My Sister's Daughter, Hannah, Sings the ABCs.

My father bought this neat new hand-held video thing. Now this opens up all sorts of possibilities!!!!

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What is Science?

[sent to analytic in response to the question, "what is the proper definition of science?"]
 
... it depends upon whether you mean "science" to be a title, a social club, a behavior, or a state of affairs for propositions (certainty) -- or some complicated mixture of all of these things. (If you do intend a recipe, beware that cooking has variation).

[don't know if you can see this with proper formatting, but here are some remarks from an old paper of mine]:
_________________________________________________________________________

1.0.          What is Science?
1.1.                     People may mean different things when they use the word “science.”
1.1.1.      Some may merely mean a group of academic scholars with a shared interest in a given subject and a professional regimentation. Science as “organized scholarly professionalism.” With this way of speaking one might say that any organized department in a college or university today is a “science.” Art appreciation is a sort of “science” in this way of talking. The people who practice art appreciation are serious about what they do, they teach certain conventions to others, develop and carry on “knowledge,” write about what me might call “disciplinary matters,” and so forth. In this sense of talking, law is also a science. So is communications. So is theater.
1.1.1.1.              But astrology, for example, is not.  It cannot be a science according to this vernacular because the academy has not christened it. Same with religion (although not religious studies). Were these pursuits to gain membership in academia – and were students to major and enroll in these subjects – then, they, too, would be “science” according to this way of speaking.    
1.1.2.      Others may mean it to refer to those who study some phenomena in the external world. Hence, mathematics or logic would not be a “science” according to this way of talking. Only the data-gatherers and world-watchers would count. Only empirical pursuits would quality. (Of course, there would be debate about what is “empirical”).
1.1.3.      Others may say that science is the study of only natural phenomena in the external world, which means that subjects like geology, chemistry, physics, anatomy, biology, are in, but subjects such as economics, sociology, psychology, etc., are not counted. Indeed, there is the need to say of these latter pursuits that they are “social science.” This grammar suggests something adjective, which is an indication that behavioral sciences are not exemplars of the idea. (Similar ideas come from the expression “hard” or “soft” science, or natural science).
1.1.4.      Still others may attempt to define science according to a specific methodological criterion. Science is, e.g., the process of falsifying empirical hypotheses. Note that this suggests science is a behavior, not a subject. It is an activity. Presumably, anyone could do science so long as they behaved properly.
1.1.4.1.              Let us imagine a creation scientist who spent productive years falsifying certain evolutionary hypotheses. As to this behavior, we would have to say it was “scientific,” although we might not say that other aspects of the behavior – e.g., obstinately believing in a created world – would count as “science.” (This would be because the latter behavior was not an attempt to falsify an empirical hypothesis). Hence, if science is a behavior, any social group can both engage and not engage in it when furthering the goals of the group.
1.2.                       My Intentions.—
1.2.1.      It is not my intention in these remarks to declare what “science” is. Philosophers who seek to turn semantics into legalisms do not understand what philosophy is. I want to do something different. All I really want to do is to identify a particular kind of behavior that scholars who are often said to be “scientists” engage in. When I identify this behavior, X, I will say that “science engages in X,” but what is meant is only that “a way of talking exists such that a distinct group of scholars, Y, called ‘scientists,’ engage in X.”  It would not be a proper response to say of this premise, “political science doesn’t do this, and they are also considered a ‘science,’ too.”  This objection plays a language game. It misunderstands what is said.
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
New Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860

________________________________
From: gerardoprim
To: analytic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2008 7:07:50 PM
Subject: [analytic] Is falsability enough for the demarcation of science?

Hello, I'd like to know what do you think about the demarcation of
science vs nonscience. Is falsability a necessary condition? Is it a
sufficient condition? What are the other relevant criteria? Or should
we abandon the goal of demarcation?

Best Regards,
Gerardo.

The Illogic of Median Justices?

[sent to law and courts regarding, cough, "median justices."] 
 

... one can only be a "median justice" if what you are counting is commensurable. Let's do it this way: assume a hypothetical Court with 9 members. The appeal is from a trial court sentence of 5 years for a first time marijuana user. In this hypothetical world, 5 justices vote to overturn the conviction, 4 vote not to.  So the good guys win. Let's say the rationalizations are as follows:

Justice-A: 5 years is too much for a first time marijuana user ("cruel punishment")
Justice-B: 4 years is too much for a first time marijuana user ("cruel punishment")
Justice-C: 3 years is too much for a first time marijuana user ("cruel punishment")
Justice-D: 2 years is too much for a first time marijuana user ("cruel punishment")
Justice-E: the jury was improperly instructed ("jury violation")

Justices-F: I don't count my views on severity because trial judges should have discretion in sentencing ("higher principle")    
Justice-G: I don't count my views on severity because trial judges should have discretion in sentencing ("higher principle")
Justice-H: I don't count my views on severity because trial judges should have discretion in sentencing ("higher principle")
Justice-I: I don't count my views on severity because trial judges should have discretion in sentencing ("higher principle")

One assumes that in this situation, there should be no precedent whatsoever, and that the rule should apply only to the parties. I had always thought this was the case and that Marks was not saying otherwise. I don't see how you can have a rule of law without five heads on board for something other than the outcome. 

The only people who are proximate to each other in this example are A-D. That is the only group for which you can apply median logic. The others are theoretically proximate to views only concerning the issue that they are expressing. (F through I may or may not agree with A through D's points). Of course, on the issue of whether the higher principle should apply here, I suppose F - I are proximate to A-D. But one could construct another hypothetical where they are not.

Proximity logic only works if you have a natural issue spectrum. If you have either/or legal rules and people applying different issues to the same controversy, you can throw out unidimentional logic. I have never understood, frankly, the logic of "counting" these things anyway.  
  
Regards.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
New Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860

Thoughts on "Scholarship"

I absolutely detest writing for journals because it is as if you have to sound like you are writing for a magazine. You cannot be frank. You cannot simply be demonstrative, as one might be in, say, mathematics. You have to “compose” the idea. You have to do, intellectually, something similar to what television shows do to make the presentation interesting. In short, what you have to do is make your thoughts into a good piece of journalism –- showing why the problem is interesting, what others have said, what you say and why it is helpful. Honestly, a better program would simply be to have the person’s thought following his frank remarks as to why they are offered. All of the rest of it is just fluff, pomp and dress – and it is so meaninglessly tedious in the labor it requests. Some of it, also, is showing off. “I read this and that."

The Legality of Constitutional Conventions

[sent to conlaw prof. We are discussing whether the states who ratified the US constitution violated their own state constitutions when doing so]  

... yes, but no such convention could have been authorized except by a statute. And no statute is authorized except by a constitution. And no statute can violate the constitution. And that constitution presumably has a provision for amending it. This is the same argument that is used against the Articles of Confederation, only it is more wisely directed at the government possessing sovereignty (the states). Think about it. You have a state government that is duly constituted and given the power to govern citizens. It does not share that power with any other state. Now, one day, James Madison comes along and that state government is passing a law to set up a ratifying convention to, in effect, share sovereignty. Shouldn't they have amended their own constitution to allow this first (or do it concurrently)?  Look at it this way: could they have set up a convention to take away the right to speech, juries or property? It seems to me if they were going
to do something that took away from or altered the state constitution, the only legal procedure would be something in the nature of an amendment.

Now, I realize that constitutions were new and that many in the legal culture thought that both provisions for amendments as well as Bills of Rights were not needed. If you are using a natural law model, then anytime you call a big enough pow wow, well, you know, it's like getting a new Pope. But in a positivistic world -- in a world where the law is only what is written -- it seems that one would have to amend the state constitution in order to join the union. The amending provision would incorporate through reference the new constitution.

Historically, the only way out of this conundrum is to: (a) be a natural law theorist; or (b) simply acquiesce in the fact that the ritual used to ratify the constitution was (i assume) the same or better than the one used to amend state constitutions, and that the legal system simply wasn't yet pedantic (overly positivistic).  

Regards. 
  
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
New Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860

________________________________
From: "Scarberry, Mark"
To: Sean Wilson ; conlawprof@lists.ucla.edu
Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 7:00:52 PM
Subject: RE: Sovereignty as Consideration

I don't think state legislatures conveyed sovereignty. Rather, they organized the process by which conventions in each state -- made up of delegates chosen by the people for that purpose -- decided whether to ratify the Constitution (and thereby give up a portion of the state's sovereignty). Akhil Amar has argued that the state legislatures in many states permitted broader participation in the elections for convention delegates than was allowed in state legislative elections. Thus in a sense it was the people of each state (or at least a broader than usual slice of the people), rather than the legislatures, that made the decision.

Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law