Talk:Operational definition

message: Hey— don't knock logical positivism!  It is still an ideal philosophy for keeping scientists honest and real; and it only fails at the extremes (where everything gets fuzzy anyway).
But, seriously, can anyone explain why "Operational definitions are particularly important in quantum mechanics, statistical physics and relativity?" I see  operational definitions  as critical and equally as important to all science and engineering.
normxxx 17:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "There is no true value of any characteristic, state, or condition that is defined in terms of measurement or observation. Change of procedure for measurement (change of operational definition) or observation produces a new number."
An interesting remark. Anyone care to say who made it?
W.E. Deming made this remark.
----
Why was relevance to philosophy removed?  Will this be replace by something else? CSTAR 22:36, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

text: Computation changes the whole of it in ways that will need increasing scrutiny and attention as the interplay of AI (weak or strong or other), human intelligence, and our inevitable (categorical) need for instrumentation unfolds. See Operational definition#In computing and, please, help improve this needed section. jmswtlk (talk) 14:40, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overarching issues 

message: This article lacks refernces. I have completely rewitten the philosophy section and qualified the paragraph about opetrationism's requiring public accesibility with Daniel Dennett's unusual but important view on the matter. I cna add the referecnes in the body, but there should be reference section at the bottom as is customary in encylcopedia entries. I think I can throw the Web refernces in there as well, if I cabn figure out author, title and date.--Lacatosias 10:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Twould be greatly appreciated.  ⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 22:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: Lacatosias: Let's get some contrary opinion going!  I would argue that ODs are critical in science, especially psychology and the social sciences, and helps us distinguish History from a Science of History.  But, philosophically, things are hardly so clear, primarily because we wind up with an infinite regression of ODs and, finally, nothing but fuzz.
⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 23:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I entirely agree. I think it's obvious that such defintions are often indispensable to scientific practice. But when it becomes part of a sort of ideological movement to eliminate all unobservaable entities from human discourse (as it was for the logical positivists) then it runs into the problem of changing procedures which measure what are,  in my view, the same really existing entities. So what's the contrary opinion? --Lacatosias 09:23, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Oh, I know, I know. I just meant peculiar in relation to the apparently modern acceptation of the term ("publicly observable" and all that).--Lacatosias 09:23, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Peculiar Definition 

message: Don't get me wrong; I think NC is a genius— anyone who could invent mathematical linguistics and take it as far as he did (although ultimately failing to prove most of his points), must be classified a genius.
But, he is still a nut!
⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 18:39, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's Noam Chomsky, not Naom (in case that wasn't a typo). So I change the title of this section heading.
⇒⇒Thanks for the correction.  It wasn't a typo; I know he is Noam, but he is the only Noam I know of— and I know several Naoms, so I "forget."  Maybe that was his first eccentricity.⇒⇒ 'P.S. '  In searching the internet, I find that I am not the only one who seems to have lapsed into calling him Naom!  ⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 18:06, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  About Noam Chomsky... 

message: ⇒⇒ Alienus and Lacatosias: See my reference above on introspectionists for a discussion of Second-person operationalism and the study of 'mental phenomena(?),' or, as Kant would put it, noumena.! ⇒⇒P.S. I have invited Bill Adams (the article's author) to contribute.  Hope he does!
⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 18:06, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. The same is true of verificationism, IMO. There's tremendous confusion: logical positivism is dead, therefore verificationism is....what, useless, pointless, meanignless. But that's sort of a positivistic vision of the meaning of verificationism. I'm somwhwt synpathetic toward the neo-verificationist (or justificaationist) positions of Michael Dummett and think they should, at leats, be teken seriously. but it has become something of an epithet in philosophy to describe someone's position as bordering on verificationism. Some people just find it hard to accept metaphyscial realism (espcially with reagrd to mathematical entities and the TRUE and FALSE of two-values classical logic) without argument. the debate between realism-antirelaims is very deep and intersting.--Lacatosias 10:39, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second-person Operationalism? 

message: ⇒⇒ Ribes-Inesta, Emilio: ABSTRACT With S.S. Stevens, operationism became an important influence in psychology. In this paper I discuss the differences between Bridgman's and Stevens' proposals on operationism and the role that operational definitions play in scientific theory. I discuss how Stevens' notions of the basic act of discrimination and of the relation procedure-outcome influenced B.F. Skinner's criteria under which the main conceptual distinctions in operant psychology were formulated. The operational origin of the dichotomies between respondent and operant behavior, contingency-shaped and rule-governed behavior, private and public events, and verbal and nonverbal behavior are examined.
⇒⇒ Apparently, I misremembered about the public vs. private debate; the "public" requirement did come from psychology, but from S.S. Stevens... ⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 06:06, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Public versus Private 

message: ⇒⇒Well, see, I divide my deep thoughts in <I>science</I> and <I>philosophy</I> largely between science and philosophy.  My first love is <I>philosophy of science,</I> so I have spent a lot of time thinking about the subject (at least the last 20 years or so, and for about 5 years at the U. of Mich. in the '60s).
In <I>science,</I> I believe that to make progress, we must be pragmatic.  Take renormalization— <I>where you essentially just cancel out infinities on both sides of the equation.</I> Entirely without mathematical justification— <I>Dirac went to his grave predicting dire consequences to our understanding of theoretical physics.  Dick Feynman called it hocus-pocus.</I>  But it works!
Similarly, I believe that the only workable worldview in Physics (and science) is the Copenhagen interpretation: WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get.  Anything deeper is metaphysics!
But, that does not mean I will not explore metaphysics (as related to science or not) as best I am able; it just means that when exploring the <I>philosophy of science,</I> per se; I will eschew <I>metaphysics</I> as much as I am able.
but it has become something of an epithet in philosophy to describe someone's position as bordering on verificationism. Some people just find it hard to accept metaphyscial realism (espcially with reagrd to mathematical entities and the TRUE and FALSE of two-values classical logic) without argument.
I learned early— fortunately before I returned to school, and so avoided getting my mind bent like Pirsig— 
Pirsig, Robert M. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry Into Values (P.S.) (Paperback) (2005; reprinted from 1974)
that the last place to look for philosophical understanding is in the <I>philosophy department</I> of any large university.  I figured the best place would be <I>at the leading edges of science;</I> which, in the early '60s was either in particle physics (for which I figured I was too old— I was 29 at the time), or in psychology.  Genetics had not yet exploded (the paper by Watson and Crick had just been published some 8 years earlier).  So, I "dropped out" of being an E.E. (it was the '60s after all) and returned to school to work on a Ph.D. in Mathematical Psyshology.
All of which is by way of explanation, that the last people I am likely to be impressed by are academic (or so-called 'professional') philosophers!  Anyway, with Popper, I fully subscribe to the notion that all valid empirical propositions of science must be falsifiable (since they are inductive), but not yet proved to be false.  I also adhere to the notion that all valid logical propositions of science must be verifiable (since they are deductive), but not yet proved to be false.  To that extent I suppose I am a verificationist!
As an <I>inductive</I> scientist, I believe that a sighting of a <I>green beatle</I> is an <I>affirmation</I> of the <I>empirical proposition</I>, "All crows are black" (which yields the <I>transposition,</I> "All not black things are not crows.")
P.S. In 'professional' philosophy, denigrating the more recent philosophers is frequently mistaken for progress (it's permissable to say good things about the 'ancients'— but not too much). 
P.P.S. Yes, with old age has come a considerable degree of cynicism. ⇐⇐
⇒  normxxx|  talk  ⇒  email 22:41, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ohh, I don't think the academic arm-chair philosophers are all that bad. Philosophy of science, itself, seems to have become much more pragmatic and scientifically-informed in recent years, I think, probably as ea result of increasing specialization. There are people who really do know their molecular biology working on the philosophy of molecular biology; people who really do know, and have extensively studied, quantum mechanics working on the philosophical implication of quantum theory (most of them accept the Copenhagen interpretation or something close to it, BTW). There is an excellent entry which I was just reading on the history of the gene in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which explains very throughougly how different interpretation of the concept "gene" (realist, instrumentalist and what ave you) have all contributed at different times to the evolution in our understanding of the concept: a wonderful example of interaction between metaphical assumptions and practical application.  At any rate, this page has turned into an interesting discussion forum. I don't even have time to read through everything right now. The second-person operationalist view seems clear enough to me .I also agree that Dennett's first-person operationalism is basically incoherent but I'll leave that alone for now. I don't want to offend anyone and the 'pedia is just supposed to represent views without toosing in personal judgement, so I still think it belongs in there. One more observation: over here (Italy), there are some outstanding philosophers of physics (see Giancarlo Ghirardi and Mauro Dorato) who are actually both working physicists and philosophers (so these things are not mutually exclusive). But much of what you say is correct: there is still a great deal of division into schools of thought, where the speculation about the nature of numbers, e..g., comes first and the practical reality comes later. But the post-modernist philosophers are far worse with respect to science and they are still dominant on European television and popular culture, doing much serious damage.--Lacatosias 11:25, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Verificationism]] 

message: I still suggest that any adjective such as theoretical or empirical in the definition is unnecessary. Aside from this, what about the word "term" used in the definition? Is the term a property of an object (e.g. x-coordinate of object is in the interval [a,b]) or more generally an n-ary relation between objects (e.g. x-projection of object1 is to the left of x-projection of object2).  This is in the spirit of the operational definition of an observable in quantum mechanics.--CSTAR 18:33, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Empirical term 

message: Just synonyms? Or is it the process of translating abstract concepts into observable and measurable quantities? Andries 19:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exteremely closely related, indeed. These should probably be merged. Operational definition == operationalization, from everything I've ever read in the philosophy of science and from common sense. being Wikipedia, however....there are mergists, anti-mergists, expansionists an other such meta-meta-meta-encyclopesists who like to spend their time arguing about these matters for several centuries. Not for me!! --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: How is [[operationalization]] related to this subject?

message: There appear to be conflicting definitions of conceptual definition. Some make it indistinguishable from operational definition, while some contrast them. See wikt:conceptual definition AND this --JimWae (talk) 22:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge proposal 2009-Oct 

message: What is the difference between a "working definition" and a "Operational definition"? It should be explained in the article!  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moooooooon (talk • contribs) 15:43, 25 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "working definition" 

message: I'd suggest we remove Duck Typing from this article, as without citation it is largely unrelated to the term...   Though I can see a link between it and how in Object Oriented Programming Objects are defined in terms of their methods (operations), it is a little tenuous.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.96.227.86 (talk) 12:54, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Merged this into the "In computing" (Operational definition#In computing) section. Though, there may be various specific interpretations, the whole meme deals with not knowing except through attributes some of which may be less observable than others. Or, they are such so as to be provided by a computational run, but not necessarily repeatable. In short, we might see a pattern and match it with something prior. Yet, overemphasizing convergence is a potential problem (machine learning, to wit). Operational definition applies quite heavily to computing in many ways. jmswtlk (talk) 21:08, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Duck Typing 

message: I think "Shore scleroscope" is wrong. The Shore hardness measurement is used
for measuring the hardness of softer materials such as rubber. It is measured with a durometer.
The scleroscope is used to measure the hardness of hard surfaces such as metals.
john f 82.132.245.207 (talk) 08:02, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scleroscope 

message: I know as far as priorities go, this problem is fairly low, but i feel it needs to be said. In the beginning of the article, there is an example of an operational definition using a peanut butter sandwich. The problem is that the picture that demonstrates the peanut butter sandwich is actually a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so the operational definition does not actually fit the example.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.104.169.55 (talk) 22:55, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: just chiming in to second this. the picture needs to be changed or the text does. Platypusjones (talk) 16:24, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with the peanut butter sandwich example in the beginning 

message: Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 13:48, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm clearing the quote as an excessively long quote that fails our copyright violation policy - it is far too much copyright taking for something that can be paraphrased. You can paraphrase most of what Boyd said, using short quotes for anything that is a subject opinion of his but most of that quote is not in that style and expressing details of the past. --MASEM (t) 15:18, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Also note that the source is wrong for the quote, it is now located here . --MASEM (t) 15:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Turned it into paraphrase with a much, much briefer quotation. That's pretty much the heart of the source. :/ --Moonriddengirl (talk) 15:30, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richard Boyd quote up for discussion 

message: On request (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JMSwtlk#Operational_definition), updating this section. This list of references is a minor start:  -- Computational Thinking in Science - very recent overview of the issues; Peter Wegner (1994) on computable functions (and Turing's tarpit); K-12 Interest (Operational definition of Computational Thinking); Theory and Operational Definitions of Computational Memory Models ...; ... 
At the same time, will merge the Duck Typing section to this one. 
This subject needs its own page. jmswtlk (talk) 21:10, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. (Operational definition#In computing) Note, the section is long. Needs to be longer. Hence, a new page is recommended with a synopsis here. There is no doubt of the suitability of this subject. jmswtlk (talk) 22:23, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  In computing 

message: I've added the  template to the article; much of the lead section at least is unduly vague and doesn't explain exactly how an operational definition is different from any other kind of definition. In contrast, see this simple explanation from PsychCentral: 
I'm no expert on the topic, so any suggestions for improving the clarity of the article would be welcome. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 20:32, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This article reads as though it were written by a retarded potato. "There are not many who can bridge all three of these." What the heck?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.84.60.134 (talk) 20:00, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article cleanup 

message: Template:Confusing was placed atop this article in January 2018, for good reasons. Some of the language is also overly technical. I began to edit the article for improved clarity (diff). Let's discuss edits to improve the clarity, precision, and comprehensibility of the article here. My expertise is in psychology, so not surprisingly my edits cited references from the psychology literature. If other scientific disciplines explain "operational definition" differently, please add that information with citations to reliable sources. Thanks! Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 03:40, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing, overly technical language 

message: This page used to explain operational definitions as used in science in a concise and clear way. Right now it looks like an exercise in disinformation to prevent readers from understanding the concept. Can we revert it to a sane state, please? Vaceituno (talk) 08:52, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  who molested this page