A structural interpretation of measurement and some related epistemological issues

Luca Mari; Paolo Carbone; Alessandro Giordani; Dario Petri

doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.08.001

A structural interpretation of measurement and some related epistemological issues

Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2017 Oct-Dec:65-66:46-56. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.08.001. Epub 2017 Aug 18.

Authors

Luca Mari¹, Paolo Carbone², Alessandro Giordani³, Dario Petri⁴

Affiliations

¹ Università Cattaneo - LIUC, Italy. Electronic address: lmari@liuc.it.
² Università di Perugia, Italy.
³ Università Cattolica, Italy.
⁴ Università di Trento, Italy.

PMID: 29195648
DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.08.001

Abstract

Measurement is widely applied because its results are assumed to be more reliable than opinions and guesses, but this reliability is sometimes justified in a stereotyped way. After a critical analysis of such stereotypes, a structural characterization of measurement is proposed, as partly empirical and partly theoretical process, by showing that it is in fact the structure of the process that guarantees the reliability of its results. On this basis the role and the structure of background knowledge in measurement and the justification of the conditions of object-relatedness ("objectivity") and subject-independence ("intersubjectivity") of measurement are specifically discussed.

Keywords: Measurement; Models in measurement; Objectivity and intersubjectivity in measurement; Reliability of measurement; Stereotypes of measurement.