Resisting Hasok Chang’s pragmatic realism via the case of the ether in the 19th century

Hasok Chang, in Realism for Realistic People , articulates a novel form of pragmatic realism, in which he defines “truth” and “reality” in terms of “operational coherence.” I observe, however, that Chang’s treatment of the “reality” of the controversial theoretical entity, “ether,” is ambiguous. More importantly, the ether case reveals structural tensions internal to pragmatic realism. First, pragmatic realism has to accept that mutually exclusive hypotheses about the ether were both true to a certain extent, and hence allow the ether to count as real to a certain extent despite attributing incompatible properties to it. This weakens the constraint role assigned to the “mind-uncontrolled reality.” Second, pragmatic realism lacks a threshold of incoherence for determining when the ether was an “unreal” entity and relevant hypotheses were “false.” This renders the notions “falsity” and “unreal” superfluous, and hence they fail to guide our choices. Third, I argue that pragmatic realism faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if “operational coherence” can be evaluated across systems of practice, it follows that the ether is unreal. This sits uneasily with Chang’s pluralism. On the other hand, if “operational coherence” can only be evaluated relative to a given system, the reality of the ether and the truth of relevant propositions are dependent on our choice of system. This sits uneasily with Chang’s intended form of “realism.” Together, these three problems reveal a structural instability within pragmatic realism.