The paper “Epistemological scientism and the scientific meta‐method”, written by Helsinki Circle members Petri Turunen, Ilmari Hirvonen, and Ilkka Pättiniemi, was published in European Journal for Philosophy of Science on 8 June 2020.
Read it if you are interested in why the proponents of scientism must answer the demarcation problem and what kind of epistemic evaluability science requires.
The article is an open-access publication, and it can be read here.
The paper “Demarcation without Dogmas” written by Helsinki Circle members Ilmari Hirvonen and Janne Karisto was published in Theoria on 13 February 2022.
Read it if you are interested in how the proposed answers to the demarcation between science and pseudoscience have developed over the decades. In addition, Hirvonen and Karisto give suggestions on how demarcation could be possible or at least what it does not require.
(Errata: Negation signs are missing from footnote 20. The examples 2. and 4. should have ¬p in them.)
The article is an open-access publication and it can be read here.
Helsingin Piiri on vastikään saanut informaatiota viime vuosien aikana tapahtuneesta asiattomasta ja vahingollisesta käyttäytymisestä filosofian tutkijoiden ja opiskelijoiden keskuudessa. Ongelmakäyttäytymistä on ollut myös tapahtumissa, joissa Piirin jäseniä on ollut läsnä. Helsingin Piiri pyytää vilpittömästi anteeksi kyvyttömyyttään tunnistaa ja reagoida asiattomaan toimintaan niin, että häirintä olisi saatu lopetettua. Teemme tarvittavat konkreettiset muutokset, jotta vahingollista käytöstä ei tapahdu järjestön sisällä ja jotteivät Piirin jäsenet osallistu sellaiseen esimerkiksi muiden järjestöjen toteuttamissa tapahtumissa.
Syrjintä kaikissa muodoissaan sekä syrjintään kiinteästi liittyvä häirintä ovat vakava ongelma akateemisessa filosofiassa. Helsingin Piiri suhtautuu ongelmaan äärimmäisellä vakavuudella ja haluaa painottaa, ettei tällaiselle toiminnalle ole minkäänlaista sijaa järjestössä. Jos joku on kokenut syrjintää tai tullut häirityksi järjestön aiempien tai nykyisten jäsenen toimesta tapahtumissa, internetissä tai muualla, voi siitä ilmoittaa joko Helsingin Piirin hallituksen jäsenelle Sofia Blanco Sequeirokselle osoitteessa etunimi.sukunimi@helsinki.fi tai anonyymisti tällä lomakkeella.
Helsingissä 24.10.2021
Helsingin Piiri
Lisätietoja antaa hallituksen jäsen Sofia Blanco Sequeiros, etunimi.sukunimi@helsinki.fi
An Official Statement Against Harassment and Discrimination
The Helsinki Circle has recently received information regarding inappropriate and harmful behaviour among philosophy researchers and students over the past few years. Such behaviour has also occurred at events where Helsinki Circle members have been present. The Helsinki Circle sincerely apologises for not having been able to identify and react to such behaviour earlier with the necessary force. We will make concrete changes to ensure that such harmful behaviour does not occur within the organisation and that members of the Circle do not participate in such behaviour, for example at other organisations’ events.
Discrimination in all its forms, as well as harassment connected to discrimination, are a serious problem within academic philosophy. The Helsinki Circle takes this issue extremely seriously. We emphasise that we do not tolerate discriminatory behaviour or harassment in any form within our organisation. If you have experienced discriminatory behaviour or have been harassed by our past or present members online, in any of our events, or other spaces, please contact board member Sofia Blanco Sequeiros at firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi or approach us anonymously via this online form.
Helsinki, 24.10.2021
The Helsinki Circle
For more information, please contact board member Sofia Blanco Sequeiros at firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi
One can take (at least) two attitudes when it comes to the meaning of words (or concepts, phrases etc.). One can be a prescriptivist, that is one can hold to the idea that words have a real meaning that is determined by some, possibly metaphysical, facts about the world outside of their use. The other option is to be a descriptivist, that is to hold a view that the meaning of words is determined by their use. For the prescriptivist, dictionaries try to capture the real definitions of words, while for us descriptivists dictionaries describe the use of words.
The attractiveness of the prescriptivist position can be easily seen. It allows for a strong normativity when it comes to language. People can now be wrong by definition! When someone uses the phrase “that begs the question” to mean “that raises the question” they are simply wrong. For the prescriptivist ‘science’ simply means the natural sciences, ‘marriage’ means a union between a man and a woman, ‘man’ means someone with XY-chromosomes, and not as a matter of argument, but by the virtue of these being their real meanings. People trying to change such meanings are making a mistake. But how could the prescriptivist know that these, and not something else, are the real meanings? After all, if meaning is divorced from use, then how can we know that our current – or past – use reflects the real meaning of words or phrases? So, much for the prescriptivist.
The descriptivist is better off when it comes to the meaning of words. After all, she can just look at how words are being used. The price is, of course, that she can no longer make such strong normative (prescriptivist) statements. So, using “that begs the question” to mean “that raises the question” will be quite fine, if that ends up how the phrase is actually used, our sensibilities about correct use be damned. But shouldn’t us descriptivists, us supporters of a use theory of meaning, still wish to be normative about language? In a word, yes. But how to go about doing that, since we can not appeal to the “correct meaning of words”?
The solution is simple: we appeal to our (possibly shared) preferences, and to the consequences of adopting a different use than the one currently in play. This has largely already happened when it comes to ‘marriage’. Marriage is now largely seen as a union between any couple, regardless of their respective genders. The impetus for this has been the dawning of the idea that all couples deserve equal standing under the law, should they so choose. That ‘marriage’ (at some time) used to mean a union between a man and a woman should not constrain us, if equality is our goal. Similarly with the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’: It might be the case that common usage is tied to (though I struggle to see how) sex chromosomes, or even more biologically minded, to the question of who produces the ovum and who the sperm. But that should not stop us from amending the use of the terms to include the variety of gender identities that exist under the concepts ‘man‘ and ‘woman‘, if that is seen to have desirable outcomes. (Which it does.) So, we can have good reasons to prescribe the meaning of words, but those reasons will in general have little to do with (metaphysically) correct meanings. They have to do with our goals and preferences, but those are reasons enough.
Finally, I will turn to science. In the English language ‘science’ is commonly used to mean the natural sciences. Thus, attempts to broaden the use might be seen as problematic. For instance, sociology has very little in common with, say, quantum physics, and not only in subject matter, but also in methodology. There are, however, two reasons to not view such a broadening of use as a problem. First, the natural sciences are not methodologically uniform. Methods in biology and astrophysics are quite distinct. And indeed archeology (not a natural science) has much methodologically common with paleontology (a natural science). So, an argument from methodological unity/diversity will not work. Second, many languages – German, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, just to name a few – do not have a similar connotation of natural science for their words for science: Wissenschaft, wetenschap, vetenskap, and tiede. As far as I can see, this causes no more confusion than the situation with English. And if, as we at the Circle argue, there is a methodological core to things that Wissenschaft encompasses, namely, they all share some criteria of proper argumentation or epistemic justification, then there is a good positive reason to broaden the use of ‘science’.
In my last blog post, I took up the idea that fallibilism should be taken seriously in the philosophy of mathematics. In doing so, I did not mean to imply that philosophers of mathematics (or mathematicians for that matter) deny that we are fallible creatures. Rather, my intent was to state, following Tymoczko, that fallibilism has highly non-trivial consequences. To that end, I will here concentrate on some of such consequences, though not in the philosophy of mathematics, but more generally.
Let us take an ordinary claim such as (1) “That is a table over there”. How does one go about seeing whether (1) is the case? One might ask others whether there is a table over there, one might go and try to touch the table, and so. Why would one do that? Because bitter experience has taught us that we are occasionally mistaken about our sensory experiences. That is, we might be mistaken. The same goes for memory, deduction and so on. An important part of (at least some kinds of) knowledge is being cognisant of the possibility of mistakes and working to avoid them. We are more certain of (1) if others agree that there is indeed a table there, more certain of our calculations and proofs if we (and others) have checked them, more certain of our experimental results if they have been vetted and replicated.
I have now linked knowledge to the possibility of checking for mistakes, but is this appropriate? Is it not enough that we acknowledge the possibility of mistakes? Do we need this idea of checking for mistakes on top of that? Yes, we do. Why? Because simply admitting “I might be mistaken” without any means of checking whether I actually am mistaken, is either a call for scepticism or just empty posturing – putting on airs of epistemic virtue. So, any fallibilism worth its salt will require the possibility of checking for mistakes.
Let me now turn to some of the consequences of fallibilism. When we come to accept that we are fallible, we can start doing things to ensure that we are not, after all, mistaken. This will be relatively straight-forward in the case of sensory experience, memory, calculation, and deduction. We use different modalities, check archives and records, redo calculations, and – importantly – collaborate and corroborate with each other. But what about intuitions, revelations, and the like? As long as these are about matters we can independently check, we are fine. But what if they are not? Notable cases here are (some) metaphysical theories, theological claims, and – interestingly enough – some claims in physics and mathematics.
Take the claim (2) “a person seeing something red will have the quale ‘red’”. If we define qualia in accordance to the usual way as “non-behavioural, non-neurological, and completely intrinsic properties of conscious experience,” we will face the following problem. What would count as being wrong when asserting (2)? We might ask that person, but that will only give us behavioural evidence. We might use neural imaging, but that will only give us neural evidence. So, while one might concede to the possibility of mistake in claiming (2), one will have no way of checking whether (2) is indeed the case.
For similar reasons the same problem holds for the theological claim “the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ[.] [B]rought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristics of bread […] remain[s] unaltered[.]” (Vatican 2005.) There is no way of checking whether such a change has occurred.
In quantum physics the claims that in measurements the world splits into two (or more) worlds, or alternatively that there are Bohmian trajectories, or that the wave function is simply a representation of an agent’s degree of beliefs, are all similarly removed from any possibility of checking – here for the simple reason that all interpretations of quantum mechanics have the same empirical content.
A proponent of such claims will be at best a fallibilist in name only! True fallibilism forces us to be quietists about such claims until such time that a check is possible.
Reference:
Vatican (2005): Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html
Lately, as one does, I have been reading up on the philosophy, and especially epistemology of mathematics. In doing so, I chanced upon the great, late philosopher of mathematics, Thomas Tymoczko. In his paper “Computers, Proofs and Mathematicians: A Philosophical Investigation of the Four-Color Proof” (1980) Tymoczko gives five very sensible criteria for a realistic epistemology of mathematics. I will quote all five in full with some comments interspersed.
Indeed. All knowledge worth the moniker is public. Thus, all sensible epistemology will be social epistemology, and this will also hold for the epistemology of mathematics.
Here, we have shades of Wittgenstein, especially his On Certainty where Wittgenstein points out that a “mathematical proposition has been obtained by a series of actions that are in no way different from the actions of the rest of our lives, and are in the same degree liable to forgetfulness, oversight and illusion” (§651). We are often led astray by the fact that inductive reasoning is fallible through-and-through while deductive reasoning is only fallible insofar as we are fallible. But fallible we are.
We are limited beings. We need hammers to drive nails efficiently. Similarly we need calculators and computers, compasses and rulers, pens and paper, to do mathematics efficiently. All these things are cultural creations. Our epistemology should reflect this.
This opens up a lot of new avenues. Tymoczko explicitly calls for a sociological and historical outlook in the epistemology of mathematics. I wholeheartedly agree. It is very hard indeed to understand what people like Frege and Hilbert were doing in the foundations of mathematics, if one does not understand the mathematics that had come before (cf. Grattan-Guinness 2000). The same goes for the mathematics of today. To see what mathematicians are doing and why, one needs to understand the current – and past – state of play, including the mathematical community.
Here, again, the role of the history of mathematics comes to play. We need not explain how we got from pre-Euclidean geometry to differential geometry. However, we do need to explain how we got from Cantor’s set theory to the state of play, say, in the 1930s. And that story is a lot messier than a lot of people might like. For more on this, I heartily recommend Ivor Grattan-Guinness’ (2000) wonderful history of logic and set theory.
These five criteria were offered as a way of providing “satisfying answers about checkability, rigor and computer supplements in proofs” (Tymoczko 1980, 137) But should we not take heed of these criteria already because we should strive to understand – and do justice to – this peculiar human phenomenon called “mathematics”? And how else could we even accomplish that?
References:
Grattan-Guinness, Ivor (2000): The Search for Mathematical Roots, 1870-1940. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tymoczko, Thomas (1980): Computers, Proofs and Mathematicians: A Philosophical Investigation of the Four-Color Proof. Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 3, 131–138.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1969): On Certainty, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
A bit of levity for this week, but with serious undertones.
In the 25th book of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, The Truth, there is a discussion between the commander of Ankh-Morpork’s city watch, Vimes, and an intrepid journalist William de Worde on trust and responsibility:
Vimes said, ‘I don’t trust you, Mr de Worde. And I’ve just realised why. It’s not just that you’re going to cause trouble. Dealing with trouble is my job, it’s what I’m paid for, that’s why they give me an armour allowance. But who are you responsible to? I have to answer for what I do, although right now I’m damned if I know who to. But you? It seems to me you can do what the hell you like.’
Pratchett 2001, 184.
‘I suppose I’m answerable to the truth, sir.’
‘Oh, really? How, exactly?’
‘Sorry?’
‘If you tell lies, does the truth come and smack you in the face? I’m impressed. Ordinary everyday people are responsible to other people. Even Vetinari had – has one eye on the Guilds. But you . . . you are answerable to the truth. Amazing. What’s its address? Does it read the paper?’
So here, again, lies the rub: truth does very little in the way of keeping us accountable. But other people, and even ourselves on occasion, do. Is that not enough? And what would be the alternative? We may well try to point outside of ourselves and our communities, but Truth, the Good, Gods, or Moral Law, seem to take us no further. We could, of course, elect kings – or priests, or what have you – to tell us what to believe and how to act, but why trust them? Because they say they answer to such things as Truth? Our best bet is, it seems to me, to discuss things out amongst ourselves to find out what to believe and how to act.
Science, justice, ethics, and politics are far too important to be let out of human hands.
Reference:
Pratchett, Terry (2001): The Truth, London: Corgi Books.
For this week’s installment I will tie up some loose ends from my post on vagueness, as there is always more to say.
Thing the first: bivalence and realism.
It seems clear that scientific realism requires bivalence, but does bivalence (or the demand for bivalence) imply (a demand for) realism? Simply put: no. The instrumentalist and the pragmatist will wish for bivalence in her science as much as the realist. After all, classical logic and easy (enough) mathematisability are of pragmatic value in building theories. And indeed the solution Quine (1981) and I are offering is based on (potentially mutually exclusive, more on this later) stipulations made for pragmatic purposes. This seems to go against the spirit of realism, as for the (scientific) realist scientific theories reflect the world, not our interests.
Thing the second: do cut-off points converge? Is there a correct definition?
Here’s a challenge from (say) the epistemicist (like Timothy Williamson from my last installment): “It is true that we might start our enquiry by making arbitrary precisifications. But the fact that we can refine our precisifications and make progress in our enquiries shows that there indeed is a correct dividing line, a correct definition!” Gosh darnit! They got me! Or did they? Recall, that for Quine, and for me, the precisifications were made based on our interests. We wish to do geography, and therefore we state that mountains are delineated thus and so. It might turn out that our interests are better served by another delineation, and so we change our precisifications. But a seismologist might have quite different interests in delineating mountains, so she will act accordingly. And there is no (pre-empirical) reason to think that these two precisifications converge. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But that will not – should not – have any bearing on whether geography and seismology are sciences in good standing. The same goes for biology. Differing definitions of ‘gene’ (say as a functional hereditary unit or a piece of DNA) need not converge. They might but it is not clear that the world forced this upon us. Perhaps molecular geneticists just persuaded their opponents to take up their interests and thus their definitions. So, it does not seem at all clear that our willingness to change our precisification and to accept new, better definitions coupled with epistemic progress is enough to justify the claim that there is a correct cut-off point or definition. The burden lies squarely at the realist’s feet.
Thus endeth the sermon.
References:
Quine, Willard Van Orman (1981). What Price Bivalence?, in Theories and Things, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 31–37.
Petri Turunen
While doing metaphilosophy, one can come across some rather hostile attitudes. This is particularly true if one dares to consider such questions as how is, can, or even should philosophy be practiced. Some say that such methodological considerations are a non-starter since philosophy, by its very nature, should not have any constraints. Philosophy is about bringing to light unarticulated presuppositions and then transcending them. It is the ultimate “meta” discipline, and attempts to curtail it will just end up severing it.
Such attitudes are understandable, yet they miss something important. It is true that taking any particular methodological restriction as given will curtail philosophy, but having some methodology at all does not. This is because you cannot properly do philosophy without doing it somehow. Philosophising is an activity after all.
To be precise, you can philosophise without a methodology, but it will quickly turn into something trivial. If there are no methodological restrictions, then all ways of justifying any claims are allowed. This would mean that we could prove any claim in any way we desire. Thus, a single utterance of, say, “plii”, is enough to prove any claim. But that same “plii” is also enough to disprove the same claim, which means that without methodological restrictions, you cannot have any practical difference between true and false claims. Truth becomes arbitrary and, hence, also the idea of a proof itself. This way we end up with everything and nothing at the same time. This is why having no methodological restrictions at all is to walk in a barren wasteland of arbitrariness.
There is no escape from having some methodology, but this does not mean that philosophy should adopt, say, the methods commonly used in chemistry or ornithology. Avoiding arbitrariness leaves a lot of methodological room and it is the job of metaphilosophy or metamethdology to work out exactly how much and at what price.
Just to give a short example, consider the problem of heaps showcased by Ilkka in a previous blog post. The predicate “heap” seemed to be vague and this leads to potentially metaphysical problems. From a methodological point of view, however, we can note that the initial problem comes with a strong presupposition. It takes a notion that is used for large quantities of objects (“heaps”) and then analyses it on a level of individual objects (grains). It takes two notions from two different levels of description and then combines them into a single context. The result is that the notion of “heap” becomes vague.
From a practical point of view, this is totally expected and unproblematic. In a context of having heaps of things, the notion of a heap is not vague. The distinction between different heaps or some other objects of similar size is often not arbitrary. For the notion of a “heap” to be usable for those contexts, it does not need to be well defined for all possible contexts. Similarly, the notion of a “grain” does not need to be well-defined at the level of description of “heaps”. Indeed, when we are dealing with heaps, the number of grains they have, is not something we can often evaluate, and is thus vague.
From the perspective of methodology, then, the problem of heaps comes from mixing two different levels of description. Noting this allows us to recognise something non-trivial. By accepting a mixing of contexts of the aforementioned kind, one is effectively assuming that concepts are well-defined in all contexts and thus that there is or should be some sort of a universal context. Thus, if anything, the argument from vagueness is an argument against certain varieties of metaphysical realism and not a problem otherwise. So, Ilkka is right in claiming that we do not need metaphysics to deal with it, even though it can show us something about certain metaphysical views.
By paying attention to how different ways of analysis can lead to problems, what sort of restrictions they come with, and how analysis is always tied to some practical activity of analysing, we can arrive at similar results and deepen our understanding of philosophy as a whole.
Methodological scientism is an example of such an activity. It tries to enhance philosophical inquiry that has some epistemic goals. What methods work for achieving these goals? Why? Why not? Methodological scientism draws from known cases of epistemic success, namely science, while also taking into consideration the domain specific nature of methods. This is why the focus is on general methodological principles such as evaluability or definability. Methodological scientism has the advantage of being able to draw from the success of science and from the rich methodological expertise scientists have. It is a good place to start one’s metaphilosophical journey.
While any specific form of methodological scientism can be opposed, rejecting the approach altogether is just to embrace wilful ignorance. It is to assume that nothing methodologically useful can be learned from the success of science before even making the attempt.
Studying the limits of analysis is a fruitful field of philosophical research and should not be shunned merely because it can potentially be truly fruitful.
Some time ago, Ilmari made a general case against the metaphysicians’ claim that science requires metaphysics. I agree with what was said there, but wish to make a more piecemeal case against such claims. To that end, I will look at vagueness, and see whether a metaphysical (or a merely philosophical) solution to the problems vagueness gives rise to is needed.
The problem of vagueness is an age old problem in philosophy, starting with the sorites paradox first known to be formulated in the 4th century BCE by – who else? – the Greeks. What is the paradox? It is a problem concerning concepts, namely vague concepts. Take the concept ‘heap’ as an example. One can derive the following inference:
Assume you have a heap of sand totalling n grains of sand, then
1. if you have a heap of sand (n grains), then after removing one grain of sand you will still have a heap of sand (n – 1 grains).
2. If you have a heap of sand (n – 1 grains), then after removing one grain of sand you will still have a heap of sand (n – 2 grains).
3. If you have a heap of sand (n – 2 grains), then after removing one grain of sand you will still have a heap of sand (n – 3 grains).
.
.
.
k. If you have a heap of sand (n – k grains), then after removing one grain of sand you will still have a heap of sand (n – k – 1 grains).
Therefore no matter how many grains of sand you remove from a heap of sand, you will still have a heap of sand!
This can also be done the other way around with the conclusion that, no matter how many grains you add to a non-heap, you will never get a heap. But all this is manifestly silly! Clearly at some point we will stop (start) having a heap. There is, however, a problem here: it seems we cannot determine a clear dividing line between heaps and non-heaps (say 15 grains of sand). But so what? What do heaps have to do with science? Simply put, this has to do with logic.
One property of vague concepts like ‘heap’, is that they do not jibe well with bivalence (which implies the law of excluded middle). And bivalence in turn is needed to keep the logic we use simple and fruitful – in a word classical. And such a logic is needed, in turn so that we are able to formalise and mathematise our scientific theories. (This is not strictly so, but it at least helps us to keep our formalisations simple.) Still, if the problem were only with concepts like ‘heap’, ‘tall’, ‘small’ and so on, this would not be a problem, as one rarely needs such terms in (formalised) science.
However, it turns out that a lot of concepts in ordinary language share this property of vagueness. And some of these concepts are used in science – concepts like species, mountain, cloud, gender, mammal to name a few. Here we can see problems beginning to rise: atmospheric sciences need terms like ‘cloud’ to be bivalent, as do biologists terms like ‘species’ and ‘mammal’. So, how to make such terms non-vague?
A (metaphysical) solution might be to say that there is indeed a well-defined dividing line between heaps and non-heaps, a proper definition of what constitutes a biological species, and so on. We simply are ignorant of these things. This line of thinking is championed by Timothy Williamson (1994). But this will be of little help to the working scientist. It will do nothing to settle the dispute between and advocate of the biological species conception and the ecological species conception. Nor will it tell the geologist what criteria to demand of a mountain. And so on.
A second (also metaphysical) solution is to say that vague terms do not track anything. There are no heaps, so there is no question of a dividing line between heaps and non-heaps. The same with clouds, genders, mountains, species and what-have-you. This nihilistic view was championed by Peter Unger (1979). But again, this is of no help to the working scientist, who might at this point begin to wonder the very point of this discussion.
I will offer a third possibility (though there are many more to be had), a solution I share with the great Willard Van Orman Quine (1981). This way of doing things leaves things as they were for the scientist, while (hopefully) putting at ease the worries raised by philosophers. Simply put, we accept that terms might not have any clear conditions of application, but nevertheless we make a precisification, that is we stipulate a dividing line between mountains and non-mountains, or a definition for biological species, and so on. Such a stipulation allows us to enjoy the benefits of bivalence while freeing us from additional metaphysical assumptions.
But there is a price for such a pragmatic move: we might have made a bad precisification! Bad in which way? Bad in a way that the stipulation made ends up going against the goals we were trying to accomplish. Say that we are convinced that the biological species concept, which is based on sexual reproduction, is the one to use in biological classification. If we are then confronted with an asexually reproducing organism (like bacteria) we will be thwarted in our efforts to classify such beings. Another example comes from the 2006 decision of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to ‘downgrade’ the (until then) planet Pluto to the status of a dwarf planet. It had turned out that our solar system contains a great many objects that share their properties with Pluto and, crucially, that Pluto does not share certain important properties of the other planets. So, the IAU faced a conundrum: either accept a large group of celestial objects as planets, or remove from Pluto the status of a ‘planet’. So, a new definition for planets was developed along with a brand new definition for dwarf planets.
Therefore, the price for bivalence is that we have to both be cognisant of the fact that we have made a (somewhat arbitrary) stipulation and willing to change our precisifications and definitions when practical needs require. Such is the way of things, and is the way the sciences are already being practiced. So, at least this time around, there was no need for metaphysics – or even philosophy! – to come and save the day.
References:
Quine, Willard Van Orman (1981). What Price Bivalence?, in Theories and Things, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 31–37.
Unger, Peter (1979). There Are No Ordinary Things, Synthese 41, No. 2, 117–154.
Williamson, Timothy (1994). Vagueness, London: Routledge.
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