My last session of the day yesterday was called "Around Quantum Mechanics," which is about right, since quantum mechanics was more or less secondary to each of the presenters topics. First up was Eran Tal, illustrious former guest of the former Beck-Brown-Skywalker household, doing a talk on "Simulated Evidence: Signatures of a Quantum Phase Transition." I think his case study is really interesting, and its going to blow a bunch of stuff wide open. He's looking at cases in which theorists (at Oxford?), using computer simulations based in part on the theory, and in part on the description of an experimental device used by a set of experimentalists in Zurich studying phase transitions between superfluids and Mott-insulators. By simulating both together, and varying certain assumptions about initial conditions and the background device, these theorists claim to have shown that the Zurich experiment (whose results are somewhat messy) was a successful detection of the phase transition, since the signature produced in their simulation has a qualitative match to the results produced in Zurich. In other words, they claim to have shown (a) that the Zurich experiment was reliable, and (b) that the Zurich experiment successfully measured what the theory predicted, when neither was certain before.
This is super-interesting! What they did cannot be said to be an elaborate prediction from theory, nor clarification of the data, but rather some combination of the two, plus something else besides. Most interesting to me, as I pointed out to Eran later at the reception, is how this clearly raises a problem for the Suppes/Giere theory about different levels of models which nonetheless come in two flavors: models of data and theoretical/representational models. I'm not sure what Giere should say, nor am I sure what a Deweyan should say (this process doesn't clearly fit on either side of the existential/conceptual gap distinction, either).
Next, Melanie Frappier gave a talk entitled "If 'Copenhagen' is Leibzig's Code Name, What does 'Interpretation' Mean?: A Re-examination of the Origin of the Copenhagen Interpretation." Melanie was responding to Don Howard's paper, which suggests Heisenberg invented the notion of a unified "Copenhagen" interpretation in the 1950's, but that whatever Heisenberg identified wasn't Bohr's "complementarity" view, and it wasn't really a consensus at all. She agreed with the former point, but denied the later, based on a nuance about what the physicists meant by "interpretation." She showed clearly that from much earlier on, various physicists talked about "interpretation," but that this sense of interpretation is very different from what we mean today. In particular, she gave reasons to believe that the theory has a univocal interpretation, in Heisenberg's sense of "interpretation."
If you think about it, it makes sense. A theory is not just a formal-mathematical system; it is also a set of concepts related together in a certain way, where each concept has a certain meaning, or empirical criterion of application, or something. What an alternative interpretation would have to provide, which most "interpretations" of quantum mechanics today don't, is an alternative criterion of empirical application for the terms of the theory. All the insistence by Bohmians and others that their interpretation has identical empirical results sounds to Heisenberg like they have the same interpretation. All the other stuff is not part of what physicists do. (This makes sense of something I've puzzled with for a long time, which is David Finkelstein's insistence that quantum theory already comes with an interpretation, so there is little sense to the project of "interpreting" quantum theory.)
Isaac Record gave an interesting talk on "Instruments of Explanation" which I'm not going to summarize. He was arguing, basically, that new instruments provide new realms of "technological possibility," which unlike logical and physical possibility, is sensitive to contingent facts and to practical issues like time it takes to complete a procedure. On his view, computers really open up a new realm of possible explanations, because we can realistically consider options that we couldn't before we had super-fast computers. Something to think about, with real echoes in Dewey's own concept of relations and potentials.
Off to the Aeroport!
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
CPA Report 4: The Value of Values
The late morning session I went to was quite good! I saw four papers on Science and Value that all brought something interesting to the table. It was a long session, a bit tiring, but I liked all the papers very much.
Kathleen Okruhlik gave an interesting talk entitled "Putman, Proctor, and Political Economy." If it had just been an advertisement for reading Proctor's book, Value-free Science?: Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge, it would have been worthwhile, but it was much more than that. The case of values and the ideal of value-freedom in political economy is an interesting one, one that Putnam brings up in his book on the fact/value, though Okruhlik suggested that Putnam's view of the history of both political economy and the fact/value dichotomy was overly narrow. Proctor has a wider view, in which Max Weber plays an important role. Chief among the interesting feature of Weber's historical mileu is that those arguing for the value-free ideal of science were progressives, whereas their value-happy opponents were conservatives.
One of the things that came up in Okruhlik's talk was also the "promiscuity" of the use of the term "value" in these debates. Think of all the things that "value" might stand in for: emotions, interests, ideologies, ethical norms, preferences, and so on. Moira Howes, in her talk on "Epistemic Emotions, Salience and Ignorance in Scientific Reasoning" was also emphasizing this point. While Okruhlik focused on ethical norms in her own account, Howes talked about how emotional reactions, and emotion-based preferences and aversions, have both necessary and biasing effects in science.
Something else that Okruhlik brought up that I found really interesting, was an extension of Proctor's explanation of the phenomenon of attempting to escape to value-freedom in science to philosophy. According to Proctor, this ideal is used by scientists as both a shield from a certain kind of criticism (value-free science is not subject to political, ideological, or moral critique) and a weapon against other views (value-laden science is full of wishful-thinking, bias, etc.?). So to, suggests Okruhlik, philosophers ascend to formal, meta-level discussions as both a shield and a weapon of the same sort. As she pointed out, for much of the twentieth century, discussions about ethics were limited almost exclusively to meta-ethics, i.e., value-free ethics! Philosophers have another way of escape as well, she suggested: they can descend into naturalism, avoiding the need to engage with ethical, epistemological, and other kinds of norms and values by moving to discussion of moral psychology, learning theory, etc. Very interesting. I wonder whether some good work couldn't be done on this, about "philosophy's evasion of values" or "philosophy's flight from the political." (Dibs!)
Howes' talk was also fantastic and complex. One of the things that I was most interested in was her discussion about the ways (positive and negative) that emotions or feelings guide rationality and the scientific process. She insisted that feminist philosophers should look carefully at the psychology and philosophy of emotions as a tool for feminist critique and feminist understandings of science. I couldn't help but think about how similar her ideas are to John Dewey's obscure but crucial essay, "Qualitative Thought." There Dewey talks about the way in which a "qualitative background" provides the necessary ground, context, and test of thought. Though I'm pretty sure Dewey meant "quality" to be broader than what we usually call "emotion," I think that his point is really aligned with Howes'. I'm pretty sure she even used and example that Dewey also took up: the way that certain feelings accompany the struggle through a mathematical problem, the way that those feelings can guide the process, and the way that being certain one has attained an answer is tied to the distinctive feeling of success at having solved the problem. Dewey applies such considerations to inquiry in general, and it seems as though Howes has similar aims.
The other talks were good as well, though I don't have as much to say about them. Neelam Sethi discussed "Rethinking Normativity," in which she compared feminist discussions of values and normativity to recent work by Philip Kitcher and Nancy Cartwright on ends / goals in science. Burcu Erciyes gave an ambitious paper, "Feminist Objectivity versus Traditional Objectivity," arguing that feminists provide a genuine rival conception of objectivity, rather than using "objectivity" in a different way.
I'm going to skip and go read a bit until the sessions at 4. Maybe I'll walk around the beautiful UBC campus a bit. Maybe I'll have some fancy pictures for ya'll tonight!
Kathleen Okruhlik gave an interesting talk entitled "Putman, Proctor, and Political Economy." If it had just been an advertisement for reading Proctor's book, Value-free Science?: Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge, it would have been worthwhile, but it was much more than that. The case of values and the ideal of value-freedom in political economy is an interesting one, one that Putnam brings up in his book on the fact/value, though Okruhlik suggested that Putnam's view of the history of both political economy and the fact/value dichotomy was overly narrow. Proctor has a wider view, in which Max Weber plays an important role. Chief among the interesting feature of Weber's historical mileu is that those arguing for the value-free ideal of science were progressives, whereas their value-happy opponents were conservatives.
One of the things that came up in Okruhlik's talk was also the "promiscuity" of the use of the term "value" in these debates. Think of all the things that "value" might stand in for: emotions, interests, ideologies, ethical norms, preferences, and so on. Moira Howes, in her talk on "Epistemic Emotions, Salience and Ignorance in Scientific Reasoning" was also emphasizing this point. While Okruhlik focused on ethical norms in her own account, Howes talked about how emotional reactions, and emotion-based preferences and aversions, have both necessary and biasing effects in science.
Something else that Okruhlik brought up that I found really interesting, was an extension of Proctor's explanation of the phenomenon of attempting to escape to value-freedom in science to philosophy. According to Proctor, this ideal is used by scientists as both a shield from a certain kind of criticism (value-free science is not subject to political, ideological, or moral critique) and a weapon against other views (value-laden science is full of wishful-thinking, bias, etc.?). So to, suggests Okruhlik, philosophers ascend to formal, meta-level discussions as both a shield and a weapon of the same sort. As she pointed out, for much of the twentieth century, discussions about ethics were limited almost exclusively to meta-ethics, i.e., value-free ethics! Philosophers have another way of escape as well, she suggested: they can descend into naturalism, avoiding the need to engage with ethical, epistemological, and other kinds of norms and values by moving to discussion of moral psychology, learning theory, etc. Very interesting. I wonder whether some good work couldn't be done on this, about "philosophy's evasion of values" or "philosophy's flight from the political." (Dibs!)
Howes' talk was also fantastic and complex. One of the things that I was most interested in was her discussion about the ways (positive and negative) that emotions or feelings guide rationality and the scientific process. She insisted that feminist philosophers should look carefully at the psychology and philosophy of emotions as a tool for feminist critique and feminist understandings of science. I couldn't help but think about how similar her ideas are to John Dewey's obscure but crucial essay, "Qualitative Thought." There Dewey talks about the way in which a "qualitative background" provides the necessary ground, context, and test of thought. Though I'm pretty sure Dewey meant "quality" to be broader than what we usually call "emotion," I think that his point is really aligned with Howes'. I'm pretty sure she even used and example that Dewey also took up: the way that certain feelings accompany the struggle through a mathematical problem, the way that those feelings can guide the process, and the way that being certain one has attained an answer is tied to the distinctive feeling of success at having solved the problem. Dewey applies such considerations to inquiry in general, and it seems as though Howes has similar aims.
The other talks were good as well, though I don't have as much to say about them. Neelam Sethi discussed "Rethinking Normativity," in which she compared feminist discussions of values and normativity to recent work by Philip Kitcher and Nancy Cartwright on ends / goals in science. Burcu Erciyes gave an ambitious paper, "Feminist Objectivity versus Traditional Objectivity," arguing that feminists provide a genuine rival conception of objectivity, rather than using "objectivity" in a different way.
I'm going to skip and go read a bit until the sessions at 4. Maybe I'll walk around the beautiful UBC campus a bit. Maybe I'll have some fancy pictures for ya'll tonight!
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
CPA Report 2: I win!
(Check out Part I here.)
Today was a good day for philosophy.
After lunch, the first thing I did was go to Shane Ralston's talk on Deweyan democracy, "In Defence of Democracy as a way of life." His commentator canceled, which cheesed me a bit, since I had originally volunteered to comment on that paper. But no matter. I think that Shane has a pretty good response to Talisse's criticisms of Dewey. I still worry that Dewey might not be able to accommodate the degree of pluralism that Berlin or Rawls demands, and that this might reflect negatively on Dewey. Shane called such positions "dogmatism" or "fundamentalism," but I worry then that even many liberals and democrats end up as dogmatists. I appreciate Dewey's call for experimentalism and fallibilism, here, but worry that there is a big tension with pluralism.
Next was my session. Jeff Kochan gave a talk on "Popper's Communitarianism." I think Jeff's paper is super-interesting, but ultimately suffers from a big problem that Jeff isn't alive to, since he comes from philosophy of social science rather than normative political philosophy. The debate between "Liberals" and "Communitarians" is essentially a normative debate, dealing with how self-determination and autonomy are valued. His paper casts it as a methodological difference, about how best to conceptualize and explain the behavior of individuals. I think the audience was ultimately sympathetic to my criticisms. I was left thinking that perhaps Jeff could recast his views in a way that was less problematic and might still be able to adopt the term "communitarianism" in a qualified way.
Finally, I caught most of Jacob's paper. Jacob's work on evidence and robustness is super-sharp. I have some serious reservations about the way that these discussions get cast, but Jacob has once again convinced me that the distance between our views isn't so large. I'm still convinced that looking at two oft-ignored features of evidence will dissolve a lot of the worries that Jacob raises, as well as showing the problematic features of the tradition that Jacob wants to critique. First, we need to look at the temporal dynamics of inquiry, and second, we need to look at the functional roles that evidence plays in the course of inquiries, particularly at the diversity of those roles. I think at that point, much of the talk about "robustness," "discordance," and "evidence for use" may look less important that Jacob thinks.
Then there was the President's reception with snacks and drinks, and more drinks at a grad student pub with UBC and other students. It was a good time. Conversation ranged broadly and interestingly. One particularly interesting discussion had to do with the way that standards of evidence changed in response to the complaints of AIDS activists. An important case discussed in cultural studies, by Epstein, and others. Roger Stanev has a couple of papers here on the topic, and Jacob was pushing him on it. Roger is a nice fellow, and so were Jaime and Josh, who I met. I had an awkward interaction with Alan R. at the reception, which is worrisome given that I'm supposed to be doing a panel with him in November (if we get accepted). But probably I'm over-worried. After all, he'd never met me!
Off to bed soon. Supposed to meet Jacob for breakfast around 8! We'll see if that happens.
Today was a good day for philosophy.
After lunch, the first thing I did was go to Shane Ralston's talk on Deweyan democracy, "In Defence of Democracy as a way of life." His commentator canceled, which cheesed me a bit, since I had originally volunteered to comment on that paper. But no matter. I think that Shane has a pretty good response to Talisse's criticisms of Dewey. I still worry that Dewey might not be able to accommodate the degree of pluralism that Berlin or Rawls demands, and that this might reflect negatively on Dewey. Shane called such positions "dogmatism" or "fundamentalism," but I worry then that even many liberals and democrats end up as dogmatists. I appreciate Dewey's call for experimentalism and fallibilism, here, but worry that there is a big tension with pluralism.
Next was my session. Jeff Kochan gave a talk on "Popper's Communitarianism." I think Jeff's paper is super-interesting, but ultimately suffers from a big problem that Jeff isn't alive to, since he comes from philosophy of social science rather than normative political philosophy. The debate between "Liberals" and "Communitarians" is essentially a normative debate, dealing with how self-determination and autonomy are valued. His paper casts it as a methodological difference, about how best to conceptualize and explain the behavior of individuals. I think the audience was ultimately sympathetic to my criticisms. I was left thinking that perhaps Jeff could recast his views in a way that was less problematic and might still be able to adopt the term "communitarianism" in a qualified way.
Finally, I caught most of Jacob's paper. Jacob's work on evidence and robustness is super-sharp. I have some serious reservations about the way that these discussions get cast, but Jacob has once again convinced me that the distance between our views isn't so large. I'm still convinced that looking at two oft-ignored features of evidence will dissolve a lot of the worries that Jacob raises, as well as showing the problematic features of the tradition that Jacob wants to critique. First, we need to look at the temporal dynamics of inquiry, and second, we need to look at the functional roles that evidence plays in the course of inquiries, particularly at the diversity of those roles. I think at that point, much of the talk about "robustness," "discordance," and "evidence for use" may look less important that Jacob thinks.
Then there was the President's reception with snacks and drinks, and more drinks at a grad student pub with UBC and other students. It was a good time. Conversation ranged broadly and interestingly. One particularly interesting discussion had to do with the way that standards of evidence changed in response to the complaints of AIDS activists. An important case discussed in cultural studies, by Epstein, and others. Roger Stanev has a couple of papers here on the topic, and Jacob was pushing him on it. Roger is a nice fellow, and so were Jaime and Josh, who I met. I had an awkward interaction with Alan R. at the reception, which is worrisome given that I'm supposed to be doing a panel with him in November (if we get accepted). But probably I'm over-worried. After all, he'd never met me!
Off to bed soon. Supposed to meet Jacob for breakfast around 8! We'll see if that happens.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
We gotta take the scientists down!
Okay, maybe we don't really.
I had a great time tonight. After Nancy's Objectivity seminar, where I got kind of angry and loud, I repaired to the pub with ECM and Marilena to continue the discussion. The question is the science-policy boundary. I was riled up about the practice that is common where scientists get together (on their own or at government's behest) and try to tell people what to think on the basis of their authority (rather than, say, because they have a good argument or know anything about what they're talking about). More charitably to everyone involved, we were interested in hashing out what the proper relationship of government and science is.
I guess I have a radical view? I think that we don't need the thin kind of interaction that we have now, with committee reports and funding streams forming the bulk of the science-policy relationship, but rather multiple levels of inquiry that bridge the gap. Just like in privately funded research, where ultimately we have a private interest to further or problem to solve (say, how to sell widgets to suckers), where we go from high-level theory to applied science to engineering to corporate research labs to development and production to corporate decision making and back again in a complex but high-bandwidth set of interactions and cross-border talk (where each part nevertheless retains some autonomy), so in the case of private interests and practical problems of a social nature, we need some more robust set of bridges analogous to the levels of engineering, research and development that we have in the technological case.
Anyhow, that's schematic, but the basic principle is, if you have a problem which current research doesn't already solve, the best long-term solution is not to rely on a committee report, but to do more research. Of course, there are all kinds of messy issues here, about whether the analogy holds, how to make decisions under uncertainty, how to implement, how to make sure there isn't too much interference with science, and that was a lot of our discussion.
It was really nice, though. We had a beer, we yelled, pounded the table, did some armchair history of science, made some distinctions, got careful, reached some tentative agreements. It was some good intense philosophy of the sort I hadn't done for a while...
Of course, the seminar ended at 8 and I didn't get home until 12:30, so there's that. But it was worth it.
I had a great time tonight. After Nancy's Objectivity seminar, where I got kind of angry and loud, I repaired to the pub with ECM and Marilena to continue the discussion. The question is the science-policy boundary. I was riled up about the practice that is common where scientists get together (on their own or at government's behest) and try to tell people what to think on the basis of their authority (rather than, say, because they have a good argument or know anything about what they're talking about). More charitably to everyone involved, we were interested in hashing out what the proper relationship of government and science is.
I guess I have a radical view? I think that we don't need the thin kind of interaction that we have now, with committee reports and funding streams forming the bulk of the science-policy relationship, but rather multiple levels of inquiry that bridge the gap. Just like in privately funded research, where ultimately we have a private interest to further or problem to solve (say, how to sell widgets to suckers), where we go from high-level theory to applied science to engineering to corporate research labs to development and production to corporate decision making and back again in a complex but high-bandwidth set of interactions and cross-border talk (where each part nevertheless retains some autonomy), so in the case of private interests and practical problems of a social nature, we need some more robust set of bridges analogous to the levels of engineering, research and development that we have in the technological case.
Anyhow, that's schematic, but the basic principle is, if you have a problem which current research doesn't already solve, the best long-term solution is not to rely on a committee report, but to do more research. Of course, there are all kinds of messy issues here, about whether the analogy holds, how to make decisions under uncertainty, how to implement, how to make sure there isn't too much interference with science, and that was a lot of our discussion.
It was really nice, though. We had a beer, we yelled, pounded the table, did some armchair history of science, made some distinctions, got careful, reached some tentative agreements. It was some good intense philosophy of the sort I hadn't done for a while...
Of course, the seminar ended at 8 and I didn't get home until 12:30, so there's that. But it was worth it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
