Comments on Rozeboom's Criticisms of Possible Psychophysical Laws "

The publication of Rozeboom's (1962) criticisms of my paper concerning limitations on scientific laws of certain types (Luce, 1959), together with what we both feel are misinterpretations and misleading uses of those results, prompt me to attempt to clarify some of the issues. At the outset, let me admit that much of the confusion is my fault, due in part to an inadequate understanding of the problem and in part to a not wholly satisfactory presentation of the ideas and results. These failures have been aggravated by some readers who seem to have ignored the second half of that paper and, thereby, have oversimplified its content. Rozeboom takes me to task for an ambiguous statement of the two criteria that were suggested as a possible "principle of theory construction"—despite these ambiguities, which he has discussed in detail, we both agree about the mathematical "nugget" to be extracted from them, namely his Equation 2. We both emphasize that there are physical laws that either fail to satisfy this equation or satisfy it vacuously, and he thus concludes, correctly I now believe, that it should never have been termed a "principle." We also both point out that whether Equation 2 has any bite in limiting the form of a law has something to do with the existence of dimensional parameters in the law. We seem to differ mainly on the emphasis to place upon this distinction. Because I believe that it is extremely important, I should like to make a few remarks about it. Among the various lawful statements that can be found in any science, Rozeboom and I are restricting our attention to what may be called function laws—