Valid for What? On the Very Idea of Unconditional Validity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10927434 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cristian Larroulet Philippi (0000-0001-5793-4670, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 151-175 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Philosophy of the Social Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0048-3931 • E-ISSN: 1552-7441 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0048393120971169 |
| OpenAlex | W3101942598 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 29 |
What is a valid measuring instrument? Recent philosophy has attended to logic of justification of measures, such as construct validation, but not to the question of what it means for an instrument to be a valid measure of a construct. A prominent approach grounds validity in the existence of a causal link between the attribute and its detectable manifestations. Some of its proponents claim that, therefore, validity does not depend on pragmatics and research context. In this paper, I cast doubt on the possibility of a context-independent causal account of validity (what I call unconditional validity). I assess several versions, arguing that all of them fail to judge the validity of measuring instruments correctly. Because different research purposes require different properties from measuring instruments, no account of validity succeeds without referring to the specific research purpose that creates the need for measurement in the first place
Cognitive psychology · Concurrent validity · Construct (python library) · Construct validity · Context (archaeology) · Criterion validity · Data mining · Epistemology · External validity · Internal validity · Linguistics · Measure (data warehouse) · Pragmatics · Psychometrics · Statistics · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Social Psychology
Inventing Temperature
Measuring the Mind
Theory of mental tests.
Causation
On the Theory of Scales of Measurement
The Concept of Validity.
Three Kinds of Idealization
Representing and Intervening
Validity in Psychological Testing and Scientific Realism
Why Psychometrics is Not Pathological
Psychometrics versus Representational Theory of Measurement
Verisimilitude
The Mismeasure of Consciousness
A Defense and Definition of Construct Validity in Psychology
Is Construct Validation Valid
Foundations of a Probabilistic Theory of Causal Strength
Against Prohibition (or, When Using Ordinal Scales to Compare Groups Is OK)
A Philosophy for the Science of Well-Being
Operationalism and realism in psychometrics
Construct validity in psychological tests
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |