Constructive criticism

I've been thinking about constructive empiricism. (This is a boiled down version of a more rambling post over at my blog.)

AN OBJECTION

Van Fraassen doesn't see the disagreement between realists and constructive empiricists as being about what we ought to believe. Instead, he sees the dispute as being about the proper aim of science. Here's one way he put the point:

Scientific realism and constructive empiricism are. as I understand them, not epistemologies but views of what science is. Both views characterize science as an activity with an aim - a point, a criterion of success - and construe (unqualified) acceptance of science as involving the belief that science meets that criterion. According to scientific realism the aim is truth (literally true theories about what things are like). Constructive empiricism sees the aim as not truth but empirical adequacy. [Analysis 58.3, 1998]

So scientific realism and constructive empiricism (as van Fraassen understands them) both need for there to be a purpose to science altogether - SCIENCE write large. As I intimate in my dcog paper, I don't think there is such a purpose. Even supposing that there is, however, it is not something that can be divined by a priori rumination. As van Fraassen admits, our account of what science is about must accommodate the actual history of science. It is a partly empirical enquiry responsible to evidence.

In this enquiry, the phenomena include historical documents and physical evidence. They probably also include the actual historical activities of scientists. Yet under no account is the aim or purpose of the activity itself among the phenomena. The aim of the activity is a posit, introduced as part of a philosophical-historical theory. Moreover, it is an unobservable posit.

Therefore, an agnostic (who declines to believe in the unobservable posits of even the most successful theories) must decline to believe in the aim of science. This follows regardless of what the aim of science is posited to be, so an agnostic must decline to be a constructive empiricist. This is a problem for van Fraassen, who thinks that agnosticism is a comfortable epistemic position for constructive empiricists. I see two possible replies.

First, he might stick to his agnostic guns. Refusing to believe in constructive empiricism, he still might accept it. That is, he could treat constructive empiricism as involving not a true theory about science but instead an empirically adequate one. This would involve some mental gymnastics, but being an agnostic already involves mental gymnastics. This meta move is only a small additional flourish.

Second, he might deny that the aim of science is a theoretical posit. Perhaps history is not a science. Perhaps discovering what what science is is not history. I don't see this line as terribly promising.

A QUESTION

Van Fraassen has argued that we need a richer epistemology, one which allows for more than just binary beliefs or probabilistic degrees of belief. Moreover, he resists formal models of belief as direct representations of entities in the mind or brain. Yet he does seem to genuinely believe in states of opinion, "real epistemic attitudes, pointed to by traditional epistemology, which cannot be accommodated in the probabilist models we have developed so far" [ibid.].

As Sellars and Churchland convincingly argue, though, epistemic attitudes like this are not among the immediate phenomena of the world. We posit them as part of a (folk) psychological theory. An agnostic about scientific and folk scientific theories ought not to believe in beliefs.

Does van Fraassen acknowledge this anywhere? or is his psychological musing a personal matter rather than an announcement ex cathedra qua constructive empiricist?

In defence of objective Bayesianism

Here’s a plug for my new book!

In defence of objective Bayesianism

How strongly should you believe the various propositions that you can express?

That is the key question facing Bayesian epistemology. Subjective Bayesians hold that it is largely (though not entirely) up to the agent as to which degrees of belief to adopt. Objective Bayesians, on the other hand, maintain that appropriate degrees of belief are largely (though not entirely) determined by the agent’s evidence. This book states and defends a version of objective Bayesian epistemology. According to this version, objective Bayesianism is characterized by three norms:
· Probability – degrees of belief should be probabilities
· Calibration – they should be calibrated with evidence
· Equivocation – they should otherwise equivocate between basic outcomes

Objective Bayesianism has been challenged on a number of different fronts. For example, some claim it is poorly motivated, or fails to handle qualitative evidence, or yields counter-intuitive degrees of belief after updating, or suffers from a failure to learn from experience. It has also been accused of being computationally intractable, susceptible to paradox, language dependent, and of not being objective enough.

Especially suitable for graduates or researchers in philosophy of science, foundations of statistics and artificial intelligence, the book argues that these criticisms can be met and that objective Bayesianism is a promising theory with an exciting agenda for further research.

Available now through all good bookshops, or direct from Oxford University
Press at:
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199228003.do

CFP: "Methodology of alleged scientific failure: The crisis of 2008-09" Symposium at EAEPE Conference, Bordeaux (28-30 Oct, 2010)

The latest economic crisis has raised a lot of questions about the state of economics as a scientific endeavor. After the crisis, practicing economics such as Paul Krugman (among many others) started questioning the performance of economics as a science and the explanatory and predictive roles of its highly abstract mathematical models. The following is an indicative passage from Paul Krugman’s NY Times article: “[...] the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. [...] When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won’t be neat; but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right.”

In July 2009, philosophy of economics was on the cover of The Economist that asked: “What went wrong with economics?” However, although philosophers of economics have been discussing these same issues for a long time, they were not mentioned in The Economist. So it was philosophy of economics that was on the cover of The Economist, not philosophers of economics or any of their contributions. Moreover, philosophers of economics did not actively contribute to the lively methodological discussion after the crisis. So philosophers of economics were late in responding to the pressing questions that economists and the general public were asking.
To improve the situation slightly, we are organizing a symposium at the EAEPE conference in Bordeaux (28-30 October 2010). We are looking for papers that will diagnose the alleged failures of economics, will evaluate the status of economics after the crisis, and will provide some answers to the questions that practicing economists and the general public have been asking about economics.
Please send a proposal for a contribution (400-500 words) to Uskali Mäki and Emrah Aydinonat . Please send your proposals as soon as possible – no later than 30 May 2010.

Postdoc at Caltech

Caltech has a two year postdoctoral fellowship funded through the McDonnell Collaborative on Causal Learning. Candidates should work in some area of philosophy or psychology that makes contact with the topic of causal learning. The terms of the fellowhsip are very generous. Details may be found here.

*Newton and Empiricism*

Saturday and Sunday, 10-11 April 2010
Center for Philosophy of Science
817 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh , PA USA
Everyone welcome. Registration is requested but not required. To register, please contact pittcntr@pitt.edu.

Saturday Morning
8:30 Continental Breakfast
9:00 Katherine Dunlop, Brown University:, "Apriorism and Empirical Science in Barrow and Newton’s Metaphysics (of Space and Time)"
10:15 Coffee
10:30 Mary Domski, University of New Mexico, "Newton’s Empiricism in Cartesian Context: Revisiting the Argument for Space in De Gravitatione"
11:45 Lunch
Saturday Afternoon
1:15 Matthew Priselac, University of North Carolina, "Newton on Substance"
2:30 Coffee
2:45 Ori Belkind, University of Richmond,"The Divisibility Criterion in Locke and Newton"
4:00 Coffee
4:15 Invited Speaker: Lisa Downing, Ohio State University, "Locke's Metaphysics and Newtonian Metaphysics"

Sunday Morning
8:30 Continental Breakfast
9:00 Tammy Nyden, Grinnell College, "Living force at Leiden"
10:15 Coffee
10:30 Yoram Hazony, Shalem Center, "Newton and Hume: A Reappraisal"
11:45 Lunch
Sunday Afternoon
1:15 Geoff Gorham, Macalester College, "Locke and Newton on Time and Space"
2:30 Coffee
2:45 Erik Curiel, London School of Economics, "On Newton’s Third Rule of Reasoning in Philosophy"
4:00 Coffee
4:15 Chris Smeenk, University of Western Ontario, "Quantitative Empiricism"
Discussants:
Philip Catton
Robert DiSalle
Ed Slowik
David Miller
Gordon Steenbergen
Hylarie Kochiras

Program Committee:
Zvi Biener, Western Michigan University
J.E. McGuire, University of Pittsburgh
Eric Schliesser, Ghent University

Sponsors
Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

Mathematical models and philosophical progress.

One of the most attractive features of The Reasoner, www.thereasoner.org the montly zine out of Kent, is the interview this month with Hannes Leitgeb. One passage caught my attention:

"Hannes Leitgeib: Overall, and ultimately, mathematical methods are necessary for philosophical progress, yes. But of course there can be points in a philosophical argumentation at which there is no payoff applying such methods. And while I do not think that there is any area of philosophy that is ‘beyond mathematical methods’, in some areas they do not pay off as yet because these areas are not quite developed enough. Or that’s at least the diagnosis of a mathematical philosopher!"

Let's grant for the sake of argument that mathematical methods have a distinguished record of progress. (In the interview Leitgeib does not offer a historical argument for the claim, but surely we can point to the history of analytic philosophy with some satisfaction.) Let's also grant that all areas of philosophy can benefit from mathematical methods.
But what could the (mathematical???) argument be that mathematical methods are *necessary* for philosophical progress? What to make of un-mathematical philosophy; is all the progress achieved without mathematical methods merely apparent?

And...let's accept that philosophical progress by mathematical methods ought to be understood in terms of "clarity" (as Leitgeib seems to suggest in the interview). Ought we to accept that it is cost-free?
Here are some possible costs within philosophy (I created the list while thinking of the role of Bayesianism as an aid to understanding scientific practice in the fields I am familiar with):
1. Focus on tractable machinery and toy-examples (at expense of complexity)
2. Training in technical skill at expense of good judgment
3. Inflated expectations from technique rather than learning how to ask right questions (or the making of distinctions)
4. Focus on producing 'results' rather than insight
5. Focus on the model and not the messy world

Max Weber in Friedman's Methodology of Positive Economics

I am working on a paper showing the Weberian influence on methodological developments in (early) "Chicago" economics.
The link between Chicago and Weber is not as far-fetched as it sounds because Frank Knight (a fascinating character), the supervisor of Milton Friedman and George Stigler, was Weber's early English translator and popularizer and remained interested in Weber throughout his life. (This has been ably demonstrated by Ross Emmett.)

In 1949 Stigler gave five lectures at the LSE. At one point Stigler remarks, “I wish to close by offering an estimate of the net contribution of the attempt to construct a theory of monopolistic competition. Before undertaking this appraisal, however, it is necessary to set forth certain methodological principles,” (GJS, Five Lectures, 23) He then adds the following footnote: “The present interpretation of these principles is due to Professor Milton Friedman; see Talcott Parsons, *The Structure of Social Action*.” This footnote is the basis of the paper I am writing. (Turns out Parsons' Structure is fascinating -- it anticipates Kuhn's Structure in various ways -- and it had non trivial impact on early Stigler.)

Once sensitized, I re-read Friedman's famous "Methodology of Positive Economics" (F1953) in light of Parsons' Structure. I found a lot of similarities, including Friedman's treatment of Galileo's Law of Fall, and found evidence for an earlier speculation that Friedman's scare quotes (used with remarkable frequency in F1953) betray a kind of neo-Kantianism. But I was absolutely delighted to note the following passage:

“The abstract model corresponding to this hypothesis contains two “ideal” types of firms: atomistically competitive firms, grouped into industries, and monopolistic firms. A firm is competitive if the demand curve for its output is infinitely elastic with respect to its own price for some price and all outputs, given the prices charged by all other firms; it belongs to an “industry” defined as a group of firms producing a single “product.” ... A firm is monopolistic if the demand curve for its output is not infinitely elastic at some price for all outputs.29 … As always, the hypothesis as a whole consists not only of this abstract model and its ideal types but also of a set of rules, mostly implicit and suggested by example, for identifying actual firms with one or the other ideal type and for classifying firms into industries. The ideal types are not intended to be descriptive; they are designed to isolate the features that are crucial for a particular problem,”

It is accompanied by the following footnote:
“29. This ideal type can be divided into two types: the oligopolistic firm, if the demand curve for its output is infinitely elastic at some price for some but not all outputs; the monopolistic firm proper, if the demand curve is nowhere infinitely elastic….”

Here one can see Friedman casually employing the very Weberian language of “ideal types” and explaining their function in Weberian terms.