I feel like you’re taking my attempts to explain my position and requiring that each one be a rigorous defense.
If someone has made a position clear, they need to move onto defending it at some stage, or else it’s all just opinion.
You clearly think that some concepts lack objectivity .. that’s been explained a great length with equations and diagrams...and you think that the very existence of scientific objectivity is in danger. But between these two claims there are any number of intermediate steps that have not been explained or defended.
Much of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is a mistake
I don’t see why. It’s not a mistake to use special purpose or value laden concepts appropriately. So how can it be usually be a mistake to use them? Are you saying that they are usually used inappropriately?
Most of the time, using “unscientific concepts” is useful only for manipulative purposes. My argument here is based on the idea that agents with shared goals will communicate in a way which shares as much information as possible (in the bits communicated—IE, modulo communication costs, redundancy built into the language to ensure communication over noisy channels, etc).
No. If they have shared goals, they will already have a lot of shared information ( ie. small inferential distance) and they will already use a special purpose jargon.
Special interest groups always have special language. Objective, scientific language is what scientists use, and not that many people are scientists, so it is not the default.
In any case, how is that evidence of manipulation?
but I presume that you would be less happy to argue in favor of unscientific concepts if you conceded that they were almost always manipulative.
I don’t concede that they are always manipulative, in an objectionable sense. We are at the stage where you need to clarify that.
Your response to this was to call my argument a “very special case”. I do not concede this; I think it is a very general case. (I do not currently understand why you called it a very special case).
How common is manipulation? If you set the bar on what constitutes manipulation very low, then it is very common, even including this discussion. But if it is very common, how can it be very bad? If you think that all gerrymandered concepts are “manipulative” in the sense of micro manipulations, where’s the problem?
I think this a central weakness of your case: you need to choose one of “manipulation common”, and “manipulation bad”.
Very nearly all of the time, it makes sense to separate out pure epistemic quality and consider it as a coherent goal, talk about how to achieve it, etc.
Why? And for whom?
Some of the time, it makes sense to have a social norm against appeals to consequences (as an argument for changing epistemic stances), in order to safeguard ‘scientific’ thought-processes against distortion
Well, if it’s only some of the time, you can achieve that by saying that scientists are special people who do have an obligation to be as objective as possible , but no obligation to be consequentialist. But that’s not novel.
As for #2, I think some of this is covered by #1. Everything else, I claim is manipulative, like EG promising a good afterlife if you help build a pyramid in the middle of the desert
That seems like a weakman to me. What about cases where coordination is of benefit to the people doing the coordinating...like obeying traffic laws? A speed limit is a gerrymandered concept.
If someone has made a position clear, they need to move onto defending it at some stage, or else it’s all just opinion.
You clearly think that some concepts lack objectivity .. that’s been explained a great length with equations and diagrams...and you think that the very existence of scientific objectivity is in danger. But between these two claims there are any number of intermediate steps that have not been explained or defended.
I don’t see why. It’s not a mistake to use special purpose or value laden concepts appropriately. So how can it be usually be a mistake to use them? Are you saying that they are usually used inappropriately?
No. If they have shared goals, they will already have a lot of shared information ( ie. small inferential distance) and they will already use a special purpose jargon. Special interest groups always have special language. Objective, scientific language is what scientists use, and not that many people are scientists, so it is not the default.
In any case, how is that evidence of manipulation?
I don’t concede that they are always manipulative, in an objectionable sense. We are at the stage where you need to clarify that.
How common is manipulation? If you set the bar on what constitutes manipulation very low, then it is very common, even including this discussion. But if it is very common, how can it be very bad? If you think that all gerrymandered concepts are “manipulative” in the sense of micro manipulations, where’s the problem?
I think this a central weakness of your case: you need to choose one of “manipulation common”, and “manipulation bad”.
Why? And for whom?
Well, if it’s only some of the time, you can achieve that by saying that scientists are special people who do have an obligation to be as objective as possible , but no obligation to be consequentialist. But that’s not novel.
That seems like a weakman to me. What about cases where coordination is of benefit to the people doing the coordinating...like obeying traffic laws? A speed limit is a gerrymandered concept.