On Science, Inference, Information and Decision-Making: Selected Essays in the Philosophy of Science

255 Pages·1998·11.638 MB·English

by  Klemens Szaniawski (auth.), Adam Chmielewski, Jan Woleński (eds.)

ON SCIENCE, INFERENCE, INFORMATION AND
DECISION-MAKING
SYNTHESE LIBRARY
STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY,
LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Managing Editor:
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University
Editors:
DIRK V AN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley
THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University ofGroningen, The Netherlands
PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California
JAN WOLENSKI, Jagiellonian University, KrakOw, Poland
VOLUME 271
Klemens Szaniawski
1925-1990
Photograph by Tadeusz PoZniak
KLEMENS SZANIAW SKI
ON SCIENCE, INFERENCE,
INFORMATION AND
DECISION-MAKING
Selected Essays in the Philosophy of Science
Edited by
ADAM CHMIELEWSKI
University ofWroclaw, Poland
and
JAN WOLENSKI
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
....
"
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-94-010-6213-8 ISBN 978-94-011-5260-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5260-0
Printed on acid-free paper
AU Rights Reserved
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1998
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner.
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ACKNO~GEMENTS xiii
I: ON SCIENCE
1. Some remarks on the philosophy of science 1
2. Information and decision-making as tools of philosophy of science 8
3. Method and creativity in science 19
4. Sociology and models of rational behaviour 28
5. Mathematical models and social facts 40
6. Science as a search for information 45
II: ON INFERENCE
7. Inference or behaviour? 54
8. A note on confirmation of statistical hypotheses 62
9. On some basic patterns of statistical inference 70
10. A method of deciding between N statistical hypotheses 80
11. A pragmatic justification of rules of statistical inference 87
12. On sequential inference 96
13. Interpretations of the maximum likelihood principle 106
III. ON INFORMATION AND DECISION MAKING
14. Some remarks concerning the criterion of rational decision-making 114
15. The concept of distribution of goods 128
16. The value of perfect information 140
vii
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
17. Questions and their pragmatic value 154
18. Two concepts of information 157
19. Types of information and their role in the methodology of science 167
20. Information in decision-making. Some logical aspects 177
21. Decision-making and future research. Some theoretical problems 191
22. On formal aspects of distributive justice 200
23. Philosophy and decision-making 210
24. The concept of unreliable information 222
25. On defining information 226
APPENDIX
26. Rationality as a value 232
INDEX OF NAMES 241
PREFACE
Klemens Szaniawski was born in Warsaw on March 3, 1925. He began to
study philosophy in the clandestine Warsaw University during World War II.
Tadeusz Kotarbinski, Jan Lukasiewicz, Maria and Stanislaw Ossowskis,
Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, and Henryk Hii: were among his teachers. Sza
niawski was also a member of the Polish Home Army (AK), one of the young
est. He was arrested and spent the last period of the war as a prisoner in
Auschwitz. After 1945, he continued his studies in the University of L6dz; his
Master thesis was devoted to French moral thought of the 17th and 18th cen
turies. Then he worked in the Department of Ethics in L6dZ. In 1950, he
received his Ph.D. on the basis of the dissertation on the concept of honour in
knight groups in the Middle Ages; Maria Ossowska was the supervisor. In the
early fifties he moved to Warsaw to the Department of Logic, directed by
Kotarbinski. He took his habilitation exams in 1961. In 1969 he became a
professor. Since 1970 he was the head of Department of the Logic at the
Warsaw University. In the sixties Szaniawski was also the Dean of the Faculty
of Philosophy and Sociology. In 1984 he was elected the Rector Magnificus of
the Warsaw University but the Ministry overruled the autonomous democra
tic vote of the academic community. He served as the President of the Polish
Philosophical Association (since 1977) taking this post after Kotarbinski. He
was also the Editor-in-chief of Studia Logica (1970-1974) and a member of
editorial boards of many other journals, Synthese included.
Klemens Szaniawski was also a very important political and public figure.
He never accepted communism and its ideology. In the late sixties, he became
one of the leading Polish dissidents. As the Dean of the Faculty in 1968, he
inspired a very strong protest of the Council of the Faculty against anti
semitism in Poland. In the seventies, he was one of the organizers of the group
called "Experience and Future", which discussed the political situation in
Poland and elaborated several warning reports on the decline of Polish social
life. When "Solidarity" movement came into being in 1980, Szaniawski imme
diately joined its ranks and soon became one of its most important members.
As a great master of dialogue and compromise, he successfully participated in
several negotiations between "Solidarity" and the government. He also
organized a special association of Polish artistic and scientific societies
responsible for independent cultural life in Poland. He was the chief person
responsible for the organization of the Congress of Polish Culture which was
to be held in the middle of December 1981. The Martial Law introduced in
IX
x PREFACE
Poland on December 13, 1981 prevented this event. Immediately after intro
duction of the Martial Law, Szaniawski was detained, but he was released
after two days. He immediately became a part of various underground activ
ities. In particular, he was the head of the special committee which organized
financial support for repressed scientists and artists in Poland. He also served
as one of the closest political advisors of Lech Wal~sa. When the so-called
Round Table was prepared in Poland in 1989, Wal~sa asked Szaniawski to
join the official representation delegation of representatives of "Solidarity" for
negotiations with the government. I well remember TV news on the day when
the Round Table started. When the "Solidarity" group led by Wal~sa entered
the building, Szaniawski was the fourth from the top. It shows his actually
high position in "Solidarity". However, he faced a very difficult dilemma at the
time. After seven years of a strict prohibition of going abroad, Szaniawski had
just received a permission and wanted to go for a scholarship in the USA,
which had waited for him since the early eighties (it is quite possible that the
government intended to prevent his participation in the Round Table). Since
any further prolongation was absolutely impossible, Szaniawski decided to
resign from his place at the Round Table and informed Wal~sa about his
decision, but the leader of "Solidarity" insisted that he should stay with the
entire group at least for one more day which he did. In the end of 1989 he was
nominated the Polish ambassador in the United States of America. He con
tracted cancer in December 1989 and died on March 5, 1990.
Klemens Szaniawski was a charming person. Everybody who knew him was
greatly impressed by his personality, a unique sense of humour, openness in
personal contacts and his way of thinking that combined refined scepticism
with a very firm belief in human rationality. In this he resembled Russell, who
was one of Szaniawski's main intellectual heroes.
I met Szaniawski for the first time in July 1957 during summer holidays.
At that time, I was in the secondary school and I did not think that I would
become a philosopher myself. When I began my undergraduate studies and
philosophy of science became one of my favourites, I very often read his
exceptionally clear writings; I learned very much from them. Then, we met
occasionally on various meetings, but these encounters were rather formal,
although he well remembered that we had met earlier. In the seventies, our
contacts were more frequent, because we both participated in regular
meetings in philosophy of sciences. Once he said to me: "Jan, I do not
understand why we still address each other so formally. I am Klemens." I
was very proud that such a distinguished academic and political figure
offered me this cordial relationship. In the eighties, we met very often. I always
visited him in Warsaw and he did the same when he came to Wrodaw,
where I lived at the time. He enjoyed very much eating red borsch prepared
by my wife. Once he said: "Oh, I must come to you every month to taste this
excellent soup."
Klemens was an extraordinary authority in all problems. I remember the
following event. The Austrian Cultural Institute in Warsaw planned to
organize an international seminar on Austro-Polish philosophical relation-
PREFACE xi
ships. Mr. Sickinger, the head of the Institute invited a few Polish scholars,
including Klemens and myself, in order to discuss this project. I was asked to
prepare a list of participants and a preliminary program. Toward the end of
an excellent dinner, I made some notes in my notebook. Mter returning to
Wroclaw, I found a very elegant gold "Parker" ball-point in my pocket. I
immediately realized that it belonged to Mr. Sickinger who had lent it to me
for making notes and which I automatically put in my pocket. I was very
desperate and I immediately called Szaniawski for advice. I started with some
thing like this: "Klemens, something terrible happened", and then I reported
the story. He answered: "Only this. At first, I thought that really something
terrible happened. Do not worry. Call the Austrian Institute and tell them
what happened. Mr. Sickinger probably did not realize that you took his ball
point." I followed his advice; Klemens was right: the secretary to Mr. Sick
inger was very surprised by my phone call and the whole problem. Let me
remark that it was 1984 and much more terrible things happened in Poland at
that time; hence, Klemens' answer was "I thought that really something terr
ible happened."
Szaniawski left Poland in April 1989 and returned in October of the same
year. I went to the USA in September 1989 and spent three months there.
Once more I visited the USA in January and February of 1990. My contacts
with Klemens were limited only to talks on the phone. In September 1989, I
called him in Washington, D.C., and we had a long conversation. He told me
about his scientific plans which he began to implement during his visit in
America. Our last contact took place, also on the phone, in December. He told
me: "I am not quite well, I got only a little cold." Nobody expected that it was
the beginning of the mortal illness.
Szaniawski's first philosophical interests concerned ethics. However, the
period of the early fifties in Poland was not conducive for an independent
research in this field. Szaniawski decided to move to formal logic and philos
ophy of science. When Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz came to Warsaw in 1955, Sza
niawski began to work with him. Their common scientific interest concerned
fallible inferences. Both intended to build a theory of such reasonings based on
results of decision theory and mathematical statistics. Ajdukiewicz's concep
tion of the so-called pragmatic methodology which takes inferential pro
cedures as closely connected with human epistemic activities, became a general
background of this research.
Szaniawski was educated in the tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw Philosophical
School for which the idea of logical inference played the main role in rational
procedures. On the other hand, he was also very strongly influenced by ideas
coming from modern statistics. Now, as it is widely known, many statisticians
doubt whether the classical concept of inference has any sound application in
statistical procedures and their analysis. For example, they think that we have
to do with inductive behaviour rather than induction as an inference. Sza
niawski wanted to find a compromise between various competing general pro
posals in the foundations of statistics, probability and decision theory. In