REALITY, TRUTH AND

EVIDENCE
IX SIMPOSIO INTERNACIONAL
DE DIDÀCTICA DE LAS
CIENCIAS SOCIALES EN EL
ÀMBITO IBEROAMERICANO

Facultat d’Educació – Universitat

de Barcelona
2 OCTOBER 2019
Jean BRICMONT
Institut de Recherche en
Mathématique et Physique
UCLouvain
jean.bricmont@uclouvain.be
BELGIUM
A Physicist in wonderland.
1. A Parody.
It has thus become increasingly
apparent that physical “reality”,
no less than social “reality”, is
at bottom a social and linguis-
tic construct; that scientific “knowl-
edge”, far from being objective,
reflects and encodes the dom-
inant ideologies and power re-
lations of the culture that pro-
duced it; that the truth claims
of science are inherently theory-
laden and self-referential;
and consequently, that the dis-
course of the scientific commu-
nity, for all its undeniable value,
cannot assert a privileged epis-
temological status with respect
to counter-hegemonic narratives
emanating from dissident or marginal-
ized communities.
Alan Sokal
“Transgressing the
boundaries: Toward a
transformative hermeneutics
of quantum gravity”
2. STRANGE BUT REAL STATE-
MENTS:
[T]he validity of theoretical propo-
sitions in the sciences is in no
way affected by factual evidence.
K. GERGEN (social psycholo-
gist)
The natural world has a small
or non-existent role in the con-
struction of scientific knowledge.
H. COLLINS (sociologist of knowl-
edge)
Since the settlement of a con-
troversy is the cause of Nature’s
representation, not the conse-
quence, we can never use the
outcome — Nature — to ex-
plain how and why a contro-
versy has been settled.
LATOUR (sociologist of knowl-
edge)
We do not wish to say that facts
do not exist nor that there is
no such thing as reality. Our
point is that ”out there ness” is
a consequence of scientific work
rather than its cause.
LATOUR AND WOOLGAR (so-
ciologists of knowledge)
For the relativist [such as our-
selves] there is no sense attached
to the idea that some standards
or beliefs are really rational as
distinct from merely locally ac-
cepted as such.
BARNES AND BLOOR (soci-
ologist of knowledge)
Science legitimates itself by link-
ing its discoveries with power,
a connection which determines
(not merely influences) what counts
as reliable knowledge . . .
S. ARONOWITZ (cultural the-
orist)
Recent social studies of science
and technology have made avail-
able a very strong social con-
structionist argument for all forms
of knowledge claims, most cer-
tainly and especially scientific
ones.
D. HARAWAY (Gender stud-
ies)
 Corruption of language:
He tells his truth (meaning: he gives
his opinion)
She refutes that claim (meaning:
she rejects or contradicts that claim).
Systematic confusion between facts
and representation or perception of
facts.
Scare quotes around “truth”, “re-
ality” etc.
General avoidance of anything that
sounds “objective”, not to speak of
“universal”.
 GOAL OF THIS TALK: ANALYZE
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THOSE
STATEMENTS

BY GOING TO THE ROOT OF

THE PROBLEM.

WHICH IS THE IDEALIST PHILO-

SOPHICAL TRADITION, AND ITS
SOCIALIZATION.

WHAT DO I MEAN?
REALISM AND IDEALISM

1. REALISM.
• There exists a world independent
of human consciousness and this
world is structured; it has its own
properties.
• A proposition is true or false de-
pending on whether it reflects or
not the properties of that world.
This means that the truth or false-
hood of a proposition is indepen-
dent of the person who expresses
it, or of the group to which he/she
“belongs”.
• We can know true propositions about
the world, for example, through
our sensory experiences.
• However, our senses can deceive
us; therefore, we can never be ab-
solutely certain that our knowl-
edge is true.
• This knowledge is human. It is
the result of a specific interaction
between “us” and the world; that
interaction depends on our biol-
ogy, our history and our culture.
Other species have other types of
interactions, with the same world.
2. IDEALISM.

Wait a minute! (“critical moment”)

• In order to interact with the world,
we need our senses.
• In order to talk about it, we need
our languages.
• In order to name things, we need
concepts.
• In order to have theories about
the world, we need conceptual schemes.
 Therefore, isn’t what we call the
“structure of the world” actually a
reflection of the structures of our minds?

And isn’t the “structure of our mind”

actually the product of our culture,
the historical period we live in, our
gender, our social class?

(Socialization of idealism-linked to
the development of social sciences).
 Thus, when we talk about “the world”,
aren’t we in reality talking about our
senses, representations, concepts, or
expressing what is determined by our
culture, the historical period we live
in, our gender, our social class?

Or (weaker form) should we not, in

order to understand our discourses
about the world study FIRST our
senses, languages, concepts, concep-
tual schemes or the effects on our
thought of our cultures, historical pe-
riods, gender and classes?
 Arguments in favor of ideal-
ism.
IDEALISM IS OFTEN BASED ON
SKEPTICISM (OBJECTIVE KNOWL-
EDGE, WHICH REALISM CLAIMS
TO ACHIEVE, IS IMPOSSIBLE):
 1. SKEPTICISM WITH RESPECT
TO OUR SENSES
It is a question of fact, whether
the perceptions of the senses
be produced by external objects,
resembling them: how shall this
question be determined? By
experience surely; as all other
questions of a like nature. But
here experience is, and must
be entirely silent. The mind
has never anything present to
it but the perceptions, and can-
not possibly reach any expe-
rience of their connexion with
objects. The supposition of such
a connexion is, therefore, with-
out any foundation in reason-
ing.
D. HUME (An Enquiry Con-
cerning Human Understanding)
2. SKEPTICISM WITH RE-
SPECT TO INDUCTION
Are we rationally justi-
fied in reasoning from re-
peated instances of which
we have experience to in-
stances we have had no
experience? Hume’s un-
relenting answer is: No,
we are not justified. . . My
own view is that Hume’s
answer to this problem is
right.
K. POPPER (Logic of Sci-
entific Discovery)
3. SKEPTICISM BASED ON
UNDERDETERMINATION OF
THEORIES BY DATA:
Any statement can be held true
come what may, if we make dras-
tic enough adjustments elsewhere
in the system. Even a state-
ment very close to the periph-
ery [i.e. close to direct experi-
ence] can be held true in the
face of recalcitrant experience
by pleading hallucination or by
amending certain statements of
the kind called logical laws.
QUINE (Two Dogmas of Em-
piricism)
COMMON “CONCLUSIONS”
DRAWN FROM IDEAL-
ISM

1.REDEFINITIONS OF TRUTH.

TRUTH AS CONSENSUS:
Philosophers on my side of the
argument answer that objectiv-
ity is not a matter of corre-
sponding to objects but a mat-
ter of getting together with other
subjects — that there is noth-
ing to objectivity except inter-
subjectivity.
R. RORTY (Truth and Progress:
Philosophical Papers)
OR PRAGMATISM:
What people like Kuhn, Der-
rida and I believe is that it is
pointless to ask whether there
really are mountains or whether
it is merely convenient for us to
talk about mountains.
R. RORTY (Truth and Progress:
Philosophical Papers)
OR COMBINE BOTH INTO
RELATIVISM
. . . the only criterion we have
for applying the word ‘true’ is
justification and justification is
always relative to an audience.
So it is also relative to that au-
dience’s lights – the purpose that
such an audience wants served
and the situation in which it
finds itself.
R. RORTY (Truth and Progress:
Philosophical Papers)
RELATIVISM IS ALSO DE-
RIVED FROM THE STUDY
OF HISTORY
Chemists could not, therefore,
simply accept Dalton’s theory
on the evidence, for much of
that was still negative. Instead,
even after accepting the the-
ory, they had still to beat na-
ture into line, a process which,
in the event, took almost an-
other generation. When it was
done, even the percentage com-
position of well- known com-
pounds was different. The data
themselves had changed. That
is the last of the senses in which
we may want to say that after
a revolution scientists work in
a different world.
There is, I think, no theory-
independent way to reconstruct
phrases like ‘really there’; the
notion of a match between the
ontology of a theory and its ‘real’
counterpart in nature now strikes
me as illusive in principle. Be-
sides, as a historian, I am im-
pressed with the implausibility
of the view.
T. KUHN (The Structure of Sci-
entific Revolutions)
OR:
Each society has its regime of
truth, its “general politics” of
truth: that is, the types of dis-
course which it accepts and makes
function as true; the mecha-
nisms and instances which en-
able one to distinguish true and
false statements, the means by
which each is sanctioned; the
techniques and procedures ac-
corded value in the acquisition
of truth; the status of those who
are charged with saying what
counts as true.
M. FOUCAULT (POWER/KNOWLEDGE)
 RELATIVISM DERIVED FROM
SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
The relativist, like everyone else,
is under the necessity to sort
out beliefs, accepting some and
rejecting others. He will natu-
rally have preferences and these
will typically coincide with those
of others in his locality. The
words ‘true’ and ‘false’ provide
the idiom in which those eval-
uations are expressed, and the
words ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’
will have a similar function.
B. BARNES AND D.
BLOOR
 RELATIVISM= IDEALISM + DE-
COLONIZATION.

INSTEAD OF HAVING A VIEW

OF THE WORLD PRODUCED BY
A UNIVERSAL HUMAN MIND (BUT
IN REALITY, WESTERN, MALE
ETC.)

EACH CULTURE AND EACH PE-

RIOD CREATES ITS OWN “WORLD”.
 CRITIQUE OF IDEALISM

IS THERE ANY TRUTH IN ALL

THIS?

-MAYBE SOLIPSISM OR RADI-

CAL SKEPTICISM ARE IRREFUTABLE.

-BUT, BEYOND THAT, NO.

-ALTHOUGH THERE IS A REAL

PROBLEM (LATER).
OFTEN THE ARGUMENT FOR
IDEALISM TAKES THE FORM
OF THE GEM:

You cannot have trees- without-

the-mind in mind, without hav-
ing them in mind. Therefore,
you cannot have trees-without-
the-mind in mind.
D. STOVE (The Plato Cult)
OR

We can eat oysters only inso-

far as they are brought under
the physiological and chemical
conditions which are the pre-
suppositions of the possibility
of being eaten.
Therefore, we cannot eat oys-
ters as they are in themselves.
D. STOVE (The Plato Cult)
Or, even more bluntly:
“We have eyes, therefore we can-
not see” (Alan Olding).
PURE GEMS
The mind ... is deluded to think
it can and does conceive of bod-
ies existing unthought of, or with-
out the mind, though at the
same time they are apprehended
by, or exist in, itself.
G. BERKELEY (Principles of
Human Understanding)

Or HUME above: “The mind

has never anything present to
it but the perceptions, and can-
not possibly reach any expe-
rience of their connexion with
objects. The supposition of such
a connexion is, therefore, with-
out any foundation in reason-
ing.”
If we treat outer objects as things
in themselves, it is quite im-
possible to understand how we
could arrive at a knowledge of
their reality outside of us, since
we have to rely merely on the
representation which is in us.
For we cannot be sentient [of
what is] outside ourselves, but
only [of what is] in us, and the
whole of our self-consciousness
therefore yields nothing save merely
our own determinations.
I. KANT (Critique of Pure Rea-
son)
All that is not thought is pure
nothingness; since we can think
only thought and all the words
we use to speak of things can
express only thoughts, to say
that there is something other
than thought, is therefore an
affirmation which can have no
meaning.
H. POINCARE (The Value of
Science)
 IDEALISM HAS BEEN CRITICIZED
AND DERIDED FOR A LONG TIME
Thus when my brain excites in
my soul the sensation of a tree
or of a house I pronounce with-
out hesitation that a tree or a
house really exists outside me
of which I know the place, the
size and other properties. Ac-
cordingly we find neither man
nor beast who calls this truth
in question.
If a clown take it into his head
to conceive such a doubt, and
should say, for example, he does
not believe that his bailiff ex-
ists though he stands in his pres-
ence, he would be taken for a
madman and with good rea-
son; but when a philosopher
advances such sentiments, he
expects we should admire his
knowledge and sagacity, which
infinitely surpass the apprehen-
sions of the vulgar.
L. EULER (Letters to a Ger-
manPrincess; Letter XCVII Refu-
tation of the Idealists)
Those philosophers, madam, are
termed idealists who, conscious
only of their own existence and
of a succession of internal sen-
sations, do not admit anything
else; an extravagant system which
should to my thinking have been
the offspring of blindness itself;
and yet, to the disgrace of the
human mind and philosophy, it
is the most difficult to combat
though the most absurd.
DENIS DIDEROT
 In a more humoristic version, the
French philosopher (by training) and
journalist Jean-François Revel, remem-
bers an exercise he had to do while
studying philosophy, namely answer-
ing the following questions:
Given that a rock is a creation
of my understanding, how is it
possible that I might be killed
by a falling rock, since in that
case I would be smashed by one
of my own notions? Can one
commit suicide with the help
of one’s own concepts? Or be
surprised and assassinated by
it?
And Revel adds: “A problem to
be urgently solved, as everyone can
see.”
 EVEN HUME REJECTED SKEP-
TICISM IN PRACTICE

Sceptical principles may flour-

ish and triumph in the philos-
ophy lecture-room, where it is
indeed hard if not impossible
to refute them. But as soon
as they come out of the shad-
ows, are confronted by the real
things that our beliefs and emo-
tions are addressed to, and thereby
come into conflict with the more
powerful principles of our na-
ture, sceptical principles van-
ish like smoke and leave the most
determined sceptic in the same
believing condition as other mor-
tals.
DAVID HUME
WHAT ABOUT IDEALISM DE-
RIVED FROM HISTORY?
Perhaps evidence is never ”de-
cisive” in the sense of show-
ing how the world actually is.
If so, then our claim that the
disputes between Ptolemy and
Copernicus, Galen and Harvey,
etc. were rightly decided could
be brought into question. The
Copernicans, it might be ar-
gued, having accepted the new
paradigm came to live in a Coper-
nican world, but Ptolemaic as-
tronomers would never have ex-
perienced the supposedly deci-
sive evidence.
Perhaps the appearance of the
success and progress of science
is only an illusion, the ultimate
propaganda produced by the win-
ner. Of course the successful
paradigm will regard itself as
being right, will proclaim to the
world that it tells the truth,
will manufacture “evidence” of
its correctness- but perhaps this
is merely the will of the stronger,
not the voice of nature.
But no acceptable argument could
possibly lead us to such a con-
clusion. After all, we have much
stronger, direct, irrefutable ev-
idence that the earth rotates,
that the blood circulates, that
matter is made of atoms than
we have grounds to believe any
epistemology or account of sci-
entific practice. [. . . ] the so-
cial constructivist can pile all
his works in one pan of the bal-
ance, and climb in with his fam-
ily and friends as well, while
Foucault [the one of the pendu-
lum ] or Harvey or Cavendish
outweighs him on the other side
with a scrap of paper from a
laboratory journal.
T. MAUDLIN (Kuhn Defanged)
 GENERAL ARGUMENT AGAINST
IDEALISM:
-EITHER IDEALISM IS AN AR-
GUMENT FOR RADICAL SKEP-
TICISM OR SOLIPSISM

-OR, IT RELIES ON SPECIFIC

CLAIMS ABOUT OUR MEANS OF
PERCEPTION, OUR CONCEPTS,
OUR MODES OF THINKING, OUR
EXPERIMENTAL APPARATUSES,
OUR HISTORY, OUR EVOLUTION,
ETC.

AND IT PRESUPPOSES THAT

OBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE IS POS-
SIBLE, i.e. IT PRESUPPOSES THE
TRUTH OF REALISM.
 RICHARD RORTY FOR EXAM-
PLE ASSUMES THAT WE KNOW
WHAT THE REAL CONSENSUS
IS OR WHAT IS REALLY USE-
FUL.

THOMAS KUHN ASSUMES THAT

WE KNOW REAL FACTS ABOUT
HISTORY

MICHEL FOUCAULT ASSUMES

THAT WE KNOW REAL FACTS
ABOUT “REGIMES OF TRUTH”.
 -The above arguments could be ar-
guments for a specific skepticism: an
objective study of history, sociology
or perception could in principle un-
dermine our trust in the natural sci-
ences.
-But then comes the issue of pri-
orities (Maudlin): what do we know
best? Physics or history, sociology,
psychology of perception etc.?
-The (often implicit) assumption of
social scientists is that what we know
best is ourselves, our history, society
etc.-by introspection. but that is an
illusion!
 Another wrong turn: the idea that
all science does is to save the data, to
“save the appearances”, to account
for our perceptions, ou subjective ex-
periences, etc.
If all you want is to be able to
predict your experiences, the
rational strategy is clear: Don’t
revise your theories, just arrange
to have fewer experiences; close
your eyes, put your fingers in
your ears, and don’t move. Now,
why didn’t Newton think of that?
Surely this stuff about the busi-
ness of science being to save
the appearances gets the prior-
ities backward, and the tail has
commenced to wag the dog. What
goes on in science is not that
we try to have theories that ac-
commodate our experiences; it’s
closer that we try to have expe-
riences that adjudicate among
our theories
J. FODOR The dogma that didn’t
bark (a fragment of a natural-
ized epistemology)
 IN SUMMARY, THERE IS NO CO-
HERENT IDEALIST OR RELATIVIST
OR ANTI-REALIST POSITION.
 Real Problems
In the end of the day, we are all
realists; the question is about what?
Or: what and whom to believe?

• The sciences?
• The pseudo-sciences?
• Traditional and religious beliefs?
 Recall Hume’s argument against be-
liefs in miracles and extend it to skep-
ticism with respect to all discourses:
scientific, pseudo-scientific, political,
religious etc.

• For the sciences, we have two kinds

of answers: coincidence between
theoretical predictions and obser-
vations and technology.
• For the pseudo-sciences, no such
answers (otherwise they would be
sciences).
• For the traditional and religious
beliefs: most of those beliefs are in
essence pseudo-scientific (belief in
miracles, in the efficacy of prayers
etc.). But there is also a meta-
physical aspect of religion (“the-
ology”).
 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
SCIENCE AND PSEUDO-SCIENCE
IS NOT SHARP:

Inflation
after the Big Bang Traditional Medicine

v v v v v v
? ?

Atomic String Cold Astrology,

theory theory fusion creationism,
Judaism,
Christianity,
Islam,
Hinduism
A very rough depiction of the contin-
uum from genuine science to pseu-
doscience, based on the strength of
the empirical evidence for or against
the given theory and on the sound-
ness of the methodology employed by
the theory’s advocates. This graph
should be interpreted qualitatively,
not quantitatively.
 But there are real problems: we
(ordinary citizens, me included) need
to trust scientific experts.
Trust in authority (politicians, me-
dia) is collapsing in our society (often
for very good reasons).
To the extent that scientists are seen
to be linked to the state, to the mil-
itary, or to large corporations, the
confidence in them suffers the same
fate as the one in authority in gen-
eral.
I have no solution to offer to that
real and crucial problem.
But that problem is not philosoph-
ical!
 As far as philosophy is concerned,
a good summary is provided by P.
Boghossian:
The intuitive view is that there
is a way things are that is in-
dependent of human opinion,
and that we are capable of ar-
riving at beliefs about how they
are that are objectively reason-
able, binding on anyone capa-
ble of appreciating the relevant
evidence regardless of their ide-
ological perspective. Difficult
as these notions may be, it is a
mistake to think that philoso-
phy has disclosed any reasons
for abandoning them.
P. BOGHOSSIAN (Fear of Knowl-
edge: Against Relativism and
Constructivism)