Timeline for Can definitions be experimentally tested?
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| Dec 12, 2014 at 16:44 | comment | added | user9166 | That expectation is embedded and expressed in the form of the statement of the definition, aspect and tense are omitted, lack of an indefinite article presumes single reference. The definition itself expresses those assumptions -- that there is some way to factor out time, and that there will ultimately be one value in some sense. If you cannot see that, you are being willfully blind, and not arguing in good faith. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 7:26 | comment | added | user9166 | Now I stop taking you seriously. Go waste someone else's time. | |
| Dec 12, 2014 at 6:28 | comment | added | user12262 | "I define IQ to be what you get on this test, that is a definition." -- As far as the procedure ("definiens") itself is unambiguous, let's call it "IQ test", fine. "But say every time you take the test, you get a different number, and they keep getting farther apart over time." -- (Poor me! ;) So what? There are even names for various conceivable outcomes: "learning/retaining", "becoming stressed/fatigued/bored", "randomness/noise". "How is there no error in the definition?" -- The error, if any, is in the prediction/expectation of particular results. Now what? | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 19:03 | comment | added | user9166 | At the risk of keeping on repeating the obvious -- OK, so if I define IQ to be what you get on this test, that is a definition. But say every time you take the test, you get a different number, and they keep getting farther apart over time. How is there no error in the definition? I would say it is proven not to define, because the single referent does not exist, it changes over time, and the definition does not allow for that change. What is that other than an error? And how could we find that error without actually giving anyone the test? How could we know the scores would diverge? | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 18:09 | comment | added | user12262 | I've no problem with different definitions being sought/selected/preferred for having different properties, and in pursuit of different goals "in the mind of the inventor/user". But I object to any one definition by itself being declared "erroneous", or "testable", while what's being tested are instead and always hypotheses/predictions/expectations that a definition under consideration has some particular (separately specified) properties, or serves some external goal. And erroneous would be to subsume different definitions under the same name. Apparently even "Lakatos' teacher" knew better. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 10:44 | comment | added | user9166 | That is why the post contains the examples of IQ and personality traits. You can watch the history slowly wind in on the definitions. From the actual literature you have to see it change over time. If you like harder science, consider the process by which birds became dinosaurs, or Pluto stopped being a planet. The definitions got better. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 10:40 | comment | added | user9166 | @user12262 That is our divergence. Definitions of long standing may be impartial, but they are never so when initially proposed -- they seek some goal or capture some individual's intuition, so they are biased. Science may work toward impartiality, but it cannot start there. There is no purely objective observation, rule or choice of words, but in combining enough you can get balance and thus impartiality. So we need to freely fix definitions, moving toward including more perspectives in our understanding, rather than imagining they originate with some special warrant against error. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 6:18 | comment | added | user12262 | jobermark: "How is what we intended to define extraneous?" -- Well, you name it ("intent"). Can any one specific definition (e.g. in terms of "points", "edges", and, along with "straigthness", perhaps a full-fledged metric space) not be considered and used without regard of intent? (Even: of intents of whoever might be interested?) Doesn't science (especially experimental) rather subscribe to "impartiality"? ... "And did you consider any of the rest of the post" -- Only with growing incomprehension/displeasure; sorry. | |
| Dec 11, 2014 at 0:03 | comment | added | user9166 | How is what we intended to define extraneous? And did you consider any of the rest of the post, or just stop there? | |
| Dec 10, 2014 at 22:19 | comment | added | user12262 | jobermark: "a scene in Lakatos's Proofs and Refutations [...] "Oh, I guess we need to add the fact [...]"" -- This supposed "need" doesn't seem to arise from the (initial) definition itself, nor from any or all imaginable examples/instances (which may be expressed by the available terminology) themselves but ... from some extraneous "what we want" (to use Rex Kerr's phrase). Unfortunately I'm not yet fluent in applicable "technical terms" (as far as any have been coined already); but at least I had read about "Lakatos" already. So reading "P&R", for once, seems good advice. Thus +1. | |
| Dec 10, 2014 at 20:20 | history | edited | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2014 at 17:58 | history | edited | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2014 at 17:49 | history | edited | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2014 at 17:40 | history | edited | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2014 at 17:34 | history | edited | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 10, 2014 at 17:13 | history | answered | user9166 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |