I think constructing a good theoretical framework is very hard, so people often do other things instead, and I think you’re using the word “legible” to point to some of those other things.
I’m emphasizing that those other things are less than completely useless as semi-processed ingredients that can go into the activity of “constructing a good theoretical framework”
You’re emphasizing that those other things are not themselves the activity of “constructing a good theoretical framework”, and thus can distract from that activity, or give people a false sense of how much progress they’re making.
I think those are both true.
The pre-Darwin ecologists were not constructing a good theoretical framework. But they still made Darwin’s job easier, by extracting slightly-deeper patterns for him to explain with his much-deeper theory—concepts like “species” and “tree of life” and “life cycles” and “reproduction” etc. Those concepts were generally described by the wrong underlying gears before Darwin, but they were still contributions, in the sense that they compressed a lot of surface-level observations (Bird A is mating with Bird B, and then Bird B lays eggs, etc.) into a smaller number of things-to-be-explained. I think Darwin would have had a much tougher time if he was starting without the concepts of “finch”, “species”, “parents”, and so on.
By the same token, if we’re gonna use language as a datapoint for building a good underlying theoretical framework for the deep structure of knowledge and ideas, it’s hard to do that if we start from slightly-deep linguistic patterns (e.g. “morphosyntax”, “sister schemas”)… But it’s very much harder still to do that if we start with a mass of unstructured surface-level observations, like particular utterances.
I guess your perspective (based on here) is that, for the kinds of things you’re thinking about, people have not been successful even at the easy task of compressing a lot of surface-level observations into a smaller number of slightly-deeper patterns, let alone successful at the the much harder task of coming up with a theoretical framework that can deeply explain those slightly-deeper patterns? And thus you want to wholesale jettison all the previous theorizing? On priors, I think that would be kinda odd. But maybe I’m overstating your radicalism. :)
I mean the main thing I’d say here is that we just are going way too slowly / are not close enough. I’m not sure what counts as “jettisoning”; no reason to totally ignore anything, but in terms of reallocating effort, I guess what I advocate for looks like jettisoning everything. If you go from 0% or 2% of your efforts put toward questioning basic assumptions and theorizing based on introspective inspection and manipulation of thinking, to 50% or 80%, then in some sense you’ve jettisoned everything? Or half-jettisoned it?
I don’t think we disagree much if at all.
I think constructing a good theoretical framework is very hard, so people often do other things instead, and I think you’re using the word “legible” to point to some of those other things.
I’m emphasizing that those other things are less than completely useless as semi-processed ingredients that can go into the activity of “constructing a good theoretical framework”
You’re emphasizing that those other things are not themselves the activity of “constructing a good theoretical framework”, and thus can distract from that activity, or give people a false sense of how much progress they’re making.
I think those are both true.
The pre-Darwin ecologists were not constructing a good theoretical framework. But they still made Darwin’s job easier, by extracting slightly-deeper patterns for him to explain with his much-deeper theory—concepts like “species” and “tree of life” and “life cycles” and “reproduction” etc. Those concepts were generally described by the wrong underlying gears before Darwin, but they were still contributions, in the sense that they compressed a lot of surface-level observations (Bird A is mating with Bird B, and then Bird B lays eggs, etc.) into a smaller number of things-to-be-explained. I think Darwin would have had a much tougher time if he was starting without the concepts of “finch”, “species”, “parents”, and so on.
By the same token, if we’re gonna use language as a datapoint for building a good underlying theoretical framework for the deep structure of knowledge and ideas, it’s hard to do that if we start from slightly-deep linguistic patterns (e.g. “morphosyntax”, “sister schemas”)… But it’s very much harder still to do that if we start with a mass of unstructured surface-level observations, like particular utterances.
I guess your perspective (based on here) is that, for the kinds of things you’re thinking about, people have not been successful even at the easy task of compressing a lot of surface-level observations into a smaller number of slightly-deeper patterns, let alone successful at the the much harder task of coming up with a theoretical framework that can deeply explain those slightly-deeper patterns? And thus you want to wholesale jettison all the previous theorizing? On priors, I think that would be kinda odd. But maybe I’m overstating your radicalism. :)
I mean the main thing I’d say here is that we just are going way too slowly / are not close enough. I’m not sure what counts as “jettisoning”; no reason to totally ignore anything, but in terms of reallocating effort, I guess what I advocate for looks like jettisoning everything. If you go from 0% or 2% of your efforts put toward questioning basic assumptions and theorizing based on introspective inspection and manipulation of thinking, to 50% or 80%, then in some sense you’ve jettisoned everything? Or half-jettisoned it?