On 09/24/2015 08:06 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
that Nick wrote:
the relation between the nomothetic and the idiographic
When I first encountered these terms in the psychological literature I noted the parallels to
"analytic" and "synthetic" approaches in the "harder" Sciences. Do you have
any thoughts about that?
I'm ignorant of the nomothetic vs. idiographic relationship (mainly because
they seem like very burdened terms). So, I'll let Nick talk about the 4-way
relationship between all 4 terms. But I can say that I usually prefer the
inductive vs. synthetic contrast over the analysis vs. synthesis contrast.
"Analysis" seems to often be used to mean "the way we distinguish one set of things from
another", e.g. open vs closed sets, reachability, etc. "Inductive" smacks more of the
premature conclusions arrived at. It seems to talk more directly to the sets _after_ we've got some sort of
conception of them. Perhaps I'm biased by the rhetoric against the existence of induction (people claim to
do it, but don't really seem to).
Scope incommensurability is the deeper problem.
I do think that mis-scoping is a big problem and it plagues both sides of the aisle. But then there is always a bit of the Goldilocks
dilemma at work: "Too much" vs "Too little" and rarely enough "Just Right". When the Santa Fe Standard
bumper sticker when from "Visualize World Peace" (and the "whirled peas" variant) to "Think Global, Act
Local", I was mildly heartened. It captured at least one aspect of the scoping bias, though if taken literally just throws everything
off kilter in the other direction.
Yep, scoping has to be a tight coupling to the environment. Sense a little,
effect a little. Sense a lot, effect a lot.
--
⇔ glen
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