In the mode [REF] there is emphasis given on chains of reference that connect us with "distant entities" and reference is made about "immutable mobiles" that move along these chains.
There is something that bothers me in this understanding of [REF]:
"Distant entities" are something like the "natural kinds" that sciences "bring forth". I hear that Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) Theory ( for example in: Boyd, R. (1999). Kinds, complexity and multiple realization. Philosophical Studies, 95(1), 67-98.) “is the best recent contribution to the doctrine of natural kinds”.
In this theory "Most kinds used in the sciences allow for variation among their members such that there are no properties that all and only the members of a kind must exhibit. HPC Theory accommodates this observation by the intuition that for a kind to be epistemically useful, its members need not share a particular set of essential properties as long as there is a reason why they sufficiently resemble one another in relevant respects." and "Causality is an essential component of HPC Theory, as seen in Boyd’s notion of “homeostatic mechanisms.” Such mechanisms are the causal factors responsible for the repeated co-occurrence of clusters of properties" (I take both these comments from Ereshefsky, M., & Reydon, T. A. (2015). Scientific kinds. Philosophical Studies, 172(4), 969-986. which criticizes the theory as well)
What do I keep from there? The sense I also have from my exposure with Physics (though the approach is more general. For example Buckner, C. (2015). A property cluster theory of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 28(3), 307-336., for cognition) that the crucial thing is not found in separate reference chains that are well constructed but in having distinct reference chains that cohere among themselves.
If the "distant object" is for example a galaxy or the surface of a metal (microscopically), what convinces us about objectively "approaching" it, is not the well constructedness of unique chains of reference (for expample the X-ray view of the galaxy alone, or the gamma-ray view alone, or the visual spectrum view alone, or the correlational data about the speeds of the "dots" based on doppler effect) but that these chains cohere. They can be constructed as different senses perceiving the same entity. If we have just one chain of reference, even if information comes back and forth, then it seems to me that I may have a reliable practice but not a science, because approaching the "issue" from a very different avenue and still find somethimg homologous (with what I found from the initial avenue) is a different level of risk and challenge than continually predicting and checking within a specific approach.
I think also that this is one of the points that Anderson makes in Anderson, P. W. (2001). Science: A ‘dappled world’or a ‘seamless web’?. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32(3), 487-494.
There is something that bothers me in this understanding of [REF]:
"Distant entities" are something like the "natural kinds" that sciences "bring forth". I hear that Richard Boyd’s Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) Theory ( for example in: Boyd, R. (1999). Kinds, complexity and multiple realization. Philosophical Studies, 95(1), 67-98.) “is the best recent contribution to the doctrine of natural kinds”.
In this theory "Most kinds used in the sciences allow for variation among their members such that there are no properties that all and only the members of a kind must exhibit. HPC Theory accommodates this observation by the intuition that for a kind to be epistemically useful, its members need not share a particular set of essential properties as long as there is a reason why they sufficiently resemble one another in relevant respects." and "Causality is an essential component of HPC Theory, as seen in Boyd’s notion of “homeostatic mechanisms.” Such mechanisms are the causal factors responsible for the repeated co-occurrence of clusters of properties" (I take both these comments from Ereshefsky, M., & Reydon, T. A. (2015). Scientific kinds. Philosophical Studies, 172(4), 969-986. which criticizes the theory as well)
What do I keep from there? The sense I also have from my exposure with Physics (though the approach is more general. For example Buckner, C. (2015). A property cluster theory of cognition. Philosophical Psychology, 28(3), 307-336., for cognition) that the crucial thing is not found in separate reference chains that are well constructed but in having distinct reference chains that cohere among themselves.
If the "distant object" is for example a galaxy or the surface of a metal (microscopically), what convinces us about objectively "approaching" it, is not the well constructedness of unique chains of reference (for expample the X-ray view of the galaxy alone, or the gamma-ray view alone, or the visual spectrum view alone, or the correlational data about the speeds of the "dots" based on doppler effect) but that these chains cohere. They can be constructed as different senses perceiving the same entity. If we have just one chain of reference, even if information comes back and forth, then it seems to me that I may have a reliable practice but not a science, because approaching the "issue" from a very different avenue and still find somethimg homologous (with what I found from the initial avenue) is a different level of risk and challenge than continually predicting and checking within a specific approach.
I think also that this is one of the points that Anderson makes in Anderson, P. W. (2001). Science: A ‘dappled world’or a ‘seamless web’?. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32(3), 487-494.
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