Helmut, There are versions of what science is supposed to do that don’t worry about causation, but just try to find regularities. The more extreme forms of this are instrumentalism (like Mach) or Pierre Duhem’s antirealist view of physics in Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Duhem thought that the real causes were supernatural (he was very religious) and were not captured by physics, which merely “saves the appearances”.
I prefer the causal view of scientific explanation because it puts on a stronger constraint (though Bas van Fraassen, another believer, would argue that it doesn’t really). In any case, testing scientific theories typically requires interacting with their objects, which can only be done causally – our connection to the natural world is causal. If there is no difference in detectable causes, then there is no real difference in the theories. This is not quite the same as Peirce, but not so different to his pragmaticism either. John Collier Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, 20 May 2016 9:54 PM To: John Collier <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected]; 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]> Subject: Aw: RE: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: 6 vectors and 3 inference patterns John, that is interesting to me, as I did not know, that reverse engineering is merely about the result or function, but not about the codes or causes. Still I wonder, how can a scientist be sure, that the causal structure in his hypotheses duplicates the causal structure of nature, and is not a parallel, equally working, but different, structure. I guess, this has to do with induction: Again and again, there are no deviations found between theory and nature. And if a deviation is found, then a new part of hypothesis is formed, that explains it, and must be experimentally verified (like the Higgs-boson). Maybe the string theory suffers from the lack of possibility to verify it, because nobody can detect anything in this small scale? I wonder whether Rosen claims, that there can be a final evidence, that theoretical and natural structures are the same. But maybe this is a deviation from the topic, or a too early anticipation to the topic induction, and whether there can be a complete induction, and whether completeness of induction may have two different causal / coding paths or not... (I guess, not), and so on. Best, Helmut 20. Mai 2016 um 20:48 Uhr "John Collier" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Helmut, Although the idea of science as reverse engineering is intriguing, it does not fit my view of what science does when it is successful. Reverse engineering studies how something works in order to reproduce the function. It doesn’t necessarily, and usually does not, use the same causes: the reverse engineered program and the program that results from reverse engineering may well not have much at all in terms of common code (inferences). My understanding was that this is why reverse engineered programs don’t violate copyright. Science, on the other hand, tries to find the actual causes. A common view of the relation between theory and reality (due to Hertz originally, but developed in detail by Robert Rosen) is that the logical structure of the theory should duplicate the causal structure of what the theory is about. This is a much tighter relationship than required for successful reverse engineering. John Collier Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate University of KwaZulu-Natal http://web.ncf.ca/collier From: Helmut Raulien [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, 20 May 2016 6:28 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Cc: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Aw: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: 6 vectors and 3 inference patterns List, when I read about the comparison of science / mathematics with engineering, the term "reverse-engineering" comes into my mind. Perhaps a hypothesis in physics is an attempt to reverse-engineer an aspect of nature, and a mathematical hypothesis, to reverse-engineer an aspect of logic? In creativity though, it is somehow different, say, in biological evolution and in arts: Here there is no reverse-engineering of something already existing, but the hypothesis is a hypothesis of viability: Might this or that new combination work out to be fulfilling (in evolution) a species members needs, conquer a niche, or, in arts, be esthetic, logical, or deliver an extraordinary view of some kind- or even an- even more viable- combination of the three, like a complex emotion. I think, Ezra Pounds parts of poetry (melopoeia, logopoeia, phanopoeia) apply to music and painting too: A picture can have a melody and a logic , a peace of music a logic (eg. Bach), or even paint something in the mind. So, abduction in this case is not only telling something about the origin of a sample of beans or something else, already existing, but to create something new. This new thing though must fit somehow into old schemes, otherwise it would not be regarded as viable or extraordinary. But, once established, it changes or widenes the old schemes. This evolutionary thing, maybe, is the uniqueness of abduction? Best, Helmut Gesendet: Freitag, 20. Mai 2016 um 15:45 Uhr Von: [email protected] An: 'Peirce-L' <[email protected]> Betreff: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Re: 6 vectors and 3 inference patterns Jon, Ben’s post has said a lot of what I would have said, so I’ll just add a few notes by insertion here … From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>] Sent: 19-May-16 09:13 Gary F., List: Gf: Science as a discipline of engineering? That’s too much of a stretch for me ... It would be like claiming that mathematics is a discipline of physics. Only more so. ☺ Js: Well, I acknowledged that it is a provocative notion. The point is that science is pursued with the same basic motivation--transforming dissatisfaction into satisfaction--as engineering and any other human endeavor. Gf: Now I’m seeing the limitations of your hypothesis that ALL human endeavor is rooted in dissatisfaction. It seems to ignore more positive motivations such as curiosity, participation and playfulness in all its forms. The quest for knowledge can be much more than an escape from a state of dissatisfaction. Peirce’s dictum would, I suppose, portray not yet possessing the object of one’s quest as a “state of dissatisfaction,” but that’s only one perspective on the questing tendency. Gf: Engineering, as I understand it, always involves some technology, some manipulation of the physical world for some conscious purpose other than discovery of its nature. Js: Why should discovering the nature of the physical world be privileged over all other conscious purposes? Gf: It isn’t, except by a physicist per se. But discovery of principles in nature — including the nature of conscious purposes as a specialized subset of final causes, or natural purposes — is, for any philosopher, ethically privileged over manipulation of any kind, because self-control depends on it. It is also privileged over “Practice,” according to Peirce, because for Science, “Nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,— the object of its worship and its aspiration. It therein takes an entirely different attitude toward facts from that which Practice takes” (EP2:55). Gf: The conception or selection of that purpose, of the end to which the engineering project is the means, is the job of the normative sciences, which are themselves only part of science in the Peircean sense. This reflects the status of engineering as almost purely instrumental--clients and managers dictate what engineers do, rather than engineers themselves. My writings on engineering ethics attempt to explore whether and how engineers might someday escape this "social captivity," as Steven L. Goldman has called it. Gf: The status of engineering as a profession (as opposed to a discipline) is a sociological issue, and I wasn’t trying to say anything about that. There’s nothing in the nature of the discipline that stops a professional engineer (or a client, or a manager!) from taking a scientific or philosophical approach to the matter at hand. Gary f. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.linkedin.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt> ----------------------------- PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . 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