MC Philosophy

Kuhn: Values and Algorithms

This is the third and last entry on Kuhn, the first is Thomas Kuhn: Objectivity, Value Judgment and Theory Choice, the second is Kuhn: Justification of Scientific Theory.

-In previous entries, we covered the Paradigm Shifts that Kuhn believes drive scientific discovery and the manner in which he believes they are decided upon.  Kuhn states that it is not strictly correctness or truthfulness that make one theory better than another, but rather that there are many criterion for each scientist to ponder when deciding where to lay their belief.  Furthermore, each scientist may view data in different lights depending on their belief system.  Here, we will expound upon the reasons there are not strict logical choices that each scientist should make and how their values affect them. 

Definitions:

Algorithm - a procedure to solve a problem, especially an established, recursive computational procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps (American Heritage)

Time - will be used in the Heideggerian sense.  That is, the whole of the events that affect their current atmosphere and person - or the environment and situation in which some person finds him/herself. 

Subjectivity - will be used as a defendable judgment on the part of a scientist as opposed to an indefensible 'taste'.  So a 'subjective' choice is not just made on a whim like, 'I like ice cream', but rather an educated and defensible position that is still not objectively discernible.

-To start, we are going to take a step back and address why there can be no absolute deciding logic that a scientist must follow in order to choose between competing theories. 

  So let's think about the material brain and its capabilities.  We can assume that the brain has certain determined activities that allow specific functions, without subjectivity ie. breathing, heart pumping, digestion.  Let's say that these are all controlled by algorithms established in the brain - there is a definitive procedure for breathing that your brain follows and thus accomplishes its task. 

Could there be a similar algorithm for dictating rational, unanimous choice?  So if we assume that the problems of differing criteria (talked about in the last entry) were not pertinent - if accuracy was the only necessity for choosing a theory, is there an algorithm for deciding on the rationally accurate choice? 

"The search for algorithmic decision procedures has continued for some time and produced both powerful and illuminating results.  But those results all presuppose that individual criteria of choice can be unambiguously stated and also that, if more than one proves relevant, an appropriate weight function is at hand for their joint application.  Unfortunately, where the choice at issue is between scientific theories, little progress has been made toward the first of these desiderata and none toward the second...the sort of algorithm which has traditionally been sought [is] a not quite attainable ideal." 

- Uh, so, NO is the answer we're looking for.  Now Kuhn included the fact that there is also a criteria problem that the brain is not capable to deal with (which I excluded above), but even if that is erased, there has been no progress on finding an appropriate algorithm for deciding between competing theories or data.  This means that subjective factors must be included in the decision-making process.  Let me say that again, this means that subjective factors must be included into the decision-making process.

Subjective Factors

Values

Most would attribute that word to such situations as "the guy picking up the prostitute in his Ford Taurus paid for by his trusting and hard-working wife has bad values." 

-But Kuhn applies Values to the subjective factors that apply to scientific decision-making.  Certain scientists value different things - different criteria for a theory or selecting ground-breaking as opposed to orthodoxy-confirming experiments.   

"[Values] do specify a great deal: what each scientist must consider in reaching a decision, what he may and may not consider relevant, and what he can legitimately be required to report as the basis for the choice he has made."

Needless to say, this implies that the Time in which each scientist lives affects the values they use in decision-making.  Different circumstances due to different Times might have resulted in different scientific outcomes.  Kind of like the German people's WWII excuse!! (sorry, I know its cheap to use Nazi's when proving any point)

"Though idiosyncrasy must be invoked to explain why Kepler and Galileo were early converts to Copernicus's system, the gaps filled by their efforts to perfect it were specified by shared valued alone."

Consensus

-In the end, it is just the consensus of educated people, with idiosyncratic algorithms for decision choice that decide which theory should be propagated.  One of Kuhn's main points is that the deciding data or experiment for theory justification usually comes far after it is the accepted practice.  Scientists had to argue over which criteria they supported, which data was most convincing, etc.  Now this should not be considered total relativism, these are specialized people who are qualified to make these determinations and use pretty good evidence to back them up.  But the belief that science moves along wholly objectively is objected to by Kuhn. 

Just look at the vote on the definition of a "planet"

Or if you know anything about String Theory, you know science isn't exactly cut and dry.   

Kuhn: Justification of Scientific Theory

This is the second entry on Thomas Kuhn, the first is Thomas Kuhn: Objectivity, Value Judgment and Theory Choice.

In the previous entry, we discussed the notion of scientific revolutions and how Kuhn proposed they came about.  Science didn't progress smoothly with new facts adding onto or improving older ones, but rather science moved in revolutions where paradigm shifts created a new way to look at science and the world.  These shifts were not the act of Truth-progression, but scientists making personal judgments and justifications as to which theory to support.  Here we will discuss in greater detail this last part, the justifications of the scientist deciding between competing theories. 

- Now, as stated in the last entry, Kuhn is trying to dismantle the belief that his proposal for scientific revolutions includes a type of "mob psychology" on the part of scientists.  That is, whatever seems hip at the time for a scientist to believe is what he/she will believe and study/teach.  If that was the case, they would be no better than sociologists. 

Unlike a set of commandments that tell you exactly what to do, what decisions are right or wrong, Kuhn stated that there was no single rule set for determining support for competing theories. 

"In the absence of criteria able to dictate the choice of the individual, I argued, we do well to trust the collective judgment of scientists trained in this way.  'What better criterion could there be ' I asked rhetorically, 'than the decision of the scientific group?'"

This may seem like a nice compliment to scientists - that they are most qualified to determine which theories to be supported.  But quickly the mob turned against him, with scimitars, for this undermined what many scientists believed about their practice.  If the worth of competing theories is only based on the group decision of qualified scientists, is it not more True than before?  Many scientists surely thought they were discovering new Truths about the world, and that they chose Einsteinian physics over Newtonian physics because Einstein was Right and Newton was Wrong. 

- This opens up a whole slew of questions about how these decisions are made, and thus about how science progresses:  Who is actually a scientist?  Why does science work so well if its just people deciding whats best?  How does a scientist decide which theory is good and which isn't?

-It is the third query that we will address now.  Kuhn provides 5 principle characteristics of a good scientific theory, not exhaustive characteristics, but the main ones. 

1. Accuracy - "within its domain, that is, consequences deducible from a theory should be in demonstrated agreement." 
2. Consistency - "not only internally or with itself, but also with other currently accepted theories applicable to related aspects of nature."
3. Broad Scope - "a theories consequences should extend far beyond the particular observations, laws or subtheories it was initially designed to explain."
4. Simplicity - "bringing order to phenomena that in its absence would be individually isolated, and, as a set, confused."
5. Fruitfulness - "discloses(s) new phenomena or previously unnoted relationships among those already known."

Scientists would've been just fine with criterion 1 as the sole one.  Many want to get the right answer, turn around and smile a delightful smile.  Copernicus was just more accurate than Ptolemy, they will say.  HE WAS RIGHT!!, they will scream.  The earth does move around the sun, they will haughtily profess. 

- Now, the key to all of this is Justification.  How do you justify who you believe, at the time, between Copernicus and Ptolemy.  Because we must note that had it not been for Copernican supporters at his time, he might have faded into oblivion, and who knows, maybe we'd still be the masters of the Universe!! 

"Copernicus's system, for example, was not more accurate than Ptolemy's until drastically revised by Kepler more than sixty years after Copernicus's death...The oxygen theory, for example was universally acknowledged to account for observed weight relations in chemical reactions, something the phlogiston theory had previously scarcely attempted to do.  But the phlogiston theory, unlike its rival, could account for the metals' being much more alike than the ores from which they were formed.  One theory thus matched experience better in one area, the other in another.  To choose between them on the basis of accuracy, a scientist would need to decide the area in which accuracy was more significant."

But the Phlogiston Theory was wrong!! And Oxygen Theory Right!!!

- Let's not forget that Kuhn is here describing how scientists, at the time, come to support a certain theory over another.  And at the time it is not so obvious.  They have to individually make a choice - am I a Copernican or a Ptolemian? am I a Phlogistonian or an Oxygenationian?  That choice will set the stage for further supporters to work within the, say Copernican, framework and discover new insights into a heliocentric universe.  And had they decided on Ptolemy, they would be searching for and assigning evidence to the geocentric theory. 

-Kuhn proposes that simplicity not accuracy was the main determining characteristic that made Copernican theory better than Ptolemian.  "But that sense of simplicity was not the only one available, nor even the one most natural to professional astronomers, men whose task was the actual computation of planetary position." 

Much like how the Bachelor has to decide which characteristic is most important to him - T and A, great hair, bubbly personality, etc., because it is not logically obvious which one is the correct choice.  And what if I think Julie's T and A is the best and you think Laura's is?

"When scientists must choose between competing theories, two men fully committed to the same list of criteria for choice may nevertheless reach different conclusions.  Perhaps they interpret simplicity differently or have different convictions about the range of fields within which the consistency criterion must be met."

- The fundamental point is that there are different characteristics of a good theory and the justification for choosing one theory over another is not always housed in logical accuracy. 

Next Up:  Kuhn: Values and Algorithms

Thomas Kuhn: Objectivity, Value Judgment and Theory Choice

Thomas Kuhn  (1922 - 1996)

- Scientist and Philosopher hugely influential in the History and Philosophy of Science

- Known for concept of Scientific Revolutions

Positions Defended - Science based in revolutions of thought, Incommensurability, Subjective nature of individuals in science

Work Discussed - Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice

- Talking about this essay instead of Kuhn's famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (SOSR), might seem questionable since Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice (OVJTC) is a corollary work, addressing interpretive misunderstandings of his major work. 

-So why are we discussing OVJTC and not SOSR? 

Why do you climb K2 when its only the second highest mountain in the world?  Because it's there, it's badass, and it still has a lot to offer.  (And maybe because that was the only mountain available to you at the moment and you just felt that climbing that one and not the other one).

- We can look at OVJTC as a work that expounds upon mistakes that Kuhn believes others made in interpreting SOSR.  Most significantly, the idea that with his notion of scientific revolutions came the idea that science was totally debased and scientists merely practicing "mob psychology".  First, though, we must have a quick run through of SOSR.

Kuhn's Revolutionary Ideas

- In SOSR, Kuhn proposed a huge idea about the nature of science - that it wasn't simply a logical progression of scientific facts.  Instead, he proposed that science underwent Paradigm Shifts.  These paradigm shifts were when ordinary science gave way to a revolutionary idea, that changed the way scientists thought about the world. 

Paradigm Shifter

Paradigm Shifter

Paradigm Shifter  (ps - thats a sexy pic of Isaac Newton)

- Now this idea of paradigm shift isn't quite as jolting as the reasons Kuhn gave for these paradigm shifts occurring.  He claimed they didn't occur purely based on scientific fact.  They didn't happen because Einstein was right and Newton was wrong or because Copernicus was right and Ptolemy was wrong.  These shifts, or revolutions, happened because specific scientists of the given era made personal choices that supported the revolutionary idea over the earlier paradigm. 

Let's find the most trite example we can......ah, Professional Football

For years, teams were lining up and running short and throwing deep.  That was how the game was played, in essence you ran short so you could upen up the longer throws.  Like scientists in the Newton era, you solved problems according to Newtonian calculus, within the established paradigm.  Coaches would come up with new plays to fit this basic scheme. 

Then came this guy called Bill Walsh, who thought outside the traditional paradigm and tried to think of other ways to solve the problem.  He came up with what's called the West Coast Offense.  This employed short, precise passes to the sidelines that spread the field and allowed passing and running lanes deep and up the middle. 

(This image should clear it all up).  His idea was that the short passes would force a defense to play over greater parts of the field.  Passes could happen outside the fat linemen, so they wouldn't get stifled like runs, and this would bring defenders closer to the line of scrimmage, making bigger plays available.  Kind of like how Einstein determined that curved space-time would make gravity no longer a mysterious force, creating a new understanding of how to describe the universe. 

And just like with Einstein's theories, the West Coast Offense worked GREAT.  Soon, in order to compete, you had to be playing some form of that offense, cause it was just the way to win - the way to get things done. 

- Now you couldn't say that the West Coast Offense was logically better than previous ones.  They all had their advantages and they all worked at different times.  Similarly, Einstein's theories shouldn't be considered logically better than Newton's, they just work better nowadays, and people decided to use that paradigm. 

This isn't as benign as it might seem.  If the progression of science is only based on the personal views of scientists and not on the Truth of the new idea over the earlier one, then many believe science itself is degraded.  It's no longer Truth-exposing, but language-evolving. (Pictured is the metaphorical kick in the nuts that some scientists must have felt). 

- It goes even deeper, however. Somebody running a West Coast Offense could still run an old-school play.  They still had all the parts and the know-how.  The only difference was that  in the old school systems the play would be called "dive right", the West Coast based systems would call it "X left, Magnum, Z motion, 24 Beamer".  These two languages for different systems were incommensurable.

- Kuhn believed that the proponents of the newer ideas were in effect incommensurable with the old schoolers. That is, they could not wholly compare systems with each other because the methodology they were using, the perceptions and observations they were looking for, and the language they were speaking, were so very different.

So we no longer have a linear form of science, progressing in a straight line of information improval, but jumps to different steps, where the thought on the new step isn't better or necessarily truer, just newer and more akin to our purposes today.

OVJTC

- As we shall see, this doesn't wholly degrade science, and it doesn't fall into complete relativism.  What OVJTC explains is that subjectivity always comes into play when deciding which theory to go by.  Therefore, there is no objective choice such that Einstein should be believed and Newton should be discarded.  That is based on individual scientists who make value judgments and theory choices that affect the direction of science as a whole.

Next Up: Kuhn and Justification of Scientific Theory