Perhaps we should consider the possibility that incommensurability is not as drastic as it seems. There are a number of ways in which we can see a bridge of some kind. First, not only is it possible to for someone not only to learn both Newton and Einstein, but also to use one or the other as appropriate in context. Second, it was essential for the acceptance of Einstein that it explained all the old data (already explained by Newton) as well as the new anomalous data. This suggests that while reference may break down in some areas, it must be maintained in others - at least if the new theory is to compete with the old one. Third, the practices must be recognizable as the same (similar) or different if incommensurability is to be identified at all and when practices are not purely verbal (even if theory-laden), the possibility of sharing references across the divide becomes essential.While something can be said to be the same, something has changed fundamentally so I don't think it stops incommensurability without coming to the conclusion that SR and NM are identical. — Apustimelogist
Adaptive, yes. But also so much more. Theoretical practices are important, but only to creatures that have values, wants and needs, doubts, questions, mistakes - and these need to be expressed, communicated and even discussed as well.I think a strong case can be made for human linguistic ability being evolutionarily adaptive, on the basis that it does provide humans the ability to communicate truths to each other. — wonderer1
Yes. The agreements required in order to disagree and, equally important, to reach agreement. seem particularly important to me. But I don't see that necessarily rules out incommensurability that prevents reaching agreement, there must be sufficient commensurability to recognize difference.But then I have to admit that there is a solid difference between meaningful disagreement, which does seem to need agreement to at least continue, and silence or absurdity. So Davidson still has a point to me, and I feel, in reading all this, that I'm even more uncertain than when I started in spite of spilling so many words. — Moliere
... and if only people would let philosophers get on with what they do best!Observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient when conceptual clarification is needed. — Banno
First, not only is it possible to for someone not only to learn both Newton and Einstein, but also to use one or the other as appropriate in context. — Ludwig V
Second, it was essential for the acceptance of Einstein that it explained all the old data (already explained by Newton) as well as the new anomalous data. — Ludwig V
. This suggests that while reference may break down in some areas, it must be maintained in others - at least if the new theory is to compete with the old one. — Ludwig V
Third, the practices must be recognizable as the same (similar) or different if incommensurability is to be identified at all and when practices are not purely verbal (even if theory-laden), the possibility of sharing references across the divide becomes essential. — Ludwig V
I would say that if both theories are explaining the same data, reference has been maintained. And I never meant to say that all references must be maintained. Just enough to establish that they are both theories of the same things, or at least the same world.I don't agree reference must be maintained. I think its plausible one could explain the same data with very different constructs. — Apustimelogist
I was trying to be brief, but in this case I was too brief. As I understand it, the point is that Einstein is more accurate that Newton, and the difference between them at "normal" - sub-light - speeds is negligible for many purposes.I am not entirely sure it is *essential*. — Apustimelogist
"Correspond" is a strong word. I would compare different languages (I'm not saying that "theory" and "language" mean the same thing). We can recognize that two languages are about the same world and even about the same things, so long as some (most?) references correspond; it helps if some (most?) concepts overlap, at least roughly. But we can recognize at the same time that that is not true of all references or all concepts.Incommensurability is not inherently about some inherent sense of intelligibility or communicability, its about whether the concepts in different theories correspond to each other. — Apustimelogist
.It seems to me that incommensurability is really quite vague. — Ludwig V
"Is it the 'concept' part or the 'scheme' part of a 'conceptual scheme' that's allegedly incommensurable?" — J
Observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient when conceptual clarification is needed.
— Banno
... and if only people would let philosophers get on with what they do best! — Ludwig V
I agree that's one of the issues in the background of this thread.What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1
What, then, do we want to say is the relationship between astrology and astronomy? “Asymmetrical” doesn’t seem to cover it. Any ideas? — J
It was a joke!
More seriously, the question where philosophy ends and science begins is not clear and is contested.
What is clear is that when conceptual clarification is needed, observation, and empirical science generally, is insufficient.
I share your irritation with low-key armchair theories, but am also irritated by over-confident (and over-excited) generalization from scraps of evidence.
What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature
— schopenhauer1
I agree that's one of the issues in the background of this thread. — Ludwig V
joint attention — schopenhauer1
Some thinking out loud:
Incommensurable is the word I'm tempted by :D
But then it seems to be too convenient, in a way. It depends upon just how radical is radical incommensurability, I think -- taking Kuhn's book sometimes it seems a matter of harsh disagreement, and sometimes it seems they inhabit different experiential worlds which in turn give the theories meaning which in turn explains their radical incommensurability. — Moliere
I think it is one way of articulating what is happening when normal ways of conducting arguments break down. That problem is not only found in science.What is the legitimacy of “conceptual schema” in the scientific literature — schopenhauer1
I glad you put "actually the case" in scare quotes. It is the crucal question. The great temptation for empiricism is to jump to conclusions. Too much focus on the data is not helpful. Too little is a waste of time.Well, if you are committed to empiricism, then I would suppose what is closer to "actually the case" is the scientific evidence, not journal articles leading back to neologisms from various early analytic philosophers. — schopenhauer1
But that's the question. Where does this evidence take us? This question becomes acute when there is evidence pointing in different directions - or interpretations of the available evidence that do not agree on which way it points.So my own idea I guess is that philosophers of the empirical bent have to be committed to where the evidence from science takes them, — schopenhauer1
Well, from the outside, it all too often looks as if that's exactly what it is. Given time (maybe a century or so), the community usually sorts itself out - and then finds something else to disagree about.Otherwise, as I stated in an earlier post, science just becomes a noisy room of various disparate findings — schopenhauer1
Seems to me that, that we understand dolphins to be social and communicative shows us that they inhabit the same world we do. If their songs are showing rather then saying, then they are not subject to Davidson's considerations of sentential language.The part that I'd still be uncertain about, at least, is whether or not they inhabit a different world or not. — Moliere
Contrary to ↪Joshs, if we commence by assuming that there is no possibility of communication on important issues, then we are throwing out the possibility of "ameliorating" the "violent breakdown in communication".
Again, we can come to understand that the rabbit is a duck-rabbit, and hence to see the point of view of those who only see the duck. Only where there is some potential for agreement is there also potential to avoid violence. — Banno
She argues that this is because certain extra obligations arise through joint action. — mcdoodle
The relation with empiricism seems to me more complicated than you're saying. Researchers go to a prescribed portion of the world already armed with ideas, looking to confirm or refute them; the ideas come from the armchair or from previous researchers. Certainly for instance Gilbert and Searle's speculations long preceded Tomasello's work in the field (though I really like his fieldwork too, I'm a cooperative-minded person). And Chomsky's initial arguments in the 1960's were taken by some as justifying *not* engaging in certain kinds of empirical linguistic research, since variation between people and their languages was not relevant to his overarching theory: the philosophical presumption dictates what empirical research you undertake, and the reasons for it. — mcdoodle
Astronomy, as practiced by science, is trying to do science with respect to the stars and planets and such, while astrology is trying to soothe people's fears about the future or their place within the world or what it is they ought to do with their life today: one is descriptive of the universe, and the other is therapeutic. — Moliere
I would say that if both theories are explaining the same data, reference has been maintained... Just enough to establish that they are both theories of the same things, or at least the same world. — Ludwig V
"Correspond" is a strong word. I would compare different languages (I'm not saying that "theory" and "language" mean the same thing). We can recognize that two languages are about the same world and even about the same things, so long as some (most?) references correspond; it helps if some (most?) concepts overlap, at least roughly. But we can recognize at the same time that that is not true of all references or all concepts.
It seems to me that incommensurability is really quite vague. — Ludwig V
Yes, I would agree with that. But one needs to tease out what counts as access.To be honest, I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of referencing something in the world that one cannot access. — Apustimelogist
Yes. There's an ambiguity about language. Most people seem to equate "language" with "conceptual scheme" or "paradigm". But I can't see that natural languages can be equated to a single conceptual scheme or paradigm, so I prefer to regard them as distinct. But the point applies to conceptual schemes or paradigms as well as languages.I think with different languages, people usually are not only literally in the same world, but living lives in similar ways with similar objects. — Apustimelogist
Yes, that's clearly true. He's a bit like Hume, who demolishes the claim that logic or reason establishes causal powers or causal laws, and then turns to psychology to fill the gap. I'm doubtful about this, because it seems to reduce the issues to causality or subjectivity. Which misrepresents what's going on, I think. One couldn't seriously argue that Newton's theory was not better (more comprehensive, more accurate, more coherent (?), simpler (?)) than Aristotle's.His account of theory change isn't about logic like Popper, but psychological change in people's minds which is not constrained in a determinate, algorithmic way by evidence. — Apustimelogist
Well, yes. The new science (Newton, LaPlace) abandoned the Aristotelian idea of "matter" in favour of a different conception of what physical objects consist of. But it was pretty clear that both concepts were "about" at least some of the same thing(s). Is that what you had in mind?Kuhn's translatability is instead just about if the structure of lexical networks match up and terms in one theory have a direct correspondence or interchangeability to constructs in the other so that they can be thought of the same thing. — Apustimelogist
He's a bit like Hume, who demolishes the claim that logic or reason establishes causal powers or causal laws, and then turns to psychology to fill the gap. I'm doubtful about this, because it seems to reduce the issues to causality or subjectivity. Which misrepresents what's going on, I think. — Ludwig V
There are lots of degrees and levels of agreement within science, and just as many degrees and levels of incommensurability. Among participants in a scientific paradigmatic community, there need mot be unanimous agreement on conceptual definitions in order to work
productively together. I do think it can be helpful to conceive of normative discursive communities in terms of shared worlds, as long as we treat the idea of world as something like form of life or language game. In a shared world, my behaviors and your responses are mutually intelligible enough to allow for each of us to anticipate the other’s next moves in the game. Now let us say my scientific community undergoes a paradigm shift. Is our new shared world incommensurable with our old one, and if so, how are we then able to go back and forth between the old and new paradigm? I suggest what happens here is that in formulating the new way of thinking, at the same time we subtly reconstrue the sense of meaning of the old concepts such that we now see that old vocabulary in a different light. It is not as if we are able to make the old theory and the new one logically commensurable, but our redefining of the old terms in themselves makes it possible to form a bridge between the old and the new concepts. The old scheme becomes an inadequate or incomplete version of the new one as we retrospectively look back at it. Much the same thing happens in religious conversion. When look back at our old thinking, we implicitly reshape what the old notions were through the filter of the new ones.
Now let’s say we encounter someone who remains within the old way of thinking. We can share their world with them, maybe even consciously taking into account that we no longer conceive of the particulars of that old
world exactly in the way that we used to and the other still
does. But the bridge we created between the old and new doesnt exist for the other. Our new world is mostly invisible to them, at least as evidenced by the impossibility of sharing practices based on that new thinking.
But there are many other ‘worlds’ of practices that we CAN share with the other. We can participate with them in shared recreational activities, for instance. We can do the same with ‘alien’ species like dogs, when we play fetch with them. Whether we are ‘really’ understanding each other is not a question that need be asked as long as the game is flowing smoothly. Given that astrology makes use of concepts that are loose enough to be amenable to a wide variety of interpretations producing different practices among disparate communities, one can find those who consider themselves to have undergone a ‘conversion’ form astrological belief to astronomy, where for others astrology and astronomy can happily co-exist as distinct but not incommensurable worlds. — Joshs
I think it’s important to take seriously the reality of radically incommensurable conceptual schemes, worlds, forms of life. The often violent breakdown in communication that incommensurability between ethico-political communities produces cannot be adequately ameliorated by consultation of a presumed single real world, even Davidson’s indirect one One needs to recognize that these multiple worlds of practices cannot be reduced to a single correct one., even if we believe such reduction is only an asymptotic goal never to be reached. — Joshs
Yes, I would agree with that. But one needs to tease out what counts as access. — Ludwig V
Yes. There's an ambiguity about language. Most people seem to equate "language" with "conceptual scheme" or "paradigm". But I can't see that natural languages can be equated to a single conceptual scheme or paradigm, so I prefer to regard them as distinct. — Ludwig V
But the point applies to conceptual schemes or paradigms as well as languages. — Ludwig V
Yes, that's clearly true. He's a bit like Hume, who demolishes the claim that logic or reason establishes causal powers or causal laws, and then turns to psychology to fill the gap. I'm doubtful about this, because it seems to reduce the issues to causality or subjectivity. Which misrepresents what's going on, I think. — Ludwig V
One couldn't seriously argue that Newton's theory was not better (more comprehensive, more accurate, more coherent (?), simpler (?)) than Aristotle's. I hesitate about "more useful" because it isn't particularly obvious at the moment that Einstein is more useful that Newton. — Ludwig V
Well, yes. The new science (Newton, LaPlace) abandoned the Aristotelian idea of "matter" in favour of a different conception of what physical objects consist of. But it was pretty clear that both concepts were "about" at least some of the same thing(s). Is that what you had in mind? — Ludwig V
1. For what evidence is there empirically for "conceptual schema" to be a "thing" as applied to language use itself (not necessarily as a meta-theory of differences in scientific frameworks aka "incommensurability"). — schopenhauer1
2. What role does Philosophy of Language play in understanding language as opposed to linguistic anthropology, linguistic cognitive neuroscience, psycho-linguistics, and related empirical, or scientific-naturalistic adjacent fields?
For example, when we talk about "forms of life" and "language games", yes that is indeed a neologism created in the Philosophy of Language, but have "forms of life" and "language games" and related neologisms (like "conceptual schema") just become runaway theoretical constructs? — schopenhauer1
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