Logical Positivism

[Guyau]

Recent scholarship on issues raised in #25, #31, and #50:

Conventionalism

Yemima Ben-Menahem

(2006 Cambridge)

From the jacket flap:

The daring idea that convention—human decision—lies at the root of so-called necessary truths, on the one hand, and much of empirical science, on the other, reverberates through twentieth-century philosophy, constituting a revolution comparable to Kant’s Copernican revolution. Conventionalism is the first comprehensive study of this radical turn. . . .

Drawing a distinction between two conventionalist theses, the under-determination of science by empirical fact and the linguistic account of necessity, the book traces these notions back to their origins in Poincaré’s geometric conventionalism. It argues, further, that the more ambitious conventionalism became in extending the scope of convention beyond its original application, the more vulnerable it became to the problems that would bring about its demise.

Poincaré’s Philosophy: From Conventionalism to Phenomenology

Elie Zahar

(2001 Open Court)

From the back cover:

Henri Poincaré . . . made momentous contributions to mathematics . . . . [His] numerous achievements did not leave him time to expound a systematic philosophy. His philosophical works, composed at different times and for different audiences often seem to be contradictory when taken as a whole . . . .

In Poincaré’s Philosophy, Elie Zahar reconstructs the philosophical thought of Poincaré and presents it as a unified system, reconciling most of its apparent conflicts, and isolating those which the author identifies as shortcomings.

Lastly, Michael Friedman. The chapter he has contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Logical Empiricism (2007) is “Coordination, Constitution, and Convention: The Evolution of the A Priori in Logical Empiricism.” The final chapter of Professor Friedman’s book Foundations of Space-Time Theories (1983 Princeton) is “Conventionalism.” Friedman concludes in this 1983 work:

The principle of parsimony functions as an upper limit on the process of theoretical postulation, a process that also has a lower limit generated by the need for theoretical unification. This is why considerations about empirical equivalence, theoretical underdetermination, and so on can only motivate the elimination of entities that truly lack unifying power. Such considerations have no general antitheoretical force. Hence the generalized conventionalist argument of Poincaré and Reichenbach fails. . . .

The present conception of scientific method involves no general distinction between factual statements on the one side and conventions or arbitrary definitions on the other. . . . All elements of theoretical apparatus . . . are in the same boat. They are all subject to confirmation and disconfirmation, and in essentially the same way, that is, by a process of theoretical unification that looks for repeated boosts in confirmation. . . . Similarly, there is no general distinction between “inductive simplicity” and “descriptive simplicity.” There is only one kind of “simplicity”: that required by the proper operation of the principle of parsimony. (338–39)

From the back cover of Foundations of Space-Time Theories:

This book . . . explores the conceptual foundations of Einstein’s theory of relativity [both special and general]: the fascinating, yet tangled, web of philosophical, mathematical, and physical ideas that is the source of the theory’s enduring philosophical interest. Michael Friedman shows how Einstein himself was influenced by positivist and empiricist philosophy and how the logical positivists used both this fact and the theories that resulted as central sources of support for their philosophical views. While clarifying this complicated relationship of mutual influence, Professor Friedman argues that relativity theory neither supports nor embodies a general positivist point of view.

[Robert Campbell]

Stephen,

Thank you for the references. They generally support my point that claims about conventional aspects of science have not been handed down to us unchanged since the early days of Logical Positivism.

Conventions can't be equated with human decisions. A convention requires shared understanding; a decision doesn't.

Robert Campbell

[BaalChatzaf]

[Flagg]:

I'd love to see a Logical Positivist account for the uniformity of nature. I've been harping the New Atheists about this for a long time.

Flagg,

Do you think "uniformity of nature" necessarily points to a god as "creator"?

Not for two nanoseconds.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

[Flagg]:

I'd love to see a Logical Positivist account for the uniformity of nature. I've been harping the New Atheists about this for a long time.

Flagg,

Do you think "uniformity of nature" necessarily points to a god as "creator"?

Not for two nanoseconds.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Whatever this is it can only refer to gravity, both literally and metaphorically. Uniformity levels; so does gravity.

-- Brant

uh--what is "uniformity of nature"?