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The Paradox of Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Edward G. Ballard
Edward G. Ballard*
Affiliation:
The Tulane University of Louisiana
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Extract

A brief analysis of the processes of measurement common to any science reveal a paradox. This paradox is encountered when one tries to make clear how formal statements are related to experience in such a way that factual statements, such as statements about measurements, result. I believe that this paradox bears an analogy to the “fallacy of the third man” which disturbed Plato. Be that as it may, this paradox has not been satisfactorily solved in modern times, although a full comprehension of the processes of measurement would require its solution. In this paper I wish to do nothing more than present a statement of the difficulty.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 1949 , pp. 134 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

∗

Read at Southwestern Philosophical Conference, Dec. 20, 1948.

References

Notes

1 Cf. S. S. Stevens, “On the Theory of Scales of Measurement,” Science, June 7, 1946. Cf. also C. Sparrow Voyages and Cargoes, Richmond, Va., 1947, pp. 116–180.

3 The Positivists have encountered a difficulty not unlike the present one in the multiplicity of metalanguages required to clarify a given language; cf. Rudolph Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language, London, 1937, p. 325ff; and Meaning and Necessity, University of Chicago, 1947, ch. 4. Also W. E. Johnson has developed a paradox more remotely similar to the one described above in Logic, Cambridge, 1940, pt. I, p. 211f.