Jammer says his concept of a theory (a theory of a theory? ) is in line with Hempel; Jammer postulates C, E, and M - Hempel does mention this 'trope', but not to approve it - where E is a "bottom up" mapping of C to empirical results, and M is a " top down" model. Jammer also proposes "explanatory statements". This seems attractive for physics (relativity = Lorentz, Mitchelson-Morley, c as a constant, curved space) but how's it going to work for, say, biology? And even if it's right that a calculus can be constructed sufficiently abstractly to escape Hempel's objections, those same objections re-surface in E because E is (generally, inevitably? ) framed in T-1
Monday, March 18, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Reading Hempel
Finally I get round to reading Hempel as a primary source, and I find that what strikes me most is the apparent variability of the quality of the argumentation; is all academic writing like this? Sometimes, as in the discussion of the complementary challenges of the linguistic/ontological turns vis-a-vis determinism (I tried to type "reductionism" there but the predictive text replaced it with determinism - amusing) (I've now given up blogging on the bus - a keyboard is a requirement, I just can't finesse the tablet on-screen keyboards into something that doesn't feel like a battle and this is being continued from the trusty if somewhat rubbish laptop) Hempel is fantastic, but his long screeds on the various problems with various flavors of theory construction are all over the shop. Not that he is wholly wrong, T = (C, S) and T = (I, B) aren't unproblematic - in fact his description of some of the problems is good, but he seems to site them in odd places. Taking, for example, lambda = (H*C)/(E2-E1): That's a "calculus", surely, and unproblematic in itself. OK, it doesn't mean anything until we start in with S: lambda = the wavelength of light (as measured by some device); h = Plank's constant, which is a number derived from a particular set of experimental procedures; c = the speed of light according to some other set of procedures. Now we know what the calculus means - or is intended to mean - and now we can see where the problems start. If we want to avoid operationalism then it's going to be difficult to avoid either trivial circularity or empty assertion in these S. But the problem is in the S, not the C, isn't it?
This problem is what I think Nagel was trying to address with his addition of the M(odel) to C & S (or I and B, I haven't got to Nagel yet). Here again Hempel is insightful with his questioning of the difference between the "heuristic" model exemplified by the "electricity as water" analogy and the Bohr model of the electron which in some sense people take to be "realistic" (probably less so now, although I did see a so-called science journalist defending his continuing use of the Bohr model as being "convenient for non-specialists" within the last 6 months). But Hempels' best effort is drawing attention to Sellars' "thing-ish or quasi-thingish qualities...", although he doesn't do with it what I would, which would be mount more of a defence of operationalism. The fact that the human brain when furnished with a set of measurements wishes to immediately construct a quasi-thing for them to be measurements of doesn't seem to be an inevitable problem. Still, I'm a big fan of operationalism.
From memory, Jammer adds a fourth element (which Hempel addresses elsewhere, and not quite on all fours with Jammer), the E(xplanation). Jammer's excellent account of 5 different theories of how quantum mechanics is to be "explained" might make an excellent place to replicate some of these ideas. What I took from Jammer, though, was that the C is unproblematic; nobody is arguing about great chunks of the maths - it's the non-mathematical M and E that seem to cause the most pain. S - well, I'd like to look harder at S.
What shocked me most, though, was the (apparently) blase - "Oh well, nothing much can be done until we sort out what meaning means...". Gee, you think? Mightn't that be a priority? If everything the philosophers of science are doing is trying to work out what meaning means I think they should cast the problem as that explicitly - and they need to ask themselves what their meaning means as well, because I don;t see that they can easily limit the problem to the science department.
It's not that I disagree with him.
(Actually, I was also surprised that what I recall as "grue" (green/blue) in the secondary literature turned out to be "blite" (you can guess) in the primary. What's that about?)
This problem is what I think Nagel was trying to address with his addition of the M(odel) to C & S (or I and B, I haven't got to Nagel yet). Here again Hempel is insightful with his questioning of the difference between the "heuristic" model exemplified by the "electricity as water" analogy and the Bohr model of the electron which in some sense people take to be "realistic" (probably less so now, although I did see a so-called science journalist defending his continuing use of the Bohr model as being "convenient for non-specialists" within the last 6 months). But Hempels' best effort is drawing attention to Sellars' "thing-ish or quasi-thingish qualities...", although he doesn't do with it what I would, which would be mount more of a defence of operationalism. The fact that the human brain when furnished with a set of measurements wishes to immediately construct a quasi-thing for them to be measurements of doesn't seem to be an inevitable problem. Still, I'm a big fan of operationalism.
From memory, Jammer adds a fourth element (which Hempel addresses elsewhere, and not quite on all fours with Jammer), the E(xplanation). Jammer's excellent account of 5 different theories of how quantum mechanics is to be "explained" might make an excellent place to replicate some of these ideas. What I took from Jammer, though, was that the C is unproblematic; nobody is arguing about great chunks of the maths - it's the non-mathematical M and E that seem to cause the most pain. S - well, I'd like to look harder at S.
What shocked me most, though, was the (apparently) blase - "Oh well, nothing much can be done until we sort out what meaning means...". Gee, you think? Mightn't that be a priority? If everything the philosophers of science are doing is trying to work out what meaning means I think they should cast the problem as that explicitly - and they need to ask themselves what their meaning means as well, because I don;t see that they can easily limit the problem to the science department.
It's not that I disagree with him.
(Actually, I was also surprised that what I recall as "grue" (green/blue) in the secondary literature turned out to be "blite" (you can guess) in the primary. What's that about?)
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
re-booting
no time ...
OK, make time. I'm re-starting this blog for educational musings.
I'm not sure that the phone keyboard is ever going to be my favourite tool, though.
I remain convinced that web-based tools are strategic, more so if both Blackberry and Microso\t do achieve some traction. But, I've just developed a prototype application using a language called Frink, which is not at all strategic. So, what's that all about?
Quick answer...Frink has a really short learning curve. For me. I've only ever learned programming in a tasked-based way - I cannot slog through a step-by-step course doing meaningless examples. With Frink I got from idea to working prototype in 3 days.
Not only that, but I've motivated myself to learn Java properly, identified the problem with Javascipt-CSS-HTML, and confirmed
number of things about institutions
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