From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: 8 Oct 92 21:04:22 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Oct08.150840.51360@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:
> In article <1992Oct8.064917.43675@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>>Given an *assertion* that p, hearers will interpret p in context as
>>making some claim that something is the case. ...  Call this C, the
>>interpreted content of the assertion in context.
> 
>>     C will be as exact as is required for the occasion, as judged
>>by speaker and (if the communicative act is successful) by hearer. ...
> 
>>     Now to scientific hypothesis.  If one says, "I hypothesize
>>that p" what is interpretive content C like?  Due to the nature of
>>science, it is *as exact as possible* since its strength resides in
>>its falsifiability.
> 
> I think this is not quite accurate.  A scientific hypothesis is
> simultaneously interpreted in two different ways: one as exact as possible,
> and the other quite loose.

Simultaneously?  Are you sure this is what you want to claim?

> While this exact pattern is specific to scientific hypotheses, multiple
> precision of interpretation is not unusual in assertions made in other
> contexts.  In the example I gave of a personal description, my listeners and
> I might both understand that I think all the details I gave are correct, but
> that there is a much greater degree of certainty that they are approximately
> correct.

It sounds as if you are talking about *vagueness* and indeed natural
language is vague, in the sense that we cannot normally *precisely*
define the truth conditions of an utterance.  However for language
theorists the degree of precision required by an assertion is
determined by the context* of the assertion.  Your claim of assertions
simultaneously having multiple precision values seems mystifying.  Do
you have any evidence from speaker behavior to back it up?

If you claim that assertions might be ambiguous in intended precision,
so that a hearer might be uncertain, and might be intended by the
speaker to be uncertain, just what degree of precision is intended, I
think that certainly happens; it is a rhetorical device and it is
regarded, quite simply, as a trick!  It allows the speaker to claim
after the fact that his intended degree of precision was wrongly
interpreted.  Are you saying that science systematically exploits this
trick?

> Of course, you can find distinguishing characteristics for scientific
> hypotheses from (other) assertions; after all, we do successfully make such
> a distinction.  But I think these characteristics fall well within the
> normal range of variance for assertions in everyday language.

We can be lumpers or splitters, whichever is more useful.  I think it
is more useful than not to posit a special category for scientific
assumptions, in contrast to "ordinary" assertions, in order to try
to shed some light on the rather considerable difference in direct
experiential grounding needed for such utterances as (a) vs. (b):

	(a)  The same physical laws obtain everywhere in the universe.

	(b)  It is sixty miles from Kansas City to Topeka.
-- 
*context of course includes a lot more than the immediate context of
the utterance--it includes the belief-worlds of speaker and hearer as
well. 

-<Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN             {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor