Neil Rickert was at it again attempting to ‘explain consciousness’ over at PS at the imperative-phrased invitation of Joshua Swamidass to: “Tell me how you think consciousness evolved.” https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/rickerts-ideas-on-consciousness/3684/
Neil had written this: “What it really boils down to, is that there is no such thing as metaphysical truth. There is only conventional truth. And different social groups will disagree over their social conventions.”
TSZ poster BruceS answered Neil’s challenge and addressed part of its background assumptions: “Another fan of Rorty-style pragmatism… Seems to be a cult among TSZ moderators.” So perhaps this is worth discussing here as well (though obviously the lone religious theist moderator at TSZ Mung was forgotten in BruceS’s comment).
I too reject the notion that “there is only conventional truth,” a view, however, that this site’s founder Elizabeth Liddle also seemed to hold. In the fields I have studied, this is a view held largely by social constructivists, which is often turned into a kind of ‘sociologism’ – the ideology that holds all things can be explained by appeal to societies or groups alone. This view, however, unfortunately comes at the cost of other ‘truths’.
Thus, I respectfully disagree with Neil and believe that the claim “there is no such thing as metaphysical truth” is just his own convenient fiction. It would seem that he has taken a massive detour away from ‘metaphysical truth’ and is now trying to ‘explain’ something that cannot actually be explained. Additionally, it appears that this detour has had to do largely with an attempt to create a ‘religion substitute,’ along the lines of Daniel Dennett’s evolutionistic-atheist worldview.
Rickert tells: “I was a deeply committed Christian for part of my life. But I came to doubt that, long before I started to study human cognition.” https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/rickerts-ideas-on-consciousness/3684/4 It thus seems that it was instead a reaction against YECism that had an important role in Neil leaving whatever Christian community he had been ‘deeply committed’ to, prior to taking up a pastime study of human cognition. If not for YECists, he might still believe in metaphysical truth & a Creator who loves us – all people – even Neil.
Rickert writes about his, “study of consciousness, where I have to look at how people make conscious assessments of what is true.” He admits that he holds “a view which many people – perhaps most people – will see as wrong. That’s why it is difficult to explain consciousness.” Yet, this makes the mistake of suggesting that it is merely other peoples’ fault why he can’t ‘explain consciousness,’ rather than taking responsibility for his inability or lack of success to convince others about how ‘consciousness evolved’ (implied: naturalistically, without need, use or role for a supernatural Creator) on himself. Maybe ‘consciousness’ simply can’t be ‘explained’ and hence there is little value in trying to do so (unless or even if one is trained as a PhD in the field and has made it their life’s passion). Otherwise, I don’t understand the ‘that’s why’ implied in Neil’s assessment of the professed difficulty of ‘explaining consciousness.’
I find the rejection of YECism dilemma fascinating and surely relevant for the TSZ community, most of whom reject YECism. It is not one commonly faced where I grew up, so please excuse if my questions come across as ignorant or insensitive. However, I did personally face and had to grapple with the ideology of YECism as told to me by a person who I highly respect still to this day and who has become a very successful practitioner in his chosen field of study & expertise (non-academic), which has nothing to do with the age of the earth. I even thought YECism had some glimpse of merit for a time, before realising that what had to be ignored and discounted in order to remain a YECist displayed errors too voluminous to seriously entertain.
Does rejection of YECism lead some people into a crisis of faith? How do we face or encounter YECists as still respectable and worthy human beings even though we wholeheartedly disagree with the ideology that they have embraced (as part of their consciousness)? I believe Neil is right to wonder about these things. And I believe it would be wrong to act unjustly towards or to treat people in an inhumane way simply because they hold an ideology that is damaging usually to no one other than themselves and their local religious community, as if I held any power as ultimate judge over the care for their souls by demanding that they turn away from ideological YECism.
“We can, of course, sit back smugly knowing that we are right and that the YECs are wrong. But, at the same time, the YECs can sit back smugly knowing that they are right and that we are wrong.” … “People do not like explanations of what they already take for granted. They don’t believe that an explanation is needed, since they already take it for granted. And, if pointing out that what they take for granted depends, in part, on social conventions, then they are likely to see that as questioning what they take for granted. / This is why it is hard to explain consciousness.” – Neil Rickert https://nwrickert.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness/
My concern with the social constructivist and ‘social convention’ approach to ‘truth’ is that it places the utmost difficulty on the doorsteps of other people, rather than accepting responsibility on one’s own doorstep by insisting that one *can* ‘explain consciousness.’ It is surely unfortunate, however, because Neil may not have had to face this dilemma in a different Christian community, given that YECists constitute a rather large minority view among Christians worldwide (despite what R. Byers says). Indeed, most Christians don’t get upset with each other about ‘evolution’ or ‘consciousness’ as they go about their regular lives of prayer and worship and aren’t upset by it in their beliefs or relationships with others at their local churches.
Another option, one that Rickert might like to consider, is that consciousness is something that can’t actually be explained, certainly not ‘scientifically’. It may even be a God-given reflection of human beings as ‘ensouled’ creatures. Consciousness may thus simply be always something greater than what can be grasped by highly limited, finite human minds, rather than a temptation toward trying to become god-like in our self-understanding; a topic not meant for full comprehension. At some point, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bahai’s and others must simply admit we don’t have all of the answers and consciousness, as well as some ‘metaphysical truths,’ are surely strong candidates for such an admission.
Leaving the Church because one can’t understand/explain why YECists couldn’t change their minds when faced with a huge amount of ‘strictly scientific’ evidence for an ‘old earth’ may indeed be felt by some as a very difficult but necessary situation to face. It is not one that perplexes me and I have never faced any pressure from a religious person inside a ‘house of worship’ to adopt their hypothesis about the age of the Earth. I have been calmly told about their views, but never with insistence. There is help, however, for those who have experienced pressure or insistence. Indeed, this is precisely what the BioLogos Foundation was built to encounter, as it is made up largely of former YECists who didn’t turn away from religious faith but found a way to embrace theology without accepting YECism, i.e. while rejecting YECist ideology.
Please consider this as an attempt at understanding and simply offering an answer to Rickert’s dilemma, rather than at dictating any particular solution to the problem. As it involves his own personal history that he has volunteered on the internet on this extremely sensitive topic, I certainly do not wish to put any words in Neil’s mouth or to misrepresent him or his view. I do not wish to ‘out’ his thoughts or character about anything he wishes to keep private. Please do forgive my inability to ‘explain’ these things more clearly, as I’m just trying to understand what if any link there might be between rejecting ‘metaphysical truth,’ trying to ‘explain consciousness’ and leaving a church due to what might appear as YECist fanaticism and refusal to accept scientific knowledge about the Earth, creatures and people on it.
If that’s the case, I’m not one. Is there anyone alive who is?
This, of course, is absurd.
If that’s the view, then we know nothing about reality. All we can ever know comes from our interactions with reality (our experiments).
Are you perhaps confusing instrumentalism with anti-realism?
If we take that point of view, then there are no colliders either. That way lies solipsism.
Thinking more about this, I think I see the problem.
Let’s look at a voltmeter as an example of an instrument.
An impoverished voltmeter is a black box that delivers meaningless numbers (the voltmeter readings).
A rich voltmeter is an instrument that works by known principles providing meaningful information about the circuit to which it is connected. So the rich voltmeter delivers meaningful numbers.
An impoverished instrumentalism would see a scientific theory as delivering meaningless data about experiments.
A rich instrumenalism would see a scientific theory as delivering meaningful information about experiments.
With that distinction, I am a rich instrumentalist. Theories are important because they deliver meaningful information about experiments and about the world based on uses of the theory.
A theoretical scientist is using a theory in his thought experiments, because the theory is a source of meaning. A theory itself is neither true nor false, because it is a set of conventions. So, if considered true, then it is an analytic truth. The theory, when used to get data, provides true meaningful data about the world. But the theory itself is neither true nor false because it is not a description of reality. Rather, the theory is a system of useful principles about how to generate meaningful descriptions of reality.
Consider Newton’s
and Ohm’s 
. Considered as impoverished instruments, they are identical apart from a simple change of names (symbols) used. They express the identical relation between meaningless data that they deliver. But, considered as rich instruments, they are vastly different because their operating principles provide very different meanings to that delivered data.
The same can be said about theories of brains, consciousness or mind.
To the extent they suggest meaningful measurements, they are useful.
This is also why I think ID is useless as a theory, because it suggests no meaningful experiments, measurements, or observations.
That’s helpful.
I want to focus on “meaningul”. I am not sure what “information” adds to the picture, unless it is adding “actionable”. I’ll leave “information” out for this post.
First, for me, scientific theories include mathematical statements, models, mechanisms, algorithms/simulations, and other interpretable entities. I mean interpretable in the sense of formal model theory. This is assumed for rest of post.
Then scientific theories are meaningful because there is at least one way to interpret them as referring to te world. Such a reference must be through a humanly-invented conceptual scheme, ie the one expressed by the theory.
I understand you as saying that reference is limited to entities we can observe on measuring instruments. So V=IR is solely about the deflection of needles or the display of digits on measurement tools built a certain way in order to measure voltage, current, and resistance.
Our best scientific theories explain our ability to build such tools and their operation by referring to electrons (or better quantum mechanics). But instrumentalists and I think you reject that ‘electrons’ in scientific theories refers at all.
A positivist philosophical instrumentalist says that the only reason to use ‘electrons’ is to summarize all possible readings on instruments governed by the theories using the term.
A different instrumentalist position is van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism.
He is an instrumentalist because he thinks that the purpose of theories is to be empirically adequate, that is to reproduce human-observable events. But he also believes that theoretical entities do refer, it is just that we have no justification for assuming any truth value to theories with those references taken literally.
One of the above, likely the positivist view, is my best understanding of your ideas. I should say I see a tension between that understanding and your previous post that you see no difference between O-terms and T-terms. But I best stop there.
Scientific realism is about the theoretical terms in scientific theories only. It assumes realism above everyday entities (humanly-observable entities). Scientific anti-realism is only anti-realism about the theoretical entities in scientific theories.
Instrumentalists do tend to be scientific anti-realists. But instrumentalism (at least in the positivist case) is about the semantics of theories, not realism per se. Specifically, whether theoretical terms in such theories refer, that is whether the theories are to be taken literally. Instrumentalists answer that theoretical terms do not even refer. So scientific realism is a non-issue since it assumed that the T-terms do not even refer to something.
But there are many other ways to be an anti-scientific-realist while still agreeing theoretical terms refer. There is the quietism of constructive empiricism (above post). There are also all the arguments that say such reference fails (error theories, I suppose). These include: the pessimistic meta-induction, the underdetermination argument, the argument from unconceived alternatives, and arguments against IBE in general (since IBE is used in the no-miracles argument to scientific realism).
I’m less familiar with the concept of conventionalism as applied to scientific theories, but as I understand it is separate from instrumentalism about theories.
Scientific conventionalism says that the semantics of scientific theories depends on the conventions we adopt for the terms used in the theories. That is, convention determines which terms are interpretable (ie have semantics) and which terms are fixed by that convention.
For example, if we take the convention to be that light travels in straight lines, then “light trajectories are geodesics” is conventional. Under that convention whether spacetime is Euclidean or not becomes an empirical matter and the semantics of the T-term ‘spacetime’ is subject to whether or not one is an instrumentalist. Under the convention that spacetime is Euclidean and we determine the straightness of light empirically, the opposite holds.
In both cases instrumentalism about T-terms still applies, but only to the T-terms that are not fixed by convention.
FWIW, I see the issue of whether one should follow Carnap or Quine on the nature of those conventions as separate and not relevant to the point I am making here.
Neil,
The hard problem isn’t about how brains implement “theories of everything”, nor does it depend on a close match between those theories; it’s simply the problem of explaining how neural activity gives rise to felt experience — for example, figuring out how and why the neural response to a pinprick produces the subjective experience of pain.
Also, you wrote:
If a particular person isn’t already a “mindless mechanical robot”, why would the existence of duplicates transform him or her into one?
There’s obviously some miscommunication here.
I already disagree.
It is not a requirement of a scientific theory, that it include mathematical statements — at least as I see it. And looking at it in terms of formal model theory is probably a mistake. Yes, the theory should be logically consistent, but I don’t see logic requirements as going beyond that.
I see a theory as defining a suitable conceptual scheme, and as defining reference. Yes, it may be somewhat abstracted from a direct definition, because the theory usually avoids specification of the units of measurement. But it is supposed to be clear what is being measured, even if the units of measurement are not specified.
No, there’s no such limitation. There can be entities which we normally observe with our eyes or other means. A measuring instrument is just a mechanized way of observing, where that is possible. And it isn’t always possible.
No, not at all. My presumption is that Ohm came up with his law as an aid to solving engineering problems with electrical transmission. These days it is more important in electronics, but there wasn’t much electronics available to Georg Ohm, and voltmeters would have been hard to find.
No, I don’t reject that “electron” refers. And I have never been a fan of positivism.
Why look at that?
Our ordinary measurement of distances is conventional. That is to say, the use of a meter ruler for determining length/distance is a matter of convention. Scientists even talk of measuring conventions.
Euclidean geometry (ruler and compass geometry) is really just an exploration of the implications of our basic measurement of length. And yes, we do need to add an additional convention for the parallel axiom.
Aristotle would likely have said that moving things slow down, and that such slowing down is natural. Newton completely changed that. He reconceptualized motion. So I see Newton as establishing new conventions to be used when talking about motion.
walto,
Neil is all over the map on this issue.
Sometimes he downplays his stance:
But that’s obvious, and I’d be surprised if anyone here disagrees.
He also calls himself a realist and says
But at other times he goes completely overboard, saying things like:
And:
But of course Tunguska happened, and that fact is available for us to “pick up”.
You can see it here, too:
Neil doesn’t want to acknowledge that Newton’s view is closer to reality than Aristotle’s, so he characterizes it as a mere shift in convention.
Well, so Neil has apparently just ‘shifted in convention’ away from the YECists he was once surrounded by. One might wonder: did Neil ever accept YECism himself? I expressed a bit about my personal experience with one YECist in the OP. The most important things were always about more than just ‘social convention’ anyway.
Most of the posters & staff at BioLogos were once YECists themselves, who later changed their views & now reject YECism. However, they remained as believers, even when surrounded by non-mainstream evangelical Protestant YECists in the USA. They didn’t nevertheless change their ‘social convention’ to disbelieve in ‘metaphysical truth.’
So, apparently such a balance of rejecting YECism & accepting metaphysical truth is indeed possible to find. Neil seems unable to find it, though at one time in his life he was ‘deeply committed’ to metaphysical truth. It seems he ran into a ‘universal acid’ involving a worldview that posits naturalistic ‘evolution of consciousness’ without God-breathed spiritual reality. That might be enough to ruin a man’s faith with hyper-rational anti-Platonic mathematics.
Honestly, Gregory, can you try to manage without making stuff up?
No, I never did.
Yes, I used the example of YEC in an attempt to illustrate a point. But you are making far too much of it.
I’ll repeat, once again, that my leaving Christianity had nothing to do with YEC. It also had nothing to do with evolution or science. I just reached the point where I could no longer believe some of the core theology. And I left Christianity more than 25 years before I started seriously thinking about consciousness.
keiths:
Bruce:
IIRC, you put forward at least four different externalist views in the course of that discussion:
1) that meaning supervenes on the brain states of the entire linguistic community;
2) that it supervenes on those brain states plus their physical environment;
3) that it supervenes on the above plus the causal history; and
4) that it supervenes on the current physical state of a wide swath of the universe, big enough to encompass the distinguishing aftereffects of the relevant events in the causal history.
#1 and #2 are defeated by Twin-Earth-like scenarios in which the physical states are identical. #3 won’t fly because the causal history is not itself a physical thing upon which meaning can supervene. #4 doesn’t work because the relevant differences in physical state are too distant, so that the “true meaning” is causally inert with respect to the “meaner” and his or her environment.
Neil,
What is its referent, in your view?
That light ray case is a standard example from the literature which goes back to at least to Poincare. He was is an originator of modern conventionalism in philosophy of science.
(I know the word is used in other fields where its meaning may change to suit that field).
Your use of ‘conventional’ in science is something that as best I can tell is idiosyncratic — your own ideas, and difficult for me to relate to standard usage.
OK, thanks, I’ll try to puzzle out your personal approach as some point. As per my previous post, what I summarized is standard philosophical usage of terms which is how I try to use them in my posts, like the reply to Alan on instrumentalism.
This paper covers some the topics in the exchange between Neil and me in this thread.
Neuroscience Needs Behavior:Correcting a Reductionist Bias
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0896-6273%2816%2931040-6
I think that Figure 1, especially A, D, E, might at least partially reflect Neil’s concerns with individualization of the brain’s theories, eg through the multiple realizability noted in the figure and article.
As an aside, I see the idea about the individualization of theories implemented by brains as related to underdetermination in science theories. Also, I think, to Quine’s underdetermination of meaning from behavior. There are proposed solutions to both concerns, and I think the resolution of that underdetermination for the brain’s theories will need similar approaches.
Also important to me is the section in the paper on the proper understanding of mechanisms as needing to involve both behavior as the top-level phenomenon and neural process/states as the details of the implementation of the mechanism.
Leiter today does a blast from the past on the exchange between Morris and various philosophical criticisms of the book. Leiter says “the book is a tour de force of serious writing about philosophy for a popular audience. “.
In replying to criticism, Morris emphasizes he did simplify due to popularizing the ideas.
AFAIK, the book itself is only available in hard copy. Too many images and margin notes to be readable as Morris intended on a Kindle. Possibly Morris’s movie-making skills went into the book layout.
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2019/03/blast-from-the-past-errol-morris-on-kripke-and-kuhn.html
If you were to be charitable, it was merely an attempt to understand what you wrote. That’s why I started this thread; not to have a discussion about ‘explaining consciousness.’ Joshua obviously didn’t want one & neither do I. You’re welcome for enabling this conversation with almost entirely fellow agnostics & atheists here at TSZ.
Good to know you never did. It might have been a mainstream Protestant or Catholic church that you were a ‘deeply committed’ Christian in then, since the majority of YECists are non-mainstream evangelical Protestant. That you used YECism to illustrate a point about ‘social conventions,’ however, fails to provide an explanation given that it is the metaphysical truth that Muslims, Christians, Jews & Baha’is *all accept* that we are created by God.
Which ‘core theology’ (of Christianity) could you no longer believe? If I understand you now, it had nothing to do with mere ‘consciousness,’ but rather perhaps something about not believing we are created in the image and likeness of God (imago Dei)? Or loving one’s neighbour as oneself? Or believing we are sinful and fall short of what God created us for?
Well thanks for that.
It seems that they are beginning to realize (in 2016), what was already obvious to me in the 1980s. A reductionist program of reverse engineering is unlikely to work.
And they finally get to same argument — those methods would not work for understanding a computer, unless informed by a big-picture understanding of how the computer operates. And a brain is far more complex than a computer.
That’s why I have been working on that big-picture understanding.
It is already clear from the discussion in this thread, that people are far too hung-up on a reductionist reverse-engineering approach. So I will probably be unable to communicate my big-picture understanding. It will die when I die. Still, I sense that I have a moral obligation to try.
Joshua thought that he wanted an understanding of consciousness. He started that thread at PS. However, as I hinted, understanding consciousness would be incompatible with his Christianity. And he is clearly not ready to abandon his Christianity.
I could no longer believe the divinity of Jesus. I spent plenty of time searching, but I was unable to find a convincing biblical case to support that theology.
What does “understanding consciousness” mean? Joshua asked for your ‘evolutionary explanation’ of consciousness. You failed to provide one. What you stated seemed uninspiring and superficial compared with the view that we are made in God’s image and thus consciousness-bearing. I suspect that’s partly why he didn’t continue to engage you & why BruceS, another agnostic/non-theist was the only one to seriously engage you there. I doubt your ‘explanation’ of consciousness, evolutionary or not, would make even the slightest dent in Joshua’s Christian worldview, which is why he appeared open to risk your answer there.
As for the divinity of Jesus, this was discussed at length during the Council of Nicaea. Did you study this Council, i.e. look beyond the Bible itself to Christian tradition & teachings? Many Protestants know next to nothing about the history of the early church, the councils or the Church Fathers, knowledge of which might have contributed to answering your questions while you were a skeptical, but still ‘committed’ believer in Christ.
As for “a convincing biblical case” for the divinity of Christ, surely that means you didn’t find that in Luke 22:70, John 10:30 or Matthew 16:16. The person who those verses refer to must have been a liar or a lunatic then, in your view? One could of course still be a Unitarian, something like a modern-day Arian, a deist, a Muslim, Jew or Baha’i, and at the same time accept the divine origins of human consciousness, i.e. as gifted by God, rather than becoming an agnostic, apatheist or unspiritual atheist. I wonder where you fit on that spectrum.
Glad you liked the paper.
The non-reduction versus reductionist controversy has been going on in philosophy of science for much of the last century, I believe. Fodor and Block did work on the non-reducibility of the special sciences like psychology in the early 70s.
Barr did his work on the need for different levels in the late 70s and early 80s.
Bechtel did work on the mechanism approach to reduction in the sciences in the early 90s.
I see the linked paper as complaining that some neuroscientists have become fascinated with technology and lost sight of these previous insights of philosophy and scientific modeling when applying that technology.
Bruce, do you recommend the political science podcast you linked on the brexit thread? I haven’t yet listened to any of them, but it seems like there’s an awful lot of ibertarianism there…..
Sure the hell did….
Tsk-tsk.
I don’t think it would be of value for someone with your depth of knowledge, unless there was a particular guest speaker you wanted to hear. But even then, the quality of the host’s questions tends to vary.
The host did a series explaining the history of libertarianism as he saw that history, so that accounts for the list of libertarian episodes you saw . The host is not a libertarian, he’s. closer to a Sanders/AOC democratic socialist.
Podcasts are a much slower way to absorb ideas than reading. I listen to them while doing chores or while deal with insomnia.
Assuming you wanted to listen to podcasts rather than reading, you might find Ezra Klein’s podcast and Yasha Mounk’s Good Fight podcast more to your liking. Tyler Cowen can be good too, depending on his guest. He is closer to a libertarian, I think. BTW, Cowen did a good interview of Kukla, who is the editor you complained about sometime ago for her policy on anonymity of peer reviews (but that doesn’t come up).
https://www.vox.com/ezra-klein-show-podcast
https://player.fm/series/the-good-fight-1528359
https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler
Bruce:
He’s a great filmmaker. I’ve been a fan ever since seeing Vernon, Florida in college.
The ones I’ve heard are The Political Theory Review (Jeffrey Church) and Talking Politics (Cambridge Univ.). IIRC, the Church one is better.
Neil:
As Swamidass pointed out:
It’s silly to claim that a Christian cannot understand a non-Christian’s arguments regarding consciousness.
Judging from the guests and the topics, the Church one does look interesting and I will try some episodes and let you know how the quality of the conversation compares with politicalyphilosophypodcast.
The second semst closer to the type of podcast I get from news papers and magazines like Atlantic or NYT or New Yorker. Those get repetitive and I limit my listening time for them.
Do you ever look at New Books Network; it has interviews with authors of recent book and topics in political science (not necessarily philosophy though)
https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/politics-society/political-science/page/2/
BruceS,
No, I was unfamiliar with that. Thanks!
BTW, Philosophia today finally (FINALLY–after 11 months!!) accepted my paper on prudential values. Again I have to thank keiths for pushing me (and my buttons) on the issues I discuss therein. I don’t know what Springer’s position is about posting it elsewhere–like on researchgate or academia.edu, but if it’s not too expensive, I might splurge for open access so it will be available on the internet right away. (If it IS expensive, there might be a wait, you poor dears.)
ETA: I haven’t heard yet when it will appear in the journal. That may be another year……
walto,
Congratulations! I look forward to discussing it with you.
Woohoo! congrats W!
Thanks, gents!
Congratulations, Walt. Have you shared that paper in pre-print already?
If you were not aware of NBN, you might want to look at the other subtopics. It is similar to the Church podcast in that it interviews book authors, but it covers many more subjects. There are about 150 entries under philosophy alone. However, the UI is not friendly to mobile, at least not to Chrome on my tablets.
Yes, you are right to disagree. I wrote that too quickly and on re-reading I am not happy with it either. I need to be more careful on the relation between theories, models, the various pragmatic ways scientists have to state theories and models, and how that relates to conceptual schemes. I do want to clarity that the list of formats I gave was intended to be an “or” list.
On conventionalism: I don’t see your position as the scientific conventionalism I was trying to describe. So I’ll not pursue that.
On conceptual schemes. I think you are saying part of what theories do is to provide new conceptual schemes for humans to describe reality. If so, I agree.
What I am unclear on is the how measuring, conceptual schemes, and analyticity relate in your ideas.
I agree that testing a theory requires a way to interpret the theory into some phenomena and predictions we can measure through instruments. And that some aspects of those instruments are conventional, such as the scales of measurement.
But I believe you have something deeper than that in mind with respect to measuring and conceptual schemes, and that it somehow relates to your idea (?) that theories cannot be true or false, or maybe that they are always true analytically for some reason.
Well done, walto!
Do these ideas resonate with what you think?
The following is a quote from the linked NBN interview:
https://newbooksnetwork.com/david-j-stump-conceptual-change-and-the-philosophy-of-science-alternative-interpretations-of-the-a-priori-routledge-2015/
“Ever since Kant argued that there was a category of truths, the synthetic a priori, that grounded the possibility of empirical knowledge, philosophers have debated the concept of a priori knowledge in science. Are there kinds of scientific knowledge that are not based in sense experience? What is the status of mathematical claims in science? David J. Stump, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco, argues that there is a priori knowledge in science, but that it is a pragmatic and dynamic. In Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science: Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori (Routledge, 2015), Stump argues that the a priori is better understood as the ‘constitutive elements’ of science – the truths that must be presupposed for empirical inquiry to take place, but without implying that these truths are universal and fixed as Kant held. Stump provides an accessible critical understanding of post-Kantian conceptions of the a priori and contrasts his view with those of Quine, Friedman and others.”
BruceS,
Stump’s work is quite good. His draws extensively on C. I. Lewis’s idea of the “pragmatic a priori“. I also like Friedman’s work in Dynamics of Reason. I’d be very interested to see how Stump contrasts his view with Friedman’s.
Congratulations!
Thanks. I’ve added it to my favorites and hope to listen to something on a future car trip.
Thanks to all. Much appreciated. I’ve just read the copyright transfer doc and I think I can put a pre-final draft up at academia and philpapers. I’ll try to do that over the next few days and eagerly await keiths’ inevitable Another Epic Walto Fail OP.
That does make sense to me. If I take analytic=a priori, then that also allows me to make some sense of Neil’s statement in an upthread post:
” A theory itself is neither true nor false, because it is a set of conventions. So, if considered true, then it is an analytic truth”
—Neil
So if some statements, possibly theories exceedly well confirmed, are taken as a priori for current scientific work, then that does seem similar to what Neil says.
But the big difference for me is that does not mean there are not further theories within that research program that are not themselves analytic. I mean how can one do science otherwise?
I suspect Neil will answer that question by saying such theories generate predictions which must be tested in the world by experiment or observation. But the theories themselves are not synthetic. If that is right, them to me that says that theoretical terms are not referring which I think is instrumentalism. And that is the explanation for the view I took upthread on the nature of instrumentalism in the scenario which expresses my understanding of the Stapp quote (and I think I listened to the podcast too).
Agreed.
Do tell what was/is ‘inspiring’ in Neil’s godless naturalistic view of (the emergence of) human consciousness.
Yes. How we form concepts is fundamental to everything.
You cannot just point to a rabbit, and use that to form the “gavagai” concept. That’s because the ability to point to an object already presupposes the concept. You cannot get to concepts by naming things, because there are no things. You have to first thingify the world — that is, turn the world into something like a collection of things. The world, by itself, is just undifferentiated stuff. Until we make distinctions within that stuff, we don’t have things.
So how do we get concepts? To be able to conceptualize a rabbit is to have some sort of procedure that I can use that identifies what I will eventually call a rabbit. And it has to be a reasonably reliable procedure. Only then, can I have a rabbit concept and start to introduce names.
There’s an additional problem here. The procedures that I (or my brain) might use to identify a rabbit are not conducted in public. So the procedures that you use to identify a rabbit are probably very different from the procedures that I use to identify a rabbit.
This is where social conventions come in. If I thingify the world, and you thingify the world, we need to both carve the world into the same things if we are to be part of a society. So what I identify as a rabbit has to be about the same as what you identify as a rabbit. We don’t have to always get the identical answer — there might be some odd entity that you consider a rabbit and I don’t. But such disagreement has to be infrequent. Even though we might be using different brain procedures to identify rabbits, we need to have close agreement on what we identify. So our thingifying of the world has to be conventional (in accordance with social conventions). This gets worked out, because we are able to adjust (or tweak) our thingifying procedures so that we mostly agree about what to take as a thing.
And here’s where I agree with keiths on semantic internalism. My meaning of “rabbit” comes from my procedures that I use to identify a rabbit. And if you are using different procedures, as you likely are, then your meaning of “rabbit” will be different. Because we mostly agree on what we actually identify as a rabbit, our reference to rabbit can be considered external. But our meaning is internal. Putnam’s “Twin Earth” argument only works for reference, not for meaning.
Science has the same kind of problem. It needs a procedure to identify an entity. So Newton’s
amounts to a procedure that identifies what we will take to be a force. And it also tells us how to measure force.
The one difference with science, is that the procedures are also public. Those procedures are, however, built upon private common sense knowledge, so they are not quite as objective as we take them to be.
If I use a procedure — say “procedureA” — to recognize a rabbit, then:
What procedureA recognizes is a rabbit
becomes an analytic statement. It is a definition, so it is a necessary truth. It is analytic for me, but perhaps not for you because you use different procedures.
When we get to science, however, the procedures are public. So scientific statements of that form are analytic for everyone (or everyone who accepts the science).
I really don’t understand this aversion to analytic statements.
In order to do science, we need to be able to make reference to reality. And that requires defining terms. A definition is, of necessity analytic.
Science could not work without definitions, because those are needed to allow us to talk about reality.
Definitions are analytic. They give us a language we can use to make observations. Those observations are not analytic. But the observations are also not part of the theory. The definitions are part of the theory.
I think I see the problem when I look at Quine’s “Truth by convention” where he claims to prove that mathematical truth cannot be a matter of truth by convention. But it is nonsense. He gives a very narrow definition of “convention”. And, yes, he is right that mathematical truth can not be a matter of what fits his very narrow definition of “convention”. But his definition of “convention” is far too narrow.
Roughly speaking, Quine is looking only at syntactic conventions and is completely ignoring semantic conventions (or what I prefer to call “behavioral conventions”).
So I see Newton’s laws as conventions. But they are not syntactic conventions. They are behavioral conventions for physicists. And that makes them semantic conventions, because of the way that meaning is connected with behavior (Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use”).
This becomes obvious when someone born blind has successful treatment to gain sight. Vision is not passive or innate.
I don’t say it is. But why think it should be? That seems to me a pretty odd test.