I suggest that standardization of quantities is a pragmatically and vaguely distinguished special case of concept formation and that measurement is an inference from empirical results about a standardized quantity given some background assumptions (including laws of nature). The measurement debate is thus but a special case of the debates about concept formation and inference, and the logical empiricists’ positions on these topics can be immediately applied to it. Their positions provide straightforward solutions to alleged problems of conventionalism in the philosophy of measurement, for instance the influence of empirical results on standardization, different methods of measuring the same quantity, improvements of measurements and standardizations, and the roles of theoretical assumptions and of models in standardization and measurement.

Commentator: Ádám Tamás Tuboly.  Date: 4 May 2021 (Tuesday), 2pm

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