Kites, models and logic: Susan Sterrett investigates models in Wittgenstein's world

This is the text of Dr. Sterrett's replies to an interviewer's questions for simplycharly.com, a website with interviews by academics on various authors, philosophers, and scientists

How Beliefs Make A Difference (PhD dissertation)

How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how beliefs are efficacious that takes into account how beliefs are involved in the full range of behavioral disciplines, from psychophysiology and cognition to social and economic phenomena. The account of how beliefs are efficacious I propose draws on work on active accounts of perception. I develop an account based on a proposal sketched by the cognitive scientist Ulrich Neisser. Neisser sketched an active account of perception, on which dynamic anticipatory schemata direct an organism's exploration and action, and are in turn revised as a result of exploration and action. This notion of schema has roots in nineteenth century neurophysiology and in Frederick Bartlett's subsequent work on memory. Neisser appealed to it to unite what he thought was right about information-processing accounts of perception with what he thought was right about ecological accounts of perception. The point that we must anticipate in order to perceive has been recognized by philosophers in the form of the "theory-ladenness of observation." I extend the concept of anticipatory schema to include its role in social perception and social interaction; the concept of anticipatory schema provides a more interactive account of the role of expectations in the maintenance and existence of social institutions, and can be used to enrich the account of convention David Lewis provided. I also show that the concept of rational expectations, which explains the neutrality of money in terms of the efficacy of anticipatory expectations, is compatible with the proposed account of how beliefs are efficacious. I discuss how the proposal accounts for the three main modes by which beliefs can be efficacious: (i) via their role in causing intentional action, (ii) via their role in causing economic phenomena and the existence and maintenance of social institutions, and (iii) via their role in causing unintentional physiological responses, including anticipatory physiological responses that can enable perception, cause involuntary actions and give rise to the placebo effect

Kinds of Models

I survey a broad variety of models with an eye to asking what kind of model each is in the following sense: in virtue of what is each of them regarded as a model? It will be seen that when we classify models according to the answer to this question, it comes to light that the notion of model predominant in philosophy of science covers only some of the kinds of models used in scientific contexts. The notion of a model predominant in philosophy of science requires that a model be related to something formal, such as equations or statements. Not all the examples provided in the brief survey in this paper fit that notion of a model. I identify another kind of model that ought to be included in philosophical and foundational studies of scientific models, which I call a “piece of the world” kind of model, to contrast with a “realm of thought” kind of model. These models also have formal methodologies associated with them, and, hence, analytic philosophers of science can embrace them without abandoning the rigor that has characterized the discipline

Physical Pictures: Engineering Models circa 1914 and in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

In 1914, Wittgenstein recorded an incident in his Notebooks that he later mentioned to several friends as occasioning a major insight for his views in the Tractatus that propositions represent by being pictures. The entry reads: "In the proposition a world is as it were put together experimentally. (As when in the law-court in Paris a motor-car accident is represented by means of dolls, etc.)" This incident, he said, was pivotal in coming to the view in the Tractatus that propositions represent by being pictures. In his later writings as well, investigations of what it is to understand a proposition remain tied to investigations of what it is to understand a picture. Numerous scholars have looked to Hertz' Priniciples of Mechanics as the element of Wittgenstein's milieu from which he drew the notions of model and picture used in the Tractatus; that they have done so may be due to a brief parenthetical remark in a much later section of the Tractatus. However, I think that a far more relevant source of a notion of model in Wittgenstein's milieu was the engineering scale model. The methodology of scale modelling is strikingly different from analytical methods, in just those ways that are important to the notion of picturing found in the Tractatus: the primary notion is that of translatability between two physical situations, rather than between a physical situation and a mathematical or linguistic representation, or, even, between two physically similar situations whose similarity is established by showing that they are both instantiations of the same more general equation or general description. The notion fits well with the remark: "The essential nature of the propositional sign becomes very clear when we think of it as made up of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, books) instead of written signs (3.1.4.3.1)." It's also significant that the methodology of scale modelling can be used when one has no theory by which the behavior of the model can be predicted, or, even, a theory of the phenomenon being investigated. Since wind tunnels were already in use when Wittgenstein did his engineering studies, the concept of scale model would actually have been in his milieu much earlier than the pivotal 1914 notebook entry. However, the methodology of scale modelling was then more a matter of engineering practice than it was a formal methodology. At the time Wittgenstein recorded the insight about a world being "put together experimentally", the field was at a threshold. Formal foundations for the practice were just then being developed; it was in 1914 that Buckingham's proof about the minimum number of dimensionless groups needed to identify physically similar situations was presented in London. I also speculate on why the use of a scale model in the context of a courtroom, rather than a laboratory, lent significance to the incident

Frege and Hilbert on the Foundations of Geometry (1994 Talk)

I examine Frege's explanation of how Hilbert ought to have presented his proofs of the independence of the axioms of geometry: in terms of mappings between (what we would call) fully interpreted statements. This helps make sense of Frege's objections to the notion of different interpretations, which many have found puzzling. (The paper is the text of a talk presented in October 1994.

How Beliefs Make A Difference (PhD dissertation)

How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how beliefs are efficacious that takes into account how beliefs are involved in the full range of behavioral disciplines, from psychophysiology and cognition to social and economic phenomena. The account of how beliefs are efficacious I propose draws on work on active accounts of perception. I develop an account based on a proposal sketched by the cognitive scientist Ulrich Neisser. Neisser sketched an active account of perception, on which dynamic anticipatory schemata direct an organism's exploration and action, and are in turn revised as a result of exploration and action. This notion of schema has roots in nineteenth century neurophysiology and in Frederick Bartlett's subsequent work on memory. Neisser appealed to it to unite what he thought was right about information-processing accounts of perception with what he thought was right about ecological accounts of perception. The point that we must anticipate in order to perceive has been recognized by philosophers in the form of the "theory-ladenness of observation." I extend the concept of anticipatory schema to include its role in social perception and social interaction; the concept of anticipatory schema provides a more interactive account of the role of expectations in the maintenance and existence of social institutions, and can be used to enrich the account of convention David Lewis provided. I also show that the concept of rational expectations, which explains the neutrality of money in terms of the efficacy of anticipatory expectations, is compatible with the proposed account of how beliefs are efficacious. I discuss how the proposal accounts for the three main modes by which beliefs can be efficacious: (i) via their role in causing intentional action, (ii) via their role in causing economic phenomena and the existence and maintenance of social institutions, and (iii) via their role in causing unintentional physiological responses, including anticipatory physiological responses that can enable perception, cause involuntary actions and give rise to the placebo effect

How Beliefs Make A Difference (PhD dissertation) SEARCHABLE pdf

How are beliefs efficacious? One answer is: via rational intentional action. But there are other ways that beliefs are efficacious. This dissertation examines these other ways, and sketches an answer to the question of how beliefs are efficacious that takes into account how beliefs are involved in the full range of behavioral disciplines, from psychophysiology and cognition to social and economic phenomena. The account of how beliefs are efficacious I propose draws on work on active accounts of perception. I develop an account based on a proposal sketched by the cognitive scientist Ulrich Neisser. Neisser sketched an active account of perception, on which dynamic anticipatory schemata direct an organism's exploration and action, and are in turn revised as a result of exploration and action. This notion of schema has roots in nineteenth century neurophysiology and in Frederick Bartlett's subsequent work on memory. Neisser appealed to it to unite what he thought was right about information-processing accounts of perception with what he thought was right about ecological accounts of perception. The point that we must anticipate in order to perceive has been recognized by philosophers in the form of the "theory-ladenness of observation." I extend the concept of anticipatory schema to include its role in social perception and social interaction; the concept of anticipatory schema provides a more interactive account of the role of expectations in the maintenance and existence of social institutions, and can be used to enrich the account of convention David Lewis provided. I also show that the concept of rational expectations, which explains the neutrality of money in terms of the efficacy of anticipatory expectations, is compatible with the proposed account of how beliefs are efficacious. I discuss how the proposal accounts for the three main modes by which beliefs can be efficacious: (i) via their role in causing intentional action, (ii) via their role in causing economic phenomena and the existence and maintenance of social institutions, and (iii) via their role in causing unintentional physiological responses, including anticipatory physiological responses that can enable perception, cause involuntary actions and give rise to the placebo effect