Ordinary Language Inference: Preserving and Creating Truth
Because ordinary language is by construction the indispensable meta-language of every kind of a formal logical system it is clear that every kind of formal logic inference can be reproduced in ordinary language.
Thus we can easily reproduce a preserving inference in ordinary language like the following:
Example 4: It is known that all members of the country club are voting for the political party A. Then you hear, that Bill is a member of this country club. Then you — spontaneously — can infer, that Bill is voting for the political party A too.
In predicate logic you could write this as follows:
Assumption: ALL(x) IF MEMBER-OF-COUNTRY-CLUB(x) THEN IS-VOTING-FOR-POLITICAL-PARTY-A(x)
Replacing: (x/Bill)
Concrete expression: IF MEMBER-OF-COUNTRY-CLUB(Bill) THEN IS-VOTING-FOR-POLITICAL-PARTY-A(Bill)
Assumption: MEMBER-OF-COUNTRY-CLUB(Bill)
Inference: IS-VOTING-FOR-POLITICAL-PARTY-A(Bill)
Besides this truth-preserving inference we can observe in ordinary language usage different cases.
Example 5: Susan plans to go to Chicago (this is a ‘goal’). Actually she is in New York (this is a ‘given situation’). Now she thinks how to ‘realize her plan’. Either she ‘remembers’ by her memory that there are options like going by car, by train or by airplane, or she ask her colleagues in the office, what they can propose. Whatever she will do after ‘researching possibilities’ there will be some ‘outcome’: either no option or some options. Let us assume she ‘learned’, that there exists the option ‘going by train’ and by ‘personal reasons’ she decided to take this option ‘going by train’. Then we have the following kind of ordinary language inference:
Goal: I want to got to Chicago
Given: I am in New York
Learned Knowledge: You can go by train (and possibly other options)
Applying preferences: She has opted for the possibility ‘going by train’
Outcome: She goes by train from New York to Chicago.
This simple example shows interesting differences compared to the formal inferences. Usually you will not start with a given knowledge but with some ‘need to act’ (which can function as a ‘goal’). This goal will be related to the ‘given situation’ which determines conditions which have to be considered as ‘constraints’ for a possible solution. Having this — a goal and given constraints — you have to ‘explore’ what you know: either something which you can ‘remember’ or you can get by ‘communication with others’ or you have to start an ‘investigation’ of given data-bases or you have to make your own ‘experiments’. Thus the ‘given knowledge’ is a dynamic structure which has to be ‘determined on demand’.
In the case with the country club you had some knowledge ‘at hand’ and this induced some inference.
In the case with the ‘idea to go somewhere’ you had to clarify your constraints and to ‘activate’ ‘helpful knowledge’.
This ‘activation process’ can be ‘conservative’ by taking what you know already’ or it is to some degree ‘dynamic’ and ‘creative’ because you have to start a ‘process’ of ‘finding appropriate knowledge’. ‘Appropriate knowledge’ is knowledge which could be a ‘practical solution’ and which is ‘in agreement with your personal preferences’. Thus such a ‘knowledge creating process’ is a ‘process in everyday life’, which can not simply be ‘encoded’ in a formal inference only. In the full case we have a process with several participating actors (often thousands or several thousands or even more), which are communicating and thereby cooperating in complex patterns, whose ‘result’ can be some ordinary language expressions, but the ‘meaning’ of these language expressions is ‘encoded by the creating process as a whole’! Therefore the resulting expressions — as ordinary language expressions or as formal logic expressions — are rather secondary: they ‘live’ from the fact, that the acting actors are dealing dynamically with meaning structures which are ‘receiving’ ‘their life’ from this whole process.
Hidden Ontologies: Cognitively Real and Empirically Real
Instead to talk about the ‘meaning of expressions’ often the expression ‘ontologies’ is used. This language game traces back to the Greek philosophy and is vivid since then through all centuries in the world of philosophers (and today heavily borrowed by computer scientists without giving some foundation, what these ‘formal ontologies’ should be).
While the concept of ‘meaning’ is alluding to (i) those abstract (cognitive, mental, …) entities in our thinking which can be related to expressions, and (ii) mediated by this to those perceptions of object-like somethings assumed to exist in the ‘outer world’ of the brain, an ‘ontology’ assumes a ‘realm of objects’ without an existential qualification: the assumed realm of objects can be only an abstract realm (only by thinking) or an assumed ’empirical realm’ by ‘real objects’.
The philosophical discipline called ‘epistemology’ — today backed up by different empirical disciplines like e.g. experimental psychology associated with brain sciences — has clarified that so-called ’empirical reality’ is for a brain only given as an ‘abstract model triggered by different perceptional events’, where the abstract model is associated with ‘perceptional triggers’. A human actor can talk about ‘ontologies’ only in this ‘abstract mode’, which eventually has some ‘clues for perceptional triggers’ which ‘signal’ an ‘object-like something’ as a ‘possible instance’ of the used abstract structure in thinking. In this sense appears the language game of an ‘ontology’ to be an unnecessary doubling of the language game of ‘meaning’.
After all these preceding considerations we can conclude, that a logical inference is primarily a formal mechanism transforming some expressions (of a formal language) into other expressions. This mechanisms is completely independent of any kind of meaning. The so-called property of being a ‘true’ or ‘false’ expression is a purely technical device with no meaning either. You can translate this ‘abstract property of being true or false’ as a saying “It is unclear what you mean with ‘true’ or ‘false’, but if you will classify an expression in the light of your knowledge as being ‘true’ (or ‘false’), then this abstract property of ‘being true or false’ will be preserved by this inference procedure, independent of the assumed concrete meaning.”
In the light of the traffic-light example we can conclude further, that the classification of an expression as being ‘true’ or ‘false’ in an everyday context with human actors works differently. Saying “The traffic light is red” (abbreviated ‘A’) would allow the purely formal inference
(5) A ⊢X A
If ‘A’ is ‘abstract true’, then it follows, that ‘A’ is abstract true. But in the ‘real world’ of everyday life this property of being true is ‘time dependent’: at some time-interval it can be true, in another not. This results from the fact that the expression ‘The traffic light is red’ is in a human mind associated with a ‘known meaning’ and this known meaning can either actually be associated with concrete perceptions wich can be interpreted as a ‘real’ traffic light showing red or not. Because traffic lights are embedded in an observable ‘behavior’ which produces changes between ‘red’, ‘orange’, and ‘green’, the expression ‘The traffic light is red’ is ’empirically’ only true, if the traffic light behavior in that moment produces ‘red’, otherwise not.
Thus the difference between a ‘formal inference’ and an ’empirical forecast’ is rooted in the fact that human actors, which are using language expressions to communicate about possible ‘states of the world’, always are associating expressions with ‘learned meanings’ as part of their ‘inner knowledge’, and in some cases they can associate this ‘inner knowledge’ with ‘actual perceptions’ which are ‘matching’ some of this ‘inner knowledge’, which as such is always ‘abstract’. Thus if a human actor is able to use his inner abstract knowledge to ‘construct’ (= thinking) some abstract structures as possible ‘follow ups’ of assumed ‘given structures’, and this human actor translates this knowledge by meaning functions into ‘language expressions’, than this human actor can say to someone else “After showing orange the traffic light will show green”, which would represent a possible inference like
(6) ‘The traffic light is orange at time t’ ⊢X ‘The traffic light is green at time t+c’
The sign ‘c’ represents here the time constant which gives the amount of time which is needed until the change from orange to green will happen. The sign ‘X’ represents the hidden knowledge of the speaking actor which is assumed to be shared with the hearer, because they live in the same environment and both have learned this environment and have learned the same meanings in their used language. Formally this is still a ‘logical inference’, but on account of the involved ‘meaning’ it can happen, that the derived expression ‘The traffic light is green at time t+c’ can either ‘become true (if the traffic light really is changing) or it ‘become false’ if it is not changing to green. In this sense the pattern (5) is not only a ‘logical inference’ but additionally it is a ‘communicative forecast’.
These two attributes ‘logical’ and ‘communicative’ are the keys to understand, that we have here two different paradigms: the ‘logic paradigm’ is restricted to formal expressions only combined with some abstract properties’ and ‘operations’ with these expressions. In the ‘communicative paradigm’ the ‘logic paradigm’ is embedded in a bigger framework of human actors in a real environment, where the human actors have a minimal ‘inner structure’ of ‘perceiving’ the environment, of having a ‘self-learning’ inner structure for ‘knowledge’ and for ‘language’, where the language can be ‘mapped’ onto the knowledge, and a ‘behavior’ part, which can translate ‘some inner states’ into observable properties of the actor body surface, which in turn can act in some sense onto the environment.
From this follows that a ‘common science’ which shall be ‘rooted in the empirical world’ and which will include ‘all aspects’ of the empirical world (we have not to judge what is world’!) has to be formatted according to this perspective of ‘communicative forecasting’.
Using the concepts ‘logical inference’ and ‘communicative forecast’ in the sense described before one has to clarify a bit more, how such a ‘communicative forecast’ has to be understood as a real process, enabling the participants (human actors) to ‘create’ ‘forecasts’ which can become ‘true’ or not. In doing this one has to take a ‘point of view’ of looking ‘from above’ on these processes. The question is ‘which view’ and ‘how much from above’?
Because the individual scientific disciplines represent each a kind of ‘scientific niche’ by using their own language, their own methods, their own kinds of models and ‘theories’, these individual disciplines are not well equipped to talk about other disciplines or even about the whole of science. How we can free ourselves of this ‘being trapped in a special view’? [29]
As has been explained in the preceding sections of this text the only meta-language for all languages — even for itself — is the everyday language. And the only ‘common experts’ are rooted in every human, every citizen as such. A ‘specialist’ is always defined ‘relativ to something else’, here to the ‘normal human person’. Thus digging into the specialties of our common world does not eliminate this common world, it only induces a look at some point with a special view into some possible ‘hole’ of reality. But ‘many individual holes’ do not give a ‘complete picture of the common reality’: neither physics, neither biology, neither chemistry, neither whatever individual view one is taking.
Thus the need for a ‘common view’ of all specialties ’embedded’ ‘within the ‘common view’ is always alive and will never end because the whole is a something with no clear boundaries. And every human actor — with the whole biosphere — is part of the whole and in the light of the ‘built in freedom’ is a potential ‘open horizon’. The other ‘open horizon’ seems to be the ‘whole universe’ as far as we can understand it today.
Thus the only chance humanity has to get a grip on some common view is the everyday language spreading through all nations. The only known project today trying such a demanding task is the Wikipedia project. (cf. [21]) One can criticize it from many points of view, but there is nothing better at the moment. We should try to improve this every day. Every individual science as such is no alternative. The solution can only be radical ‘cooperation’ between individual scientific disciplines and the common science of the everyday world. In a ‘war’ between ‘common science’ and individual scientific disciplines we all would be losers. The ‘noise’ caused by ‘information flooding’ will overtake all. Time is running.
Keeping this in mind I will take a short ‘side trip’ to Wikipedia to inspect in a loose way some articles around the concept ’empirical theory’.
— draft version —
COMMENTS
[21] Gerd Doeben-Henisch, In Favour of Wikipedia, https://www.uffmm.org/2022/07/31/in-favour-of-wikipedia/, 31 July 2022
[29] The idea that individual disciplines are not good enough for the ‘whole of knowledge’ is expressed in a clear way in a video of the theoretical physicist and philosopher Carlo Rovell: Carlo Rovelli on physics and philosophy, June 1, 2022, Video from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Theoretical physicist, philosopher, and international bestselling author Carlo Rovelli joins Lauren and Colin for a conversation about the quest for quantum gravity, the importance of unlearning outdated ideas, and a very unique way to get out of a speeding ticket.
If one takes a side trip to different articles in the English Wikipedia then one will not find an article about ’empirical theory’ directly. Looking for the word ‘theory’ alone you can find an article talking about ‘rational thinking’ about ‘phenomena’, where the thinking can produce ‘assertions’, which can include ‘explanations’ how nature works. (cf. [3]) Further you are told that there are also ‘scientific theories’ which are based on ‘scientific methods’ fulfilling the ‘criteria of modern science’. ‘Scientific methods’ are using ‘scientific tests’. ‘Scientific theories are a form of ‘scientific knowledge’. ‘Testable empirical conjectures’ or ‘scientific laws’ are not yet ‘scientific theories’. (cf. [2]) Following the hint, that scientific methods’ are important for ‘scientific theories’, you can read some statements about a ‘scientific method’: it is an ’empirical method’ of ‘acquiring knowledge’. An ’empirical method’ uses ‘careful observations’ and creates — based on these observations — ‘hypotheses’ via ‘induction’. From these hypotheses one can draw ‘deductions’. Based on ‘experimental findings’ one can ‘refine’ or ‘eliminate’ hypotheses. These statements are called ‘principles of the scientific method’. (cf. [4c]). Additional it is explained, that the goal of an ‘experiment’ is to determine whether ‘observations’ do ‘agree’ with or ‘conflict’ with the ‘expectations’ ‘deduced’ from a ‘hypothesis’. Though the scientific method is often presented as a fixed sequence of steps, it represents rather a set of general principles.(cf. [4c]) These remarks point to the further concept of ‘science’, which is characterized as a ‘systematic enterprise’ that ‘builds’ and ‘organizes’ ‘knowledge’ in the form of ‘testable explanations’ and ‘testable predictions’ about the ‘universe’ . (cf. [2]) Contemporary scientific research is further characterized by working highly ‘collaborative’, which is usually done by ‘teams’. The practical impact of scientific work has led to the emergence of ‘science policies’ that seek to influence the scientific enterprise. (cf. [2])
What can we do with these ‘fragments’ of a large discourse around ‘science’, ‘theory’, and ‘knowledge’?
In the following figure I have arranged the detected words in some ‘order’ which seems to me to make ‘some sense’. But clearly, because we have at every moment nowhere an ‘overall ordering’ accepted by ‘all’, every individual ordering will suffer a final argument. We can ‘try’ to find some ‘hidden structures’ in the realm of ‘phenomena’, but whether these ‘suggested orderings’ are really helpful this can only show the ongoing process of life itself framed by our different views.
Figure: Hypothetical graphical interpretation of some Wikipedia articles associated with the concepts ‘science’ and ‘theory’
Here some aspects of my findings looking into the cited Wikipedia articles.
Following some links starting with the question for ’empirical theory’ I could find several articles associated with ‘theory’ in some sense.
Within every article it was not quite clear what really is the reining perspective of an article. If one assumes — as I do — that a Wikipedia article is not reproducing an individual scientific discipline as such but some ‘common view’ and thereby is representing a ‘meta level view’, it is difficult to define the ‘method of a meta level view’. Where should it come from? Nowhere we have today an official discipline for ‘meta level views’ (historically this should be philosophy, but philosophy today is far away from doing this job sufficiently well).
On the other side: there exists a common view ‘by fact’ because all human actors together represent ‘implicitly’ a common view before and above every special knowledge by their pure existence. Taking the everyday language communication seriously there exists everyday an ongoing ‘common talk’ of ‘common experts’ about everything which happens as ‘everyday experience’.
But not every talk represents knowledge which can be shared and thereby (i) enabling cooperation and (ii) enabling decidable forecasts. This is the minimum we need and it is the maximum we can get.
Wikipedia today is somehow in the ‘direction’ by enabling a little bit cooperation, but it clearly not yet enables forecasts.
Focusing on the subject of an ’empirical theory’ I arranged the different citations of the Wikipedia articles around the main concept of ‘science’. This concept is associate with many additional concepts which — if arranged — are pointing slightly to different ‘views’ which I loosely classified as ‘history’, ‘society’, and ‘philosophy/ philosophy of science’. If one would set ‘philosophy’ as the main view then ‘sociology’ and ‘history’ are contributing special views as part of the ‘meta level view’. One can ask, whether there are other views available, which also have some importance.
Within that what I identified as the ‘philosophical view’ one is associating ‘science’ with special kinds of ‘methods’, which allow ‘observations’ which in one direction can enable ‘hypotheses’ about the ‘phenomena’ in ‘observations’, and in another direction allow ‘deductions’ from these hypotheses, which then can be ‘tested’ with the aid of ‘experiments’. The ‘findings’ of an experiment can ‘confirm’ or ‘weaken’ a hypothesis. Because the hypotheses have the format of ‘language expressions’, which can be used as ‘assertions’, they can be understood by the experimenters as ‘explanations’ which can further be understood as ‘knowledge in a scientific format’.
In the whole of these citations it is not really clear what is in fact a ‘theory’. The word ‘theory’ is used in these articles but there exists nevertheless no real definition. To speak about ‘scientific’ theories instead of the word ‘theory’ alone points to the explanations about ‘scientific methods’ which are explained by the ’empirical method’. But it stays open what then a ‘theory is’.
From the point of view of philosophy (and by inspecting some more references) there are two approaches for a characterization of a ‘theory’:
THEORY CONCEPT I: Looking primarily to the used language expressions only then a theory needs (i) those expressions which represent the hypotheses; (ii) a logical inference concept enabling inferences (deductions); (iii) the inferred inferences as candidates for forecasts; (iv) an experimental procedure to test whether one can find measurements which ‘confirm’ or ‘weaken’ a forecast.
THEORY CONCEPT II: Looking in a wider context to the ‘theory producers’, their ‘environment’, and then to the ‘procedure’, how the theory producers really ‘built’ a ‘theory concept I’.
Usually ‘theory concept I’ is applied, not ‘theory concept II’. But at that moment where one starts to analyze science and theories from a real meta level point of view one needs ‘theory concept II’. All known problems about theories and theory production can be discussed within ‘theory concept II’, but not with ‘theory concept I’.
Although the word ’empirical theory’ is not found — yet — in Wikipedia articles, it makes sense to use this concept, because we have ‘theories’ also in logic and mathematics, but without a relationship to some empirical reality. Thus the expression ’empirical theory’ states from the ‘first outlook’ that it is a theory with a relationship to empirical reality.
As one can see by reading this text as a whole I am using one more attribute named ‘sustainable’. Thus a ‘sustainable empirical theory’ (SET) is an empirical theory which fulfills even more requirements which then directly leads to the concept of a ‘common theory’.
—- draft version —
COMMENTS
[2] Science, see e.g. wkp-en: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
Citation = “In modern science, the term “theory” refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with the scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that scientific tests should be able to provide empirical support for it, or empirical contradiction (“falsify“) of it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge,[1] in contrast to more common uses of the word “theory” that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which in formal terms is better characterized by the word hypothesis).[2] Scientific theories are distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testableconjectures, and from scientific laws, which are descriptive accounts of the way nature behaves under certain conditions.”
[2b] History of science in wkp-en: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science#Scientific_Revolution_and_birth_of_New_Science
[3] Theory, see wkp-en: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory#:~:text=A%20theory%20is%20a%20rational,or%20no%20discipline%20at%20all.
Citation = “A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be scientific, belong to a non-scientific discipline, or no discipline at all. Depending on the context, a theory’s assertions might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek, but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings.”
Citation = “In modern science, the term “theory” refers to scientific theories, a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature, made in a way consistent with the scientific method, and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science. Such theories are described in such a way that scientific tests should be able to provide empirical support for it, or empirical contradiction (“falsify“) of it. Scientific theories are the most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge,[1] in contrast to more common uses of the word “theory” that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which in formal terms is better characterized by the word hypothesis).[2] Scientific theories are distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testableconjectures, and from scientific laws, which are descriptive accounts of the way nature behaves under certain conditions.”
[4b] Empiricism in wkp-en: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
[4c] Scientific method in wkp-en: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
Citation =”The scientific method is an empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries). It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation. It involves formulating hypotheses, via induction, based on such observations; experimental and measurement-based statistical testing of deductions drawn from the hypotheses; and refinement (or elimination) of the hypotheses based on the experimental findings. These are principles of the scientific method, as distinguished from a definitive series of steps applicable to all scientific enterprises.[1][2][3] [4c]
and
Citation = “The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations[A][a][b] agree with or conflict with the expectations deduced from a hypothesis.[6]: Book I, [6.54] pp.372, 408 [b] Experiments can take place anywhere from a garage to a remote mountaintop to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. There are difficulties in a formulaic statement of method, however. Though the scientific method is often presented as a fixed sequence of steps, it represents rather a set of general principles.[7] Not all steps take place in every scientific inquiry (nor to the same degree), and they are not always in the same order.[8][9]”
A view pointing to ‘science’ and ‘engineering’ in parallel embedded in a human ‘society’, which in turn is part of the ‘biosphere’ hosted on the ‘planet earth’.
Has to be written yet …
Integrating Engineering and the Human Factor (info@uffmm.org) eJournal uffmm.org ISSN 2567-6458
