Tal's epistemology (and DCP's)

[_Tal Bachman]

Tarski

Funny - I rented a Bobcat a couple of days ago to do landscaping, so I've been going like twelve hours a day. I just took a break, decided to sneak a peek at the site, and found this.

I want to respond to this asap in appropriate depth (perhaps way too much depth), but I should really get back out at the moment. I'm already a day overdue on returning the machine.

In a nutshell, (clearing throat) in my future post, I shall argue (:P) that certain influential arguments made by Kuhn, Popper, Kant, and Rorty are prima facie defective, and yes, should be "thrown out".

I shall further attempt to show the genealogy of their defectiveness. That is, I shall show that these arguments derive from an original argument by Hume, and then show that Hume's argument is defective. Along the way, I shall also be under the necessity of showing numerous contradictions within the thought of those discussed.

And yes, Tarski - I even think I can get you to agree with me!

If I do all this, will you help me get into grad school? I'm thinking of applying. I want to do something related to cog-sci, perhaps a joint Philosophy and Cog-Sci thing.

[Guest]

Hmmm,Apparently my attempt to get Dan P. and Tal B. in the same "room" without bloodshed has failed because they just didn't show up.

Ain't gonna happen. I've tried to converse with him before and it's been nothing but frustrating.

TB: You believe X.

DP: No I don't.

TB: Yes you do.

DP: No I don't.

TB: Yes you do. Here's proof: You said A, B, and C.

DP: But A, B, and C don't mean that.

TB: Yes they do.

DP: They . . . do . . . not!

TB: Yes they do. You believe X. What a moron!

TB: Peterson believes X. What a moron!

[_Ren]

My exposure to Kuhn has mainly been in relation to questioning Popperian philosophy, and how that relates to the demarcation of science.

Often, people think of scientific theories as these 'objective' entities that we can 'objectively' test against observation and - with relatively little ambiguity - determine whether they have been falsified or not.
My understanding of Kuhn's argument in this regard is that - in practice - we can't look at any scientific theory 'truly objectively'. It just ain't possible. By initially 'buying into' a given theory, we tie ourselves into a 'paradigm' by which all data collected will be filtered and distorted.

The classic example being Newtonion theories of gravity, and the anomoly of Mercury's orbit. Within the 'paradigm' of Newtonian gravity, there had to be 'something' that we hadn't observed that was affecting Mercury's orbit. (The theoretical object called 'Vulcan' - that was never found!). The question is - can the 'Newtonain' proponenets really be blamed for still accepting the 'truth' of Newtonian gravity, even with this unexplained anomoly staring them in the face?

I think Kuhn's argument is that - no - it would be perfectly reasonable to accept the truth of Newtonian gravity, and simply assume that there was something missing from observation that would explain the anomoly. After all, it was - otherwise - such a successful theory.
Also bearing in mind that a similar 'anomoly' was found in Uranus' orbit, and a similar undiscovered object was proposed - which turned out to be correct! i.e. the discovery of Neptune!!

However, I don't see this is the utter destruction of falsification. I think the conclusion this brings us to is the idea of 'competing' theories.
Or in other words: "It wouldn't nessesarily have been justified to consider Newtonian theory 'falsified' unless there was a better theory avalaible". A new theory that could provide a better fit to the evidence. In this case, the 'new' theory was of course 'General Relativity' - which not only explained the Mercury anomoly, but provided it's own seperate falsifications, and passed them all!

In this situation, you now have two competing theories. And one clearly seems 'superior' to the other. Therefore, 'Relativity' wins, and Newtonian gravity is 'falsified'.
I think Kuhn is right. I think science - in the end - does come down not to having any one theory that is clearly 'unfalsified'. It's about having a theory that is as unfalsified 'as possible', and also having no equal. This 'latest' theory might have the odd anomoly that we can't yet explain. But without a decent alternative, I don't think anamoly's that 'could' be falsification are good enough reason to get all 'Popper' on it's arse and ditch it.

I did go for quite a while thinking that Popperian philosophy had everything tied up neatly. But I now lean much more toward Kuhn. Not to say that I nessesrily lean away from Popperian philosophy because of it. It's more that I think it wrong to look at it in isolation. Popperian 'falsifiability' has simply become one of the markers by which we can 'judge' scientific theories against others. Like a scoring system. If a theory has lots of potential points of falsification, and seems to pass them all with flying colours, then we can say that it is a 'better' theory than one that has less potential points of falsification, and when it comes to a few of them, we have some observations that can - at the very least - be called 'anomolys'.

But there also seems to be a certain interperetation of Kuhn (that seems fairly extreme to me) where you can't really judge between two different scientific theories at all! There is considered to be no objective, meaningful way to say 'Theory A is clearly superior to theory B'. And I guess this interperetation would lean heavily towards the kind of 'there can be no determination of objective truth' conclusion that is being discussed here.
For my part, I don't accept the idea that we can't judge between theories. Although someone smarter than me is certainly welcome to talk it though with me. In fact, I'd welcome that :)

[_Tarski]

Tarski

Funny - I rented a Bobcat a couple of days ago to do landscaping, so I've been going like twelve hours a day. I just took a break, decided to sneak a peek at the site, and found this.

I want to respond to this asap in appropriate depth (perhaps way too much depth), but I should really get back out at the moment. I'm already a day overdue on returning the machine.

In a nutshell, (clearing throat) in my future post, I shall argue (:P) that certain influential arguments made by Kuhn, Popper, Kant, and Rorty are prima facie defective, and yes, should be "thrown out".

I shall further attempt to show the genealogy of their defectiveness. That is, I shall show that these arguments derive from an original argument by Hume, and then show that Hume's argument is defective. Along the way, I shall also be under the necessity of showing numerous contradictions within the thought of those discussed.

I'm looking forward anxiously and a bit skeptically to your thoughts.

And yes, Tarski - I even think I can get you to agree with me!

I expect I will agree with much and so it may get boring. However, it will be truly amazing if I am persuaded that you have sorted all of this stuff out once and for all.
I hope we can still be friends even if it turns out that I diagree and maybe even say so forcefully with arguments that you might find daft (i.e. I hope I don't get labeled in your book with a big L on my forehead).
I am not sure how much I will be willing to go refresh my memory on philosophy (I am very busy with a book on differential geometry and I haven't looked at a real philosophy book in about ten years--except for a couple popular ones by Dennett which read more like science books). I am also currently experiencing a renewed obsession with the Japanese language and with jazz guitar. Right now, both more rewarding than hard core philosophy.

If I do all this, will you help me get into grad school? I'm thinking of applying. I want to do something related to cog-sci, perhaps a joint Philosophy and Cog-Sci thing

It's not my field but I would sure let anyone who asks know that I thought you would be very successful in grad school.

[_Tarski]

My exposure to Kuhn has mainly been in relation to questioning Popperian philosophy, and how that relates to the demarcation of science.

Often, people think of scientific theories as these 'objective' .......
.......For my part, I don't accept the idea that we can't judge between theories. Although someone smarter than me is certainly welcome to talk it though with me. In fact, I'd welcome that :)

After a quick read of you comments I think we probably agree on a lot.
I hope you and Sidewinder, er, I mean Greyskull participate too.

It seems that before Einstein, very few people would have guessed that of all the theories of the day, it would be Newtonian gravity that would be subjected to an overthrow. Of course, what most people don't realize is that Newtonian gravity retains truth in some sense (it is a limiting case and holds in its regime). It wasn't just demolished outright.

[_Ren]

It seems that before Einstein, very few people would have guess that of all the theories of the day it would be Newtonian gravity that would be subjected to an over throw.

Indeed! I think this kind of occurance should be a warning to all of us. Be very wary of the word 'fact'. It may well come to bite you where it hurts later...!

Of course, what most people don't realize is that Newtonian gravity retains truth in some sense (it is a limiting case and holds in its regime). It wasn't just demolished outright.

Yes. I beleive the Newtonian equations are still used quite regularly today. They are 'accurate enough' for a lot of people's needs.
I don't think to say a theory is 'falsified' is to say that 'it has no element of truth to it...' But I guess you can confidently declare that it - at the very least - can't be the 'full' truth.

[_KimberlyAnn]

Tarski, thanks for starting this thread, it has me completely intrigued!

I just have a BA in History and although I was introduced to many philosophers in a historical setting, I've only cursory knowledge of their actual philosophies. The instructor who introduced me to Kant confessed to having a bias against him, and so I suppose may have imparted a skewered understanding of him. I look forward to learning something new from you and Renegade and Gad.

Thanks again,

KA

[_Gadianton]

I liked Renegade's post. Just for the record, I'm not a disciple of Kuhn or any of the others, I think they all made important contributions and the matter is far from settled. Mainly for Kuhn, I was trying to show that in many important ways, apologists are worse off if they stand by him. Something I forgot to mention, is that questioning knowledge isn't the only tactic of apologists or religionists. They exist on the exact opposite side of the epistemic fence too, believing in the radical certainty of knowledge and truth - Alvin Plantinga and Norman Geisler for example. Presuppositionalism is far, far more anoying than relativism. I remember when the late EA introduced me to the Christian molestation of Kant's transcendental philosophy. You just can't believe these fools are serious. One article I read tried to make the case that without a Christian worldview, you can't account for walking into a store and buying milk without contradicting yourself. The ultra-fundamentalist "ministry" apologists are diametrically opposed to anything that could be associated with postmodernism and maintain Truth and Knowledge in pristine glory. So it doesn't really matter what take you have on epistemology, some God-fearer out there agrees with you and in part bases his religious beliefs on it.

Oh yeah, back to Kuhn real quick. Kuhn did seem to slip, in the end, into idealism when he declared that when paradigms shifted, the world changed. But it was a careful slip (given he only believed that there could be two paradigms at a time, it's not like every apologist who has his own paradigm because they confuse Kuhn with Covey), and even if we reject that, his work still was enlightening for many other reasons. Just like Popper, in the end, putting a final stamp on a philosphy of science is probably impossible.

[_Ren]

Hey Gadianton,

Just for the record, I'm not a disciple of Kuhn or any of the others, I think they all made important contributions and the matter is far from settled...

...Just like Popper, in the end, putting a final stamp on a philosphy of science is probably impossible.

These couple of statements above certainly ring true to me. At the time I was considering Popper vs. Kuhn (as this is how it was presented to me), one of my first thoughts was 'Is it really Popper vs. Kuhn?' It seemed fairly obvious to me pretty quickly that they both have good ways of approaching the issue, that don't nessesarily conflict...

As far as 'tying' down the philosophies of science to some kind of 'standard' that all agree on - yeah, I take the point. But I see all the debate as having a 'refining' effect rather than making any large turns. To me, it's reasonably clear when 'real' scientists are talking - regardless of whether they prefer Popper, or Kuhn, or whoever else. The philosophy of science - to me - is just a way to formalise a way of thinking that many people just 'get', without having to really understand any of the philosophy, or the technical terms.

I think a police detective investigating suspects will make use of Popparian philosophy in his efforts to 'discount' them from the investigation.
...he might well have no clue who 'Karl Popper' is though...

One article I read tried to make the case that without a Christian worldview, you can't account for walking into a store and buying milk without contradicting yourself.

Haha! The worrying thing is, I have no trouble beleiving that...!

[_Tal Bachman]

Hi Tarski

Good luck trying to get Runaway Dan to offer up anything coherent...I'm sure he knows better than to try that.

Anyway, about your comments and me "figuring this stuff all out". I don't think I have figured out every last question in epistemology; I don't think I've figured out much at all. I do think, though, that I can show that Kuhn, Popper, Hume, et al, in addition to maintaining a number of effective contradictions in their own philosophies, fail to give an adequate account of "the growth of scientific knowledge". I even think that is easy. You can tell me if I am wrong or not. And I doubt I would ever think of you as a loser, Tarski. I reserve that designation for flight-prone, buck-naked mini-emperors :P.

You wrote:

Personally, I am not so quick to dismiss all the ideas of Kant, Hume and Kuhn. I don't think that we have discovered a rock solid foundation for knowledge in the way that classical epistemology sought and seeks to do.

This sentence seems to me to contain an implied non sequitir, so I want to begin by pointing out that logically, we can find epistemic arguments by Kant, Hume, Kuhn, Rorty, and Popper defective, without having to claim that "we have discovered a rock solid foundation for knowledge". In fact, we may have no idea how to construct an adequate epistemology, but we may very well have an idea of how not to construct one, or why certain attempts don't work (we might be able to figure out that the sum of two and two is definitely not three, but not know it's four yet). So in my own comments here, I want only to point out how the epistemic arguments of those mentioned (I'll call them "The Gang" from now on) fail.

Here is part one of the prima facie argument I alluded to in my earlier post (everything which comes after will either be an elaboration of this position, or a defense of my characterizations of certain arguments):

Part One: Much more is known now than it was, say, five hundred years ago (or five thousand, or even just five). (Let us call this claim [K]). Therefore, any argument which to any degree, explicitly or by logical extension, requires or entails the denial of K, may be known to be defective at least to that degree.

Is there anyone reading this (not named "Wade Englund", that is...) who will deny that more is known now than was known in 1507? I don't think so. But if someone is so inclined, I suggest that s/he take some leftovers out of the refrigerator, heat them up in the microwave, pour themselves a nice glass of pasteurized, homogenized milk, and settle down in front of their computer, log on to the world wide web with their high-speed wireless connection, and run a Google search to find out whether or not more is known now, than it was in 1507.

Before I go on, does everyone agree that more is known now, than was known in 1507, or 507, or 50,000 B.C.? (Remember, NOT counting Wade Englund!).

GOOD! (Whew)

Part Two: The Gang's positions either explicitly, or by logical extension, require the denial of K. Therefore, they must be defective.

This is the prima facie argument. I can now elaborate if you want...but...

I was just thinking, Tarski - do you want me to go on, or are your eyes glazing over already? I'll go on if you want, just not sure how much you really care what some songwriter might think.....(?)

I guess what I'm sort of wondering is - does anything I say matter?

Tal