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Sorry, but what is an "operationalizable theory of causal mechanisms" other than the ability to control causes? I guess, there is rather little hard science do

Sorry, but what is an "operationalizable theory of causal mechanisms" other than the ability to control causes? I guess, there is rather little hard science done in the world then/a lot of science is speculative in your view (maybe only most of mathematics would survive if it were a science).

mjburgess 2y ago
There's a lot of science: chemistry, physics, some biology -- etc. Mathematics isnt a science at all, since its a study of number not of cause: there is no inferential gap between measures and their causes in mathematics, because there are no measures. > operationalizable theory of causal mechanisms A theory whose terms refer, at some point, to measurable variables that can in some contexts be controlled. So, eg., you might have a theory of light which tells you necessarily how to adjust for some lighting effect in some experiment, even if you cannot control it in that experiment. The key relation that Science has is Necessity, since it is a study of cause. If your "science" has no means of obtaining necessary relata between physical objects, then it's not a science.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  So not being able to control a cause in an experiment is fine then - how is that not speculative science in that experiment if the theory isn't a theory of everything (and it still could be wrong!)?
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    I'm not trying to equate science with "perfect knowledge". I'm simply saying that if you open a physics textbook you'll find causal theories. These cannot, often, be tested in a wide variety of experimental setups. Instead they are used to design the experiments, and sometimes, post-facto, adjust the measures based on these theories. This is perfectly fine. And it does make science in some minimal literal sense "speculative". My issue is with an extreme depature from this method. Where you open a psychology textbook and there are no causal theories, no quantification of the number and nature of causes, and hence no way of designing experiments with controls, and so on. This kinds of activity may, at some great distance, resemble each other -- but one is capable of reliably producing knowldge (even if in small quantity), and the other is not. That latter mechanism produces, imv, at least as much wholesale nonesense.
    - RandomLensman 2y ago
      To get to causal theories from hypotheses needs a lot experiments that were somewhat speculative then. And, yes, there are well and poorly designed experiments (and analyses) but I don't think the speculative nature prior to having a theory is what necessarily separates them.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  > there is no inferential gap between measures and their causes in mathematics, because there are no measures That's not true. For example in researching prime numbers, mathematicians carry out simulations and produce observational results from those simulations, without having a fully-proven formal theory to support the results.

mjburgess 2y ago

There's a lot of science: chemistry, physics, some biology -- etc. Mathematics isnt a science at all, since its a study of number not of cause: there is no inferential gap between measures and their causes in mathematics, because there are no measures. > operationalizable theory of causal mechanisms A theory whose terms refer, at some point, to measurable variables that can in some contexts be controlled. So, eg., you might have a theory of light which tells you necessarily how to adjust for some lighting effect in some experiment, even if you cannot control it in that experiment. The key relation that Science has is Necessity, since it is a study of cause. If your "science" has no means of obtaining necessary relata between physical objects, then it's not a science.

RandomLensman 2y ago
So not being able to control a cause in an experiment is fine then - how is that not speculative science in that experiment if the theory isn't a theory of everything (and it still could be wrong!)?
- mjburgess 2y ago
  I'm not trying to equate science with "perfect knowledge". I'm simply saying that if you open a physics textbook you'll find causal theories. These cannot, often, be tested in a wide variety of experimental setups. Instead they are used to design the experiments, and sometimes, post-facto, adjust the measures based on these theories. This is perfectly fine. And it does make science in some minimal literal sense "speculative". My issue is with an extreme depature from this method. Where you open a psychology textbook and there are no causal theories, no quantification of the number and nature of causes, and hence no way of designing experiments with controls, and so on. This kinds of activity may, at some great distance, resemble each other -- but one is capable of reliably producing knowldge (even if in small quantity), and the other is not. That latter mechanism produces, imv, at least as much wholesale nonesense.
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    To get to causal theories from hypotheses needs a lot experiments that were somewhat speculative then. And, yes, there are well and poorly designed experiments (and analyses) but I don't think the speculative nature prior to having a theory is what necessarily separates them.
nerdponx 2y ago
> there is no inferential gap between measures and their causes in mathematics, because there are no measures That's not true. For example in researching prime numbers, mathematicians carry out simulations and produce observational results from those simulations, without having a fully-proven formal theory to support the results.