Philosophy of science: the energy and excitement of curiosity
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #8 - Philosophy of science: the energy and excitement of curiosity
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:06
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery.with me, Abigail Acton. Observing things we can't understand. Frustrating or intriguing from rabbits plucked out of hats to dark matter, how do we comprehend the inexplicable or the unobservable? What do particle physicists and a magician's audience have in common? Do we enjoy being baffled?
00:00:36:06 - 00:00:59:13
Abigail Acton
And if so, why? What pushes us to seek to understand? And is objectivity so vital in scientific observation? Is subjectivity really its negation? Or is the relation between the two most subtle? If you're intrigued by how we process the unexpected and search for the invisible, then you're in the right place. Let me introduce this episode's three guests who have been funded under the EU horizon 2020 program.
00:00:59:15 - 00:01:25:14
Abigail Acton
Together, we'll be exploring philosophical approaches behind science and the interplay between reality, illusion, objectivity and subjectivity. These two. So welcome to Jason Leddington who is an associate professor of philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He worked on the Philo Magic Project and his book on the philosophy of magic and other arts of impossibility is under contract with MIT press with the working title the Art of the impossible.
00:01:25:17 - 00:01:26:12
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Jason.
00:01:26:15 - 00:01:27:22
Jason Leddington
Hi, Abigail. Great to be with you.
00:01:27:24 - 00:01:46:04
Abigail Acton
Michela Massimi is professor of philosophy of science at the University of Edinburgh, and was the principal investigator of a project called Perspectival Realism Science, Knowledge and Truth from a Human Vantage Point. She is the author of Perspectival Realism, which will come out in January 2022, published by the Oxford University Press. Welcome, Michaela.
00:01:46:08 - 00:01:48:10
Michela Massimi
Hi, Abigail. Very nice to be here.
00:01:48:15 - 00:02:03:07
Abigail Acton
Jan Sprenger is professor at the center for logic, Language and Cognition at the University of Turin. His area of interest is the relationship between scientific inference, public trust and the role of objectivity, which he explored in his project objectivity. Hello.
00:02:03:09 - 00:02:04:21
Jan Sprenger
Hi, Abigail. Great to meet you.
00:02:04:23 - 00:02:25:08
Abigail Acton
Thank you all for being here. So let's get cracking. Jason, in your paper, the experience of magic on which the magic project was based. One of the things you do is to set out a systematic and theoretically rigorous account of what goes on in the mind of someone who witnesses a good magic trick. Magic is one of the oldest and most consistently popular genres of theatrical performance.
00:02:25:11 - 00:02:28:02
Abigail Acton
Why do you think that is? Why do we enjoy being baffled?
00:02:28:06 - 00:02:51:22
Jason Leddington
It's a really great question, and I think it's it goes right to the heart of of my project, which really began with my own experience performing magic and noticing that some people really love it and others really hate it. And to be fair, most people really love it. But the range of reactions you get to a strong magic trick are pretty incredible.
00:02:51:24 - 00:03:22:03
Jason Leddington
And they're also, often strongly emotional. So the question just arose, like, why are people attracted to this? And on the usual story, of course people are attracted to things that they don't understand, especially things that they have no hope of understanding. But precisely the point of magic is to provide us with experiences that if the magic is very good, we have no hope of making sense of either now or at any point in the future.
00:03:22:05 - 00:03:48:12
Jason Leddington
So the question that I really want to explore then is why would anyone want to see a good magic show? I think that understanding this reveals something not only about magic, but about the human mind. In particular, I think it highlights something that every scientist and scholar knows, if only implicitly, namely, that the energy that drives inquiry is not the pleasure we take in final explanations, but the energy and excitement of curiosity.
00:03:48:14 - 00:03:49:05
Jason Leddington
Itself.
00:03:49:11 - 00:04:04:22
Abigail Acton
That's really very interesting. And you mentioned curiosity. What role do you feel that plays? Do you think it's the curiosity that actually subdues the possible feeling of resentment, of being baffled? Do you think that this curiosity overcomes that feeling of resentment in some people or most people?
00:04:04:24 - 00:04:36:23
Jason Leddington
I think that curiosity is a pleasant affective experience. And one of the interesting things about, recent work on curiosity and one of the things that my project highlights is that curiosity has traditionally been conceived merely as a kind of intellectual condition. And recent work has highlighted the emotional and affective, dimensions of curiosity. And this really comes out in the experience of magic.
00:04:36:23 - 00:05:04:12
Jason Leddington
So let's think a little bit about how this works in the case of encountering a magic trick. So normally when you walk around the world, you don't understand everything you see, but everything fits together intuitively. The world works according to pretty much your set of intuitive expectations. When you encounter a magic trick, you encounter what I like to call an experiential anomaly, something that just disrupts your ordinary, intuitive understanding of how the world works.
00:05:04:14 - 00:05:34:00
Jason Leddington
And outside of a theatrical context that could be threatening, quite unpleasant. It could prompt you to try to revise, say, physical theory. But in a theatrical context, this is a place where you can actually enjoy having your curiosity stimulated without the burden of trying to satisfy it. So what I think that goes on in magic performance, and why some people really enjoy it, is that they enjoy having their curiosity stimulated.
00:05:34:00 - 00:06:03:11
Jason Leddington
They don't mind the, experience of ignorance because they understand this is a theatrical context and not an ordinary, everyday one where their epistemic status or standing is actually threatened by what they're experiencing. So taking that into account, they can now actually enjoy the magic trick, as in the end, ideally a kind of endless source of curiosity and one stimulation and wonder, right?
00:06:03:15 - 00:06:22:12
Jason Leddington
So it's something that even even long after that, people have experienced a magic trick. They can think back on it and have their curiosity once again stimulated. This is one of the reasons why you'll encounter people who will tell you about magic tricks they experienced 50 years ago, and related in detail precisely because that experiential anomaly has stuck with them.
00:06:22:12 - 00:06:42:18
Jason Leddington
It stimulates the curiosity they've been able to carry it with them and continue to enjoy it, even over a long period of time. I think other people don't get, as it were, the theatrical context. Take the magic trick too seriously, not as a form of play, and so they experience it as a form of epistemic threat or challenge.
00:06:42:18 - 00:06:47:23
Abigail Acton
Yeah, and where do the inexplicable, any unobservable overlap in our thought processes, do you think?
00:06:48:00 - 00:07:15:15
Jason Leddington
So I think this is really interesting actually. Right. So suppose that, you, encountered a magic performance and, you took it seriously as an object of scientific investigation. And on investigating it, you discovered that there were no methods that we could make sense of for, say, how this apparent telekinesis took place. So you decided. Well, actually, this isn't a magic trick at all.
00:07:15:15 - 00:07:43:19
Jason Leddington
This is real telekinesis. In other words, suppose magic was real. If magic was real, there would be a science of it, and the science of it would potentially involve postulating on observables. So if telekinesis was something that was real, then we'd have to potentially postulate unobservable entities to explain how our minds can interact with matter at a distance.
00:07:43:21 - 00:07:52:05
Jason Leddington
So the postulation of observables is part of explaining observable things we can't otherwise make sense of.
00:07:52:07 - 00:07:57:19
Abigail Acton
Absolutely. Okay. That's fascinating. Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions they'd like to put to Jason?
00:07:57:21 - 00:08:00:09
Michela Massimi
Yes, I would like to ask Jason the following question.
00:08:00:10 - 00:08:01:21
Abigail Acton
Certainly, Michaela.
00:08:01:23 - 00:08:14:22
Michela Massimi
How do you see the relation between that magic and what we can see? And in particular at where does the invisible world end, being the remnant of magic and becomes the remnant of science?
00:08:14:24 - 00:08:45:14
Jason Leddington
I think I want to say that the invisible world is always the realm of science, and that the realm of magic is the space of play, as it were. And when it is no longer a space of play, that's when it becomes the realm of science. So, a good friend of mine and, an important magician and essayist, Jamie and Swiss describes magic as a burlesque of science.
00:08:45:16 - 00:09:08:05
Jason Leddington
So it's not that I think of the realm of magic as, say, the realm of Harry Potter. Over here, alongside the world of science. Over here. It's rather that magic as an art form plays with the very same types of impulses and approaches to the world that we engage with in a serious way when we do science.
00:09:08:07 - 00:09:11:01
Abigail Acton
Does anyone else have any questions for Jason?
00:09:11:03 - 00:09:12:08
Jan Sprenger
Yes, I would, yes.
00:09:12:13 - 00:09:12:21
Abigail Acton
Go ahead.
00:09:12:24 - 00:09:21:04
Jan Sprenger
Thank you very much. So, I'm curious what distinguishes this from a cognitive point of view? A good magic trick from a bad magic trick.
00:09:21:06 - 00:09:50:05
Jason Leddington
It's a terrific question. And, I'll start with a famous quote. Or a famous idea from from, then, a great, late, magician, Simon Aaronson, which is that he says that there's a world of difference between not knowing how something is done and knowing that something can't be done. So when you experience a magic trick, if you can walk away from it saying, yeah, it could have been wires, it could have been magnets.
00:09:50:10 - 00:10:17:03
Jason Leddington
It could have been a trick deck or a gimmicked coin. Then the magic trick isn't successful. It's true. You're still in a position of ignorance, but you have candidate explanations for what you witnessed. The job of the magician is to erase all candidate explanations in your mind and leave you completely baffled. So cognitively, the position you should be in is one of what Socrates and Plato would have called aporia.
00:10:17:05 - 00:10:26:06
Jason Leddington
Total speechlessness. You no longer know what to say. You know it's a trick, but you don't see how it could be because you have no candidate explanations.
00:10:26:08 - 00:10:45:08
Abigail Acton
And Michela, I mean, if we think about the work that that you've been doing. So I'm going to turn to you, you were exploring how our notion of the word realism relates to experimental work and perspectives in science. And what drew you to the area of, of, realism as it relates to experimental work? And why do you feel that there was something important to acknowledge?
00:10:45:10 - 00:11:07:15
Michela Massimi
I've always been fascinated by questions about realism in science, in the sense that I'm interested in questions about what is real and how do we go about finding out about what is real. And one of the problems in philosophy of science is that often if we look back at the history of science, we find out that the best theory is that we used to believe to be true in the past, set them out to be false.
00:11:07:15 - 00:11:26:11
Michela Massimi
So we used to believe in the ether and we used to believe in caloric. We still believe in phlogiston and lots of other stuff, but that turned out to be false. So the question that really guided my project was not so much whether science can deliver a true story about nature. I think that the answer is yes. That's why it's called perspectival realism.
00:11:26:13 - 00:11:56:06
Michela Massimi
But a question is how we go about finding out what is real. So I was interested in how particle physicists at CERN, for example, go about finding out new particles that, to the best of our knowledge, we believe must be real, not for which we, found any evidence yet. And what kind of models, what kind of statistical methods, what kind of data they use to explore what we haven't explored yet, to find out what's in Savable?
00:11:56:08 - 00:11:58:09
Abigail Acton
Sure. And did you speak with many?
00:11:58:11 - 00:12:32:06
Michela Massimi
Yes I did. So we went to CERN with my postdoc, my future student, and, we had the chance to talk to both theoretical physicists and experimental physicists and working at both the Atlas and CMS experiments, which are some of the. But the two biggest experiments on. And ask them questions about their methodology, share their views and getting to know more about the methods and methodologies and, and modeling practices that they use, which was really fascinating because informed the result of the project.
00:12:32:08 - 00:12:40:19
Abigail Acton
And, what are the things with regards to a historical perspective did you feel was important to uncover and discuss in your project?
00:12:40:21 - 00:13:03:19
Michela Massimi
So there isn't just a contemporary, element to the project, a perspective of realism. Amazing just about how contemporary physicists at CERN or the Dark Energy Survey, which was the other big communities that we work with in cosmology, are currently looking for, evidence for unobservable entities, like candidate particles for dark matter, for example, or what?
00:13:03:20 - 00:13:22:20
Michela Massimi
What is dark energy? We were also interested in the historical aspect of this question, namely how communities of the past went about, finding out new entities and exploring, new ones that were, up to the point not known. No, that's very interesting.
00:13:22:20 - 00:13:32:08
Abigail Acton
Michaela. And what drew you to the area of perspectival realism? What did you understand by the meaning of what you want to set out by the meaning of the word perspectival?
00:13:32:10 - 00:13:56:02
Michela Massimi
So the word perspectival realism really wants to capture this idea that there is a plurality of scientific perspective that matters to science and to scientific knowledge, and how we produce scientific knowledge. So it's a way of responding to traditional a realist field have portrayed realism as a god side view of nature, and a way of the discovering the profoundly social and collaborative nature of scientific knowledge.
00:13:56:04 - 00:14:20:07
Michela Massimi
But at the center stage, a really struggling, culturally situated epistemic communities, be they particle physicists in contemporary science or Victorian physicists there in Cambridge. So there is an important historical component, not just the contemporary one. In this project, we spent effectively two years doing, field work with physicists at CERN and the cosmologists for the Dark Energy Survey.
00:14:20:07 - 00:14:45:17
Michela Massimi
But then we spent lots of solid two years doing more historical research on these sort of science. And that's because, again, if you look back at the history of science very often, the way we have asked the question about realism goes from theory to unobservable entities, where the theories of the past, true or false, what happens about those, observable objects so that they postulated and that turned out to be false?
00:14:45:19 - 00:15:11:22
Michela Massimi
But if you look more closely at the history of science, what we're missing is an important bottom up approach, how scientists went from specific data to phenomena and from phenomena to natural kinds, even if the model that sometimes false beliefs about this object. So that's the case with Jay Thompson, who has gone down in history as the discoverer of the electron.
00:15:11:24 - 00:15:34:23
Michela Massimi
But effectively had all sorts of false belief about that particle, which you called the corpuscle at the time, because the term monitoring was used to indicate, a particular view about those objects that were embedded into their theory. So what did it also go? They wanted to set the rules and model a robust phenomenon. That was the bending of cathode rays.
00:15:34:23 - 00:15:57:15
Michela Massimi
This experiment that they ran in Cambridge in 1897 using a glass tube, but with vacuum inside, and it was able to observe how this fluorescence was able to be bent in the presence of an electrical magnetic field, and it was able to make an inference from that to the existence of a particle. They must have had a negative charge and must have been relatively small.
00:15:57:15 - 00:16:19:14
Michela Massimi
The first subatomic particle to be discovered. So it's the type of realism is really a way of approaching realism, not necessarily from theories to an observable entities that model now from the data to the phenomena to the natural kinds, in a way that is sensitive to the historical nuances of communities that a particular time.
00:16:19:16 - 00:16:39:00
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's great. Okay. And in the knowledge and the understanding that certain ideas gained traction, other ideas fall by the wayside, but that it's a community of people not necessarily directly working together, that build, knowledge essentially. What would you wished that we should reconsider in the light of your findings?
00:16:39:02 - 00:17:01:02
Michela Massimi
So there are three things that I really wish we could reconsider. So the first is really a rediscovery of, the role of local knowledge and what sometimes I call as the artisanal knowledge that was really instrumental to scientific knowledge production. We remember Maxwell, we remember Einstein, remember Thomson, but we don't remember the people that made those discoveries possible.
00:17:01:07 - 00:17:24:13
Michela Massimi
So Johnson had a professionally trained glassblower over at the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge, whose name was Ebenezer Everett. And, and that artisanal moment was instrumental, instrumental at the time for, the very possibility of doing electrical researches of the type that Thomas was doing. So perspectival realism is a way of really being sensitive to those historical nuances.
00:17:24:15 - 00:17:53:22
Michela Massimi
The second is a change in the way we approach the metaphysics of nature. So what I mentioned is change from the top down view theories 20 to a bottom up view from data, a phenomena of multiple kinds. And the third is changing attitudes towards why we care so much about science. And I think we care so much about science, not so much because, science is necessarily delivering some kind of certainty or objective.
00:17:53:22 - 00:18:23:11
Michela Massimi
And finally, much about the way will this. But because there is something incredible about how finite human beings like casts at the resources at each historical point in time to make reliable inferences over time. And I think it's it's a way of giving credit to those epistemic communities over time that no matter what false belief the head, they were nonetheless able to make advancement in our knowledge of the world.
00:18:23:13 - 00:18:34:21
Abigail Acton
Yeah, contributing to, to an overall jigsaw puzzle almost, I think. Yeah, yeah. Does anybody have any questions for Michaela? Yeah. Jason, please go ahead.
00:18:34:23 - 00:19:10:19
Jason Leddington
It's it's really interesting and I'm wondering a bit about how it is that, scientific explanations or pseudo scientific connections get distinguished. How types of explanations or phenomena get discredited on your model. So I'm thinking in particular here from the perspective of, of the magician. Magicians were in the late 19th century became, important for debunking, spiritualist phenomena, pseudo psychic phenomena.
00:19:10:19 - 00:19:23:08
Jason Leddington
And that's continued throughout the 20th century. And so we have paranormal psychology developing in the early 20th century. And that gets discredited. How does that work on your model?
00:19:23:10 - 00:19:54:09
Michela Massimi
Well, that's that's an excellent question. And a tricky one, too, because it takes us where do they have the what is science and the demarcation problem? In a way, I'm operating with a very generous notion of a scientific perspective as the historical and cultural embedded scientific practice of the community. One thing I do in the book and in my work is I explicitly say, for example, that what I really meant was into the practice is the experimental theoretical modeling resources available at the time to make those inferences.
00:19:54:09 - 00:20:20:00
Michela Massimi
And so, for example, I would then include in the the facially prospective metaphysical beliefs that people might have at the time, because although this belief played an absolutely key role in, for example, whether or not the community accepted some theories at the time, what the notion of scientific perspective does is to provide us with a tool for understanding the reliability of the inferences that we draw.
00:20:20:02 - 00:20:39:07
Michela Massimi
So I'm trying to make that line, if you like, in the way I define the notion of a scientific perspective. But also I see pluralism in science. This plurality of perspectives. There isn't just one perspective at one time. There's a plurality of perspective at any one time. And I see that pluralism as having a sort of self refining role.
00:20:39:09 - 00:21:00:03
Michela Massimi
It is because we have that plurality of perspective that we can have a robust, assertive acknowledge that improves and becomes more reliable over time. So in the case of digital, so they are absolutely right. I mean, the Victorian Cambridge of the time was imbued with spiritualist beliefs about the ether and, and and all sorts of paranormal phenomena.
00:21:00:03 - 00:21:33:06
Michela Massimi
Right. It's it's a sort of area which is students of science obviously have done a lot of important research. I guess the question that matters to me from a kind of epistemologies science point of view is what is it that digital single day writing is inferences, and how can we bring other perspectives? For example, the perspective of people working in electrochemistry or, people that were working at the time in that, quantum theory with Max Planck to bear on the work that J.J. Thomson was doing.
00:21:33:06 - 00:21:39:15
Michela Massimi
And how is it that this intersection of scientific perspective eventually led to the inferences that we did produce?
00:21:39:17 - 00:22:02:08
Jason Leddington
Do you think of, say, the Cambridge, glassblower or, say, you know, Houdini's work in debunking pseudo psychics? Are they contributing to the constitution of scientific perspectives in your sense, or are they external to that process? They're they're important, but they're not actually, as it were, part of the scientific process per se.
00:22:02:10 - 00:22:27:10
Michela Massimi
So glassblowers or, you know, beekeepers or any kind of artisanal knowledge that is instrumental to, producing that kind of knowledge in the sense that we need to cut all the way to them in the first instance to be able to run the debate on some experiments, both from a scientific perspective. Now, what kind of beliefs say, due to Thompson as a person, human beings at the time?
00:22:27:10 - 00:22:48:02
Michela Massimi
What about the electron? I mean, his personal beliefs, his metaphysical beliefs and so forth? That's not a path. So listen to the perspective as a as I intend. So, for example, he believed that, you know, the outermost sort of plumb good things where B could pass on as a call that was distributed inside the mostly positive charge.
00:22:48:02 - 00:23:15:12
Michela Massimi
So I thought that, you know, we need to wait rather for the at least experiment to have the smaller model of the atoms so that, JJ Thompson, they were operating with a completely different model. So, yeah, all sorts of beliefs that we nowadays would regard that force. But when you go it right, is the kind of inference I made about the existence of the charge of the mass ratio of the particle that must have been very small subatomic particle, and with the negative charge.
00:23:15:12 - 00:23:33:04
Michela Massimi
And to do that, Ebenezer the the official glassblower at the Cavendish lab, it was an instrumental part of that story. So I would like to give credit to those kind of communities of artisanal knowledge that provided the technological resources for making that possible.
00:23:33:06 - 00:23:41:17
Abigail Acton
It's nice to have the man's name so clearly set out. He's like a forgotten name in science. Now we know the name Ebenezer Everett not want to be forgotten.
00:23:41:19 - 00:23:44:08
Michela Massimi
Which is a quite, a quite remarkable name.
00:23:44:10 - 00:23:48:01
Abigail Acton
For a kind of a lost figure. Jason. Sorry. Yeah. Do you have something else you want?
00:23:48:01 - 00:24:19:10
Jason Leddington
Classic. Quick follow up there. Yeah. So, I guess I'm wondering if your view involves acknowledging their importance for the scientific process, which seems pretty uncontroversial, or if it involves, breaking down in some significa way the boundaries between scientific activity and so-called nonscientific activities. So I guess my question is, is really should we think of the glassblower as in some way a scientist?
00:24:19:12 - 00:24:49:02
Michela Massimi
Yeah. Going back to he said, I, I think George Stone. So I call them epistemic communities, not scientists, partially because the farmer, you know, scientist is a very late term. And that was really introduced. I think, at the end, you know, the 19th century, if I remember correctly. And a better, better word for it is epistemic communities, communities of epistemic agents, agents that are capable of producing and contributing to the production of scientific knowledge.
00:24:49:02 - 00:25:08:00
Michela Massimi
So, yeah, so we see that a benefit that it glassblowers people with artisanal practices were instrumental to those, advancement as epistemic communities, the way historically situated, they use the tools of the time, and they were an integral part of this knowledge production.
00:25:08:02 - 00:25:10:08
Abigail Acton
So it's it's a wider picture. It's a it's a more globe.
00:25:10:09 - 00:25:11:07
Michela Massimi
Yes. Yeah.
00:25:11:08 - 00:25:36:01
Abigail Acton
It's a more globetrotter. And that merging of margins, I think also in a way feeds into the idea of, of trust a little. Jan I'd like to bring you in here, please, if I may, the objectivity project clue's in the name looked into whether, by building up the importance of objectivity as a feature of research, we've set up a false dichotomy between objective and subjective analysis.
00:25:36:03 - 00:25:59:19
Abigail Acton
And in fact, whether this is something researchers should be focused on. I'd like to explore that concept with you, and I'd also like to consider, bearing in mind our recent conversations we've been having the notion of trust and mckellar's idea of plurality that leads to a sensation of trust, the feeling that thoughts and ideas refined by various thinkers, that that builds into the notion of trust.
00:25:59:24 - 00:26:16:13
Abigail Acton
So could you tell me a little bit about, your your concept in the, in the Objectivity Project? It sounds positively heretical to say that, scientific research shouldn't be rigorously objective. Why did you feel the need to challenge that assumption?
00:26:16:15 - 00:26:52:00
Jan Sprenger
Well, first of all, I think that the label objective raises to high expectations. So it highlights that science is essentially fallible. And of course, scientists more often. Right, that it's not. And it's maybe our most reliable source of knowledge. But mistakes to happen or sometimes just bad luck in science and, putting scientists, putting the objective label on, scientific knowledge makes it sound as if it was certified infallible by knowledge, which then makes it very hard to explain why failures to happen.
00:26:52:02 - 00:27:21:17
Jan Sprenger
And, it makes it. And there are easy game for science skeptics like the, former president of the United States, Donald Trump, and, to give you an example. So for in science, the concept of statistical significance, which is a quite technical concept, which I won't explain, has often been used to quantify knowledge as objective, but, independent of its technical meaning, it does not give the, answer to questions.
00:27:21:19 - 00:27:49:17
Jan Sprenger
Does this effect, which we observe, really make a practical difference? Is it useful for solving our problems? And I think if you want to answer this question, the perspective switch market, and mentioned so the perspectives of different communities, different research traditions have to be taken into account. And I am using, let's say, I mean, let's say I'm, working on a quite similar project like McKenna in the realm of statistical inference, in particular.
00:27:49:19 - 00:28:13:11
Abigail Acton
Okay. This is a closed book to me, and I'm absolutely fascinated by this. I mean, if I think of the word statistics to me, I mean, I know they can be interpreted and they can be manipulated, but the best statistics themselves, to me, that sounds like that's something factual. That's that's not subjective or objective. Tell me a little bit more about the notion of subjectivity and statistics, because to me that seems a little bit of an an interesting combination of words.
00:28:13:13 - 00:28:42:00
Jan Sprenger
Where there is a strong research tradition in statistics, which is tried to clean statistics of all explicit, subjective elements to the extent that a scientist's subjective, opinion or the particular theoretical framework in which he or she is working are effecting the, statistical inference, the inference becomes invalid or less trust Rossi than an inference, which does not make reference to such theoretical background.
00:28:42:00 - 00:28:44:06
Jan Sprenger
For example, to such, let's say, subjective elements.
00:28:44:08 - 00:28:47:16
Abigail Acton
And what was the objectivity project setting out to do in relation to that?
00:28:47:18 - 00:29:12:19
Jan Sprenger
Well, we are trying to, argue that, the so called subjective inference, which is in the realm of statistics, often associated with the Bayesian, with Bayesian inference, can actually, do the job which most people and most users of science would expect from the label of objective. It can help to, provide reliable, inferences. It makes the subjective elements explicit.
00:29:12:19 - 00:29:36:04
Jan Sprenger
So if you want to criticize an inference, if you don't agree with the results, you know, let's say you can also, track the disagreement to the sources. Right. And I think it's very important to be transparent about what is, let's say, subjective or perspective to just make errors. Trump's in an inference. And what is, for example, just mathematics.
00:29:36:06 - 00:29:51:14
Jan Sprenger
And I think only if you make these, points explicit, we will be able to appreciate, the degree to which inferences can be shared among all science users or more members of society, and to which extent there is room for genuine and rational disagreement.
00:29:51:19 - 00:30:17:20
Abigail Acton
So are you saying, then, that the subjective is is inherent? Essentially, and by not acknowledging that, we remove the ability to to discuss it and to discuss its importance and to discuss its impact on the interpretation of the statistics involved. Exactly right. And I guess then tell me a little bit more about your theories with regards to trust and the vital necessity of maintaining public trust in in scientific output.
00:30:18:01 - 00:30:19:08
Abigail Acton
How does this play in with that?
00:30:19:10 - 00:30:52:01
Jan Sprenger
Now, in the last year, we have seen, especially in the social science, a so-called replication crisis, which means if there has been a systematic project to replicate experimental findings from various areas of social science, psychology in particular, and, what this systematic replications, which has been done by other research teams and by the original researchers, if you notice that very often the, what has been statistically significant in the original experiment is not significant anymore.
00:30:52:03 - 00:31:21:10
Jan Sprenger
The effect sizes are much lower. And so this is, of course, shake at the trust and science. And one of the causes of the replication crisis is, in my view, as a philosopher of science. Is that or, evaluating whether an effect is real. People are using the wrong standards standards, which has been, shaped by this, in my view, mistaken conception of scientific objectivity.
00:31:21:12 - 00:31:42:09
Jan Sprenger
And we are trying to improve, this and to help scientists and science us by developing better methods for scientific inference and in particular, but I'm arguing that scientists don't be, don't have to be afraid of explicit subjective elements in their inferences. It's good to have them, and it's good to make them explicit.
00:31:42:09 - 00:31:45:03
Abigail Acton
And I that's I was I was about to say, the key word there is explicit.
00:31:45:09 - 00:32:12:16
Jan Sprenger
Exactly. So let's say statistically you can the various techniques for how you can, encode your, prior knowledge or your, theoretical expectations and of course, about these things. Scientists often disagree, but let's say a subjective statistical framework, sketch them, let's say, the opportunity to see you, let's say, how are these different expectations are compatible with the, data, which, let's say so objective, unmistakably objective, trained.
00:32:12:16 - 00:32:13:10
Jan Sprenger
For example.
00:32:13:12 - 00:32:36:07
Abigail Acton
Can you give me a bit of an example? I mean, could you what sort of domain you mentioned sort of psychology generally, but could could you give me an example of, of where this absolute overriding desire to be objective at all costs actually undermines the, the validity of the results or our interpretation of those results at least. Do you understand my question there also?
00:32:36:08 - 00:32:58:04
Jan Sprenger
Yes. There are some cases in medicine, for example, where of course effect size. So let's say it does not only make some difference, which we can tell from no difference at all, but does it make a substantial difference is to help patients to recover. It's quite important. And often let's say the traditional statistical frameworks answer the wrong question.
00:32:58:06 - 00:33:17:20
Jan Sprenger
Namely, it's not an effect at all. Or can we tell with some certainty that the effect is not equal to zero? But of course, what scientists want to know and or patients want to know, they don't just want to know, is that these effects have a certain practical significance. And these questions are much easier to answer if you, work with, explicit, subjective, assumptions.
00:33:18:01 - 00:33:18:21
Jan Sprenger
Much easier to model.
00:33:19:02 - 00:33:29:03
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah. That's excellent. Thank you. That makes it much clearer indeed. Work. But how and how? Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Michaela, would you have any questions that you would like to ask Jan? Yes.
00:33:29:05 - 00:33:57:01
Michela Massimi
For my work, purpose that there were really similar. One thing we did, wasn't just to work with physicists at CERN, but also with cosmologist involved in the Dark Energy Survey, which was, served by one of the largest, observational cosmology survey to find evidence for the existence of dark energy. Bayesianism is one of the most the ubiquitous statistical inference is used by cosmologists today.
00:33:57:03 - 00:34:08:00
Michela Massimi
So I just would like you to. Yeah, to to say something about how your work in your research, may be important, relevant for, cosmology and for other areas of research.
00:34:08:03 - 00:34:14:19
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Before you answer, Michael, could I just, could I ask you also to give a little bit of explanation about what Bayesianism means?
00:34:14:21 - 00:34:54:06
Jan Sprenger
Bayesianism, or Bayesian inference is a school of, statistical reason or statistical inference based on the idea that you start out with a representation of our subjective theoretical knowledge or expectations, and that this representation of our knowledge is changed as we come to know new things, as we conduct experiments and, observe data. And, there's a particular mathematical, formula describing this, change of our beliefs, which is quite, this Bayes theorem.
00:34:54:08 - 00:35:23:13
Jan Sprenger
And, it is indeed, I think, the most successful, attempt of making subjective elements in the statistics explicit. And that's why I'm also advocating its use a lot. And it's the cosmologists. Cosmologists are already on board. Then. Good for them. I think not using them will actually, lead us to, an overestimation of, what we actually know.
00:35:23:15 - 00:35:30:15
Jan Sprenger
As opposed to, how many of our findings actually actually truthful and trustworthy.
00:35:30:17 - 00:35:35:23
Abigail Acton
Right. So it's almost like a, a way of writing in transparency at source.
00:35:36:00 - 00:35:36:16
Jan Sprenger
Yes.
00:35:36:18 - 00:35:38:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Very interesting.
00:35:38:10 - 00:36:19:14
Jan Sprenger
That's excellent. I do think that also for the communication of scientific, results, it is much better to instead of p values which nobody understands. So these are the so called statistical significance level. Another name for them is p values. Instead of this very arcane and often interpreted quantities, it is much better, to use Bayes factors, which is basically explain how much, the actual evidence or the results of a particular experiment would shift your, beliefs in favor of a particular hypothesis, because this is something that also ordinary people can relate to much better with this evidence, really shift my beliefs.
00:36:19:16 - 00:36:22:16
Jan Sprenger
And if so, by, by which degree?
00:36:22:20 - 00:36:47:19
Abigail Acton
Very good. Very, very good. That's all been very interesting. Thank you very much. I found that a stimulating episode of this, cool discovery podcast. I think we come away with the idea that that the boundaries are a little bit more blurred between between what we can know and what we can assume and guess and how we go about establishing the unknown and how we acknowledge that we might be being swayed.
00:36:48:00 - 00:36:50:23
Abigail Acton
I think this has all been fascinating. Thank you very much for joining me today.
00:36:51:01 - 00:36:53:00
Jason Leddington
Thank you. It's been super interesting.
00:36:53:02 - 00:36:58:23
Abigail Acton
It has been, hasn't it. Excellent. Well, I wish you all the very best in all the work that you're doing. Thank you for your time.
00:36:59:01 - 00:37:01:23
Michela Massimi
Thank you. Thank you very much again. Thank you everyone. Thank you.
00:37:02:00 - 00:37:03:03
Jason Leddington
Again. Thanks, Abigail.
00:37:03:08 - 00:37:05:21
Jan Sprenger
Bye bye.
00:37:05:23 - 00:37:27:22
Abigail Acton
Are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing in the field of philosophy? Take a look at the special section from Socrates to Modern Science New Perspectives in European Philosophy of issue 105 of the research EU magazine, available on the court's website, called es.europa.eu. The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the horizon 2020 program.
00:37:27:24 - 00:37:49:17
Abigail Acton
Find daily news articles and interviews with researchers working in a very broad range of domains, from archeology to zoology. Results packs drill down deeper, gathering groups of projects by subject area, and the magazine offers insights into a different subject every month in its special section. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain.
00:37:49:19 - 00:38:06:24
Abigail Acton
So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. So drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:36:06
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery. Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery.with me, Abigail Acton. Observing things we can't understand. Frustrating or intriguing from rabbits plucked out of hats to dark matter, how do we comprehend the inexplicable or the unobservable? What do particle physicists and a magician's audience have in common? Do we enjoy being baffled?
00:00:36:06 - 00:00:59:13
Abigail Acton
And if so, why? What pushes us to seek to understand? And is objectivity so vital in scientific observation? Is subjectivity really its negation? Or is the relation between the two most subtle? If you're intrigued by how we process the unexpected and search for the invisible, then you're in the right place. Let me introduce this episode's three guests who have been funded under the EU horizon 2020 program.
00:00:59:15 - 00:01:25:14
Abigail Acton
Together, we'll be exploring philosophical approaches behind science and the interplay between reality, illusion, objectivity and subjectivity. These two. So welcome to Jason Leddington who is an associate professor of philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. He worked on the Philo Magic Project and his book on the philosophy of magic and other arts of impossibility is under contract with MIT press with the working title the Art of the impossible.
00:01:25:17 - 00:01:26:12
Abigail Acton
Welcome, Jason.
00:01:26:15 - 00:01:27:22
Jason Leddington
Hi, Abigail. Great to be with you.
00:01:27:24 - 00:01:46:04
Abigail Acton
Michela Massimi is professor of philosophy of science at the University of Edinburgh, and was the principal investigator of a project called Perspectival Realism Science, Knowledge and Truth from a Human Vantage Point. She is the author of Perspectival Realism, which will come out in January 2022, published by the Oxford University Press. Welcome, Michaela.
00:01:46:08 - 00:01:48:10
Michela Massimi
Hi, Abigail. Very nice to be here.
00:01:48:15 - 00:02:03:07
Abigail Acton
Jan Sprenger is professor at the center for logic, Language and Cognition at the University of Turin. His area of interest is the relationship between scientific inference, public trust and the role of objectivity, which he explored in his project objectivity. Hello.
00:02:03:09 - 00:02:04:21
Jan Sprenger
Hi, Abigail. Great to meet you.
00:02:04:23 - 00:02:25:08
Abigail Acton
Thank you all for being here. So let's get cracking. Jason, in your paper, the experience of magic on which the magic project was based. One of the things you do is to set out a systematic and theoretically rigorous account of what goes on in the mind of someone who witnesses a good magic trick. Magic is one of the oldest and most consistently popular genres of theatrical performance.
00:02:25:11 - 00:02:28:02
Abigail Acton
Why do you think that is? Why do we enjoy being baffled?
00:02:28:06 - 00:02:51:22
Jason Leddington
It's a really great question, and I think it's it goes right to the heart of of my project, which really began with my own experience performing magic and noticing that some people really love it and others really hate it. And to be fair, most people really love it. But the range of reactions you get to a strong magic trick are pretty incredible.
00:02:51:24 - 00:03:22:03
Jason Leddington
And they're also, often strongly emotional. So the question just arose, like, why are people attracted to this? And on the usual story, of course people are attracted to things that they don't understand, especially things that they have no hope of understanding. But precisely the point of magic is to provide us with experiences that if the magic is very good, we have no hope of making sense of either now or at any point in the future.
00:03:22:05 - 00:03:48:12
Jason Leddington
So the question that I really want to explore then is why would anyone want to see a good magic show? I think that understanding this reveals something not only about magic, but about the human mind. In particular, I think it highlights something that every scientist and scholar knows, if only implicitly, namely, that the energy that drives inquiry is not the pleasure we take in final explanations, but the energy and excitement of curiosity.
00:03:48:14 - 00:03:49:05
Jason Leddington
Itself.
00:03:49:11 - 00:04:04:22
Abigail Acton
That's really very interesting. And you mentioned curiosity. What role do you feel that plays? Do you think it's the curiosity that actually subdues the possible feeling of resentment, of being baffled? Do you think that this curiosity overcomes that feeling of resentment in some people or most people?
00:04:04:24 - 00:04:36:23
Jason Leddington
I think that curiosity is a pleasant affective experience. And one of the interesting things about, recent work on curiosity and one of the things that my project highlights is that curiosity has traditionally been conceived merely as a kind of intellectual condition. And recent work has highlighted the emotional and affective, dimensions of curiosity. And this really comes out in the experience of magic.
00:04:36:23 - 00:05:04:12
Jason Leddington
So let's think a little bit about how this works in the case of encountering a magic trick. So normally when you walk around the world, you don't understand everything you see, but everything fits together intuitively. The world works according to pretty much your set of intuitive expectations. When you encounter a magic trick, you encounter what I like to call an experiential anomaly, something that just disrupts your ordinary, intuitive understanding of how the world works.
00:05:04:14 - 00:05:34:00
Jason Leddington
And outside of a theatrical context that could be threatening, quite unpleasant. It could prompt you to try to revise, say, physical theory. But in a theatrical context, this is a place where you can actually enjoy having your curiosity stimulated without the burden of trying to satisfy it. So what I think that goes on in magic performance, and why some people really enjoy it, is that they enjoy having their curiosity stimulated.
00:05:34:00 - 00:06:03:11
Jason Leddington
They don't mind the, experience of ignorance because they understand this is a theatrical context and not an ordinary, everyday one where their epistemic status or standing is actually threatened by what they're experiencing. So taking that into account, they can now actually enjoy the magic trick, as in the end, ideally a kind of endless source of curiosity and one stimulation and wonder, right?
00:06:03:15 - 00:06:22:12
Jason Leddington
So it's something that even even long after that, people have experienced a magic trick. They can think back on it and have their curiosity once again stimulated. This is one of the reasons why you'll encounter people who will tell you about magic tricks they experienced 50 years ago, and related in detail precisely because that experiential anomaly has stuck with them.
00:06:22:12 - 00:06:42:18
Jason Leddington
It stimulates the curiosity they've been able to carry it with them and continue to enjoy it, even over a long period of time. I think other people don't get, as it were, the theatrical context. Take the magic trick too seriously, not as a form of play, and so they experience it as a form of epistemic threat or challenge.
00:06:42:18 - 00:06:47:23
Abigail Acton
Yeah, and where do the inexplicable, any unobservable overlap in our thought processes, do you think?
00:06:48:00 - 00:07:15:15
Jason Leddington
So I think this is really interesting actually. Right. So suppose that, you, encountered a magic performance and, you took it seriously as an object of scientific investigation. And on investigating it, you discovered that there were no methods that we could make sense of for, say, how this apparent telekinesis took place. So you decided. Well, actually, this isn't a magic trick at all.
00:07:15:15 - 00:07:43:19
Jason Leddington
This is real telekinesis. In other words, suppose magic was real. If magic was real, there would be a science of it, and the science of it would potentially involve postulating on observables. So if telekinesis was something that was real, then we'd have to potentially postulate unobservable entities to explain how our minds can interact with matter at a distance.
00:07:43:21 - 00:07:52:05
Jason Leddington
So the postulation of observables is part of explaining observable things we can't otherwise make sense of.
00:07:52:07 - 00:07:57:19
Abigail Acton
Absolutely. Okay. That's fascinating. Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions they'd like to put to Jason?
00:07:57:21 - 00:08:00:09
Michela Massimi
Yes, I would like to ask Jason the following question.
00:08:00:10 - 00:08:01:21
Abigail Acton
Certainly, Michaela.
00:08:01:23 - 00:08:14:22
Michela Massimi
How do you see the relation between that magic and what we can see? And in particular at where does the invisible world end, being the remnant of magic and becomes the remnant of science?
00:08:14:24 - 00:08:45:14
Jason Leddington
I think I want to say that the invisible world is always the realm of science, and that the realm of magic is the space of play, as it were. And when it is no longer a space of play, that's when it becomes the realm of science. So, a good friend of mine and, an important magician and essayist, Jamie and Swiss describes magic as a burlesque of science.
00:08:45:16 - 00:09:08:05
Jason Leddington
So it's not that I think of the realm of magic as, say, the realm of Harry Potter. Over here, alongside the world of science. Over here. It's rather that magic as an art form plays with the very same types of impulses and approaches to the world that we engage with in a serious way when we do science.
00:09:08:07 - 00:09:11:01
Abigail Acton
Does anyone else have any questions for Jason?
00:09:11:03 - 00:09:12:08
Jan Sprenger
Yes, I would, yes.
00:09:12:13 - 00:09:12:21
Abigail Acton
Go ahead.
00:09:12:24 - 00:09:21:04
Jan Sprenger
Thank you very much. So, I'm curious what distinguishes this from a cognitive point of view? A good magic trick from a bad magic trick.
00:09:21:06 - 00:09:50:05
Jason Leddington
It's a terrific question. And, I'll start with a famous quote. Or a famous idea from from, then, a great, late, magician, Simon Aaronson, which is that he says that there's a world of difference between not knowing how something is done and knowing that something can't be done. So when you experience a magic trick, if you can walk away from it saying, yeah, it could have been wires, it could have been magnets.
00:09:50:10 - 00:10:17:03
Jason Leddington
It could have been a trick deck or a gimmicked coin. Then the magic trick isn't successful. It's true. You're still in a position of ignorance, but you have candidate explanations for what you witnessed. The job of the magician is to erase all candidate explanations in your mind and leave you completely baffled. So cognitively, the position you should be in is one of what Socrates and Plato would have called aporia.
00:10:17:05 - 00:10:26:06
Jason Leddington
Total speechlessness. You no longer know what to say. You know it's a trick, but you don't see how it could be because you have no candidate explanations.
00:10:26:08 - 00:10:45:08
Abigail Acton
And Michela, I mean, if we think about the work that that you've been doing. So I'm going to turn to you, you were exploring how our notion of the word realism relates to experimental work and perspectives in science. And what drew you to the area of, of, realism as it relates to experimental work? And why do you feel that there was something important to acknowledge?
00:10:45:10 - 00:11:07:15
Michela Massimi
I've always been fascinated by questions about realism in science, in the sense that I'm interested in questions about what is real and how do we go about finding out about what is real. And one of the problems in philosophy of science is that often if we look back at the history of science, we find out that the best theory is that we used to believe to be true in the past, set them out to be false.
00:11:07:15 - 00:11:26:11
Michela Massimi
So we used to believe in the ether and we used to believe in caloric. We still believe in phlogiston and lots of other stuff, but that turned out to be false. So the question that really guided my project was not so much whether science can deliver a true story about nature. I think that the answer is yes. That's why it's called perspectival realism.
00:11:26:13 - 00:11:56:06
Michela Massimi
But a question is how we go about finding out what is real. So I was interested in how particle physicists at CERN, for example, go about finding out new particles that, to the best of our knowledge, we believe must be real, not for which we, found any evidence yet. And what kind of models, what kind of statistical methods, what kind of data they use to explore what we haven't explored yet, to find out what's in Savable?
00:11:56:08 - 00:11:58:09
Abigail Acton
Sure. And did you speak with many?
00:11:58:11 - 00:12:32:06
Michela Massimi
Yes I did. So we went to CERN with my postdoc, my future student, and, we had the chance to talk to both theoretical physicists and experimental physicists and working at both the Atlas and CMS experiments, which are some of the. But the two biggest experiments on. And ask them questions about their methodology, share their views and getting to know more about the methods and methodologies and, and modeling practices that they use, which was really fascinating because informed the result of the project.
00:12:32:08 - 00:12:40:19
Abigail Acton
And, what are the things with regards to a historical perspective did you feel was important to uncover and discuss in your project?
00:12:40:21 - 00:13:03:19
Michela Massimi
So there isn't just a contemporary, element to the project, a perspective of realism. Amazing just about how contemporary physicists at CERN or the Dark Energy Survey, which was the other big communities that we work with in cosmology, are currently looking for, evidence for unobservable entities, like candidate particles for dark matter, for example, or what?
00:13:03:20 - 00:13:22:20
Michela Massimi
What is dark energy? We were also interested in the historical aspect of this question, namely how communities of the past went about, finding out new entities and exploring, new ones that were, up to the point not known. No, that's very interesting.
00:13:22:20 - 00:13:32:08
Abigail Acton
Michaela. And what drew you to the area of perspectival realism? What did you understand by the meaning of what you want to set out by the meaning of the word perspectival?
00:13:32:10 - 00:13:56:02
Michela Massimi
So the word perspectival realism really wants to capture this idea that there is a plurality of scientific perspective that matters to science and to scientific knowledge, and how we produce scientific knowledge. So it's a way of responding to traditional a realist field have portrayed realism as a god side view of nature, and a way of the discovering the profoundly social and collaborative nature of scientific knowledge.
00:13:56:04 - 00:14:20:07
Michela Massimi
But at the center stage, a really struggling, culturally situated epistemic communities, be they particle physicists in contemporary science or Victorian physicists there in Cambridge. So there is an important historical component, not just the contemporary one. In this project, we spent effectively two years doing, field work with physicists at CERN and the cosmologists for the Dark Energy Survey.
00:14:20:07 - 00:14:45:17
Michela Massimi
But then we spent lots of solid two years doing more historical research on these sort of science. And that's because, again, if you look back at the history of science very often, the way we have asked the question about realism goes from theory to unobservable entities, where the theories of the past, true or false, what happens about those, observable objects so that they postulated and that turned out to be false?
00:14:45:19 - 00:15:11:22
Michela Massimi
But if you look more closely at the history of science, what we're missing is an important bottom up approach, how scientists went from specific data to phenomena and from phenomena to natural kinds, even if the model that sometimes false beliefs about this object. So that's the case with Jay Thompson, who has gone down in history as the discoverer of the electron.
00:15:11:24 - 00:15:34:23
Michela Massimi
But effectively had all sorts of false belief about that particle, which you called the corpuscle at the time, because the term monitoring was used to indicate, a particular view about those objects that were embedded into their theory. So what did it also go? They wanted to set the rules and model a robust phenomenon. That was the bending of cathode rays.
00:15:34:23 - 00:15:57:15
Michela Massimi
This experiment that they ran in Cambridge in 1897 using a glass tube, but with vacuum inside, and it was able to observe how this fluorescence was able to be bent in the presence of an electrical magnetic field, and it was able to make an inference from that to the existence of a particle. They must have had a negative charge and must have been relatively small.
00:15:57:15 - 00:16:19:14
Michela Massimi
The first subatomic particle to be discovered. So it's the type of realism is really a way of approaching realism, not necessarily from theories to an observable entities that model now from the data to the phenomena to the natural kinds, in a way that is sensitive to the historical nuances of communities that a particular time.
00:16:19:16 - 00:16:39:00
Abigail Acton
Okay. That's great. Okay. And in the knowledge and the understanding that certain ideas gained traction, other ideas fall by the wayside, but that it's a community of people not necessarily directly working together, that build, knowledge essentially. What would you wished that we should reconsider in the light of your findings?
00:16:39:02 - 00:17:01:02
Michela Massimi
So there are three things that I really wish we could reconsider. So the first is really a rediscovery of, the role of local knowledge and what sometimes I call as the artisanal knowledge that was really instrumental to scientific knowledge production. We remember Maxwell, we remember Einstein, remember Thomson, but we don't remember the people that made those discoveries possible.
00:17:01:07 - 00:17:24:13
Michela Massimi
So Johnson had a professionally trained glassblower over at the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge, whose name was Ebenezer Everett. And, and that artisanal moment was instrumental, instrumental at the time for, the very possibility of doing electrical researches of the type that Thomas was doing. So perspectival realism is a way of really being sensitive to those historical nuances.
00:17:24:15 - 00:17:53:22
Michela Massimi
The second is a change in the way we approach the metaphysics of nature. So what I mentioned is change from the top down view theories 20 to a bottom up view from data, a phenomena of multiple kinds. And the third is changing attitudes towards why we care so much about science. And I think we care so much about science, not so much because, science is necessarily delivering some kind of certainty or objective.
00:17:53:22 - 00:18:23:11
Michela Massimi
And finally, much about the way will this. But because there is something incredible about how finite human beings like casts at the resources at each historical point in time to make reliable inferences over time. And I think it's it's a way of giving credit to those epistemic communities over time that no matter what false belief the head, they were nonetheless able to make advancement in our knowledge of the world.
00:18:23:13 - 00:18:34:21
Abigail Acton
Yeah, contributing to, to an overall jigsaw puzzle almost, I think. Yeah, yeah. Does anybody have any questions for Michaela? Yeah. Jason, please go ahead.
00:18:34:23 - 00:19:10:19
Jason Leddington
It's it's really interesting and I'm wondering a bit about how it is that, scientific explanations or pseudo scientific connections get distinguished. How types of explanations or phenomena get discredited on your model. So I'm thinking in particular here from the perspective of, of the magician. Magicians were in the late 19th century became, important for debunking, spiritualist phenomena, pseudo psychic phenomena.
00:19:10:19 - 00:19:23:08
Jason Leddington
And that's continued throughout the 20th century. And so we have paranormal psychology developing in the early 20th century. And that gets discredited. How does that work on your model?
00:19:23:10 - 00:19:54:09
Michela Massimi
Well, that's that's an excellent question. And a tricky one, too, because it takes us where do they have the what is science and the demarcation problem? In a way, I'm operating with a very generous notion of a scientific perspective as the historical and cultural embedded scientific practice of the community. One thing I do in the book and in my work is I explicitly say, for example, that what I really meant was into the practice is the experimental theoretical modeling resources available at the time to make those inferences.
00:19:54:09 - 00:20:20:00
Michela Massimi
And so, for example, I would then include in the the facially prospective metaphysical beliefs that people might have at the time, because although this belief played an absolutely key role in, for example, whether or not the community accepted some theories at the time, what the notion of scientific perspective does is to provide us with a tool for understanding the reliability of the inferences that we draw.
00:20:20:02 - 00:20:39:07
Michela Massimi
So I'm trying to make that line, if you like, in the way I define the notion of a scientific perspective. But also I see pluralism in science. This plurality of perspectives. There isn't just one perspective at one time. There's a plurality of perspective at any one time. And I see that pluralism as having a sort of self refining role.
00:20:39:09 - 00:21:00:03
Michela Massimi
It is because we have that plurality of perspective that we can have a robust, assertive acknowledge that improves and becomes more reliable over time. So in the case of digital, so they are absolutely right. I mean, the Victorian Cambridge of the time was imbued with spiritualist beliefs about the ether and, and and all sorts of paranormal phenomena.
00:21:00:03 - 00:21:33:06
Michela Massimi
Right. It's it's a sort of area which is students of science obviously have done a lot of important research. I guess the question that matters to me from a kind of epistemologies science point of view is what is it that digital single day writing is inferences, and how can we bring other perspectives? For example, the perspective of people working in electrochemistry or, people that were working at the time in that, quantum theory with Max Planck to bear on the work that J.J. Thomson was doing.
00:21:33:06 - 00:21:39:15
Michela Massimi
And how is it that this intersection of scientific perspective eventually led to the inferences that we did produce?
00:21:39:17 - 00:22:02:08
Jason Leddington
Do you think of, say, the Cambridge, glassblower or, say, you know, Houdini's work in debunking pseudo psychics? Are they contributing to the constitution of scientific perspectives in your sense, or are they external to that process? They're they're important, but they're not actually, as it were, part of the scientific process per se.
00:22:02:10 - 00:22:27:10
Michela Massimi
So glassblowers or, you know, beekeepers or any kind of artisanal knowledge that is instrumental to, producing that kind of knowledge in the sense that we need to cut all the way to them in the first instance to be able to run the debate on some experiments, both from a scientific perspective. Now, what kind of beliefs say, due to Thompson as a person, human beings at the time?
00:22:27:10 - 00:22:48:02
Michela Massimi
What about the electron? I mean, his personal beliefs, his metaphysical beliefs and so forth? That's not a path. So listen to the perspective as a as I intend. So, for example, he believed that, you know, the outermost sort of plumb good things where B could pass on as a call that was distributed inside the mostly positive charge.
00:22:48:02 - 00:23:15:12
Michela Massimi
So I thought that, you know, we need to wait rather for the at least experiment to have the smaller model of the atoms so that, JJ Thompson, they were operating with a completely different model. So, yeah, all sorts of beliefs that we nowadays would regard that force. But when you go it right, is the kind of inference I made about the existence of the charge of the mass ratio of the particle that must have been very small subatomic particle, and with the negative charge.
00:23:15:12 - 00:23:33:04
Michela Massimi
And to do that, Ebenezer the the official glassblower at the Cavendish lab, it was an instrumental part of that story. So I would like to give credit to those kind of communities of artisanal knowledge that provided the technological resources for making that possible.
00:23:33:06 - 00:23:41:17
Abigail Acton
It's nice to have the man's name so clearly set out. He's like a forgotten name in science. Now we know the name Ebenezer Everett not want to be forgotten.
00:23:41:19 - 00:23:44:08
Michela Massimi
Which is a quite, a quite remarkable name.
00:23:44:10 - 00:23:48:01
Abigail Acton
For a kind of a lost figure. Jason. Sorry. Yeah. Do you have something else you want?
00:23:48:01 - 00:24:19:10
Jason Leddington
Classic. Quick follow up there. Yeah. So, I guess I'm wondering if your view involves acknowledging their importance for the scientific process, which seems pretty uncontroversial, or if it involves, breaking down in some significa way the boundaries between scientific activity and so-called nonscientific activities. So I guess my question is, is really should we think of the glassblower as in some way a scientist?
00:24:19:12 - 00:24:49:02
Michela Massimi
Yeah. Going back to he said, I, I think George Stone. So I call them epistemic communities, not scientists, partially because the farmer, you know, scientist is a very late term. And that was really introduced. I think, at the end, you know, the 19th century, if I remember correctly. And a better, better word for it is epistemic communities, communities of epistemic agents, agents that are capable of producing and contributing to the production of scientific knowledge.
00:24:49:02 - 00:25:08:00
Michela Massimi
So, yeah, so we see that a benefit that it glassblowers people with artisanal practices were instrumental to those, advancement as epistemic communities, the way historically situated, they use the tools of the time, and they were an integral part of this knowledge production.
00:25:08:02 - 00:25:10:08
Abigail Acton
So it's it's a wider picture. It's a it's a more globe.
00:25:10:09 - 00:25:11:07
Michela Massimi
Yes. Yeah.
00:25:11:08 - 00:25:36:01
Abigail Acton
It's a more globetrotter. And that merging of margins, I think also in a way feeds into the idea of, of trust a little. Jan I'd like to bring you in here, please, if I may, the objectivity project clue's in the name looked into whether, by building up the importance of objectivity as a feature of research, we've set up a false dichotomy between objective and subjective analysis.
00:25:36:03 - 00:25:59:19
Abigail Acton
And in fact, whether this is something researchers should be focused on. I'd like to explore that concept with you, and I'd also like to consider, bearing in mind our recent conversations we've been having the notion of trust and mckellar's idea of plurality that leads to a sensation of trust, the feeling that thoughts and ideas refined by various thinkers, that that builds into the notion of trust.
00:25:59:24 - 00:26:16:13
Abigail Acton
So could you tell me a little bit about, your your concept in the, in the Objectivity Project? It sounds positively heretical to say that, scientific research shouldn't be rigorously objective. Why did you feel the need to challenge that assumption?
00:26:16:15 - 00:26:52:00
Jan Sprenger
Well, first of all, I think that the label objective raises to high expectations. So it highlights that science is essentially fallible. And of course, scientists more often. Right, that it's not. And it's maybe our most reliable source of knowledge. But mistakes to happen or sometimes just bad luck in science and, putting scientists, putting the objective label on, scientific knowledge makes it sound as if it was certified infallible by knowledge, which then makes it very hard to explain why failures to happen.
00:26:52:02 - 00:27:21:17
Jan Sprenger
And, it makes it. And there are easy game for science skeptics like the, former president of the United States, Donald Trump, and, to give you an example. So for in science, the concept of statistical significance, which is a quite technical concept, which I won't explain, has often been used to quantify knowledge as objective, but, independent of its technical meaning, it does not give the, answer to questions.
00:27:21:19 - 00:27:49:17
Jan Sprenger
Does this effect, which we observe, really make a practical difference? Is it useful for solving our problems? And I think if you want to answer this question, the perspective switch market, and mentioned so the perspectives of different communities, different research traditions have to be taken into account. And I am using, let's say, I mean, let's say I'm, working on a quite similar project like McKenna in the realm of statistical inference, in particular.
00:27:49:19 - 00:28:13:11
Abigail Acton
Okay. This is a closed book to me, and I'm absolutely fascinated by this. I mean, if I think of the word statistics to me, I mean, I know they can be interpreted and they can be manipulated, but the best statistics themselves, to me, that sounds like that's something factual. That's that's not subjective or objective. Tell me a little bit more about the notion of subjectivity and statistics, because to me that seems a little bit of an an interesting combination of words.
00:28:13:13 - 00:28:42:00
Jan Sprenger
Where there is a strong research tradition in statistics, which is tried to clean statistics of all explicit, subjective elements to the extent that a scientist's subjective, opinion or the particular theoretical framework in which he or she is working are effecting the, statistical inference, the inference becomes invalid or less trust Rossi than an inference, which does not make reference to such theoretical background.
00:28:42:00 - 00:28:44:06
Jan Sprenger
For example, to such, let's say, subjective elements.
00:28:44:08 - 00:28:47:16
Abigail Acton
And what was the objectivity project setting out to do in relation to that?
00:28:47:18 - 00:29:12:19
Jan Sprenger
Well, we are trying to, argue that, the so called subjective inference, which is in the realm of statistics, often associated with the Bayesian, with Bayesian inference, can actually, do the job which most people and most users of science would expect from the label of objective. It can help to, provide reliable, inferences. It makes the subjective elements explicit.
00:29:12:19 - 00:29:36:04
Jan Sprenger
So if you want to criticize an inference, if you don't agree with the results, you know, let's say you can also, track the disagreement to the sources. Right. And I think it's very important to be transparent about what is, let's say, subjective or perspective to just make errors. Trump's in an inference. And what is, for example, just mathematics.
00:29:36:06 - 00:29:51:14
Jan Sprenger
And I think only if you make these, points explicit, we will be able to appreciate, the degree to which inferences can be shared among all science users or more members of society, and to which extent there is room for genuine and rational disagreement.
00:29:51:19 - 00:30:17:20
Abigail Acton
So are you saying, then, that the subjective is is inherent? Essentially, and by not acknowledging that, we remove the ability to to discuss it and to discuss its importance and to discuss its impact on the interpretation of the statistics involved. Exactly right. And I guess then tell me a little bit more about your theories with regards to trust and the vital necessity of maintaining public trust in in scientific output.
00:30:18:01 - 00:30:19:08
Abigail Acton
How does this play in with that?
00:30:19:10 - 00:30:52:01
Jan Sprenger
Now, in the last year, we have seen, especially in the social science, a so-called replication crisis, which means if there has been a systematic project to replicate experimental findings from various areas of social science, psychology in particular, and, what this systematic replications, which has been done by other research teams and by the original researchers, if you notice that very often the, what has been statistically significant in the original experiment is not significant anymore.
00:30:52:03 - 00:31:21:10
Jan Sprenger
The effect sizes are much lower. And so this is, of course, shake at the trust and science. And one of the causes of the replication crisis is, in my view, as a philosopher of science. Is that or, evaluating whether an effect is real. People are using the wrong standards standards, which has been, shaped by this, in my view, mistaken conception of scientific objectivity.
00:31:21:12 - 00:31:42:09
Jan Sprenger
And we are trying to improve, this and to help scientists and science us by developing better methods for scientific inference and in particular, but I'm arguing that scientists don't be, don't have to be afraid of explicit subjective elements in their inferences. It's good to have them, and it's good to make them explicit.
00:31:42:09 - 00:31:45:03
Abigail Acton
And I that's I was I was about to say, the key word there is explicit.
00:31:45:09 - 00:32:12:16
Jan Sprenger
Exactly. So let's say statistically you can the various techniques for how you can, encode your, prior knowledge or your, theoretical expectations and of course, about these things. Scientists often disagree, but let's say a subjective statistical framework, sketch them, let's say, the opportunity to see you, let's say, how are these different expectations are compatible with the, data, which, let's say so objective, unmistakably objective, trained.
00:32:12:16 - 00:32:13:10
Jan Sprenger
For example.
00:32:13:12 - 00:32:36:07
Abigail Acton
Can you give me a bit of an example? I mean, could you what sort of domain you mentioned sort of psychology generally, but could could you give me an example of, of where this absolute overriding desire to be objective at all costs actually undermines the, the validity of the results or our interpretation of those results at least. Do you understand my question there also?
00:32:36:08 - 00:32:58:04
Jan Sprenger
Yes. There are some cases in medicine, for example, where of course effect size. So let's say it does not only make some difference, which we can tell from no difference at all, but does it make a substantial difference is to help patients to recover. It's quite important. And often let's say the traditional statistical frameworks answer the wrong question.
00:32:58:06 - 00:33:17:20
Jan Sprenger
Namely, it's not an effect at all. Or can we tell with some certainty that the effect is not equal to zero? But of course, what scientists want to know and or patients want to know, they don't just want to know, is that these effects have a certain practical significance. And these questions are much easier to answer if you, work with, explicit, subjective, assumptions.
00:33:18:01 - 00:33:18:21
Jan Sprenger
Much easier to model.
00:33:19:02 - 00:33:29:03
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah. That's excellent. Thank you. That makes it much clearer indeed. Work. But how and how? Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Michaela, would you have any questions that you would like to ask Jan? Yes.
00:33:29:05 - 00:33:57:01
Michela Massimi
For my work, purpose that there were really similar. One thing we did, wasn't just to work with physicists at CERN, but also with cosmologist involved in the Dark Energy Survey, which was, served by one of the largest, observational cosmology survey to find evidence for the existence of dark energy. Bayesianism is one of the most the ubiquitous statistical inference is used by cosmologists today.
00:33:57:03 - 00:34:08:00
Michela Massimi
So I just would like you to. Yeah, to to say something about how your work in your research, may be important, relevant for, cosmology and for other areas of research.
00:34:08:03 - 00:34:14:19
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Before you answer, Michael, could I just, could I ask you also to give a little bit of explanation about what Bayesianism means?
00:34:14:21 - 00:34:54:06
Jan Sprenger
Bayesianism, or Bayesian inference is a school of, statistical reason or statistical inference based on the idea that you start out with a representation of our subjective theoretical knowledge or expectations, and that this representation of our knowledge is changed as we come to know new things, as we conduct experiments and, observe data. And, there's a particular mathematical, formula describing this, change of our beliefs, which is quite, this Bayes theorem.
00:34:54:08 - 00:35:23:13
Jan Sprenger
And, it is indeed, I think, the most successful, attempt of making subjective elements in the statistics explicit. And that's why I'm also advocating its use a lot. And it's the cosmologists. Cosmologists are already on board. Then. Good for them. I think not using them will actually, lead us to, an overestimation of, what we actually know.
00:35:23:15 - 00:35:30:15
Jan Sprenger
As opposed to, how many of our findings actually actually truthful and trustworthy.
00:35:30:17 - 00:35:35:23
Abigail Acton
Right. So it's almost like a, a way of writing in transparency at source.
00:35:36:00 - 00:35:36:16
Jan Sprenger
Yes.
00:35:36:18 - 00:35:38:06
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Very interesting.
00:35:38:10 - 00:36:19:14
Jan Sprenger
That's excellent. I do think that also for the communication of scientific, results, it is much better to instead of p values which nobody understands. So these are the so called statistical significance level. Another name for them is p values. Instead of this very arcane and often interpreted quantities, it is much better, to use Bayes factors, which is basically explain how much, the actual evidence or the results of a particular experiment would shift your, beliefs in favor of a particular hypothesis, because this is something that also ordinary people can relate to much better with this evidence, really shift my beliefs.
00:36:19:16 - 00:36:22:16
Jan Sprenger
And if so, by, by which degree?
00:36:22:20 - 00:36:47:19
Abigail Acton
Very good. Very, very good. That's all been very interesting. Thank you very much. I found that a stimulating episode of this, cool discovery podcast. I think we come away with the idea that that the boundaries are a little bit more blurred between between what we can know and what we can assume and guess and how we go about establishing the unknown and how we acknowledge that we might be being swayed.
00:36:48:00 - 00:36:50:23
Abigail Acton
I think this has all been fascinating. Thank you very much for joining me today.
00:36:51:01 - 00:36:53:00
Jason Leddington
Thank you. It's been super interesting.
00:36:53:02 - 00:36:58:23
Abigail Acton
It has been, hasn't it. Excellent. Well, I wish you all the very best in all the work that you're doing. Thank you for your time.
00:36:59:01 - 00:37:01:23
Michela Massimi
Thank you. Thank you very much again. Thank you everyone. Thank you.
00:37:02:00 - 00:37:03:03
Jason Leddington
Again. Thanks, Abigail.
00:37:03:08 - 00:37:05:21
Jan Sprenger
Bye bye.
00:37:05:23 - 00:37:27:22
Abigail Acton
Are you interested in what other EU funded projects are doing in the field of philosophy? Take a look at the special section from Socrates to Modern Science New Perspectives in European Philosophy of issue 105 of the research EU magazine, available on the court's website, called es.europa.eu. The Cordis website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded by the horizon 2020 program.
00:37:27:24 - 00:37:49:17
Abigail Acton
Find daily news articles and interviews with researchers working in a very broad range of domains, from archeology to zoology. Results packs drill down deeper, gathering groups of projects by subject area, and the magazine offers insights into a different subject every month in its special section. Maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain.
00:37:49:19 - 00:38:06:24
Abigail Acton
So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. So drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu. Until next time.
From rabbits plucked out of hats to dark matter, how do we comprehend the inexplicable or the unobservable? What do particle physicists and a magician’s audience have in common? Do we enjoy being baffled? If so, why? What pushes us to seek to understand? Is objectivity so vital in scientific observation and is subjectivity really its negation – or is the relationship between the two more subtle? As one of our guests puts it: “The energy that drives inquiry is not the pleasure we take in final explanations, but the energy and excitement of curiosity itself.” To find out more about the importance of the communities that foster scientific discoveries and whether objectivity is all it’s cracked up to be, we hear from: Jason Leddington, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, whose book on the philosophy of magic and other arts of impossibility is under contract with MIT Press. He was the principal investigator on the PhiloMagic project. Michela Massimi, Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. Massimi was the coordinator of the Perspectival Realism project and the author of Perspectival Realism, which will come out in January 2022 published by Oxford University Press. And Jan Sprenger, a professor at the Centre for Logic, Language and Cognition at the University of Turin who was the principal investigator on the Objectivity project.
Happy to hear from you!
If you have any feedback, we’re always happy to hear from you! Send us any comments, questions or suggestions to the usual email address, editorial@cordis.europa.eu.
Keywords
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, philosophy, curiosity, communities, objectivity, magic, perspectival