tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post4505577922454630079..comments2024-03-28T04:04:55.806-07:00Comments on Faculty of Language: A further note on falsificationismNorberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-4909459156228853592013-07-10T13:32:00.015-07:002013-07-10T13:32:00.015-07:00That's enough for me. The facts that people te...That's enough for me. The facts that people tend to notice re the small ones. Falsificationism, I believe, orients attention to these. If one agrees that the big facts count as much s these, then I am fine.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-21778101208044596042013-07-10T10:40:03.841-07:002013-07-10T10:40:03.841-07:00Let me edit that a little, because though I think ...Let me edit that a little, because though I think there is something very right about falsificationism, even in its more sophisticated forms it doesn't quite capture the reality of scientific methodology which is as you say a bit fuzzier. For me, it's more about making testable predictions than it is about the falsification/confirmation debate.<br /><br />My point is just that the choice of scientific methodology is largely independent of/orthogonal to your choice of what facts you think are most important.<br /><br />And however much I might disagree with you about the importance of precision, and the value of GB, I do agree with you about which the important large facts are, and the importance of deciding what the important questions are.<br />Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-43499417409987530652013-07-10T09:16:20.755-07:002013-07-10T09:16:20.755-07:00But then your objection is really not anything to ...But then your objection is really not anything to do with falsificationism, but rather with the selection of which facts are important or not. I completely agree with you, (if this is what you are saying! I have prior form here .. ) that the large facts are more important than the small ones. <br /><br />In other words, one can be a falsificationist and interested in the large facts (me), or a non falsificationist and interested in the large facts (you) or a non falsificationist interested in the small facts (some of the other commentators here) and so on.Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-24416466752963934962013-07-10T07:45:34.380-07:002013-07-10T07:45:34.380-07:00Speaking carefully, I believe you are right. They ...Speaking carefully, I believe you are right. They are just facts, like any other. However, as a practical matter, I think it pays to separate them out for special status as they are the "large" facts that "smaller" facts are assembled to understand. I know that these distinctions are not precise. But in the realm of methodology, there is no precision worth having. These are general rules of thumb, attitudes, mores. They are squishy, but nonetheless play an important and constant role.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-88213397995291703312013-07-10T07:42:27.134-07:002013-07-10T07:42:27.134-07:00Yup. Well said. I'm in.Yup. Well said. I'm in.Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-25491026083125097212013-07-10T07:41:16.025-07:002013-07-10T07:41:16.025-07:00Couldn't agree more. What's made Generativ...Couldn't agree more. What's made Generative Grammar so interesting has been the discovery of a couple of dozen non-trivial generalizations. I think that explaining these, where they come from and why they arise, as the main avenue for a deep understanding of FL/UG. I have made myself somewhat of a pest for insisting on this with my minimalist colleagues. So yes, yes, yes. Generalizations rule! (Or should).Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-56075363190614317142013-07-10T06:58:26.834-07:002013-07-10T06:58:26.834-07:00I agree with a lot of what you say here: but I gue...I agree with a lot of what you say here: but I guess I don't see Plato's problem and Darwin's problem as being separate nonempirical issues. <br />It is an empirical fact that children learn/acquire languages, and that the LAD that they use to do the acquisition task evolved in some way. <br />So these are facts that need to be explained, just as syntacticians might want to explain some island effect. <br />Suppose we have theory A which explains lots of syntactic facts but has no theory of learning and theory B which also explains lots of syntactic facts and explains acquisition facts but has a very rich UG with no theory of how that might have evolved, and theory C which is a small UG theory but which has no explanation of the cross-linguistic variation in island effects for example, but has an acquisition theory and a plausible theory of evolution, then all three theories have some *empirical* problems. They fail to account for some of the facts, and which one of them you favour depends on which you think the important facts are.<br /><br />So if I understand your argument here, EO refers to the nonlinguistic facts like the acquisition fact and the evolution fact. But I think these are part of the data that need to be "covered" just as the syntactic data do.<br /><br />And I don't think that falsificationism per se favours one type of fact over another. <br />Alex Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04634767958690153584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-48624849650368462592013-07-10T06:55:39.045-07:002013-07-10T06:55:39.045-07:00I think it's incorrect to say that "every...I think it's incorrect to say that "every scientific theory aims for truth." As you note, we wouldn't know truth if we saw it, anyway. In describing science as being a search for indirect indicators of truth (or falsity), and in describing (roughly) explanation and empirical coverage as two dimensions of theory appraisal, I think you're getting at the mechanics of theory choice more directly (and more accurately).<br /><br />Based on what I've read in philosophy of science (mostly essays and books by Larry Laudan), it seems to me that there are more than two dimensions along which theories are evaluated, some of which have to do with how theories relate to data, and some of which with how theories relate to other theories and to themselves.<br /><br />Perhaps echoing and expanding on Avery's point, "getting the facts right" itself consists of multiple evaluative dimensions (e.g., the range of data accounted for, the accuracy with which data are accounted for, whether a theory accounts only for data it was designed to account for or if it also accounts for other data [i.e., makes surprising predictions]). The more purely theoretical concerns are similarly multidimensional (e.g., internal consistency, consistency with 'neighboring' theories, fecundity, simplicity).<br /><br />So, while some of these may bear more or less direct relationships to truth (or, more to the point, if a theory is true, it may be more or less likely to exhibit certain of these properties), and while any given scientist may well believe that their favored theory is true (or non-boring, or elegant), what matters in convincing other scientists of the value of a theory are these more objectively defined criteria.<br /><br />I think this is all consistent with your argument against naive falsificationism, which is to say that we can still make the case that this position puts undue emphasis on a small subset of our evaluative criteria.Noah Motionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00150446498549219747noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-22508153133508087342013-07-10T00:15:07.356-07:002013-07-10T00:15:07.356-07:00Not necessarily anywhere in particular, but it see...Not necessarily anywhere in particular, but it seems to me to be something very important, which people pay considerable heed to in inexplicit practice, but don't talk about very much, so perhaps it would be good to have a story about where it fits in, especially because as a goal, it is somewhere in between brute accounting for the facts and the higher levels of explanation that many people are uncomfortable about.<br /><br />For example, even if the double central embeddings such as my Plato example turn out to provide a processing issue for at least some people (some messing around with an adapted version for Md Greek got mixed results on the Greek Linguistics fb group), the requirement of capturing the generalizations of the single centrally embedded one is still a substantial problem for the advocates of flat structure.AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-87051654268604045032013-07-09T19:12:39.670-07:002013-07-09T19:12:39.670-07:00I've been vague, but you are right. Generaliza...I've been vague, but you are right. Generalizations are a big deal. If an account cannot handle a well established generalization then it is more problematic than being unable to accommodate a stray un/acceptable sentence or two. But I am not sure where you are going with this. Norberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15701059232144474269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275657281509261156.post-2438429596033092592013-07-09T18:56:01.013-07:002013-07-09T18:56:01.013-07:00There's an ambiguity/vagueness/unclarity here ...There's an ambiguity/vagueness/unclarity here which bothers me, which is whether "getting the facts right" does or does not include getting the 'significant generalizations'. For example, have you got the facts of English right if your phrase-structure rules work, but there are two versions of the NP rule, one for singulars, one for plurals?<br /><br />I think this is a significant issue because getting the generalizations is a rather more demanding task than getting the brute facts, and hard questions come up as to what the generalizations really are. E.g. is the resistance to agreement in Icelandic of dative, accusative and genitive subjects one fact or three?AveryAndrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17701162517596420514noreply@blogger.com