complex of the theory’s terms. These semantical contributions reduce vagueness, and do not depend on the logical derivation of test-design sentences from the theory sentences. But where such derivation is possible, coherence is increased and vagueness is thereby further reduced. Furthermore due to a mathematical derivation test-outcome measurement values may be changed to numerical values that still fall within the range of measurement error, and the measurement accuracy may be judged improved.
3.46 Observation and Test Execution
For the execution of the test all the statements involved have their quantification changed from universal to particular. The semantics for all the language involved in a test is defined by the universally quantified statements, since particularly quantified language does not define semantics. The particularly quantified theory statements make the prediction for the test. All the language needed to realize the initial conditions together with the test-outcome statements have their semantics defined by the universal statements in the test design. The particularly quantified statements in the test design describing the subject of the theory are observation statements. For a mathematically expressed theory particular logical quantification is accomplished by assigning values by measurement to the theory’s descriptive variables to implement the test’s initial conditions needed to calculate the one or several prediction variables, and then calculating the predicted numerical values.
After the test is executed, the statements in the test design reporting the test outcome are observation statements describing the observed results of the test. The prediction statements are not as such observation statements unless the test outcome is nonfalsifying. If the test is falsifying, the prediction statements are merely rejected language. For a mathematically expressed theory a nonfalsifying test outcome is a predicted magnitude that is manifestly larger than the estimated measurement error, such that the prediction is deemed to be as the test-outcome statements describe. Then the test is effectively decidable as nonfalsifying. Otherwise the test is falsifying, and the prediction values are simply rejected as erroneous prediction values.
3.47 Scientific Professions
In computational philosophy of science a “scientific profession” means the researchers who at a given point in time are attempting to solve the same scientific problem as defined by a test design. They are the language community represented by the input and output state descriptions for a discovery system application. On this definition of profession for discovery systems in computational philosophy of science, a profession is a much smaller group than the academicians in the field of the problem but is not limited to academicians.
3.48 Semantic Individuation of Theories
Theory language is defined pragmatically, but theories are individuated semantically.
Theories are individuated semantically in either of two ways:
Firstly different expressions are different theories, because they address different subjects.
Different theory expressions having different test designs producing different measurements or observations are different theories with different subjects.
Secondly different expressions are different theories, because each makes contrary claims about the same subject.
The test-design language defines the subject and is the same for all of such contrary theories.
Chapter 4. Functional Topics
The preceding chapters have offered generic sketches of the principal twentieth-century philosophies of science, namely romanticism, positivism and pragmatism. And they have discussed selected elements of the contemporary pragmatist philosophy of language for science, namely the object language and metalanguage perspectives, the synchronic and diachronic views, and the syntactical, semantical, ontological and pragmatic dimensions.
Finally at the expense of some repetition this chapter integrates those discussions into the four functional topics briefly examined in the overview chapter, namely the institutionalized aim of basic science, scientific discovery, scientific criticism, and scientific explanation.
4.01 Institutionalized Aim of Science
Over the last three hundred years empirical science has evolved into a social institution with its own distinctive and autonomous professional subculture of shared views and values.
The institutionalized aim of science is the cultural value system that regulates the scientist’s practices of basic research.
Idiosyncratic motivations of individual scientists are historically interesting, but are largely of anecdotal interest to philosophers of science, except when such idiosyncrasies have produced results that have initiated an institutional change.
The literature of philosophy of science offers various proposals for the aim of science. The three modern philosophies of science mentioned above set forth different philosophies of language, which influence their diverse concepts of all four of the functional topics including the aim of science.
4.02 Positivist Aim
The positivists proposed a foundational agenda based on their naturalistic philosophy of language. Early positivists such as Ernst Mach proposed that science should aim for firm objective foundations by relying exclusively on observation, and should seek empirical generalizations that summarize the individual observations. They initially deemed theories to be at best temporary expedients and too hypothetical to be considered appropriate for science.
After the acceptance of Einstein’s relativity theory by physicists, the later positivists known as “neopositivists” acknowledged the essential rôle that hypothetical theory must have in the aim of science. Between the twentieth-century World Wars, Rudolf Carnap and his fellows in the Vienna Circle group of neopositivists attempted to justify theories in science by logically relating the so-called theoretical terms in the theories to the so-called observation terms that they believed should be the foundational logical-reduction base.
Many of these neopositivists were also called “logical positivists”, because they attempted to use the symbolic logic developed by Bertrand Russell and Alfred N. Whitehead to accomplish the logical reduction of theory language to observation language. The logical positivists fantasized that this Russellian symbolic logic could serve philosophy as mathematics serves physics, and it became their idée fixe. For decades the symbolic logic ostentatiously littered the pages of the Philosophy of Science and British Journal of Philosophy of Science journals with its chicken tracks, and rendered their ostensibly “technical” papers fit for the bottom of a birdcage.
The positivists were self-deluded, because in fact the Russellian truth-functional logic does not adequately capture the hypothetical logic of empirical testing in science. For example the truth-functional truth table says that if the conditional statement’s antecedent statement is false, then the conditional statement is defined as true. But in the practice of science a false antecedent statement means that execution of a test did not comply with the description of initial conditions thus invalidating the test, and is therefore irrelevant to the truth-value of the conditional statement that is the tested theory. Today truth-functional logic is not seriously considered by post-positivist philosophers of science much less by any practicing research scientists.
Consequently the aim of these neopositivist philosophers was not the aim of practicing research scientists. Scientists do not use symbolic logic or seek any logical reduction for so-called theoretical terms. The extinction of positivism was in no small part due to the disconnection between the positivists’ philosophical agenda and the actual practices and values of research scientists.
Readers wishing to know more about positivism are referred to BOOKs II and III below.
4.03 Romantic Aim
The romantics have a subjectivist social-psychological reductionist aim for the