Synthese (2010) 173:299–315

DOI 10.1007/s11229-008-9427-2

Transcendental realisms in the philosophy of science:

on Bhaskar and Cartwright

Stephen Clarke

Received: 5 March 2008 / Accepted: 22 October 2008 / Published online: 12 November 2008
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract I consider two transcendental arguments for realism in the philosophy of

science, which are due to Roy Bhaskar (A realist theory of science, 1975) and Nancy
Cartwright (The dappled world, 1999). Bhaskar and Cartwright are both influential
figures, however there is little discussion of their use of transcendental arguments in
the literature. Here I seek to correct this oversight. I begin by describing the role of
the transcendental arguments in question, in the context of the broader philosophi-
cal theories in which they are embedded, by Bhaskar and Cartwright respectively.
I then consider some specific problems that arise for these particular transcendental
arguments, in the context of contemporary philosophy of science. I raise two general
problems for transcendental arguments for realism and I finish by spelling out what
needs to be done to address the criticisms raised in this paper.

Keywords Transcendental argument · Transcendental realism · Local realism ·

Realism · Bhaskar · Cartwright

1 Transcendental arguments

Transcendental arguments are arguments that are directed at establishing the necessity
of conceptual claims and are mostly deployed by opponents of epistemic scepticism.
A famous attempt to defeat the skeptic, by appeal to a transcendental argument was
made by Kant (1998) [1781]. Transcendental arguments typically involve a major

Many people assisted me in developing the ideas in this paper. I would particularly like to thank David
Spurrett and the late Peter Lipton. The paper is dedicated to the memory of Peter.

S. Clarke (B)
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
e-mail: Stephen.Clarke@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

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premise which is a statement of an uncontroversial claim about the way some aspect
of the world is experienced by us. It is then asserted that, for this uncontroversial claim
to be possible, it must necessarily be the case that a more controversial general claim
is true. According to Robert Stern:

… transcendental arguments are usually said to be distinctive in involving a cer-

tain sort of claim, namely that ‘For Y to be possible, X must be the case’, where
Y is some indisputable fact about us and our mental life … but where it is left
open at this stage exactly what is substituted for X . (2000, p. 6)

In simple outline a typical transcendental argument consists of two premises, which

together entail a conclusion, according to the following format:
Premise 1: Y is experienced by us.
Premise 2: Y could not be experienced by us unless X is the case.
-------------
Conclusion: X is the case.
In this paper I will consider two transcendental arguments for realism in the philoso-
phy of science, due to Roy Bhaskar (1975) and Nancy Cartwright (1999). Bhaskar and
Cartwright are both very influential figures1 , however there is little discussion of their
use of transcendental arguments in the literature. Here I seek to correct this oversight.
Bhaskar (1975) and Cartwright (1999) both deploy facts about scientific explanatory
practice as their uncontroversial premise, and these are used in attempts to derive
metaphysical realist conclusions. Although their respective transcendental arguments
start and end in similar places these neither start nor end in the same places. The two
authors appeal to different aspects of scientific explanatory practice and they each
derive different metaphysical realist conclusions from their respective transcendental
arguments. I will proceed by describing the role of the transcendental arguments in
question, in the context of the broader philosophical theories in which they are embed-
ded, by Bhaskar and Cartwright respectively. I then consider some specific problems
that arise for these particular transcendental arguments, in the context of contemporary
philosophy of science. I then raise two general problems for transcendental arguments
for realism and I finish by spelling out what needs to be done address the criticisms
raised in this paper.

2 Bhaskar’s transcendental realism

According to Roy Bhaskar, natural scientists typically design experiments to be con-

ducted in controlled laboratory circumstances, in which the objects of their investiga-
tions are shielded from the interference of outside factors (1975, pp. 33–36). On the

1 Bhaskar has not achieved the same eminence in mainstream philosophy of science as Cartwright. How-
ever, he is an extremely influential figure in social and political theory, being the key figure in the ‘critical
realist’ school of social thought.

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basis of such experiments, scientists ascribe enduring causal powers to objects.2 They
then go on to formulate theories, involving causal laws, which they appeal to in order
to explain the behaviour of those objects both inside and outside of the laboratory.
Reapplications of explanations, into contexts that differ from the contexts in which
they have been established, are sometimes referred to as instances of ‘exportation’.3
Bhaskar observes that the exportation of explanations about the behaviour of
objects established in the context of the laboratory, into the broader world, is
endemic to scientific explanatory practice. Scientists draw conclusions based on the
results of relatively simple, controlled laboratory circumstances—‘closed systems’ in
his terminology—and reapply these in uncontrolled, complicated real-life
circumstances—‘open systems’ in his terminology. They usually do so unhesitat-
ingly, as if this form of explanatory exportation was an unproblematic activity. But it
is far from unproblematic. We don’t normally presume that an explanation that suc-
ceeds in one set of circumstances can be reapplied into very different contexts, so it
is hard to understand why it is widely assumed that explanations, which succeed in
controlled laboratory circumstances, can be reapplied in uncontrolled non-laboratory
circumstances.
And scientists are not the only people who assume that this form of explan-
atory exportation is unproblematic. This assumption seems to be shared by many
philosophers—or at least by many philosophers that I have talked to—who appear to
believe that the practice of employing this form of explanatory exportation introduces
no new philosophical problems. Such philosophers typically have a very idealised
view of the way that actual scientific explanation proceeds. On this idealised view,
scientists only reapply explanations based on laboratory results, to non-laboratory cir-
cumstances when they are able to justify such reapplications by making very accurate
adjustments for the effects of the factors that would have interfered with a given exper-
iment, had the experiment not have been designed in such a way as to be shielded from
the influence of these factors.4
Unfortunately, the above depiction of scientific explanatory practice is hopelessly
optimistic. It is a description of an ideal that current scientific explanatory practice
does not even come close to approximating. Scientists typically do not carefully iden-
tify real interfering factors and calculate how these interact, before claiming to have
explained real world phenomena. Not only does current scientific explanatory practice
fail to approximate to this ideal in complicated situations where many causal factors
are in play, it does not even approximate to this ideal in apparently very simple cases.
Consider the case of Neurath’s falling thousand-dollar note.5 The note is dropped
from a high window in St. Stephen’s Square and flutters downwards. Its behaviour is,

2 I’m simplifying here. Bhaskar (1975) elaborates a quite complicated metaphysics that includes ‘disposi-
tions’, which are distinct from causal powers, as well as ‘generative mechanisms’, which are, roughly, the
physical structures in which causal powers inhere.
3 The term ‘exportation’ is not part of Bhaskar’s terminology, but terminology employed by Cartwright
(1989, 1999) and Rueger & Sharp (1998).
4 Formalisations of this process of adjustment are provided by Krajewski (1977) and Nowak (1980), both
of whom appear to accept the idealised view of scientific explanatory practice that I criticise.
5 Discussed in Cartwright (1999, p. 27).

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it seems, only affected by the force of gravity and by the wind. However, we are as
yet unable to accurately model the interactions between gravity and the wind as they
affect the trajectory of the falling banknote. Nevertheless, scientists don’t hesitate to
claim that the universal law of gravity continues to affect the falling thousand-dollar
note, even though they are unable to incorporate the force of gravity and the forces
of wind in an accurate model describing the trajectory of falling bank notes in windy
city squares and even though they are unable to predict where it will land with any
significant degree of accuracy.
Bhaskar contends that there is only one way to render intelligible the scientific
practice of conducting experiments in contrived circumstances and exporting expla-
nations, derived from experiments conducted in these contrived circumstances, into
very different circumstances (1975, p. 33). This is to make a transcendental presuppo-
sition that we are living in a world in which causal powers exist and in which nature is
law-governed. On this view, the usual purpose of scientific experiments is to identify
causal powers being expressed in isolation from other effects. On the basis of the
results of such experiments, laws and theories describing the behaviour of identified
causal powers are formulated. We must presume that these causal powers are governed
by universal laws of nature, on pain of being unable to render scientific explanatory
practice intelligible, according to Bhaskar. And scientific practice is intelligible. So, in
seems to follow that nature must be law-governed and that causal powers must exist.
Bhaskar’s transcendental argument for realism about causal powers and universal
laws can be understood as an instance of the general form of typical transcendental
argument introduced in Sect. 1 as follows:
Premise 1: Scientific explanatory practice (in particular the practice of exporting
explanations from laboratory circumstances to general circumstances) is expe-
rienced by us as intelligible.
Premise 2: Scientific explanatory practice could not be experienced by us an
intelligible unless causal powers exist and those causal powers are governed by
universal laws of nature.
-------------
Conclusion: causal powers exist and are governed by universal laws of nature.
Bhaskar positions his own ‘transcendental realist’ view against putative Humean
empiricist and idealist alternatives.6 Humean empiricists don’t grasp the importance
of accounting for exportation, according to Bhaskar, because they fail to appreciate
that scientific explanation proceeds by establishing the existence of causal powers in
‘closed systems’ and exporting explanations that are based on theoretical generalisa-
tions about these causal powers, into ‘open systems’. And they fail to appreciate that
the primary explanatory role of laws of nature is to enable such exportations. Further-
more, Bhaskar holds that Humean empiricists could not give an adequate account of
scientific explanatory practice. The Humean empiricist is committed to a conception

6 Bhaskar’s descriptions of these alternatives are most usefully understood as sketches of ideal types rather
than descriptions of positions that particular philosophers have held. Bhaskar does identify particular empir-
icist and idealist representatives of these types, but his scholarship seems questionable. For example, see
Spurrett (2000), who has serious misgivings about Bhaskar’s interpretation of Mill’s empiricism.

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of laws of nature that makes it impossible to account for nomic explanatory exporta-
tion. Humeans hold that laws of nature are nothing more than constant conjunctions
of occurrent events established by enumerative induction. On such a conception, it
can only be legitimate to project a law into circumstances that replicate the very
circumstances in which we first identified that law. From the Humean point of view,
nomic explanatory exportation, from one set of circumstances to a non-identical set
of circumstances, can never be warrantable (Bhaskar 1975, pp. 24–26).
Bhaskar’s attack on idealism, as he understands it, turns on its failure to render
explanations based on the exportation of experimental results intelligible. If we pro-
jected orderliness onto the world, as idealists contend, then there would be no reason to
deliberately design and construct experimental circumstances that differ from uncon-
trolled circumstances. Instead we would unproblematically project suitable regular-
ities and experimental circumstances really would be in constant conjunction with
uncontrolled circumstances. If idealists were right then there would be no practice
of scientific explanatory exportation to be accounted for in the first place. But scien-
tists do practice explanatory exportation, so idealism must be rejected (Bhaskar 1975,
p. 27).
Bhaskar no longer describes himself as a transcendental realist, but as a ‘critical
realist’, and this change of nomenclature might seem to suggest that he no longer
regards the provision of a successful account of scientific exportation as being of
overwhelming importance. But Bhaskar’s philosophy has merely been rebadged and
remains unchanged at its core. Bhaskar is, in Isaiah Berlin’s well-known terminology,
a ‘hedgehog’ rather than a ‘fox’. All of his significant work, at least in the philosophy
of science, has been devoted to spelling out the consequences that he perceives to
follow from the requirement that we account for experimental activity and from his
belief that transcendental realism offers the only way to satisfactorily do so. This is
not just my take on Bhaskar, it is shared by Andrew Collier, his foremost expositor.
According to Collier, “Most of the leading ideas of transcendental realism are rooted
in a single transcendental argument, which answers the question ‘how are experiments
possible?”’(Collier 1994, p. 31). Although Bhaskar no longer describes himself as a
transcendental realist, he has continued to be emphatic about the transcendental nature
of the core argument for his position. Whilst commenting on his earlier work, in the
late 1990s, Bhaskar asserted that his position is meant to be transcendental “in the
sense of Kant” (Bhaskar and Lawson 1998, p. 4) and reaffirmed that he regards his
account of science as the only account that can explain experimental activity “without
generating metaphysical absurdity” (Bhaskar and Lawson 1998, p. 4).

3 Cartwright’s transcendental argument for local realism

Bhaskar is not the only contemporary realist who utilises a transcendental argument
for realism. Nancy Cartwright does the same, although she does so on behalf of ‘local’
realism:

My advocacy of realism—local realism about a variety of different kinds of

knowledge in a variety of different domains across a range of highly differenti-

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ated situations—is Kantian in structure. Kant frequently used a puzzling argu-

ment form to establish quite abstruse philosophical positions (
): We have X—
perceptual knowledge, freedom of the will, whatever. But without

(the transcendental unity of the apperception, or the kingdom of ends) X would
be impossible, or inconceivable. Hence
. The objectivity of local knowledge
is my
; X is the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and
policy setting. Unless our claims about the expected consequences of our actions
are reliable, our plans are for nought. Hence knowledge is possible. (Cartwright
1999, p. 23)

Like Bhaskar’s transcendental argument, Cartwright’s transcendental argument can

be understood as an instance of the general form of typical transcendental arguments
introduced in Sect. 1:

Premise 1: Planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting are

experienced by us as possible.
Premise 2: Planning, prediction, manipulations control and policy setting could
not be experienced by us as possible unless local knowledge is objective.
-------------
Conclusion: local knowledge is objective.

Like Bhaskar, Cartwright’s appeal to a transcendental argument is motivated by a con-

cern to account for our ability to export certain types of knowledge claims. And like
Bhaskar, her conviction that there is no other way to account for the exportability of
these knowledge claims motivates her appeal to the transcendental. However, her con-
cern with exportation differs in two ways from Bhaskar’s concern. First, Cartwright’s
concern about the exportability of knowledge claims is broader than Bhaskar’s as she
appeals to a transcendental argument to establish that we are able to export knowledge
claims in ways that enable us to make predictions and formulate policies to guide
us generally. So, she is concerned with exportation from worldly contexts to other
worldly contexts. But she is also concerned, as is Bhaskar, to establish the exportabil-
ity of knowledge claims from the laboratory to the wider world. For Cartwright, the
creation of controlled laboratory circumstances is crucial to enabling us to manipu-
late entities, which is the primary way by which we discover their causal capacities.
Second, Cartwright is not concerned to establish universal laws to enable exportation.
According to her the extent and scope of our entitlement to export knowledge claims
is not delineated by universal laws but varies from case to case (1999, p. 29). To
understand these differences we need to appreciate some of the detail of Cartwright’s
philosophy of science.
Cartwright, as is well known, understands the fundamental laws that physicists
accept as falsehoods that are explanatorily convenient to us. This is because she under-
stands these fundamental laws to be key components of attempts to describe what
would take place in relatively simple, idealised models that bear scant resemblance to
the real world. To justify the use of such idealisations in explanations of occurrences
in the real world, scientists employ a variety of ad-hoc explanatory manoeuvres. Sci-
entists appeal to convenient approximations to make fundamental laws appear to be
systematically generalised cases of better established lower level ‘phenomenological

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laws’—the more mundane, typically causal generalizations of science that Cartwright

is a realist about— when in reality fundamental laws are only loosely related to phe-
nomenological laws. Furthermore scientists can explain away apparent mismatches
between fundamental theory and reality by appeal to causal factors that interact with
one another in less than fully specified ways and by appeal to open-ended ceteris
paribus clauses in the specification of fundamental laws (Cartwright 1983, pp. 3–4).
Many will be willing to go along with Cartwright in allowing that the laws of our
current sciences are liable to be wrong, but will expect that there is a true set of laws
governing the universe out there waiting to be found. Cartwright holds that those who
presume that there are such laws waiting to be found lack proper warrant for this belief.
She refers to such people, pejoratively, as fundamentalists. Against fundamentalists,
Cartwright raises the possibility that this world may be ‘wholistic’ (1991; 1999). In
a wholistic world, the causal powers that there are can interact in complicated and
irregular ways that do not conform to any set of fundamental laws. If the world is
significantly wholistic, then hopes for veridical nomic explanatory exportation seem
dashed.7 If the actual world is a significantly wholistic world, then what laws there
are will be of a limited range.
Accepting that the fundamental laws of science are, strictly speaking, false may
seem akin to accepting skepticism about all scientific postulates. But there is an alter-
ative to such skepticism available for those of us who do not want to be closed to the
possibility that the world may be wholistic, and this is to adopt entity realism. Entity
realists, such as Cartwright (1983, 1999) argue that, although we are not warranted in
believing that the fundamental laws of science are true or approximately true, we are
warranted in believing that many of the unobservable entities posited by scientists, as
a result of laboratory experiments, exist.
Entity realists, such as Cartwright, require a source of warrant for the claim that
the unobservable entities of science exist, which is distinct from entailment from
those fundamental theories and laws that entity realists reject. The source of warrant
that entity realists have usually appealed to is our ability to manipulate entities and
intervene in their activities. We are warranted in accepting that unobservable enti-
ties exist when we can manipulate such entities and intervene in the causal processes
that these entities are involved in. We require carefully controlled circumstances in
which to manipulate entities and intervene in their activities in order to identify their
causal capacities; and this is why we require ‘closed systems’—to revert to Bhaskar’s
terminology—to conduct scientific experiments.
According to Cartwright (1983, 1999), laboratory scientists identify causal capaci-
ties in controlled experiments and make generalisations about these, which are
exported out of the laboratory. Such generalisations are exported in two distinct
ways. We export unqualified generalisations about capacity claims non-veridically,
via fundamental laws. We also export generalisations about capacity claims using
phenomenological laws which are underwritten by a transcendental presupposition
of the objectivity of local knowledge. Such instances of exportation can be veridical
when these phenomenological laws feature in well-understood models that describe

7 However, Rueger & Sharp (1998) argue that veridical nomic explanatory exportation is still possible
given a modest wholism.

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the behaviour of suitably regular parts or aspects of the universe. These suitably reg-
ular parts or aspects of the universe are what Cartwright refers to as ‘nomological
machines’. In her words, a nomological machine is:

… a fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough)

capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated
operation, give rise to the kind of regular behaviour that we represent in our
scientific laws. (Cartwright 1999, p. 50)

We don’t know that an entity always carries around the same capacities in the same
magnitudes, in a way that is invariant to the influence of other causal factors, and so
we would not be warranted in exporting unrestricted nomic claims about causal capac-
ities out of the laboratory. However, we can establish the regularity of causal capacity
claims within the restricted framework of well-understood models of nomological
machines, and so we can be warranted in exporting causal capacity claims from the
laboratory into these restricted contexts. Philosophers bought up to think of universal
laws as the sine qua non of explanatory generalisation may find this approach to the
justification of exportation unsatisfying. However, there is a well-developed literature
in the recent philosophy of science arguing that scientific explanation can proceed
without relying on universal laws that can be drawn on here.8
Cartwright distinguishes sharply between cases where we are able to model the
behaviour of natural entities and systems, to a reasonably accurate degree, and cases
where we are unable to do this. Currently we can model the movement of the planets
and moons within the solar system and we can model the behaviour of a heavy stone
dropped out of a window. We can also model the behaviour of many of the objects that
we create. This should not be surprising. We have an interest in creating objects that
behave regularly, and so we often try to create objects that we are able to make behave
regularly. When we create aeroplanes, for example, we have an abiding interest in
creating ones that will take off, fly and land in a regular manner. The behaviour of
the objects and systems that we deliberately create to behave in a regular manner, we
find, ceteris paribus, to be regular. In many other cases we cannot accurately model
behaviour, including apparently very simple cases, such as the already mentioned case
of the thousand-dollar note dropped in St Stephen’s square.
When Bhaskar formulated his transcendental account of exportation he appears to
have assumed that a satisfactory account of exportation would have to be concordant
with conventional beliefs about the universality of laws of science. But, consider-
ation of Cartwright’s competing account allows us to see that there may be another
viable treatment of exportation that does not involve realism about universal laws.
Following Cartwright we can endorse the exportation of causal capacity claims within
well-tested models of nomological machines. At the same time we can reject the view
that universal laws of science are required for veridical exportation.

8 Woodward (2000) develops the notion of invariance, which is intended to characterise explanatory gener-
alisation in the special sciences more accurately that traditional accounts that appeal to subsumption under
laws. Giere (1999) presents a general account of science that forgoes laws of nature.

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4 What is local realism?

Cartwright advocates local rather than global realism. It is not entirely clear what
she means by this. One way of shedding light on Cartwrightian local realism is by
examining her use of the language of ‘dappling’, which features prominently in her
(1999) The Dappled World.9 According to Cartwright (1999) our world is ‘dappled’,
which is to say that it is a world in which the true laws of nature have a limited range.
This assertion is ambiguous between at least two readings, which Lipton identifies as
‘pluralist dappling’ and ‘anomalous dappling’ (Lipton 2002, pp. 255–259). Pluralist
dappling, or pluralist local realism, is the claim that different parts of the universe
are governed by very different laws, because different combinations of capacities are
present in those different parts of the universe. On this reading, because capacities are
so diverse and interact in such complicated wholistic ways, there are few, if any, broad-
ranging generalisations to be had, but no region of the universe is actually anomalous.
Anomalous dappling, or anomalous local realism, on the other hand, is the claim that
there really are parts or aspects of the universe that are completely ungoverned by
laws.
Similarly ‘fundamentalism’, the position that Cartwright (1999) is most concerned
to oppose, is ambiguous between two readings. On one reading, to be a fundamental-
ist is to be committed to there being laws governing all parts of the universe and to
be committed to these laws being reasonably small in number (the smaller the num-
ber the better from this point of view). On this ‘strong fundamentalist’ reading, both
the pluralist local realist and the anomalous local realist are anti-fundamentalists. On
a second reading, the fundamentalist is merely committed to the existence of laws
governing all parts of the universe and, although she may prefer that these be few in
number, she is not committed to these actually being few in number. This, somewhat
more tolerant ‘weak fundamentalist’ is only committed, qua fundamentalist, to the
comprehensiveness of the laws of nature. From the point of view of the weak funda-
mentalist, the anomalous local realist is to be counted as an anti-fundamentalist but
the pluralist local realist is not.
Lipton (2002) argues that the bare evidence available is not telling between anom-
alous and pluralist local realism. It is possible that there are complicated laws fully
governing the behaviour of banknotes dropped in St Stephen’s square and it is also pos-
sible that, at least some aspects of the behaviour of dropped banknotes in St Stephen’s
square really are anomalous. It is very hard to know how to impartially assess the rel-
ative plausibility of these two options. Most scientific realists will, I am sure, have an
intuitive preference for pluralist local realism. Cartwright’s preferences are otherwise.
In discussing Lipton’s (2002) analysis of Cartwright (1999), Cartwright informs us
that she intended a defence of anomalous local realism. Although Cartwright is an
advocate of anomalous local realism, rather than pluralist local realism, she concedes
that “… the evidence is not compelling either way” (2002, p. 273). Her reason for pre-

9 Much more could be said about other aspects of Cartwrightian local realism that remain underdevel-
oped, but this would take us too far afield. Paul (2002) and Menzies (2002) both raise lines of criticism
of Cartwright (1999) that go beyond the discussion here. See also Cartwright’s (2002) response to their
criticisms.

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ferring anomalous local realism to pluralist local realism, is due to aesthetic consider-
ations, which find expression in the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins. Like Hopkins,
Cartwright is a lover of “all things counter, original, spare, strange” (Cartwright 2002,
p. 273).10
It is surprising that Cartwright has expressed a willingness to base her metaphysical
convictions on aesthetic considerations. Aesthetic considerations are often employed
by defenders of fundamentalism in physics, who argue that an aesthetic preference for
simplicity and elegance in explanation is a good reason to favour fundamentalism over
its possible alternatives. Cartwright’s aesthetic preferences are the exact inverse of the
most common aesthetic preferences in scientific explanation. Fundamentalists prefer
simplicity and elegance in explanation. Cartwright prefers complexity and inelegance.
But these are aesthetic preferences and they have no apparent relation to truth-aptness.
Someone who accepts Cartwright’s local realist metaphysics and her transcendental
account of exportation could do so while failing to join her in advocating anomalous
local realism. We are simply not forced to choose between pluralist local realism
and anomalous local realism. Cartwright’s account of exportation is tied up with her
account of scientific explanatory practice, not with the speculative metaphysical con-
clusions that she derives from it. We can be ‘agnostic dapplers’ in Lipton’s terminology
(Lipton 2002, p. 257), accepting the possibility that this world may be subject to either
anomalous or pluralist dappling, and also accepting that we are unable to make a
well-motivated choice between these two alternatives.
We have already seen that, despite her arguments against fundamentalism,
Cartwright fails to do enough to rule out the possibility that we in are living in a
fully law-governed world. Equally though, when we examine the work of opponents
of Cartwright who seek to defend weak fundamentalism, such as Sklar (2003) and
Hoefer (2003), it seems that they do not do enough to rule out the possibility that this
world is anomalously dappled.11 Sklar (2003) accepts Cartwright’s depiction of sci-
ence as it is practiced, however he objects to the inference from the premise that science
is dappled to the conclusion that the ontology of the world is, therefore, anomalously
dappled. In his words:

The mere fact that our science is irremediably ‘dappled’ is not in itself the slight-
est reason for thinking that we live in a ‘dappled world’, if that is meant to deny
that there is some conceptual characterization of the nature of things that is
universal in its applicability. (2003, p. 440)

Sklar does not produce a decisive argument that could serve to rule out the possi-
bility that we are in fact living in a dappled world. Instead he introduces a number
of less than decisive considerations and argues that, in light of these considerations,
the burden of proof, which originally fell on the fundamentalist, is reversed and now

10 See also Cartwright (1999, p. 19).

11 Both Sklar (2003) and Hoefer (2003) are committed to the view that there are laws that govern the entirety
of nature, so they are at least weak fundamentalists. It may seem tempting to read Hoefer as a strong fun-
damentalist given his discussion of simplicity (2003, pp. 1409–1412). However, his actual description of
the “ultimate set of mathematical laws that a fundamentalist believes in” includes no stipulation that these
must be small in number (2003, p. 1411).

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falls on the proponent of the view that the world is anomalously dappled (2003,
p. 440). A similar argumentative strategy is pursued by Hoefer (2003). Hoefer portrays
the dispute between Cartwright and fundamentalists in terms of “competing burden
of proof arguments” (Hoefer 2003, p. 1408). He contributes to this debate by arguing
that the evidential demands that Cartwright makes on the weak fundamentalist are
unreasonable and by citing several considerations in favour of weak fundamentalism.
Again a decisive argument is not offered. Instead several less than decisive arguments
are presented and it is implicitly suggested suggested that, in virtue of these arguments,
the burden of proof has now shifted away from the weak fundamentalist and on to the
anomalous local realist.
The weak fundamentalist and the anomalous local realist are entitled to wield burden
of proof arguments against one another, but such arguments could not be effectively
redirected against the agnostic local realist. Agnostic local realism is a view that is
inclusive of both the possibility of weak fundamentalism and the possibility of anom-
alous local realism. The burden of proof is surely not on the person who holds an
inclusive position to show why she should prefer that inclusive position to one of a set
of disjuncts that comprises that inclusive position. To be motivated to reject an inclu-
sive position, in favour of one of the disjuncts that comprises that position, arguments
are required that decisively rule out the other disjuncts that comprise that position.
But Cartwright (1999), Sklar (2003) and Hoefer (2003) all present arguments that fall
short of constituting such decisive arguments.

5 Problems for Bhaskar and Cartwright and a scientific realist alternative

One problem with both Bhaskar and Cartwright is that neither specify what exactly
it is that their respective transcendental arguments are supposed to achieve. Bhaskar
claims that without a transcendental argument we are unable to render experimental
activity intelligible (1975, p. 33). If all was required was that we rendered experimental
activity intelligible then it seems that a sociological account of exportation might do
as well as Bhaskar’s transcendental account. Latour’s (1988) well-known discussion
of Pasteur could be appealed to in order to provide a blueprint for such a solution.
Latour considers the difficulties that Pasteur faced when attempting to export expla-
nations that succeeded in laboratory circumstances, into worldly circumstances, and
he argues that Pasteur did not proceed by justifying such instances of exportation, but
by rhetorically outmanoeuvring his opponents, who objected to the way in which he
claimed generalisability for his results.12 If Latour is right, then Pasteur’s explanatory
practice is rendered intelligible without being given a rational justification. Bhaskar is
not consistent in claiming that the intelligibility of experimental practice is at stake. He
later claims that a transcendental argument is required to provide a rationale for exper-
imental activity (1975, p. 33) which is a vague term, but one that sounds something
more like a justification.
Cartwright is no more specific than Bhaskar. She claims that without a transcenden-
tal argument planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting is ‘impos-

12 Guala (2003) provides a helpful discussion of Latour on Pasteur.

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sible or inconceivable’ (1999, p. 23). This is unsatisfactory because impossibility and

inconceivability are distinct qualities and do not always go together. We might be
unable to conceive of a non-transcendental argument for the possibility of planning,
prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting, but this does not show that one
is impossible, although it is evidence in favour of the claim that one is impossible.
Presumably Bhaskar and Cartwright could both clarify what exactly it is that they
hold we are unable to do without appeal to a transcendental argument. Unfortunately
neither author appears to have done so yet.
A second problem with Bhaskar and Cartwright is that they have presented us
with two competing transcendental arguments to choose between. This might not be
a major problem if Bhaskar and Cartwright each offered transcendental arguments
to account for completely distinct subjects, but they offer transcendental arguments
in order to account for overlapping subjects, so each undermines the credibility of
the other. Bhaskar is not merely offering us one possible way of accounting for the
experimental practices of scientists. He is claiming that his is the only way to account
for the experimental practices of scientists. It is hard to show that there are no possibly
viable rivals to a transcendental argument, because this involves showing that you
have considered and reasonably rejected all possibly viable alternatives. But it is very
hard to show that you have exhausted all possibly viable alternatives.
If it can be shown that there is at least one apparently viable alternative, to the
account of experimental activity that Bhaskar urges, then his account is definitely not
the only account of experimental activity and, by its own lights, it should be rejected
en passant. Cartwright’s transcendental local realism involves a rival account of key
elements of experimental practice that Bhaskar did not consider. Similarly,
Cartwright’s claim—implicit in the use of her transcendental argument—that hers
is the only possible way of accounting for the possibility of planning, prediction,
manipulation, control and policy setting is challenged by the existence of Bhaskar’s
account of experimental practice, which, if successful, gives him a rationale for accept-
ing the existence of universal laws and, by implication an account of our ability to
undertake these various activities. If we are entitled to assume that there are universal
laws then we are entitled to use these to enable planning, prediction and so on. If this
is right, then Cartwright’s account of the possibility of planning, prediction, manipu-
lation, control and policy setting is definitely not the only account of the possibility
of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting available and, by its
own lights, it should be rejected en passant also.
A third problem for Bhaskar and Cartwright, related to the second, is that it seems
plausible to think that a non-transcendental alternative account of both experimen-
tal activity and the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and
policy setting is available. This is a scientific realist alternative. Scientific realists
and transcendental realists agree about much. They agree that the primary aim of
science is to express true statements about the world and they agree that we are jus-
tified in believing that contemporary scientific theories succeed in approximating to
the truth. However, they part company when it comes to specifying why it is that
we are justified in believing that scientific theories succeed in approximating to the
truth. The transcendental realist argues that we are justified in believing that scientific
theories succeed in approximating to the truth, in virtue of an implicit transcendental

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presupposition that we make, of realism about causal powers and laws of nature. The
transcendental realist holds that this transcendental presupposition provides the only
possible way to make sense of the success of our scientific explanatory practices and
therefore the only possible justification for belief in the truth-aptness of contemporary
scientific theories. To most scientific realists this line of argument will seem to be
gratuitously ambitious. Scientific realists, following Putnam (1975), typically mount
a ‘success of science argument’, arguing that realism about laws, causes and scientific
theories provides the best available explanation of science’s explanatory and predic-
tive successes, or arguing that such realism provides the only plausible explanation of
science’s explanatory and predictive successes. However, scientific realists typically
stop short of making the extravagant claim that no alternatives are even possible.
The scientific realist asserts that adopting realism about the laws, theories and causal
postulates of science provides us with the best explanation of the explanatory and pre-
dictive successes of science. If realism about the laws, theories and causal postulates
of science provides us with the best explanation of the explanatory and predictive
successes of science, then, in so doing, it also seems to provide us with the best expla-
nation of our ability to export explanations, which succeed in laboratory conditions,
into different circumstances. Despite the complexity of appearances, the causal powers
identified in the laboratory can reasonably be expected to be present in non-laboratory
circumstances, because it is reasonable to accept that there are laws governing the
behaviour of such causal powers both inside and outside of the laboratory. And it is
reasonable to accept all of this because these beliefs form part of a set of beliefs that
provide the best explanation of science’s explanatory and predictive successes, or so
says the scientific realist. So the scientific realist can provide a non-transcendental
account of the intelligibility of experimental activity. And, of course, if the reliability
of laws of nature can be underwritten, then we have a non-transcendental account of
the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting as well.
So, scientific realism seems to offer plausible alternatives to both Bhaskar’s transcen-
dental argument for experimental activity and Cartwright’s transcendental argument
for the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting. As
we have already established, transcendental arguments cannot tolerate alternatives, so
the scientific realist alternative is very bad news for both Bhaskar and Cartwright.
I have described transcendental realism as being conceptually distinct from scien-
tific realism and in doing so I place myself in dispute with Alan Chalmers. Chalmers
is a scientific realist who has attempted to infuse scientific realism with key arguments
due to Bhaskar (Chalmers 1987, 1988). Chalmers has shown great enthusiasm for
Bhaskar’s ideas, describing Bhaskar’s realism as “a decisive refutation of much
orthodox philosophy of science” (Chalmers 1988, p. 18). He also tells us that he knows
of “… no rival theory of science that can accommodate certain features of experiment
as it occurs in science as well as Bhaskar’s …” (Chalmers 1988, p. 19). However,
Chalmers shies away from endorsing Bhaskar’s key transcendental argument for real-
ism, conceding that “the possibility of rival accounts of science equally able to render
experimental activity etc. intelligible cannot be ruled out” (Chalmers 1988, p. 19). He
holds that realism provides us with the best explanation of the successes of science,
rather than the only possible explanation of those successes.

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Having conceded that the possibility of rivals to Bhaskar’s account of science can-
not be ruled out, Chalmers immediately goes on to assert that this concession “by no
means trivialises Bhaskar’s position” (Chalmers 1988, p. 19). Chalmers is right that
this concession doesn’t trivialise Bhaskar’s position. What it does do is transform it
into a different position, a position that employs abductive reasoning rather than tran-
scendental reasoning. And a position that does not employ transcendental reasoning is
not transcendental realism, so it is not Bhaskar’s position. Despite initial appearances,
it seems fair to say that Chalmers is an advocate of a scientific realism that remains
distinct from transcendental realism.13

6 Two general problems for transcendental arguments

and concluding remarks

Although Kant’s transcendental response to the skeptic was enormously influential,

transcendental arguments are regarded as suspect by many. Two sort of objection to
them are particularly influential. The first sort of objection, which is developed by
Stefan Körner (1979, pp. 213–219), among others, is an objection to claims about the
necessity of any particular way of conceiving the world. In a transcendental argument
it is asserted that we are compelled to make some or other presupposition to account
for the way in which some aspect of the world is experienced by us. But it is possible
that we may be able to conceive of that same aspect of the world in a different way,
and when we do so we may no longer require the presupposition that the proponent
of a transcendental argument urges us to make. In order to head off this possibility,
the proponent of a transcendental argument would need to establish that we require
the conceptual structure that she is assuming, which is to say that it has no viable
alternatives. But this would require a demonstration that all genuine alternatives have
been considered and found wanting; and this would seem to be extremely difficult to
provide. The best that a proponent of a transcendental argument may be able to estab-
lish is that all alternatives that have so far been conceived of have been considered and
found wanting.
Körner’s (1979) objection to transcendental arguments is a generalised form of two
problems that were raised in the previous section of the paper. As we have seen sci-
entific realism and Cartwrightian local realism appear to provide genuine alternatives
to Bhaskar’s transcendental argument for the intelligibility of experimental activity,
and scientific realism and Bhaskarian transcendental realism seem to provide genuine
alternatives to Cartwright’s transcendental argument for the possibility of planning,
prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting. Cartwright and Bhaskar could
both make some headway in arguing that the scientific realist alternative to their
respective positions is unviable by drawing on the existing body of work of scholars
critical of scientific realism. For example, they could draw on recent work advancing
the ‘pessimistic induction’ against scientific realism (Stanford 2003), a problem for

13 In more recent work Chalmers (1999, p. 238) appears to shift allegiance from scientific realism to a
form of structural realism. However, it is arguable that Chalmers (1999) is, nevertheless, best understood
as an advocate of a variant of scientific realism (see Clarke 2002).

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scientific realism that does not appear to affect their respective transcendental real-
isms. However, the presence of thoroughgoing defences of scientific realism in the
recent literature, such as Psillos (1999) and Chakravartty (2007), suggests that this
body of work may provide insufficient resources to warrant the outright rejection of
the scientific realist alternative.
Although neither Bhaskar not Cartwright have done enough to decisively dismiss
alternatives to their respective transcendental arguments for realism, Cartwright is
somewhat better placed to do this work than is Bhaskar. In order to establish the
case for transcendental local realism Cartwright needs, inter alia, to defeat scientific
realism and Bhaskarian transcendental realism. Although it is perhaps not decisive,
Cartwright (1983) provided an influential and important critique of scientific real-
ism. To my knowledge Cartwright has not commented on Bhaskarian transcendental
realism.14 Because her critique of scientific realism focussed primarily on the com-
mon scientific realist assumption of the universality of laws of nature and because
Bhaskarian transcendental realism involves the assumption of the universality of laws
of nature it looks like Cartwright’s critique could be redeployed against Bhaskarian
transcendental realism.
Bhaskar (1975) developed transcendental realism by contrasting it with Humean
empiricism and idealism. He did not consider the scientific realist alternative and it is
not clear that he recognised that it is distinctly different from transcendental realism
(in Bhaskar 1975); and nor did he recognise the possibility of local realism. If Bhaskar-
ian transcendental realism is to be rendered viable then its proponents need to provide
decisive reasons to reject both scientific realist and local realist alternatives. Even if an
advocate of transcendental realism was to do the work required to decisively rule out
both of her explicit rivals, she would still have a job ahead of her to demonstrate that no
other plausible account of experimental activity could be mounted. But without such
a demonstration, it seems that Körner’s (1979) general objection is not addressed and
her argument would not go through. Mutatis mutandis for advocates of local realism.
The second sort of objection to transcendental arguments targets those transcenden-
tal arguments that involve inferences from the nature of our experience to the nature
of reality in general. It is associated particularly with Barry Stroud (1968). According
to Stroud (1968) transcendental arguments are enthymemes, which rely on an implicit
premise to the effect that if we are compelled to understand the world in a particular
way, the world must in fact be that way. It is this implicit premise that does the actual
work of bridging the gap between appearance and reality. If this implicit premise is
made explicit then it is liable to be rejected by a sceptical opponent of the transcenden-
tal argument in question. And if the implicit premise is not employed then the sceptical
opponent can substitute the conclusion of the argument, which concerns the nature of
reality, with a different and more modest conclusion regarding the way reality must
appear to us. If we only employ premises concerning our experience then the only

14 Bhaskar (1989, p. 149) has commented approvingly in passing on Cartwright (1983). He refers to her
critique of laws in physics in the course of developing an attack on Humeans who understand laws of nature
as they are actually used in science to be universal empirical generalisations. He appears not to appreciate
that her critique is intended to apply to all who postulate universal laws of nature, which may explain why
he fails to view her position as a competitor with his own transcendental realism.

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valid inferences that can be drawn are ones that also concern our experience and the
appearance-reality divide is not bridged, or so Stroud (1968) argues.15
Both Bhaskar (1975) and Cartwright (1999) do attempt to draw transcendental
inferences from the nature of our experience to the nature of reality, so they both
appear to run afoul of Stroud’s objection to such inferences. One obvious way to avoid
running afoul of Stroud’s objection is to give up insisting that there is a conceptual gap
between our experience and reality. But as this would be to give up realism in favour
of some form of Kantian constructivist-style idealism, I take it that, as committed
realists, neither Bhaskar nor Cartwright will wish to go down this path. A second way
to address Stroud’s objection is to deny that the transcendental argument in question
is intended to be an answer to the global skeptic. Bhaskar and Cartwright can argue
that they provide the only viable account of our experimental practices and the only
viable account of the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and
policy setting, respectively, while admitting that they do not mean to rule out the bare
possibility that our experiences are actually being simulated by evil super-scientists
and that we are actually ‘brains in vats’. This seems a good way to go, for both Bhaskar
(1975) and Cartwright (1999), as they are both principally concerned to oppose anti-
realisms and rival forms of realism in the philosophy of science, and they both appear
unconcerned by the challenge of global skepticism.
As of now neither Bhaskar’s transcendental account of experimental practice, nor
Cartwright’s transcendental account of the possibility of planning, prediction, manip-
ulation, control and policy setting is worthy of acceptance. However, neither should
be rejected out of hand. The problem is that neither author has yet completed the work
required to sustain a transcendental argument. They have not done enough to rule out
known alternatives to their transcendental arguments and they have not done enough
to convince us that there are not unknown alternatives waiting to be identified. As
we have seen, transcendental arguments cannot tolerate alternatives. The acceptabil-
ity of both arguments depends crucially on alternatives been shown not to be viable,
including the alternative that each presents to the other.

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