Defined Content in Theories As a Measure of Usefulness (rough draft)

The following is an idea about theories, assessing the issue that sometimes occurs where a theory becomes so encompassing that it loses some of the useful distinguishing qualities that presumably motivated the development of it, or the content of the theory is so vague and undefined that to know what the theory would mean is just to look at the world/thing it's referring to in order to gain insight- thus making the theory not as helpful as it was presumably intended to be; so I'm mostly attempting to identify an issue and speculate on some concerns of it. There may be a place for all-encompassing or vague theories, but I'm at least attempting to show how their usefulness differs, if not indeed lacking in usefulness. I haven't developed this idea as far as I think would be warranted for a full understanding, but it's a start and hopefully any mistakes are fewer than the insights. I might revise this idea in the future, so feel welcome to give feedback and criticism.

When theories are useful for our understanding of the world it is because there is a correlation between the theory and reality, and because there is information or criteria within the theory that is defined and the knowledge and understanding of which is transferable to our knowledge and understanding of the world. So a theory that wouldn't be useful for our understanding is one which has undefined information or criteria such that there is no understanding to be gained that translates to an understanding of the world. For example, when theories equivocate their content by defining it in reference to the content of the world then an understanding from the theory depends on knowledge of the information of the world and thus one's understanding is being formed by the world primarily and not the theory, thus making the theory not useful. This occurs when content is undefined, a classic example of which would be the Euthyphro problem- where the desired understanding ("what is good?") is given an undefined criteria ("whatever is loved by the gods"). This theory is not useful for understanding because it makes an identification (goodness with what is loved by the gods) without definition (is it good and therefore the gods love it, or do the gods love it and therefore it is good?; in other words, we're still left asking "what is good?").

I'm not saying that theories with undefined content or criteria are false, I'm just assessing usefulness. Mainly I'm addressing the issue that sometimes comes up when handling a theory where the theory becomes so encompassing by way of its referencing  that it approaches equivalency with the theorized object in consideration (the world, etc.), and thus it doesn't offer much of its own content except to refer to the object- thus knowing the theory is equal to knowing the object in terms of useful content. I'll give two examples of theories with contrasting ways of handling them just to illustrate this point; this is a theoretical comparison of a couple of ideas, I'm not asserting whether or not these topics necessarily fall into the problem I'll pose (it may be more a criticism of how they're handled, but certainly if they're posited in this problematic way then that instance of the theory would be subject to the same criticism). Before those examples (the way you might run into them academically), brief examples of ways people may commonly experience the type of thing I'm addressing (the way you might run into them popularly): someone saying something like "all communication is argument" or "everything is politics"; now, such statements shouldn't be readily dismissed merely for the scope of their claim, and there's often an element of truth to them. Sometimes the person saying it is just trying to imply the importance or breadth of that topic by showing how everything can be viewed through that lens, or how everything relates to that topic. But the difficulty that sometimes emerges with such types of statements is that a lack of distinction renders them less useful. If all communication is argument then to talk about communication is just to talk about argument, unless you specify that all communication is argument but that communication isn't only argument- to the extent there's no distinction it seems to make less sense (in terms of usefulness) to bring up such a point. Real quick- just to lay out some logic in a basic example, consider basketballs (bearing reasonable assumption):  all basketballs are round, but not all round things are basketballs. So on the topic of talking about a round thing it is useful to clarify that it is a basketball, but on the topic of talking about basketballs it is less useful to clarify that it is a round thing. However, even in clarifying that all basketballs are round it's the case, in this example, that all basketballs aren't only round- they also have other attributes such as color or size, which may differ. But insofar as all basketballs are round, the basketball is entirely round- but being all round doesn't excluding it from being something else in addition to round (red, blue, big, small, etc.). So to say all basketballs are round isn't to say all basketballs are the same.

Now on to two theories and examples of different handling (I'm not asserting that I'm representing these theories correctly, these are just examples for the sake of comparison; but the comparison should make sense regardless of the accuracy of representation). Take Evolution and Behaviorism for example; evolution dealing with biological adaptation to the relative environment and reproductive development, and behaviorism dealing with behavioral psychology with respect to reward and punishment. Now say, theoretically (i.e.- I'm making this up), that one were to posit evolution as the development of biological life with respect to lifespan and offspring, and behaviorism as the understanding of behavior with respect to the subject's preconceived or recalled assessment of an experience's effectual reward and punishment. With a bit of elaboration and assessment those two theories (as just posited) would be potentially useful given the defined content (lifespan and offspring; preconceived or recalled assessment of an experience's effectual reward and punishment) and criteria (development of biological life; understanding of behavior). The use of these theories as such would look something like- life is developing evolutionarily if and when their is an increase in length of lifespan or an increase in quantity of offspring (another example could be the sustaining of length of lifespan and quantity of offspring in relation to a changing environment); and, we're understanding behavior behavioristically if and when we know a subject's assessment of a behavior's potential reward and punishment and their inclination toward reward. So in these examples, these theories would be useful in that we can, on one hand, understand if a species is adapting to its environment (and thus whether it's tending toward extinction or expansion, or sustained) by measuring and comparing different points of lifespan length and offspring quantity; and on the other hand, understand the reason for one's behavior (and thus the likelihood of certain behavior with respect to the experience in consideration) by knowing the subject's assessment of an experience's outcome of reward and punishment, along with their inclination toward reward.

Taking the same topic of theory, but handling it in an undefined way, will show how such a theory is much less useful:  say we define evolution as the adaptive changes of biological life to its environment, and behaviorism as the understanding of behavior where one's choices are done for reward. When inquiring for understanding of the theories as to what defines "adaptive changes" or "reward" their usefulness as theories is diminished (or lost) when the answer is merely an unqualified reference to the very instance in consideration. It's all-encompassing in a way that doesn't offer insight into any part, or it's tautologous in a way that is necessarily true but useless. So if someone says that evolution is simply the occurrence of all changes between living things and the environment- that biology necessarily evolves in relation to the environment (and parts of the living thing in consideration might be considered as environmental causes to other parts of the living thing) because living things are composed with the environment and so for living things to reproduce they must do so compatibly with the environment and when there is incompatibility the living thing ceases to be sustained, and thus all life and evolution become connected- since you couldn't have a living thing that isn't evolved (since it would cease). Notice that the difference between this conception of evolution and the one theorized earlier is that this one is about adaption of a living thing to its environment (thus to be alive is to be adapted to some extent) and the other one was about some defining characteristics of adaption as they relate to reproduction and lifespan. In the mere adaption one you can have a living thing adapting to its environment (thus changing in a way that if it didn't change it would've died off) but still having a reduction in lifespan and offspring (thus the changes were sufficient to sustain life but not advantageously in comparison to its relation to the previous environmental factors); in the other theory the living thing in consideration is deemed to be evolving with respect to a sustaining or increase in lifespan or offspring. Both theories may be true, but their usefulness differs; to answer whether something is evolving for one is just to ask whether it's still living and reproducing at all with respect to environmental changes, to answer whether something is evolving for the other is contingent on (in this example) an increase in lifespan or offspring and thus some living things will be considered evolving and some not.

As for behaviorism, say it is posited that all behavior is done for reward. But pursuant to this assumption, in answering "what was this behavior done for?" it isn't debated as to whether what it was done for was a reward or not, but rather, being done for a reward, what was it done for since that is the reward. Thus "reward" becomes synonymous with the reality of whatever it is, in all circumstances, that anyone behaves the way they do for. And thus "reward" becomes as broad in definition as there are reasons for behavior. Although it seems very similar, there is a difference between saying that someone did something because it was rewarding (thus a defined or preconceived notion of reward; the reason for something that was done is compatible with what is, at least in that person, considered rewarding; this way of positing it doesn't preclude the possibility of doing something not for reward) and the reward for which someone did something is whatever the reason they did it for was (thus having done it for reward is a matter of necessity, not a matter of compatibility, since reward is being identified as equal to the reason for a behavior). So saying "everything is done for reward" doesn't become helpful because there isn't anything that isn't done for reward and the reward is just whatever anything is done for- which is presumably unique to each event and thus the theory has no common attribute.

Please note that I'm not attempting to over-exert myself for the perfect example comparison- I'm just attempting to offer two different aspects of a theory to show that when held in a certain way the theory isn't as useful (unless expanded in a way that includes the qualities of the more defined theory).

One of the qualities of a good theory with defined content is that the theory can be used for prediction and mechanistic identification; if there's a correlation between the theory and reality, and the theory has defined content, then when something in reality correlates to that defined content then the implications within the theory will have transitive application to understanding the instance of reality in consideration that the theory is being applied to. The defined content allows one to identify the association between the parts in the theory and the correlating parts of reality. Theories that are so undefined that they get all of their content from reality, or that are so encompassing that there's no distinguishing contrast, don't seem to then develop enough internal understanding that would then be clarifying in it's application to the world, the understanding will emerge in the perception of the information one gains from reality, but the usefulness that follows from this will be owing to the understanding developed from perceiving reality rather than from the conception of the theory. A possible exception might be if such a theory wasn't aimed at adding understanding but rather removing misunderstanding- so the example of saying all communication is argument may not be informative but may be clarifying by virtue of challenging the preconceived idea that there are types of communication that aren't argument (if such were the case).