Old and new problems in philosophy of measurement
Open accessAbstract
The philosophy of measurement studies the conceptual, ontological, epistemic, and technological conditions that make measurement possible and reliable. A new wave of philosophical scholarship has emerged in the last decade that emphasizes the material and historical dimensions of measurement and the relationships between measurement and theoretical modeling. This essay surveys these developments and contrasts them with earlier work on the semantics of quantity terms and the representational character of measurement. The conclusions highlight four characteristics of the emerging research program in philosophy of measurement: it is epistemological, coherentist, practice oriented, and model based.
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The development of thermometers was catalyzed by intuitive folk-psychological judgments of temperature, and those judgments are now corrigible on the basis of readings taken by thermometers.
“although the development of thermometers was catalyzed by our intuitive, folkpsychological judgments of temperature, those intuitive, folk-psychological judgments are now corrigible on the basis of readings taken by the thermometers that have been developed ([73]; see also [74,75]).”
From Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond (2024) · cites this paper as [74]
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Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond
Bayne, T., Seth, A. K., Massimini, M., Shepherd, J., Cleeremans, A., Fleming, S. M., Malach, R., Mattingley, J. B., Menon, D. K., Owen, A. M., et al. (2024) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2024.01.010 · Cited by 163 · see citing works
Uncertainty in Measurement and Total Error
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- Authors
- Tal, E.
- Affiliations
- Bielefeld University (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Tal, Eran
- ORCID
- Tal, Eran
- Venue
- Philosophy Compass
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-12
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1159-1173
- ISSN
- 1747-9991 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1524887506
- Cited by
- 154
- References
- 96
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 56.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- philarchive.org
- Locations
- Philosophy Compass (publishedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy, Science, and History
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- philosophy of measurement, measurement theory, epistemology of measurement, coherentism, measurement practices, model-based reasoning
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