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Constructions and Inferred Entities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Lewis White Beck
Lewis White Beck*
Affiliation:
The University of Rochester
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Extract

1. Terminological Considerations. Since Russell enunciated the principle, “Wherever possible logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities,” or “Wherever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities,” the terminological situation has become confused. Russell defined neither “construction” nor “inferred entity.” “Construct” soon came to be used for “construction,” perhaps to avoid the ambiguity whereby the latter term was used to refer to both a process and a result. But many writers now use “construction” or “construct” to refer to what Russell called the “inferred entity.” This seems to be the usage of Margenau, Ramsperger, Benjamin, Bures, and many others. Again, some of the same writers in other places (e.g., Benjamin) remain closer to Russell's usage. And I find it difficult to determine exactly the relation of the usage of some writers to that of Russell because of the differences between their contexts and Russell's. I experience this difficulty in reading, for instance, both Miss Stebbing and Werkmeister. The terminological difficulties have been evaded by some other writers who have formulated new terms to refer to Russell's inferred entities. Thus Northrop speaks of the “theoretic component” and Miller has coined the word, “interphenomena.” The terms reflecting Russell's rule in psychology have become so confused that a set of explicit definitions has recently been proposed.

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Type
Research Article
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 1950, pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1950

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References

1 “The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics,” in Mysticism and Logic, (New York, 1918), p. 155; “Logical Atomism,” in Contemporary British Philosophy (London, 1924), I, p. 363.

2 An explicit definition of logical construction is given by Ernest Nagel, “Russell's Philosophy of Science,” in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Library of Living Philosophers, V, 319–49), p. 324.

3 H. Margenau, “Metaphysical Elements in Physics,” Reviews of Modern Physics, XIII (1941), 176–89; “Phenomenology and Physics,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, V (1944), 269–80.

4 A. G. Ramsperger, Philosophies of Science (New York, 1942), p. 128.

5 A. C. Benjamin, “Science and Vagueness,” Philosophy of Science, VI (1939), 422–31.

6 C. E. Bures, “Operationism, Construction, and Inference,” Journal of Philosophy, XXXVII (1940), 393–401.

7 “On the Formation of Constructions,” The Monist, XXXVIII (1928), 402–12.

8 L. S. Stebbing, “Constructions,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1933–34, 1–30. Miss Stebbing compares the usage of Russell, Stace, Eddington, Price, and Carnap. She speaks of “unificatory” and “existential” constructions, but holds that the latter have only “constructive existence.” Elsewhere, (“Logical Constructions and Knowledge through Description,” Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Philosophy, 1930, 117–22), she objects to the alleged exhaustiveness of the disjunction between inferred entities and constructions. For her a pen is a construction in the sense that it cannot be referred to by a demonstrative symbol (i.e., it is not an object of knowledge by acquaintance), but this does not imply to her that it is a construction in Russell's sense (which to her is equivalent to fiction) or an inferred entity.

9 W. H. Werkmeister, The Basis and Structure of Knowledge (New York, 1948), p. 105. My difficulty in interpreting Werkmeister is due to no indefiniteness on his part, but to the difficulty in translating from a Kantian to a Russellian language.

10 F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West (New York, 1946), ch. viii.

11 D. L. Miller, “Metaphysics in Physics,” Philosophy of Science, XIII (1946), 281–6; “Explanation vs. Description,” Philosophical Review, LVI (1947), 301–12.

12 Cf. Kenneth MacCorquodale and P. E.Meehl, “On a Distinction between Hypothetical Constructs and Intervening Variables,” Psychological Review, LV (1948), 95–107.

13 Mysticism and Logic, p. 169.

14 “Russell's Theory of Language,” in The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, pp. 229–55, at p. 246.

15 Our Knowledge of the External World (Chicago, 1914), p. 105.

16 Cf. A. Lowinger, The Methodology of Pierre Duhem (New York, 1941). Duhem is inconsistent on the role of prediction and the service rendered by inferred entities, as Lowinger points out (pp. 41, 44 and n., 53n., 69). For “legerdemn” Duhem offers intuition and “good sense.” A sounder view, in my opinion, is provided by Lowinger in his criticisms; cf. ch. x.

17 John Laird, “The Law of Parsimony,” The Monist, XXIX (1919), 321–44.

18 A. E. Heath, Ibid., XXX (1920), 309. I have dealt with this and other meanings of “simplicity” in “The Principle of Parsimony in Empirical Science,” Journal of Philosophy, XL (1943), 617–33.

19 A. D. Ritchie, Scientific Method (London, 1923), p. 166.

20 “Science and Vagueness,” 426, 428.

21 H. A. Larrabee, Reliable Knowledge (Boston, 1945), p. 291.

22 F. S. C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities (New York, 1947), p. 117 etc.; and loc. cit.

23 “Potentiality, Property, and Accident,” Philosophical Review, LVI (1947), 613–30.

24 Cf. Agnes Arber, “Analogy in the History of Science,” in Studies and Essays in the History of Science and Learning offered in Homage to George Sarton (New York, 1944), pp. 219–35; W. Rosenblueth and N. Wiener, “The Role of Models in Science,” Philosophy of Science, XII (1945), 316–22.

25 Russell follows this principle in choosing among possible inferred entities when some inference is necessary. He says, “… The inferred entities should, whenever this can be done, be similar to those whose existence is given …” (Mysticism and Logic, p. 157). Thus he is led to posit sensibilia and the minds of other persons as inferred entities instead of matter. A similar argument for his spiritualism is used by Berkeley.

26 The three following paragraphs are a summary of my paper, “The Distinctive Traits of an Empirical Method,” Journal of Philosophy, XLIV (1947), 337–44.

27 In symptomizing momentum, we have indeed used the concept of mass, but we did not symptomize it through any observed variable which would distinguish between the mass-component and the velocity-component; and as the work was done without varying the mass of the gas used, the only effect of mass would be on the proportionality constant that would appear in the final equations.