The Epistemology of Measurement: A Model-based Account

Measurement is an indispensable part of physical science as well as of commerce, industry, and daily life. Measuring activities appear unproblematic when performed with familiar instruments such as thermometers and clocks, but a closer examination reveals a host of epistemological questions, including:\n\n1. How is it possible to tell whether an instrument measures the quantity it is intended to?\n2. What do claims to measurement accuracy amount to, and how might such claims be justified?\n3. When is disagreement among instruments a sign of error, and when does it imply that instruments measure different quantities? \n\nCurrently, these questions are almost completely ignored by philosophers of science, who view them as methodological concerns to be settled by scientists. This dissertation shows that these questions are not only philosophically worthy, but that their exploration has the potential to challenge fundamental assumptions in philosophy of science, including the distinction between measurement and prediction. \nThe thesis outlines a model-based epistemology of physical measurement and uses it to address the questions above. To measure, I argue, is to estimate the value of a parameter in an idealized model of a physical process. Such estimation involves inference from the final state (‘indication’) of a process to the value range of a parameter (‘outcome’) in light of theoretical and statistical assumptions. Idealizations are necessary preconditions for the possibility of justifying such inferences. Similarly, claims to accuracy, error and quantity individuation can only be adjudicated against the background of an idealized representation of the measurement process. \nChapters 1-3 develop this framework and use it to analyze the inferential structure of standardization procedures performed by contemporary standardization bureaus. Standardizing time, for example, is a matter of constructing idealized models of multiple atomic clocks in a way that allows consistent estimates of duration to be inferred from clock indications. Chapter 4 shows that calibration is a special sort of modeling activity, i.e. the activity of constructing and testing models of measurement processes. Contrary to contemporary philosophical views, the accuracy of measurement outcomes is properly evaluated by comparing model predictions to each other, rather than by comparing observations.

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