Gary R., list,
I agree, a hypothesis may be uncertain yet still be helpful, although
it's important for a contrite fallibilism in any science that the
uncertainty, possible errors, etc., be examined and expressed.
- Best, Ben
On 10/1/2016 12:53 PM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Ben, List,
Thanks for this clarification. You wrote: Researchers need to be able
to state that a hypothesis has been ruled out in plain enough words to
keep communication clear because the scientific method is the inquiry
method that, by its own account, can go wrong as well as right. They
don't always say "shown to be false," they'll say "ruled out" or
"disconfirmed" or "disfavored" or the like.
I suppose the language of "ruled out" or "disconfirmed" seems sounder
to me than "false;" but perhaps it amounts to the same thing.
But aren't there some hypotheses which, while not fully borne out when
tested, yet give information which is, for example, "statistically
significant" in adding to the understanding of the question being
inquired into such that that the direction of further inquiry may be
informed by that, shall we say, incomplete (although not strictly
'false') result? This seems to me to happen, for example, in the
social sciences (and other 'soft' sciences).
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
*Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Gary R., list,
"Good" is traditionally taken as meaning "valid" or "justified" when
applied to an inference. Valid deductions can conclude in falsehoods
by vice of falsehood among the premisses, and we can see both
critical and methodeutical kinds of justification of an abductive
inference that can nevertheless turn out, upon testing, to conclude
in a falsehood, e.g., the hypothesis of a detectable ether wind in
the theoretical effort to save the Galilean transformations; the
disconfirmation of the ether wind led eventually to the triumph of
the Lorentz transformations, amid which the Galilean transformations
survive as an approximation for things moving slowly in one's
reference frame, and it led to the quantitative unification of time
and space (with lightspeed as yardstick, e.g., years and
light-years), which simply isn't there in the Galilean and
(unreconstructed) Newtonian pictures; in any case the hypothesis of
an ether wind is quite dead, but it was critically and
methodeutically justified as far as it went; it was plausible,
distinctive predictions were deducible from it, and indeed its
adoption bore fruit. Researchers need to be able to state that a
hypothesis has been ruled out in plain enough words to keep
communication clear because the scientific method is the inquiry
method that, by its own account, can go wrong as well as right. They
don't always say "shown to be false," they'll say "ruled out" or
"disconfirmed" or "disfavored" or the like. The majority of
explanatory hypotheses, even the fruitful ones, turn out to be false;
the surprising thing, as Peirce often pointed out, is that they
aren't false much oftener. - Best, Ben
On 10/1/2016 11:34 AM, Gary Richmond wrote:
Ben, Jon, List,
Ben, you commented:
"An abductive inference may be good and successful in terms of the
economics of inquiry, even if it turns out to conclude in a
falsehood, if it nevertheless helps research by either making it
positively fruitful (think of all the hypotheses that positively
help lead to truth without scoring a 'hole in one') or at least by
leading to knowledge of a previously unknown dead end that would
otherwise have caused waste of time and energy."
I would tend to agree strongly with this but wonder whether
'falsehood' is the best expression to describe what happens in such
a case. The abduction is 'good' if it is testable, even if the
hypothesis is not, or not fully, borne out. As you suggested,
information is sometimes gained from testing such hypotheses which,
in the economy of research, is useful for further inquiry.
Best,
Gary R
Gary Richmond
*Gary Richmond
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690 <tel:718%20482-5690>*
On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Benjamin Udell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:
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