Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Einsicht (inneres psychologisches Geschehen); was ist x?; heuristische Funktion von x; weitere Fragen um x (Einheit, Mannigfaltiges, Relationen);

Kurzinhalt: The insight grasps a relation ... that define a in terms of its appropriate context of other elements. And if it is correct1 the insight can be formulated into a definition that fixes its relations to other elements such that ...

Textausschnitt: 4/3 Empirical method has a curious and backward way of moving towards the understanding of its object.1 A customary way of answering the question 'what is it?' is to say 'it is an x' when x designates the name of a class of objects, when such a class is to be distinguished from other classes in a field, and when the characteristics of that class can either be described or explained by experts in the field.2 But when there arise questions about the distinctions between the classes, or about the obscurities of the central insights that define the procedures for classification or when there are discovered objects or data that seem to fit into none of the classes then the question 'what is it?' takes on a new meaning. The answer cannot be found by appealing to stock names, distinctions, insights and verification procedures, for there continue to arise questions that just cannot be answered intelligently in terms of the stock conceptual tools. It is in this case that empirical method implements its curious and backward way of investigating its object. (62; Fs)

5/3 The investigator can name the object. But initially the name has no meaning, no familiarity, no intelligibility. The function of the name is heuristic. The name does not serve to classify the object but only to point to it as an object that can be experienced in some way or another but remains to be understood. 'Let the object be named a,' where a can be any set of marks, squiggles, letters, or characters as long as it is not presupposed that we know what a 'means.' The next step is a little more complicated. The investigator must turn his or her attention to the empirical occurrences of a and to whatever experiential evidence can be gathered about a that will give clues to the appropriate context or perspective in which a is to be understood. Is a an operation or the result of an operation? Is it a unity or a manifold? Does it have a structure? Where does it begin and where does it end? Can first hand sensory operations yield the necessary data or will microscopes, computers, or chemical test equipment be necessary? Is a to be understood in relation to b or in relation to c? Will we need interviews, questionnaires, frequency tables, statistical testing? By shifting contexts and perspectives, trying to bring one or another set of questions to bear on a, listing the data, juggling it around, rejecting one perspective in favour of another, performing endless operations in controlled settings to test possible sets of questions and answers, the investigator moves more or less slowly towards a discovery.3 (62f; Fs)

6/3 That discovery, when and if it occurs, is an insight, an 'internal' psychological event in which something new becomes psychologically present to a human person. It is a personal event which only occurs to one who has travelled the road of questions, operations and rejected answers. Its initial occurrence substantially reduces the obstacles to its successive occurrence in other persons. For, once the appropriate road of questions, procedures and answers has been charted the endless manifold of blind alleys can be avoided. But still the insight occurs only to one who treads the charted path. (63; Fs)

7/3 The insight grasps a relation or set of relations that define a in terms of its appropriate context of other elements. And if it is correct4 the insight can be formulated into a definition that fixes its relations to other elements such that progressive steps in the manipulation of that definition and the drawing of corollaries brings more of the relevant experiential data to bear on a. Thus gradually a becomes less obscure and more intelligible and meaningful. And this meaning, while certainly born of old elements and data is nonetheless a new meaning.5 Everyone has experienced some of these stages in the 'logic of discovery'6 (or the learning process). And so many of us can recall moments when we have been startled to find that something quite familiar was in fact quite obscure and unintelligible.7 The once-familiar object or event is given an ill-fitting or singularly inappropriate name. And then it is manipulated and juxtaposed with other objects of experience which seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with it. But by such manipulations and juxtapositions the object or event comes to be 'seen' in a strangely new context of relations and other terms. By asking and answering appropriate questions we acquire the relevant set of insights that serve to reorient habitually our attitude towards the object. And when these insights are correct8 the daily operations of implementing the understanding continue to yield data which are explained by and which serve to verify and re-verify the insights. (63; Fs)

8/3 Following the approach of Lonergan, McShane's procedure in Randomness is to apply this empirical method, this set of stages in the 'logic of discovery,' reflexively, to the personal, 'internal' discovery process itself as it occurs in the application of statistical techniques in empirical science. Thus while his data base is to be found in references to experiments in the natural sciences and in other philosophers' attempts to understand statistical knowing, the data themselves are psychological events which occur when human persons travel the charted (or uncharted) path described briefly above. The experiments are thus public in the sense that we all have experiences of acts of knowing. But they are private in the sense that my attention to your acts of knowing will most often fail to bear fruit. (63f; Fs)