"Gary Richmond" <gary.richm...@gmail.com>
In consideration of inquiry requiring the sampling of a population, Shepperson argued that, for example, in his own field, JMC (journalism, media, and communication studies) that inquiry employed hypotheses involving not only denumerable and enumerable collections (see below), but even more so, that it ought consider what Peirce termed "abnumerable collections," that is collections of potential populations, changing populations tending towards the future. Here's a short excerpt from my article which focuses on this principle.Shepperson argued strongly that the kind of sampling appropriate to most JMC inquiry is a little understood variety not relying on statistical probabilities. This alternative approach is necessary because “the persons, collections and institutions that make up the social realm do not constitute a collection that can be validly sampled statistically.”In this model JMC inquiry is not essentially concerned with collections whose members can be presently counted (e.g., a census), nor even those which form a partial ordering (e.g., the generations of a given society). Rather, he holds that, as JMC concerns itself with ever-changing populations tending towards the future, it ought sample potential populations, what Peirce called abnumerable collections (as opposed to the denumerable and enumerable collections just mentioned parenthetically above). Shepperson noted that since the very subject matter of JMC studies, the social realm, is itself an abnumerable collection, statistical sampling could result in distortions, kinds of ‘freezing’ of the characters of what are essentially ever-changing, perhaps evolving populations.Furthermore, potential collections involve what Peirce refers to as would-bes, or that which would occur if certain conditions were brought about (for example, if all young people in a given society were provided internet access) and this too relates to the ethics involved in JMC inquiry and practice. This emphasis on potential populations does not deny that in specific contexts and under certain conditions that statistical sampling isn’t desirable in JMC research. But Shepperson’s argument strongly implies that, when considering the social realm, it is not possible to “draw necessary conclusions about the human future.” All researchers can do is to “continually test our hypotheses against experience, correcting as we learn from the errors that this experience reveals.” It was Shepperson’s hope that JMC inquiry could develop exemplary methods and techniques for sampling abnumerable collections so that its findings would tend “over the long run to approximate to true assertions about social and human reality.”
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
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 12:31 PM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com> 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
Philosophy and Critical Thinking
Communication Studies
LaGuardia College of the City University of New York
C 745
718 482-5690On Sat, Oct 1, 2016 at 11:20 AM, Benjamin Udell <baud...@gmail.com > wrote:
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