Episode 3, edited for a few very minor typos.  [I'm sure there are others. Eventually, I'll put everything together into a "Complete Season 3" PDF.  That will be the official version. So please feel free to suggest additions, corrections, etc., to these drafts]


Stephen Pepper’s World Hypotheses: Season 1, Episode 3

 

Narrator: “Previously on World Hypotheses:” 

So we are finally ready to dive into our first world hypothesis.  Let's start with formism.  Pepper distinguishes two variations: immanent and transcendent.   


Immanent Formism

It is possible to make a modest shift in our root metaphor and open up new conceptual possibilities.  For example, of speaking of crude "similarity", we might think instead of “the work of an artisan in making different objects on the same plan or for the same reason” (e.g., “a carpenter making beds”; p. 162) or  “natural objects appearing or growing according to the same plan” (e.g., “oak trees”; p. 162).  Similarity remains the animating metaphor, but these ideas allow for considerable enrichment of our world hypothesis.  Immanent formism gives way to...

Transcendent Formism
On the limits of formism

Formism, it should now be clear, is a world hypothesis with unlimited scope.  We can use it to ground a complete, and reasonably coherent, philosophy of science.   In a previous post, I suggested that the typical psychology student “assimilates a more-or-less unified account of the scientific enterprise”.   Here I can be more specific: Transcendent formism is the default metaphysics of the modal research psychologist.  I don’t mean to imply that this default metaphysics guides the thinking of the research psychologists in all contexts (e.g., I may be a transcendent formist when I teach Research Methods, but an animist when I read Heidegger).  But transcendent formism (as a metaphysics with unlimited scope) is the backdrop against which our parochial theories typically emerge.    What we end up with, of course, is a constellation of loosely-affiliated theoretical systems, each with its own constellation of discrete laws (or empirical regularities that cry out to be interpreted as laws).   


Mechanism

We will begin our discussion of mechanism with a very simple observation: The world is like a machine.  

What could be simpler than that?  And it certainly seems possible to interpret the cosmos as a giant "machine" of sorts.  But refined mechanism will enrich this metaphor to such an extent that the ultimate metaphoric machine will bear little resemblance to a spinning jenny.

Pepper distinguishes two variations of mechanism: discrete and consolidated

Discrete Mechanism

Consider a watch.  It has a collection of parts that need not be described here.  But we can say that each of the parts is externally related to the other parts.  That is, they can be considered as conceptually distinct.  This is an example of the "discreteness" of discrete mechanism.  [Another example is the thesis that "space is distinct from time"; p. 196].

Something else worth noting about the watch is that it matters where the parts are located in the machine.  If you fidget with a part -- and move it to a place it is not supposed to be -- the watch might not work any more.  This insight clears the way to consider the basic categories of mechanism:
Consolidated mechanism
The mechnanistic theory of truth
On the limits of mechanism

So, we now have sketches of two world hypotheses: Formism & Mechanism.   Each world hypothesis employs a unique set of "fundamental categories" to make sense of the world.  This set of categories functions as a (more-or-less) consistent system, with unique approaches to the problem of refined truth.  

Coming next week: Contextualism.

 Here's my episode guide for Season 1 of Steven Pepper's World Hypotheses. 
  • Episode 1: Evidence & Corroboration [Chapters 1-4] -- January 7, 2018
  • Episode 2: Root Metaphors [Chapters 5-7] -- January 14, 2018
  • Episode 3: Formism & Mechanism [Chapters 8-9] -- January 21, 2018
  • Episode 4: Contextualism [Chapter 10] -- January 28, 2018
  • Episode 5: Organicism; Conclusions [Chapters 11-12] -- February 4, 2018]
Eventually, I'll release the complete Season #1 on PDF, with hours of special features, deleted notes, etc. 

Until next week,

~ Steve Q 

Note: Bold-faced text = emphasis added

 

 
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