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Inference Belief and Interpretation in Science INFERENCE BELIEF AND INTERPRETATION IN SCIENCE Avijit Lahiri Inference Belief and Interpretation in Science (an e-book) All rights reserved. by Avijit Lahiri, author and publisher. 252 Laketown, Block A, Kolkata 700089, India. e-mail: [email protected] website: physicsandmore.net // physics-plus-more.blogspot.com [May, 2019; January 2020] June 2020 i Contents 1 Introduction 1 Opening words . .1 Inference and reasoning: the intrinsic and the extrinsic . .3 Perception and cognition . .7 Concept: the basic entity of thought . .9 The substratum of cognition . 10 Logical leaps in inference . 11 What science aims at . 11 The logical and the extra-logical: inferences and beliefs . 13 Belief-emotion-feeling: the unacknowledged trinity . 14 The received view — and beyond . 15 2 Objectivity 18 The irreducible gap . 20 The observable and the unobservable . 23 Observation involves interpretation . 24 Observations are partial: multiple layers of description . 27 The existence of objects, and their relatedness to one another . 30 Theories as condensed decriptions of inter-relations . 31 All observations and theories are contextual . 32 Theoretical concepts: greater and greater depths in a layered description . 35 The big question: how do theories correspond to reality? . 37 Summary: the issues of relevance . 40 ii CONTENTS 3 The emergence of theories: how are theories constructed and accepted? 48 The essential tension: the objective and the subjective . 49 Science on a pedestal . 50 Logic and reality . 51 Michael Polanyi: roots of personal knowledge . 53 Thomas Kuhn: the paradigm shift . 60 On the irrationality of the substratum . 62 4 Inductive inference 64 The problem view and the process view . 66 Inductive inference: contextual, ambiguous, and non-deductive . 72 Induction: definition, features, and taxonomy . 74 Can induction constitute a logic of confirmation? . 81 Induction: questions and issues . 84 Unconscious cognition . 85 Induction: the role of heuristics . 88 Induction: beliefs emotions and affects . 91 Inductive inference: summary . 97 5 The cognitive unconscious 101 The unconscious as the arena of complex cognitive processes . 103 The unconscious versus the conscious . 104 Unconscious cognition: the role of emotions . 105 The unconscious detection of similarity . 105 The ‘rationality’ of the unconscious . 106 Unconscious cognition: how ‘hot’ is it? . 109 6 The process of inference: beliefs and emotions 110 Beliefs and belief systems . 110 Belief, knowledge, and inference . 112 Beliefs and emotions . 116 Heuristics in the inferential process: the dual role of beliefs . 121 Deterministic but unpredictable . 126 iii CONTENTS Heuristics as inter-subjective and person-specific rules . 127 7 Reasoning and rationality: the intrinsic and the extrinsic 130 The rationality issue: a brief overview . 131 Rationality: misplaced notions . 137 The dual-process theory . 141 Complexity . 147 The unpredictable . 147 The essential role of the context . 149 The rules of inference-making . 151 Guessing at the inner mechanisms of a complex system . 154 8 Abduction: theory in emergence 156 The generation of hypotheses: an adventure into the mystery world of psychology158 Abduction and novelty . 159 Abduction: the naturalist point of view . 163 Abduction: the crucial link in science . 164 The process of abduction: exploration of a conceptual space . 164 Amplifying mechanisms, instabilities, and parallel explorations . 166 Abduction: the setting up of new correlations . 170 The reasoning individual: an atom in a cosmos, and a product of evolution . 171 The parable of the two children . 172 Analogy: the great organizing principle . 172 Further principles: simplicity and elegance . 173 Abduction: the inspiration of science . 174 9 Suming up: science as an interpretation of the world 175 Scientific theories: the basic issues of relevance . 176 Realism or anti-realism? . 178 Theories: from the immediate to the remote . 181 The two facets of truth . 182 Hypothesis and theory: the individual and the scientific community . 189 The aim and method of science: the question of values . 192 iv CONTENTS Science as a telescope: the ‘objective’ and the ‘eyepiece’ . 194 Approximations in science: the metaphor of convergent and divergent series . 196 Asymptotic series and singular approximations . 196 Singular reduction from one theory to another . 199 The crossing of borders: scientific revolutions . 201 Normal science: conceptual restructuring at all scales . 202 The complex relation between theories: emergent phenomena . 203 Contextuality in science: summing up . 206 Theory choice: the problem of ‘underdetermination’ . 207 Scientific progress: socially determined or socially conditioned? . 211 Evolutionary psychology and cultural inheritance . 214 The rationality of science: values in troubled times . 216 10 Summary and concluding words 221 v Chapter 1 Introduction Should you be interested in this book? Opening words Science is commonly perceived to be the last word in logic and objectivity, where the latter has two aspects to it — one of being person-independent and the other of being a true description of the workings of Nature. In this little book of mine I will tell you, as best as I can, of the possible presence of extra-logical components in the reasoning process of individuals and groups of individuals, making special reference to the context of scientific inquiry. And I’ll also indicate the possibility of a skewed fit between what science tells us about nature, and Nature itself. In the process, we will get to under- stand how all this can constitute a strength rather than a deficiency in the way science inquires into nature. To what extent do people conform to standards of logic and rationality in everyday reasoning and in scientific activity? How do the extra-logical components woven into the reasoning process of individuals lend color to the way they solve problems relating to workings of nature? To what extent does inter-personal and group interactions succeed in effacing the subjective component involved in individual and collective reasoning and yield objective knowledge, transformed from the belief-laden knowledge of individuals 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION and groups to knowledge gained by humankind? These and related questions have repeatedly been addressed by authors for a long while now. I will collect here a few of the basic ideas that have come up in the course of studies into these important and interesting issues. In the process, I hope to tell you, in outline, how and to what extent scientific inquiry can possibly be conditioned by the mindset of people. In recent decades, philosophy has taken a naturalistic turn. Briefly stated, naturalism looks at things and processes as they actually are, without looking at these from too abstract and analytical a perspective — a tendency so common in philosophy. In this, the naturalist point of view follows the point of view of science itself (see, for background, [48], [43], chapter 1). The issues relating to mechanisms underlying the inferential processes in men, and to human rationality at large, are now being addressed from a naturalist point of view. The branch of inquiry dealing with these and many other related questions on mechanisms of human thinking that has developed over the last fifty years or so is known as cognitive science. In this book, I will have occasion to refer to the naturalist point of view and to ideas in cognitive science, as someone who has been keenly interested in these in the context of philosophy of science, someone with a background in physics. My job in this book will be to share with my readers a point of view that has a good degree of contact with current literature on a broad area in cognitive science and philosophy of science. I will explain a number of basic concepts to set the tone of this book and then go on to propose a framework that raises deep questions on the received view of science, based on cognitive aspects of our reasoning process. In the process, I will venture to place before you my own interpretation and speculation of how things work in individual inferential processes that find expression in scientific exploration by individuals and by scientific communities at large, again taking care that these do not conflict with the body of opinions and beliefs shared by experts in the relevant areas of discourse. I will do my best to build up a picture that hangs together, is not inconsistent with what experts have found and written on the issues involved, and is, one hopes, relevant and 2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION interesting. Here are a few words on how the text is displayed in this book. As you can see, this book runs in two courses one written in larger font that consti- tutes the main text, and the other in smaller font that makes up a sub-text. The latter is for the purpose of additional explanation and clarification, along with references to literature. There will not be too many of the references, and most of those will be to books and monographs. You will find only few references to journal articles, since I do not want to burden the presentation with technicalities. You can read the text and the sub-text any way you like. This said, let us move ahead. I will, in the remainder of this opening chapter, take you to a brief tour of some of the key ideas that will define the content of this book. Inference and reasoning: the intrinsic and the extrinsic The first basic idea I wish to highlight is that of the role of inductive inference in rea- soning in general, and in scientific inquiry in particular. Induction and deduction are commonly taken to be two distinct modes of reasoning where, in either of the two, one starts from one or more premises and then draws a conclusion. This act of starting from a set of premises and reaching at some conclusion I will call inference. In this act of inference, a person may, depending on circumstances, make some use of rules that may have something to do with logic.
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