Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Reiss,J/Spreger,J, Nuel D. Belnap and Richard G. Heck

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21 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 5. Objectivity

22353	One view says objectivity is making a successful claim which captures the facts [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: One conception of objectivity is that the facts are 'out there', and it is the task of scientists to discover, analyze and sytematize them. 'Objective' is a success word: if a claim is objective, it successfully captures some feature of the world.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2)
	A reaction: This seems to describe truth, rather than objectivity. You can establish accurate facts by subjective means. You can be fairly objective but miss the facts. Objectivity is a mode of thought, not a link to reality.

22356	An absolute scientific picture of reality must not involve sense experience, which is perspectival [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: Sense experience is necessarily perspectival, so to the extent to which scientific theories are to track the absolute conception [of reality], they must describe a world different from sense experience.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2.3)
	A reaction: This is a beautifully simple and interesting point. Even when you are looking at a tree, to grasp its full reality you probably need to close your eyes (which is bad news for artists).

22359	Topic and application involve values, but can evidence and theory choice avoid them? [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: There may be values involved in the choice of a research problem, the gathering of evidence, the acceptance of a theory, and the application of results. ...The first and fourth do involve values, but what of the second and third?
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.1)
	A reaction: [compressed] My own view is that the danger of hidden distorting values has to be recognised, but it is then possible, by honest self-criticism, to reduce them to near zero. Sociological enquiry is different, of course.

22360	The Value-Free Ideal in science avoids contextual values, but embraces epistemic values [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: According to the Value-Free Ideal, scientific objectivity is characterised by absence of contextual values and by exclusive commitment to epistemic values in scientific reasoning.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.1)
	A reaction: This seems appealing, because it concedes that we cannot be value-free, without suggesting that we are unavoidably swamped by values. The obvious question is whether the two types of value can be sharply distinguished.

22362	Value-free science needs impartial evaluation, theories asserting facts, and right motivation [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: Three components of value-free science are Impartiality (appraising theories only by epistemic scientific standards), Neutrality (the theories make no value statements), and Autonomy (the theory is motivated only by science).
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.3)
	A reaction: [They are summarising Hugh Lacey, 1999, 2002] I'm not sure why the third criterion matters, if the first two are met. If a tobacco company commissions research on cigarettes, that doesn't necessarily make the findings false or prejudiced.

22364	Thermometers depend on the substance used, and none of them are perfect [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: Thermometers assume the length of the fluid or gas is a function of temperature, and different substances yield different results. It was decided that different thermometers using the same substance should match, and air was the best, but not perfect.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 4.1)
	A reaction: [summarising Hasok Chang's research] This is a salutary warning that instruments do not necessarily solve the problem of objectivity, though thermometers do seem to be impersonal, and offer relative accuracy (i.e. ranking temperatures). Cf breathalysers.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / a. Numbers

17453	The meaning of a number isn't just the numerals leading up to it [Heck]
	Full Idea: My knowing what the number '33' denotes cannot consist in my knowing that it denotes the number of decimal numbers between '1' and '33', because I would know that even if it were in hexadecimal (which I don't know well).
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 5)
	A reaction: Obviously you wouldn't understand '33' if you didn't understand what '33 things' meant.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / f. Cardinal numbers

17457	A basic grasp of cardinal numbers needs an understanding of equinumerosity [Heck]
	Full Idea: An appreciation of the connection between sameness of number and equinumerosity that it reports is essential to even the most primitive grasp of the concept of cardinal number.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 6)

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / c. Counting procedure

17448	In counting, numerals are used, not mentioned (as objects that have to correlated) [Heck]
	Full Idea: One need not conceive of the numerals as objects in their own right in order to count. The numerals are not mentioned in counting (as objects to be correlated with baseball players), but are used.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 3)
	A reaction: He observes that when you name the team, you aren't correlating a list of names with the players. I could correlate any old tags with some objects, and you could tell me the cardinality denoted by the last tag. I do ordinals, you do cardinals.

17455	Is counting basically mindless, and independent of the cardinality involved? [Heck]
	Full Idea: I am not denying that counting can be done mindlessly, without making judgments of cardinality along the way. ...But the question is whether counting is, as it were, fundamentally a mindless exercise.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 5)
	A reaction: He says no. It seems to me like going on a journey, where you can forget where you are going and where you have got to so far, but those underlying facts are always there. If you just tag things with unknown foreign numbers, you aren't really counting.

17456	Counting is the assignment of successively larger cardinal numbers to collections [Heck]
	Full Idea: Counting is not mere tagging: it is the successive assignment of cardinal numbers to increasingly large collections of objects.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 5)
	A reaction: That the cardinals are 'successive' seems to mean that they are ordinals as well. If you don't know that 'seven' means a cardinality, as well as 'successor of six', you haven't understood it. Days of the week have successors. Does PA capture cardinality?

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 4. Using Numbers / e. Counting by correlation

17450	Understanding 'just as many' needn't involve grasping one-one correspondence [Heck]
	Full Idea: It is far from obvious that knowing what 'just as many' means requires knowing what a one-one correspondence is. The notion of a one-one correspondence is very sophisticated, and it is far from clear that five-year-olds have any grasp of it.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 4)
	A reaction: The point is that children decide 'just as many' by counting each group and arriving at the same numeral, not by matching up. He cites psychological research by Gelman and Galistel.

17451	We can know 'just as many' without the concepts of equinumerosity or numbers [Heck]
	Full Idea: 'Just as many' is independent of the ability to count, and we shouldn't characterise equinumerosity through counting. It is also independent of the concept of number. Enough cookies to go round doesn't need how many cookies.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 4)
	A reaction: [compressed] He talks of children having an 'operational' ability which is independent of these more sophisticated concepts. Interesting. You see how early man could relate 'how many' prior to the development of numbers.

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 4. Axioms for Number / d. Peano arithmetic

17459	Frege's Theorem explains why the numbers satisfy the Peano axioms [Heck]
	Full Idea: The interest of Frege's Theorem is that it offers us an explanation of the fact that the numbers satisfy the Dedekind-Peano axioms.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 6)
	A reaction: He says 'explaining' does not make it more fundamental, since all proofs explain why their conclusions hold.

6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 1. Mathematical Platonism / b. Against mathematical platonism

17454	Children can use numbers, without a concept of them as countable objects [Heck]
	Full Idea: For a long time my daughter had no understanding of the question of how many numerals or numbers there are between 'one' and 'five'. I think she lacked the concept of numerals as objects which can themselves be counted.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 5)
	A reaction: I can't make any sense of numbers actually being objects, though clearly treating all sorts of things as objects helps thinking (as in 'the victory is all that matters').

6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / d. Logicism critique

17458	Equinumerosity is not the same concept as one-one correspondence [Heck]
	Full Idea: Equinumerosity is not the same concept as being in one-one correspondence with.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 6)
	A reaction: He says this is the case, even if they are coextensive, like renate and cordate. You can see that five loaves are equinumerous with five fishes, without doing a one-one matchup.

17449	We can understand cardinality without the idea of one-one correspondence [Heck]
	Full Idea: One can have a perfectly serviceable concept of cardinality without so much as having the concept of one-one correspondence.
	From: Richard G. Heck (Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity [2000], 3)
	A reaction: This is the culmination of a lengthy discussion. It includes citations about the psychology of children's counting. Cardinality needs one group of things, and 1-1 needs two groups.

14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 3. Experiment

22357	The 'experimenter's regress' says success needs reliability, which is only tested by success [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: The 'experimenter's regress' says that to know whether a result is correct, one needs to know whether the apparatus is reliable. But one doesn't know whether the apparatus is reliable unless one knows that it produces correct results ...and so on.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2.3)
	A reaction: [H. Collins (1985), a sociologist] I take this to be a case of the triumphant discovery of a vicious circle which destroys all knowledge turning out to be a benign circle. We build up a coherent relationship between reliable results and good apparatus.

14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / b. Raven paradox

19000	Read 'all ravens are black' as about ravens, not as about an implication [Belnap]
	Full Idea: 'All ravens are black' might profitably be read as saying not that being a raven 'implies' being black, but rather something more like 'Consider the ravens: each one is black'.
	From: Nuel D. Belnap (Conditional Assertion and Restricted Quantification [1970], p.7), quoted by Stephen Yablo - Aboutness 04.5
	A reaction: Belnap is more interested in the logic than in the paradox of confirmation, since he evidently thinks that universal generalisations should not be read as implications. I like Belnap's suggestion.

14. Science / C. Induction / 6. Bayes's Theorem

22365	The Bayesian approach is explicitly subjective about probabilities [Reiss/Sprenger]
	Full Idea: The Bayesian approach is outspokenly subjective: probability is used for quantifying a scientist's subjective degree of belief in a particular hypothesis. ...It just provides sound rules for learning from experience.
	From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 4.2)

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / a. Types of explanation

17897	Analytic explanation is wholes in terms of parts; synthetic is parts in terms of wholes or contexts [Belnap]
	Full Idea: Throughout the whole texture of philosophy we distinguish two modes of explanation: the analytic mode, which tends to explain wholes in terms of parts, and the synthetic mode, which explains parts in terms of the wholes or contexts in which they occur.
	From: Nuel D. Belnap (Tonk, Plonk and Plink [1962], p.132)
	A reaction: The analytic would be bottom-up, and the synthetic would be top-down. I'm inclined to combine them, and say explanation begins with a model, which can then be sliced in either direction, though the bottom looks more interesting.