Scientific Detoxification, Semantic Detoxification, Sophisticated Operationalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Scientific Polysemy, Semantic Detoxification, and Sophisticated Operationalism *
2022
Two commonplace phenomena of scientific practice have been taken to challenge operationalism. I provide a version of operationalism that, in fact, explains these phenomena: scientific polysemy and semantic detoxification. Scientific polysemy is generated by cases of semantic extension: the extension of the usage of old terminology in new theoretical or experimental regimes. The changes in the usage of that terminology result in polysemy. Semantic detoxification follows semantic extension’s resul-tant polysemy; it is a reconciliation of novel and past usages. The new usage takes priority over older uses in the novel context, correcting and circumscribing old usages in their native contexts. Focusing on the case of quantity terms, I present a holist operationalism that explains both phenomena: Multiple meanings arise because of differences in the relation of some quantity to other quantities; Multiple meanings are unified into one term because the functional roles determined by these ...
2005: Semantic Holism and (Non-)Compositionality in Scientific Theories
It is a well-established view in the Philosophy of Science that scientific theories introduce new terms, so-called theoretical terms. They denote properties, usually functional properties, which go beyond what is observable or given by common sense. Their meaning is not pre-theoretically given. It is specified by nothing else but the theory itself. The same holds for the denotations of theoretical terms-these denotations are not pre-theoretically given but are hypothetically postulated by the theory. Consider, as our main example, the way how mass and force are characterized by the axioms of Newtonian physics: (N1) For all physical objects x and times t: The sum of all forces acting on x at t equals the mass of x times the acceleration of x at t. (N2) Whenever x exhibits a force onto y, then y exhibits a force of the same amount and opposite direction onto x. (NG) For all x, y and t, the gravitational force between x and y at t equals the amount of g•m(x)•m(y) |s(x,t)−s(y,t| 2 with the direction pointing from x to y and vice versa. Three things are very typical in this theory T : (1.) The theory T itself is specified by a finite set of axioms. So we may identify T with a single statement-the conjunction of its axioms. (2.) The only observational or pre-theoretical concepts in Newtonian physics are object, time, and position as a dependent function of object and time, plus its derivatives w.r.t. time, velocity and acceleration. The meaning of the two T-theoretical concepts, namely mass and force, is simultaneously characterized by the axiom of T. (3.) The meaning of mass and force is not given by observation, common sense, or in any other theory-independent way. For example, it would be inadequate to regard the common sense meaning of force as 'something which pushes or pulls' as the semantic core of the meaning of this term.
Qualitas and Quantitas: two ways of thinking in science
Quality & Quantity, 2013
The paper explores the complex history of quality and quantity from Aristotle's doctrine of categories up to current discussions of the status of qualia in the mind-body problem in modern analytic philosophy. In the first part of the paper we trace the progressive mechanisation, mathematisation and quantification of the natural sciences, processes which spread to the humanities and medicine as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and later culminated in the logical positivism of the Vienna and Berlin Circle. The second part discusses the renaissance of qualitative research methods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the humanities and the social sciences (hermeneutics, descriptive psychology, phenomenological sociology; the Chicago and Frankfurt School). It describes the origin of the terms "quality of life", "quality of the environment", "qualitative growth", etc., and brings out the quite unexpected fact that qualitative research methods are nowadays also in vogue in mathematics, physics and artificial intelligence. The paper is based on a comprehensive search of the databases of several libraries via the keywords "quality" and "quantity". It contains a bibliography of some 200 items.
Quantificational Modification: The Semantics of Totality and Proportionality
2011
The thesis explores the syntactic and semantic dimensions of four linguistic elements that appear in Modern Greek arguably as quantifiers and modifiers, i.e., in the form of Quantificational Modifiers (QMods) olos 'all, whole, overall' and its extension olikos 'total', merikos 'some, a few, partial', ligos 'some, few, little, insignificant' and polls 'many, great, considerable'. Such QMods are analyzed as 'measure' quantifiers of scalar semantics that appeal' in a syntactic position common to adjectival modifiers. The thesis explores specific sets of reading and their interpretations. Such a phenomenon is common to Modern Greek, English, French and Arabic QMods and gives evidence to the universality of Quantificational Modification as a semantic subclass of Quantification. Chapter 1 discusses Quantification as semantic interpretation along with the main questions this research intends to answer, while Chapter 2 reviews recent liter...
Semantic Contextualism and Scientific Pluralism, (presentation Philang 2015, Lodz, Poland)
Semantic Contextualism and Pluralism, 2015
This paper explores the relationship between semantic contextualism and philosophical pluralism. Semantic contextualism is understood here as a philosophical approach to linguistic meaning and interpretation and an intuitively plausible ground or rationale of a moderate anti-formalism-one which attempts to make good use of formal methods where they are applicable but which is otherwise content to proceed in terms of content as contrasted with over-emphasis on formal methods. Contextualism involves a moderate semantic holism as contrasted with unrestricted or monistic holism, and it also avoids the opposite extreme of semantic atomism. In opposition to unrestricted semantic holism, we do not need to understand everything in order to understand particular matters of interest; and this point helps us focus on the corresponding epistemic question: how much do we need to know or understand, in order to justify particular claims of interest? A scientific pluralism will be shown to arise more or less directly from contextual constraint on interpretation. This includes a brief consideration of the ways in which the virtues of hypotheses enter into the pluralism of responses to particular, outstanding problems.
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2021
Quantitative scientific theories have been crucial to science for 400 years. Yet a random sample of the voluminous metaphysics literature on laws is still likely to pay mere lip-service to this fact-the schema 'All Fs are Gs' standing in for much of the ongoing debate. Wolff therefore undersells her new book-length treatment, The Metaphysics of Quantities (2020, OUP), when she remarks that 'we do not have a good metaphysical understanding of quantities' (p. 1). Indeed, the debate has entirely failed to have the prominence it should have. Nevertheless, there is a rich background on which Wolff draws to develop her 'substantival structuralism' about quantities. Within metaphysics-proper, this includes Field's science without numbers, Mundy's Platonism about quantities, and Arntzenius and Dorr's view of calculus as geometry. However, the central inspiration behind Wolff 's considered view is the Representationalist Theory of Measurement (RTM), developed by Krantz et al. (1971-90), Narens, and others. As initially conceived, RTM is more concerned with the mathematical nature of quantitative representation than any metaphysical project (although there are deflationary undertones). But Wolff puts it to work informing a genuinely novel account of quantities that is both realist and rigorously defined. One thing that could have been made more explicit early on in the book is that Wolff is concerned only with classical quantities. Hence, the peculiar discreteness of certain quantum scales is not within her purview (fn. 9, p. 20). Moreover, Wolff tends to treat the quantities with which she does engage as homogeneous, with complications of zero-values considered as an afterthought (e.g. p. 154). One might wonder therefore about the scope of her metaphysical view when moving into these other domains. For instance, homogeneity is crucial for her rejection of absolutism (ch. 8), but should we be absolutist about zero-values? Nevertheless given the caveats, the path Wolff leads us down is generally well-supported and plausible. The book is divided into three parts. In the first (chs 2-4), Wolff argues for a 'restricted realism' about quantities. She begins (ch. 2) by rejecting treatments of quantities in terms of the determinate-determinable model (e.g. Funkhouser
Academia Letters, 2021
We will argue that semantic models are not enough to distinguish between what is meaningful and what is pseudo-meaningful. It can only do so when combined to some further knowledge of the interpretative options, and those are arrived at by the Scientific models of reality. The discussion of the difference between what is meaningful and what is nonsense is, on this account, always subjected to a discussion about the demarcation between science and pseudo-science. This discussion can be made employing metaphysical reasoning, by positivist criteria or naturalistic parameters. In any case, what enters in question is not merely semantic, and semantics is not able to offer a universal and timeless account of the distinction of meaning and pseudo-meaning. This is a short article to highlight some forgotten relations between formal semantics and philosophical issues. This relations were once the common trait of a category theory, but as the speculations pertaining to this field became more linked to mathematical models on syntactic regularities and recursive semantic projections, the less the semantic problem seems linked to philosophical questions or questions related to scientific demarcation. The article is an appeal to remember this aspect of the discussion. Along with it we invite the reader to a reflection inside that field of debate. The tradition of semantic philosophy initiated by Frege (1982) had its broad repercussion because it gave all the tools to identify the mapping functions of language capable of basing its projection of identity content. An expression that is synonym of another have the same projection feature, i.e., it can map equal semantic values, or produce the same generative
2001
Mark H. Bickhard Department of Psychology 17 Memorial Drive East Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA 18015 610-758-3633 office mhb0@ lehigh. edu mark. bickhard@ lehigh. edu http://www. lehigh. edu/~ mhb0/mhb0. html Keywords: operational definition, positivism, logical positivism, philosophy of science