Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0005
Mark A. Wilson
Many of the great advances in modern computing are supplied by modeling architectures that practice a crucial division in descriptive labor by asking distinct forms of submodeling to work together in cooperative harmony without engaging in a straightforward amalgamation of conclusions. Commonly these distinct submodels are aligned with characteristic scale lengths within their target systems so that a preliminary modeling (ΔH) that calculates how a system normally behaves upon a macroscopic scale becomes subjected to corrective suggestions arising from a lower-scale modeling (ΔL) that focuses upon the local factors that occasionally upset the behavioral presumptions codified within the ΔH scheme. The syntactic safeguards within this technique that avert inconsistency and an unmanageable explosion in computational complexity keep their various levels of submodeling isolated from one another. They only pass corrective messages of a specialized character (called “homogenizations”) amongst themselves without attempting to fully amalgamate their localized conclusions into a shared narrative. The computational architecture merely demands that the various submodels reach accord with respect to the homogenization messages that they exchange amongst themselves. This book argues that unnoticed reasoning arrangements of this kind provide the proper diagnosis of the “Mystery of Physics 101” tensions that troubled Hertz (the distinct usages of “force” he noticed operate upon distinct size scales in the manner of a modern multiscalar scheme). It is then suggested that the natural development of many forms of linguistic attainment lead to reasoning architectures of this general character, although we often fail to recognize the subtle strategies that undergird their operations.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0006
Mark A. Wilson
This chapter applies the diagnostic lessons of the previous chapter to familiar philosophical controversies with respect to causation, in which the word “cause” appears to highlight different forms of physical circumstance depending upon the context in which it is employed. By examining the modeling of billiard ball behavior from a multiscalar point of view, it becomes easy to appreciate why “cause” must naturally adapt its referential attachments in a variable manner, for essentially the same “division in linguistic labor” reasons that lead the word “force” to distinct forms of applicational attachment. Often we fail to notice the tacit structural safeguards that render such context-sensitive patterns of usage effective within our everyday employments. This chapter then argues that conceptual analyses of this “division of labor” character supply better answers to many of the standard “small metaphysics” issues that arise whenever a natural language gradually increases it applicational scope. From this perspective, the standards of “ersatz rigor” associated with theory T conceptions of philosophical analysis rest upon a faulty diagnosis of how the conceptual tensions of everyday life should be remedied, in a manner analogous to Hertz’s mistaken embrace of single-leveled axiomatics.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0003
Mark A. Wilson
But Hertz’s suggestions did not address his original “small metaphysics” conflicts in a credible manner. The alternative resolution that material scientists currently favor supplies an alternative paradigm upon which this book will later elaborate. To this end, the present chapter reviews the intellectual circumstances that Hertz confronted and why they were important to him. He displayed a keen eye for delicate detail in his diagnostic work, in a manner that should serve as a sterling model of conceptual detective work whenever it is wanted. But the depth of his insights has been frequently misunderstood by later generations, largely due to a greatly diminished form of “classical mechanics” that became popular in the twentieth century because of the parochial requirements of quantum theory. Within this reduced setting, Hertz’s motivating problems disappear, not because they have been solved, but because they have been ignored. As an aftereffect, many philosophers writing today confidently believe that they understand what “the worlds of classical mechanics are like,” although these rash presumptions embody a significant degree of simplistic misrepresentation. The present chapter outlines the forgotten background required to appreciate Hertz’s conceptual puzzles as he confronted them. These details are not required for the central argument of the book, but they nicely illustrate the natural contexts from which “small metaphysics” puzzles characteristically emerge within a gradually evolving discourse.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0004
Mark A. Wilson
Hertz and his scientific contemporaries correctly viewed conceptual disharmony as the inevitable product of the evolutionary manner in which an initial descriptive practice gradually enlarges its applicational outreach, pragmatically guided by the discovery of fresh opportunities for calculating results in a useful manner. As a side effect of this increasing accumulation of technique, component words will become naturally pulled into subtly different forms of localized referential attachment. These discordant alignments create difficulties when a straightforward exposition of “fundamental principle” is wanted, as arises within an elementary class in classical mechanics (this is the “mystery” of the chapter’s title). Hertz, in particular, noticed that the word “force” behaves in a diverging manner, according to the comparative scale size of the object under consideration. This structural insight is crucial to unraveling the resulting conceptual tensions, but the axiomatic corrective that Hertz proposed leads to very unfortunate results, because such a scheme must artificially choose which of these usages of “force” should be favored as “primary.” Nonetheless, Hertz’s faulty presumption that axiomatics represents the proper vehicle for rectifying conceptual tangles of this character has turned into a widely accepted methodological dogma. It constitutes the foundational basis of the theory T thinking of which this book complains. Again the finer details outlined in this chapter are not essential for following the main argument of this work, but they nicely illuminate its motivational background.
{"title":"The Mystery of Physics 101","authors":"Mark A. Wilson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Hertz and his scientific contemporaries correctly viewed conceptual disharmony as the inevitable product of the evolutionary manner in which an initial descriptive practice gradually enlarges its applicational outreach, pragmatically guided by the discovery of fresh opportunities for calculating results in a useful manner. As a side effect of this increasing accumulation of technique, component words will become naturally pulled into subtly different forms of localized referential attachment. These discordant alignments create difficulties when a straightforward exposition of “fundamental principle” is wanted, as arises within an elementary class in classical mechanics (this is the “mystery” of the chapter’s title). Hertz, in particular, noticed that the word “force” behaves in a diverging manner, according to the comparative scale size of the object under consideration. This structural insight is crucial to unraveling the resulting conceptual tensions, but the axiomatic corrective that Hertz proposed leads to very unfortunate results, because such a scheme must artificially choose which of these usages of “force” should be favored as “primary.” Nonetheless, Hertz’s faulty presumption that axiomatics represents the proper vehicle for rectifying conceptual tangles of this character has turned into a widely accepted methodological dogma. It constitutes the foundational basis of the theory T thinking of which this book complains. Again the finer details outlined in this chapter are not essential for following the main argument of this work, but they nicely illuminate its motivational background.","PeriodicalId":370964,"journal":{"name":"Imitation of Rigor","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124972763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0007
Mark Wilson
The grander metaphysical schemes popular in Hertz’s era often suppressed conceptual innovation in manifestly unhelpful ways. In counterreaction, Hertz and his colleagues stressed the raw pragmatic advantages of “good theory” considered as a functional whole and rejected the armchair meditations upon individual words characteristic of the metaphysical imperatives they spurned. Rudolf Carnap’s later rejection of all forms of “metaphysics” attempts to broaden these methodological tenets to a wider canvas. In doing so, the notion of an integrated, axiomatizable “theory” became the shaping tenet within our most conception of how the enterprise of “rigorous conceptual analysis” should be prosecuted. Although Carnap hoped to suppress all forms of metaphysics, large and small, through these means, in more recent times, closely allied veins of “theory T thinking” have instead encouraged a revival of grand metaphysical speculation that embodies many of the suppressive doctrines that Hertz’s generation rightly resisted (I have in mind the school of “analytic metaphysics” founded by David Lewis). The proper corrective to these inflated ambitions lies in directly examining the proper sources of descriptive effectiveness in the liberal manner of a multiscalar architecture.
{"title":"Dreams of a Final Theory T","authors":"Mark Wilson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The grander metaphysical schemes popular in Hertz’s era often suppressed conceptual innovation in manifestly unhelpful ways. In counterreaction, Hertz and his colleagues stressed the raw pragmatic advantages of “good theory” considered as a functional whole and rejected the armchair meditations upon individual words characteristic of the metaphysical imperatives they spurned. Rudolf Carnap’s later rejection of all forms of “metaphysics” attempts to broaden these methodological tenets to a wider canvas. In doing so, the notion of an integrated, axiomatizable “theory” became the shaping tenet within our most conception of how the enterprise of “rigorous conceptual analysis” should be prosecuted. Although Carnap hoped to suppress all forms of metaphysics, large and small, through these means, in more recent times, closely allied veins of “theory T thinking” have instead encouraged a revival of grand metaphysical speculation that embodies many of the suppressive doctrines that Hertz’s generation rightly resisted (I have in mind the school of “analytic metaphysics” founded by David Lewis). The proper corrective to these inflated ambitions lies in directly examining the proper sources of descriptive effectiveness in the liberal manner of a multiscalar architecture.","PeriodicalId":370964,"journal":{"name":"Imitation of Rigor","volume":"161 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127325142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0008
Mark A. Wilson
The various “small metaphysics” puzzles that this book surveys suggest their proper resolutions requires an expanded appreciation of the strategic underpinnings of fruitful descriptive endeavor. In doing so, philosophical analysis should study linguistic adaptation in the same naturalistic spirit as a biologist investigates the environmental adaptations of a particular animal or plant. Doing so effectively requires attending to shaping considerations that arise from a wide variety of sources, including the issues of computational complexity that supply multiscalar tactics with their significant advantages. For various reasons that ultimately trace to the theory T thinking that this book rejects, the philosophical notion of “scientific realism” has become unhappily aligned with various simplistic assumptions with respect to effective word/world alignment. Our conceptions of scientific and linguistic possibility have suffered greatly as a result.
{"title":"Linguistic Scaffolding and Scientific Realism","authors":"Mark A. Wilson","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"The various “small metaphysics” puzzles that this book surveys suggest their proper resolutions requires an expanded appreciation of the strategic underpinnings of fruitful descriptive endeavor. In doing so, philosophical analysis should study linguistic adaptation in the same naturalistic spirit as a biologist investigates the environmental adaptations of a particular animal or plant. Doing so effectively requires attending to shaping considerations that arise from a wide variety of sources, including the issues of computational complexity that supply multiscalar tactics with their significant advantages. For various reasons that ultimately trace to the theory T thinking that this book rejects, the philosophical notion of “scientific realism” has become unhappily aligned with various simplistic assumptions with respect to effective word/world alignment. Our conceptions of scientific and linguistic possibility have suffered greatly as a result.","PeriodicalId":370964,"journal":{"name":"Imitation of Rigor","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121896022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0001
Mark Wilson
The natural evolution of language that can capture nature’s varied behaviors in effective terms frequently encourages descriptive practices that encode physical data in deviously complex ways. Often this complexity sets in without being overtly noticed by the agents in question. When this happens, “small metaphysics” conundrums frequently arise in the form “what is this bit of language actually telling us about the world beyond?” Historically, many of the familiar systems of grander metaphysics arose from these puzzling seeds, and these same schemes frequently place unacceptable restrictions upon the free development of science. To cast off the oppressive yoke often encouraged by this vein of philosophical musing, Rudolf Carnap and others developed a logicized conception of “theory” that claimed to liberate science (and philosophy) from any concern with “metaphysics” whatsoever. This point of view will be called “theory T thinking” in this book. But Carnap’s proposed remedy represents a diagnostic mistake; the real-life complexities of efficient data registration demand direct examinations of the strategic assumptions that underlie the effective forms of word-to-world alignment. The present book rejects the misleading conceptions of “methodological rigor” that Carnap’s conception of “theory” encourages.
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Pub Date : 2021-12-16DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192896469.003.0009
Mark A. Wilson
Closely aligned with the considerations of the previous chapter are a variety of erroneous presumptions with respect to the evaluative utilities of the word “true” in our linguistic life. These misconceptions also stem from a failure to recognize the contextual architectures that commonly underlie effective discourse. The frequent utilization of these entangled reasoning schemes suggests an intriguing linkage between “true”’s practical utilities and the “homogenization message” evaluations that are crucial to the implementation of a multiscalar architecture. Overlooking these non-trivial relationships in the single-leveled manner characteristic of theory T thinking encourages the “deflationist” doctrine in which holding that “S is true” conveys no new information beyond what “S” itself says. But the corrective feedback loops characteristic of our richer architectures assign locutions like “S is true” more substantive tasks, those of implementing the “homogenization messages” correctives central to the operations of a multiscalar scheme.
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