RE: uncertainty

["Andrew Hagen" <xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:29:04 -0600, Forstater, Mathew wrote:

> [....] a distinction between conceptions of
>uncertainty based on something like "human nature" [and] conceptions of
>uncertainty based on the structure of our social reality.

This topic continues a 1995 discussion from a PKT seminar,
<http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/seminars/expectations/0111.html>, about
ontological and epistemological uncertainty. The controversy here
chiefly concerns whether economic prediction is possible.

Cogito ergo sum. Okay, but what about the rest of the world? Descartes
affirmed the reality of the world by relying on faith. God would not be
so cruel or sly as to deceive us with a world of imaginary tables,
chairs, walls, and trees, said great rationalist. Thus, the world must
be real.

In our unfaithful science, how do we know that which is beyond our own
mind? The subject of this inquiry is ontology. Ontology investigates
"being" and what "being" is. On the other hand, epistemology is the
study of knowledge. It addresses the question of how we know what we
know.

If you dig beneath the surface of many scientific disputes, you will
find problems of ontology. Ontology is more than an assumption. It is
our understanding of the real world. One critic who finds ontology to
be significant has written:

"To see science as a social activity, and as structured and
discriminating in its thought, constitutes a significant step in our
understanding of science. But, I shall argue, without the support of a
revised ontology, and in particular a conception of the world as
stratified and differentiated too, it is impossible to steer clear of
the Scylla of holding the structure dispensable in the long run (back
to empiricism) without being pulled into the Charybdis of justifying it
exclusively in terms of the fixed or changing needs of the scientific
community (a form of neo-Kantian pragmatism exemplified by e.g. Toulmin
and Kuhn). In this study I attempt to show how such a revised ontology
is in fact presupposed by the social activity of science. The basic
principle of realist philosophy of science, viz. that perception gives
us access to things and experimental activity access to structures that
exist independently of us, is very simple. Yet the full working out of
this principle implies a radical account of the nature of causal laws,
viz. as expressing tendencies of things, not conjunctions of events.
And it implies that a constant conjunction of events is no more a
necessary than a sufficient condition for a causal law." (typo
corrected) Roy Bhaskar, "A Realist Theory of Science," 2nd. Ed., 1975,
Verso, London, p. 9.

One of critical realism's insights is the identification of the
"epistemic fallacy," a confusion of epistemology and ontology. One
commits an epistemic fallacy when one supposes that the structures of
the world rest upon the prospect of human observation. Wide operation
of the fallacy has degenerated social science: in lieu of studying the
world, we study only what (we think) we can know. Is the world limited
to what we can know? No, says critical realism.

The solution is two-dimensional, literally. Bhaskar proposes dividing
science into two dimensions: transitive and intransitive. Empirical
realism is a popular school. Unfortunately, it conflates
sense-experience, common sense, and knowledge of basic facts
(intransitive), with scientific observations (reduced by empirical
realism
to artificial observations of constant conjunctions) (transitive).

Bhaskar calls these the intransitive and transitive dimensions.
Critical
realism attempts to avoid conflating the two. Science can make use
of obvious facts, intuition, and analogies. While
this would be disaster if our goal were prediction, it is absolutely
necessary if we wish to break free of the constraints of the predictive
mode. In this way, critical realism sets the philosophical foundation
for a useful, new science.

Now, many scientists deny that they are victims of the epistemic
fallacy, but they need to keep careful watch. A Humean must deny the
intransitive dimension or risk the purity of his experimental (or
computational) observations. A Humean must furthermore equate an
empirical law with a constant conjunction of events. It can take
a lot of work to figure out how to manipulate the data into finding a
suitable constant conjunction. By finding empirical laws in constant
conjunctions of events, a Humean finds that the structures of the world

are dependent on the prospects of human observation, and so commits
the epistemic fallacy.

The harder that post-Keynesian theory attempts to predict the future,
the poorer its success in explanation. Why are US retail sales lower
than economists predicted this year? See
<http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001218/bs/holiday_sales_dc_2.html>.
We'll have to blame it on the weather unless we develop a theory that
can explain social phenomena.

A few more links.

<http://www.friesian.com/undecd-1.htm>   an article

<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/gpi/index.htm>   a guide to philosophy

<http://www.formalontology.it/>

<http://www.criticalrealism.demon.co.uk/>


good luck,

Andrew Hagen
xah@xxxxxxxxxxxxx