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Post 0

Monday, October 25, 2010 - 8:49amSanction this postReply
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I am reading William Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. I believe his account of the debate between realism and nominalism was insightful. It is as follows.
The opposition involved in this controversy is, in fact, that fundamental antithesis of Sense and Ideas about which philosophy has always been engaged; and of which we have marked the manifestation in Plato and Aristotle. The question, What is the object of our thoughts when we reason concerning the external world ? must occur to all speculative minds: and the difficulties of the answer are manifest. We must reply, either that our own Ideas, or that Sensible Things, are the elements of our knowledge of nature. And then the scruples again occur,—how we have any general knowledge if our thoughts are fixed on particular objects; and, on the other hand,—how we can attain to any true knowledge of nature by contemplating ideas which are not identical with objects in nature. The two opposite opinions maintained on this subject were, on the one side,—that our general propositions refer to objects which are real, though divested of the peculiarities of individuals; and, on the other side,—that in such propositions, individuals are not represented by any reality, but bound together by a name. These two views were held by the Realists and Nominalists respectively: and thus the Realist manifested the adherence to Ideas, and the Nominalist the adherence to the impressions of Sense, which have always existed as opposite yet correlative tendencies in man. (page 148 here)


Post 1

Monday, October 25, 2010 - 5:23pmSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

... how we have any general knowledge if our thoughts are fixed on particular objects; and, on the other hand,—how we can attain to any true knowledge of nature by contemplating ideas which are not identical with objects in nature.

The two opposite opinions maintained on this subject were, on the one side,—that our general propositions refer to objects which are real, though divested of the peculiarities of individuals ...
This outline of "realism" by Whewell, as worded, includes Objectivism -- which holds that concepts refer to real (actual) referents, though divested of the (measurable) peculiarities of individuals.

Ed


Post 2

Monday, October 25, 2010 - 6:31pmSanction this postReply
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Ed T. wrote:
This outline of "realism" by Whewell, as worded, includes Objectivism
It doesn't per Ayn Rand. See the forward in ITOE. There she rejected both extreme and moderate realism.


Post 3

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - 7:15amSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

This outline of "realism" by Whewell, as worded, includes Objectivism
It doesn't per Ayn Rand. See the forward in ITOE. There she rejected both extreme and moderate realism.



That's why I said: "as worded." To elaborate, look at Peikoff describing nominalism:

On the nominalist view, the process of defining a concept is a process of cutting the concept off from its referents, and of systematically evading what one knows about their characteristics.
from:
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/nominalism.html

... and contemplate that Objectivism is opposite to this -- that concepts mean nothing without reference to real referents, including everything knowable about their characteristics (which fits Whewell's outline of "realism").

Ed


Post 4

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - 7:33amSanction this postReply
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Eureka!

The issue involves the number of objects (or "ingredients" in knowing).

Nominalism posits one object: a sensible thing (which we can crudely associate with other sensible things).

Realism posits three objects: the sensible thing, a metaphysical essence (a supernatural, extra-sensible thing) of which the sensible thing is just a shadow or echo, and an internal thing -- an (innate?) idea -- which exactly corresponds to the shadow or echo of the real and sensible things out there in the world.

Objectivism posits two objects: the sensible thing and the human consciousness, capable of grasping knowledge which is simulaneously general and true, by a very special but underrated and poorly understood means (i.e., conceptual awareness of reality).

Ed


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Post 5

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - 8:29amSanction this postReply
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Ed T.,

My reason for posting the quote from Whewell was to give another perspective (his) on Realists versus Nominalists. The perspective is not about the nature of concepts, but the interplay between the Senses and Ideas. Realists rely more on Ideas; Nominalists more on the Senses. Whewell doesn't say so, but I think the same could be said for Rationalists and Empiricists.

Whewell's position is more balanced, to wit:
The antithesis of Sense and Ideas is the foundation of the Philosophy of Science. No knowledge can exist without the union, no philosophy without the separation, of these two elements.

Ideas are not transformed, but informed Sensations; for without ideas, sensations have no form. 

The Sensations are the Objective, the Ideas the Subjective part of every act of perception or knowledge.

General Terms denote Ideal Conceptions, as a circle, an orbit, a rose. These are not Images of real things, as was held by the Realists, but Conceptions: yet they are conceptions, not bound together by mere Name, as the Nominalists held, but by an Idea.  

(page 443 here)

Inventive hypotheses needed for discovery draw more on Ideas, but need to be checked by observation, i.e. with the Senses, and experiment.
(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/26, 4:03pm)


Post 6

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - 2:32pmSanction this postReply
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Great quote, Merlin.

Ed


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Post 7

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 7:18amSanction this postReply
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Merlin and Ed,

I think you are applying the "principle of charity" too liberally here.  Whewell was a Kantian, and I think the correct interpretation of the part of the quotation where he says "without ideas, sensations have no form" is that the "ideas" are the Kantian categories.

Also, Merlin's statement that "Inventive hypotheses needed for discovery draw more on Ideas" relates to Whewell's use of the Hypothetico-Deductive model, which Whewell named.  He believed that one brings a hypothesis to the data, rather than derive it from the data; a point on which he strongly disagreed with Mill.

Thanks,
Glenn


Post 8

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 7:38amSanction this postReply
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Glenn and Merlin,

He believed that one brings a hypothesis to the data, rather than derive it from the data ...
The idea of 'watching & waiting' (instead of 'immediately imagining') for a while, until data present you with the right kind of a hypothesis to draw -- seems to be a 'Harrimanian' issue (The Logical Leap).

Is it the central issue?

Curious as to your thoughts.

Ed


Post 9

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 8:53amSanction this postReply
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Glenn wrote:
I think you are applying the "principle of charity" too liberally here.  Whewell was a Kantian, and I think the correct interpretation of the part of the quotation where he says "without ideas, sensations have no form" is that the "ideas" are the Kantian categories.

Maybe you apply the opposite. :-) Based on my reading of Whewell's own words, I don't agree that he was a Kantian. I have not seen him posit an unknowable noumenal world in contrast to the phenomenal world of our experience. I have not seen him endorse or use Kant's a priori doctrines. Regarding the quote "Ideas are not transformed, but informed Sensations; for without ideas, sensations have no form." sounds to me as much or more Aristotelian (the role of the intellect) as Kantian.  
He believed that one brings a hypothesis to the data, rather than derive it from the data 
He also believed that any hypothesis needs to be reconciled with the data. Did Kepler bring the elliptical hypothesis about the orbit of Mars to the data or did he derive the ellipse strictly from the data?

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/27, 10:13am)


Post 10

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 10:01amSanction this postReply
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Merlin,

Excellent topic!

I was at first baffled by what Whewell could mean by saying the Realists, such as Plato and Aristotle, regarded “Ideal Conceptions as Images of real things.” After all, it was the philosophers Berkeley and Hume who held that general ideas—and ideal conceptions too—were images. Those British empiricists were not realists concerning universals; rather, they denied that there were such things as an abstraction. There is no such process or product as that, which had been put forth by Aristotelians and others.

I think I see now what Whewell is asserting in this last passage you quoted in #5. He is using image more generally than usual. I think he means to assert that on the realist approach one ends up acquiring general ideas, where each is a mirror reflection in the mind of a particular real thing in the world as it is absent mind. That is, there had been, according to the realist, one mental item, a distinct general idea, corresponding to one particular item in the world (which particulars had to be accessed by intellection, not simply sensory perception). It seems Whewell is standing here with Kant against the rationalist tradition holding that we have intellectual intuitions.

Whewell’s charge against realism seems unfair to the Aristotelian tradition of realism, but that would depend on how one understands their claim that universals reside immanently (not transcendently) in particulars. At any rate, Whewell takes himself to have refuted the realists by his Image charge, and perhaps he was aware that in the same stroke he was repudiating the abstraction-skeptics, Berkeley and Hume. In his embrace of the binding of particulars by ideas and conceptions that are much more than names, contrary the nominalist position, Whewell seems to stay pretty close to Kant.* (Scroll down to seventh paragraph from the end of that section.)

I notice that Whewell is not using the terms idea and conception interchangeably. He use them distinctly to mark an epistemological distinction. He writes in Novum Organon Renovatum (the second part of his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences):
    We have given the appellation of Ideas to certain comprehensive forms of thought,— as space, number, cause, composition, resemblance,—which we apply to the phenomena which we contemplate. But the special modifications of these ideas which are exemplified in particular facts, we have termed Conceptions; as a circle, a square number, an accelerating force, . . . a genus. Such Conceptions involve in themselves certain necessary and universal relations derived from the Ideas just enumerated; and these relations are an indispensable portion of the texture of our knowledge. But to determine the contents and limits of this portion of our knowledge, requires an examination of the Ideas and Conceptions from which it proceeds. The Conceptions must be, as it were, carefully unfolded, so as to bring into clear view the elements of truth with which they are marked from their ideal origin. This is one of the processes by which our knowledge is extended and made more exact . . . . (Chapter II, §1)

    Now in order to establish any law by reference to facts, we must select the true Idea and the true Conception. For example: when Hipparchus found that the distance of the bright star Spica Virginis from the equinoxial point had increased by two degrees in about two hundred years, and desired to reduce this change to a law, he had first to assign, if possible, the idea on which it depended;—whether it was regulated for instance, by space, or by time; whether it was determined by the positions of other stars at each moment, or went on progressively with the lapse of ages. And when there was found reason to select time as the regulative idea of this change, it was then to be determined how the chance went on with the time;—whether uniformly, or in some other manner: the conception, or the rule of the progression, was to be rightly constructed. Finally, it being ascertained that the change did go on uniformly, the question then occurred what was its amount:—whether exactly a degree in a century, or more, or less, and how much: and thus the determination of the magnitude completed the discovery of the law* of phenomena respecting this star. (Chapter V, §2)

    Aphorism XXXVIII
    The construction of the Conception very often includes, in a great measure, the Determinations of the Magnitudes.
    (Chapter VI, §1)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glenn,

I gather that contemporary scholars are divided as to how far Whewell’s idealism is like that of Kant. Robert Butts writes in his Introduction to William Whewell – Theory of Scientific Method:
    Fundamental Ideas are what the activity of mind contributes to knowing. Whewell likens some of them, notably space, time, and number, to Kant’s forms of intuition. Others, for instance the ideas of cause and likeness, play for Whewell something akin to the role of Kant’s categories, though he does not use Kant’s term to designate them. . . .

    What is significant for our purposes is not this evident similarity of his doctrine to Kant’s (which Whewell readily admits), but rather the novel features of Whewell’s position, which his subsequent discussion brings forth. . . .

    [Whewell’s] view that empirically observed truths can become necessary ones, or as Whewell says elsewhere, that a posteriori truths become a priori appears to be quite incompatible with the Kantianism of his general conception of the Fundamental Ideas. . . .

    To understand this initially astonishing view, one must comprehend in detail both the nature of Whewell’s Fundamental Ideas and the character of necessity that they bestow on some propositions of fact. . . .



Post 11

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 11:19amSanction this postReply
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Stephen Boydstun wrote:
I was at first baffled by what Whewell could mean by saying the Realists, such as Plato and Aristotle, regarded “Ideal Conceptions as Images of real things.” After all, it was the philosophers Berkeley and Hume who held that general ideas—and ideal conceptions too—were images. Those British empiricists were not realists concerning universals; rather, they denied that there were such things as an abstraction. There is no such process or product as that, which had been put forth by Aristotelians and others.
I was baffled, too, and also by your paraphrase in quotes, which seems to be missing a "not". So I offer a different paraphrase:
The Realists regarded general ideas as real things, not images of them.
This paraphrase seems consistent with the rest of your paragraph.

Stephen quotes Butts:
Fundamental Ideas are what the activity of mind contributes to knowing.
I think identifying and integrating would be Fundamental Ideas (as Whewell used the term) in Ayn Rand's philosophy.
(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/27, 11:59am)


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Post 12

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 1:20pmSanction this postReply
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Stephen and Merlin,

I was at first baffled by what Whewell could mean by saying the Realists, such as Plato and Aristotle, regarded “Ideal Conceptions as Images of real things.” After all, it was the philosophers Berkeley and Hume who held that general ideas—and ideal conceptions too—were images.
There is an understanding of how one could get stuck in the realism-nominalism dichotomy which, I believe, answers your conundrum. It is the notion of the mind as a sensory organ. If you start with that notion, then you can only get to two positions: realism and nominalism. Let me explain.

If you start with the mind-as-sense-organ notion it is easy to slip into nominalism. Nominalism is the default position. All you have got to do is to notice that when you make up a general name for things, that they aren't really all the same. It turns out that your name was just a name, and that not all (white) swans are (white) swans. So you epistemologically give up and live with it -- even though the full, logical implication would mean that no one could ever communicate anything substantial with anyone else.

But another way out of -- instead of through -- the problem is to postulate "inner perception" or "inner sensation" or "inner memory" or the vivid imagery of an "innate idea." [All of these involve the original notion that the mind is nothing other than a passive, perceptual tool.] Once you postulate this "inner" realm which can be visualized with your "perceives-only" mind, you have gotten around the problem (though leaving it unsolved).

Just think of Plato saying that the reason we can communicate with each other about general things is because there's a realm of Ideas which we tap into and visualize with our mind's eye. If, for instance, this otherworldly realm didn't exist -- then there'd be no where to look for the answer to how we can communicate general things to each other. That is, unless, you drop the notion that the mind/brain is a passive sensory organ, and adopt the notion that the mind is active in the process of conception.

It's the reason that both realists and nominalists use the term "image" to attempt to communicate any "not-immediately-perceivable" thing. I wrote about this epistemological misstep here.

Ed


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Post 13

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 - 6:39pmSanction this postReply
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Merlin, Stephen quoted Whewell:

Finally, it being ascertained that the change did go on uniformly, the question then occurred what was its amount:—whether exactly a degree in a century, or more, or less, and how much: and thus the determination of the magnitude completed the discovery of the law* of phenomena respecting this star. (Chapter V, §2)

Aphorism XXXVIII
The construction of the Conception very often includes, in a great measure, the Determinations of the Magnitudes.
(Chapter VI, §1)

In the Spica Virginis example above, the induction was successful before the quantification process. According to Whewell, Hipparchus' discovered that Spica Virgninis' movement from the equinox is time-dependent, and uniformly so -- without measuring the quantity of, magnitude of, or the rate of change ("whether exactly a degree in a century, or more, or less"). The measured (quantified) magnitude came after the fact. But Harriman claims that you have to first measure magnitudes before you can inductively infer such things (and I think you agree with that). We'd have never discovered the period of a pendulum depends on length without first having repeated measurements.

Will you please address this apparent contradiction? It may be that Whewell has his account of the timeline of things mixed up or reversed -- where Whewell merely believes that the last thing Hipparchus did was to finally measure the magnitude of change (when he might have actually started measuring it before getting to the conclusion that it was time-dependent, and uniformly so.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/27, 6:45pm)


Post 14

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 5:59amSanction this postReply
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Ed T.,
I don't believe I can help you much in better understanding what Whewell said about Hipparchus and the Spica Virginis. I find his narrative puzzling, but not clear enough to be contradictory. I don't understand what you believe is contradictory. I don't understand why you say there was induction before the quantification process, since two degrees in 200 years is a quantification.


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Post 15

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 6:09amSanction this postReply
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Ed,

I think Whewell was supposing Hipparchus had before him numerical data from observations of earlier people (measured star locations plus time intervals between such sets of data) (cf.). Then it is supposed that Hipparchus had to make further observational measurements of his own which would allow him to more securely conjecture that the rate of precession is uniform and to infer a closer lower boundary value of whatever is the supposedly uniform actual rate of precession (186–89).

Hipparchus was correct in finding that the rate was at least 1 degree per 100 years (.01 d/y), for the correct rate is 1 degree per 72 years (.0139 d/y). For recent reliable scholarship on discovery of the precession, we have online Ancient Declinations and Precession by Dennis W. Duke.*

(I'm regret having to make this post under a new account, but I am unable today to log in under my old account. The cause of this failure is unknown to me.)


Post 16

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 6:45amSanction this postReply
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Stephen, have you tried this tool:

"http://rebirthofreason.com/cgi-bin/SHQ/SHQ_Login.cgi?Function=showEmailPWReminder"

Just enter your username/email, and it will email you a link that will log you in and let you reenter a new password.

I was also unable to log in after logging out, and had to get in this way.

Post 17

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 7:17amSanction this postReply
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Yes, Dean, I tried that, but apparently the email address for me that is in the RoR system is an obsolete one. So the system was unable to get a message to me by email.

Thank you for your swift attention to the post under a new account. Do you think this login fault is something it will be feasible to fix?

Post 18

Thursday, October 28, 2010 - 12:28pmSanction this postReply
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I'm not sure the cause. The password are not stored in plain text, only a cryptographic hash is kept on the server. For some reason maybe the website host changed the cryptographic algorithm, and all of the passwords are now kind of lost/invalid. I don't currently have access to the server.

If anyone can't log in due to their email being invalid, Joe could update your email to a valid one and then you could use the recovery tool to log in and change your password to what you want..

If someone could make a news item or something explaining the above I'd apriciate.

Note that if you are currently staying logged into the site, you will stay in, but as soon as you log out or try to log on on a different computer you will have this problem (once). After you set your password using the new crypto algorithm, you should be fine.

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Post 19

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 - 7:41amSanction this postReply
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Merlin,
I wasn't so much being uncharitable about Whewell as basing my opinion on a couple of sources, which turned out to be from the same "camp".  That is, they both considered Whewell to be a (neo)Kantian.  However, I've been having fun reading more about him and his debates with Mill and I'm finding that, as Stephen emphasized, there are differing opinions as to Whewell's philosophy in general and his views about induction in particular.  One source argues that even though Whewell coined the term "hypothetico-deductive model", he wasn't in fact a hypothetico-deductivist!
Thanks,
Glenn


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