Presuppositions of Science

Given recent posts here at TSZ challenging the validity of presuppositions and self-evident truths I thought the following list might be worthy of debate.

Presuppositions of Science

1. The existence of a theory-independent, external world
2. The orderly nature of the external world
3. The knowability of the external world
4. The existence of truth
5. The laws of logic
6. The reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment
7. The adequacy of language to describe the world
8. The existence of values used in science
9. The uniformity of nature and induction
10. The existence of numbers

When critics object to the Logos as a presupposition and offer instead 10 other presuppositions, Ockham’s Razor flies out the window.

788 thoughts on “Presuppositions of Science

  1. It’s nothing to do with the number of ‘presuppositions’ – it’s their relevance.

    Any reasonable person could look at your list of scientific presuppositions and at least understand them as pertinent.

    Now compare that list to the amorphous menagerie of ideas, concepts, history, songs, poems, parables and whatnot that is offered up as ‘Logos’. You really think you’re on Occam’s good side?

    We are invited to believe that floods, prophecies, resurrections and talking donkeys are actually necessary presuppositions for knowledge without so much as a hint as to why all this disparate esoterica bears in the least on the questions at hand.

    Until somebody explains why believing a bronze age rabbi was nailed to a cross two thousand years ago is a necessary condition for science then I’m happy to dismiss the presuppositional game as the game it is.

  2. Presuppositions of Science

    1. The existence of a theory-independent, external world
    This is not a presupposition of science, but many epistemologies including all theistic ones.

    2. The orderly nature of the external world
    The external world is discovered to be orderly, not presumed to be.

    3. The knowability of the external world
    This is basically the same as your #6, and besides, this is not a presupposition of science, but many epistemologies including all theistic ones.

    4. The existence of truth
    5. The laws of logic

    This is not a presupposition of science, but reason itself. Theists have to presume these too.

    6. The reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment
    This is basically the same as your #3, and besides, this is not a presupposition of science, but many epistemologies including all theistic ones.

    7. The adequacy of language to describe the world
    Discovered, not presumed.

    8. The existence of values used in science
    What the hell does this even mean? Values “exist”?

    This is straight up nonsensical. In so far as you value something, you value it, and your valuation therefore is manifest, it “exists”. It doesn’t have to be presumed.

    9. The uniformity of nature and induction
    Discovered, not presumed. It nature wasn’t “uniform” and induction didn’t work, we would discover this to be the case because science would not work.

    10. The existence of numbers
    Like with reason, numbers are not unique presuppositions of science.

    Now, this Logos thing you speak of. What is it, what does it say? Just because you can refer to an idea with a single word does not mean it contains only a single or few individual concepts. Explain what it is so we can unpack and analyze it.

  3. Scientific “presuppositions” are considered to be fallible, and many are understood to be subjects of investigation, such as how humans use–and often fail to use, or misuse–logic and numbers. They are the same for theists and atheists.

    The “Logos” merely distorts matters into “infallibility” and provides miraculous “answers” to ongoing questions. It doesn’t so much simplify the issues as it does trivialize them.*

    Glen Davidson

    *Obviously I don’t mean that “Logos” does this for all theists, but for those who use “it’s a miracle” as an explanation.

  4. I took a flyer at what you and FFM might propose that non-theists presuppose in another thread a week ago; I think I covered some of your list but definitely not all (eg that scientists must be math Platonists is one I missed).

    In any event, the answer to your question is science presupposes nothing.

    Scientific process was pragmatically developed; it is one we have found that allows us to develop theories to predict, control, and explain spatio-temporal reality. That process undergoes continuous improvement/review, as illustrated by the current issues of whether multiverse theory is science and how to compensate for the weaknesses of statistical significance testing (eg “p-hacking”). (BTW, that review process is best thought of as philosophical, not scientific).

    It is true that no process might have been found to work. But it seems to me that such a condition could only obtain in a universe where no entities capable of doing science could possibly exist. So the possibility of science is better thought of as an anthropic condition, not a presupposition.
    .

  5. It may be helpful on an issue like this to look at science *as it has happened*, eg. engage with history a bit. I’m on mobile now so I won’t elaborate atm, but I think that if you look at the history of science and the great, creative scientists (bypassing the work of the medieval in the sciences to save time) such as Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Herschel, Einstein, Planck etc, that it becomes rather clear exactly what presuppositions made possible their work (some of them made it quite explicit what they were presupposing, as well).

  6. What, specifically, does it mean for a number to “exist”? Where does this “existence” take place?

  7. “science presupposes nothing.”

    So, the ‘view from nowhere’ then, BruceS? You make ‘science’ sound like an autonomous agent. Yet it is, in fact, people who do science. At least, you could talk about ‘scientists’ (Whewell). To say, ‘scientists presuppose nothing’ is of course folly easily shown.

  8. Mung:

    When critics object to the Logos as a presupposition and offer instead 10 other presuppositions, Ockham’s Razor flies out the window.

    Occam’s razor applies to competing hypotheses.

    Presuppositions are not hypotheses.

  9. “The ‘Logos’ merely distorts matters into ‘infallibility’ and provides miraculous ‘answers’ to ongoing questions.”

    You might want to take this discourse to BioLogos, instead of to the IDM. Notice particularly the capital ‘L’ in BioLogos.

    When the human genome was ‘mapped’ in 2000, by project Human Genome Project head Francis Collins and a large global team of biological/genetic scientists, the expression of this achievement spoke to the ‘Logos’ in a powerful way. Here are the remarks from the White House press conference: https://www.genome.gov/10001356

    “Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God’s most divine and sacred gift.” – Bill Clinton

    “we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.” – Collins

    Collins, now head of the NIH, then went on to write “The Language of God” and to start the BioLogos Foundation.

    Collins is by far a bigger figure in science than anyone in the IDM, probably more than the top 50-100 IDists combined! Yet atheists nowadays tend to want to dance only with the outspoken attention-seeking IDists (and other ‘creationists’) rather than face the more mature and nuanced position of people who accept ‘theistic evolution’ and ‘evolutionary creation’, like those at BioLogos. Would anyone like to explain why that is?

    Does anyone here participate at BioLogos? stcordova is one who should swallow his pride to try. They may yet convert him from his backwards looking, hillbilly YECism, if his local church would ever have the courage to let him with his full consent.

  10. Gregory: So, the ‘view from nowhere’ then, BruceS? You make ‘science’ sound like an autonomous agent. Yet it is, in fact, people who do science. At least, you could talk about ‘scientists’ (Whewell). To say, ‘scientists presuppose nothing’ is of course folly easily shown.

    I agree that the view from nowhere is impossible.

    I am trying to argue that the scientific processes are pragmatically arrived at and continually revised by communities of scientists. To me, nothing is presupposed in such a pragmatic approach.

    I prefer to use the plural “processes” but didn’t want to complicate the issue in making my basic reply to Mung. But even though I think the details of the processes might vary among scientific communities, I think that there will be certain commonalities among the processes resulting from the common goals of predicting, control, and explanation.

    I also find merit in Kitcher’s arguments that members of the scientific communities bring their values into how they execute that comunities’ process, that such value decisions can be at various levels, and that at one level the values-based decisions must in the end by controlled somehow by the whole society, not just the relevant scientific community (eg what work to fund).

  11. BruceS,

    “I am trying to argue that the scientific processes are pragmatically arrived at and continually revised by communities of scientists. To me, nothing is presupposed in such a pragmatic approach.”

    You suggest ‘nothing is presupposed’, yet there is still ‘philosophy in science’ regarding the meanings of basic terms like life, energy, force, matter, power, nature, information, etc. So to credit ‘pragmatism’ only gets one so far (though I recognise you only said ‘pragmatically/pragmatic’, not ‘pragmatism’). & scientific processes are sometimes un-pragmatically arrived at too, within the political & economic surrounds of the ‘culture of science’.

    Mung’s ‘presuppositionalism’ is a typical feature of the flimsy, thin but PR heavy ‘philosophy of science’ (yes, I include Stephen C. Meyer & his Cambridge HPS PhD!) of IDists and the IDM and its ultimate downfall. In this case, I’d actually include the term ‘philosophistry’ for IDists too, just like the 2 who teach philosophy here at TA/SZ (that’s atheist-skeptical zone).

    “the values-based decisions must in the end by controlled somehow by the whole society, not just the relevant scientific community (eg what work to fund).”

    Yes, we are agreed (or at least we share that hope).

  12. Nice OP, mung. Although my views on this may not be held terribly widely, FWlittleIW, I think we ARE probably stuck in nowheresville without 1-6, and I’m including the Logos-wielders in my “we” here: they need all that stuff too.

    I don’t buy the “adequacy” in 7–or I’m not sure exactly what it means, anyhow. 8 and 9 seem more like things we’ve derived from the use of 1-6–including the input of our experiences, and 10 is a particular ontological theory regarding “mathematical objects.”

    Occam’s Razor can be put in any number of ways, so the question of “who wins” the parsimony contest (even if Logosworlders didn’t need 1-6 too) is a matter of how you put the principle.

    BTW, if you don’t mind me asking, where’d you get this interesting list?

  13. Given recent posts here at TSZ challenging the validity of presuppositions and self-evident truths I thought the following list might be worthy of debate.

    Yes, Mung, you are right. Theology is a grossly inferior system because it depends on presuppositions. So theologians attempt to compensate by coming up with bogus assertions about science.

    So let’s look at that list:

    1. The existence of a theory-independent, external world

    No, that’s not a presupposition. It’s a tentative conclusion. It could be wrong, but that would not affect science.

    2. The orderly nature of the external world

    I believe this to be false. The external world is a very disorderly place. Most of it is so disorderly, that we could not live there.

    3. The knowability of the external world

    Absurd. Our ability to know is our ability, and not a property of the external world.

    4. The existence of truth

    False. Truth talk is simply a human social practice. Truth itself is an invented fiction.

    5. The laws of logic

    These are simply a codification of useful social practices. No presupposition is needed.

    6. The reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment

    This is probably false. We just make do with what abilities we have.

    7. The adequacy of language to describe the world

    This is obviously false. That’s why science is continually making up new language, because the received language is hopelessly inadequate for science.

    8. The existence of values used in science

    I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

    9. The uniformity of nature and induction

    False. The importance of induction is greatly exaggerated. If you think nature is uniform, I suggest you try living on the surface of Mercury.

    10. The existence of numbers

    Numbers don’t exist, except as useful fictions.

  14. Gregory: When the human genome was ‘mapped’ in 2000, by project Human Genome Project head Francis Collins and a large global team of biological/genetic scientists, the expression of this achievement spoke to the ‘Logos’ in a powerful way.

    Theists engage in flowery speech. So what?

  15. Neil Rickert: Yes, Mung, you are right.Theology is a grossly inferior system because it depends on presuppositions.So theologians attempt to compensate by coming up with bogus assertions about science.

    So let’s look at that list:

    No, that’s not a presupposition.It’s a tentative conclusion.It could be wrong, but that would not affect science.

    I believe this to be false.The external world is a very disorderly place.Most of it is so disorderly, that we could not live there.

    Absurd.Our ability to know is our ability, and not a property of the external world.

    False.Truth talk is simply a human social practice.Truth itself is an invented fiction.

    These are simply a codification of useful social practices.No presupposition is needed.

    This is probably false.We just make do with what abilities we have.

    This is obviously false.That’s why science is continually making up new language, because the received language is hopelessly inadequate for science.

    I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

    False.The importance of induction is greatly exaggerated.If you think nature is uniform, I suggest you try living on the surface of Mercury.

    Numbers don’t exist, except as useful fictions.

    Fwiw, I disagree with almost every word of this that I can make any sense of at all.

    That’s not an argument or a reason for anybody else to disagree with (or not understand) it, of course, but I think it’s clear at any rate that it constitutes metaphysics and epistemology at their most extreme. You’re the raddest metaphysical philosopher I know, Neil!

  16. Rumraket and Neil Rickert have already shredded your list quite handily, but one item sticks out to me:

    4. The existence of truth

    In a number of your comments you seem to be reifying “truth.” “True” simply means “in accordance with fact or reality.” “Truth” is just the “quality or state of being true.” (Definitions from readily available online dictionaries.)

    There is no free floating “truth.” If one is working within the assumption that an objective reality exists external to subjective observers, truth simply means correspondence to that reality. There is no need for this item on your list.

  17. Patrick: There is no free floating “truth.” If one is working within the assumption that an objective reality exists external to subjective observers, truth simply means correspondence to that reality. There is no need for this item on your list.

    It’s been found pretty tough to explain exactly what’s meant by “correspondence” here. E.g., does there have to be property of F-ness for every predicate “F” asserted in some sentence in order for that sentence to be true?

  18. Gregory:

    You suggest ‘nothing is presupposed’, yet there is still ‘philosophy in science’ regarding the meanings of basic terms like life, energy, force, matter, power, nature, information, etc. So to credit ‘pragmatism’ only gets one so far (though I recognise you only said ‘pragmatically/pragmatic’, not ‘pragmatism’). & scientific processes are sometimes un-pragmatically arrived at too, within the political & economic surrounds of the ‘culture of science’.

    I’m not sure we are talking about the same thing.

    I agree that terms like “energy” are theory laden. I am not sure if theory-ladenness is included in what you mean by “presupposition.”

    When I say science has no presuppositions, I am not referring to any particular theory or term, but rather to the overall process(es) for doing science. And you are right, I’m not referring to “pragmatic” as the philosophy but rather as in the dictionary sense of “efficacious for achieving the goals.”

  19. walto,

    It’s been found pretty tough to explain exactly what’s meant by “correspondence” here. E.g., does there have to be property of F-ness for every predicate “F” asserted in some sentence in order for that sentence to be true?

    What I mean is that “truth” is dependent on reality. Whether or not that is difficult to measure is beside the point. Fifthmonarchyman’s treating the concept as some free floating abstraction is what I was objecting to.

  20. walto:
    Nice OP, mung.Although my views on this may not be held terribly widely, FWlittleIW, I think we ARE probably stuck in nowheresville without 1-6,

    I suppose it comes down to what one means by presuppositions.

    In this context, I understand it to mean assumptions that must be made for science.

    Instead of assumptions, however, I see other things:
    A. Anthropic conditions. There could not be assumptions without beings to make them, and I see some kind of regularity required for such being to exist. Numbers 1, 2, 9 seem closer to this kind of anthropic condition.

    B. 5, rationality, as a presupposition was discussed and I believe debunked in the other thread.

    C 6, 7, 8 are all pragmatically adjusted by the ongoing evolution of the scientific process. They are not assumptions made once and held fixed.

    D. 3, 4 are not required assumptions since science can be done well by scientists who are instrumentalists in their philosophy of science. So one can be agnostic about these assumptions.

    10. Scientists who are non-platonists in math can be do science just as well as scientists who are platonists. So this assumption is not required.

  21. Not sure about “the laws of logic”. Do you mean the laws of classical logic? Much of science is probabilistic, not binary. Things are not true vs false but probably true (or not true) and probably false (or not false). In fact, I’d argue that science has nothing to do with “truth” in a philosophical sense at all, but with the predictive utility of models. A model that makes good predictions is, in informally terms, regarded as more likely to be “true” than one that doesn’t, but all models are false in some sense, and some mutually contradictory models can nonetheless both be highly predictive, even though both cannot be right (and both are probably wrong). Also, models that are supported by a large amount of consilient evidence from independent sources can be regarded, again informally, as “true” – e.g. common descent and evolution, but only informally. All models are false.

  22. Patrick:
    walto,

    What I mean is that “truth” is dependent on reality.Whether or not that is difficult to measure is beside the point.Fifthmonarchyman’s treating the concept as some free floating abstraction is what I was objecting to.

    I sort of agree with you, but I wasn’t talking about measuring or determining whether some assertion (for example) is true. I was talking about what it MEANS for the assertion to be true. You say it means something like “corresponds with external reality.” But it’s been found quite difficult to explain what that means. If it can’t be defined, then there’s a sense in which truth DOES turn out to be a sort of ultimate.

    Again, none of this stuff really matters to anything–in the way that the truth or falsity of this philosophical position or that doesn’t really change much.

  23. Elizabeth: A model that makes good predictions is, in informally terms, regarded as more likely to be “true” than one that doesn’t,

    For something to be more or less likely to be true, truth has already got to mean something. Even if science is entirely probabalistic, it requires a concept of truth just to explicate the probability concepts.

  24. Which is true: general relativity or quantum theory? Figure out how to characterize the discrepancy before continuing.

  25. Rumraket said:

    This is not a presupposition of science, but many epistemologies including all theistic ones.

    Perhaps all major theisms, but certainly not all theisms. Some theisms consider everything to be “inside” each of us – that the appearance of a distinction between an “external world” and “self” is an illusion.

  26. petrushka,

    (i) Is somebody supposed to be able to answer that question?

    (ii) If the answer is that nobody can, is that supposed to be relevant to anything being discussed here?

  27. William J. Murray:
    Rumraket said:

    Perhaps all major theisms, but certainly not all theisms. Some theisms consider everything to be “inside” each of us – that the appearance of a distinction between an “external world” and “self” is an illusion.

    The important point that I think you make here is that presupposing one or more of these is no proof of them. (Full-on) skepticism of the external world, non-contradiction, etc. (including the whatever the position is that Neil has endorsed) remain possibilities. That’s true for atheists as well as theists.

  28. walto: For something to be more or less likely to be true, truth has already got to mean something.Even if science is entirely probabalistic, it requires a concept of truth just to explicate the probability concepts.

    It seems to me that one could be a deflationist about truth and still do science successfully.

  29. Elizabeth:
    Not sure about “the laws of logic”.Do you mean the laws of classical logic?Much of science is probabilistic, not binary.

    Yes, and how do you figure probabilities? You use logical “truth” in your mathematics.

    Things are not true vs false but probably true (or not true) and probably false (or not false).In fact, I’d argue that science has nothing to do with “truth” in a philosophical sense at all, but with the predictive utility of models.

    It has everything to do with philosophical truth, or you’d never arrive at probabilities for scientific models. Computers typically operate using classical, binary logic. Then too, I’m use “philosophical truth” in the sense that “true” and “false” are assigned values, not in the sense that some philosophies would start with “truth”

    Glen Davidson

  30. walto: For something to be more or less likely to be true, truth has already got to mean something.Even if science is entirely probabalistic, it requires a concept of truth just to explicate the probability concepts.

    Which is why I followed my comment up with the claim that science isn’t about truth anyway, but about the relative predictive utility of models.

  31. GlenDavidson: Yes, and how do you figure probabilities? You use logical “truth” in your mathematics.

    I’m not saying that we never use classical logic, although often it’s that very type of math that fails (null hypothesis testing, for instance). I’m saying that mostly what we do is estimate (at best) the probability that a hypothesis is true but without any absolute criterion as to how to judge, or even what the priors are! And in null hypothesis testing, we are, usually, estimating the probably of our data “if the null is true” when we know that the null is almost certainly false, even if it were knowable, which it isn’t.

  32. William J. Murray: Perhaps all major theisms, but certainly not all theisms. Some theisms consider everything to be “inside” each of us – that the appearance of a distinction between an “external world” and “self” is an illusion.

    If that counts as a “theism” then I’m probably a theist. Cue Gregory in 3…2…1…

  33. Of course if we define “truth” (at least in the scientific sense) to mean “has good preditive validity and is corroborated by independent evidence” then, sure, science is about truth. But I’m still not sure classical logic is all we need. Fuzzy logic seems much more appropriate for much of what we do.

  34. Elizabeth: Which is why I followed my comment up with the claim that science isn’t about truth anyway, but about the relative predictive utility of models.

    At the model level, maybe.

    The point is that even those start with “truth,” the “facts.” Anatomy is science, too, and mostly it’s “facts,” if perhaps within a range of possibilities. From established “facts” or “truth” from comparative anatomy, we may get to the theory of evolution, which is rather more interesting, and certainly is more probabilistic. But probabilities depend on the “facts,” today including cladistics and DNA analysis.

    Glen Davidson

  35. whitefrozen: I think that if you look at the history of science and the great, creative scientists (bypassing the work of the medieval in the sciences to save time) such as Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Herschel, Einstein, Planck etc, that it becomes rather clear exactly what presuppositions made possible their work (some of them made it quite explicit what they were presupposing, as well).

    That’s a good point. But I think we should distinguish between what is held as a priori with respect to some particular theory and what is held a priori with respect to all theories.

    Though it seems quite obviously correct that any scientific theory will have some constitutive principles, definitions, stipulations, and procedures that are functionally a priori with respect to that theory, that’s fully consistent with thinking (correctly, in my view) that, over the history of science, the a priori principles of one theory are revised or refuted by its successors.

    In other words, although there are relative a priori principles — relative to each theory — that doesn’t mean that there are absolute a priori principles for all theories.

    BruceS: It seems to me that one could be a deflationist about truth and still do science successfully.

    It is true that a meaningful language requires an implicit semantics and pragmatics for the “is true” predicate, and figuring out the underlying rules that allow the semantics and pragmatics to function is probably not a total waste of time. (Probably.) That’s a condition for a meaningful language, whether it is used to do science or not.

    It is a further question whether or not the intelligibility of scientific practice requires a non-semantic conception of truth as well, i.e. truth as “correspondence”.

    It seems to me, as far as scientific practice goes, it doesn’t matter that, as Elizabeth says, “all models are false” — or that all models fall short of an isomorphic mapping to their domains. On the contrary, an isomorphic model would be useless. Consider a map of an area on the scale 1:1. Where would you keep it? (Borges and Eco are both brilliant on this idea, by the way.)

    Distortion, simplification and selection of what to model and what not model are necessary features of any model that can be interesting and useful. And there’s a historical dimension here as well: any model is going to be a correction of some previous model.

  36. GlenDavidson: The point is that even those start with “truth,” the “facts.” Anatomy is science, too, and mostly it’s “facts,” if perhaps within a range of possibilities. From established “facts” or “truth” from comparative anatomy, we may get to the theory of evolution, which is rather more interesting, and certainly is more probabilistic, but probabilities depend on the “facts,” today including cladistics and DNA analysis.

    “Facts” is not a word I’m all that keen on. It’s essentially an informal world we use for things that we can safely assume to be true.

    So I tend to talk about “data” and “models”. And the neat thing about data and models is that they aren’t two categories of knowledge, they are relational – all models are of data at a lower level of analysis, and vice versa.

    For instance, I work quite a lot in brain imaging. For me the “data” I work with are signal intensity measures from a particular XYZ coordinate in 3D space at a specific time. However, for the physicist who gives me that “data” (or the software, in fact, these days) that signal intensity measure, at that time and place, is a model, derived from more primary “data” and so on. Even our “direct” observations are models we make based on incoming data. As soon as we “know” something, we have made a model of it. i.e. what we know is a model albeit one with very good predictive validity. But not always. What we see with our eyes and other senses can be misleading – can make poor predictions.

  37. Elizabeth: Of course if we define “truth” (at least in the scientific sense) to mean “has good preditive validity and is corroborated by independent evidence” then, sure, science is about truth. But I’m still not sure classical logic is all we need. Fuzzy logic seems much more appropriate for much of what we do.

    I think it’s difficult but important to distinguish between the semantic conception of truth and the epistemic conception of truth.

    Semantically, we get stuff like “‘Snow is white’ is true if and only if snow is white”, and related theories: deflationary theories, redundancy theory, the prosentential account (according to which sentences like “that’s true” function to signal one’s endorsement of a previously made assertion).

    Epistemically, truth functions as a goal of inquiry. Or we could say that the goal of inquiry is “good preditive validity and is corroborated by independent evidence”, and leave truth out of it.

    My take is that there is an intimate link between whether one accepts an epistemic conception of truth, or truth-as-correspondence, however naturalized or qualified — and whether one accepts scientific realism. Rejecting either entails rejecting the other, because correspondence is a real relation, and real relations require real relata.

    If one rejects scientific realism in favor of instrumentalism, then there’s no room for truth-as-correspondence and truth becomes merely a semantic concept (as can be seen in Rorty). Conversely, if one accepts scientific realism, then there must be room for something like truth-as-correspondence, however different that concept turns out to be from the semantic concept (as can be seen in Sellars).

  38. walto: Sure.Why not?

    Hence one can say that doing science is compatible with there being no need for a concept of truth.

    Hence 4 is not a presupposistion of science (assuming Mung meant the concept of truth by 4).

    If Mung meant the existence of truth as a correspondence between scientific theory and reality, then that is shown to be an unnecessary assumption for science by the fact that one can do science perfectly well while being an instrumentalist in one’s philosophy of science.

    Bottom line of this post and reply to you: I don’t think it is correct for you to say “we ARE probably stuck in nowheresville without 1-6” if nowheresville is meant to be where science would be without presuppositions.

  39. walto: For something to be more or less likely to be true, truth has already got to mean something. Even if science is entirely probabalistic, it requires a concept of truth just to explicate the probability concepts.

    For science, truth is pretty much the same as conformance with standards. Data is true if you followed the standards in getting that data.

    As for correspondence — I’m inclined to say that scientific standards of measurement actually establish a correspondence between reality and the data.

    Andy Tanenbaum famously said: “The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.” So I suppose that truth should be relative to standards. However, we usually know from context, which standards are relevant.

  40. BruceS: Scientific process was pragmatically developed; it is one we have found that allows us to develop theories to predict, control, and explain spatio-temporal reality.

    I agree. We might say presuppositions can be turned into hypotheses that we can test. ID could develop a scientific approach by turning supposition into a testable hypothesis.

  41. Kantian Naturalist:

    It is true that a meaningful language requires an implicit semantics and pragmatics for the “is true” predicate, and figuring out the underlying rules that allow the semantics and pragmatics to function is probably not a total waste of time. (Probably.)That’s a condition for a meaningful language, whether it is used to do science or not.

    It is a further question whether or not the intelligibility of scientific practice requires a non-semantic conception of truth as well, i.e. truth as “correspondence”.

    See my above post to Walt on the impact of deflationism and instrumentalism on 4, depending on how 4 is interpreted.

    Note that I make no claim about the correctness of these philosophical approaches to truth and science. Only that both are compatible with doing science. Hence there is no need for scientists to presuppose anything about truth.

    I did not get into it in that post to Walt, but I think one could make a similar argument on the relevance of one’s philosophical theory of meaning (which is not explicitly mentioned by Mung).

    ETA: 5 on the adequacy of language is clearly false as written. For science is continually inventing and refining the languages it uses: mathematics, mechanisms, simulations, diagrams, and so on.

    On the other hand, if Mung meant the existence of a community able to communicate, I take that as another anthropic condition, not a presupposition made by science.

  42. walto: For something to be more or less likely to be true, truth has already got to mean something. Even if science is entirely probabalistic, it requires a concept of truth just to explicate the probability concepts.

    Is it essential? Pragmatically, we can just go with what works, what gels with shared experience.

  43. Well, I think we can be a lot more precise than that, although it depends on the field. But one measure is of fit of model to data is a comparison with the fit of the null model – which you can measure as the probability of observing what you did observe under that null.

  44. BruceS,

    That all seems right to me. Pretty much all the “presuppositions” Mung mentions here can be reformulated as metalinguistic expressions of the implicit practices of inquiry, some of which have a biological basis and others of which are more recent cultural achievements.

    What is true is that if we want to engage in some epistemic practice, then there will some ‘metaphysical’ principle that must be assumed in order for that practice to be fully intelligible. If you want to count or measure, there you assume that there are numbers (or units), and so forth. But there is nothing necessary about those practices, and so nothing necessary about those principles, either. The principles are merely metalinguistic statements that allow us to say what one is doing by engaging in that practice.

    But it is false to think that there must be some presuppositions one must already accept prior to engaging in any epistemic practice, because that involves the Myth of the Given, and if Sellars is right, the Myth of the Given is simply incoherent.

  45. Kantian Naturalist: But it is false to think that there must be some presuppositions one must already accept prior to engaging in any epistemic practice, because that involves the Myth of the Given,

    I don’t think so.

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