RoR: Forum

Ed,

Point of clarification: The presenters at PSA are, with rare exception, professional philosophers, not scientists.

You remarked “I feel like you wanted us to embrace these scientists' work or conclusions (and we let you down).” I post such information here because I expect it to be of interest to some readers here, not because I agree with conclusions or reasoning in the work. As I mentioned in #2, I find their work (as published in Philosophy of Science) of consistently high caliber. Because only titles were available, my post #13 had not been very informative, and I should not have bothered.

Yes, there are ways you fellows disappoint me. One is that to such a list of paper titles, no one takes any overt notice of anything that looks positive or worthwhile. Spotting something that looks flawed? Now that is worth a gold mark; the other entries are not worth a stroke or click.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m way out of time for this follow-up of a small matter. I may return to this thread when the papers are published. Then again, maybe that sort of effort is no longer worthwhile for this site, where the viewing-glasses seem so dark.

Post 21

Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 9:51am

Stephen,

I hope you don't give up on this site. Looking through its older threads you can see the value it had... and I'm hopeful it will again. I agree with your impression of the 'attack' mentality (and I'm probably one of the culprits at times). The other times threads become so chatty that to someone from the outside it must look like walking into a strangers living room and intruding upon personal conversations. I often feel like ideas aren't really explored here, so much as they are picked at for the purpose of showing how well one can pick.

Post 22

Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 2:11pm

Stephen,

[a personalized recap of Steve's point above]

For the record, I appreciated the essay by Prof. Samuels, and I really appreciate you for calling it to my attention. You are of great value to me not only for your sharp intellect, but for your seemingly childlike curiosity in exploring new frontiers or advancements in the fields of philosophy and science.

Thank you for correcting me regarding details. I love ideas and think it's very healthy to debate ideas. But oftentimes when I write I come off as rude or at least inconsiderate of others. That's because I think in sort of a "rude" way. Let me explain.

In the past, I've been characterized as a staccato-style thinker -- taking one point and ruminating on it for a long time (before moving on to the next point). The effect this has on communication with me often leaves folks either bewildered or insulted. Sometimes, a peer will post a post with 10 points in it and I will respond to one and ignore the other 9. If I only took extra time to explain myself this wouldn't be seen as so "rude" (ignoring 90 % of what someone has said).

You could, in jest, say I'm using "heuristics" and economizing my thought.

:-)

Thinking can make me exhausted. I do economize it (a lot). It's different across a coffee table when I can see someone's reaction of disgust or of feeling dismissed by me. At those times, I alter my behavior accordingly and communication runs smooth.

I hope that my response shows that I care enough about thinking and ideas to take the needed time and energy to get my feet wet. I hope that you don't feel that I or others are operating on the idea that you only raise yourself up by bringing others down.

One time, I wrote an essay on validating induction and, in doing my research, I discovered that someone else (Wallace Matson) beat me to the punch. I properly gave him credit instead of trying to convince others that I was the first guy on earth to philosophically validate inductive generalization. I think you have even responded that another before Matson had written a pretty good philosophical validation.

Regardless, it wasn't about me trying to tear others down (for some kind of second-hand respect), it was about the innocent love of ideas and advancement toward truth. Because of your intelligence combined with your curiosity, you are an invaluable asset to me and countless others here.

I hope you don't leave.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/21, 2:18pm)

Post 23

Friday, October 22, 2010 - 6:40am

Robert,

and I wonder how that 'No Universal Rules for Inductions' [from the preceding list] holds with Harriman's book...

That caught my eye, too.

Harriman's book says that you can use one of two rules: the rule of similarity, or the rule of difference -- and that they counter-confirm each other when used conjunctively. In one sense, you could think of these as two "Universal Rules for Inductions", but in another sense, you could say that neither one of them is or needs to be universally used (since one could substitute for the other).

I wonder what John D. Norton thinks about that.

Ed

p.s., The rule of similarity could even pull back one level and extend to theory (not just facts), such as William Whewell's theory of consilience. I hope that I or others will write an essay comparing and contrasting Whewell's view with Harriman's view. It'd be real neat.

Post 24

Friday, October 22, 2010 - 12:40pm

Ed,
In a book entitled "Evidence, Explanation, and Realism", Peter Achinstein has a chapter on "The War on Induction", which is based on the talk Stephen referenced in post #10 above. In it he discusses Norton's work, specifically the article entitled "A Little Survey of Induction", again which Stephen referenced above. Here's a quote from Achinstein:
"[Norton] claims that particular inductive inferences are warranted by and only by empirical facts, and not at all by being shown to satisfy some formal schema or template in the manner of formal deductive inferences. I think it safe to say that he has in his sights Newton's methodological rules and Mill's ideas about induction, among many others."

Stephen,
I haven't seen any comments by you on Harriman's book. Have you read it and, if so, do you have an opinion? Also, have you been following the McCaskey-Peikoff argument over the book? I've been reading some of McCaskey's papers (I started reading his dissertation, which is very long but eminently readable, but found that the meat of it is in his papers) and find them to be interesting.

Thanks,
Glenn

P.S. I'm currently auditing a course on Philosophy of Science given by Richard Boyd. An excellent course and an amazing lecturer.

(Edited by Glenn Fletcher on 10/22, 12:43pm)

Post 25

Friday, October 22, 2010 - 1:10pm

I browsed an essay of Norton's and pulled out a cool quote:

We can infer inductively from the evidence that some samples of the element Bismuth melt at 271oC to the universal conclusion that all samples melt so. The warrant is a fact about chemical elements:

Generally, all samples of one element agree in such physical properties.

The “generally” accommodates the existence of allotropes of elements, which typically differ in their physical properties. Without this qualification, the inference would be deductive. The qualification gives the inference an inductive character. In accepting the conclusion, we take the inductive risk that this element has no allotropic forms that would have a different melting point. As result, the inference is ampliative, even with explicit adoption of the warranting fact as a premise. The material theory does NOT assert that all inductions are enthymemes, that is, deductive arguments with suppressed premises.

I'm having trouble getting on board with this, because I view successful induction as something which can be retroactively deduced from the facts of the matter. For Norton, it seems that you can't perform induction without risk of error.

Another way to say this is that induction doesn't add facts -- but only probabilities -- to our growing body of knowledge.

Ed

Post 26

Friday, October 22, 2010 - 7:46pm

Thanks for the follow-up remarks, Steve and Ed.

Glenn,

I do not expect to be able to work in the Harriman book for another year or so. I’ll not read any reviews of it in advance of reading it and considering whether to write my own review. I have not looked into any of the substance of the dispute between Peikoff and McCaskey over that book.

Delighted to hear you are taking in a course by Boyd.

I continue to have my study and writing time consumed by fairly large philosophy projects for internet posting sites. Lots of Nietzsche & Rand (finished!) and Kant & Rand the last year. More on the way on the latter. I still hope to take up some of our unfinished topics here, on causality and law, on philosophy of time, and on that Jenkins book on an empirical basis for arithmetic knowledge.

Post 27

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - 8:16am