Collaborative Proposal: Model Knowledge and Scientific Judgment

协作提案：模型知识和科学判断

• 批准号: 0354536
• 负责人: Michael Bishop
• 金额: $ 9.09万
• 依托单位: Northern Illinois University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fixed Amount Award
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-09-15 至 2005-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0354536&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Proposal; Model; Knowledge; Scientific

A central issue in science studies is the relationship between evidence and hypothesis. But science studies is not the only discipline that investigates this relationship. Science studies has too long neglected the half-century's worth of fascinating and important empirical literature we call Ameliorative Psychology. A central finding of Ameliorative Psychology is that statistical prediction rules (or SPRs) are generally more reliable (and usually significantly more reliable) than human experts when it comes to making predictions about practically important matters (Meehl 1954, Sawyer 1966, Dawes 1994). This literature offers effective reasoning strategies that have undergone repeated and successful empirical tests. This proposal is to develop and articulate a view of human knowledge and reasoning that takes Ameliorative Psychology seriously as an exemplification of reasoning excellence. It intends to extract from the literature what science has learned about good reasoning, and then apply those lessons back to individual reasoners and social institutions, including the institutions of science. The new position is defined as strategic reliabilism: Reasoning excellence involves the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to robustly reliable reasoning strategies. Strategic reliabilism is an explicitly cost-benefit-based epistemology for real, bounded knowers. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge and good reasoning. The proposal will liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of analytic philosophy and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science: Normative epistemology is to be properly understood and investigated as an essential, though often implicit, feature of cognitive science. The PIs will bring the skills and interests of the philosopher of science to epistemology by unearthing and clarifying the philosophical (in this case, epistemological) presuppositions of a particular branch of science (in this case, psychology). A novel theory about how best to reason about empirical matters, especially one that comes with a half-century's worth of empirical support, is bound to have broad and significant impact. Here are four such impacts: (1) The view of reasoning excellence we extract from Ameliorative Psychology naturally suggests a number of concrete useable lessons about how people can improve their reasoning about causation, diagnosis, and cost-benefit analysis (among other issues). The proposal's aim is to begin to employ the underutilized power of science to improve people's reasoning about important issues. (2) SPRs are currently being used by institutions to make some very important decisions that deeply affect people's lives (from medical diagnoses to credit decisions). The use of SPRs by social institutions is a significant (and largely ignored) way in which science is affecting society. The project will offer a clear articulation of the principles and assumptions underlying Ameliorative Psychology. (3) The view of reasoning excellence we extract from the Ameliorative Psychology can suggest alternative decision-procedures for social institutions. However, there are still many social institutions that have yet to heed the advice of the SPR literature, including diagnostics for mental illness, predicting violent behavior, and admissions to graduate and professional school. (4) The predictive models developed by Ameliorative Psychology are especially valuable for reasoning about complex phenomena about which one has many different lines of evidence. This is a perfectly accurate description of the task facing those who are charged with assessing science at various levels. Philosophers, historians and sociologists of science take the huge mass of data that is the history of science and try to draw general lessons about the methods and theories of science. Those scientists on grant review boards also make assessments about the promise of various projects by considering and weighing a number of different lines of evidence. It is ironic that those who assess science have not used methods that have the strongest scientific support. This is true for individuals extracting lessons from the history of science (Faust & Meehl 1992), and for scientific institutions rating scientific grant proposals (NIH Panel Report, 1996, especially section 5).

科学研究中的一个中心问题是证据与假设之间的关系。但科学研究并不是研究这种关系的唯一学科。长期以来，科学研究忽视了半个世纪以来我们称之为改良心理学的迷人而重要的实证文献。改良心理学的一个核心发现是，当涉及到对实际重要问题的预测时，统计预测规则（或SPR）通常比人类专家更可靠（通常更可靠）（Meehl 1954，索耶1966，Dawes 1994）。这些文献提供了有效的推理策略，经过反复和成功的实证检验。 这个建议是发展和阐明人类知识和推理的观点，将改善心理学作为推理卓越的典范。它旨在从文献中提取科学对良好推理的经验，然后将这些经验应用于个人推理者和社会机构，包括科学机构。新的立场被定义为战略可靠性：卓越的推理涉及到有效的认知资源分配到鲁棒可靠的推理策略。战略可靠性是一个明确的成本效益为基础的认识论真实的，有限的知识。 认识论是哲学的一个分支，研究知识和良好的推理。这个提议将把认识论从分析哲学的经院辩论中解放出来，并把它作为科学哲学的一个分支来对待：规范认识论将被正确地理解和研究，作为认知科学的一个基本的，尽管常常是隐含的特征。通过发掘和澄清科学的一个特定分支（在这种情况下，心理学）的哲学（在这种情况下，认识论）前提，PI将把科学哲学家的技能和兴趣带到认识论中。一个关于如何最好地推理经验问题的新理论，特别是一个有着半个世纪经验支持的理论，必然会产生广泛而重大的影响。以下是四种影响：（1）我们从改良心理学中提取的关于推理卓越的观点自然提出了一些具体可用的经验教训，关于人们如何改善他们对因果关系、诊断和成本效益分析（以及其他问题）的推理。该提案的目的是开始利用未充分利用的科学力量来提高人们对重要问题的推理能力。(2)SPR目前被机构用来做出一些非常重要的决定，这些决定对人们的生活产生了深远的影响（从医疗诊断到信贷决策）。社会机构使用SPR是科学影响社会的一种重要方式（但在很大程度上被忽视）。该项目将提供一个明确的原则和假设的基础上改善心理学。(3)我们从《改良心理学》中提取出来的推理卓越的观点可以为社会机构提供替代性的决策程序。然而，仍然有许多社会机构尚未听取SPR文献的建议，包括精神疾病的诊断，预测暴力行为，以及研究生和专业学校的招生。(4)改良心理学开发的预测模型对于推理复杂的现象特别有价值，因为人们有许多不同的证据。这是对那些负责在各个层次上评估科学的人所面临的任务的完全准确的描述。哲学家、历史学家和科学社会学家从科学史中收集大量的数据，试图从科学的方法和理论中得出一般性的教训。资助审查委员会的科学家们也通过考虑和权衡一些不同的证据来评估各种项目的前景。具有讽刺意味的是，那些评估科学的人没有使用有最强科学支持的方法。对于从科学史中吸取教训的个人（Faust Meehl，1992），以及对科学资助提案进行评级的科学机构（NIH Panel Report，1996，特别是第5节），情况都是如此。