The Theory-Observation Distinction I Fodor’s Distinction

Abstract

Abstract What do Jerry Fordor and Bas van Fraassen, the archetypical scientific realist and his antirealist shadow, have in common? They’re both defenders of the theoryobservation distinction (van Fraassen 1980; Fodor 1984). It isn’t surprising that a realist and an antirealist should agree about something, but it is curious that van Fraassen’s and Fodor’s defenses of the theory-observation distinction play diametrically opposite roles in their philosophical agendas. Van Fraassen needs it to support his antirealism; Fodor wants it in support of his realism. Van Fraassen needs the distinction to protect antirealism from the charge of incoherence. Antirealists wish to ascribe a more exalted epistemic status to the observational import of a theory than to its nonobservational claims. This position would be utterly untenable if the observational import couldn’t be distinguished from the rest. And, in fact, denying the coherence of the theory-observation distinction has been a popular realist gambit in the debate about scientific realism (Maxwell 1962; Friedman 1982; Foss 1984; Creath 1985; Musgrave 1985).