Category: Epistemology and Method

(NOTES TO SELF) RELEVANT DEFINITIONS

(I don’t want to really work in this part of philosophy because it brushes up with metaphysics, and I stick to ethics and institutions. But since our movement’s fearless leader has advised me to try to use existing language more often, I’m collecting some common language definitions that constrain to the propertarian methodology.)

1: PHILOSOPHY

PHILOSOPHICAL REALISM is the view that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc., such that truth consists in the mind’s correspondence to reality; and whatever we believe at any moment is only an approximation of reality and that every new observation brings us closer to understanding reality.

SCIENTIFIC REALISM is the view that the world described by science and the scientific method is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be, and that we can make valid claims about unobservables, and those claims have the same ontological status as observables.

INSTRUMENTALISM is the view that a scientific theory is a useful instrument in understanding the world. A concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality, but that some experience, understanding, or knowledge cannot fully be captured by science.

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY: A philosophical methodology that attempts to adopt the methods and findings of the physical sciences, and as such is characterized by an emphasis on:

a) CLARITY: constructing clear arguments, objectively stated, often with the help of formal logic and analysis of language, expressed if possible in ordinary language ;

b) SCIENCE: a respect for the superiority of the methods and findings of natural sciences over that of the senses (See Scientific Realism);

c) TRUTH: the principle that there are not any specifically philosophical truths;

d) THOUGHT: and that the object of philosophy is the logical clarification, and reduction of error, in thought.

and

e) ACTIONS: Tangentially, that all arguments (a) are constructed as human actions in Operational Language (See Operational Language).

In practice, Analytical Philosophy is a rejection of broad philosophical systems in favor of attention to detail, precise, testable statements, expressed in ordinary language. This atomic approach allows analytical philosophers to bring the discipline of philosophy closer to the discipline of the physical sciences because it has the advantage of being able to solve problems incrementally by the same evolutionary process as does science using the scientific method – rather than requiring that all statements fit within a predefined system of thought.

OPERATIONAL DEFINITIONS: (Operationalism) Operational definitions are definitions of theoretical constructs that are stated in terms of concrete, observable procedures (Actions). Operational definitions solve the problem of what is not directly observable by connecting unobservable traits or experiences to things that can be observed. Operational definitions make the unobservable observable. ( the concepts or terms used in nonanalytic scientific statements must be definable in terms of identifiable and repeatable operations.)

PRAXEOLOGY: is the application of Operationalism to human behavior: it suggests that all statements must be expressed as human actions, just as all scientific actions must use observable procedures, all scientific statements about man must expressed as individual human actions. Praxeology therefore, is a methodology for testing incentives by analyzing every action in a chain of actions to see if each is a rational action for the actor. In theory praxeolgical reasoning is a rational, non empirical test of any statement about human activity. But given the similarity of human beings, it can be used by human beings to test statements about other human beings, assuming one possesses enough information about the individual’s circumstance to sympathize with it. (I don’t argue that it’s a science. I argue that it is a logical test, and a valid logical test, because humans are more capable of empathic considerations of observables, than they are any other system of measurement.) This definition of praxeology contrasts with it’s authors as a science that purports to permit us to deduce human actions, rather than a method of testing a set of human actions as believable sequences of rational incentives. Praxeology has largely be subsumed by Incentives Theory. But Incentives theory as currently structured seems to rely on positivism rather than testing. And incentives theory seems to have largely been subsumed by Experimental Psychology, which has produced most of the valuable information about human cognitive biases and limits.

2: SCIENCE

SCIENTIFIC METHOD is a body of procedures for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, and correcting or integrating previous knowledge, consisting of:

a) the identification of question or problem,

b) systematic observation, measurement, and experiment,

c) the formulation, testing, falsification, and modification of hypotheses.

(There are multiple ways of expressing this.)

THE FIVE COMPENSATIONS of Science: The scientific method can help us compensate for:

i) Biological Limits to Observation: sense, perception, relation, and calculation.

ii) Cognitive Biases which distort our senses, perceptions, relations, valuations and calculations: the operative consideration bing ‘valuation’ or ‘weights’.

iii) Experiential Biases which distort the same, such as emotional loading, mysticism, traditions, myths, norms and assumptions.

iv) Performative Errors which are due to the imperfection of our actions in any endeavor.

v) Deceptive Loadings such as lies, propaganda, deceptions or manipulations.

(The compensations are the part I care about.)

THE FOUR CANONS OF SCIENCE In order to understand the scientific approach to experimental psychology as well as other areas of scientific research, it is useful to know the four fundamental principles that appear to be accepted by almost all scientists.

i) DETERMINISM : One of the first canons of science is the assumption of determinism. This canon assumes that all events have meaningful, systematic causes. The principle of determinism has a close corollary, that is, that the idea that science is about theories. Scientists accept this canon largely on faith and also to the fact that theories wouldn’t be very useful in the absence of determinism, because in the absence of determinism, orderly, systematic causes wouldn’t exist.

ii) EMPIRICISM: The canon of empiricism simply means to make observations. This is the best method of figuring out orderly principles. This is a favorite tool among scientist and psychologists because they assume that the best way to find out about the world is to make observations.

iii) PARSIMONY: The third basic assumption of most scientific schools of thought is parsimony. The canon of parsimony says that we should be extremely frugal in developing or choosing between theories by steering away from unnecessary concepts. Almost all scientist agree that if we are faced with two competing theories, that both do a great job at handling a set of empirical observations, we should prefer the simpler, or more parsimonious of the two. The central idea behind parsimony is that as long as we intend to keep simplifying and organizing, we should continue until we have made things as simple as possible. One of the strongest arguments made for parsimony was by the medieval English philosopher William of Occam. For this reason, the principle of parsimony is often referred to as Occam’s razor.

iv)TESTABILITY: The final and most important canon of science is the assumption that scientific theories should be testable using currently available research techniques. This canon is closely related to empiricism because the techniques that scientists typically use to test their theories are empirical techniques. In addition to being closely related to empiricism, the concept of testability is even more closely associated falsifiability. The idea of falsifiability is that scientists go an extra step by actively seeking out tests that could prove their theory wrong.