to the section "Philosophy of Technology" at the XX World Congress of Philosophy in Boston 1998. (There was no volume in the Proceedings on philosophy of technology (!). Part II and the postscript were published in an abbreviated form in Lenk-Maring 2001, 93ff.) 217

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e.g. of technological progress and related ideas. — The second part refers to some aspects of the general trends and essential characteristics of the overall and sectoral developments within technology systems which occurred and developed mainly in the last decades and should turn out to be prominent also in the foreseeable future, particularly with regard to the so-called new technologies and comprehensive technological systems as well as eco(techno)logical and sociotechnical systems and contexts.

I. "In any case, progress implies that it looks much greater than it really is". This statement by the Austrian poet Nestroy became famous after Wittgenstein had chosen it as the motto of his Philosophical Investigations. Is it true, however? Certainly it seems to be true for the problems, methods and methodologies of philosophy itself (maybe even for Wittgenstein's investigations — in the light of Lichtenberg, Schopenhauer, Mauthner and other forerunners). But it certainly does not seem to be true any more for technical and technological progress. Instead, we might state: "Technical progress implies that it is much greater than it seems". But technical progress is not identical with cultural or moral progress. Discrepancies between the different kinds of progress were time and again highlighted and epitomized as well as made responsible for some untoward effects (e.g. by Albert Schweitzer, Lord Snow, Daniel Bell, Arthur Koestler and many others, especially by intellectual critics). The one and only, the unique progress as a general social phenomenon without any differentiation does not even exist. However, there are systems interlockings and systems effects which had been discovered already in the twenties by Von GottlOttlilienfeld in his classic on Economics and Technology. Foundations of Social Economics (1923). Here, the author already stressed the "interlocking of all individual progresses towards a total movement of technology itself": creative analogies from different fields, combination of results from earlier progresses are preconditions of genuinely innovative technical progress in general which has to be relevant for the fulfilment of demands. Technological progress has to be

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distinguished from technical progress, because it is progress in knowledge about and of technologies without necessarily an extant technological development or implementation to occur. However, technological progress and knowledge is very important for the mutual interlocking of subsystems. Von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld mentioned already series of continuity, technological and technical mutations (the jump to another basic idea of a problem solution) as well as die systematic contexts of all technical problems and their individual development [which he even calls "proper life" ("Eijjenleberi")] and the derivation and "filiation" of problems which eventually lead to an unitarian system of technical questioning and probing, i.e. to a kind of methodological unity. The "self-advancement ("Selbststeijjerunjf) of progress" is clearly seen under system aspects. This later on (Hiibner 1968) led to the idea that modern technology would be "coming to itself" and its intentionality in the ideas and applications of cybernetics. What is now the new characteristic of technological development and the ever-accelerating technical progress and its overall situation in our society? Certainly it lies not only — but also — in the fact that particular moral and legal concepts do not easily avail themselves to applications without further concretion. Sachsse, the late Nestor 51 of German philosophy of technology, for instance showed that concepts like "property", "theft", "just", "exchange" and maybe also "consumption" cannot be simply transferred to the concept of information as a goods gaining ever more prominence, but they where somehow developed in view of the classical concept of possession of goods with respect to some kind of underlying substance or philosophic category of substance, which cannot be multiplied. Moreover, fast changes in the circumstances of life in modern dynamic and pluralistic societies as well as the accelerating dynamics of social, political and economic and technological conditions in the shifting orientations require also some respective changes in the applicability conditions of fundamental ethical convictions and opinions. Quantitive acceleration also here engenders a kind of shifting 51

Besides the late Simon Moser, a "pioneer" of the philosophy of technology who taught at Karlsruhe University for almost 30 years since about 1950.

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Grasping Reality: An Interpretation-Realistic Epistemolojry

of accents and causal changes of the respective systems themselves. Omissions however can be ethically speaking much more important than in earlier times. Collisions of values — even if not fundamentally new ones — can be dramatized or even lead to a new kind of social harm of social origin [when we think e.g. of the results of the implementation of scientifically successful medicine, the overpopulation problem and other social traps as sociologists would call them which might lead to a kind of new "tragedy of the commons" (G. Hardin 1968)]. In any case, the most decisive point of view for a new interpretation of ethics in view of technology and technological progress is beyond any doubt the immense technological power of man which has grown to an extension and intensity where some sort of systems backlash or a kind of overkill effect of a self-destroying dynamics might occur or might have even already been developing — particularly in view of the ecology and the imbalance of ecosystems in highly industrialized or over-industrialized regions or even globally. We seem not to be aware or not be able to implement the respective responsibility for the overall functioning of the eco-systems in general. Let us start with some remarks about the concepts of "technical progress", without being able to develop a whole theory of technical and technological progress here. At first, it is clear that the concept "technical progress" has a normative hue. It is always in comparison to an "is-state" or with respect to a state of the system to be aimed at which motivates the technical solution or operation to be called "better" in view of a potential technical progress. This is the case, whenever the same accomplishment can be achieved by less cost or effort or when we succeed in getting a higher output or a better achievement with the same input or effort. The criteria of the assessment refer to the advancement of quality, longer endurance of product, safety, reliability, greater precision, feasibility, better control, higher speed, simpler or better surveyability and improved economic efficiency, particularly pertaining to costs of production and maintenance (in terms of the input-output relation). Economists define even the existence of what they call "technical progress" simply by the increasing output in comparison to equal or less investment of


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capital and labor. This would even imply increases of production stemming from higher motivation as for instance found and supported by the famous Hawthorne experiments in social science and an improved organization of the work process in view of constant investment of capital and labor. This, however, cannot be dubbed "technical progress proper". Friedrich Rapp (1978) distinguishes between potential and realized or materialized technical progress taking up again Von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld's distinction between technological progress in knowledge and genuine technical progress in social reality. Gottl-Otdilienfeld indeed restricted his analysis to the socalled "real technology" ("Realtechnik") consisting in the production of material artifacts, the application of respective operations and "the clearing of die totality of operations and means of actions to dominate nature" (1923, 9). If one adds die embedding in social contexts one has to extend the concept of progress to perspectives which imply social, economic, and other factors. With the introduction of a concept of socio-technical progress however, the specific traits of the concepts of technical and technological progress in the narrower sense might easily lose precision. Therefore, this terminological shift is not generally to be recommended. Generally speaking, the overall direction of technical development to be called "progressive" cannot be understood purely as an outcome of just economical or technological details by themselves, but as a complex systemic interplay between different kinds of factors without just obtaining linear causality of one factor only. Many authors stress that there are mutual dependencies to be taken into consideration for the explanation of technological development which can only be grasped in a multidimensional analysis. That means, generally speaking, that the concept of a general or an overriding cumulative and ever-escalating progress with a kind of proper dynamics of its own ("Eigendynamik") turns out to be an integrative interpretative construct which can only occur from a permanent interplay of and with all the mentioned fields of influence and agents engendering the rather great complexity of contributions, interconnections, and factors. What we can call "the societal state of progressiveness or progress" is thus a complex integration of many detailed factors and processes as well as subsystems of different kinds.

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The fact that the probability of improvements and advancements is always to be increased and to be assessed in terms of and/or dependent on the respective previous state of development in technology, science and other societal factors of influence also determines the quasi lawlike basic form of an exponential growth of technical (including technological) progress. This is particularly true with respect to the acceleration phenomena. With regard to moral assessments and judgments of responsibility it is difficult, if not impossible, to attribute in rather complex realms of synergetic and cumulative effects, in view of the mentioned systems effects, the responsibility for the application and implementation of detailed aspects of progress to just one individual technologist or researcher. If the development and acceleration do indeed depend on a multiplicity of mutually escalating interconnections and interplays, it is not possible just to attribute the responsibility to just one person or single institution. However, in the wider perspective of responsibility for prevention (preventing of accidents, disturbances or even catastrophes) and for the attitude of trust or stewardship for eco-systems etc. (as stressed by Hans Jonas in his book The Imperative of Responsibility), certainly individual persons partaking in contributing, namely technologists, engineers and, generally speaking, many members of the technological intelligentsia do bear a certain co-responsibility, although they cannot always actually or grossly be attributed the total moral responsibility for the implementation and application of their discoveries and developments, if the respective harmful effects could not even possibly be foreseen by them or anyone in advance. (This is the problem of individual responsibility of the technologist or engineer and the scientist in applied research which cannot be dealt with here in detail.) Generally speaking, however, the splitting of individual responsibilities and the contribution of different kinds of responsibilities to different bearers as e.g. collectives or persons as role- or position-holders, moral agents etc. would pose real and difficult problems which have not yet been analysed in a detailed manner and certainly not been solved to date. It is true, that there is collective responsibility for the implementation and application of technical operations, procedures, and enterprises


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which has to be borne by human beings unless a thesis of a quasi "natural" technological developmental process with a kind of proper dynamics of its own could be defended. Technology is an outcome of human activities and initiatives and can only be dealt with in terms of responsibility and moral duties etc., if we refer the pseudocollective systemic responsibilities to the human decision-making beings themselves. It is the acting human being who develops technology, if in a multiramified and a synthesized accomplishment of combinations and collective activities as well as networks of accomplishments. This has certainly consequences for the extension of the concept of responsibility which cannot be deductively reduced, but has to be referred to the respective individual responsibilities of the acting and partaking persons in an operational manner. In particular, one has to take into account the responsibility of prevention and stewardship with special regard to misuse and omission or neglection etc. In technology and industrialization many technical progresses without the adequate social progresses have become problematic as we know very well. Can we say, then, that technical or technological or even "the progress" (whatever this interpretational construct may mean) can be responsibly attributed to somebody? Apparently not. However, knowledge in science and technology and the respective technological progress is certainly posing a problem which grows in parallel with the increasing power of technology in many realms of our society. In an age of pervasive technology, responsibility for technological progress(es) does pose a much more pressing problem than just armchair-science did in earlier times. Together with the increase of dispositions and range of effects of technology certainly the responsibility grows considerably. Cannot even knowledge be misused? Is the separation between pure science and technical application still to be neatly carried through? Certainly not in view of an ever-growing technicalization of science and simultaneous scientification of technology. The differences between basic research and applied research or technology are amounting just to differences of accents; the borderlines between these realms become more or less fluid. Has not any knowledge whatsoever, any technological

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development and discovery a certain kind of ambivalent characteristic with respect to implementation (as the Roman god Janus would have insinuated)? Generally speaking, the moral and ethical problems of applying technological procedures are certainly not new. Any knife could already be misused in earlier times. Only the range of effects, the magnitude of risks have vastly grown — up to the danger of self-destruction of humankind. In addition, the unforeseen side-effects have grown with the range of actions, of technological effectiveness to such a degree that the traditional ethical regulations of behavior to which man has accustomed himself within the sociobiological evolution of group organization etc. seem frequently or even notoriously to be overcharged or overstrained. The ethics of "love thy neighbor" does not any more suffice in an age of global pervasive technology with remote interconnections, instantaneous interactions and even remote effects to or in other continents. If just pressing a button can kill hundreds of thousands of humans or deprave or harm millions or even humankind in total, traditional regulations of actions and their respective motivating concepts having been developed from face-to-face group situations in our sociobiological evolution will certainly fail. Therefore, it seems necessary to deal with problems of responsibility in a more detailed manner for individual agents, collective decisionmakers, and nations as well as humankind in general. It is not only the solution of technical problems and just the increase of technological and technical progress (though they are necessary indeed insofar as we are dependent on them) which literally determine our future, but also notably and prominently the social, political, and ethical problems which have to be solved and have been so much underrated in the last decades. Certainly, we are dependent on technical and technological progresses, but we have to apply them and to implement technical developments in a wise manner. This wisdom to be sought or searched for is still the traditional task and asset of philosophy. Philosophers to the front! We have to meet this mundane challenge, i.e. to develop a comprehensive ethics including individual and collective agents in an age of pervasive and ever-accelerating technology.


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II. Surveying the classical interpretations of technology e.g. as extension of human organs (Kapp, 1877), as "realization and reification from ideas" ("aus Ideeri"; Dessauer, 1956) and as productive self-realization by working on and encroaching into nature (Marx), one gets a whole bunch of aspects, pertaining to what has occasionally been labelled "Realtechnik" ("real technology" and/or material technics) which does not seem to be readjustable to just one main fundamental trait but opens up a whole spectrum of diverse elements. All of these would appear only together grossly to characterize or comprise the multilevel phenomena of modern technological and sociotechnological development. It seems fair to state tliat not just one unique trait characterizes techniques and technology or even "the essence" of technology, but that only a pluralistic description and theory of technology can cover all the general fundamental traits. That would mean that philosophy of technology has to be a pluralistic discipline or to choose a pluralistic approach. Just one-factor theories of technology, only highlighting just one trait (e.g. "the domination of nature") is but a much too global and skewed interpretation hardly sufficient to cover all the different levels and aspects of modern technology and technological societies. This is true all the more since in our "informations- and systemstechnological era" (Lenk 1971) regarding its ever narrower enmeshment of systems and relationships within systems as well as regarding the connection by handling and controlling information in worldwide networks, by growing scientism and industrial comprehensive organization and management technologies, by rather abstract procedures and generalizations and formal and functional approaches. This is a general and quasi law-like trend covering increasingly comprehensive outlooks. Thus, an interdisciplinary theoretical description of technical objects, operations, procedures, and systems (including sociotechnical structures and technological action systems as well as environmental, cultural and political conditions or influences [not to mention economical ones]) has to be taken into consideration by a pragmatic and reality-oriented philosophy of technology. Therefore,

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a pragmatic philosophy of technology has to identify and distinguish all of the intriguing practical trends within the different fields of technological and socio-technological development supplying a certain kind of total view of the phenomenon of technology and historical trends as well as cultural traditions and new, rather revolutionary outlooks caused by technological breakthroughs (like the information "revolution" or systems engineering and systems technology management as well as biotechnologies). In what follows I would like to give a short characterization of rather new characteristics of technologies, in particular the so-called New Technologies, which have recently gained considerable weight and are still getting relief in the overall technological development, but concerning particularly pioneering areas thus shaping our technological future. I would like to mention 30 characteristics reaching beyond the traditionally so-called "essential" features and traits of classical technologies. By the way, the classical trends still go on and they are of extant leverage, but they are embedded in new generalizing, functionalizing, formalizing and information-systemical encompassing trends which are especially characteristic of new technologies and their ever-growing social, intellectual, and material as well as ecological import. I started in 1970-1 to define these trends of the operations and function-oriented as well as informa(izat)tion- and systems-oriented analysis of some of the trends to be outlined. Thus far, the development of what I tlien called "informations- und systemtechnolqgisches Zeitalter" (informations- and systems-technological era) — comprises trends which have since then dramatically accelerated to get weight and prominent position and are progressively getting more and more comprehensive impact to manipulate and reshape if not revolutionize our environment and the social world. We seem to live in a rather socio-technological, a rather humanmade technological and thus in a sense "artificial" world — at least to a considerable and ever-increasing degree. I would like to mention the following 30 characteristic traits of the modern technological world and techno- as well as social systems


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particularly dominating and gaining outstanding relief in and by the so-called new technologies. 1. The orientation at operations, procedures and comprehensive processes in technology: Technology does not only comprise machines, instruments and other technical products but there is a growing and accelerating importance of and orientation at technological processes, operations, procedures etc. Process control and management, procedural phenomena are outstanding features of modern technological and industrial production and development (see my 1971, 133f). These phenomena would extend and augment earlier changes already obtaining when energy-transforming machines and systems and assembly-line production became widespread. In modern technology, "'the reaV is very often "but the procedural" 52 and the systemic. At least, by way of interpreting, we can thus conceive of the most characteristic features of modern technologies. 2. Systematic methods and methodologies. Essential are not only methods, but also increasingly, methodologies: this trend is to be found in all science-based technological developments as well as in administration. Such general trends would nowadays characterize more and more areas and R&D dynamics to be captured by operations technologies (led by systematic, methodical or even methodological process control, systems engineering, operations research etc.). 3. Informatization, abstraction, formalization, and concentration to operational essentials: It is by way of computerization and informatization, as well as the use of formal and functional operations technologies (e.g. flow charts, network approaches 52

This is an intriguing, but — as regards technology — only slightly overstated judgment by Roger Haussling in his Diploma Thesis "Der Mensch im Spannungsfeld moderner Technologisierung" (Karlsruhe University 1995). He analyzes the mentioned orientation at software and process operations, comprehensive procedures, and systems management under the title of an encompassing "technologization of technics" {"'Technologisierung der Technik") thus drawing on and extending Gehlen's philosophy of technology superstructures: Technology is being totalized and would become "self-reflexive".

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etc.), that the formalized essentials of increasingly comprehensive processes, organizations and interrelations of different fields and subfields are integrated. Information technologies lead the way. 4. Comprehensive systems engineering or systems technology. It is indeed characteristic that the different technological developments including economic and industrial realms are getting sensitive to the joint impact. Moreover, all of this provides the development with a kind of positive feedback leading to systemic interaction and generally to a kind of systems acceleration across different fields. (This is a trend which had already been predicted by GottlOttlilienfeld (1923): "mutation", "filiations" and intensification of different progresses across traditional realms: a sort of mutually interactive spill-over effects and of what we nowadays would call positive feed-back processes). 5. Technological needs and problems-generation engendered on the basis of potential solutions produced by systematic searches for options including possible utilization (Klages 1967): Even for Research and Development in technology die systems character became obvious already some decades ago: There is a significant tendency systematically to sift and exhaust potentials, possibilities, and options 53 (e.g. by the so-called "morphological matrix" after Zwicky, see Ropohl 1975, 1979). Frequently, only after having detected several products, processes, or procedures in a systematic search an application will be launched or even a new "need" might be discovered, created, or even manipulated now to be satisfied by the technological development already completed. Sometimes, the technological solution or invention would precede the need or the problem to be solved (as e.g. Marx had already predicted in his philosophy of technology, largely still to be rediscovered).

53

Gehlen deemed a new paradigmatic feature of the most modern technology the tendency "to vary (or modify), probe all the means of representation and thought, the very kinds of procedures and processes (uVerfahrensarten"), to invoke all possibilities until exhaustion and to look for the consequences" (1986, 169), i.e. systematically to test all possibilities and options — technologically speaking, but also in terms of utilization.


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6. Interdisciplinary interaction and stimulation ("interstimulation"): Interdisciplinarity is frequently led by spill-overs from science to science and from there to technological development and innovation or implementation — as well as to society at large. It characterizes the embedding of the interdisciplinary interactions within the overall developmental purview. Systems technologies require interdisciplinary approaches in practice. 7. Artificial environments and a world widely made up of artifacts: Specifically, technogenic relationships, properties and technological or technology-made objects are shaping our world to such a degree that we can metaphorically, if not virtually, talk of an "artificial world?'' we are living in. (The "second nature", the "symbolic universe" mentioned by the philosophical anthropologists Plessner, Gehlen and Cassirer has in fact turned out to be a rather technological world now gaining primacy everywhere on this planet including the mentioned trends in ever-accelerating and widely spreading processes of technological generalization.) 8. Technicalization of the virtual and fictional: We nowadays even find a kind of visualization of these artificial and symbolic worlds in information technologies as well as in technology-based images and models including imagery-modeling superimposing themselves on real life and the respective interpretations. (In addition, all the counterreactions by new cultural critics should also be mentioned.) 9. Systematic and accumulating combinations of the technomedia ("multimedia"): Indeed, all these processes and developments of the technicalization of the symbolic, of virtual representations and their respective interpretations, lead to a kind of co-action and coevolution of different and diverse information technologies and media. Moreover, there is an ever-increasing generalization, even a tendency towards universality, and a common or joint impact as well as systems integration of these information technologies and media; we seem to be living more and more in a multiplymediated technogenic world impregnated by multimedia, in a multimedia technoworld.

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10. Multiple manipulability and flexibility by software (pre)simulation: Computerization and software models allow a somewhat riskfree and inexpensive simulation and/or the testing of technological constructions and developments in advance. This is a feature of a rather general, if not universal, scope for adapting models in science, planning, and administration; systems organizing and management endeavors are rendered much more flexible and easily variable than hitherto. 11. Model simulations provide flexibility, adaptability, risklessnesr. Computer models, software programming, and other successful attempts at improving and optimizing the relevant models by way of computer programming and visual computer-graphic construction would provide and render efficient, inexpensive and fast solutions to many design and construction tasks of all kinds (including scientific modeling e.g. for molecule designing, the technical construction and development of new machines, procedures, and systems in the narrower sense). (This goes even beyond the analytic solubility of mathematical equations systems.) The computer has turned out to be a universal, easily feasible and employable representative " can-do-anythinjf instrument providing extreme variability, easy detours and energy- as well as cost-savings posing virtually no physical resistance or obstacles, since the respective model simulation is conducted in advance and without real risks. 12. Modularity, flexibility and multiple applicability: Generally speaking, in technology there is a comprehensive trend towards these modules, functional building-blocks, and functionally integrated microprocessors, which can be inserted, by way of adaptable connections and exchanges of chips, within other modules and systems — and even in sets of new constructive elements. This would at times extremely increase technical progress and development as well as render possible and support the exchangeability of obsolete parts or modules. Modularity of parts and elements provides a universa(lizabi)lity of applications of the respective parts and modules also within other processes and instrument systems, amounting to what is now called "flexible


13.

14.

15.

16.

54

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production systems" (Ropohl, 1971). Interfaces are relatively open and guarantee a full spectrum of options, possible ramifications, and modifiable applications. Thus, connectivity, flexibility, and the dynamics of development — as well as multiple and tendentially universalized applicability of partial technical solutions — are enhanced. Remote control and intelligent sensing. New electronic and multimedia technologies allow remote control and intelligent sensing at a distance or in unaccessible environments (e.g. robot manipulation in nuclear plants or in outer space technology), thus multiplying manipulative and technological power in extension and scope; it also allows us to speak of reactions of the technological instruments and systems as "intelligent". User-friendliness and self-explaining design: New technologies gradually should and gradually will become much more userfriendly, tendentially more anthropomorphic and more adjusted to human dimensions, capacities, and capabilities in their reactions and ways of handling them — sometimes displaying even a selfexplanatory usage and design tending to minimize or even eliminate the explicit need for technical manuals and instructions. ""Intelligent" technology and systems autonomy: Not only in sensing and remote control instruments and systems are feedback loops built in, but in a plethora of instruments and systems more and more sensitive feedback control and "intelligent" "decisionmaking" techniques and "learning" procedures are progressively gaining momentum. This provides a kind of flexible systems autonomy or, at times, error-correcting ultra-stability. Meta-autonomy: Even in the designing, building, checking of machines, programs, technological and organizational systems there is a tendency to eliminate human interference: "Machines build machines, machines check machines, programs control and check machines, programs supervise programs..." 54 . In effect, this

The last five characteristics are kindly proposed by Oliver Mussgnug, drawing on his Master's thesis " "Virtuelle Realitaf und Cyberspace" ("Virtual Reality" and Cyberspace"), Karlsruhe University 1997.

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17. 18.

19.

20.

55


involves a meta-level technicalization in terms of a higher-order self-applicability of overarching abstract procedures, programs etc. amounting to a sort of "reflexive" or "self-referential" selfapplicability — a meta-feasibility and metafunctionality of sorts. 55 Robotization will proliferate and be widely disseminated in all fields of future technology-guided production. Computerization and multifunctionality: Universal machines like the computer provide a certain kind of abstractness, a softwaredetermined use of programmed processing and control. Generally, universal machines and technological as well as techno-organizational systems are advancing fast and progressively maximizing all the mentioned features of flexibility, speed, "intelligent" machine autonomy, adaptivity (if not "learning"), exchangeability of parts etc. Mega-information-systems and mejjamachines: There is a tendency to conceive of the whole world as technology-dominated, manipulated, organized, and shaped by technosystems. Even ecosystems and social systems become artificially encroachedupon eco-technosystems or socio-technical systems, respectively. The trend towards a mega-information-system and mega-worldmachine is enhanced by the functional overarching and by meta-levels of the mentioned technological and operational processing and the multiple applicability of processes, machines, and programs. (The same applies to the levels and meta-levels of interpretations and methodological procedures mentioned in the main body of this book.) Telematization and techno-reality: Telematization of almost everything, the world-wide ubiquitous presence {"hie et nunc et potentialiter ubique") will make the idea of a global information village come tendentially true — not only in passive attendance or ubiquitous media coverage and (pseudo-)presence. But there are also already locally separated, but functionally coordinated teams working on giant virtual projects or abstract "dissipated

Haussling (see above) talks of a "reflexiv verstandene Fungibilitaf functionality and/or feasibility").

("a reflexive


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objects", designs, or networks (e.g. the Internet). The "second nature", the technology-enacted "reality" engendered by information networks takes on relief and will be getting impact. The media technicalize (a kind of) reality, indeed constitute a techno-enacted reality. This second-hand informational reality gains momentum and social impact, has already become a "real reality", a "socio-(information-technological" one, an IT-reality, so to speak. 2 1 . Information-technological historicity: Not only comprehensive information systems, expert systems, and computerized decision making systems which are designed, developed, operated on and controlled by many programmers and agencies take on a certain "history" of their own that mirrors the development of "the system" thus far, but also a representation of world history by and in the media systems seems to display a peculiar historicity for this "media-ted" virtual reality: "quod non in systemis non in realitate"56 ("what is not in the very systems is not real"). 22. Globalization of technology: The overwhelmingly global success of technology and the technicalization of almost everything leads to a new unity of the world — it engenders a new "technogenic world", a technologically integrated, informational and, consequently, interactive one on a planetary scale. Indeed, to a large extent we seem to live in a media-electronic global village (as hinted at sub 20). 23. Interfering by and intermingling by way of interrelations and the wide interdependence of technological products and processes: Indeed, by way of the interdisciplinary, formally systematized, functional integration and interrelation of generalized operations and by systems engineering in all walks of life, we are getting a texture woven together by mutual dependencies between all the 56u

Quod non in actis non in mundo" ("what is not in the files is not in the world", that is to say, of history) used to be a kind of criterion for reality amongst historians of old. (An intriguing question for mountaineers still is whether or not Mallory in the twenties had already reached the summit of Mount Everest, since his ice axe was found a short distance below the peak and recendy his corpse further down the slope; but there was no trace or object-remnant found on the summit to be filed.)

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24.

25.

26.

27.


realms of life that are susceptible to systematic technological, informational, and operational manipulations (including economical ones). Socio-systems technology: Indeed, nature and nurture tend to go together, even coincide almost everywhere. Systems orientation, systems engineering and the constitution as well as managing of socio-techno-systems and social systems lead to an inseparable, indissoluable social systems syndrome provoked by the evergrowing, ever-accelerating, ever more encompassing technological measures (cf. Lenk and Ropohl 1976, Ropohl 1996). Systems-technocratic tendencies: As predicted by the author already twenty-five years ago (1973), systems-technocratical tendencies will gain impact and importance. This means that many different political, cultural, and human(itarian) problems of modern societies will tend to be conceived of and discussed, as well as attacked — and maybe partially solved — by systems-technological means. Systems-technological administrations are currently gaining momentum everywhere. Systems-technocratic dangers seem to be intimately integrated with the encompassing systemstechnological approaches. Personality and data protection against informational tapping, information invasions, and encroachment: With respect to information technologies, social and legal problems of data protection and privacy, as well as protection of the integrity and dignity of the human person and aspects of human(itarian) values and humaneness, even of what it means (and when the embryo starts) to be human — all these problems are now getting a particular urgency — notably in applied information technology and biotechnology. Susceptibility to sometimes unnoticeable risks: The encompassing intertwinement of systems components widiin all-comprehensive socio-technological systems in general implies a certain susceptibility or proneness to risks as could be experienced several times by electrical blackouts of whole metropolitan areas etc. Risk susceptibility of highly developed and densely intertwined systems is a kind of systems-technocratical danger, too. Some technically


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engendered dangers (e.g. radioactivity) may even go unnoticed by the affected beings. Comprehensive information systems are particularly exposed to risks as by e.g. viruses, cyber-terrorism etc. 28. Miniaturization and nanotechnology: Intriguing trends which favor ever more miniaturized technological subparts, elements, and building blocks (in the figurative and literal sense) produce another kind of "danger": the "chipifying" or "chipification" of almost everything. If combined with an ever-increasing miniaturization, micro-systems technology & nanotechnology might not only extend the technological availability and manipulability of all sorts of information-management and systems-regulation processes, but also engender dangers of the spilling-over of minute faults and failures etc. from the respective micro-levels. 29. Systems-technical and information-technological multiplication of impacts, whether of technological success or failure. With the nearly unimaginable explosion of human technological power in the vast extension of energy technologies and systems as well as information technologies, the respective direct and indirect consequences both of success (domination and manipulation) and of failure ("catastrophes", "accidents", "normal" or otherwise) will pose extraordinary problems to deal with. Indeed, they seem to grow beyond any potential human grasp (in the literal as well as in the figurative sense). 30. Bearability and limits of responsibilities as well as their distribution: Ever-extending systems-technological trends and the exponential enlargement of the power of encroachment by multiply distributed technological systems, "big technologies", "big (applied) science", or even worldwide technological systems) pose tough ethical questions of responsibilities. Included are responsibility problems for the (still human-made) technological world and events therein (cf. for instance my 1994). These hard problems come up and often amount to real moral and social conflicts or even "traps"; they seem to present insoluble tasks of how to deal with and divide up, distribute, or share responsibility bearable in practice. Technology appears to take on the characteristic of a fate or destiny. At the same time, the survival of humankind,

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essentially and cumulatively, appears to depend on a rather smoothly increasing technological, social, political, economical and ecological progress. However, the auspices of the ever-accelerating technological progress on a worldwide systems scale (including "globalization" effects of and in international organizations and in the world-wide economy seem to take on a vast expansion and momentum. Consequently, the responsibilities not only for the onset and development of the general systems phenomena, but also for the detailed consequences of the respective technological intertwinements, even for individual decisionmaking at strategic points, can hardly be borne by individual persons, given current legal and moral responsibilities. Large realms of socio-technical developments seem to evade responsible decision making and any willingness to accept such a responsibility. [This is a problem area my co-worker Maring and myself have been struggling with for almost a decade (cf. Lenk-Maring 1991, 1998, Eds. 2001).] With this thirtieth feature I conclude my list of structural characteristics of modern technologies. These traits, especially those pertaining to so-called new technologies seem clearly to oblige us to extend descriptions of the structural features of technology and technologies beyond any of the traditional accounts mentioned at the beginning of section II of this appendix chapter. It may be an interesting task for the near future to analyze combinations and conditional relationships among these characteristic features, and to allocate them to particular technologies, technological fields, and engineering disciplines — as well as to socio-technical contexts and problems. But that remains a task for future studies. Postscript It was my former academic disciple in philosophy and friend Giinter Ropohl who presented a very thoughtful and differentiated, at times rather critical discussion of the mentioned features of new technologies during the summer conference 2000 of the more or less invisible College of Philosophy of Technology at the Academy of Philosophical


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Studies at Sant 'Abbondio (Lago Maggiore) thereby opening a new discussion on the structural features and tendencies of modern technology from a methodological and philosophical point of view. The debate will presumably go on for some time. However, I would like very shortly to give the gist of his criticism — and react. Ropohl is right in noting that many of the structural characteristics of the list are neither totally new nor indeed definitional or essential characteristics proper (e.g. the principle of modularity (No. 12), of feedback and servomechanisms (No. 15) and the mutually impact between needs and technical solutions (No. 5) have been known ever since or since a long time). Continued technicalization of the world and of many processes (Nos. 7 and 22 as well as No. 29) attain to well known consequences of technology. This is certainly true — and I never doubted this. I do not pretend or claim to have discovered totally new structural characteristics of technologies, but my aim was to highlight the importance of tendencies, aggravated impacts and describing die ever-enlarging influences as well as penetrating trends of notable features of technics and technology which have gained much weight in the last half century. I am not interested in a clean or meticulous definition of a concept of new technologies, but in describing and emphasizing a newly dominating trend of in part maybe old characteristics and features or as well as trends. (The phenomenology of talking about "characteristics" may be misleading invoking some essentialist connotations — which is not my aim, indeed; it might be better to talk about new important tendencies getting relief or even taking over or overarching traditional trends and phenomena.) Ropohls discussion of some features is well-taken, but sometimes he misunderstands the intention of the author: I have never meant that processes and procedures take priority over artifacts and real technology ("Realtechnik"), though — I admit — the quote of Haussling's rather pointed statement "the real nowadays is the procedural" might be irritating in that respect. I certainly agree that artifacts and machines as well as "real technology" in the traditional sense is necessary. Indeed, there is no formalization, proceduralization and algorithmization nor "virtuality without reality" (i.e. without

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artifacts, objectification and reification in technology). However, robotization, automatization and formal or ever more formalized procedures as well as organizational, so to speak meta-level technologies, of structural management systems, information systems and systems technology are gaining much more momentum these days (which I myself, by the way, predicted in 1970). Therefore, trend no. 1 was misunderstood by the reviewer: the procedural has gained weight and is still getting more and more leverage, whereas the systems of artifacts (Sachsysteme) do not lose any importance whatsoever. The same is true — and this is a major point — for nos. 2 and 3: Systematic metJiods and methodologies and science-based as well as abstract and formalized strategies are certainly getting headlines, ever more importance and impact on planning and construction processes. Indeed, as Ropohl also notes, automatization, formalization and such abstract strategies attain relevance, momentum, and importance together with the refined "real technology" of the artifacts and technical bases. There is no "either... or" nor "neither... nor", but an important mutual interaction and interpenetration of both tendencies, whereas the meta-level formalization of many systems approaches is indeed a rather new feature like informatization and automatization or robotization in general. To be sure, the discussion of characteristic features here is, philosophically or epistemologically speaking, a methodological one (this does not mean that engineers themselves always are intentionally using philosophy of science methodology or so). The technicalization of the virtual and virtual world is a very noticeable fact everywhere in highly industrialized media & technology systems and in information and communication technologies we all use and "live by" (No. 8). By contradistinction, no. 20 raises the problem of gaining "secondary reality" of information systems e.g. most notably the Internet and other information and electronic systems technologies impinging more and more even on economic and political as well as "real life" decisions. In particular, real-time and online decisions have nowadays worldwide impact on this planet (see stock rates) as well as economic and social reverberations. The


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"secondary" historization or historifkation of information systems in large computer systems, expert systems etc. has been misunderstood by the critic; I am not denying the phenomena of degradation and decay in information storage via electronic systems, but I claim that very complex information systems take on a quasi life of their own insofar as no individual person or programmer can survey any more all the developments of a very complex distributed net functioning by co-operation and via all or, rather, practically innumerable parallel influences of millions of interactive users and programmers. Certainly, we should not over the acknowledgement of this "secondary", primarily social or human-made, "reality" of the information systems and networks forget about the technology-enacted and -based "artifactual" reality in the rather traditional machine-oriented and material sense. However, the secondhand information reality has indeed become a "real" reality by now — at least socially speaking. Giinter Ropohl is also right in noting that I occasionally (No. 14) mistook a desideratum like user-friendliness for a characteristic feature (this again is a matter of terminology). To be sure, I wanted to highlight a tendency—this time a social requirement getting importance in proportion to the millions of users at die front door of the information world. User-friendliness is not yet a real fact, but rather a guiding normative or orienting principle — a desideratum indeed. Equally well-taken is Ropohl's criticism, that the list given above is not really yet systematized but rather gathered up in a somewhat impressionist manner — which is true (but it is a first attempt in the beginning stage of developing new descriptive as well as normative categories and forms reaching beyond traditional ontological and essentialist philosophies of technology which were and still are frequently using but just one trait or so, see above). To be sure, artifacts and their systems can be differentiated and divided up according to some qualitative and quantitative aspects like automatization and robotization, miniaturization or even nanotechnicalization, pertaining to horizontal and vertical expansion and interaction as well as interpenetration, according to higher levels of abstractness and universal management procedures as well as regarding

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so-called new technologies (e.g. information technology), computer modeling, simulation, and controlling (including robots and nanosystems), as well as biotechnology (notably gene technology) etc. Ropohl is also right that the development of artifacts and their integrative systems would require much more technological knowledge and ability as e.g. science-based and operation-oriented approaches, simulation of prototypes and models (prior to materialization), the rather scientific technological design in any field of technology as well as interdisciplinarity (as covered in many nos., from 3 to 18 above). Also, Ropohl is right in mentioning the special field of the study of utilization of artifacts and their systems (Sachsysteme) in everyday connections and the respective consequences regarding growing dependencies, and alienation as well as invisibility and lacking penetrability and lacking spontaneity or human intuition. But this just means that the mentioned consequences would indeed obtain with respect to general systems technocracy, the endangering of privacy regarding data retrieval and, frequently, the degradation of noticeable and operative responsibilities for collective and secondary, i.e. institutional and/or corporate, actions. Again, we may in fact improve the manipulation of far-reaching information systems and remote effects (including in interplanetary unmanned spaceships or satellites and in nuclear plant chambers) as well as in chemical reactors and regarding chaos technology for manipulating the state or phase space orbits of complex dynamic systems etc. Here, thus far unapproachable constituents and components as well as processes seem to come into the reach of technological manipulation — and even some kind of control, though maybe of a very indirect provenance. As Ropohl admits, the attempt to the systematize the features is far from being complete and comprehensive. However, it is worth going on to work on such a systematization in the future — maybe in an improved and expanded cooperation by younger philosophers and social scientists of technology and applied science.


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Zou, X. Y., Wang, L. J. and Mandel, L.: Physical Review Letters, 67 (1991), 318ff. Zurek, W. H.: Decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical, in: Physics Today, 44 (Oct. 1991), 3 6 - 4 4

Name Index

" P refers to the actual and the following page, "ff" refers to the actual and the following two pages. Abel 67, 70, 9 1 , 200, 209f Abelson 9 Adorno 60 Aertson 17 Agrippa 205, 207 Albert 205 Almeder 110 Apel 53, 206 Archimedean 138, 208 Aristotle 49, 54, 106 Arntzen 48 Aspect 163, 168

Bose 158, 167f, 171 Brentano 41 Brown 170 Bunge 73 Camp 51 Campoamor y Campoosorio 48 Carnap 29, 57, 8 1 , 98 Carter 72 Cassirer 229 Chang 83 Chiao 163f, 166, 168, 181 Church 76 Cornell 168 Crick 66

Bauer 159 Beecher 72, 88 Bell 158f, 168, 172f, 218 Belnap 51 Blacksburne 109 Bohr vf, 150, 153ff, 159, 162f, 167, 169, 172f, 194f Born 157

Darwin 34, 106, 108 Davidson 50 Descartes 34, 128, 185, 196 Dessauer 225 Dilthey 36

255

256


Duhem 57 Dummett 93 Eckhorn 66 Eddington 78 Einstein vf, 57, 78, 150f, 154, 158, 161ff, 167f, 171 Engel 17, 65f Englert 162 Enskat 120 Euclid 81 Everett 170, 194 Farquhar 48 Feyerabend 6 1 , 77f Feynman vf, 15 Of, 155 Fichte 196 Fraasen, van 64 Franzen 51, 53f Freud 35 Galilei 31 Gauss 155 Gehlen 22 8f Ghirardi 160 Gibson 138, 140 Giere vi, 64, 80, 84ff, 136, 148f Godel 76 Goethe 60, 109, 174 Gooding 136 Goodman 55, 62, 21 Off Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, von 218f, 2 2 1 , 228 Greenberger vf, 150 Grene 107 Grover 51 Hacking vi, 84f, 132, 136, 147ff Hansen 57 Hardin 220 Harre vi, 132, 135f, 138ff, 142ff Hartmann 38, 43ff, 46

Haussling 227, 232 Hawking 159f Hawthorne 221 Hebb 21,66 Hegel 173, 175 Heisenberg 107, 159, 162f, 166, 176, 181 Helmholtz 107, 110 Herbert 166, 172f, 189 Herder 103f, 133 Hesse 109f Hey 151, 153 Hilbert 76 Hook 81 Horgan 151, 163, 166f Hossenfelder 122f, 126, 129, 201 Hubbard 48 Hubel 20 Hubner 219 Hume 35, 91f, 105, 121 Husserl 41ff, 133 Jacobi 118 James 33, 195 Jennings 109 Jesus 47 Jonas 222 Josephson 158 Kant vi, ix, 7f, 11, 15, 19f, 45, 49, 64, lOlff, 109ff, 115-133, 135, 137, 139, 142, 178, 196f, 200ff Kapp 225 Kessel 48 Ketterle 168 Klages 228 Koch 66 Koestler 218 Kuhn 6 1 , 77 Kuelpe vi, 106 Kutschera, von 93, 11 Off Kwiat 163f, 166, 168, 181

257

Names Index

Lakatos

59

Laub 72 Lessing 47f, 56 Lichtenberg 218 Locke 101 Lockwood 160, 182, 188 London 159 Lorenzen 139,212 Mackie 53 Mainusch 47 Malsburg, von der 17, 66 Mandel 163ff, 168, 181f Marengos 99 Maring 217,236 Marx 225,228 Mauthner 218 McLean 32 Mead 35 Meinong 38ff, 45 Messer 106 Metzinger 33 Millikan 18, 108 Moser 83,219 Mussgnug 231 Nahr 65 Neisser 9, 45, 142 Nelson 55 Nestroy 218 Neumann, von 171 Newton 78, 8 1 , 85, 174 Nicholas of Cusa 31 Nietzsche vi, 48f, 70, 203, 210 Nimtz 99 Nortmann 120 Oldenbourg Palm Pauli Peirce

210

17 157 53, 63, 154

Piaget 13 Pilatus 47 Pistorius 118 Planck 157 Plato 27f, 30f, 109, 122 Plessner 229 Podolsky 154, 161f Poincare 57, 68 Pollock 204 Popper vi, ixf, 14, 29, 48f, 56, 58f, 6 1 , 63f, 75, 78, 106 Primas 174ff, 183, 185ff Pritchard 167f Putnam 15, 29, 53ff, 56, 58, 61ff, 64, 100, 105, 1 1 0 , 1 3 1 , 2 0 4 Pyrrho 35, 9 1 , 207 Pydiagoras/ean 31,96 Quine

36

Rapp 221 Reich 120 Rescher 53, 94ff, 110, 112 Rimini 160 Roberts 143 Rod 105, 120ff, 124-131, 137, 196, 198, 201 Rodin 130 Ropohl 83, 228, 2 3 1 , 234, 236ff Rosen 154, 161f Rossler 175 Roth 17, 32 Rumelhart 9 Ryle 57 Sachsse 219 Sapir 111 Sauter 170f Schank 9 Schantz 100,204 Scheler 36 Schneider 45

258


Schopenhauer 199, 218 Schrodinger 157ff, 168, 170f, 174ff, 183 Schummer 138, 146f Schweitzer 218 Scully 162ff Sellars 36, 106 Sextus Empiricus 35, 91 Simon 85 Singer 17,65f Sneed 78, 80 Snow 218 Socrates 27 Spinnen 47 Stegmiiller 78, 80, 82 Steinberg 99, 214 Stenius 210 Stockier 154, 159f, 163, 169, 186 Strawson 206 Suh 83 Suppes 78 Tarski Tiles

50f 143

Vaihinger 48, 107, 110 Vollmer 107ff

Wallace 108 Walters 151, 153 Walther 162 Wang 99, 164 Weber 160 Weizsacker, von 108, 168 Wheeler 168, 170, 182 Whorf 111 Wieman 168 Wigner 159 Wilde 47f Wittgenstein 27, 30, 39, 49, 53, 209f, 218 Young

17, 151

Zeh 160, 170 Zeilinger 99, 155 Zou 163f Zubairy 163ff Zurek 160, 170f Zwicky 228

Subject Index

"f" refers to the actual and the following page, " f f refers to the actual and the following two pages. absolutism, interpretative 25 acceleration of progress 219f acceptability, rational & idealized 55, 59 action(s) 24, 26, 191 action-theoretical approach in the philosophy of science 86f, 146 activation, reactivation lOf, 21f activism, epistemological 104f, 146 activities 2 1 , 39, 42 activities, interpretativeschematizing (Fig. 2.2) 23 adaequatio 50 adaptability 230 adequate (Tarski) 51 affectio 118 affizieren (affect/Kant) 103, 118f, 121f affordances 138ff Agrippa's dilemma 205 Annahmen 40 Anschauung(en) 7

appearances (Kant) 105, 117, 121f, 123f, 137 applications, intended 79 applications, multiple 230 approximation of truth (see also verisimilitude) 58f Archimedean take-off point 25,138, 208 artifacts 229, 239f artificial world & environments 229 assemblies, neuronal 17f automatization 239 axiomatization 76f, 83

259

BARGAINING-schema 10 bit, the 168 blurred state 159 Bose-Einstein condensate 158, 167f, 171 brain constructs 17 brain programmes 17 brain, triune 32


260

Brownian movement 170 building blocks of cognition BUYING-schema 10

9,11

Cartesian split of subject and object 185f categories (Kant) 103, 200 categorization(s), schema13, 67, 133 categorizing (categorization) 112 causality (Kant) 118f chaotic attractors 193 chaotic phenomena 193 circle(s), (methodo)logical 108 circle(s), "virtuous", "virtuosic" 108 cognition building blocks of 9, 11 formal, mathematical, logical 139f instrumental, operative 73 cognizing 24 coherence theory of truth 52 collapse of wave package 162f, 171 compartments 174f complementarity 153, 162, 194 computer(ization) 227, 230 concepts, theoretical 8If conditionalizing 60ff, 68 constituting (constituta) 20ff constitutive synthesis (Kant/ Hossenfelder) 122 construct(ion)s 4ff, 20, 22 cognitive 9 interpretive (or constructive interpretation) 5f, 89, 156, 178, 207 social 4 theoretical 4, 130 conventionalization 13 converter, parametric 164 Copenhague interpretation 155 corpuscular (nature or

character)

151

correlation 161, 163, 188 correspondence theory of truth 53f

49f,

DC-attribution 143, 145 decoherence interpretation (of

quantum mechanics)

160,170f

definition, implicit 76 design, self-explaining 231 design theory 83 designation (by consciousness) 182, 198 determination of real entities, realistic 146 deterministic systems, classical 193 Ding an sich (Kant) 103 directism (see realism, direct) 204 disposition predicates 136 dispositional ontology 135f, 139 dissections 174 double-slit experiment 15Iff, 155, 158f ecological psychology of perception 138 eco-techno-systems 232 Eigendynamik (eijjen dynamics) 221 Einbildungskraft (power of imagination) 7f electron experiments 85, 98,151,161 elementary particles 85,151,153 endo-physics 175f entanglement 168, 174f, 186, 188

entities, micro-

151 ff, 190

entities, theoretical 98, 145 EPR- Gedankenexperiment 161f EPR reality-criterion 161 Erfassen (see grasping) 198 Erkenntnis (Kant) 116,119 Erscheinung(en) (Kant) 105, 121, 123

essence(s)

27, 29

Subject Index essentialism 29ff every-day entanglement 194 exo-physical, exo-system 175f external world (see world & real) facts 39 factum 49 fallacy of magnifying 146 falsification 74, 78, 106 Fassen (see grasping) 198 Felis paradoxalis Schrodingeri 160 filiation of problems 219 fitting together, concept of 55, 67, 74f, 108f flexibility 230 formal & mathematical logical cognition 139f fundamental rules of logics and mathematics 139f, 212 fundamentum inconcussum 208 fundamentum reale 196 Gauss distribution(s) 155 (Fig. 9.1) Gedankenexperiment (thought experiment) 158 Geltunjj (validity) 3 General Technology 83 Gestalt(en) 7 given, (the) 35, 102f, 119, 130 global village, media-electronic 233 globalization of technology 233 God's view, eye 54, 58, 62, 180 Good, (the) 27 grasp(ing), concept of (graspability) vi, 15, 3 8 - 4 6 , 88, 141, 176, 179f, 184ff, 188ff, 192, 198f, 213 grasp(ing), plain 43 hauling-in 45f Heisenberg cut (Heisenbergscher Schnitt) 176

261 Hirnkonstrukte (brain constructs) 17 historicity, IT 233, 239 holistic system interpretation 167, 174f, 185f horizon of interpretations 204 human being as animal rationale, the acting and normative being 201f idealism interpretative 25 Platonic 30f transcendental 103f idealization 56 ideism 125 idler beam 165 idler detector 164 image 8 imagery 24 imagination 8 implicit definition 76 Impragnat, impregnate 70 impregnation 16, 19, 67, 147, 179, 188, 192, 194 information- and systemstechnological era 225f information technologies 228 informatization 227f interactional interpretationism vii, 147ff, 195 interdisciplinary interaction 229 interference (pattern) 152ff, 165f interlocking of progresses and subsystems 218f interpenetration 239 interpretat(a) 39, 70 interpret(ation) 1 Iff, 20, 185, 215 classificatory 12f justificatory 12f levels of (Fig. 2.1) 12f, 197f objectifying 196 pattern12 primary 12f

262


theory of (Kant) 105f, 120 varieties of 12ff interpretation-worlds 200 interpretational/interpre(ta)tive constructs (see constructs, interpret(ative)) interpretation-dependent, -impregnated, -laden 16, 19, 25, 115, 127, 179, 181, 185ff, 189 interpretationism, (or schemascheme-)) interactive, interactional vii, 104, 141, 147ff interpretationism, methodological vi, vii, lOff, 15, 89, 178, 182 interpretationist approach in the philosophy of science 87f interpretative synthesis (Kant) 122f, 126 interpretative system 17 interpreting being (see metainterpreting being) 203 interreactability 141 interstimulation 229 intervention (intervening) 18ff, 194 IP-mode 143, 145 it from the bit 168 Josephson effect judgment 41

158

kaleidoscope/ic (reality) 173, 177, 184 knowledge, (technologically) embodied 86 language-dependence 113 language games 210 law cluster concepts 29f learning rule (Hebb) 66 Lebenswelt (life-world) 41 limiting concept 55f, 59, 127 locality 167, 193

Mandel's experiment 164 many worlds interpretation (Goodman) 21 If many worlds interpretation of quantum theory 169f, 212 material practice 143 measurement (device) 156 measurement problem 154ff, 160ff measuring instruments/arrangement, dependence on 154f, 185 mega-information system 232 megamachines 232 Meinen (mean) 40 meta-autonomy 231 (meta interpretation, methodological 12, 14, 131 meta-interpreting being 14, 26, 203 micro-entities (see entities & quones) 190 miniaturization 235, 239 mixture of pure states 170, 182, 214 model simulations 230 models, classical mechanical 80ff model-theoretic approach 78ff, 84f modularity 230 momentum, concept of 30, 157 momentum-correlated 161 morphological matrix 228 multimedia technoworld 229 multiple manipulability 230 Munchhausen trilemma 205 mutations, technical 219 nano-technology 235 neuronal assemblies 17f neurophysiological foundation of schematization 17f New Experimentalism 87 new technologies, 30 characteristics of 227-236 Newtonian mechanics (80) 81 noema(ta) 43

263

Subject Index non-Archimedean (see Archimedean) non-locality 166, 168, 172f non-separability 168, 172f non-statement approach/view 78ff normative requirements, (extraphysical) 176 normativity, normative 176 object 1, 26, 43f, 192, 195f intentional 4 1 , 43f vs. subject 186 objective (phenomenon) 172, 185f objective(s) 38f observation-dependent 155 ontology, dispositional 135f operations (orientation at technology) 227 oscillations, neuronal 17, 66 paradox of quantum phenomena 152ff particle(-like character) 151ff, 155f Passung (see fitting) pattern(ing) 12, 21 perception, activistic lOlf, 141 perception as construction 45, lOlf, 107 perception, ecological psychology of 138 personality & data protection 234 perspective-dependence (such as preparation, interpretationdependent) 179f, 189ff petitio tollendi 206 phenomena, context-, interpretationdependent 187 photon pairs 161 photons 153, 156 Planck's constant 157 pratitya samutpada 102 preparation (Preparation) 155f, 169, 171f, 177, 179, 182f, 185

pre-predicative 41 probational acting (Probehandeln) procedural, the, procedures 227 progress empirical 59, 78, 217ff socio-technical 221 technical/technological 218, 220, 223 theoretical 59, 78 projectionism, structural 180 propositions 38f

35

quantum entities (see quones) 168, 177 experiments, recent 163ff mechanics 15 Off mystification 182 objects 166 reality 155, 168f teleportation 99 theory v, 150-183 quone(s) 166, 168, 172, 183, 189 R 1-, R 2-, R 3-entities 144f rainbow reality/properties 172f, 177, 184 reaching beyond 45f reactibility 136, 140f, 147, 149 real 117, 121, 129, 188, 191, 206, 213, 227 real, the vii, ix, 27, 32ff, 97, 188 real definition 28f real entities 85 real technology (Realtechnik) 221, 225, 237f realism viiff, 15, 90-114 blind 110 cognitive 94,97,112 common-sense 91 constructive 85, 148 copy101 critical ix, 105f

264


descriptive 94f, 97 direct 100, 105 epistemological vii, 92, 96, 107 evolutionary 107ff hypothetical 107, 191, 197 immanent 110, 112f indirect 100, 107 internal 54, 110, 131, 137 limited (see realism, restricted, minimum, moderate, weak(ened)) x "lukewarm" 109 metaphysical 9If, 94, 97 minimum (see rudimentary) 180, 192 moderate 109 ontological 91f physicalist(ic) 96, 147 pragmatic x, 114,137,149, 191f quasi109 "realistic" 110, 112 referential 132ff, 144, 147, 149 relational 129, 180 residual 192 restrictive x, 114 rudimentary 120f, 131 schema-interpretationist (see scheme/a-interpretationism, interpretationism, interactive, methodological vii scientific 94ff semantic 92f, 97 structural 129, 180 technology-oriented vii, 84f varieties of 90-114, 132 weak(ened) 109, 115 reality (see real) ix, 140, 149, 155, 167, 179f, 186, 188, 192, 196, 200,207 background90 relational 186 virtual 233

reality-criterion, EPR- 161 recognition 43ff, 122, 142, 190f recognizing 24, 202 reference (see realism, referential) 143 referent hunting vi, 144f referential realism 132-149 regelgemafi (rule-conforming) vs. regelmafiig (regularly used) 30 relation-dependence 173 relations (relata) 28 relative state formulation 160 remote control/sensing 231 repetition 21 representation 39f repraesentatum 24 research programmes (Lakatos) 78 resententialization 51 residuum of the analysis of experience 124, 126ff, 196 responsibility 121ff, 235f, 240 risklessness 230 risks, unnoticeable 234 robotization 232,239 Sachsysteme (systems of artifacts) 238 satisficing 85 scanning tunnel microscope 6, 144, 158 schema(s), scheme(s) 7ff (re)activation of lOf neurophysiological 17f, 22 psychological 9f transcendental 8 schema-games 210 schema-theoretic approach in the philosophy of science 87f schematical operating (logics, mathematics) 139f Schematisat(e) 70 schematization 103f, 133, 119, 138 scheme(or -a)-interpretations 5, lOff, 16, 19ff

265

Subject Index Schrodinger's cat 158ff Schrodinger's wave equation interpretation 156f, 183 second nature 229 self 34 separable, separability 169, 193 separateness, pristine 43 signal beam 165 signal detector 164 skepticism 207 social, the 3f social constructs 4 socio-systems technology 234 socio-technical systems 232 something interpreted 124, 126, 128, 197, 207f space, spaciality 103f spell out (appearances) 123f, 128 spiral of interpretation (levels) 205 stabilizing 2 1 , 66 statement as such (Satz an sich; see proposition) 38 strange attractors 193 structurability, structuring {Strukturierbarkeit{en)) 135f, 138, 178, 198f structural core 79f, 82 structural meaning (Carnap) 98 structuralist (non-statement) view/ approach 78ff structure(s) of reality 135, 180 subject 34, 43f, 186, 195, 213 subjectivity 213 subschema 10 succession-dependence 103f superposition (of states) 159, 167, 170 suppositions 40 supra- or super-interpreting being (see meta-interpreting being) symbolic universe 229

synchronization 17 synthesis, constitutive (Kant/ Hossenfelder) 122 synthesis, interpretative (Kant/ Hossenfelder) 122f, 126 systems autonomy 231 systems technology & method(s) 227, 228 systems-technocratic 234 Tatsachen (facts) 39 technology 85f, 217ff 30 characteristics of new technologies 227-236 classical/traditional interpretation of 225 intelligent 23 pragmatic/realistic philosophy of 216ff, 225 technology-oriented approach to philosophy of science 84ff technomedia 229 telematization 232 teleportation 99 theoretical concepts 51 theoretical entities 98, 143ff theoretical progress 59 theory dynamics 77 theory element(s) 79 theory of interpretation (Kant) 105f, 120, 126, 128, 137 theory/ies 72-89 operative 73f structuralist model approach 78ff substantive 73 theory-laden (-impregnated) 3, 56, 76 thing in itself 103, 125, 197, 200 thinking 35, 215 time(-impregnatedness) 103 transcendency 43

266


transcendental 120f apperception (Kant) 120 philosophy, problematistic 120 question(s) 116 turn 121 truth, (true) 27, 4 7 - 7 0 , 74f, 99f coherence theory of 52 correspondence theory of 49f, 53f generation potential 6 1 , 63f interpretationist idea of 66, 69f necessary 52 pragmatized 48f redundancy theory of 51 T-theoretical concepts 81f T-theoreticity 82 tunneling effect 158 uncertainty principle/relations (Heisenberg) 157f, 162 Understanding (Verstand, Kant) 132, 142, 200 unseparated reality 187 " W-decisions 168 " Urgeschiedenheif 43 Urinterpretationen 12, 191 user-friendliness 231

varieties of interpretation 12 verificators 67 verisimilitude 48f, 58, 106 Vernunft (reason, Kant) 200 Verschrdnkung (entanglement) 174 Verstand (Kant; see Understanding) 2 Vorstellen 40 Vorstellung (imagination, Kant) 8, 111, 125, 130, 142 Wahrheitsgenerierungspotential 61 f wave-like (character) 151ff, 155f which-path information 165 Wirkungsquantum 157 world (factor(s); see impregnation) 191f world, external (see real) vii, 180, 191,208-211 world in itself (see thing in itself) world version 21 Of Young's experiment (see double-slit experiment) 151

The author would like to thank Andrea Gammer, MA, for her diligent typing.

Grasping Reality addresses the methodology of a sophisticated realistic approach to scientific as well as everyday recognition by using schemes and interpretative constructs to analyze theories and the practice of recognition from a hypothesis-realistic vantage point. The three main theses are: (1) Any "grasping" of real objects, processes, entities etc. is deeply dependent on scheme interpretations and interpretative constructs — in short, on using schemes and constructs; the same applies to any sophisticated actions encroaching on reality; (2) a sophisticated interpretationdependent realism is sketched out and U i a S p i n g if©alliy defended from a methodological, nonAn Interpretation-Realistic Epistemology foundational, epistemological point of view called pragmatic realism; (3) the most provocative thesis is generalized from the role of the well-known preparationist interpretation of quantum theory to everyday knowledge — the interpretative structuring and preparing of the experimental makeup as known in quantum mechanics is not just a special case but the rather general case of gaining any knowledge in science and everyday recognition. An appendix provides an overview regarding a realistic and pragmatic philosophy of technology, including the so-called new information technologies.

ISBN 981-238-024-8

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