# Conjectures and Refutations - Chapter 3 Once you are concerned with truth or falsity—you are trying to figure out the reality of the difference between two instruments. This is the difference between is questions and why questions. [Essentialism](Essentialism.md) is important to have in mind. The method of essentialism is asking "what is" questions. What is consciousness? What is life? What is democracy? When you ask a what is question, you are trying to inquire about the true nature of something. The alternative to asking "what is" questions are "how" questions. How does this piece of matter behave in various circumstances? How does it move in the presence of other bodies? This approach also just regards words as merely useful instruments of description. So in this case **words are instruments, theories are not**. This connects to politics as follows. When someone starts asking "what is racism?"—we are no longer asking "*how* do we reduce inequities between groups?", rather we are asking "what is the true core of racism?". Is it the interactions between individuals? Is about entire systems? Is it about structures? As soon as you start asking "what is" questions, the goal posts shift in a very subtle way—now you are interrogating the true nature of a word, you are trying to argue about the definition of a word. You are no longer trying to ask probing questions about reality. You are asking definitional questions. It is so easy to fall into the trap of "what is the true nature of suffering?" or "what is good?" or "what is the nature of western civilization?". When you do this you have trapped yourself into playing definitional games without realizing it. Instead of asking questions such as "what is racism?" we should ask questions like "how do we create schools that reduce average test score gap?", "how do we create a society that has reductions in poverty?", "how do we mitigate the worst forms of suffering?". Recognizing this in life is an incredibly freeing attitude to take with respect to language. Now you do not need to sit there and get mad that someone is using the term in a way that you find frustrating. For the sake of the conversation you can just adopt the term they are using to refer to whatever it is that they want to refer to and you just go from there. You can then talk about solutions to problems and how to deal with that. But you don't have to attach this meaning to language and then argue about differences in definitions. This is a great defense against getting too attached to terms. When that happens, you can find yourself getting frustrated when someone uses a term in a way you didn't anticipate or agree with. If that happens, just adopt their term and move forward. Don't argue about the true definition of things. The relationship between essentialism and word obsession is straight forward. The minute you start looking for the essence of something, it quickly becomes a definition game. The essentialist reads words from left to right. What is a puppy? A puppy is a young dog. Whereas the scientist reads words from right to left. What shall we call a young dog? We shall call it a puppy. In so doing we are using words to make a long story shorter. You have a long definition, and we are going to simplify it via a quick label. Words are simply the answer to "what shall we call" questions. This also allows us to use language in the way that Popper suggests—[You Do Not Need To Be More Specific Than The Situation Demands](You%20Do%20Not%20Need%20To%20Be%20More%20Specific%20Than%20The%20Situation%20Demands.md). Taking an instrumental perspective on language is a powerful cognitive tool. For one, it allows you to interface with people more smoothly. But if you take the perspective that language is a means to communicate your ideas, then it leads to the idea that you should actively increase your vocabulary as a means of sharpening your tool. Part of what gives new words life is that they distinguish between the ideas that are new and those that are stagnating. You want a word to provide as much content as possible. But once everyone is using the same language, certain words lose content. The core of Poppers critique for both [Instrumentalism](Instrumentalism.md) and [Essentialism](Essentialism.md) is that they both prevent fruitful questions from being asked. The essentialist starts asking questions like "what is gravity?" rather than "how do falling objects behave?" or "what is the cause of gravity?" or "can we explain gravity by deducing newtons theory from a more general theory?". Similarly, instrumentalism impedes progress by saying we don't care about the "what is", we just care about predictions. These two views have some truth to them, and they are diametrically opposed, but they both prevent [Progress](Progress.md) due to preventing fruitful questions. Appealing to essences boxes you in—because once you have reached the base layer, the ultimate explanation, there is nothing left. # Notes * The minute that you start asking questions about the reality and difference between two instruments, you are no longer an instrumentalist. * Consider air, or cells. These are posited entities—posited to *explain* the appearances that we see in reality. If we only ever took an instrumentalist perspective, we would have none of these concepts. To get this concepts requires caring about the thing behind the appearances. And it would prevent the discovery of new concepts. * Thus, the biggest critique of [Instrumentalism](Instrumentalism.md) is that it would impede progress. For instance, we posit these things, then we ask if this was true and they existed (or didn't exist) what consequences would follow? We then develop theories and try to test them. We find these things or don't find them. Or we find what they would logically entail, etc. And this allows us to start knowing if these things are real. * It is hard to make progress and come up with better tools if you are not trying to explain the *seen* (observations) in terms of the *unseen* (conjectures) * The problem of universals: Leaving off * Essentialism * popper the poverty of historicism * words are instruments, theories are not * open society and its enemies * Words are descriptive tools * --- Date: 20250423 Links to: Tags: References: * [#33 (C&R Series, Ch. 3) - Instrumentalism and Essentialism - YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNRF7Q31_4s&list=PLg2GgQMJHr2TajSch9Ixh8szz1c9SJgo6&index=7)