NAMES AND THE PRACTICE OF PHYSICS
Given that scientific practice is primarily concerned with distinguishability and re-identification, it should come as no surprise that physicists appear to name and refer to objects in terms of a cluster of descriptive properties. This may suggest that support for the Descriptivist theory of names can be drawn from scientific practice but, of course, a certain degree of metaphysical care must be taken at this point. If individuality is collapsed into distinguishability, then this suggestion might appear re 13213o146n asonable. On the other hand,
end p.210
if one sought to maintain this distinction, then one might insist that such practice bears on issues of distinguishability only and the Causal or hybrid views could be retained in the face of practice (of course it may do nothing to resolve the philosophical difficulties these views face). In other words, scientific practice itself does not determine which view of proper names should be adopted.
This is important because it might appear that this practice does, in fact, bear unequivocally on this issue. Thus, Dalla Chiara and Toraldo di Francia consider the following interesting case taken from astrophysics: 38 two quasars are discovered lying very close together and are initially labelled differently, by Q1 and Q2, say. It is then suggested that 'in fact' these are just two images of the same astrophysical object, whose light has been refracted by a 'gravitational lens'. As Dalla Chiara and Toraldo di Francia point out, this example is not quite comparable with that of the Morning Star and Evening Star above, since Q1 and Q2 are observed at the same time. Hence, they claim the names cannot be simply dispensed with. In other words, the underlying metaphysical issue is not that of re-identification through time, which is what the identity of the Morning Star and Evening Star effects, but, rather, that of distinguishability and individuality.
What are our options here? Well, as Dalla Chiara and Toraldo di Francia note, one could insist that the referents of the names are just the spots of light themselves, so that the statement 'Q1 is identical to Q2' is actually rendered as strictly false. Although they do not pursue this line themselves, such a move has obvious positivistic overtones and even the anti-realist will, these days, accept that names can be used to designate unobservable objects lying beyond the appearances. In this case, the names designate the stellar object giving rise to the two spots of light. Now, however, Dalla Chiara and Toraldo di Francia insist that ". when we use names to designate stellar objects instead of light spots, we use them as abbreviated descriptions". 39 Of course, the description will incorporate the cluster of properties deemed to be 'essential' by the astrophysical community; these will be properties such as luminosity and not, most importantly, the positions in the sky of the separate light spots. Dalla Chiara and Toraldo di Francia take this to show that ". even in macrophysics, the legitimacy of a sharp distinction between true proper names [presumably in the sense of the Causal or 'hybrid' theories] and descriptions may be highly questionable". 40
end p.211
Searle has drawn on the example of storms and hurricanes to make a similar point: these are-famously-given names by scientists on a descriptive basis, where the description crucially involves a specification of location in terms of latitude and longitude and is thus ultimately spatio-temporal. 41 But, of course, these claims for the role of descriptions in physics are contentious. In particular, the practices that are drawn upon in these examples may appear to undermine the distinction between the Causal and Descriptivist approaches only if one has given up on, or failed to make, the prior metaphysical distinction between distinguishability and individuality. That scientists use descriptions for identification says nothing about whether the 'true proper name' of the quasar or storm can be reduced to such descriptions. As Gracia emphasizes,
. even though the scientist may know the individual only through some kind of description, when he imposes the name, he tags the individual. There are then two aspects to be considered in this process: (1) the epistemic paraphernalia through which the scientist becomes aware of the individual out there-and all of this involves description-and (2) the act of giving the individual a name-and the latter connection has no descriptive mediation. 42
Thus, it is certainly not the case that either the Causal or 'hybrid' theories are undermined by such examples. However, an argument has been put forward to the effect that Kripke's view is ruled out by quantum physics. In the next section we shall consider this claim and as we shall see, the argument is not entirely straightforward.
|
