WI TTGENSTEI NI AN INSTRUMENTALISM 77

mentalists give in favour of their position, and in particular, in

favour of the inference-licence view.
There seem to be three of them:
(a) that it enables us to sidestep the problem of induction;
(b) that it correctly describes how scientists and others
(c) that it has been established by Lewis Carroll.
actually argue;
I will consider each of these arguments in turn.
2. Defending Wittgenstein
(a) Sidestepping the problem of induction.
Put very crudely, the first argument goes like this: as Hume showed,
no general theory can be established as true from observation or
experiment; therefore, general theories are not true (or false)
propositions at all. The argument is, of course, patently invalid. It
rests on the hidden assumption that a statement can only be true (or
false) if it can be established as true (or false). It rests, we might say,
on a conflation of truth with certainty.
Nobody has put the argument quite so crudely as this. But Schlick
came quite close to doing so. Schlick read in Wittgensteins Tractatus
that:
Suppose that I am given all elementary propositions: then I can simply ask
what propositions I can construct out of them. And there I have allpropositions,
and that fixes their limits. (4.51)
A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. ( 5 )
All propositions are results of truth-operations on elementary propositions.
(5.3)
All truth-functions are results of successive applications to elementary proposi-
tions of a finite number of truth-operations. (5.32)
Schlick took the elementary propositions to be observation state-
ments, particular statements which can be verified by the senses.
(As usual, there is some dispute about whether Schlicks under-
standing was correct.) Given this reading, it follows that general
78 ALAN MUSGKAVE
propositions are not propositions at all, since they are not (finite)
truth-functions of elementary propositions. On the verifiability theory
of meaning which Schlick extracted from Wittgensteins Tractatus,
general propositions are meaningless (neither true nor false):
I t has often been remarked that, strictly, we can never speak of the absolute
verification of a law . . . the above-mentioned fact means that a natural law, in
principle, does not have the logical character of a statement, but is, rather, a
prescription for the formation of statements.
Schlick proceeds to sidestep the problem of induction:
The problem of induction consists in asking for a logical justification of
universal statements about reality . . . We recognise, with Hume, that there is no
logical justification: there can be none, simply because they are not genuine
statements.12
Echoes of this argument are to be found in our later Wittgensteinians.
Watson says that expressions like correct and incorrect (and by
implication, true and false) are not applicable to laws of nature,
because:
I t seems that the expression the correct law of nature is not a proper gram-
matical expression because, not knowing how to establish the truth of a
statement employing this form of speech, we have not given it a meaning.13
(Watson 1938, p. 51)
Schlick, op. d., pp. 151, 156 (see footnote 8). As Popper points out, a similar argu-
ment led Carnap to espouse the view that natural laws are not indispensable for
making predictions. Carnap found that not only could universal laws not be verified,
but that in Carnaps system they could not be well-confirmed or probabilified
either: in Carnaps system the degree of confirmation, which is identified with the logical
probability, of a universal law is always zero. Whereupon Carnap eliminated laws
from predictive scientific arguments, saying (with Mill) that such arguments really
proceed from past instances to the next instance.
Later Watson subscribes to the logical twin of the verifiability theory of meaning,
the doctrine of operaticma/ definition: Meaning is connected with the method of testing
the truth of a statement which employs the expression whose meaning is in question.
I t is so in physics. The exact meaning to be given to the word length in a statement
such as The length of this iron rod is 25.30 cm. depends on the degree of precision of
the method which one has in mind for measuring it. (op. cit., p. 76) . The difficulty is,
of course, that all measuring techniques being to some extent or other imprecise,
precise particular statements are no more verifiable than universal statements. That is
why Watson has to say that as they stand they are not proper statements at all, and
WI TTGENSTEI NI AN INSTRUMENTALISM 79
Hanson agrees:
The expression the correct law of nature is an improper one from a logical
point of view. How can we establish the truth (or the falsity) of a statement
employing an expression of this form? What would count as evidence one way
or the other? If these questions cannot be answered, then we have given no
meaning to the statement in the first place. And this is precisely what I am
adv0~ati ng.l ~ (Hanson 1969, p. 324)
And then there is a curious argument, implicit in both Toulmin and
Hanson, which goes something like this. If laws and principles were
true or false statements, then because of the logical problem of
induction we would have to admit that no law or principle could be
regarded as established; but some laws and principles are established;
therefore, laws and principles are not true or false statements.
that we must interpret, say, The length of this iron rod is 25.30 cm. to mean
something like The length of this iron rod is 25.30fe cm., where e represents the
degree of precision of the method of measurement which the speaker has in mind.
This is reminiscent of Duhems argument that, measurement being imprecise and
measurements being finite in number, any body of data is consistent with a multiplicity
of precise laws, hence none of these laws is true (or false). Or of Duhems argument
that laws cannot be true or false statements because they are all provisional and liable
to future overthrow. (See Duhem 1954, pp. 171-173.) The truth-certainty conflation
is a hidden assumption of all these arguments.
l4 There is a perfectly obvious answer to Hansons secondquestion: what would count
as evidence for or against a statement like The correct law of thermal expansion of
metals is L is, quite simp1y;whatever would count as evidence for or against L.
In switching from the stronger question (How can we establish . . .?) to the weaker
one (What would count as evidence . . .?), Hanson robs the argument of any force it
possessed.
A similar switch pervades Larry Laudans recent defence of the claim that truth
(or closeness to the truth) is not, and should not be, an aim of science. Laudan slips
constantly from a weak sceptical thesis (we cannot demonstrate or knowfor sure that
any theory is true or close to the truth) to a strong one (we can never reasonah1.v
presume or have any confidence that any scientific theory is true or close to the truth):
see, for example, Laudan 1977, pp. 125-1 27. This is simply to ignore without argument
the fallibilist or critical rationalist view that we can reasonablq presume to be true
propositions that wehave not demonstrated to be true, propositions which for all we
know for sure might turn out to be false.
l 5 This, in essentials, is the argument of Toulmin 1953, pp. 80-83 and Hanson 1969,
pp. 331-337. But it is not, of course, stated as straightforwardly as this: for the
subtleties, see below, pp. 102-103.
Toulmin has a further argument which is patently invalid. He points out, against
80 ALAN MUSCRAVE
This argument, or cluster of arguments, need not detain us long.
Truth and certainty are not the same: it is perfectly obvious that a
statement can be true even though we are not, and never will be,
certain that it is true.16 The verifiability theory of meaning is just a
mistake. And the realist view that scientific theories are true or false
statements need not be combined with the dogmatist view that we
can know for sure which is which: there is, as Popper stressed some
time ago, the possibility of a fallibilist or critical realism. (See Popper
1963, pp. 97-119; also Musgrave 1977.)
Nor, we might add, is much achieved by side-stepping the problem
of induction by advocating the inference-licence view of theories.
Humean sceptical questions about the certainty of theories or the
reliability of predictions drawn from them, can simply be rephrased
as sceptical questions about the usefulness of inference-licences or
the reliability of predictions drawn according to them. So if an-
Mach, that we cannot validly deduce theories from observation reports: . . . there can
be no question of observation reports and theoretical doctrines being connected in
the way Mach thought: the logical relation between them cannot be a deductive one
(op. cit., p. 41). But later he takes himself to have shown not only that theoriescannot be
deduced from observation statements, but also that observation statements cannot be
deduced from theories (together, of course, with initial conditions). He says as we
have seen, these cannot, as Mach supposed, be thought of as deductively related one
to another, and proceeds directly to the inference-licence view of theories ( op. cit.,
p. 84). For the invalidity of this argument, see Bartley 1962, p. 30, footnote 1.
l 6 Trivialities like this should not need repeating, yet they do. In his article on
Popper in the Encyclopedia of philosophy, Hamlyn sums up Poppers view that
certainty is unattainable in science with the slogan Truth itself is just an illusion
(vol. 111, p. 37). Again, Kekes writes: Truth, however, is unattainable; the ideal can
be approximated, but it can never be achieved. That this is so follows from what has
been said up to now. For to claim that a theory is true requires that it be provable,
and to prove a theory requires the elimination of the possibility of error. Not only is it
impossible to eliminate all sources of error, but even if this were accomplished, nobody
would know that it had been done. (Kekes 1972, p. 304).
Strangely, even Popper, while he is protesting Hamlyns misunderstanding, aids and
abets it himself, italics and all: the sentence to which his protesting footnote is appended
reads Thus the idea of truth is absolutist, but no claim can be made for absolute
certainty: we are seekers f or truth but we are not its possessors. (Popper 1972, p. 46 f.)
But we can seek the truth andfind it without being cerrain that we have found it. To
possess truth does not require that we are certain of it - I can p0ssess.a Van Gogh
without being certain, indeed, without even suspecting, that it is a Van Gogh!
WITTGENSTEINIAN INSTRUMENTALISM 81
swering Hume was one of the aims of the exercise, then we must
conclude that the aim has not been achieved.
(b) Describing how people argue.
The second argument for the inference-licence view is that it cor-
rectly describes how people argue, because as a matter of (psycho-
logical or linguistic) fact arguers do not employ theories, laws and
generalisations as premises in their arguments. This argument goes
back to Mill:
. . . one set of writers represent the syllogism as the correct analysis of what the
mind actuallyperforrns in discovering the proving the larger half of the truths . . .
which we believe.
[But] though there is always a process of reasoning or inference.. ., the syllogism
is not a correct analysis of that process of reasoning or inference; which is, on the
contrary ... of the nature of induction. (Mill 1879, 11, iii, 1, 5; italics added)
Thus Mill concludes that what the mind actually performs is al-
ways an inference from particulars to particulars.
Wittgensteinians see their task not so much as describing how
people think as describing how they talk: charting the logical geo-
graphy of our concepts, as evinced in the things people say. Thus
HarrC writes:
But if we pause for a moment to consider the way instantiation is actually
performed we see that purely logical considerations apart the [deductive]
schematizations above do not truly represent the process. The natural process of
prediction of an instance is to state the instance as a consequence of another
instance, for example, that the creature is herbivorous follows from the fact that
its a rabbit. The justification of this move . . . takes us back to a generalization
or its corresponding conditional . . . These are not premises since they validate
but do not belong in the argument that expresses the deduction. (Harre 1960,
p. 79 f.; italics added)
The same argument leads to the inference-licence treatment of laws
of nature. Hanson says:
l 7 Mill regards reasoning or inferring as obtaining new information from old. And
since the conclusion of a valid deductive argument is contained in the premises, it
follows immediately that deductive arguments are not genuine processes of reasoning
or inferring. Here Mill was but one of a long line of thinkers (which included Bacon,
Descartes, and Locke) who complained that deductive logic (which meant, in effect,
Aristotelian logic) was not a genuine logic of discovery.
6 - Theoria 2-3: 1980