Gadamer on Truth and Method: Implications for Measurement

Gadamer on Truth and Method: Implications for Measurement across the Sciences

William P. Fisher, Jr.

BEAR Center, UC Berkeley LivingCapitalMetrics.com

Research Institute of Sweden

BEAR Seminar26 January 2021

Outline

• Motivation: Emerging Work on Measurement across the Sciences

• Background: Taking Language as a Model

• Gadamer: Language as the Medium of Thought

• Into the Future: The Lessons Beauty Holds for Meaning

Motivation: Emerging work on measurement across the sciences

2017 2019 2021

Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology

2016 IMEKO Joint SymposiumUC Berkeley Clark Kerr Campus

First ever measurement and metrology conference with nearly equal numbers of psychometricians and engineers in attendance



Actions speak louder than words

• It is more important to examine closely what scientists do than it is to listen to their own accounts of what they say they do.

• Investigations in the history, philosophy, and social studies of science over the last several decades document Kuhn’s contrast of method as taught in textbooks and described by scientists, versus how it plays out in the journal literature and in laboratory practice.

• See Chapter XI on the invisibility of revolutions in Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.


• Latour (1987, pp. 249-250):

• "Every time you hear about a successful application of a science, look for the progressive extension of a network."

• "The predictable character of technoscience is entirely dependent on its ability to spread networks further."

Actions speak louder than words• Latour (1987, p. 250):

• "Facts and machines are like trains, electricity, packages of computer bytes or frozen vegetables: they can go everywhere as long as the track along which they travel is not interrupted in the slightest.”

• "In all these mental experiments you will feel the vast difference between principle and practice, and that when everything works according to plan it means that you do not move an inch out of well-kept and carefully sealed networks."


• Latour (1987, p. 251):• "Metrology is the name of this gigantic enterprise to make of the outside a world

inside which facts and machines can survive.“

• "Scientists build their enlightened networks by giving the outside the same paper form as that of their instruments inside. [They can thereby] travel very far without ever leaving home.“

• Key clue: science’s standards networks are extensions of everyday language’s standards networks. Language is the model for metrology.

Outline


• Background: Taking Language as a Model• Linguistic standards as the prototype for measurement standards

• Everyday cognitive modeling extended by scientific models



Background: Emergence of written language as the prototypical standardization process

• Weitzel (2004, p. 11):

• "Among the first consciously set standards, language plays an

important role. The development from the spoken language ...

through symbols and pictograms ... to what we now understand

as written language is a perfect standardization process."

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.“

(Einstein, 1954, p. 290)

“'Ultimately, we human beings depend on our words. We are hanging in language.'

'We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down.‘”(Bohr in Petersen, 1968, pp. 187-188)

Taking language as a model

Taking language as a model

• In his review of Nancy Nersessian’s 2008 book, Creating Scientific Concepts, George Lakoff wrote:

• “It should be obvious. Scientists are human beings and their scientific theories reflect normal human mechanisms of thought.”

• Nersessian (2002, p. 133):

• "The cognitive practices of scientists are extensions of the kinds of practices humans employ in … problem solving of the more ordinary kind."

And yet some use language’s standard measure of meaning to say scientific standard measures of meaning are impossible or unnecessary.

• "Insofar as a determinate and standardized meaning for measurement concepts is achievable, the analogy with Gadamer’shermeneutics is broken” (Cupples, 2019, p. 15).

• "One of the ways in which this post-structuralist view of knowledge is incompatible with the necessities of measurement is that interpretations are not assumed to be consistent or similar across time, contexts, or individuals“ (Delandshire & Petrosky, 1994, p. 16).

What does Gadamer himself say?

• “It is the human task to constantly be limiting the measureless with measure“ (Gadamer, 1980, p. 155).

• “It is not word but number that is the real paradigm of the noetic [the domain of mental activity]“ (Gadamer, 1989, p. 412).

• “…this activity of the thing itself, the coming into language of meaning, points to a universal ontological structure, namely to the basic nature of everything toward which understanding can be directed. Being that can be understood is language.The hermeneutical phenomenon here projects its own universality back onto the ontological constitution of what is understood, determining it in a universal sense as language (Gadamer, 1989, pp. 474-475; bold emphasis added throughout).

Outline• Motivation: Emerging Work on Measurement across the Sciences


• Gadamer: Language as the Medium of Thought• Who was Hans-Georg Gadamer?

• Method as the activity of things themselves experienced in thought

• Language as medium for learning through what we already know

• The systematic problem of philosophy: language’s conceptual flattening of lived reality

• Hypothesis of conceptual ideal not tested against empirical consequences, but vice versa


Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002)

Heelan on hermeneutical philosophy of science

• “The terminal output of scientific research for a strong hermeneutical philosophy is by contrast the disclosure of new horizons of experiential Being, i.e., of perception, or what Gadamer calls ‘the transformation into structure.’“ (Heelan, 1994)

• “Such a project puts the experiential or laboratory research program of science at the center of a strong hermeneutical philosophy, i.e., as its phenomenology.” (Heelan, 1994)

• Commenting in relation to Gadamer on the work of art:

• “As a score is to a musical work, so scientific theory is to the scientific phenomenon, and as performance is to a musical work, so data are to the scientific phenomenon.” (Heelan, 1994)

Hermeneutics: Hermes, messages, and meaning

• Hermeneutics as interpretation theory• Name comes from Greek god, Hermes

• Inventor of the lyre, dice, and writing

• Roman counterpart: Mercury

• Mercurial nature of meaning in language• Analytic efforts at classificatory logic fail to divide categories of

understanding into stable elements

• Self-referential meanings split into chaotic and uncontrollable recursive functions (as in: “This statement is false.”)

• Literal interpretations are seen to be rooted in a metaphor of readability or literacy, just as metaphor itself is a metaphor

Basic themes in Gadamer’s Truth and Method

• Truth is not obtained just by methodically following rules.

• Rigorous method cannot guarantee truth.

• The usual sense of method as systematic and logical cannot possibly replace everyday language.

• Whitehead and Russell’s efforts to replace everyday language with mathematical language had already failed.

• Godel’s proofs that self-referential languages must be incomplete or inconsistent supports Gadamer’s assertion that truth necessarily always exceeds method, as method itself demands.

General recognition of the insufficiency of method as a solution• “Karl Popper (8) proposed a philosophy of scientific practice that

eliminated formal induction completely and used only the deductive elements of science: the prediction and falsification components. Rudolf Carnap tried an opposite strategy--to make the inductive component as logically secure as the deductive part (9, 10). Both were unsuccessful in producing workable models for how science could be conducted, and their failures showed that there is no methodologic solution to the problem of fallible scientific knowledge.”

• Goodman, S. N. (1999, June 15). Toward evidence-based medical statistics. 1: The p-value fallacy. Annals of Internal Medicine, 130(12), 995-1004

Contrasting senses of method

• Modern scientific method as what Hegel called “external reflection”• Outside-in, top-down, rule-based, analytic, centrally designed and controlled

• Dualistic subject-object split

• Method by Hegel’s logic• Inside-out, bottom-up, captivation in playful flow of lived experience

• Self-organized, self-regulating, ecologically distributed identity of process and content

• Nondualistic mutual implication of subject and object

Contrasting senses of method

• Ancient Greek senses of meta-odos and physis

• Natural objects contain within themselves the principIe of their own development

• Meta: a following along after

• Odos: a path or route

• Physis: • In nursing, the emergent self-healing properties of the body

• In philosophy, the emergently self-organized manifestation of natural processes

Method as the action of the thing itself experienced in thought• Gadamer (1989, p. 460; emphases added):

• "Dialectic, this expression of the logos, was not for the Greeks a movement performed by thought; what thought experiences is the movement of the thing itself.“

• p. 461:

• “…the coming into language of what has been said in the tradition… [is an] event [that] is not our action upon the thing, but the act of the thing itself.“

• "...we are thinking out the consequences of language as medium.“

Modern vs Ancient Greek Methods

• Gadamer (1989, pp. 463-464; bold emphases added):

• "This confirms the similarity of our approach to that of Hegel and the Greek world, which we have already noted. Our inquiry started from our dissatisfaction with the modern concept of methodology. But this dissatisfaction found its most significant philosophical justification in Hegel's explicit appeal to the Greek concept of methodology. He criticized the concept of a method that dealt with the thing but was alien to it, calling it 'external reflection.' The true method was an action of the thing itself."

12 x 15 = ___

112 - 46 = ___

1,000 & 100 Place Value

Learning progressions are illustrated by assessment items’ increasing difficulty order. That order is defined both in terms of students’ experiences and in terms of a logical sequence.

In education, the movement of the thing itself can be seen in the progression of learning through levels of increasingly difficult tasks.

∏r2 of a circle.

Descartes: Discourse on Method

The Magic School Bus

Dr. Seus: Hop on Pop

Learning progressions are defined by the increasing difficulty of tasks as manifest in student experience and as a systematically structured phenomenon.

The movement of the thing itself experienced in thought shows itself in the repetition of item calibration location estimates across samples, and of person measurement location samples across instruments.

Certified Public Accountant Exam

Austen: Pride and Prejudice

Seeing where I’m at, relative to where I want to be, with an eye toward what comes next for me, in the context of my special strengths *and weaknesses X.

1. My measure is here

2. I want to be here

{3. What I have accomplished

{{5. What I should focus on

XX

*

*

Managing what you measure is a matter of being the change you are trying to create.

True method follows along after the thing itself on the path it takes of its own accord.

True method is not confounded by the fact that learning from one assessment renders re-use of that assessment invalid. Different items measuring the same thing can be calibrated to the same unit. As Gadamer (1980, p. 103) says: "If I really know how to prove it, I am no longer dependent upon the different possible figures or drawings which are used in the proof."

= ={{{

True method is not confounded by the fact that there is no methodological solution to the problem of fallible knowledge. Instead, uncertainty is a fundamental component of probabilistic models and is estimated for every quantity.

{

{

{{

{{0 strata:

Reliability < 0.67

3 strata:Reliability

= .80

7 strata:Reliability

= 0.96

{

{

{

{

In addition, true method recognizes and accepts the value of individual differences

Probability of correct response: 95 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 5

Incorrect: 0 0 00 00 0 0 0 00000000000000 00

Correct: 11 111 111111111111 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Improbable responses may point to important issues in need of attention

KidmapsStochastically Consistent Pattern

Measure is in this range: |<<<>>>| 530 (+/- 25)

Easier Harder

Incorrect X XX X X X XX X X X

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Correct X X XX X XX X XX X X XX XX XX X X

350 450 550 650

Scale: |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|

Less able More able

KidmapsInconsistent Pattern

Measure is in this range: |<<<>>>| 515 (+/- 25)Easier Harder

Incorrect X X X X X XX X X-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Correct X X XX X XX X XX X X XX XX XX X X

350 450 550 650Scale: |----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|

Less able More able

Authentic method: A closer look

• Gadamer (1989, pp. 474-475):

• "The Greeks...did not conceive understanding as a methodic activity of the subject, but as something that the thing itself does and which thought 'suffers.‘”

• “We can now see that this activity of the thing itself, the coming into language of meaning, points to a universal ontological structure, namely to the basic nature of everything toward which understanding can be directed. Being that can be understood is language. "

The Socratic method’s maieutics (art of midwifery)

“Thinking means unfolding what consistently follows from the subject matter itself“ (Gadamer, 1989, p. 464).

The classic example of the Socratic method’s art of midwifery: Plato’s Meno

Young boy says doubling sides of the square doubles the area of the square. Upon demonstration, boy sees that is not true:

4 ≠ 2 * 1

Boy then says adding half a side length will result in doubling the area of the square. Again, on demonstration, sees this is not true:

9 ≠ 2 * 4


Do four half squares double the area of the original square?

Yes: 2 = 4 * .5


True method as understanding how to retrace the path taken by the thing itself independent of the means of representation

• Gadamer (1980, p. 103):

• "If I really know how to prove it, I am no longer dependent upon the different possible figures or drawings which are used in the proof.“

• In other words, when something is understood for itself and not just in the instance of answers to particular questions, then that understanding should be demonstrated in comparable terms across different sets of questions.

• This is, of course, the basic principle of invariance implemented in probabilistic models for measurement and in science in general.

Invariance• Gadamer (1980, p. 110):

• “…the figure which we draw to illustrate a mathematical relationship visually is not the mathematical relationship itself....”

• In the same way, the questions asked on an assessment or survey illustrate a cognitive or social relationship but are not that relationship themselves.

• So what is going on when numbers cannot be separated from what they represent?

• Scores as counts of correct answers or sums of ratings change their meaning when the questions asked change: illustrative figures are confused with the thing itself.

• Measurements, in contrast, remain invariant across sets of questions and so separate the concrete illustration of the relation of interest from that relationship itself.

A yet closer look at the Socratic method:Learning through what we already know

• Ancient Greek mathematics• Mathesis: learning

• Mathemata: things that are learnable through what is already known (language)

• Plato: Philosophy founded on distinction between name and concept• Over entrance to Academy: Let no one enter here untrained in mathematics

• Not a matter of being able to calculate; a fundamentally philosophical issue

•

A yet closer look at the Socratic method:Learning through what we already know

• Heidegger (1967, p. 76):

• “The mathematical, in the original sense of learning what one already knows, is

the fundamental presupposition of 'academic' work. This saying over the

Academy thus contains nothing more than a hard condition and a clear

circumscription of work. Both have had the consequence that we today, after two

thousand years, are still not through with this academic work and never will be

so long as we take ourselves seriously."

Gadamer 1980: Principle of invariance

• p. 110:

• "...Eudemos singles out Plato's contribution to the history of mathematics, namely, to have distinguished between name and concept (Simplicius, Physics 98)."

• p. 101:

• "Geometry requires figures which we draw, but its object is the circle itself.... Even he who has not yet seen all the metaphysical implications of the concept of pure thinking but only grasps something of mathematics--and as we know, Plato assumed that such was the case with his listeners--even he knows that in a manner of speaking one looks right through the drawn circle and keeps the pure thought of the circle in mind."

• Geometrical figures "school one's vision for that which is thought purely."

Restating Gadamer: invariance

Communication requires words that we say or write, but its object is the idea itself.

In a manner of speaking one looks right through the words and keeps the pure thought of the idea in mind.

Gadamer 1980: Principle of invariance

• p. 150 (bold emphases added):• "Characteristic of a proportion is that its mathematical value is independent of the

given factors in it, provided that they keep the same proportion to one another. The same relation can exist even when the numbers in it are changed. The universality of the relationship as such transcends its components.“

• p. 149:• "There is an overall structural parallel between number and logos."

• "The real problem in the logos lies in its being the unity of an opinion composed of factors or items which are distinct from the opinion itself.“

• In measurement terms: answers to different questions can exhibit proportionate relationships even when the numeric scores are different, and estimates should not depend on which items are involved.

Gadamer 1980: Independence of proof from figures, concept from names, meaning from representations

• p. 35 (original emphasis):

• “Therein lies the limitation of the Pythagorean explanation of number

and world: Pythagoreans take numbers and numerical relationships for

existence itself and are unable to think of the noetic order of existence by

itself.”

Where the problem came to a head for the Pythagoreans: The irrational

• Not being able to distinguish name from concept, and not knowing how to tell the geometric figure from the mathematical relationship, became a catastrophic problem for the Pythagoreans in the context of the irrational square root of 2 in the hypotenuse of a right isosceles triangle.

Where the problem came to a head for the Pythagoreans

• A2 + B2 = C2

• 32 + 42 = 52, or 9 + 16 = 25.

• But when sides A and B both have a length of 1, then 12 + 12 = √22.

• The irrationality of the square root of 2 contradicts the Pythagorean precept that the world is number, since this number cannot be written and a line precisely that length cannot be drawn.

• This then is something in the real world that cannot be known in rational terms.

Square root of 2 to 65 decimal places: 1.41421356237309504880168872420969807856967187537694807317667973799...

A geometric embodiment of pragmatic idealism:A meaningful, standardized representation of an unattainable abstraction a2 + b2 = c2

12 + 12 = √22

1 + 1 = 2

The practical value of distinguishing name from concept

Gadamer on pragmatic idealism as the systematic problem of philosophy

• “The systematic problem of philosophy itself: that the part of lived reality that can enter into the concept is always a flattened version—like every projection of a living bodily existence onto a surface. The gain in unambiguous comprehensibility and repeatable certainty is matched by a loss in stimulating multiplicity of meaning" (Gadamer 1991: 7).

• “All interpretation makes its object univocal and, by providing access to it, necessarily also obstructs access to it" (Gadamer 1991: 8).

Pragmatic idealism in everyday language: the semiotic triangle

‘Chair’ has a relatively invariant meaning across things and across spoken or written instances of the word, as an expression of the idea of a place to sit.

Unrealistic Ideal

Arbitrary Standard Word

Concrete Thing

chair

椅子la silla

крісло

كرسي

Relatively, because formal concepts are never fully realized in abstract references to any concrete thing. The lived reality is always “flattened” relative to the ideal.

Semiotic models cannot be disproved

• Accordingly, as Gadamer (1980: 33-34; 1986: 101-102) says, the hypothesis of an ideal model is not tested or validated against experience; instead empirical consequences are tested against the hypothesis.• “…that which constitutes being a horse could never be proved or disproved by a

particular horse.” • “…the test which is to be applied … is a test of the immanent, internal coherence

of all that is intrinsic [to the eidos, the ideal model]…”• “One should go no further until one is clear about what the assumption of the

eidos means and what it does not mean.“• “…from the start everything empirical or accidental which the eidos does not

mean and imply is to be excluded from consideration.” • “All logical confusion is a consequence of failing to distinguish and separate the

eidos from what merely participates in it."

Semiotic models cannot be disproved

• Similarly, restating Gadamer’s words in the context of probabilistic models for measurement we can say:• That which constitutes a measured construct could never be proved or disproved

by a particular item or group of items.

• Instead, the test which is to be applied is a test of the immanent, internal coherence of all that is intrinsic to the model.

• One should go no further in trying to measure until one is clear about the form of the model, what it means, and what it does not mean.

• From the start everything empirical or accidental which the model does not mean and imply is to be excluded from consideration.

• All logical confusion in measurement is a consequence of failing to distinguish and separate the model from what merely participates in it.

Everyday language semiotics extended in science

• Galison 1997, p. 49:

• "It seems to be a part of our general linguistic ability to set broader meanings aside while regularizing different lexical, syntactic, and phonological elements to serve a local communicative function. So too does it seem in the assembly of meanings, practices, and theories within physics."

• Galison, P. (1997). Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Boundary objects: Simultaneously concrete and abstract, semiotically

• "Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites.”

• “They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual site use.”

• “These objects may be abstract or concrete.“

• “They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation.“

• “The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds.“

• Star and Griesemer (1989, p. 392)

Coherence: Forced conformity, or an unexplored alternative?

• Moss (2004), in a chapter included in Wilson’s (2004) NSSE Yearbook, fears that coherence in educational assessment will become another instance of a “high modern” scheme that systematically homogenizes human variation into bureaucratically manageable forms.

• Moss cites Scott’s (1998) account of the history of failed government efforts at improving the human condition, but does not mention Scott’s suggestion of taking language as a model.

Multiple levels of semiotic complexity in language and information infrastructures

• Language is “a structure of meaning and continuity that is never still and ever open to the improvisations of its speakers“ (Scott, 1998).

• "The competing requirements of openness and malleability, coupled with structure and navigability, create a fascinating design challenge—even a new science“ (Star & Ruhleder, 1996).

• The design of information infrastructures providing both structure and openness "is highly challenging technically, requiring new forms of computability that are both socially situated and abstract enough to travel across time and space“ (Star & Ruhleder, 1996, p. 132).

Alliances and Translations for Coherence(Adapted from Star & Griesemer, 1989, p. 390)

Construct map and specification equation

Different Wright maps showing separate samples of students and items in same unit

Unique kidmaps

Metacommunicative(formal theory)

Metalinguistic(abstract standards)

Denotative(concrete data)

Golinski (2012, p. 35):

"Practices of translation, replication, and metrology have taken the place of the universality that used to be assumed as an attribute of singular science."

Bottom up arcs of dialectic spiral or hermeneutic circle

Top down arcs of dialectic spiral or hermeneutic circle

Questions are asked, tests or surveys are administered.

An intention to measure is conceived. An initial theory is formed about what variation in a coherent construct looks like. The construct is mapped.

Questions are formed, tasks representing the construct are logically organized, items are written.

Answers are given, responses are scored.

Data are analyzed, model hypotheses are experimentally tested, an instrument may be provisionally calibrated.

Empirical estimates are compared with theoretical expectations.

The theory and construct map are revised as needed.

Items are revised and new ones written as needed.

1

2

34

8

76

5

Methodical Activity of the Thing Itself Experienced in Thought

9Instrument is calibrated.

Model informs theory, standards, & data, remaining on trial while in use.

Being and thinking coordinated in praxis.

10

11

Bottom up arcs of dialectic spiral or hermeneutic circle

Top down arcs of dialectic spiral or hermeneutic circle

Situating Boundary Objects in a Developmental Context(Commons 2008, etc.; Fischer 1980, etc.)

Cross-Paradigmatic / Principle Systems

Paradigmatic / Principle Mappings

Metasystematic / Single Principles {Systematic / Abstract Systems

Formal / Abstract Mappings {Abstract / Single AbstractionsConcrete / Representational Systems

Continuum of Field-Organizing ActivitiesWoolley & Fuchs (2011, p. 1361)

Unity Through Disunity

Galison, P. (1997). Image and logic: A material culture of microphysics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Galison, P., & Stump, D. J. (1996). The disunity of science: Boundaries, contexts, and power. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.

Noise-induced order and transitions

• Stochastic resonance, far from equilibrium systems

• Nonequilibrium thermodynamics, chaos and complex adaptive systems

• For instance, see conceptual connections to:• Boettiger, C. (2018). From noise to knowledge: How randomness generates

novel phenomena and reveals information. Ecology Letters, 21(8), 1255-1267.

• Jhawar, J., & Guttal, V. (2020). Noise-induced effects in collective dynamics... Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1807)

Outline





Continuing on from here with more to work from in Gadamer• “Beauty, symmetry or measuredness, and truth (aletheia) are named as the

three structural components of the good, which appears as the beautiful.”

• “Plato defines the beautiful in terms of measure, appropriateness, and right proportions; and Aristotle states that the elements (eide) of the beautiful are order (taxis), right proportions (summetria), and definition (horismenon), and he finds these paradigmatically exemplified in mathematics.”

• “Harmonious proportion, symmetry, is the decisive condition of all beauty.”

• “"...beauty has the most important ontological function: that of mediating between idea and appearance. This is the metaphysical crux of Platonism.”

• “The ontological features of measure, beauty, and truth, which are collected together in a unitary way as the structural moments of the good, are also supposed to provide the basis for the properly human good...”

Reading growth curves for 15 cohorts of NorthCarolina students,1995-2014.

Each cohort is comprised of onegroup of thesame students.

N = 1,012,118

Figure 4 in Williamson (2018)

Unique pillars joined in common cause

Unique individual student understood in metrological context

Continuing on from here with more to work from in Gadamer• “"When we understand a text, what is meaningful in it captivates us

just as the beautiful captivates us.”

• “The path of love that Diotima teaches leads beyond beautiful bodies to beautiful souls, and from there to beautiful institutions, customs, and laws, and finally to the sciences (e.g., to the beautiful relations of numbers found in mathematics), to this 'wide ocean of beautiful utterance'--and leads beyond all that."

Thank you

William P. Fisher, Jr.

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Documents

Gadamer on Truth and Method: Implications for Measurement