Concepts Norms and Investigating Scienti

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Concepts, Norms, and Investigating

Scientific Phenomena

Integrated HPS Nottingham 2017

Harry Lewendon-Evans Department of Philosophy

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Background

• Concepts in philosophy of science

• Semantics (meaning and reference)

• Ontology (abstract senses, mental representations) • Naturalistic (psychology/cognitive science)

• Pragmatics (the use of concepts)

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Plan of the talk

1. Background 2. Normativity

3. Concepts and constraints 4. Operational definitions

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Plan of the talk

1. Background

2. Normativity

3. Concepts and constraints 4. Operational definitions

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Normativity

• Two senses of norm:

1. Narrow: explicitly formulated rule that serves as a basis for determining whether something is permissible or obligatory

2. Wide: anything which serves as a criterion/standard/measure to

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Normativity

• Wide sense:

• Legislated statues • Rules of games • ‘Unspoken’ rules

• Satisfaction conditions

• Cultural habits and manners • Goals and aims

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Normativity

• Normative character of concepts

1. Representation: how the world should be 2. Reasoning

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Plan of the talk

3. Concepts and constraints

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Concepts and constraints

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• Long-term constraints

• Metaphysical commitments (e.g. conservation of energy)

• Mid-term constraints

• Research goals (e.g. gene mapping)

• Short-term constraints

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1. Normative 2. Prohibitive

• _{“…narrow alternatives of what the experimentalist takes to be}

reasonable beliefs and actions…Using all the tools available, the experimentalist seeks to rule out alternative accounts of a phenomenon” (Galison 1987: 246)

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Plan of the talk

3. Concepts and constraints

4. Operational definitions

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Operational definitions

“In order to investigate a given phenomenon, one has to be able to empirically individuate instances of it. In order to be able to do so, one has to

possess some concept of the phenomenon. The possession of a concept is generally taken to imply knowledge about the class of phenomena that it applies to. But how do we make sense of concept use in cases where scientists investigate phenomena or objects they don’t know much

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“…paradigmatic conditions of application for the concepts in question. These are cast in terms of a description of a typical

experimental set-up thought to produce data that are indicative of the phenomenon picked out by the concept”

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• _{Mozart Effect}

• _{Rauscher, Shaw and Ky (1993) operationalised the Mozart}

Effect in terms of an experiment in which they tested the

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Conclusions

1. How concepts are used in investigative practice.

2. One use concepts have is a normative one: in this sense, they constrain and provide a measure for our beliefs or claims.

3. The notion of constraint was drawn from Galison as a way of setting out some of the various ways in which the elements of science can have normative force for research.

4. As an example of how concepts function as normative constraints, I have drawn on Uljana Feest’s recent work on operational definitions, which characterises concepts as specifying rules for the application of concepts in an experimental procedure.