NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/philosop/tech/3991

Text File | 1992-11-09 | 3.2 KB | 60 lines

Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Path: sparky!uunet!secapl!Cookie!frank
From: [e-mail] (Frank Adams)
Subject: Re: Hypotheses (was: Re: Assumptions vs. assertions)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1992 23:44:12 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Security APL, Inc.
Lines: 49

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Frank Adams) writes:
>> It has since that discussion occurred to me that simultaneous interpretation
>> on multiple levels is not strictly necessary, and may in fact be false (that
>> is, very unusual) psychologically.  It suffices that when the truth of
>> statement is falsified at the accepted level of precision, there is a
>> fallback to a less precise interpretation; and that this fallback is
>> understood by both speaker and listener.  This, I hope you will agree, is
>> fairly common.
>
>We are in *partial* agreement here.  It is assumed in pragmatics that a
>hearer normally takes an utterance to be meaningful and tries
>various strategies in order to find an interpretation.  However, in
>contrast to your formulation, I would claim along with other
>pragmaticists that the *speaker* knows what level of precision he
>intends to convey at the time of utterance;

We are in complete agreement to this point.

> when you say "this
>fallback is understood by both speaker and hearer" I feel you are
>describing something special that happens or is supposed to happen
>in scientific discourse, specifically, when a scientific hypothesis is
>stated.

I am talking about a different phenomenon.  What I am saying is that,
assuming that the speaker and hearer have reached the same interpretation of
the original statement, when that interpretation is later falsified, they do
not thereafter always discard the statement entirely.  Instead, they change
the level of precision at which the statement is interpreted.  Neither need
have considered this alternative interpretation at the time the statement
was made, but they will fall back to approximately the same interpretation.

I think this occurs with at least two kinds of statements: hyphotheses and
observations.  Not only scientific hypotheses have this kind of property; the
hypotheses of a detective investigating a crime will behave the same way.

For observations, the fall back occurs because observations are known to be
imprecise.  A person can easily think he saw something slightly different
from what he actually saw.  A small discrepancy is generally assumed to be
such an error.

My earlier suggestion that people actually make statements with multiple
intended levels of interpretation comes, I think, from this phenomenon.  A
sophisticated speaker and listener with respect to these kinds of statements
will realize that this kind of fallback will (conditionally) occur, and
actually be aware of both levels at the time of the utterance.  This is
especially common with scientific hypotheses, since any trained scientist
has dealt with a large number of hypotheses.