Communication, Rationality, and Conceptual Changes in Scientific Theories

Abstract

This article outlines how conceptual spaces theory applies to modeling changes of scientific frameworks when these are treated as spatial structures rather than as linguistic entities. The theory is briefly introduced and five types of changes are presented. It is then contrasted with Michael Friedman's neo-Kantian account that seeks to render Kuhn's "paradigm shift" as a communicatively rational historical event of conceptual development in the sciences. Like Friedman, we refer to the transition from Newtonian to relativistic mechanics as an example of "deep conceptual change." But we take the communicative rationality of radical conceptual change to be available prior to the philosophical meta-paradigms that Friedman deems indispensable for this purpose.

Similarity as distance: Three models for scientific conceptual knowledge

“…Secondly, in developing a consensus on the super iority of Gadow's taxonomy over Sundevall's, the scientific community of orni tho logist could chose in an instrumentally rational way -or so the recon structive method supports -be cause both Gadov and Sundevall used spatial features (body parts). Hence, contrary to the in com parability-interpretation of "in com men sur able" -being one the mature Kuhn had come to reject (Chen, 1997;Kuhn, 1983;Hoyningen-Huene, 1993;Zenker, Gärdenfors, 2015) -criteria could have been ra tio nal ly compared. Therefore, "the preference for spatial features in attribute selection could have functioned as a cognitive platform for the rational comparison of the Sundevall and the Gadow systems […]" (Chen, 2002: 18).…”

“…Consequently, the continuity of mathematical structure that is reconstructively achieved in limiting case reduction (see Batterman, 2003) -an achievement that, following Worrall (1989), structural realists tend to cite as strong evidence in disfavor of incommensurability claims -need not exclusively be treated as a matter of scientific laws or axioms, either. Instead, if empirical theories are primarily characterized through the scale-type of the dimensions -or, more contemporaneously, the admissible transformation of a scale (see Diez, 1997b) -and their mode of combinations (integral vs. separable), then "continuity in scientific change" denotes the continuous generation of a predecessor into a successor space (see Gärdenfors, Zenker, 2013;Zenker, Gärdenfors, 2015). Fig.…”

“…The weight dimension4 Some mathematical relational structures have been claimed as being constitutive of empirical relational structures, and so count as methodologically a priori (see, e.g.,Friedman 2001). This Neo-Kantian aspect is addressed inZenker and Gärdenfors (2015).…”

Applications of Conceptual Spaces

“…For example, the representation of Newton's distinction between mass and weight is not given by the senses but has to be learned by adopting the conceptual space of Newtonian mechanics. Zenker and Gärdenfors (2015), in this volume, distinguish between integral and separable quality dimensions: "Dimensions are said to be integral if, to describe an object fully, one cannot assign it a value on one dimension without giving a value on the other. For example, an object cannot be given a hue without giving it a brightness value.…”

Explicating ‘Explication’ via Conceptual Spaces

“…In philosophy, conceptual spaces have been used to account for vagueness-related phenomena for classificatory and comparative concepts and to model inductive inferences and other forms of conceptual manipulation (Douven et al 2013;Decock et al 2013;Decock and Douven 2014;Gärdenfors 2000;Sznajder 2016). In philosophy of science, conceptual spaces have been used to model various types of theorychange in physics as transformation of the related conceptual space(s) (Gärdenfors and Zenker 2011Zenker , 2013Zenker and Gärdenfors 2015a;Masterton et al 2017).…”