Content guidance in formal problem solving processes
Diderik Batens · 2007
In this paper, a formal framework to problem-solving processes is presented. The framework is not complete. Nevertheless, even its present sophistication allows one to see that it is promising. The framework demonstrably allows one to understand scientific change as content-guided. It will be argued that a formal framework is required in order to make definite and precise statements about the content-guided aspects of scientific problem solving. 1 Some Background On the present-day view of scientific rationality, science is content-guided. As Dudley Shapere phrases it: scientific inquiry relies on “what we have learned, including what we have learnt about how to learn ” [62, p. 52]. While the Vienna Circle ultimately reduced scientific methodology to an a priori matter, aiming at delineating all possible science, the present view understands science as essentially relying on contemporary insights in the world as well as in methodological matters. While Kuhn and other members of the ‘historicist ’ movement reduced science to a form of relativism, the present view sees scientific decisions as justified in terms of those contemporary insights. It may come as a surprise that this view requires a heavy import of logic. In trying to understand scientific reasoning, especially its more creative aspects, heuristic aspects play a central role. One should clearly distinguish between heuristic aspects that pertain to logic and other heuristic aspects. Both kinds are important (and both result from a learning process). Even in order to give the non-logical aspects their due place, the logical aspects should be located and systematically described. So I shall describe an approach to problem solving that has a remarkable combination of properties. On the one hand, the approach is formal in a specific but plain sense of the term. Yet, at the same time, it leaves ample ∗ Research for this paper was supported by subventions from the Fund for Scientific Research