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Seeing, Talking and Behaving… Ways of Inhabiting the World: A Comment to Paul Hoyningen-Huene

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Perspectives on Kuhn

Part of the book series: The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science ((WONS,volume 84))

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Abstract

The different problems raised by the terminology “world change” in comparison with “worldview change” in Kuhn’s thesis was a tidal wave reaching the metaphysical shores, as Paul Hoyningen-Huene has addressed in his chapter “The Plausibility of Thomas Kuhn’s Metaphysics”. Here I present two concerns as we continue unpacking the topics Hoyningen-Huene has already been dealing with. First, I will address the problem of talking about the world from a non-conceptualized framework. This approach has a corresponding second level problem when talking about the scientists’ way of talking about the world. Second, we will examine a way in which world change can be conceived that leaves some features at least partially untouched. This perspective will enable us to estimate how many things have changed and see what others have not, through the lens of a mid-scale conceptualized framework. I will show that this conception is compatible with the Kuhn’s position on dealing with “worldview change” versus “world change”, and with Hoyningen-Huene’s readings on this topic.

This article has been written in the framework of the IN401620 Project, UNAM, City of Mexico.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I refer sections and not pages when referring to Hoyningen-Huene’s chapter in this same volume.

  2. 2.

    Here we use the same edition cited in Hoyningen-Huene’s chapter, namely Kuhn (1970), for the pages to be coincident.

  3. 3.

    Referring to Kuhn (1970, 114): “Aware that nothing in his environment has changed, he directs his attention increasingly not to the figure (duck or rabbit) but to the lines on the paper he is looking at.”

  4. 4.

    Kuhn (1970, 114).

  5. 5.

    Part of this discussion was my concern in Miguel (2002).

  6. 6.

    Hoyningen-Huene (Chap. 9, this volume, p. 148).

  7. 7.

    Hoyningen-Huene (Chap. 9, this volume, p. 150).

  8. 8.

    For the problem of removing information before letting enter the new one, see Alchourrón and Makinson (1982), Alchourron et al. (1985), and Gärdenfors (1988); and for a comparison of this problem with that of the theory change in a scientific community, see Miguel (2014).

  9. 9.

    As Mayoral puts it (Chap. 2, p. 15 and Chap. 5, p. 56, this volume): “[…] a quotation from Aristotle or Ptolemy without further remarks—a mere statement—may be understandable from a purely grammatical point of view, but might seem nonsense or a simply false statement for us today.”

  10. 10.

    See Miguel et al. (2003).

  11. 11.

    Mayoral (Chaps. 2 and 5, this volume, p.) refers to this level as “an extended meta-language” used by historians to do their job.

  12. 12.

    Kuhn (1970, 120).

  13. 13.

    Lavoisier (1789, 99) my emphasis.

  14. 14.

    Lavoisier (1789, 99–100).

  15. 15.

    Hoyningen-Huene (Chap. 9, this volume, p. 151).

  16. 16.

    Hoyningen-Huene (Chap. 9, this volume, p. 141).

  17. 17.

    See how Mayoral points out this problem (Chaps. 2 and 5, this volume, p. 58): “[…] if we take two identical terms that belong to two different languages, e.g., ML1 and ML2, respectively ascribed to languages L1 and L2, both being characterized by the same word (e.g., “motion”), one of them is preserved as an obsolete term within the other’s language –a sort of relic that helps to understand the past– and the other term is the natural-kind term in its own language and is thereby used when stating the laws, expressing counterfactual conditionals, and so on.”

  18. 18.

    Kuhn (1970, 198) my emphasis.

  19. 19.

    Kuhn (1970, 125–126).

  20. 20.

    Kuhn (1970, 126–127) my emphasis.

  21. 21.

    Kuhn (1970, 126–127) my emphasis.

  22. 22.

    Ibid (128).

  23. 23.

    Ibid.

  24. 24.

    Kuhn (1970, 109) my emphasis.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Something similar could be analyzed in terms of manipulation processes, but these manipulations sooner or later are treated in the terms of the paradigm, at least in the second level discourse we need to develop here.

  27. 27.

    Beginning with the change in the language, and following with the change in the lexicon, this topic was addressed many times by Kuhn (1962) and ultimately in (2017).

  28. 28.

    Kuhn (1970, 129–130) my emphasis.

  29. 29.

    Kuhn (1982, 52).

  30. 30.

    Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 159).

  31. 31.

    Kuhn (1982, 1990, 2017).

  32. 32.

    Kuhn (1970, 201).

  33. 33.

    Ibid (202). Referring to the terms that are not the ones that are “used unproblematically within each community, are nevertheless foci of trouble for inter-group discussions.”

  34. 34.

    Ibid (203).

  35. 35.

    Kuhn (2000). “Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability”, the main paper in a symposium of the Philosophy of Science Association, 1982.

  36. 36.

    Wray (2018, 213).

  37. 37.

    Wray (2018, 216).

  38. 38.

    Wray and Andersen (2019, 5–6).

  39. 39.

    In his approach to this problem Mayoral (Sect. 5.3, this volume, p. 60) says: “This idea of recognition involves previous acquaintance with a set of properties we know how to recognize and some others that we learn to recognize.” He is concerned about, following Kuhn “[…] a group of characteristics that can be observed in the object in question, which are sufficient for us to pronounce on the object at issue and its kind-membership […]”. These characteristics used to help in the kind membership of the object are properties. We agree on that, and further, we explore different characteristics other than properties that can also be present to do the job.

  40. 40.

    Duhem (1958) Chapitre 15: La thèorie des marées, Vol. IX (my translation unless mentioned otherwise).

  41. 41.

    Cartwright notes that this measurement is greater than any known tide amplitude, so he warns us about the way that information could have been taken.

  42. 42.

    Cartwright says: “All historians who touch on the subject state the truism that the peoples of the Mediterranean coasts were slow to appreciate tides on account of their weak local manifestation. Nevertheless, the Greek philosophers produced the first known written references to tides.” (2001, 108)

  43. 43.

    Ibid (113).

  44. 44.

    Duhem (1958, 8).

  45. 45.

    Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 222).

  46. 46.

    Hoyningen-Huene refers to Kuhn, T. S. (1970). Theory-change as structure-change: Comments on the Sneed formalism. Erkenntnis, 179–199. We use in this paper its reprinted Kuhn (1977).

  47. 47.

    Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 222).

  48. 48.

    Kuhn (1977, 298).

  49. 49.

    This is a very interesting issue, but to go into detail falls beyond the scope of this work. For the sake of the arguments we want to set up here, it is not relevant to accept it or to reject it.

  50. 50.

    I am grateful to Miguel Fuentes for suggesting that I treat this case as an example.

  51. 51.

    Kuhn (1990, 315).

  52. 52.

    This could also be the case for “pure plant” for some characteristic that before the revolutionary change in the theory of inheritance was identified by means of its lineage, and after, in terms of having two same alleles for that characteristic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Argentinian Society of Philosophical Analysis, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Hernán Miguel

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  1. Hernán Miguel
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Correspondence to Hernán Miguel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophical Investigations, Argentinian Society for Philosophical Analysis, National University of Tres de Febrero – CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Leandro Giri

  2. University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Pablo Melogno

  3. Argentinian Society of Philosophical Analysis, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Hernán Miguel

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Miguel, H. (2023). Seeing, Talking and Behaving… Ways of Inhabiting the World: A Comment to Paul Hoyningen-Huene. In: Giri, L., Melogno, P., Miguel, H. (eds) Perspectives on Kuhn. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 84. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16371-5_10

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