Questions for Gordon Sollars
Ken Gardner
an interesting epistemological discussion with the following two
questions:
1. On what points and why do you disagree with the Objectivist
epistemology?
2. Because you seem to be a follower of Karl Popper or at least
knowledgeable about his philosophy, what differences do you see between
Popper's epistemology and Objectivism (other than terminology)? I have
read some of his books, so I am generally familiar with Popper although
I wouldn't consider myself to be an expert. Just so you know, I first
became interested in Popper because I had read in several places that
his epistemology was very similar to Ayn Rand's.
Thanks.
Ken
Karun Philip
> 1. On what points and why do you disagree with the Objectivist
> epistemology?
>
> Popper's epistemology and Objectivism (other than terminology)?
I have a free wekend so I'm jumping in before Gordon, though I am interested
in his answer. The difference I perceive is the question of certainty of
what we call "objective knowledge". Popperians would not contend that
existence does not exist. Nor would he have said there is no such thing as
"objective knowledge" because his whole life was dedicated to methodologies
to discover objective knowledge. His follower Thomas Kuhn was in fact
alienated from Popper because of his embrace of extreme relativism, despite
his use of Popper's theory itself. Kuhn was right in observing that what we
contingently hold as "objective knowledge" can be overturned or extended by
new discoveries, resulting in a paradigm shift. But incompleteness and its
necesssary consequence of fallibility does not mean that any theory is fine.
It must hold up to evidence and must survive critique and claims of
counter-evidence. Just because we agree to hold our opinions as contingently
true does not mean that we believe existence does not exist. But even
incomplete or wrong theories are sufficient to plan and engineer outcomes --
for instance getting up in the morning didn't change after we discovered the
sun doesn't rise but the earth actually "falls" (spins). General Relativity
shows the incompleteness of Newton's theories, but doesn't change the fact
that we can use Newton's "laws" to launch a satellite accurately (most of
the time).
Objectivists tend to get violent (actually, I only mean rude) if they are
confronted with claims of fallibility -- Rand herself felt that Hayek's
approach (and he was a friend and admirer of Popper) would be the undoing of
her beliefs and identified him as Enemy # 2 (after the socialists
obviously). She need not have worried -- there is much of Objectivism that
will stand up even after dumping certainty. A good site for an intro (and
depth) to Popper is Rafe Champion's at http://zap.to/rafechampion.
Regards,
Karun.
--
Karun Philip
Author: "Zen and the Art of Funk Capitalism: A General Theory of
Fallibility"
http://www.k-capital.com/HA.htm
Ken Gardner
> > 1. On what points and why do you disagree with the Objectivist
> > epistemology?
> > 2. [...] what differences do you see between
> > Popper's epistemology and Objectivism (other than terminology)?
> Kuhn was right in observing that what we
> contingently hold as "objective knowledge" can be overturned or extended by
> new discoveries, resulting in a paradigm shift. But incompleteness and its
> necesssary consequence of fallibility does not mean that any theory is fine.
> It must hold up to evidence and must survive critique and claims of
> counter-evidence. Just because we agree to hold our opinions as contingently
> true does not mean that we believe existence does not exist.
Other than semantics, how is this any different from what Objectivists
call "contextual certainty?"
[...]
> Objectivists tend to get violent (actually, I only mean rude) if they are
> confronted with claims of fallibility -- Rand herself felt that Hayek's
> approach (and he was a friend and admirer of Popper) would be the undoing of
> her beliefs and identified him as Enemy # 2 (after the socialists
> obviously). She need not have worried -- there is much of Objectivism that
> will stand up even after dumping certainty. A good site for an intro (and
> depth) to Popper is Rafe Champion's at http://zap.to/rafechampion.
But Objectivism (and Ayn Rand) would fully agree that we are fallible.
So, again, I'm having trouble seeing any real (non-semantical)
difference.
Ken
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> I'm following up on our recent thread and I'm thinking that we can start
> an interesting epistemological discussion with the following two
> questions:
These are very broad questions, Ken, and, as it happens, starting
tomorrow I'm not going to have as much time to spend on line as I have
for the past month. But I will take an abbreviated shot at it.
> 1. On what points and why do you disagree with the Objectivist
> epistemology?
It might be better if you first told me what /you/ think Objectivist
epistemology is. You have said, for instance, that you disagree in
various ways with Fred. Which of you is the "real" Objectivist
epistemologist?
I read ITOE many years ago (and I still have a copy somewhere if needed),
and I have Peikoff's "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy". Beyond that, I
only have what I have learned from Objectivists posting here. Based on
what I have read from these two primary sources, however, what I see here
seems consistent with them.
I have said that Objectivism has a "foundationalist" epistemology. A
foundationalist epistemology starts with certain basic elements of which
it is claimed that they "must" be true, are self-evident, cannot be
doubted without contradiction, etc. Then it adds some Method of moving
from these foundations to other truths. The idea is that if the Method
is properly followed the results will be true and, in the best case, true
with certainty - the Method ensures that. This Method might be, for
example, called "induction" or "integration".
Now, Objectivism adds the wrinkle of "contextual" certainty to plain
vanilla foundationalism. Recognizing that we sometimes find out later
that a "certain" truth is, in fact, false even though we followed the
Method with utmost care, Objectivism says that the "truth" was "true in a
certain context".
Although I no doubt have other disagreements with Objectivist
epistemology, this is more than enough. First, I reject
"foundationalism". Self-evidently true statements, as opposed to
statements that simply are true, are interesting only if you think that
they can lead to additional /certain/ truths. The idea is that since
/they/ are certain, we can get to other truths with certainty using the
Method. Since no such Method exists (that I know of), the whole
enterprise collapses.
Second, I see no point in "contextual certainty". Objectivists
apparently allow that the Method can err (else we wouldn't need mere
/contextual/ certainty), but that it can nevertheless give us certain
knowledge within some "context". For some time I have argued here that
this is pointless, since, for example, Newton did not know in advance
exactly what the context of his theory of gravitation was. If you cannot
precisely specify what is in or out of a context, all you are saying is,
"There may be exceptions out there, and I have no idea where". How does
this add up to certainty (or even "high confidence")? You are simply
saying, "My theory is true where it is true and false where it is not,
and I don't know which".
I have recently added another criticism of "context", using Ptolemy's and
Newton's theories as examples. I showed that - assuming realism, e.g.,
that a theory is trying to actually describe aspects of reality - it is
simply wrong to say that Newton's theory of gravity was "true in its
context" even /after/ you specify what the context is. Sadly, the only
Objectivists that came into the discussion were Fred and "harkyl" (sp?),
and the latter dropped out while the former kept repeating irrelevancies
(and then dropped out). So my new argument could be all wet, but no one
has pointed to how it fails to hold water.
Now, if I have misunderstood Objectivist epistemology as
being "foundationalist" when it is not, or "contextual certainty", then,
perhaps, I don't disagree with Objectivist epistemology.
> 2. Because you seem to be a follower of Karl Popper or at least
> knowledgeable about his philosophy, what differences do you see between
> Popper's epistemology and Objectivism (other than terminology)?
Popper is not a foundationalist or a "justificationist". Rather than
starting with truths known with certainty and moving forward hoping to
invoke the Method without error, he starts with contradictions and moves
back, roughly eliminating theories by modus tollens. The idea is to try
to classify statements as true or false, not to try to show that we are
/certain/ of the true ones.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> These are very broad questions, Ken, and, as it happens, starting
> tomorrow I'm not going to have as much time to spend on line as I have
> for the past month. But I will take an abbreviated shot at it.
Okay, and thanks.
> > 1. On what points and why do you disagree with the Objectivist
> > epistemology?
> It might be better if you first told me what /you/ think Objectivist
> epistemology is. You have said, for instance, that you disagree in
> various ways with Fred. Which of you is the "real" Objectivist
> epistemologist?
I think that ITOE, 2nd Edition, essentially represents the Objectivist
epistemology. There is, of course, a raging debate here regarding the
extent, if any, to which Chapters 4 and 5 of OPAR are also part of
Objectivist epistemology.
More to follow below.
> I read ITOE many years ago (and I still have a copy somewhere if needed),
> and I have Peikoff's "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy".
All of which is in ITOE, 2nd Edition.
> Beyond that, I
> only have what I have learned from Objectivists posting here.
That could be dangerous. :)
> Based on what I have read from these two primary sources, however, what I
> see here
> seems consistent with them.
> I have said that Objectivism has a "foundationalist" epistemology. A
> foundationalist epistemology starts with certain basic elements of which
> it is claimed that they "must" be true, are self-evident, cannot be
> doubted without contradiction, etc. Then it adds some Method of moving
> from these foundations to other truths. The idea is that if the Method
> is properly followed the results will be true and, in the best case, true
> with certainty - the Method ensures that. This Method might be, for
> example, called "induction" or "integration".
Actually, this is very close to the actual truth. Peikoff covers what
he calls "integration" and "reduction" in Chapter 4 of OPAR. According
to Peikoff, these two processes (the "method" of logic), if practiced
consistently, are the means to achieving objectivity in one's conceptual
activities and, thus, acquiring actual knowledge of reality. Of these
two processes, reduction essentially parallels what I think you are
referring to in describing Objectivist epistemology as foundationalist.
ITOE doesn't have anything comparable to Chapter 4 of OPAR with respect
to propositions, although it does have a chapter regarding the
hierarchical structure of concepts that probably would strike you as
being foundationalist.
> Now, Objectivism adds the wrinkle of "contextual" certainty to plain
> vanilla foundationalism. Recognizing that we sometimes find out later
> that a "certain" truth is, in fact, false even though we followed the
> Method with utmost care, Objectivism says that the "truth" was "true in a
> certain context".
Some self-described Objectivists do. I don't.
> Although I no doubt have other disagreements with Objectivist
> epistemology, this is more than enough. First, I reject
> "foundationalism". Self-evidently true statements, as opposed to
> statements that simply are true, are interesting only if you think that
> they can lead to additional /certain/ truths. The idea is that since
> /they/ are certain, we can get to other truths with certainty using the
> Method. Since no such Method exists (that I know of), the whole
> enterprise collapses.
I certainly accept Rand's argument, in Chapter 3 of ITOE, that concepts
are hierarchical. The trickier question for me concerns propositions (a
topic mostly uncovered in ITOE) and, more specifically, theories
expressed as universals. The plain truth is that a universal cannot be
"reduced" to the facts of reality (e.g. you cannot prove the theory that
all swans are white merely by pointing to all the white swans that you
have observed in your life, although you can refute this theory with a
single counter-example of a non-white swan), yet we need the guidance of
universal theories in our daily lives. I happen to agree here with
Popper that we should focus on trying to refute such theories by
rigorous testing instead of merely trying to develop evidence that
supports the theory. To paraphrase Nietzsche, that which does not
refute the theory makes it stronger.
> Second, I see no point in "contextual certainty". Objectivists
> apparently allow that the Method can err (else we wouldn't need mere
> /contextual/ certainty), but that it can nevertheless give us certain
> knowledge within some "context". For some time I have argued here that
> this is pointless, since, for example, Newton did not know in advance
> exactly what the context of his theory of gravitation was. If you cannot
> precisely specify what is in or out of a context, all you are saying is,
> "There may be exceptions out there, and I have no idea where". How does
> this add up to certainty (or even "high confidence")? You are simply
> saying, "My theory is true where it is true and false where it is not,
> and I don't know which".
I tend to agree with you here, but not all Objectivists (or self-
described Objectivists) subscribe to the "contextual certainty" doctrine
in OPAR. Rand herself never covered it in writing as far as I know. I
don't subscribe to it, at least not when it comes to universal
statements or theories.
> I have recently added another criticism of "context", using Ptolemy's and
> Newton's theories as examples. I showed that - assuming realism, e.g.,
> that a theory is trying to actually describe aspects of reality - it is
> simply wrong to say that Newton's theory of gravity was "true in its
> context" even /after/ you specify what the context is. Sadly, the only
> Objectivists that came into the discussion were Fred and "harkyl" (sp?),
> and the latter dropped out while the former kept repeating irrelevancies
> (and then dropped out). So my new argument could be all wet, but no one
> has pointed to how it fails to hold water.
Again, you are not the only one who disagrees with Fred on this issue.
I have said here for almost two years running that "contextual truth" is
mere code for subjectivism and has nothing to do with Objectivism,
properly understood.
> Now, if I have misunderstood Objectivist epistemology as
> being "foundationalist" when it is not, or "contextual certainty", then,
> perhaps, I don't disagree with Objectivist epistemology.
As I indicated above, I think Objectivist epistemology is certainly
"foundationalist." However, I don't think that "contextual certainty"
belongs to Objectivist epistemology proper, although the Peikoff
supporters here will certainly disagree with me.
> > 2. Because you seem to be a follower of Karl Popper or at least
> > knowledgeable about his philosophy, what differences do you see between
> > Popper's epistemology and Objectivism (other than terminology)?
> Popper is not a foundationalist or a "justificationist". Rather than
> starting with truths known with certainty and moving forward hoping to
> invoke the Method without error, he starts with contradictions and moves
> back, roughly eliminating theories by modus tollens. The idea is to try
> to classify statements as true or false, not to try to show that we are
> /certain/ of the true ones.
Okay. And when it comes to propositions, I'm closer to your side
myself, especially with his emphasis on rigorous testing,
experimentation, etc.
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16bea2126...@news.charter.net...
> Gordon G. Sollars says...
>... Recognizing that we sometimes find out later
> > that a "certain" truth is, in fact, false even though we followed the
> > Method with utmost care, Objectivism says that the "truth" was "true in
a
> > certain context".
>
> Some self-described Objectivists do. I don't.
Which self-described Objectivists? I don't. And why the gratuitous insult of
"self-described" as if yours is the correct Objectivist position, when you
have no basis whatever for that view (as even you admit) and it is prima
facie at variance with anything you know Ayn Rand would have said on the
subject.
You are still failing to grasp the Objectivist position. Why I don't know
because we have discussed it innumerable times. (That's as distinct from
your choosing to agree with it or not which is your prerogative).
The point you are still missing is that *all* truth is contextual. We do not
hold to a Platonic view of the subject. There is no such thing as
non-contextual truth (other than axioms which pertain to truth as such). You
can't have *anything* true unless you specify the context to which it
applies. If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which you
have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary. (Incidentally, that
is not what Newton did - based on some quotes Bob recently provided - and in
that sense he was thoroughly "Objectivist").
In this sense, a certain truth is *never* false, then, now, or at any time
in the future. My position was, and still is, for example - and we've
discussed this many times - that Newton's Theory was true and remains true
and always will be true. So are a great many other truths that men have
identified over the centuries, even though we may have better and more
fundamental explanations today given our wider context of knowledge. That's
how we got from oxcarts to spaceships. But spaceships don't "falsify"
oxcarts and they are not any more or less "true" than oxcarts, even though
you can't get to the moon in an oxcart. Nor are spaceships "closer to the
truth", as if there is some Platonic perfect mode of transportation which we
are continually striving to achieve but never can. That would be called,
dare I say it, dropping context. And I would have hoped that by now you'd
see where that will get you if you forget it when discussing philosophic
issues with creatures like Sollars. Which is only to say that this is a
pervasive and fundamental principle of Objectivism - not, I might add,
"self-described" Objectivism. And that's the significance of Chapters 4 & 5
in OPAR.
Your example of "all swans are white" is an example of this confusion. If
you take "all" to mean "anywhere and everywhere in the universe" (as you
take Newton's Theory which even he apparently didn't) it is simply arbitrary
and of course you can't be certain of it. Who could possibly know what color
swans might be on some distant planet (let alone on some unexplored
continent on earth)? And this even apart from the fact that color is clearly
an inessential characteristic of swans and, if nothing else, through genetic
modification, we can probably in principle create swans in every color of
the rainbow. Nonetheless there is a great deal we know with certainty about
swans - in the known universe where they reside, namely earth and its
conditions. Isn't that so? That's not exactly a small matter, not adequately
conveyed by "some" swans unless one is striving for a Platonic "perfect
essence-of-swan" residing in some universe of some philosopher's wild
imaginings having nothing to do with reality.
Fred Weiss
harkyl
4d5a2...@news.charter.net>...
> Gordon G. Sollars says...
>
>
>
> > I have recently added another criticism of "context", using Ptolemy's and
> > Newton's theories as examples. I showed that - assuming realism, e.g.,
> > that a theory is trying to actually describe aspects of reality - it is
> > simply wrong to say that Newton's theory of gravity was "true in its
> > context" even /after/ you specify what the context is. Sadly, the only
> > Objectivists that came into the discussion were Fred and "harkyl" (sp?),
> > and the latter dropped out while the former kept repeating irrelevancies
> > (and then dropped out). So my new argument could be all wet, but no one
> > has pointed to how it fails to hold water.
>
> Again, you are not the only one who disagrees with Fred on this issue.
> I have said here for almost two years running that "contextual truth" is
> mere code for subjectivism and has nothing to do with Objectivism,
> properly understood.
i was content with my final post in this matter. Gordon did not
respond. in fact, ken, you instead responded and took my post on a
different tangient, one involving inductive reasoning. if i remember
correctly, it seemed there was no other conclusion except to adopt the
belief that there is 'ultimate truth' if you want to be an
objectivist. otherwise if you are content with the concept of
contextual truth, your are in the subjectivist camp. i too was
unsatisfied with these conclusions. As far as my charge of mistakenly
believing that there exists a problem of induction, i simply didnt
have time to respond. i belive there alreadyis a lengthy thread
regarding this.
kyle
Don Watkins III
> Which self-described Objectivists? I don't. And why the gratuitous insult of
> "self-described" as if yours is the correct Objectivist position, when you
> have no basis whatever for that view (as even you admit) and it is prima
> facie at variance with anything you know Ayn Rand would have said on the
> subject.
Note Fred's concern: what Ken said would have been "at variance" with
what Ayn Rand would have said. Ken's POV is not "the correct
Objectivist position."
Well, I can't speak for Ken, but I assume that his concern is with
what the_correct_position is. What could be more Objectivist than
that?
> You are still failing to grasp the Objectivist position.
Actually, Ken probably grasps it better than you do, which is why he
calls you and your ilk "self-described" Objectivists and which is why
he rejects your epistemology. Whatever the flaws in Ken's approach,
it hasn't done have the harm to him that your epistemology has done to
you.
> Why I don't know
> because we have discussed it innumerable times. (That's as distinct from
> your choosing to agree with it or not which is your prerogative).
Uh huh.
> The point you are still missing is that *all* truth is contextual. We do not
> hold to a Platonic view of the subject. There is no such thing as
> non-contextual truth (other than axioms which pertain to truth as such). You
> can't have *anything* true unless you specify the context to which it
> applies. If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
> you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which you
> have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary.
That's fine and I doubt that Ken has a problem with it.
> (Incidentally, that
> is not what Newton did - based on some quotes Bob recently provided - and in
> that sense he was thoroughly "Objectivist").
> In this sense, a certain truth is *never* false, then, now, or at any time
> in the future.
In what sense? Of course a certain truth is never false, otherwise
you were never really certain. But, the point is, you can't achieve
certainty of something which is not the case. You can't be certain
that the earth is flat if the earth isn't flat. You can't be certain
that all swans are white if all swans aren't.
Here's the scam: cut knowledge loose of the "constraints" of
reality...get rid of the referents. Now, all you have to worry about
is words, and, guess what? Now you can be certain of anything!
That's why Fred can be so certain that Ken is preaching skepticism,
even though he's not. And that's how he's so certain that I'm a
nihilistic, pacifist, evader, even though I'm not. And that's how he
can be so certain that he's defeated any of David Friedman's
arguments, even though he hasn't.
It's simple, so simple: he can be certain of all this because -- with
his epistemology -- he can be certain of anything. All he has to do
is ignore some facts, call that a context, and...bingo...Fred Weiss
has achieved certainty!
Sound far fetched? Look at the archives. Fred wants to believe that
the American Indians were all evil savages who refused to recognize
property rights. Along comes Meghan and David and others who show
that this is not the case. Does Fred face up to his error? WHAT
ERROR? His statement were true because it only applied to the
essentail Amerinds, or the relevant Amerinds, or blah blah blah blah
blah.
That's not good enough for ya? Take a look at Fred's evasion of the
facts Rod Nibbe presented in regards to the Mid-East oil.
This isn't an accident folks. It's a direct result of Fred Weiss
epsitemology -- an epistemology he tries to pass off as not only valid
(which is bad enough)...but as Objectivist! Someone go check Ayn
Rand's grave...see if she's rolled over.
Don Watkins
Chris Cathcart
023.7c...@posting.google.com>...
> Fred Weiss writes:
> > In this sense, a certain truth is *never* false, then, now, or at any time
> > in the future.
>
> In what sense? Of course a certain truth is never false, otherwise
> you were never really certain. But, the point is, you can't achieve
> certainty of something which is not the case. You can't be certain
> that the earth is flat if the earth isn't flat. You can't be certain
> that all swans are white if all swans aren't.
Uh, given what certainty IS, yes, in fact, people can be and are
certain about a lot of things that they have insufficient
justification for, or are actually false.
Fred Weiss IS in fact certain about a lot of things for which he has
piss-poor justifications and which are, in all likelihood, false.
If atheism is true, then lots and lots of theists are certain about
something that's false.
The terrorist fucks of 9/11 were certain that they'd go to heaven for
killing the infidels.
Certainty is just a state of mind where you're very confident and sure
in your beliefs, so much so that you don't think there's any evidence,
argument, etc. that would convince you otherwise. Of course, some
place a more stringent contigent on what it is to be certain, i.e.,
something like "absolute" confidence or surety in one's belief, though
the term "absolute" is too often hard to pin down. In the sense that
I provided, I myself am certain about a lot of things. In the
"absolute" sense, I don't know if I'm certain of anything beyond the
basic axioms. That *does* mean that the things of which I am certain
-- in the first sense -- are things for which I don't think there is
any evidence or argument that would convince me otherwise, but I'm
still open to plausible evidence or argument on the very remote chance
that I'll be swayed. (There is a difference between "I don't think
there is any evidence that would sway me," and "It's not possible for
there to be evidence that would sway me.") But there may be
intrinsicists out there who are absolutely certain of some things, at
least effectively, in that they're completely close-minded.
> Here's the scam: cut knowledge loose of the "constraints" of
> reality...get rid of the referents. Now, all you have to worry about
> is words, and, guess what? Now you can be certain of anything!
>
> That's why Fred can be so certain that Ken is preaching skepticism,
> even though he's not. And that's how he's so certain that I'm a
> nihilistic, pacifist, evader, even though I'm not. And that's how he
> can be so certain that he's defeated any of David Friedman's
> arguments, even though he hasn't.
Well, he *is* being certain about these things, is he not? Sure, he's
got some pretty scummy and arbitrary standards for how he'll reach
certainty about things, but he's still certain of them. And it
appears to be tied up in his concept of "truth" so that he can talk
about "certain truths" and such, and we've already gone around several
times about his and others' concept of "truth" that it needn't be
rehashed yet again here.
Certainty *is* the kind of thing that is contextual -- precisely the
kind of thing that is open-ended and subject to revision. Truth
isn't. One is an aspect of cognition, which is what makes it a
contextual issue; the other isn't.
> It's simple, so simple: he can be certain of all this because -- with
> his epistemology -- he can be certain of anything. All he has to do
> is ignore some facts, call that a context, and...bingo...Fred Weiss
> has achieved certainty!
>
> Sound far fetched? Look at the archives. Fred wants to believe that
> the American Indians were all evil savages who refused to recognize
> property rights. Along comes Meghan and David and others who show
> that this is not the case. Does Fred face up to his error? WHAT
> ERROR? His statement were true because it only applied to the
> essentail Amerinds, or the relevant Amerinds, or blah blah blah blah
> blah.
Sounds like ARIanism, not standard-brand contextual certainty.
Another poignant exercise in that kind of method can be found in Petey
Schwartz's "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty." Just redefine
everything, or leave things undefined as the case warrants, leave out
various facts or warp them so so that, e.g., "Murray Rothbard is an
objectivist" = "Murray Rothbard is a subjectivist," substitute words
for reality, run together important distinctions, and just generally
be really arbitrary and selective about what gets allowed and what
doesn't, and you've got an ARIan exercise in "truth"-"identification."
> That's not good enough for ya? Take a look at Fred's evasion of the
> facts Rod Nibbe presented in regards to the Mid-East oil.
>
> This isn't an accident folks. It's a direct result of Fred Weiss
> epsitemology -- an epistemology he tries to pass off as not only valid
> (which is bad enough)...but as Objectivist! Someone go check Ayn
> Rand's grave...see if she's rolled over.
Not only that, but he gets plenty of approval, support and sanction
from his fellow ARIan defrauders, just like Petey Schwartz does.
Don Watkins III
>> In what sense? Of course a certain truth is never false, otherwise
>> you were never really certain. But, the point is, you can't achieve
>> certainty of something which is not the case. You can't be certain
>> that the earth is flat if the earth isn't flat. You can't be certain
>> that all swans are white if all swans aren't.
Chris Cathcart writes:
>Uh, given what certainty IS, yes, in fact, people can be and are
>certain about a lot of things that they have insufficient
>justification for, or are actually false.
[snip]
>Certainty is just a state of mind where you're very confident and sure
>in your beliefs, so much so that you don't think there's any evidence,
>argument, etc. that would convince you otherwise.
Nah...that's "psychological certainty" or something like that, and has nothing
to do with genuine epistemological certainty. Everyone has psychological
certainty, to be sure. What they don't have is certain knowledge.
You know, like "Don Watkins is now typing a sentence." Or, "AOL Newsreader
sucks."
[snip]
>> Here's the scam: cut knowledge loose of the "constraints" of
>> reality...get rid of the referents. Now, all you have to worry about
>> is words, and, guess what? Now you can be certain of anything!
>>
>> That's why Fred can be so certain that Ken is preaching skepticism,
>> even though he's not. And that's how he's so certain that I'm a
>> nihilistic, pacifist, evader, even though I'm not. And that's how he
>> can be so certain that he's defeated any of David Friedman's
>> arguments, even though he hasn't.
>Well, he *is* being certain about these things, is he not? Sure, he's
>got some pretty scummy and arbitrary standards for how he'll reach
>certainty about things, but he's still certain of them. And it
>appears to be tied up in his concept of "truth" so that he can talk
>about "certain truths" and such, and we've already gone around several
>times about his and others' concept of "truth" that it needn't be
>rehashed yet again here.
You can't be certain (in the sense that I use the word) of something which you
don't know, and you can't know anything which isn't true. Therefore, you can't
be certain of something that's not true. Q.E.D.
Now, if you ask me, how can we achieve actual certainty...well, don't ask me
that! Not yet anyway!
>Certainty *is* the kind of thing that is contextual -- precisely the
>kind of thing that is open-ended and subject to revision. Truth
>isn't. One is an aspect of cognition, which is what makes it a
>contextual issue; the other isn't.
That's where I think you're wrong. Truth_is_a contextual issue, but not the
way the ARIans mean it. It's contextual in the way that all facts are
contextual.
>> It's simple, so simple: he can be certain of all this because -- with
>> his epistemology -- he can be certain of anything. All he has to do
>> is ignore some facts, call that a context, and...bingo...Fred Weiss
>> has achieved certainty!
>>
>> Sound far fetched? Look at the archives. Fred wants to believe that
>> the American Indians were all evil savages who refused to recognize
>> property rights. Along comes Meghan and David and others who show
>> that this is not the case. Does Fred face up to his error? WHAT
>> ERROR? His statement were true because it only applied to the
>> essentail Amerinds, or the relevant Amerinds, or blah blah blah blah
>> blah.
>Sounds like ARIanism, not standard-brand contextual certainty.
I didn't realize there was a difference!
>Another poignant exercise in that kind of method can be found in Petey
>Schwartz's "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty." Just redefine
>everything, or leave things undefined as the case warrants, leave out
>various facts or warp them so so that, e.g., "Murray Rothbard is an
>objectivist" = "Murray Rothbard is a subjectivist," substitute words
>for reality, run together important distinctions, and just generally
>be really arbitrary and selective about what gets allowed and what
>doesn't, and you've got an ARIan exercise in "truth"-"identification."
Yeah...I forgot about that one. Some day I should buy that tape from the ARB
where Petey talks about the methodology he used in L:TPOL. That'll definately
be entertaining!
>> That's not good enough for ya? Take a look at Fred's evasion of the
>> facts Rod Nibbe presented in regards to the Mid-East oil.
>>
>> This isn't an accident folks. It's a direct result of Fred Weiss
>> epsitemology -- an epistemology he tries to pass off as not only valid
>> (which is bad enough)...but as Objectivist! Someone go check Ayn
>> Rand's grave...see if she's rolled over.
>Not only that, but he gets plenty of approval, support and sanction
>from his fellow ARIan defrauders, just like Petey Schwartz does.
And thus we have the ARIan Serkle Gerk <g>.
Don Watkins
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> i was content with my final post in this matter. Gordon did not
> respond.
I must have missed this post; I will try to find it. Any help in
locating it would be appreciated.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
In article <a33ev7$tr9$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>, Fred Weiss writes...
...
> In this sense, a certain truth is *never* false, then, now, or at any time
> in the future.
Neither is an uncertain truth.
> My position was, and still is, for example - and we've
> discussed this many times - that Newton's Theory was true and remains true
> and always will be true.
A fine position, until you try to find the position of Mercury.
...
> If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
> you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which you
> have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary.
Is a scientific law arbitrary because it makes statements about things
that have not yet been observed? If so, science is in trouble. If not,
then your "all facts in the universe" is just the overblown rhetorical
smoke it appears to be.
> (Incidentally, that
> is not what Newton did - based on some quotes Bob recently provided - and in
> that sense he was thoroughly "Objectivist").
...
> If
> you take "all" to mean "anywhere and everywhere in the universe" (as you
> take Newton's Theory which even he apparently didn't)
This is a straw man at best. We need not canvas the vast universe - we
only have to go as far as Mercury. Are you saying that Bob said that
Newton thought his theory did not apply to the planets?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> >... Recognizing that we sometimes find out later
> > > that a "certain" truth is, in fact, false even though we followed the
> > > Method with utmost care, Objectivism says that the "truth" was "true in
> > > a certain context".
> > Some self-described Objectivists do. I don't.
> Which self-described Objectivists? I don't.
Since when? Of course, you are not the only self-described Objectivist
whom I had understood (rightly or wrongly, but I think rightly) to
associate himself or herself with this position.
> And why the gratuitous insult of "self-described" as if yours is the
> correct Objectivist position, when you have no basis whatever for that view
> (as even you admit) and it is prima facie at variance with anything you
> know Ayn Rand would have said on the subject.
First, I was not intending to insult anyone. The phrase actually
applies to both of us, even though we disagree on this point. Second,
without intending to rehash old debates, I believe that my position is
fully consistent with Objectivism and, moreover, is the one that Ayn
Rand herself actually took in her writings. I acknowledge that there is
disagreement on this point.
[...]
> The point you are still missing is that *all* truth is contextual. We do not
> hold to a Platonic view of the subject. There is no such thing as
> non-contextual truth (other than axioms which pertain to truth as such). You
> can't have *anything* true unless you specify the context to which it
> applies. If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
> you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which you
> have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary. (Incidentally, that
> is not what Newton did - based on some quotes Bob recently provided - and in
> that sense he was thoroughly "Objectivist").
I'll comment on the last point, because at least it is new. I certainly
agree that Newton's four principles of scientific reasoning are
essentially consistent with the Objectivist approach. I was fortunate
enough to become familiar with them before my HPO days, although I have
never had a real opportunity to discuss them here.
[...]
Ken
Ken Gardner
[...]
> > The point you are still missing is that *all* truth is contextual. We d
> > o not
> > hold to a Platonic view of the subject. There is no such thing as
> > non-contextual truth (other than axioms which pertain to truth as such)
> > . You
> > can't have *anything* true unless you specify the context to which it
> > applies. If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
> > you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which you
> > have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary.
> That's fine and I doubt that Ken has a problem with it.
Depends on what it means. I certainly agree that the (epistemological)
process by which we grasp truth is contextual. However, I disagree with
the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
the facts that falsify the statement.
[...]
Ken
Chris Cathcart
7739.0...@mb-dd.aol.com>...
Well, let's take this more "epistemologically rich" definition of
certainty. It still doesn't seem to be something that you have if and
only if you have knowledge. Okay, say that by "certain" we mean
something more than what passes for certain to someone like Fred
Weiss, who by and large offers piss-poor justifications for lots of
beliefs he holds, and focus on a stronger definition that means having
justified one's beliefs properly. Okay. But you could have some
belief that you've made plenty of justification for and which --
objectively -- you can be justified in regarding as an item of
knowledge. You have the psychological and emotional states
(philosophers tend to call the latter "phenomenological," if I'm not
mistaken, referring to what it feels like to have a belief)
accompanying a belief that you have knowledge of something. IOW,
you're just in that very same mental state as if you know something --
except that, in fact, the belief is false.
It could be more rigorous than having just observed lots of swans and
concluding they were all white. It could be rigorous scientific
testing that leads someone to believe that all A-type bloods are
compatible. Or it could be someone coming to believe in the universal
applicability of Newton's laws of mechanics. We're talking
densely-packed, solid justification here.
Are you saying that THESE people are not certain except in the bare
psychological sense? If not, what is it about a propositional
belief's being TRUE that is essential to someone's being certain?
Certainty has to do with a mental or cognitive state, as distinct from
the relation between a proposition and reality, does it not?
You could speak of "certain knowledge," but that would be rather
redundant or perhaps even question-begging here. "Certain truths" or
"certain propositions" don't seem to be applicable notions considering
that there is no such thing as a truth that isn't certain, and I don't
even know what it would be for a proposition to be certain.
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16bffac7...@news.charter.net...
>... I certainly agree that the (epistemological)
> process by which we grasp truth is contextual. However, I disagree with
> the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
> Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
> nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
> the facts that falsify the statement.
Since all knowledge is contextual, you can't make any legitimate true or
false claims outside of it. If you do, you are being arbitrary. Do you agree
with that much?
So our context is *always* limited. We are not arbitrarily "omitting" facts
outside of that context. We don't know what they are. There's nothing you
can legitimately say about them - apart from speculation. Our claims
therefore should only pertain to what we know in that given context.
You have to judge of course whether you have sufficient facts to make a
claim in this or any other context - and reality is the ultimate standard
for that. But why do you think we should have to look at every possible fact
in the universe which bears on it? How could Newton, for example, have known
about "strong forces on small bodies"? And why should he have had to in
order to make claims about what he did - in fact - know (which, btw, is
still true today and nobody disputes)? Furthermore, these later discoveries
did not *contradict* Newton. As a minor point, they might have if he had
*said* (which he didn't) that his theories would apply to all phenomena in
the universe. But that would have been a problem only in the way he
presented his claim and wouldn't affect the truth of what he correctly
identified. So, he could be accused of making certain unjustified claims but
it wouldn't have changed the importance - or truth - of his legitimate
discovery. Truths, I want to emphasize, which are still true today and
always will be *regardless of later or future discoveries in physics*. The
fact that Newtonian physics doesn't explain all the relevant phenomena in
physics doesn't diminish what it does explain - anymore than the fact that
we don't know everything doesn't diminish what we do know.
Now, if it had turned out that he was wrong even about that (e.g. as was the
case with Ptolemy), that would be another matter. But he wasn't. The
progress of knowledge in this instance is clear. We learned truths
pertaining to one aspect of reality which provided the foundation for
learning about more aspects of reality, i.e. our knowledge of one
"delimited" context leads to knowledge in every widening contexts.
And what was true of Newtonian physics has been true in every field of human
knowledge which is why, ad nauseum and for which I apologize, we got from
oxcarts to spaceships. How else would you explain it? I hope you are still
not holding to your "closer to the truth" or "justified belief" position.
Surely we are not merely "justified" in believing (vs. certain) that we can
get to the moon and back within seconds and inches of predictions. And
surely all of the scientific and technological knowledge which led up to
this current state of knowledge is not somehow "less true". It merely
encompasses fewer facts, i.e. we know more now.
Yes?
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16bff8d46...@news.charter.net...
Second,
> without intending to rehash old debates, I believe that my position is
> fully consistent with Objectivism and, moreover, is the one that Ayn
> Rand herself actually took in her writings.
That our beliefs about reality are merely "justified" and that we can get
"closer to the truth" but never achieve it? Is that the view that you think
is fully consistent with Objectivism and one that Ayn Rand took in her
writings? That's equivalent to CathKant claiming that Kantianism is
compatible with Objectivism.
Fred Weiss
Don Watkins III
>> > The point you are still missing is that *all* truth is contextual. We d
>> > o not
>> > hold to a Platonic view of the subject. There is no such thing as
>> > non-contextual truth (other than axioms which pertain to truth as such)
>> > . You
>> > can't have *anything* true unless you specify the context to which it
>> > applies. If you make claims about anything and everything, including what
>> > you know and don't know, and including all facts in the universe which
>you
>> > have no way of knowing, you are simply being arbitrary.
I wrote:
>> That's fine and I doubt that Ken has a problem with it.
Ken Gardner writes:
>Depends on what it means. I certainly agree that the (epistemological)
>process by which we grasp truth is contextual. However, I disagree with
>the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
>Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
>nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
>the facts that falsify the statement.
Okay...that's all I was saying.
Don Watkins
ftb
ftb
ftb
ftb
ftb
ftb
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> Gordon did not
> respond.
Below is the last reply I made to you. I can find no evidence that you
replied to it. It has been some time, but I can add as much additional
"context" as you like.
In article <a678be79.01121...@posting.google.com>, harkyl
writes...
...
> We both believe it is relevant how we should understand theories. But
> a theory need not tie into its subject matter as any sort of
> "essential" description. It needs only to be a descriptive statement-
> stated simply as possible.
Newton's theory says that gravity is a force that obeys an inverse-square
law. But gravity is not such a force. As a result, Newton's theory was
not true "in its context" or any other way. I set this argument out in
some detail, and you are ignoring it.
...
> WEISS SAYS:
>
> >If his theory didn't correctly explain all the facts of which he was
> aware,
> >then, yes, it would have been false - or at least required
> modification. (It
> >might have explained some of them.)
It did not explain them, since it posited a certain kind of force that
the best current theory says does not exist.
> YOU RESPOND:
>
> >That's right. What's wrong is the converse, that if his theory
> explained only
Actually, I don't think that these are my words here, or in several other
places where you tried to quote me.
...
> >Fine. But then you cannot say that Newton's theory was "true in its
> contex
> >t".
>
> I suppose for your criteria of context you may say so- that is,
> Newtons context including the seemingly infinitude of potential facts.
I don't need any "seeming infinitude of potential facts". Is gravity a
force that obeys an inverse-square law?
> But this is where we differ. We don't apply what we know to be true
> now to the 1600's. Newton's context has not changed.
I'm not changing it. Gravity was not such a force in the 1600's any more
than it is one now.
> It is our
> knowledge of things that have changed. Our present understanding of
> gravitation, and sytems of nontrivial dimensions and speeds.
At plain, old garden-variety speeds like the ones Newton knew, gravity
was not such a force. Are you saying that gravity is different things at
different times?
...
> You stated classification for pursuits of knowledge was not important.
What are you talking about?
> >As it happens, the best theory we have (Einstein's) for prediction
> >doesn't view gravity as a force at all. Newton's theory - which says
> >that gravity is a force - cannot be true if gravity is not a force.
> No
> >good Objectivist should give up on "A is A".
>
> Precisely. That is why we shouldn't compare Newton and Einsteins
> theories, unless we accept the issue of context. And if we are
> prepared to do so, we may say that Newtons theory corresponds well to
> what seemed to be the case.
You are equivocating on "corresponds". Newton's theory made good
/predictions/, but that alone is not enough, unless Objectivism embraces
instrumentalism and pragmatism.
...
> I have tried to steer my argument back toward you initial post.
I don't think so. You needlessly brought in material from other posts
and incorrectly (I believe) attributed some of it to me. You have
largely ignored the argument I made in the post you were directly
replying to. My initial point is that it is incorrect for Objectivists
to say that "Newton's theory of gravity was true in its context". I
broke my argument into four cases. I showed that it would be
inconsistent of an Objectivist to hold to any one of three of them (cases
(1), (2), or (4)). I showed that in the other case (3) it was wrong to
say that Newton's theory was "true in its context".
If, like Fred, you don't want to address this argument, fine. I can well
understand your reluctance.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> >... I certainly agree that the (epistemological)
> > process by which we grasp truth is contextual. However, I disagree with
> > the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
> > Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
> > nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
> > the facts that falsify the statement.
> Since all knowledge is contextual, you can't make any legitimate true or
> false claims outside of it. If you do, you are being arbitrary. Do you agree
> with that much?
Yes, but that's essentially what I said in the first sentence above.
[...]
> And what was true of Newtonian physics has been true in every field of human
> knowledge which is why, ad nauseum and for which I apologize, we got from
> oxcarts to spaceships. How else would you explain it? I hope you are still
> not holding to your "closer to the truth" or "justified belief" position.
> Surely we are not merely "justified" in believing (vs. certain) that we can
> get to the moon and back within seconds and inches of predictions. And
> surely all of the scientific and technological knowledge which led up to
> this current state of knowledge is not somehow "less true". It merely
> encompasses fewer facts, i.e. we know more now.
> Yes?
I certainly believe that knowledge is both contextual and hierarchical,
if that's what you're driving at. But again, I'm repeating what I said
in the first sentence above. It doesn't address the point that I also
made in the second sentence above.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> > Second,
> > without intending to rehash old debates, I believe that my position is
> > fully consistent with Objectivism and, moreover, is the one that Ayn
> > Rand herself actually took in her writings.
> That our beliefs about reality are merely "justified" and that we can get
> "closer to the truth" but never achieve it?
Not all of them. Only those beliefs that are stated in terms of
universal affirmatives or universal negatives, without express
qualification in the statement itself with respect to some context of
knowledge. There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all swans are
white (or most likely white), on the other hand. There is also a more
subtle but equally important difference in the respective referents of
these two statements, which is mistakenly lost by those who attempt to
conflate the two.
> Is that the view that you think
> is fully consistent with Objectivism and one that Ayn Rand took in her
> writings?
The view she took in her writings was a full commitment to logic, which
is exactly what I am trying to do myself.
> That's equivalent to CathKant claiming that Kantianism is
> compatible with Objectivism.
I don't think that Kant is consistent with Objectivism, and not merely
because Ayn Rand didn't think so but also because I have read Kant first
hand myself and -- without holding myself out as as any sort of expert
on Kant -- at least know enough to conclude that she is essentially
right about him as far as I can tell.
Ken
harkyl
08ebb81...@mail.nji.com>...
i am out of the country right now, and having diffulty getting
internet access. i will try to respond the best i can. this was my
final reply wich resulted in responses regarding inductive reasoning
due to my first paragraph. if we find we keep repeating the same thing
to each other it is best to quit.
> > We both believe it is relevant how we should understand theories. But
> > a theory need not tie into its subject matter as any sort of
> > "essential" description. It needs only to be a descriptive statement-
> > stated simply as possible.
>
> Newton's theory says that gravity is a force that obeys an inverse-square
> law. But gravity is not such a force. As a result, Newton's theory was
> not true "in its context" or any other way. I set this argument out in
> some detail, and you are ignoring it.
> ...
Was it true in its context? Theories cannot be logically derived from
observations. They can however clash with observation. Since
theories are abstractions, they can contradict observation. The
possibility of refuting theories by observation is the basis of all
empirical tests. Was Newton's theory proven false? No, all
observations coincided with his abstract theory. It was true in its
context or at least the best approximation to the truth. It was
tested by the most precise measurements. It led to the prediction of
minute deviations from Kepler's laws and to new discoveries. Did
anybody else in the 1600's have a better explanation for gravity? Of
course not, it was the closest approximation to the truth at the time.
> > WEISS SAYS:
> >
> > >If his theory didn't correctly explain all the facts of which he was a
> > >ware,
> > >then, yes, it would have been false - or at least required modificatio
> > >n. (It
> > >might have explained some of them.)
>
> It did not explain them, since it posited a certain kind of force that
> the best current theory says does not exist.
>
> > YOU RESPOND:
> >
> > >That's right. What's wrong is the converse, that if his theory
> > explained only
>
> Actually, I don't think that these are my words here, or in several other
> places where you tried to quote me.
I cut and pasted
> ...
> > >Fine. But then you cannot say that Newton's theory was "true in its c
> > >ontex
> > >t".
> >
> > I suppose for your criteria of context you may say so- that is,
> > Newtons context including the seemingly infinitude of potential facts.
>
> I don't need any "seeming infinitude of potential facts". Is gravity a
> force that obeys an inverse-square law?
You do need infinitude of potential facts if you are talking about
'ultimate truth'. You don't if you are talking about contextual
truth. Gravity is indeed a force that obeys an inverse square law for
systems of ordinary dimensions. If you don't know what to call the
'attraction' of bodies of trivial dimensions acting at distances a
force, than what the hell do you want to call it? It is not
important, nor the point of my argument to apply a suitable term to
the results of Newton's inverse square law to you. We are talking
about context aren't we?
>
> > But this is where we differ. We don't apply what we know to be true
> > now to the 1600's. Newton's context has not changed.
>
> I'm not changing it. Gravity was not such a force in the 1600's any more
> than it is one now.
Newton never believed his theory was the last word. Einstein never
believed his theory was more than a good approximation to the true
theory (unified field theory). Einstein's theory established only
that Newton's theory was certainly not the only possible system of
celestial mechanics that could explain the phenomena in a simple and
convincing way. This indicates that the idea for the search for truth
is satisfactory only if we accept the notion of context. And let us
dismiss the notion of ultimate truth while we are at it. The search
for verisimilitude is a more realistic aim than search for ultimate
truth. If this is the case then we should not claim that we have made
progress toward ultimate truth. Einstein's theory is preferable to its
predecessor (newtons) in light of all known rational arguments.
Current theory is a modification, or bolder hypothesis that will
itself suffer the same fate as Newton's theory, but for now is a good
approximation to the truth-- (relative contextualism).
>
> > It is our
> > knowledge of things that have changed. Our present understanding of
> > gravitation, and sytems of nontrivial dimensions and speeds.
>
> At plain, old garden-variety speeds like the ones Newton knew, gravity
> was not such a force. Are you saying that gravity is different things at
> different times?
In an observer based reality, as Relativity has elucidated, everything
changes at different relative perspectives. The only thing that is
constant says Einstein, is the speed of light, and it seems to me
that this conjecture will be falsified in the future.
> > >As it happens, the best theory we have (Einstein's) for prediction
> > >doesn't view gravity as a force at all. Newton's theory - which says
> > >that gravity is a force - cannot be true if gravity is not a force.
We only observe concrete things, while theory in particular Newtonian
forces are abstract. These difficulties are not mitigated if we make
the theory even more abstract by eliminating the notion of force or by
unmasking it as an auxiliary construction.
> > Precisely. That is why we shouldn't compare Newton and Einsteins
> > theories, unless we accept the issue of context. And if we are
> > prepared to do so, we may say that Newtons theory corresponds well to
> > what seemed to be the case.
>
> You are equivocating on "corresponds". Newton's theory made good
> /predictions/, but that alone is not enough, unless Objectivism embraces
> instrumentalism and pragmatism.
> ...
> > I have tried to steer my argument back toward you initial post.
>
> I don't think so. You needlessly brought in material from other posts
> and incorrectly (I believe) attributed some of it to me. You have
> largely ignored the argument I made in the post you were directly
> replying to. My initial point is that it is incorrect for Objectivists
> to say that "Newton's theory of gravity was true in its context". I
> broke my argument into four cases. I showed that it would be
> inconsistent of an Objectivist to hold to any one of three of them (cases
> (1), (2), or (4)). I showed that in the other case (3) it was wrong to
> say that Newton's theory was "true in its context".
>
> If, like Fred, you don't want to address this argument, fine. I can well
understand your reluctance.
I am simply tangling with whether ultimate truth or contextual truth
is better to deal with. I am not trying to avoid your argument. And
I tend to believe the latter is better, but philosophers tend to
assume a new theory is 'closer to the truth', (assuming an ultimate
truth). It seems to be the only alternative if we dismiss contextual
truth, (that is we must then adopt ultimate truth). That is
impossible in an observer based reality. It is all relative in a
perspective based reality. The epistemiological dimension- 'what is
the nature of our knowledge and what do we mean by truth' can be
expressed by truth within a situation or context.
Kyle
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c1391eb...@news.charter.net...
>...I disagree with
> > > the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
> > > Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
> > > nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
> > > the facts that falsify the statement.
> ....I certainly believe that knowledge is both contextual and
hierarchical,
> if that's what you're driving at. But .... It doesn't address the point
that I also
> made in the second sentence above.
I thought I had addressed the point. If knowledge is contextual than it only
pertains to the facts bearing on that context, i.e. the facts that are the
source of it, i.e the facts known. Assuming you are making a valid claim
based on those facts, i.e. based on sufficient evidence (and reality is the
standard for that), what are you omitting that could falsify it?
And this answers Sollars question: "Is a scientific law arbitrary because it
makes statements about things that have not yet been observed?" Changing
"observed" to "known", I'd say "yes", to the extent that it is claimed to
apply to the unknown. And this answers the question pertaining to Newton and
Mercury. It's a cheap shot anyway at Newton - typical of Sollars in general
(see just as one example the whole thread on Ayn Rand's calling Milton
Friedman a "red") - and at an enormous discovery. But cheap shots are the
speciality of "modern" philosophers, since they have nothing else of great
significance to say.
Think about. Newton's makes this enormous, earthshaking discovery which is
the foundation of modern physics and because it does not apply to certain
aspects of reality unknown to him, they declare it false (which simply
tosses out context and hierarchy and leads you straight into the "stolen
concept" of your notion of "closer to the truth" and renders you unable to
explain how our knowledge has grown). If you agree with Sollars on this, we
are not on the same wavelength at all. Feel free to do so, but please don't
claim that such a position is Objectivist and I would doubt it's even
Aristotelian.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c13c931...@news.charter.net...
> Fred Weiss says...
>
> > > Second,
> > > without intending to rehash old debates, I believe that my position is
> > > fully consistent with Objectivism and, moreover, is the one that Ayn
> > > Rand herself actually took in her writings.
>
> > That our beliefs about reality are merely "justified" and that we can
get
> > "closer to the truth" but never achieve it?
>
> Not all of them. Only those beliefs that are stated in terms of
> universal affirmatives or universal negatives,...
...which therefore are arbitrary - as you understand "universal".
>.... without express
> qualification in the statement itself with respect to some context of
> knowledge.
...which is how at least implicitly we should hold all of our knowledge,
since it's source is inherently contextual.
There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
> statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
> statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all swans are
> white (or most likely white), on the other hand.
The latter is clearly arbitrary as you understand "all", so why should
anyone legitimately make such a claim?
>There is also a more
> subtle but equally important difference in the respective referents of
> these two statements, which is mistakenly lost by those who attempt to
> conflate the two.
I'm not conflating the two. I'm distinguishing them. But I'm also of the
view that if someone intends "all" to apply to the unknown, they should be
the ones to make it explicit. I don't think most rational people intend
that, which is only to say that rational people don't tend to be arbitrary.
>
> > Is that the view that you think
> > is fully consistent with Objectivism and one that Ayn Rand took in her
> > writings?
>
> The view she took in her writings was a full commitment to logic, which
> is exactly what I am trying to do myself.
Yes, but what's the logical position here?
> > That's equivalent to CathKant claiming that Kantianism is
> > compatible with Objectivism.
>
> I don't think that Kant is consistent with Objectivism, and not merely
> because Ayn Rand didn't think so but also because I have read Kant first
> hand myself and -- without holding myself out as as any sort of expert
> on Kant -- at least know enough to conclude that she is essentially
> right about him as far as I can tell.
I recall your comments to CathKant on this the last time it came up, so I
know we're in agreement. I don't know if that makes you the "pervert" and
"punk" that he thinks I am for holding the same view.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"harkyl" <khar...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:a678be79.0201...@posting.google.com...
> You do need infinitude of potential facts if you are talking about
> 'ultimate truth'.
Which is impossible of course and which therefore would render truth
impossible to achieve. This is a "Platonic" view of truth.
>We are talking
> about context aren't we?
In my view - and in the Objectivist view - you *always* should.
>.. I am simply tangling with whether ultimate truth or contextual truth
> is better to deal with...And
> I tend to believe the latter is better, but philosophers tend to
> assume a new theory is 'closer to the truth', (assuming an ultimate
> truth). It seems to be the only alternative if we dismiss contextual
> truth, (that is we must then adopt ultimate truth). That is
> impossible in an observer based reality.
Exactly. Then why do you think that "ultimate truth" is "better", since we
can never achieve it? Incidentally, the notion of "closer to the truth" is a
"stolen concept" in this context. How do you know you are closer to
something you deny you can ever know? The valid concept in this context I
believe is better described as "we know more". But knowing more does not
falsify what we previously knew and in fact continually builds on it.
I'm making mostly critical comments here, but I enjoyed your post very much
and I think you made a number of important points. I hope you will continue
to contribute to this thread.
Fred Weiss
Ken Gardner
> >...I disagree with
> > > > the notion that a false statement -- false in the traditional
> > > > Aristotelian sense of failing to correspond to the actual facts -- can
> > > > nevertheless be true in some delimited context of knowledge that omits
> > > > the facts that falsify the statement.
> > ....I certainly believe that knowledge is both contextual and
> > hierarchical, if that's what you're driving at. But .... It doesn't ad
> > dress
> > the point that I also made in the second sentence above.
> I thought I had addressed the point.
Exactly. You think that the point that knowledge is contextual also
covers the point that truth itself is contextual, in the sense that
different contexts of knowledge for the same statement can affect the
truth value of that statement. I don't. That's our disagreement.
> If knowledge is contextual than it only
> pertains to the facts bearing on that context, i.e. the facts that are the
> source of it, i.e the facts known. Assuming you are making a valid claim
> based on those facts, i.e. based on sufficient evidence (and reality is the
> standard for that), what are you omitting that could falsify it?
There are cases in which we say, in effect, "based on everything we
know, X is (or appears to be) true," made at a time when we don't yet
know of a fact that contradicts or falsifies X. I'm willing to say that
the quoted statement is true, not as a statement about X, but as a
statement of our knowledge regarding X at a given point in time.
However, I am unwilling to say that the statement "X is (or appears to
be) true is "contextually" true. The phrase "contextually true" (or
"contextually false"), as applied to a statement, is not in my
vocabulary, and shouldn't be in the vocabulary of any person who adheres
to the correspondence theory of truth.
> And this answers Sollars question: "Is a scientific law arbitrary because it
> makes statements about things that have not yet been observed?" Changing
> "observed" to "known", I'd say "yes", to the extent that it is claimed to
> apply to the unknown.
You have to be careful here because you are talking about scientific
theories. A scientific theory is almost never worth a damn unless it
purports to make accurate predictions about the unknown, predictions
which are then tested through observation, experimentation, etc. If you
refused to speculate about the application of a theory to the unknown
because you think (wrongly, IMO) that such a theory is "arbitrary,"
scientific progress would soon come to a grinding halt.
[...]
> Think about. Newton's makes this enormous, earthshaking discovery which is
> the foundation of modern physics and because it does not apply to certain
> aspects of reality unknown to him, they declare it false (which simply
> tosses out context and hierarchy and leads you straight into the "stolen
> concept" of your notion of "closer to the truth" and renders you unable to
> explain how our knowledge has grown). If you agree with Sollars on this, we
> are not on the same wavelength at all. Feel free to do so, but please don't
> claim that such a position is Objectivist and I would doubt it's even
> Aristotelian.
Again, we are not talking about a claim in the form "based on everything
I know, X is (or appears to be) true, but a claim (usually a scientific
theory) in the form "X is true," expressed either as a universal
affirmative or a universal negative and usually also expressed in the
form of a prediction. You simply cannot make claims that such a
statement IS true or false without assuming an omniscience that we human
beings simply don't possess. What you can do, however, is prefer one
such theory over another (e.g. Einstein's theory over Newton's theory)
based on which theory explains more observations, past and future (the
latter of which are ascertained through rigorous scientific testing).
Ken
Ken Gardner
[...]
> > Not all of them. Only those beliefs that are stated in terms of
> > universal affirmatives or universal negatives,...
> ...which therefore are arbitrary - as you understand "universal".
I wouldn't say arbitrary because, e.g. the presence of some white swans
and the absence of any known non-white swans would render the statement
"all swans are white" non-arbitrary. My point is that the same evidence
would not justify us in concluding that the statement IS also true,
although at a certain point we could say that the statement MAY be true
and that there is no evidence to suggest that it is false.
> >.... without express
> > qualification in the statement itself with respect to some context of
> > knowledge.
> ...which is how at least implicitly we should hold all of our knowledge,
> since it's source is inherently contextual.
Actually, I agree with this, in the sense that we cannot say that an
unqualified universal affirmative or negative (e.g. all swans are white)
represents an item of knowledge. It may, however, represent a
scientific theory, I.e. something less than an item of knowledge, but
something more than an arbitrary guess.
> There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
> > statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
> > statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all swans are
> > white (or most likely white), on the other hand.
> The latter is clearly arbitrary as you understand "all", so why should
> anyone legitimately make such a claim?
As a scientific theory that might be potentially useful if it stands up
to rigorous testing.
> >There is also a more
> > subtle but equally important difference in the respective referents of
> > these two statements, which is mistakenly lost by those who attempt to
> > conflate the two.
> I'm not conflating the two. I'm distinguishing them. But I'm also of the
> view that if someone intends "all" to apply to the unknown, they should be
> the ones to make it explicit. I don't think most rational people intend
> that, which is only to say that rational people don't tend to be arbitrary.
I'm fine with this, except that I think it should be explicit rather
than implicit -- especially on a newsgroup that discusses Objectivism.
> > > Is that the view that you think
> > > is fully consistent with Objectivism and one that Ayn Rand took in her
> > > writings?
> > The view she took in her writings was a full commitment to logic, which
> > is exactly what I am trying to do myself.
> Yes, but what's the logical position here?
Mine, of course. :)
[...]
Ken
Bob Kolker
Ken Gardner wrote:
> beings simply don't possess. What you can do, however, is prefer one
> such theory over another (e.g. Einstein's theory over Newton's theory)
> based on which theory explains more observations, past and future (the
> latter of which are ascertained through rigorous scientific testing).
There is more than just predictive power involved in Einstein's
theories. Newton assumed that space and time were absolute, but he
realized he could never base this presumption on an observation. All of
our observations reveal relative motion and do not tell us how to
specify an absolute frame of reference for space. Aether theories
completely failed in this regard, since the Aether could not be
detected. Which means it either does not exist, or has no operational
relevence to our physics.
Einstein, in his GTR, was able to express the local invariance of
physical laws by covariant transformations from one portion of the space
time manifold to another. In this regard, Einstein, could and did,
reduce his basis to observables. Experiment has shown that space-time is
locally Lorenzian. So in this particular regard, Einstein has the
superior theory.
Newton's theory of gravitation can be "fixed" by assuming that changes
in gravitational force require time to be "felt". But this alone does
not repair the basic defict, which is the concept of Absolute Space and
Time.
Most people do not comprehend Einstein's motiviation. He aimed at
perfecting the theory in terms in intrinsic clarity and the elimination
of asymmetries not reflected in the phenomena observed. In short,
Einstein did not formulate his GTR just to account for the precession of
the perihelion of Mercury. He had a higher and broader aim, which
succeed in resolving some anomalies in Newton's formulation. But this
was the fall out, not the goal.
Bob Kolker
Gordon G. Sollars
writes......
> > Newton's theory says that gravity is a force that obeys an inverse-square
> > law. But gravity is not such a force. As a result, Newton's theory was
> > not true "in its context" or any other way. I set this argument out in
> > some detail, and you are ignoring it.
> > ...
>
> Was it true in its context? Theories cannot be logically derived from
> observations. They can however clash with observation.
I am not disagreeing with this, I am defending it. I am not even
disagreeing /here/ with "all truth is contextual", which seems to be your
main concern. Please look closely at what I actually wrote: "As a
result, Newton's theory was not true 'in its context' or any other way."
I have been trying to explore what, exactly, Objectivists mean when they
say "theory X is true in context Y". I have argued that Newton's (and
Ptolemy's) theories were not true in /any/ context. I use these two
theories because the logical situation regarding them is the same, yet it
is obvious even to Objectivist supporters of "true in context" that
Ptolemy's theory is false.
> Was Newton's theory proven false? No, all
> observations coincided with his abstract theory.
This is simply false. Observations of the orbit of Mercury do not
coincide with the theory.
> It was true in its
> context or at least the best approximation to the truth.
What sort of "or" is that? Do you mean that "the best approximation to
the truth" is what "true in its context" means? (That seems like a
strange way to use words, but I'm not going to argue over meanings with
you - you can have whatever meanings you fancy.) Or that these are two
different things, at least one of which was true of Newton's theory? If
that latter, then I am only concerned with the "true in its context" part
of the disjunction. I don't doubt that Newton's theory makes useful
approximations. So does Ptolemy's theory, but that does not mean that
the planets revolve around the Earth.
...
> > I don't need any "seeming infinitude of potential facts". Is gravity a
> > force that obeys an inverse-square law?
>
> You do need infinitude of potential facts if you are talking about
> 'ultimate truth'.
I have never mentioned "ultimate truth". I have mentioned "What does it
mean to say a theory is true in some context". Please try to reply to
what I am asking, or, at least, indicate that you are using my posts as a
starting point for a new discussion of your own. This would greatly
reduce confusion.
> You don't if you are talking about contextual
> truth. Gravity is indeed a force that obeys an inverse square law for
> systems of ordinary dimensions.
This is false. If it were true, the orbit of Mercury would be different
from what it is. Or are you simply saying that we do not live in a
universe of "ordinary dimensions"? Of what possible relevance is that?
Newton's theory is meant to be about the real world, right? The world
with the dimensions - "ordinary" or not - that actually exist.
...
> > > But this is where we differ. We don't apply what we know to be true
> > > now to the 1600's. Newton's context has not changed.
> >
> > I'm not changing it. Gravity was not such a force in the 1600's any more
> > than it is one now.
>
> Newton never believed his theory was the last word. Einstein never
> believed his theory was more than a good approximation to the true
> theory (unified field theory).
This is completely irrelevant. Newton /could/ have thought his theory
was false and been wrong! What a theorist believes about his own theory
is completely irrelevant to whether the theory is true - at least if you
are a realist.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I thought I had addressed the point. If knowledge is contextual than it only
> pertains to the facts bearing on that context, i.e. the facts that are the
> source of it, i.e the facts known. Assuming you are making a valid claim
> based on those facts, i.e. based on sufficient evidence (and reality is the
> standard for that), what are you omitting that could falsify it?
The things you don't know, of course. The notion of "sufficient
evidence" begs the question; what is "sufficient" is the issue. And it
adds nothing to your position to say "reality is the standard". It's the
standard we all use to see if a theory makes claims that are false.
I think the problem here is that you don't realize that scientific
theories are precisely meant to go /beyond/ particular observations. If
they did not, they could not be used to extend our knowledge. If a claim
does not go beyond the simple conjunction of what we already know ("A is
white" & "B is white" & "C is white" &,...), then it adds precisely
/nothing/, and cannot ever add anything to what we already know. That
ought to be obvious, of course.
> And this answers Sollars question: "Is a scientific law arbitrary because it
> makes statements about things that have not yet been observed?" Changing
> "observed" to "known", I'd say "yes", to the extent that it is claimed to
> apply to the unknown.
OK, so you say "yes" to "Is a scientific law arbitrary because it makes
statements about things that have not yet been known?" All scientific
laws do this, Fred. They are generalizations beyond experience. It is
precisely for this reason that they are valuable. Call that "arbitrary"
if you like - so much the worse for your notion of "arbitrary".
> And this answers the question pertaining to Newton and
> Mercury.
How? Newton meant for this theory to apply to the planets, each and
every one of them, even ones that had not been discovered.
> It's a cheap shot anyway at Newton
This is a bizarre notion that only a naive foundationalist could hold. I
take no "cheap shots" at Newton, I only point to what is true. Having a
false theory as good as Newton's is vastly more than most people will
ever accomplish.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bob Kolker
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
>
>
> How? Newton meant for this theory to apply to the planets, each and
> every one of them, even ones that had not been discovered.
Especially so. Neptune was discovered by Adams and Leverrier by assuming
Newton's theory to be true and figuring out what planet (as yet to be
discovered) would account for anomalies in the observed orbit of Uranus.
The problem of working backwards from a perturbed orbit to the
perturbing planet is tricky and involved a lot of calculations, but it
was done. Both the English astronomer Adams and the French astronomer
Leverrier attacked the problem and deduced where "planet x" must be. And
that ishow Neptune was discovered. By assuming Newton's theory was
correct and the pertrubations of Uranus was do to an, as yet unknown,
planet.
Bob Kolker
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> >
> > How? Newton meant for this theory to apply to the planets, each and
> > every one of them, even ones that had not been discovered.
>
> Especially so.
Thanks, Bob, but I know the story. What is important here is that you
apparently did not say, as Fred implied you did, that Newton thought his
theory was restricted to some special domain that did not include the
entire Solar System.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c1c99bb...@news.charter.net...
> Fred Weiss says...
>
> [...]
>
> > > Not all of them. Only those beliefs that are stated in terms of
> > > universal affirmatives or universal negatives,...
>
> > ...which therefore are arbitrary - as you understand "universal".
>
> I wouldn't say arbitrary because, e.g. the presence of some white swans
> and the absence of any known non-white swans would render the statement
> "all swans are white" non-arbitrary.
It is arbitrary to the extent that - according to you - it is making the
totally unjustified claim that all swans are white anywhere in the universe
(which we have no way of knowing). *Any* such claim is therefore arbitrary
if it assumes that.
> My point is that the same evidence
> would not justify us in concluding that the statement IS also true,
> although at a certain point we could say that the statement MAY be true
> and that there is no evidence to suggest that it is false.
As stated, it is outside the realm of true (or false). There is absolutely
no way to determine whether it would be or not. You would need omnisicience
for that. So you couldn't even say if it might be true. It is simply
unknown. What color are the swans on Alpha Centuri?
>....we cannot say that an
> unqualified universal affirmative or negative (e.g. all swans are white)
> represents an item of knowledge.
Exactly my point.
> It may, however, represent a
> scientific theory, I.e. something less than an item of knowledge, but
> something more than an arbitrary guess.
Technically, I think you mean a scientific hypothesis or maybe even
speculation. That's the beginning stage of an investigation, not its
conclusion.
>
> > There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
> > > statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
> > > statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all swans
are
> > > white (or most likely white), on the other hand.
>
> > The latter is clearly arbitrary as you understand "all", so why should
> > anyone legitimately make such a claim?
>
> As a scientific theory that might be potentially useful if it stands up
> to rigorous testing.
But there's no way it could stand up to rigorous testing. That would be
impossible. You'd have to test it against every fact in the universe. (If
you are continuing to insist - arbitrarily in my view - that a scientific
theory must make universal claims in the sense that you claim they do).
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Bob Kolker" <bobk...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3C5837F3...@mediaone.net...
>
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> >
> >
> > How? Newton meant for this theory to apply to the planets, each and
> > every one of them, even ones that had not been discovered.
>
> Especially so.
It's irrelevant to my point. That it was later discovered not to apply to
all of them because forces were involved that he didn't anticipate (and had
no way of knowing about) doesn't diminish the importance and *truth* of what
he did discover. If that hadn't been the case, Newton's theory would not
have led anywhere.
Fred Weiss
Ken Gardner
> > I wouldn't say arbitrary because, e.g. the presence of some white swans
> > and the absence of any known non-white swans would render the statement
> > "all swans are white" non-arbitrary.
> It is arbitrary to the extent that - according to you - it is making the
> totally unjustified claim that all swans are white anywhere in the universe
> (which we have no way of knowing). *Any* such claim is therefore arbitrary
> if it assumes that.
Arguably yes, if it is regarded as an item of knowledge. No, if it is
regarded, correctly, as an educated conjecture based upon the evidence
observed to date, I.e. as a statement in the form "it is at least
possibly true that all swans are white."
> As stated, it is outside the realm of true (or false). There is absolutely
> no way to determine whether it would be or not. You would need omnisicience
> for that. So you couldn't even say if it might be true. It is simply
> unknown. What color are the swans on Alpha Centuri?
Actually, I'm informed that there are no swans on Alpha Centuri,
although it may have a certain number of multi-legged creatures. :)
> >....we cannot say that an
> > unqualified universal affirmative or negative (e.g. all swans are white)
> > represents an item of knowledge.
> Exactly my point.
Okay, we are on the same page.
> > It may, however, represent a
> > scientific theory, I.e. something less than an item of knowledge, but
> > something more than an arbitrary guess.
> Technically, I think you mean a scientific hypothesis or maybe even
> speculation. That's the beginning stage of an investigation, not its
> conclusion.
Right.
> > > > There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
> > > > statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
> > > > statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all swans
> > > > are white (or most likely white), on the other hand.
> > > The latter is clearly arbitrary as you understand "all", so why should
> > > anyone legitimately make such a claim?
> > As a scientific theory that might be potentially useful if it stands up
> > to rigorous testing.
> But there's no way it could stand up to rigorous testing. That would be
> impossible. You'd have to test it against every fact in the universe. (If
> you are continuing to insist - arbitrarily in my view - that a scientific
> theory must make universal claims in the sense that you claim they do).
Well, I agree -- which is why I have said in the past that such
statements can never be proven to _be_ true. No matter how many white
swans we observe, we simply cannot observe everything at all relevant
times and places. No matter how good the theory seems to be, it still
represents, at best, informed (scientific) speculation or conjecture.
This fact shouldn't stop us from relying on the theory, e.g. in flying
to the moon and back, if it is "true enough" to get such a job done.
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c299dbf...@news.charter.net...
> Fred Weiss says...
>
> > > I wouldn't say arbitrary because, e.g. the presence of some white
swans
> > > and the absence of any known non-white swans would render the
statement
> > > "all swans are white" non-arbitrary.
>
> > It is arbitrary to the extent that - according to you - it is making the
> > totally unjustified claim that all swans are white anywhere in the
universe
> > (which we have no way of knowing). *Any* such claim is therefore
arbitrary
> > if it assumes that.
>
> Arguably yes, if it is regarded as an item of knowledge. No, if it is
> regarded, correctly, as an educated conjecture based upon the evidence
> observed to date, I.e. as a statement in the form "it is at least
> possibly true that all swans are white."
Do you really want to be taking the position that we don't know anything
about swans? And on the grounds that we can't know everything about all of
their conceivable instances anywhere now or in the future? Or actually know
anything about anything on the same grounds?
> Actually, I'm informed that there are no swans on Alpha Centuri,
> although it may have a certain number of multi-legged creatures. :)
That wear green shirts and eat strawberries.
> > >....we cannot say that an
> > > unqualified universal affirmative or negative (e.g. all swans are
white)
> > > represents an item of knowledge.
>
> > Exactly my point.
>
> Okay, we are on the same page.
Not quite because I'm maintaining that such universal claims are not
necessary for knowledge. Universal claims, yes, but contextual. We in fact
know a great deal about swans *on earth*. That is not diminished by what we
don't - and can't yet - know about the swans on other planets.
> > > > > There is a huge difference, in my mind anyway, between the
> > > > > statement, e.g. that all swans are white, on the one hand, and the
> > > > > statement that based on our current context of knowledge, all
swans
> > > > > are white (or most likely white), on the other hand.
>
> > > > The latter is clearly arbitrary as you understand "all", so why
should
> > > > anyone legitimately make such a claim?
>
> > > As a scientific theory that might be potentially useful if it stands
up
> > > to rigorous testing.
Again, I think you mean hypothesis or speculation. That's the beginning of
the process, not the end. At the end you say "my hypothesis has turned out
to be true". But what constitutes it's truth? That it applies to the aspects
of reality and the specified conditions under which it's been tested or that
it also applies to aspects of reality of which you have no knowledge? You
have no way of knowing whether it will apply under other conditions. Again,
you can hypothesize or speculate and undertake the testing necessary to
establish it one way or the other. Suppose you find that it doesn't apply.
So what? That doesn't falsify what you have discovered to date where it does
apply. Suppose you discover that there is a more basic law which can explain
both the earlier phenomena and the newly discovered ones. That too doesn't
falsify what you previously discovered.
In none of this is it necessary to unjustifiably over-generalize your
results. In fact I would regard that as bad science.
>....No matter how many white
> swans we observe, we simply cannot observe everything at all relevant
> times and places. No matter how good the theory seems to be, it still
> represents, at best, informed (scientific) speculation or conjecture.
You have a non-sequitur here. It only represents speculation or conjecture
if you are insisting on unjustifiably over-generalizing. Again, I don't
think you want to be saying that we can't know a great deal about swans
merely because we can't know what swans might be like on some distant
planet. How can what we don't know diminish what we do know, especially
since what we do know is a necessary step in learning what we don't.
> This fact shouldn't stop us from relying on the theory, e.g. in flying
> to the moon and back, if it is "true enough" to get such a job done.
If we can fly to the moon and back it is far more than "true enough". We
couldn't do that unless we knew a great, great deal that was true, period.
"True enough" (just like "closer to the truth") as you are using it here is
a stolen concept. Do you see why? The proper concept is "know enough" - we
know enough because we have discovered enough truths to enable us to do it.
Those are truths, period. Not part truths. In the future we will learn
*more* truths which will mean we will know even more and we will be able
perhaps to travel to far distant planets.
Fred Weiss
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Bob Kolker" <bobk...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
> news:3C5837F3...@mediaone.net...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> > >
> > > How? Newton meant for this theory to apply to the planets, each and
> > > every one of them, even ones that had not been discovered.
> >
> > Especially so.
>
> It's irrelevant to my point.
Which is what? That Newton's theory is good? We know that. The issue
is whether it is true.
> That it was later discovered not to apply to
> all of them because forces were involved
The current view is that gravity is not a "force" at all.
> that he didn't anticipate (and had
> no way of knowing about)
In others words, the theory was false.
> doesn't diminish the importance and *truth* of what
> he did discover.
He discovered that if gravity were a instantaneous force that obeyed a
certain inverse-square relationship, he could explain and predict the
motions of most of the planets (and, of course, a great many other
things). Later a theory was put forward that hypothesized that gravity
was /not/ such a force, and that theory explained and predicted even more
than Newton's.
Ptolemy also had a good theory, but it was false, also due to things he
did not anticipate or know.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bob Kolker
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
>
> Ptolemy also had a good theory, but it was false, also due to things he
> did not anticipate or know.
Well, it wasn't that good, but it was the best available at the time. It
is too bad that people did not believe Aristarchus from the git go, but
they did have a reasonable objection, to wit, parallax of star apparent
motion could not be detected by the nacked eye. Stellar parallax was not
actually seen until 1838.
The basic problem was there was a disconnect between the physics of
motions as known in the time of Aristarchus and his hypothesis that the
earth and other (known) planets revolved around the Sun. For example if
the earth moved around the Sun, wouldn't the Moon be left behind?
Gravitation was not conceived of as a force at the time so there would
be an apparent contradiction between the Moon's apparant motion and the
Earth's motion about the Sun. And so on. In order for a cosmological
hypothesis to be acceptable it has to be consistent with the physics as
known.
Bob Kolker
Karun Philip
> > Kuhn was right in observing that what we
> > contingently hold as "objective knowledge" can be overturned or extended by
> > new discoveries, resulting in a paradigm shift. But incompleteness and its
> > necesssary consequence of fallibility does not mean that any theory is
> > fine.
> > It must hold up to evidence and must survive critique and claims of
> > counter-evidence. Just because we agree to hold our opinions as conting
> > ently
> > true does not mean that we believe existence does not exist.
>
> Other than semantics, how is this any different from what Objectivists
> call "contextual certainty?"
[...]
Sorry, I was busy defending myself against charges of compromising
with the evil ones.
You also wrote:
> But Objectivism (and Ayn Rand) would fully agree that we are fallible.
> So, again, I'm having trouble seeing any real (non-semantical)
> difference.
The question of whether we should use "contextual certainty" or
"fallibility" is probably just a choice. If you use the former, then
the word "certainty" has lost its original meaning. You could say
"certainty does not imply certainty" and claim it doesn't reductio ad
absurdum. This is usually reflected users of "contextual certainty"
claim "but I have various degrees of certainty" which is another way
of saying a sentence that would normally reduce to absurd.
If the contextualists have abandoned absolute certainty, why not just
stick with "we have some knowledge". To be complete they ought to say
"we have some knowledge and we acknowledge its fallibility" but I am
quite willing to let the qualifier drop in normal conversation. But
the question is once we have abandoned absolute certainty, then why
don't we bell the cat and assert fallibility and only claim a critical
preference for the "existence exists" axiom? It is insufficient to
only assert fallibility because people will end up confused and go
away. Instead, Popper introduces falsifiability and critical
preference, which are remarkably robust and provide a way to side-step
any insane implications of fallibility and remain with the normal
implications, though we can now state many implicit assumptions more
formally.
There are further problems with using "certainty" in any form in an
assertive claim. For instance, even claim of correspondence of
knowledge with its "truth-maker" in reality is not a one-to-one
correspondence between equals. Words are atoms (uncuttable) whereas
their truth-maker in reality are continuous rather than discreet.
Words are therefore an atomic reprentative of their alleged
truth-maker, which might not be a complete perception of everything
the alleged truth-maker actually is. Nevertheless, I agree that
theories can be and are approximations to the way in which phenomena
actually are, and that is, in fact, why theory, math, geometry,
meta-math, etc. are practically useful and not just analytic in
nature. But we need to remember their relationship to reality without
conflating the two, and understand the nature of the fallibility of
the theories.
Lastly, I would note that Ludwig von Mises was another person who
constructed an axiomatic system, though based on the "human action"
axiom rather than the "existence exists" axiom. He too claims
something called "apodictic certainty" which means "demonstrable
certainty" and refers to the classical notion of the syllogism
providing demonstrability. In the last analysis, Mises too never
claimed that "apodictic certainty" (which his theory had) meant
absolute certainty. This led to a disagreement between him and
Rothbard, and probably was the genesis of Rothbard's defense of the
"extreme apriorism". Barry Smith's rejoinder is on his Web site at
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/ROTHBARD.htm in a paper
entitled "In Defense of Extreme (Fallibilistic) Apriorism".
There are, I believe, uses to axiomatic represenations of reality and
the use of syllogism. All that is necessary is to understand the
relationship between knowledge and reality, and the nature of
fallibility.
Regards,
Karun.
--
Karun Philip
Author: "Zen and the Art of Funk Capitalism: A General Theory of
Fallibility"
http://www.k-capital.com/HA.htm
Ken Gardner
> > Arguably yes, if it is regarded as an item of knowledge. No, if it is
> > regarded, correctly, as an educated conjecture based upon the evidence
> > observed to date, I.e. as a statement in the form "it is at least
> > possibly true that all swans are white."
> Do you really want to be taking the position that we don't know anything
> about swans?
I'm not taking that position.
> And on the grounds that we can't know everything about all of
> their conceivable instances anywhere now or in the future? Or actually know
> anything about anything on the same grounds?
I'm not taking any of these positions.
> Not quite because I'm maintaining that such universal claims are not
> necessary for knowledge. Universal claims, yes, but contextual. We in fact
> know a great deal about swans *on earth*. That is not diminished by what we
> don't - and can't yet - know about the swans on other planets.
I certainly don't disagree with your last point. The choice here isn't
between total omniscience and total ignorance.
> > > > As a scientific theory that might be potentially useful if it stands
> > > > up to rigorous testing.
> Again, I think you mean hypothesis or speculation.
Or conjecture.
> That's the beginning of the process, not the end. At the end you say "my
> hypothesis
> has turned out to be true". But what constitutes it's truth? That it appl
> ies to the aspects
> of reality and the specified conditions under which it's been tested or that
> it also applies to aspects of reality of which you have no knowledge?
Two points. First, I would not say that the hypothesis turned out to be
true. I would say that so far it has stood up to rigorous testing.
Second, if you limit the statement to the aspects of reality and the
specified conditions under which it has been tested, then you can say
within that context (if you will) that the hypothesis holds true. But
that's different, of course, from saying that the hypothesis holds true
under any other conditions. And the more that you limit or qualify the
hypothesis in this manner, the less usefulness it has as a scientific
theory. More to follow on this last point.
> You have no way of knowing whether it will apply under other conditions.
> Again,
> you can hypothesize or speculate and undertake the testing necessary to
> establish it one way or the other. Suppose you find that it doesn't apply.
> So what? That doesn't falsify what you have discovered to date where it does
> apply.
Right. If I observe ten cases and then conclude that "based on the
cases so far observed, all A blood types are compatible," that statement
certainly holds true in the ten observed cases. However, as the price
for "specifying context," I end up with a statement that says virtually
nothing beyond these ten cases. On the other hand, if I theorize, based
on these same ten cases, that the statement that "all A blood types are
compatible" will hold in all cases (and then proceed rigorously to test
this theory), then I am on the way to discovering real knowledge that
will have much greater practical value to the entire human race. And
when I discover later, as the result of additional testing and
observation, that this theory holds true only if the RH factors are
matched, the resulting new theory is even more valuable. And so on.
But the "price" for this expansion of knowledge is a willingness to
venture beyond safely delimited contexts of knowledge, make bold
conjectures about what is currently unknown, and then submit these
conjectures to rigorous testing and (if necessary) modification or
correction.
[...]
Ken
Ken Gardner
[...]
> If the contextualists have abandoned absolute certainty, why not just
> stick with "we have some knowledge". To be complete they ought to say
> "we have some knowledge and we acknowledge its fallibility" but I am
> quite willing to let the qualifier drop in normal conversation. But
> the question is once we have abandoned absolute certainty, then why
> don't we bell the cat and assert fallibility and only claim a critical
> preference for the "existence exists" axiom?
In this particular example, the answer is because the very notion of
non-existence is self-contradictory and, therefore, self-refuting. Of
course, most false statements are not self-refuting in this manner, so
your point still holds with respect to many statements.
> It is insufficient to only assert fallibility because people will end up
> confused and go
> away. Instead, Popper introduces falsifiability and critical
> preference, which are remarkably robust and provide a way to side-step
> any insane implications of fallibility and remain with the normal
> implications, though we can now state many implicit assumptions more
> formally.
I agree. If an epistemology does not give you a method for preferring
one theory over another, it isn't worth a damn, especially as a
practical guide to daily thinking and living. For example, we can
critically examine Newton's theories against Einstein's theories, but in
the end we need a methodology for deciding which theories we should
prefer and adopt, despite the fact that we are fallible beings and both
theories may be false.
[...]
Ken
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> >
> > Ptolemy also had a good theory, but it was false, also due to things he
> > did not anticipate or know.
>
> Well, it wasn't that good, but it was the best available at the time.
It is good enough for navigation, even today.
...
> The basic problem was there was a disconnect between the physics of
> motions as known in the time of Aristarchus and his hypothesis that the
> earth and other (known) planets revolved around the Sun. For example if
> the earth moved around the Sun, wouldn't the Moon be left behind?
> Gravitation was not conceived of as a force at the time so there would
> be an apparent contradiction between the Moon's apparant motion and the
> Earth's motion about the Sun.
And thus it is only the passage of time that makes Ptolemy's theory seem
"obviously wrong". If Newton's theory is "true in its context", then so
is Ptolemy's. This is, of course, a reductio of the "context doctrine".
In order to retain "certainty", ARIans simply change the meanings of
other words. W.V.O. Quine is smiling down from above.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c329a980...@mail.nji.com...
>
> He discovered...
Yes, he did.
>.... that if gravity were a instantaneous force that obeyed a
> certain inverse-square relationship, he could explain and predict the
> motions of most of the planets (and, of course, a great many other
> things).
Which it did.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c3e52c44...@mail.nji.com...
> > The basic problem was there was a disconnect between the physics of
> > motions as known in the time of Aristarchus and his hypothesis that the
> > earth and other (known) planets revolved around the Sun. For example if
> > the earth moved around the Sun, wouldn't the Moon be left behind?
> And thus it is only the passage of time ...
No, and thus they didn't factor in all the known relevant facts of the time
(if Bob is correct in this). Or in other words, certain known unsightly
facts were shoved under the rug to make the theory look neat.
That was not the case with Newton.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c3c2ddb...@news.charter.net...
> Fred Weiss says...
>
> > > Arguably yes, if it is regarded as an item of knowledge. No, if it is
> > > regarded, correctly, as an educated conjecture based upon the evidence
> > > observed to date, I.e. as a statement in the form "it is at least
> > > possibly true that all swans are white."
>
> > Do you really want to be taking the position that we don't know anything
> > about swans?
>
> I'm not taking that position.
You seem to be taking the position that we can only *know* anything about
*some* swans - and specifically, only those we have examined first hand.
Anything else is conjecture.
>
> > And on the grounds that we can't know everything about all of
> > their conceivable instances anywhere now or in the future? Or actually
know
> > anything about anything on the same grounds?
>
> I'm not taking any of these positions.
You'll need to convince me of that because that's what you seem to be
explicitly saying.
>
> > Not quite because I'm maintaining that such universal claims are not
> > necessary for knowledge. Universal claims, yes, but contextual. We in
fact
> > know a great deal about swans *on earth*. That is not diminished by what
we
> > don't - and can't yet - know about the swans on other planets.
>
> I certainly don't disagree with your last point. The choice here isn't
> between total omniscience and total ignorance.
But on your view there doesn't seem to be much in between that constitutes
*knowledge* - not on the conceptual level. And yet, you've got the disjoint,
of saying you agree with the Objectivist view of concept formation and
consider it valid, while at the same time arguing that none of it
constitutes a recognition of reality (truth).
>
> > That's the beginning of the process, not the end. At the end you say "my
> > hypothesis
> > has turned out to be true". But what constitutes it's truth? That it
appl
> > ies to the aspects
> > of reality and the specified conditions under which it's been tested or
that
> > it also applies to aspects of reality of which you have no knowledge?
>
> Two points. First, I would not say that the hypothesis turned out to be
> true. I would say that so far it has stood up to rigorous testing.
Well, if rigorous testing doesn't lead to truth, pray tell, what does?
> Second, if you limit the statement to the aspects of reality and the
> specified conditions under which it has been tested, then you can say
> within that context (if you will) that the hypothesis holds true.
Why would you not limit it in that way? On what basis would you extend it
beyond those specified conditions (except perhaps as an hypothesis)?
But
> that's different, of course, from saying that the hypothesis holds true
> under any other conditions.
Of course. That would be bad science.
And the more that you limit or qualify the
> hypothesis in this manner, the less usefulness it has as a scientific
> theory.
Absolutely not. The exact opposite. But you are also setting up a strawman
here with regard to the limitations and qualifications. It is possible to
generalize to all similar conditions (based on the Law of Identity) -
unless you want to throw out the conceptual faculty.
>....If I observe ten cases and then conclude that "based on the
> cases so far observed, all A blood types are compatible," that statement
> certainly holds true in the ten observed cases. However, as the price
> for "specifying context," I end up with a statement that says virtually
> nothing beyond these ten cases. On the other hand, if I theorize,....
At this stage, based on only 10 cases, I'd say hypothesize, not theorize.
I'm not a scientist or a student of scientific method, so I can't tell you
how many more cases you would need, but I assume it's more than 10 (though
less than a million).
>... based
> on these same ten cases,....
I'd be intrigued enough to investigate further.
>....And
> when I discover later, as the result of additional testing and
> observation, that this theory holds true only if the RH factors are
> matched, the resulting new theory is even more valuable. And so on.
> But the "price" for this expansion of knowledge is a willingness to
> venture beyond safely delimited contexts of knowledge, ....
What "price"? You make it sound as if you are losing something. Why would
the expansion of knowledge exact a price? The exact opposite. In this
instance, you save more lives.
>...make bold
> conjectures about what is currently unknown, and then submit these
> conjectures to rigorous testing and (if necessary) modification or
> correction.
What does this have to do with anything? What point are you addressing? What
I want to know is if in any point in this process you achieve truth. You
seem to be saying "no" - and in addition claiming Ayn Rand would agree with
you.
What I'd like to know is how it could even possible for our knowledge to
expand as you are suggesting unless we were identifying truths - not merely,
as you seem to be saying, replacing conjectures with more conjectures.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c3c5cdb...@news.charter.net...
>.... If an epistemology does not give you a method for preferring one
theory over another,...
You mean like CathKant "prefers" George Walsh's theory of Kant because he
likes its conclusions? Or socialists like Marx?
Shouldn't an epistemology give you a method for determining what's true?
>.... it isn't worth a damn, especially as a
> practical guide to daily thinking and living.
Have you become a pragmatist in your old age?
>For example, we can
> critically examine Newton's theories against Einstein's theories, but in
> the end we need a methodology for deciding which theories we should
> prefer and adopt, despite the fact that we are fallible beings and both
> theories may be false.
More rather blatant and explicit - and shocking - pragmatism. You do know
what I'm saying here? The pragmatists argued that since truth was
impossible we had to decide what to do based on what's "useful". (Of course
they blanked out how one could rationally judge what's useful, if truth is
impossible). This is why, btw, when you argue with Sollars or Friedman those
nihilists, ironically, come out looking like the principled ones arguing
from the moral high ground, while you look like a rank pragmatist.
Everything, as you have frequently and correctly noted, derives from
epistemology. Since you reject context, you are forced to reject truth. What
you are left with is pragmatism - and ultimately your feelings.
Not exactly Objectivism wouldn't you agree?
Fred Weiss
Gordon G. Sollars
You have no basis for saying that facts were shoved anywhere. Bob's
point, if you can read, is that certain facts could not have been
/explained/ at the time by Aristarchus's theory. The fact that counted
against Ptolemy was retrograde motion, and it was /not/ ignored. More
epicycles were added to handle that.
> That was not the case with Newton.
What about the "unsightly fact" of Mercury?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.16c329a980...@mail.nji.com...
>
> >
> > He discovered...
>
> Yes, he did.
No one is arguing about the possibility of discovery, Fred.
> >.... that if gravity were a instantaneous force that obeyed a
> > certain inverse-square relationship, he could explain and predict the
> > motions of most of the planets (and, of course, a great many other
> > things).
>
> Which it did.
Again, no argument here, either. The point is that despite this, the
theory is false. It predicts things that do not agree with the facts,
and we have another theory - consistent with those facts - that does not
even view gravity as a force.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> >.... If an epistemology does not give you a method for preferring one
> theory over another,...
> You mean like CathKant "prefers" George Walsh's theory of Kant because he
> likes its conclusions? Or socialists like Marx?
> Shouldn't an epistemology give you a method for determining what's true?
Yes, to the extent it can. We can always determine whether certain
types of statements are true. There are other types of statements --
most notably theories expressed either as universal affirmatives or
universal negatives, in which a single counterexample contradicts the
entire theory -- in which our fallibility and lack of omniscience
prevents us from determining that they hold true at all times and
places.
> >.... it isn't worth a damn, especially as a
> > practical guide to daily thinking and living.
> Have you become a pragmatist in your old age?
Uh, no.
> >For example, we can
> > critically examine Newton's theories against Einstein's theories, but in
> > the end we need a methodology for deciding which theories we should
> > prefer and adopt, despite the fact that we are fallible beings and both
> > theories may be false.
> More rather blatant and explicit - and shocking - pragmatism. You do know
> what I'm saying here?
No. Pragmatism has nothing to do with it. Whether the theories can
hold up under new observations, new tests, new conditions, and newly
discovered facts has everything to do with it.
> The pragmatists argued that since truth was
> impossible we had to decide what to do based on what's "useful". (Of course
> they blanked out how one could rationally judge what's useful, if truth is
> impossible).
The pragmatist error is to conclude is truth is that which works,
instead of concluding correctly that what works, works because it is
true, i.e. corresponds to the actual facts of reality.
> This is why, btw, when you argue with Sollars or Friedman those
> nihilists, ironically, come out looking like the principled ones arguing
> from the moral high ground, while you look like a rank pragmatist.
> Everything, as you have frequently and correctly noted, derives from
> epistemology. Since you reject context, you are forced to reject truth. What
> you are left with is pragmatism - and ultimately your feelings.
> Not exactly Objectivism wouldn't you agree?
Not exactly an accurate representation of my views, either.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> > > Do you really want to be taking the position that we don't know anything
> > > about swans?
> > I'm not taking that position.
> You seem to be taking the position that we can only *know* anything about
> *some* swans - and specifically, only those we have examined first hand.
> Anything else is conjecture.
That's different from saying that we don't know anything about swans.
And I would add here that some conjectures may turn out to be true, even
if we don't (yet) know that they are true. In any event, I am more
concerned with whether a particular conjecture is true than with how it
was formed or arrived at in the first place.
> > > And on the grounds that we can't know everything about all of
> > > their conceivable instances anywhere now or in the future? Or actually
> > > know anything about anything on the same grounds?
> > I'm not taking any of these positions.
> You'll need to convince me of that because that's what you seem to be
> explicitly saying.
You are asking me to prove a negative. How do I go about doing that?
> > I certainly don't disagree with your last point. The choice here isn't
> > between total omniscience and total ignorance.
> But on your view there doesn't seem to be much in between that constitutes
> *knowledge* - not on the conceptual level. And yet, you've got the disjoint,
> of saying you agree with the Objectivist view of concept formation and
> consider it valid, while at the same time arguing that none of it
> constitutes a recognition of reality (truth).
I am not following you here.
I'll give you one simple example of something we can know in between
total omniscience and total ignorance. We certainly know that not all
type A bloods are compatible. This statement is an "O" statement ("Some
S are not P") on Aristotle's square of opposition. The same conclusion
applies to "I" statements ("Some S are P"). Now, think of how many O
statements and I statements we can make about the world and you will
realize that we are capable of learning a great deal of knowledge.
The problem is with the A statements ("All S is P") and E statements
("No S is P"). Even Aristotle understood that, at least in the realm of
science, we cannot prove that such statements are true. The best we can
do is to qualify them, as Aristotle did, by saying that they are true
"all or for the most part." And the beauty of it is that if you add
this qualifier, the A statements and E statements also qualify as
knowledge.
> > Two points. First, I would not say that the hypothesis turned out to be
> > true. I would say that so far it has stood up to rigorous testing.
> Well, if rigorous testing doesn't lead to truth, pray tell, what does?
See my previous comment.
[...]
> > And the more that you limit or qualify the
> > hypothesis in this manner, the less usefulness it has as a scientific
> > theory.
> Absolutely not. The exact opposite. But you are also setting up a strawman
> here with regard to the limitations and qualifications. It is possible to
> generalize to all similar conditions (based on the Law of Identity) -
> unless you want to throw out the conceptual faculty.
I think you have misunderstood me. When you qualify the statement, you
are limiting it to the cases that you actually observed -- which
excludes all the other cases to which you want to apply it. For
example, the statement "all A blood types are compatible" would apply
only to actual cases that you observed in the past, not necessarily to
any new case that you may observe today or in the future. Only when you
first make the conjecture that the statement "all A blood types are
compatible" applies to all human beings, and then begin testing it by
applying it to new cases, do you learn new knowledge.
> >....If I observe ten cases and then conclude that "based on the
> > cases so far observed, all A blood types are compatible," that statement
> > certainly holds true in the ten observed cases. However, as the price
> > for "specifying context," I end up with a statement that says virtually
> > nothing beyond these ten cases. On the other hand, if I theorize,....
> At this stage, based on only 10 cases, I'd say hypothesize, not theorize.
> I'm not a scientist or a student of scientific method, so I can't tell you
> how many more cases you would need, but I assume it's more than 10 (though
> less than a million).
There is no real difference in my mind between hypothesize and theorize.
You can do it based on ten cases, a hundred cases, or no cases at all --
it makes no difference to scientific method. What does make a
difference is whether the hypothesis or theory then holds up under
rigorous testing.
> >....And
> > when I discover later, as the result of additional testing and
> > observation, that this theory holds true only if the RH factors are
> > matched, the resulting new theory is even more valuable. And so on.
> > But the "price" for this expansion of knowledge is a willingness to
> > venture beyond safely delimited contexts of knowledge, ....
> What "price"? You make it sound as if you are losing something. Why would
> the expansion of knowledge exact a price? The exact opposite. In this
> instance, you save more lives.
The price here is certainty at the outset that your hypothesis or theory
is true. At the beginning, you simply don't know whether a statement
such as "all A blood types are compatible" will hold up when applied to
new cases in the future. Even it it holds up in the first, say, 50
cases, you don't know if it will continue to do so when you get to, say,
the 100th case. There may be some important difference or condition, as
yet undiscovered, between one case in which the theory held up and
another case in which it did not (e.g. a case in which the RH factors
failed to match, at a time when the importance of the RH factor has not
yet been discovered).
> >...make bold
> > conjectures about what is currently unknown, and then submit these
> > conjectures to rigorous testing and (if necessary) modification or
> > correction.
> What does this have to do with anything? What point are you addressing? What
> I want to know is if in any point in this process you achieve truth. You
> seem to be saying "no" - and in addition claiming Ayn Rand would agree with
> you.
I don't know if Ayn Rand would agree with me because she wrote very
little about the scientific method, which is what we have been
discussing all along. I have no reason to think that she would have
disagreed with me.
> What I'd like to know is how it could even possible for our knowledge to
> expand as you are suggesting unless we were identifying truths - not merely,
> as you seem to be saying, replacing conjectures with more conjectures.
What is it you think we are doing when, say, we replace Newton's theory
with Einstein's theory?
Ken
Karun Philip
> > the question is once we have abandoned absolute certainty, then why
> > don't we bell the cat and assert fallibility and only claim a critical
> > preference for the "existence exists" axiom?
>
> In this particular example, the answer is because the very notion of
> non-existence is self-contradictory and, therefore, self-refuting. Of
> course, most false statements are not self-refuting in this manner, so
> your point still holds with respect to many statements.
>
Is there any logical flaw in the premise of the movie "The Matrix"?
(The story has super-heroes and super-baddies so let's forget that bit
-- just the premise).
Of course, idealists and religious fundamentalists go to even greater
lengths by positing as true some things whose truth status is
unknowable by definition, in order to claim that there is no
self-contradiction. Ultimately, I believe it is a preference.
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c474ed2...@news.charter.net...
>...I am more
> concerned with whether a particular conjecture is true than with how it
> was formed or arrived at in the first place.
I don't think you can separate the two. After all, think about it, if you
ask someone how does he know that such and such is true what do you expect
him to provide you except the evidence he has and the method he used to
obtain it. Granted, that is not the same thing as whether it is true, but
wouldn't you say at least after looking over someone's evidence and checking
their methodology, "this could be true" or "this jerk has overlooked a
number of obvious things and/or his methodology sucks". In science, they
then attempt to duplicate the results, using the same methodology under
similar conditions.
> ...("Some S are not P") ....("Some S are P"). Now, think of how many
<such>
> statements ...we can make about the world and you will
> realize that we are capable of learning a great deal of knowledge.
Hume would agree with you about this. The question is whether we can go
beyond that.
>
> The problem is with the A statements ("All S is P") and E statements
> ("No S is P"). Even Aristotle understood that, at least in the realm of
> science, we cannot prove that such statements are true.
I agree...if you take "all" to mean "every instance, known and unknown, and
under any and all conditions, known and unknown". You can't prove the
impossible.
The best we can
> do is to qualify them, as Aristotle did, by saying that they are true
> "all or for the most part." And the beauty of it is that if you add
> this qualifier, the A statements and E statements also qualify as
> knowledge.
Aristotle was on the edge of "contextualism" and I think in an hour or two
with Ayn Rand he'd have come on board. All our knowledge, in my view, and I
believe on the Objectivist view, must be so qualified.
> > > Two points. First, I would not say that the hypothesis turned out to
be
> > > true. I would say that so far it has stood up to rigorous testing.
>
> > Well, if rigorous testing doesn't lead to truth, pray tell, what does?
>
> See my previous comment.
You'll have to be more explicit because this is important.
> ...When you qualify the statement, you
> are limiting it to the cases that you actually observed -- which
> excludes all the other cases to which you want to apply it.
I don't agree. The qualification is not to just those specific cases. It is
to cases of *those types* under *these conditions*. (That is assuming you
have sufficient evidence to generalize to that degree).
For
> example, the statement "all A blood types are compatible" would apply
> only to actual cases that you observed in the past, not necessarily to
> any new case that you may observe today or in the future.
No, at a certain point of evidence, you can legitimately generalize.
Only when you
> first make the conjecture that the statement "all A blood types are
> compatible" applies to all human beings, and then begin testing it by
> applying it to new cases, do you learn new knowledge.
Yes, but I'm assuming you have done that testing.
> .... At the beginning, you simply don't know whether a statement
> such as "all A blood types are compatible" will hold up when applied to
> new cases in the future. Even it it holds up in the first, say, 50
> cases, you don't know if it will continue to do so when you get to, say,
> the 100th case. There may be some important difference or condition, as
> yet undiscovered, between one case in which the theory held up and
> another case in which it did not (e.g. a case in which the RH factors
> failed to match, at a time when the importance of the RH factor has not
> yet been discovered).
That really doesn't matter at this stage. Even at the first 20 or so cases,
you may see some instances where the patient dies or has severe side
effects. But you don't know yet why they did. At a 1,000 cases when 30, 40,
or even more patients die or have side effects anyway, you still may not
know why. (You have no knowledge yet of the rh factor). What is important is
that 100's of those patients live who otherwise would have died. Some
percentage of the patients do in fact die anyway for reasons other than the
rh factor. But at some point, you start wondering if the bad results with
some patients may have something to do with the compatability of the blood,
some unknown additional factor, even though they are all "Type A's".
> > ...What I'd like to know is how it could even possible for our knowledge
to
> > expand as you are suggesting unless we were identifying truths - not
merely,
> > as you seem to be saying, replacing conjectures with more conjectures.
>
> What is it you think we are doing when, say, we replace Newton's theory
> with Einstein's theory?
Expanding our knowledge/learning more about additional aspects of reality
not previously known/ widening our context of knowledge.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c473258e...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <a3dmo6$u3v$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>, Fred Weiss writes...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> > news:MPG.16c3e52c44...@mail.nji.com...
> >
> > > > The basic problem was there was a disconnect between the physics of
> > > > motions as known in the time of Aristarchus and his hypothesis that
the
> > > > earth and other (known) planets revolved around the Sun. For example
if
> > > > the earth moved around the Sun, wouldn't the Moon be left behind?
> >
> > > And thus it is only the passage of time ...
> >
> > No, and thus they didn't factor in all the known relevant facts of the
time
> > (if Bob is correct in this). Or in other words, certain known unsightly
> > facts were shoved under the rug to make the theory look neat.
>
> You have no basis for saying that facts were shoved anywhere. Bob's
> point, if you can read, is that certain facts could not have been
> /explained/ at the time by Aristarchus's theory.
Known facts.
The fact that counted
> against Ptolemy was retrograde motion, and it was /not/ ignored. More
> epicycles were added to handle that.
Shoving it further under the rug.
> > That was not the case with Newton.
>
> What about the "unsightly fact" of Mercury?
If I've understood what Bob said about this, it was not "in sight" to be
unsightly. He didn't know about it.
Perhaps Bob would care to clarify both cases.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c47411d1...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <a3dm6d$82e$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>, Fred Weiss writes...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> > news:MPG.16c329a980...@mail.nji.com...
> >
> > >
> > > He discovered...
> >
> > Yes, he did.
>
> No one is arguing about the possibility of discovery, Fred.
You are with regard to Newton - and science in general.
>
> > >.... that if gravity were a instantaneous force that obeyed a
> > > certain inverse-square relationship, he could explain and predict the
> > > motions of most of the planets (and, of course, a great many other
> > > things).
> >
> > Which it did.
>
> Again, no argument here, either. The point is that despite this, the
> theory is false. It predicts things that do not agree with the facts, ...
It predicted precisely everything it should have given the facts he knew and
without ignoring anything he reasonably could have known at the time. With
regard to the facts he knew it was true and is still true today.
> ...and we have another theory - consistent with those facts - that does
not
> even view gravity as a force.
So what? We know more. We have a wider context of knowledge than he did.
And you're soon going to tell us that our current theory is not necessarily
true either, nor will any other at anytime in the future, no matter how much
more we know. So our knowledge continually expands and we manage to get to
intergalatic space travel without ever knowing what's true.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c46d733...@news.charter.net...
> > Shouldn't an epistemology give you a method for determining what's true?
>
> Yes, to the extent it can. We can always determine whether certain
> types of statements are true. There are other types of statements --
> most notably theories expressed either as universal affirmatives or
> universal negatives, ...
...i.e. arbitrary statements.
>...in which a single counterexample contradicts the
> entire theory --
....which is inevitable with the arbitrary.
>....in which our fallibility and lack of omniscience
> prevents us from determining that they hold true at all times and
> places.
Since we aren't omniscient, doesn't that tell you that one of the routes to
truth is to avoid the arbitrary - and in this instance to avoid
over-generalizing? Namely, dare I say it, to *keep context*.
Fred Weiss
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
unsightly. He didn't know about it.
>
> Perhaps Bob would care to clarify both cases.
Newton did not know about the precession of the perihelion. That was not
known until the 19-th century when better telescopes were available.
However his theory of gravity could not account for it.
Bob Kolker
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> The fact that counted
> > against Ptolemy was retrograde motion, and it was /not/ ignored. More
> > epicycles were added to handle that.
>
> Shoving it further under the rug.
Now you're just being silly or evasive. Your "rug" metaphor was used
first to indicate things that were ignored. Retrograde motion was not
ignored, but explicitly dealt with by adding epicycles. You now want
"shoved under the rug" to mean "dealt with incorrectly".
> > > That was not the case with Newton.
> >
> > What about the "unsightly fact" of Mercury?
>
> If I've understood what Bob said about this, it was not "in sight" to be
> unsightly. He didn't know about it.
It doesn't matter. Attempts were made later to explain Mercury's orbit
by the existence of another planet even closer to the Sun. Those
attempts were incorrect, as we now know.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> >...I am more
> > concerned with whether a particular conjecture is true than with how it
> > was formed or arrived at in the first place.
> I don't think you can separate the two. After all, think about it, if you
> ask someone how does he know that such and such is true what do you expect
> him to provide you except the evidence he has and the method he used to
> obtain it.
Actually, I would want to know if the conclusion stands up to the actual
facts of reality. Ultimately, that's all that really matters.
Thus, I would certainly be interested in whatever evidence he has, but
not necessarily in the method (subjective mental processes) he used to
form the conclusion in the first place. Well, I might also be
interested in how the person went about testing his conclusion, if in
fact he did. Someone like Bob Kolker can address this issue better than
I can, but my understanding is that part of good science is describing
in detail the experiments and observations that the scientist performed
in testing his theory so that others could attempt to duplicate his work
and see if they reached the same results.
> Granted, that is not the same thing as whether it is true, but
> wouldn't you say at least after looking over someone's evidence and checking
> their methodology, "this could be true" or "this jerk has overlooked a
> number of obvious things and/or his methodology sucks". In science, they
> then attempt to duplicate the results, using the same methodology under
> similar conditions.
Same response. The scientist would be more interested in rigorously
testing whether the conclusion corresponds with the facts (and perhaps
how the person tested his conclusion) than with examining the person's
methodology in arriving at the conclusion in the first place.
> > The problem is with the A statements ("All S is P") and E statements
> > ("No S is P"). Even Aristotle understood that, at least in the realm of
> > science, we cannot prove that such statements are true.
> I agree...if you take "all" to mean "every instance, known and unknown, and
> under any and all conditions, known and unknown". You can't prove the
> impossible.
Right. And I don't know of any serious philosophy that disagrees with
this conclusion.
[...]
> > > > Two points. First, I would not say that the hypothesis turned out to
> > > > be true. I would say that so far it has stood up to rigorous testing.
> > > Well, if rigorous testing doesn't lead to truth, pray tell, what does?
> > See my previous comment.
> You'll have to be more explicit because this is important.
My previous comment referred to three types of statements that can be
shown to be true: (1) I statements, (2) O statements, and (3) A and E
statements with Aristotle's qualification of true "all or for the most
part."
I'll add here, bringing in Aristotle's square of opposition, that by
refuting false propositions you can use logic to show that their
opposites or contradictories are true. For example, a non-white swan
contradicts the A statement that all swans are white and validates, as
true, the opposite O statement that some swans are not white. You can
also use the logical relationship between A statements and E statements
to say that if an A statement is true, the E statement must be false
(and vice versa).
> > ...When you qualify the statement, you
> > are limiting it to the cases that you actually observed -- which
> > excludes all the other cases to which you want to apply it.
> I don't agree. The qualification is not to just those specific cases. It is
> to cases of *those types* under *these conditions*. (That is assuming you
> have sufficient evidence to generalize to that degree).
That's a very big assumption. When do you know you have "sufficient
evidence?" The answer is that as a fallible, non-omniscient being, you
don't and never will. There is simply no way for such a being to prove
an unqualified universal statement (either affirmative or negative) from
a finite number of observations. You cannot prove that all swans are
white merely from a finite number of observations of white swans and the
lack of any observations of non-white swans. The best you can do is to
theorize from these observations that all swans may be white (or are
probably white, or are white "all or for the most part," or "based on my
current context of knowledge, all swans are white" -- take your pick).
> > For
> > example, the statement "all A blood types are compatible" would apply
> > only to actual cases that you observed in the past, not necessarily to
> > any new case that you may observe today or in the future.
> No, at a certain point of evidence, you can legitimately generalize.
Of course you can. What you cannot do is prove that the generalization
is true without adding the qualifications mentioned above. I think we
agree on this point, do we?
> > Only when you
> > first make the conjecture that the statement "all A blood types are
> > compatible" applies to all human beings, and then begin testing it by
> > applying it to new cases, do you learn new knowledge.
> Yes, but I'm assuming you have done that testing.
Well, sure. And the more testing you do, the more confidence you can
have in your theory, both theoretically and practically. That which
does not kill your theory makes it stronger. If your theory has stood up
to the most rigorous attempts to refute and contradict it, then I don't
think that anyone can reasonably ask for more.
> That really doesn't matter at this stage. Even at the first 20 or so cases,
> you may see some instances where the patient dies or has severe side
> effects. But you don't know yet why they did. At a 1,000 cases when 30, 40,
> or even more patients die or have side effects anyway, you still may not
> know why. (You have no knowledge yet of the rh factor). What is important is
> that 100's of those patients live who otherwise would have died. Some
> percentage of the patients do in fact die anyway for reasons other than the
> rh factor. But at some point, you start wondering if the bad results with
> some patients may have something to do with the compatability of the blood,
> some unknown additional factor, even though they are all "Type A's".
I think this is a very sensible approach to take, and one that a good
researcher or scientist would actually take.
[...]
Ken
Ken Gardner
> > In this particular example, the answer is because the very notion of
> > non-existence is self-contradictory and, therefore, self-refuting. Of
> > course, most false statements are not self-refuting in this manner, so
> > your point still holds with respect to many statements.
> Is there any logical flaw in the premise of the movie "The Matrix"?
> (The story has super-heroes and super-baddies so let's forget that bit
> -- just the premise).
I haven't seen The Matrix, so I cannot answer this question.
> Of course, idealists and religious fundamentalists go to even greater
> lengths by positing as true some things whose truth status is
> unknowable by definition, in order to claim that there is no
> self-contradiction. Ultimately, I believe it is a preference.
You mean, they prefer to "think" this way? If so, I agree.
Ken
Gordon G. Sollars
> > No one is arguing about the possibility of discovery, Fred.
>
> You are with regard to Newton - and science in general.
No, Fred, instead I am arguing - quite successfully so far - that the
"context doctrine" is both incompatible with realism and pointless. You
are somehow personally invested in the notion that if the doctrine were
false, all sorts of terrible things would result. But it is, and they
don't.
...
> > Again, no argument here, either. The point is that despite this, the
> > theory is false. It predicts things that do not agree with the facts, ...
>
> It predicted precisely everything it should have given the facts he knew and
> without ignoring anything he reasonably could have known at the time.
This is just silly. How are "should have" and "reasonable" to be
interpreted here? Ptolemy's theory also predicted precisely everything
it "should have" given the facts he knew at the time and without ignoring
anything he "reasonably" could have known, as well.
The difference is that you are well-enough informed to know that the
planets do not go around the Earth, and that there is no "context" in
which they ever did, but not enough to know that gravity is not
considered a "force" in Einstein's theory, as it is in Newton's. So, of
course, you "know" that Ptolemy's theory was never true in its context,
but Newton's was.
> With
> regard to the facts he knew it was true and is still true today.
So the fewer facts we know, the more true theories we have? This is the
nonsensical "worship of ignorance" that the context doctrine leads to.
> > ...and we have another theory - consistent with those facts - that does
> not
> > even view gravity as a force.
>
> So what? We know more. We have a wider context of knowledge than he did.
If gravity is not a force, then it has never been a force. It was not
true then or now that it was a force. No "context of knowledge" can
change that. It is a brute fact about the universe. Have you given up
on the notion of a real world altogether?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c5373cc...@news.charter.net...
>....my understanding is that part of good science is describing
> in detail the experiments and observations that the scientist performed
> in testing his theory so that others could attempt to duplicate his work
> and see if they reached the same results.
Exactly, which is my point. If the methodology looks suspect or if it is
clear that some relevant data wasn't looked at, you might not bother to go
to the trouble of attempting to duplicate it. You hold in abeyance the
judgment of whether it is true. You might not even be able to go so far as
to say it even "might" be true. You just don't know based on what has been
presented to date.
This is why I say that the way that you acquire acknowledge and what you are
basing it on is inextricably linked to the "truth status" of the (claimed)
knowledge - though they are not the same thing, since obviously process and
result are not the same thing.
> ....The scientist would be more interested in rigorously
> testing whether the conclusion corresponds with the facts (and perhaps
> how the person tested his conclusion) than with examining the person's
> methodology in arriving at the conclusion in the first place.
I think in practise they in fact look very closely at the methodology. For
some other reason, even with faulty methodology, a scientist may wish to
explore some question further, using better methodology.
>...if you take "all" to mean "every instance, known and unknown, and
> > under any and all conditions, known and unknown". You can't prove the
> > impossible.
>
> Right. And I don't know of any serious philosophy that disagrees with
> this conclusion.
So, why bother debating it or assume that that's what we must do when we
generalize?
>...When do you know you have "sufficient
> evidence?" The answer is that as a fallible, non-omniscient being, you
> don't and never will.
Which is why you maintain that even with rigorous testing we can never
achieve truth, right?
Does a hockey coach never have sufficient evidence that a player is good
enough to be in the starting line-up? Does a hockey player never have
sufficient evidence that he can play the game competently? Do they have to
have try-outs every day to determine whether everyone can still play? Maybe
everyone forgot how to skate or put on skates or hold a hockey stick?
Not only that but the sun might not rise tomorrow and forget hockey, we're
all in big trouble.
Where do you differ with Hume on this?
There is simply no way for such a being to prove
> an unqualified universal statement (either affirmative or negative) from
> a finite number of observations.
So why make them? What need is there for "unqualified" universal statements
which we both agree are completely unprovable and therefore arbitrary and
groundless.
You cannot prove that all swans are
> white merely from a finite number of observations of white swans and the
> lack of any observations of non-white swans. The best you can do is to
> theorize from these observations that all swans may be white (or are
> probably white, or are white "all or for the most part," or "based on my
> current context of knowledge, all swans are white" -- take your pick).
How about the last, since after all isn't it human (vs. god's) knowledge we
are talking about?
> > > For
> > > example, the statement "all A blood types are compatible" would apply
> > > only to actual cases that you observed in the past, not necessarily to
> > > any new case that you may observe today or in the future.
>
> > No, at a certain point of evidence, you can legitimately generalize.
>
> Of course you can. What you cannot do is prove that the generalization
> is true without adding the qualifications mentioned above. I think we
> agree on this point, do we?
We do if you think a coach can fully rationally assume his team will
remember how to play hockey from game to game.
We do if you are not a Humean.
>....the more testing you do, the more confidence you can
> have in your theory, both theoretically and practically.
Does a hockey coach continually need to test that his players will remember
how to play the game? Does he need to do try-outs every day to see who
remembers and who doesn't?
>... That which
> does not kill your theory makes it stronger.
Does an otherwise competent but drunken player who can't even get his skates
on refute the theory or if a player has some brain injury which affects his
memory? Do we have to throw out everything we know because there are
exceptions, even explicable exceptions?
Is it true or not that you start your car by putting the key in the ignition
and turning it? Is that falsified because once in a while your battery is
dead or you are out of gas? Or is that false because at some point in the
future we will be able to start our cars by some other means? Or if we don't
even use cars anymore - we just "beam ourselves" from point to point? Or is
that false because we discover a better explanation for why internal
combustion engines work as they do?
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c544595d...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <u5mfvvj...@corp.supernews.com>, Fred Weiss writes...
> ...
> > The fact that counted
> > > against Ptolemy was retrograde motion, and it was /not/ ignored. More
> > > epicycles were added to handle that.
> >
> > Shoving it further under the rug.
>
> Now you're just being silly or evasive. Your "rug" metaphor was used
> first to indicate things that were ignored. Retrograde motion was not
> ignored, but explicitly dealt with by adding epicycles. You now want
> "shoved under the rug" to mean "dealt with incorrectly".
Obviously it was dealt with incorrectly. Didn't - or couldn't - they see
that adding epicycles didn't answer the question?
> > > > That was not the case with Newton.
> > >
> > > What about the "unsightly fact" of Mercury?
> >
> > If I've understood what Bob said about this, it was not "in sight" to be
> > unsightly. He didn't know about it.
>
> It doesn't matter.
Then begging the question doesn't matter.
>Attempts were made later to explain Mercury's orbit
> by the existence of another planet even closer to the Sun. Those
> attempts were incorrect, as we now know.
Yes, so?
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c54809d...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <u5mgonm...@corp.supernews.com>, Fred Weiss writes...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> ...
> > > No one is arguing about the possibility of discovery, Fred.
> >
> > You are with regard to Newton - and science in general.
>
> No, Fred, instead I am arguing ..
...that somehow by continually discovering false things truth emerges by
some inexplicable process.
>..... You
> are somehow personally invested in the notion that if the doctrine were
> false, all sorts of terrible things would result. But it is, and they
> don't.
Tu Quoque.
> ...
> > > Again, no argument here, either. The point is that despite this, the
> > > theory is false. It predicts things that do not agree with the facts,
...
> >
> > It predicted precisely everything it should have given the facts he knew
and
> > without ignoring anything he reasonably could have known at the time.
>
> This is just silly. How are "should have" and "reasonable" to be
> interpreted here?
That our knowledge is always limited, but that we don't know everything
doesn't diminish what we do know.
> Ptolemy's theory also predicted precisely everything
> it "should have" given the facts he knew at the time and without ignoring
> anything he "reasonably" could have known, as well.
Except - from what you've said - retrograde motion.
> > With
> > regard to the facts he knew it was true and is still true today.
>
> So the fewer facts we know,...
So the more facts we know the more truths we have. If you on the other hand
are satisfied with knowing fewer truths that's your prerogative. For
example, far be it from me to dissuade you from your ignorance of
Objectivism.
Fred Weiss
Karun Philip
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote
> > Of course, idealists and religious fundamentalists go to even greater
> > lengths by positing as true some things whose truth status is
> > unknowable by definition, in order to claim that there is no
> > self-contradiction. Ultimately, I believe it is a preference.
>
> You mean, they prefer to "think" this way? If so, I agree.
So also, the rest of us prefer to assume the truth of the "existence exists"
axiom. I do believe with virtually no doubt that we are right, but once we
admit fallibility as an epistemological principle, then we must also admit
the contingent truth rather than absolute truth of any piece of knowledge
expressed in language. It does not put up any practical barriers to
reasonable thought, as far as I can see, and it introduces epistemological
rigor -- that I believe was Popper's genius. If you can express Objectivism
based on both the fallibility axiom and the contingent acceptance (or
critical preference) of the "existence exists" axiom, I believe you will be
able to generate an axiomatic system that is more coherent than one using
the phrase "contextual certainty". "Certainty" is a weasel word and needs to
be avoided by a fallibilist or Popperian. Of course, you might also discuss
context, while avoiding using "certainty". Critical rationalism is only a
methodology -- you can build on its base using Objectivist insights or any
other insights.
Gordon G. Sollars
> > Now you're just being silly or evasive. Your "rug" metaphor was used
> > first to indicate things that were ignored. Retrograde motion was not
> > ignored, but explicitly dealt with by adding epicycles. You now want
> > "shoved under the rug" to mean "dealt with incorrectly".
>
> Obviously it was dealt with incorrectly. Didn't - or couldn't - they see
> that adding epicycles didn't answer the question?
It is "obvious" /today/, of course. But Bob pointed to several reasons
why it was not obvious at the time. Adding epicycles did answer the
question - until better measurements were made, revealing the need for
more epicycles. Ultimately the system broke down. So why is it not the
case that Ptolemy's theory was "true in its context"?
...
> > > If I've understood what Bob said about this, it was not "in sight" to be
> > > unsightly. He didn't know about it.
> >
> > It doesn't matter.
>
> Then begging the question doesn't matter.
I don't think that Newton's theory would have been abandoned even if the
problem with Mercury had been known from the start - the theory worked
too well, otherwise. So it does not matter exactly when the better data
for Mercury were available. Search for another planet or another
explanation would have begun earlier, that's all. A theory that works
well is not going to be discarded even if it is false until a better one
comes along, and, as we have seen, maybe not even then.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> ...that somehow by continually discovering false things truth emerges by
> some inexplicable process.
"Things" is ambiguous, Fred. We discover that a theory is false by
discovering that it is true that it makes false predictions. The process
of testing theories and rejecting those that fail is no more inexplicable
than the process of evolution, which "proposes" varies organisms and then
rejects most of them.
...
> > This is just silly. How are "should have" and "reasonable" to be
> > interpreted here?
>
> That our knowledge is always limited, but that we don't know everything
> doesn't diminish what we do know.
I agree with that, of course. But that interpretation of those terms
doesn't save you from Ptolemy's theory being "true in its context".
> > Ptolemy's theory also predicted precisely everything
> > it "should have" given the facts he knew at the time and without ignoring
> > anything he "reasonably" could have known, as well.
>
> Except - from what you've said - retrograde motion.
The epicycles were there precisely /because/ of retrograde motion.
/Ultimately/, they were a failure at explanation, but, then, so was the
idea of gravity as an instantaneous force obeying an inverse-square law.
...
> So the more facts we know the more truths we have. If you on the other hand
> are satisfied with knowing fewer truths that's your prerogative. For
> example, far be it from me to dissuade you from your ignorance of
> Objectivism.
Fred, I am trying to cure my ignorance of Objectivism, if any. I have
presented an argument that you cannot be a realist and hold to the idea
that a theory can be "true in its context". You have completely ignored
this argument and "harkyl" responded with several uncontroversial and
completely irrelevant claims. No other Objectivists have weighed in.
This seems to be the pattern: outright evasion or truisms that are
irrelevant to the argument. Truthfully, I am not very sure of my
argument, because the opposition to it has been so weak.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
[...]
> This is why I say that the way that you acquire acknowledge and what you are
> basing it on is inextricably linked to the "truth status" of the (claimed)
> knowledge - though they are not the same thing, since obviously process and
> result are not the same thing.
Which has been my point all along: process and result are not the same
thing. Whether a statement is true (result) is different from how we
grasp or (where possible) prove that it is true (process).
> > ....The scientist would be more interested in rigorously
> > testing whether the conclusion corresponds with the facts (and perhaps
> > how the person tested his conclusion) than with examining the person's
> > methodology in arriving at the conclusion in the first place.
> I think in practise they in fact look very closely at the methodology. For
> some other reason, even with faulty methodology, a scientist may wish to
> explore some question further, using better methodology.
To be more precise, they would look closely at the methodology by which
the conclusion was subsequently tested. I probably overstated the case
earlier to the extent that I suggested that they would not be interested
at all in how the person came up with the conclusion in the first place.
Sure, there would be some interest -- but I think only secondarily to
whether the conclusion (however arrived at) stands up to rigorous
testing.
[...]
> >...When do you know you have "sufficient
> > evidence?" The answer is that as a fallible, non-omniscient being, you
> > don't and never will.
> Which is why you maintain that even with rigorous testing we can never
> achieve truth, right?
You are overstating what I said. I was talking only about statements in
the form (without qualification) "all S is P" or "no S is P." These
statements may very well be true, but any proof that they are true
requires an infallibility or omniscience that we do not possess. The
two other types of statements -- some S is P and some S is not P -- are
certainly capable of being established as being true despite the fact
that we are neither infallible nor omniscient.
> Does a hockey coach never have sufficient evidence that a player is good
> enough to be in the starting line-up? Does a hockey player never have
> sufficient evidence that he can play the game competently? Do they have to
> have try-outs every day to determine whether everyone can still play? Maybe
> everyone forgot how to skate or put on skates or hold a hockey stick?
Let's leave Don Watkin's hockey team out of this, okay? :) Seriously,
of course we can have sufficient evidence. However, do we ever have
sufficient evidence to prove that all swans are white, or that all A
blood types are compatible if their RH factors are matched? Or, to use
one of your examples, that your car will always start up when you start
the ignition? The answer is no. We have sufficient evidence to
conclude that these statements may be true, or even that they hold true
all or for the most part, but that's different.
> Not only that but the sun might not rise tomorrow and forget hockey, we're
> all in big trouble.
Actually, if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow, it will be an even better
day for hockey than normal. :)
> Where do you differ with Hume on this?
Hume was right about one thing, and I think even LP would concede this
point: you cannot prove conclusively the truth of an (unqualified)
universal affirmative or a universal negative. This is the so-called
"problem of induction" as Hume raised it. The only solution is
negative, I.e. you cannot prove that a universal generalization is true,
but (using the Aristotelian square of opposition) you can certainly
prove that a universal generalization is false and, therefore, the
particular opposite statement (N as opposed to A, I as opposed to E on
the square of opposition) is true.
I have a very limited understanding of Hume, but based on the little I
know I would say that Hume was wrong about just about everything else,
mainly because he saw extreme skepticism as the only logical outcome of
accepting the problem of induction. To his credit, Hume himself hated
this result, but for whatever reason (perhaps ignorance of Aristotle's
solution) he could see no way around it.
> > There is simply no way for such a being to prove
> > an unqualified universal statement (either affirmative or negative) from
> > a finite number of observations.
> So why make them? What need is there for "unqualified" universal statements
> which we both agree are completely unprovable and therefore arbitrary and
> groundless.
Exactly. But what are the consequences? One obvious practical
consequence is that should maintain an active, critical approach even to
conclusions that you are strongly inclined to accept. This is
especially true of philosophical ideas, which tend to be expressed as
universal affirmatives or universal negatives. Yet the critical
approach to philosophical ideas is precisely what is missing from many
here of the ARI persuasion (and several others as well). I'm not
talking here merely about a critical approach to ideas with which you
disagree, but also (especially) to ideas with which you agree.
> > You cannot prove that all swans are
> > white merely from a finite number of observations of white swans and the
> > lack of any observations of non-white swans. The best you can do is to
> > theorize from these observations that all swans may be white (or are
> > probably white, or are white "all or for the most part," or "based on my
> > current context of knowledge, all swans are white" -- take your pick).
> How about the last, since after all isn't it human (vs. god's) knowledge we
> are talking about?
There is nothing wrong with it as long as we know exactly what we are
referring to. But it is also a bit too personal for my taste. It
refers specifically to _your_ context of knowledge, instead of the
current state of human knowledge as a whole.
[...]
> >....the more testing you do, the more confidence you can
> > have in your theory, both theoretically and practically.
> Does a hockey coach continually need to test that his players will remember
> how to play the game? Does he need to do try-outs every day to see who
> remembers and who doesn't?
I think in hockey the testing process is called "practice" and, on game
day, the "morning skate." :)
> >... That which
> > does not kill your theory makes it stronger.
> Does an otherwise competent but drunken player who can't even get his skates
> on refute the theory or if a player has some brain injury which affects his
> memory? Do we have to throw out everything we know because there are
> exceptions, even explicable exceptions?
Of course not. But you might have to qualify your theory in some
respects. For example, the theory that player X is a great player may
have to be qualified by such exceptions as "when healthy" or "when
sober" or "when in good physical condition."
> Is it true or not that you start your car by putting the key in the ignition
> and turning it? Is that falsified because once in a while your battery is
> dead or you are out of gas?
This is a better example. The correct answer (with a tip of my goalie
mask to Aristotle) is that this statement is true all or for the most
part. But is it true, because your car has successfully started for,
say, 200 straight times, that it will always start right up in the
future? I don't think so!
[...]
Ken
Ken Gardner
> So also, the rest of us prefer to assume the truth of the "existence exists"
> axiom. I do believe with virtually no doubt that we are right, but once we
> admit fallibility as an epistemological principle, then we must also admit
> the contingent truth rather than absolute truth of any piece of knowledge
> expressed in language. It does not put up any practical barriers to
> reasonable thought, as far as I can see, and it introduces epistemological
> rigor -- that I believe was Popper's genius.
I love epistemological rigor (why am I here, anyway? <VBG>), but I
fully agree with Aristotle (and with Parmenides before him) that any
attempt to deny existence is self-refuting.
> If you can express Objectivism
> based on both the fallibility axiom and the contingent acceptance (or
> critical preference) of the "existence exists" axiom, I believe you will be
> able to generate an axiomatic system that is more coherent than one using
> the phrase "contextual certainty". "Certainty" is a weasel word and needs to
> be avoided by a fallibilist or Popperian.
I have argued against the notion of "contextual certainty" here for
almost two years, even before I had ever heard of Karl Popper. My view
is that at least on a psycho-epistemological level, the quest for
certainty -- especially "contextual certainty" -- ultimately interferes
with or hinders the much more important quest for truth. Popper does an
excellent job explaining why, but he isn't already telling me something
that I didn't learn first hand here at HPO. :) Just as I was arguing
the Tarski approach to truth here at HPO months before I had ever heard
(through Popper) of Tarski.
You know, at some point I should really thank Stephen Speicher for
raising Plan Speicher here at HPO during the Spring of 2000. Except
that he isn't worth it.
> Of course, you might also discuss
> context, while avoiding using "certainty". Critical rationalism is only a
> methodology -- you can build on its base using Objectivist insights or any
> other insights.
I fully agree, as I have been discovering over the six to nine months or
so. Of course, I better add here that "critical rationalism" is merely
a name for the approach and should not be confused with "rationalism" of
the type that has a very bad name around here. There is nothing
"rationalistic" (in the latter sense of the word ) about critical
rationalism as far as I can tell. Whereas the quest for "contextual
certainty" can very easily lead to a type of rationalism in which
conclusions are sheltered from reality through selective manipulation of
the "relevant context."
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c5d7041f...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <u5nr8bk...@corp.supernews.com>, Fred Weiss writes...
> ...
> > ...that somehow by continually discovering false things truth emerges by
> > some inexplicable process.
>
> "Things" is ambiguous, Fred. We discover that a theory is false by
> discovering that it is true that it makes false predictions.
Even on your terms, that means we can discover what's true - and you do it
by identifying new facts (which you also do in a given context of
knowledge). Whether those new facts *contradict* what we previously believed
to be the case is what we are debating.
On your view, Newton didn't discover anything (even tho' you acknowledged he
did). How could one discover a false theory? You might say he concocted it,
made it up, imagined it - but you couldn't say he discovered it. But in fact
all that's happened is that post-Newton, we've discovered some things he
didn't consider. So what's the status of our current view? Is it true - or
unbeknownst to us it is "really" false because of some future (true?)
discovery which will contradict it?
I hope you realize - as I have tried to point out to Ken - that you are in a
endless cycle of false theories leading to more false theories and you have
no way of *ever* knowing if *anything* you believe is true. That, however,
is self-refuting - even on your own terms (a "stolen concept" in Objectivist
terms.).
Plus, look at the reality - which as a purported "realist" you are not
doing. It is obvious that we can identify what's true. How else do you
explain how we got from oxcarts to spaceships? How else could you - even on
your terms - identify Newton's Theory as "false"? Consider the level of
knowledge required to do that! But you are denying that knowledge in the
very process of using it. Suddenly we know what's true while claiming that
everything that led up to is false - the same thing to be repeated ad
infinitum into the future.
This makes hash out of human knowledge.
> > That our knowledge is always limited, but that we don't know everything
> > doesn't diminish what we do know.
>
> I agree with that, of course.
I don't think you do.
> The epicycles were there precisely /because/ of retrograde motion.
> /Ultimately/, they were a failure at explanation,...
A failure to explain a *known* phenomenon.
>... but, then, so was the
> idea of gravity as an instantaneous force obeying an inverse-square law.
But that does in fact explain a large amount of planetary motion, plus much
else - and most especially everything known to Newton. It therefore
constitutes, as even you have acknowledged, an important discovery.
Perhaps it is even the case that Ptolemy made some true identifications,
putting aside his fallacious basic assumption. (Is that the case, Bob?).
Newton's "error" - and it's still debatable in my mind whether he ever made
any such claim - was that he thought his laws applied to *all* planetary
motion. He had no way of knowing that and had no basis for such a claim.
>... Fred, I am trying to cure my ignorance of Objectivism, if any. I have
> presented an argument that you cannot be a realist and hold to the idea
> that a theory can be "true in its context".
Nothing can be true except in a context, i.e. unless you specify the
context. So, there is no sense whatever in the true *not* being in a context
(with the exception of axioms which pertain to truth as such).
That is why, as I've been discussing with Ken, I reject the validity of
"universal" claims as he regards them, namely, as applying to anything and
everthing, now or in the future, known or unknown, and under any and all
conditions. Such claims are arbitrary and of course therefore unprovable. It
is also inevitable of course that they will be "falsified" - assuming
(unjustifiably in my view) you even wanted to grant them the status of
true/false to begin with. They are absurd on their face.
In terms of our specific debate, the question is whether our wider context
contradicts Newton's narrower one. I say it doesn't - and can't (if you want
to explain how human knowledge progresses). In fact our current one rests on
Newton's narrower one and without it, it would not be possible. I'm pretty
sure Bob will agree with me about that and - at least at times - has said so
explicitly. (However, at this level of abstraction, this is a philosophic,
not physics, issue.)
Fred Weiss
harkyl
fb8d9b1...@mail.nji.com>...
> In article <a678be79.0201...@posting.google.com>, harkyl
> writes...
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.1685f07d7a
> ...
> > > Newton's theory says that gravity is a force that obeys an inverse-sq
> > > uare
> > > law. But gravity is not such a force. As a result, Newton's theory was
> > > not true "in its context" or any other way. I set this argument out in
> > > some detail, and you are ignoring it.
> > > ...
> >
> > Was it true in its context? Theories cannot be logically derived from
> > observations. They can however clash with observation.
>
> I am not disagreeing with this, I am defending it. I am not even
> disagreeing /here/ with "all truth is contextual", which seems to be your
> main concern. Please look closely at what I actually wrote: "As a
> result, Newton's theory was not true 'in its context' or any other way."
>
i dont understand you here. You are saying that you are NOT
disagreeing here with 'all truth is contextual'. So does this mean
you do in fact understand how a theory x is true in context y. But
you still insist Newton's theory was not true in its context or any
other way? I will provide you with another example.
> I have been trying to explore what, exactly, Objectivists mean when they
> say "theory X is true in context Y". I have argued that Newton's (and
> Ptolemy's) theories were not true in /any/ context. I use these two
> theories because the logical situation regarding them is the same, yet it
> is obvious even to Objectivist supporters of "true in context" that
> Ptolemy's theory is false.
>
Try this for---'theory x is true in context y'. If we wish to
provide an accurate interpretation of Newton, we should not translate
his system of equations (theory) into a 4-D spacetime context.
> > Was Newton's theory proven false? No, all
> > observations coincided with his abstract theory.
>
> This is simply false. Observations of the orbit of Mercury do not
> coincide with the theory.
>
> > It was true in its
> > context or at least the best approximation to the truth.
>
> What sort of "or" is that? Do you mean that "the best approximation to
> the truth" is what "true in its context" means? (That seems like a
> strange way to use words, but I'm not going to argue over meanings with
> you - you can have whatever meanings you fancy.) Or that these are two
> different things, at least one of which was true of Newton's theory? If
> that latter, then I am only concerned with the "true in its context" part
> of the disjunction. I don't doubt that Newton's theory makes useful
> approximations. So does Ptolemy's theory, but that does not mean that
> the planets revolve around the Earth.
> ...
I will restate this. It was the best approximation to the truth at
the time. It is the nature of research that groups of scientists are
working on the same problems without being aware of other camps also
working on the same problem. And the one rendering the best judgement
of a problem's solution is approximately closer to the truth. Thus
there were other theorists working on the same problems as Newton, but
he arrived at the best solution first. This should be obvious, but I
clarified anyway. Finally, I will add--that his solution was the
closest to the truth within a historical context of all available
facts that scientists were aware of at the time, To accept this, one
must accept the notion that there is a larger body of knowledge (facts
and propositions) available to us now than in Newton's era.
context 1- theory x in body of knowledge y
context 2- theory x in body of knowledge (y+n)
> > > I don't need any "seeming infinitude of potential facts". Is gravity a
> > > force that obeys an inverse-square law?
> >
> > You do need infinitude of potential facts if you are talking about
> > 'ultimate truth'.
>
> I have never mentioned "ultimate truth". I have mentioned "What does it
> mean to say a theory is true in some context". Please try to reply to
> what I am asking, or, at least, indicate that you are using my posts as a
> starting point for a new discussion of your own. This would greatly
> reduce confusion.
>
Agreed. You have never mentioned this. I was only entertaining the
idea, which I extrapolated from you argument to be your belief.
> > You don't if you are talking about contextual
> > truth. Gravity is indeed a force that obeys an inverse square law for
> > systems of ordinary dimensions.
>
> This is false. If it were true, the orbit of Mercury would be different
> from what it is. Or are you simply saying that we do not live in a
> universe of "ordinary dimensions"? Of what possible relevance is that?
> Newton's theory is meant to be about the real world, right? The world
> with the dimensions - "ordinary" or not - that actually exist.
> ...
I suspect this is due to spacetime curvature. When scientists speak
of the 'curvature of space', they mean roughly this. We can say that
at a certain point in space, a body will deviate from a straight line,
because a force is acting on it. Or we can say the body continued in
a straight line, but that space itself is curved. Final
point--Measurements in curved space using general theory of relativity
typically will differ than in Newtons independent space and time.
Thus Newtons theory works perfectly well within a specified context.
This final conclusion is not a argument for the utility (works well in
3-D). It is an explanation for how Newtons theory (x) is true in
context (Y).
Kyle
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> On your view, Newton didn't discover anything (even tho' you acknowledged he
> did). How could one discover a false theory? You might say he concocted it,
> made it up, imagined it - but you couldn't say he discovered it.
All theories and models are contrivances. Einstein made this point
several time. He said that theories were free creations of the human
mind. The facts that theories address do not determine the theories
uniquely. Theories have to be constructed because of a * construal * of
fact.
Go back to theories of heat. The first cut at a theory of heat was that
heat was a * substance *, a fluid. A hot body was something with a lot
of the stuff and a colder body was something with less of the stuff and
heat (a fluidic substance) flowed from hotter bodies to colder bodies.
This is not an a priori absurd view of heat. As you stand in front of a
stove or fire place you can feel the heat coming out of the heat source
(the fact that we use terms such as source and sink is a holdoever from
the days of Caloric Fluid theory). You get the impression that heat
flows. It is not immediately clear that heat is the result of motion of
small bodies. This is a more abstract view (but a better one) and it
took longer to develop, addressing the same set of facts.
>
> I hope you realize - as I have tried to point out to Ken - that you are in a
> endless cycle of false theories leading to more false theories and you have
> no way of *ever* knowing if *anything* you believe is true.
You can find out what is true by looking. The method of validating a
theory, which is really a hypothesis or guess, is to look at the facts.
If a theory is correct and it makes a prediction that under a set of
conditons such and such must be the case, this predicts something that
must be a fact, else the theory is defective.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c6606d9...@news.charter.net...
> Fred Weiss says...
>
> [...]
>
> > This is why I say that the way that you acquire acknowledge and what you
are
> > basing it on is inextricably linked to the "truth status" of the
(claimed)
> > knowledge - though they are not the same thing, since obviously process
and
> > result are not the same thing.
>
> Which has been my point all along: process and result are not the same
> thing. Whether a statement is true (result) is different from how we
> grasp or (where possible) prove that it is true (process).
It is different but inextricably linked. You can't achieve a result - such
as your "universal" claim - apart from any inherent process necessary to
achieve it. You are trying to get a logical result by leaping past the
premises necessary to achieve it. You can't get a silk purse from a pig's
ear.
> > >...When do you know you have "sufficient
> > > evidence?" The answer is that as a fallible, non-omniscient being,
you
> > > don't and never will.
>
> > Which is why you maintain that even with rigorous testing we can never
> > achieve truth, right?
>
> You are overstating what I said. I was talking only about statements in
> the form (without qualification) "all S is P" or "no S is P." These
> statements may very well be true, but any proof that they are true
> requires an infallibility or omniscience that we do not possess. The
> two other types of statements -- some S is P and some S is not P -- are
> certainly capable of being established as being true despite the fact
> that we are neither infallible nor omniscient.
>
> > Does a hockey coach never have sufficient evidence that a player is good
> > enough to be in the starting line-up? Does a hockey player never have
> > sufficient evidence that he can play the game competently? Do they have
to
> > have try-outs every day to determine whether everyone can still play?
Maybe
> > everyone forgot how to skate or put on skates or hold a hockey stick?
>
> Let's leave Don Watkin's hockey team out of this, okay? :) Seriously,
> of course we can have sufficient evidence. However, do we ever have
> sufficient evidence to prove that all swans are white,...
How about all hockey teams?
> > Not only that but the sun might not rise tomorrow and forget hockey,
we're
> > all in big trouble.
>
> Actually, if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow, it will be an even better
> day for hockey than normal. :)
Not for long.
> > > There is simply no way for such a being to prove
> > > an unqualified universal statement (either affirmative or negative)
from
> > > a finite number of observations.
>
> > So why make them? What need is there for "unqualified" universal
statements
> > which we both agree are completely unprovable and therefore arbitrary
and
> > groundless.
>
> Exactly. But what are the consequences?
To rationality???
>.... One obvious practical
> consequence is that should maintain an active, critical approach even to
> conclusions that you are strongly inclined to accept.
This is a non-sequitur, Ken. Wouldn't in fact it be the proponents of
"universality" in the sense you mean it who would be more prone to the
dogmatism you object to. They are the ones going around proclaiming that
their truths have no context, conditions, or exceptions. This is precisely
why you got into trouble with Sollars on military tribunals.
>... This is
> especially true of philosophical ideas, which tend to be expressed as
> universal affirmatives or universal negatives.
This begs the question as it pertains to Objectivism. Nothing in
Objectivism - with the exception of axioms - is approached in this manner.
Incidentally, you've experienced that a number of times - at least in the
past - when you've claimed certain moral principles to be "non-contextual"
and "dogmatically absolute" regardless of context.
>... Yet the critical
> approach to philosophical ideas is precisely what is missing from many
> here of the ARI persuasion (and several others as well). I'm not
> talking here merely about a critical approach to ideas with which you
> disagree, but also (especially) to ideas with which you agree.
This doesn't rise to the level of anything past just a gratuitous insult. It
is completely irrelevant to what we are discussing.
> > > You cannot prove that all swans are
> > > white merely from a finite number of observations of white swans and
the
> > > lack of any observations of non-white swans. The best you can do is
to
> > > theorize from these observations that all swans may be white (or are
> > > probably white, or are white "all or for the most part," or "based on
my
> > > current context of knowledge, all swans are white" -- take your pick).
>
> > How about the last, since after all isn't it human (vs. god's) knowledge
we
> > are talking about?
>
> There is nothing wrong with it as long as we know exactly what we are
> referring to. But it is also a bit too personal for my taste. It
> refers specifically to _your_ context of knowledge, instead of the
> current state of human knowledge as a whole.
I intended it to refer to the current state of human knowledge.
> > Does an otherwise competent but drunken player who can't even get his
skates
> > on refute the theory or if a player has some brain injury which affects
his
> > memory? Do we have to throw out everything we know because there are
> > exceptions, even explicable exceptions?
>
> Of course not. But you might have to qualify your theory in some
> respects. For example, the theory that player X is a great player may
> have to be qualified by such exceptions as "when healthy" or "when
> sober" or "when in good physical condition."
I take the view - which you've never agreed with - that such qualification
is *assumed* when people make - rational - universal statements. I think
that those who make the irrational universal statements need to do the
qualifying, i.e. alert everyone that they are making an unqualified
statement. The reason I say this is because true statements are in fact
always qualified, i.e. pertain to a specific context and only to a specific
context. Or, in other word, truth is contextual.
Btw, you implicitly agree with me. You've said that "universal" statements
are unprovable. Well, if something is unprovable, how could it possibly be
true?
Give me a single example of an unprovable but true (non-axiomatic)
statement.
> > Is it true or not that you start your car by putting the key in the
ignition
> > and turning it? Is that falsified because once in a while your battery
is
> > dead or you are out of gas?
>
> This is a better example. The correct answer (with a tip of my goalie
> mask to Aristotle) is that this statement is true all or for the most
> part. But is it true, because your car has successfully started for,
> say, 200 straight times, that it will always start right up in the
> future? I don't think so!
No, it is true because that's how cars work (under normal conditions) which
you can prove because they will always work (under those conditions).
Incidentally, I can't speak for everyone, but I think everyone does the
same, but I make that statement contextually. I have no idea how cars might
work on Alpha Centauri - or in the future here on earth - and you can assume
I am not making any claims about it one way or the other. Nor could I have
made this claim 200 years ago when no one would have had any idea whatever
what a car was, let alone an ignition.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c5d3444b...@mail.nji.com...
>...Adding epicycles did answer the
> question - until better measurements were made, revealing the need for
> more epicycles. Ultimately the system broke down. So why is it not the
> case that Ptolemy's theory was "true in its context"?
You just answered the question yourself. But in his case the answer is more
obvious. He never questioned his basic assumption: that the earth had to be
the center of the solar system. I don't believe Newton had any similarily
arbitrary assumptions.
> I don't think that Newton's theory would have been abandoned even if the
> problem with Mercury had been known from the start - the theory worked
> too well, otherwise.
The theory worked too well because it was true for all planetary motions -
except where strong forces were acting on smaller bodies (if I understand
that point). That is still true today. And will always be true. What was
needed was a theory to encompass both strong and weak forces,i.e. a more
fundamental theory.
>....A theory that works
> well is not going to be discarded even if it is false until a better one
> comes along, and, as we have seen, maybe not even then.
But it's not false. That's the whole point. That would be like saying you
have a medicine that cures 90% of the patients, but until it can cure them
all it's not true that it's curing the others. Or, if they discover that a
different formulation of the drug - or even an entirely different drug - can
cure 98% of the patients, that it was false all along that the earlier drug
was curing those patients.
So, of course you are not going to discard the earlier drug until a better
one comes along. It is true that it cures people. That something better
comes along doesn't change that fact, even though you would stop using the
earlier drug.
Fred Weiss
Ken Gardner
[...]
> > > >...When do you know you have "sufficient
> > > > evidence?" The answer is that as a fallible, non-omniscient being,
> > > > you don't and never will.
> > > Which is why you maintain that even with rigorous testing we can never
> > > achieve truth, right?
That's not what I said. I said that if you have an unqualified,
universal statement (either affirmative ["all S is P"] or negative ["no
S is P"]), then you can never prove that such a statement IS true. But
you CAN prove that such a statement MAY be true, or is PROBABLY true, or
is true "all or for the most part," or holds true within a certain
context of knowledge. To the extent that you can say any of these
things, you have "achieved" truth in the sense that I think you are
using this term. I have further said that if a statement expressed as a
particular rather than a universal ("some S is P" or "some S is not
P)," CAN be proven to be true or false. The observation that at least
one S is a P proves the first statement to be true; the observation that
at least one S is not a P proves the second statement to be true.
> > > Does a hockey coach never have sufficient evidence that a player is good
> > > enough to be in the starting line-up? Does a hockey player never have
> > > sufficient evidence that he can play the game competently? Do they have
> > > to have try-outs every day to determine whether everyone can still play?
> > > Maybe everyone forgot how to skate or put on skates or hold a hockey
> > > stick?
> > Let's leave Don Watkin's hockey team out of this, okay? :) Seriously,
> > of course we can have sufficient evidence. However, do we ever have
> > sufficient evidence to prove that all swans are white,...
> How about all hockey teams?
How about what? What claim do you want to make about all hockey teams?
[...]
> > > So why make them? What need is there for "unqualified" universal
> > > statements which we both agree are completely unprovable and therefor
> > > e arbitrary
> > > and groundless.
> > Exactly. But what are the consequences?
> To rationality???
I had in mind something else. As far as I can tell, your conclusion is
that we should never make conjectures in the form of an unqualified
affirmative or an unqualified negative because such conjectures would be
"arbitrary." But if scientists followed your advice, scientific
progress would come to a grinding halt. And the same thing would happen
in other fields of knowledge as well. Imagine, for example, how few
arrests of real criminals we would make if detectives refused to
speculate on possible suspects early in their investigations. Or, if
you prefer a fictional example, what would have happened in Atlas
Shrugged if Rearden had refused to follow through on his flash of
insight to the effect that he could make a bridge of Rearden Metal by
combining a truss with an arch. [Note: I'm going by memory here, but I
can certainly find the relevant pages.] More generally, the discovery
of Rearden Metal consisted of ten years of mostly false conjectures
followed by experiments and testing that proved them to be false.
Without the initial false conjectures and failed tests, Rearden Metal
never would have been discovered.
Real progress is made when we make such conjectures -- and then
rigorously test them to see if they hold up to the actual facts of
reality. That's why it really doesn't matter how someone comes up with
a theory in the first place. What matters is whether the theory is
true, or comes closer to the truth than a competing theory -- and this
determination is made through rigorous testing of the theory, not by
examining the subjective mental processes of the person who came up the
theory in the first place.
> >.... One obvious practical
> > consequence is that should maintain an active, critical approach even to
> > conclusions that you are strongly inclined to accept.
> This is a non-sequitur, Ken. Wouldn't in fact it be the proponents of
> "universality" in the sense you mean it who would be more prone to the
> dogmatism you object to. They are the ones going around proclaiming that
> their truths have no context, conditions, or exceptions. This is precisely
> why you got into trouble with Sollars on military tribunals.
This type of dogmatism is always a problem, even with people who
describe themselves as Objectivists. But it becomes a problem because
dogmatists treat such statements as being true -- the very thing against
which I am arguing -- and, as a result, then close their eyes to
evidence or suggestions of possible counter-examples that, if proven,
would refute their conclusions.
> >... This is
> > especially true of philosophical ideas, which tend to be expressed as
> > universal affirmatives or universal negatives.
> This begs the question as it pertains to Objectivism. Nothing in
> Objectivism - with the exception of axioms - is approached in this manner.
I would agree that nothing in Objectivism (or any other philosophy)
SHOULD be approached in this manner. But six years of almost daily
experience in places like HPO has convinced me that many people do
approach Objectivism (and philosophy in general) in precisely this
manner.
> Incidentally, you've experienced that a number of times - at least in the
> past - when you've claimed certain moral principles to be "non-contextual"
> and "dogmatically absolute" regardless of context.
I have certainly contended that according to Objectivism, the principle
that retaliatory force is proper only against those who initiate force
is universal in application, although it has a special application in
wartime because of the problem of unavoidable collateral damages to
civilians and property. It would certainly be dogmatism on my part if I
refused to consider possible counter-examples that, if accepted as true,
would refute this principle. On the other hand, the counter-examples
themselves are subject to criticism, discussion and debate. It would not
be dogmatism to reject such proposed counter-examples that do not stand
up to these tests, as long as I continue to remain open and receptive to
consideration of additional possible counter-examples.
> >... Yet the critical
> > approach to philosophical ideas is precisely what is missing from many
> > here of the ARI persuasion (and several others as well). I'm not
> > talking here merely about a critical approach to ideas with which you
> > disagree, but also (especially) to ideas with which you agree.
> This doesn't rise to the level of anything past just a gratuitous insult. It
> is completely irrelevant to what we are discussing.
Fred, this is a perfect example of what I just said! I'm not insulting
anyone here with this statement, although I certainly am being critical
of them. Not every criticism is an insult.
But your "shooting the messenger" response is not the only evidence of
the problem to which I am referring. An even clearer example is the
"loyalty oaths" that one must accept in order to participate in groups
such as HBL and OSG. Private censorship is certainly legal, but like
its public counterpart it is nevertheless destructive of vigorous and
productive intellectual discussion and debate, and -- ultimately --
leads to intellectual stagnation and even mindlessness.
Note also the relative dearth of books by prominent ARI intellectuals.
Peikoff, the self-described "intellectual heir" of Objectivism, has
written all of two books and a handful of essays in the last 30 years.
Binswanger has written only one book as far as I know. The vast
majority of the rest are merely op-ed pieces or short essays that
certainly do not qualify as major philosophical writings and, as such,
are not worthy of serious discussion or debate among philosophers and
other serious intellectuals.
I suspect that one major reason for this dearth is that these people
fear criticism and don't like being vigorously challenged. If that's
the case, then they are worse than hopeless -- if their goal is to
promote Objectivism.
[...]
> I take the view - which you've never agreed with - that such qualification
> is *assumed* when people make - rational - universal statements.
I certainly don't think you can make this assumption when discussing
philosophy at a place like HPO, where precision in language is more
important than it would be in ordinary life. And yes, I don't think
this assumption holds up even in ordinary life, although I'm open to
evidence to the contrary.
> I think
> that those who make the irrational universal statements need to do the
> qualifying, i.e. alert everyone that they are making an unqualified
> statement. The reason I say this is because true statements are in fact
> always qualified, i.e. pertain to a specific context and only to a specific
> context. Or, in other word, truth is contextual.
Not truth, but knowledge.
> Btw, you implicitly agree with me. You've said that "universal" statements
> are unprovable. Well, if something is unprovable, how could it possibly be
> true?
If the referents of the statement correspond to the facts, of course.
Either they do or they don't, and the metaphysical question of whether
they do or don't is different from the epistemological question of
whether we know it or even whether we have any way of knowing it.
> Give me a single example of an unprovable but true (non-axiomatic)
> statement.
Take the pair of statements "there is at least one spider on Pluto" and
"there are no spiders on Pluto." Currently we have no way of knowing
one way or the other and, therefore, no way to prove that either
statement is true. However, because these two statements are
contradictories and have referents in reality, one of them is
necessarily true and the other is necessarily false. The first
statement is true if, and only if, there is, in fact, at least one
spider on Pluto. Otherwise, the second statement is true. Whichever
statement is true, we cannot prove that it is true.
> > This is a better example. The correct answer (with a tip of my goalie
> > mask to Aristotle) is that this statement is true all or for the most
> > part. But is it true, because your car has successfully started for,
> > say, 200 straight times, that it will always start right up in the
> > future? I don't think so!
> No, it is true because that's how cars work (under normal conditions) which
> you can prove because they will always work (under those conditions).
You said nothing about normal conditions. But look what you are doing
here. You are essentially saying that a car will always start up under
normal conditions because you define "normal conditions" always to
include the condition in which a car starts up. Well, duh! :) But the
question then becomes what you can do with this (tautological)
information, which I suggest is little or nothing. Real knowledge --
the kind with which you can build bridges, cure diseases, design a
proper political system, apprehend criminals, achieve your personal
goals, discover scientific theories, and the like -- begins with making
non-tautological conjectures about what you currently do not know and
then testing them to see if they hold up. Whether your conjectures are
later refuted or not, you always learn something new and the process is
always self-repeating.
Again, think of the fictional Rearden Metal example, in which ten years
of mostly failed tests and experiments ultimately led to the discovery
of how to make it successfully. Or the blood type example, in which an
initial conjecture that proved to be false ("all A blood types are
compatible) eventually led to the discovery of a better and more
promising conjecture ("all A blood types are compatible if their RH
factors are matched") that for all I know has stood up to subsequent
tests to date.
[...]
Ken
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
..
>
> The theory worked too well because it was true for all planetary motions -
> except where strong forces were acting on smaller bodies (if I understand
> that point). That is still true today. And will always be true. What was
> needed was a theory to encompass both strong and weak forces,i.e. a more
> fundamental theory.
It turns out that GTR used in a weak gravitational field will become the
Newtonian model (almost) as the grav field becomes weaker. Which is what
you would expect, since Newton's theory works very well where space-time
is flat (well away from massive bodies).
>
> >....A theory that works
> > well is not going to be discarded even if it is false until a better one
> > comes along, and, as we have seen, maybe not even then.
Newtonian (actually LaPlacian) celestial mechanics is still used for
guiding space craft in the solar system. As it is, the anomally in
mercury's motion is so small that it would take its perihelion about
21,000 years to precess 360 degrees. That of 43'' of arc per * century
*. For practical navigation, Newton's theory is as good as it ever was.
Bob Kolker
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Even on your terms, that means we can discover what's true - and you do it
> by identifying new facts (which you also do in a given context of
> knowledge). Whether those new facts *contradict* what we previously believed
> to be the case is what we are debating.
This is still too ambiguous, Fred. The are two different kinds of
problems with "context" here, and I may have added to the confusion by
moving from one to the other too quickly at times. This takes a little
set up, so please bear with me. First, the first problem.
There are statements like "The litmus paper turned blue", "There was a
bright point of light in /that/ position in the sky, at /this/ time",
etc. I assume that observations like this can be correctly made. Now it
might be the case that a mistake was made, and what was previously
believed - about the light in the sky, say - was incorrect. The
coordinates were measured improperly, the clock was slow, etc. We
understand that; we know that sometimes errors are made. That does not
mean that we cannot make correct observations. OTOH, a theory does not
report a single observation; a theory makes a large number of statements
about the position and time that the light would be seen. If we look
in the sky at one of those times and the bright light is not where it
supposed to be, then the /theory/ is false. I don't know what else to
say about a theory that makes a false statement, except to say that the
theory is wrong, incorrect, false, etc. Of course, that the /theory/ is
false does not mean that we do not know if various observations were
correctly made.
Now, your approach, if I understand it, is to "protect" the theory by
limiting it from making any universal statements. For example, a theory
should not predict the positions and times for /all/ the planets, but
only those planets we have already looked at. The planets we have
already looked at form some sort of "context" that goes with the theory.
Additionally, if we learn how to measure the positions more accurately,
we should not say that a theory is false if our new measurements of one
of the planets we already knew about no longer match with the theory.
The "context" of the theory was the old measurement capability.
Now, I think that this approach simply fails to grasp what theorizing is
all about. I just don't see the point of it. Further, we don't really
know where the theory is going to fail until we discover a failure, so we
really don't know how to describe the context of the theory. The
"context" is just a catchall for "where the theory works". But, let's
suppose that I am wrong. I'm wrong that theories should contain
universal statements, and, somehow, I am wrong about the inability to
describe a context; it's really all been worked out by Peikoff and maybe
someday I'll wake up and see the light. We still have the second
problem.
Let's take the Earth, the Moon, and their motions. Presumably this was
all in the context of Newton's theory, right? He knew that there was an
Earth, a Moon, that the Moon moved around the Earth, etc. Now, let's add
the notion of realism. By "realism" here I mean more than simply that
there is a real world apart from our impressions of it. I mean that our
scientific theories should try to describe things - entities and
relationships - that actually exist. For example, if a theory says that
there are "protons" and "electrons" - little, electrically charged
particles that we can't see - in order to explain things that we
do observe, then, for a realist, if that theory is /true/, then there
really must /be/ such particles. It's not enough - for realism - that
the theory makes very good predictions by assuming the existence of these
little things. A realist - as opposed to an instrumentalist or
pragmatist - would consider the theory as making a statement about the
/existence/ of these particles, and he would regard the theory as false
if it turned out that they were no such little particles. My assumption
has been that Objectivists are realists in the sense I give here.
Now, using a realist interpretation of Newton's theory, it says that in
the context of the Earth/Moon system, there /exists/ a certain force with
certain characteristics: this force, gravity, is instantaneous and
follows a certain inverse-square law. However, based on other things
that we have observed since Newton's time, we know that no such force
exists. Thus, even /within/ the context, Newton's theory is wrong. It
says that there is something, and there isn't.
Here, then, is my challenge for Objectivists: how do you keep realism
/and/ say that "Newton's theory was true in its context?"
> On your view, Newton didn't discover anything (even tho' you acknowledged he
> did). How could one discover a false theory? You might say he concocted it,
> made it up, imagined it - but you couldn't say he discovered it.
I believe I said that he discovered that he could explain the motions of
the planets very well by assuming the existence of a certain force. But
I am just as happy to say that he "concocted" or "imagined" his theory.
> But in fact
> all that's happened is that post-Newton, we've discovered some things he
> didn't consider. So what's the status of our current view? Is it true - or
> unbeknownst to us it is "really" false because of some future (true?)
> discovery which will contradict it?
Theories are always guesses. If and when we discover a false prediction,
they are then false guesses.
> I hope you realize - as I have tried to point out to Ken - that you are in a
> endless cycle of false theories leading to more false theories and you have
> no way of *ever* knowing if *anything* you believe is true.
I do not have any /justification/ for thinking that a theory is true -
but it /could/ be true - at least until I find evidence that it is not.
But I believe that the litmus paper turned blue or the bright light
appeared /here, then/, if I see it. Here is the problem for
"justificationists": justified belief that is false is worthless, yet
unjustified belief that is true is good as gold.
> That, however,
> is self-refuting - even on your own terms (a "stolen concept" in Objectivist
> terms.).
It might be "self-refuting" if in order to be true a statement also had
to be justified. Fortunately, it only has to be true to be true.
...
> Nothing can be true except in a context, i.e. unless you specify the
> context. So, there is no sense whatever in the true *not* being in a context
> (with the exception of axioms which pertain to truth as such).
If this were true, it might well undercut my "first problem" above. It
would still not make Newton's theory "true in its context", as my "second
problem" shows (assuming realism). Let's deal with the second case
first, OK?
> That is why, as I've been discussing with Ken, I reject the validity of
> "universal" claims as he regards them, namely, as applying to anything and
> everthing, now or in the future, known or unknown, and under any and all
> conditions. Such claims are arbitrary and of course therefore unprovable.
I don't think that you can do science without making universal claims -
that's part of my "first problem" - but let's do as I suggested and focus
on the second issue for now.
...
> In terms of our specific debate, the question is whether our wider context
> contradicts Newton's narrower one. I say it doesn't - and can't
I have provided an argument that is does, at least for realists. Let's
see your reply.
> In fact our current one rests on
> Newton's narrower one and without it, it would not be possible. I'm pretty
> sure Bob will agree with me about that and - at least at times - has said so
> explicitly. (However, at this level of abstraction, this is a philosophic,
> not physics, issue.)
I agree it is a philosophic issue - a contest between realism and the
idea that "theory X is true in context Y". I am no expert in physics,
and I hope that if I make any mistakes there, Bob, or David Friedman -
or, for that matter, Stephen Speicher - will correct me.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> > question - until better measurements were made, revealing the need for
> > more epicycles. Ultimately the system broke down. So why is it not the
> > case that Ptolemy's theory was "true in its context"?
>
> You just answered the question yourself.
No, because Newton's theory /also/ broke down eventually as well. We now
see where it fails to predict properly, just as we do with Ptolemy.
> But in his case the answer is more
> obvious. He never questioned his basic assumption: that the earth had to be
> the center of the solar system.
As Bob pointed out, Ptolemy had no more reason to question that
assumption - since it led to other serious problems he could not solve -
than Newton did to question the assumption that his theory would break
down at high velocities or near the Sun. Why are you so hard on poor
Ptolemy and so easy on Newton?
> I don't believe Newton had any similarily
> arbitrary assumptions.
Let me guess. You will define "arbitrary" so that what Ptolemy did was
arbitrary, but what Newton did was not.
...
> >....A theory that works
> > well is not going to be discarded even if it is false until a better one
> > comes along, and, as we have seen, maybe not even then.
>
> But it's not false. That's the whole point. That would be like saying you
> have a medicine that cures 90% of the patients, but until it can cure them
> all it's not true that it's curing the others.
No, it's not like that. As a realist, you would say that there is
something in the medicine that is 90% effective, and you would look for
it. Or, if you knew the effective ingredient, you would look for real
things about the 10% that explained why it did not work for them.
When we looked for something like the gravity in Newton's theory, we did
not find it.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c779fa10...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <u5r01v7...@corp.supernews.com>, Fred Weiss writes...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> > >...Adding epicycles did answer the
> > > question - until better measurements were made, revealing the need for
> > > more epicycles. Ultimately the system broke down. So why is it not
the
> > > case that Ptolemy's theory was "true in its context"?
> >
> > You just answered the question yourself.
>
> No, because Newton's theory /also/ broke down eventually as well.
When facts of which he was both unaware of - and unable to know - in his
time came to light.
We now
> see where it fails to predict properly, just as we do with Ptolemy.
Are you saying that Ptolemy couldn't have seen it himself? That by
continually adding these epicycles, it still breaks down.
> > But in his case the answer is more
> > obvious. He never questioned his basic assumption: that the earth had to
be
> > the center of the solar system.
>
> As Bob pointed out, Ptolemy had no more reason to question that
> assumption - since it led to other serious problems he could not solve -
...
What do you mean he had no reason to question it? You've cited the reason he
had to question it.
>...than Newton did to question the assumption that his theory would break
> down at high velocities or near the Sun. Why are you so hard on poor
> Ptolemy and so easy on Newton?
Because Newton had no way of knowing what would happen at high velocities
near the sun. It's also irrelevant because what he said with regard to the
other planets was true. In fact, Bob is telling us his theory is still
applied to spaceflight.
> > I don't believe Newton had any similarily
> > arbitrary assumptions.
>
> Let me guess. You will define "arbitrary" so that what Ptolemy did was
> arbitrary, but what Newton did was not.
Well, you guessed wrong as usual. The situations are entirely different,
even by your own account. Perhaps, it was understandable that Ptolemy
assumed that earth was the center of the solar system, but in actuality
there is no basis for that assumption.
> > >....A theory that works
> > > well is not going to be discarded even if it is false until a better
one
> > > comes along, and, as we have seen, maybe not even then.
> >
> > But it's not false. That's the whole point. That would be like saying
you
> > have a medicine that cures 90% of the patients, but until it can cure
them
> > all it's not true that it's curing the others.
>
> No, it's not like that. As a realist, you would say that there is
> something in the medicine that is 90% effective, and you would look for
> it. Or, if you knew the effective ingredient, you would look for real
> things about the 10% that explained why it did not work for them.
>
> When we looked for something like the gravity in Newton's theory, we did
> not find it.
Just that it coincedentally and by happenstance explained most planetary
motion, predicted the discovery of Uranus, and gets us to the moon and back
within inches and seconds of predictions?
Now consider the drug example and make it comparable to Newton. In
actuality, it is 100% effective on 90% of the patients (most of the
planets). You don't know why yet it doesn't work on the other 10% (for
example Mercury). It is then discovered that 10% of the population have a
particular chromosome, not previously known, which blocks the effectiveness
of the drug (strong forces working on small bodies). You discover a new
class of drugs which works on 99% of the patients and more rapidly and with
fewer side effects via an entirely new mechanism of action (the newer
theories of gravity). However for many patients the older drug is perfectly
safe and effective and less expensive, so you continue to use it for some of
them (which is why Newton's Theory is still used).
So just as a better and more effective drug does not "falsify" the previous
drug, a better theory of gravity does not falsify Newton.
Fred Weiss
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> When facts of which he was both unaware of - and unable to know - in his
> time came to light.
So if Newton had lived longer, /then/ he would have known his theory was
false? But /we/ did live longer. So it was true for Newton, but false
for us? This is the sort of subjectivist nonsense you get when you focus
on the psychological state of the theorizer instead of the logical status
of the theory itself.
> We now
> > see where it fails to predict properly, just as we do with Ptolemy.
>
> Are you saying that Ptolemy couldn't have seen it himself? That by
> continually adding these epicycles, it still breaks down.
Suppose that Ptolemy died before more accurate measurements were taken,
so that he did not see it? Now Ptolemy's theory was true! So on you
view, a theory is true if the theorizer has the good fortune to die
before he can learn anymore about it.
Have we got a reductio yet? Or are you willing to admit that these
objections you have raised about what Newton or Ptolemy knew or didn't
know are beside the point?
...
> > As Bob pointed out, Ptolemy had no more reason to question that
> > assumption - since it led to other serious problems he could not solve -
> ...
>
> What do you mean he had no reason to question it? You've cited the reason he
> had to question it.
No, Fred. I said that epicycles were needed to deal with retrograde
motion. Ultimately it didn't work, but that it didn't work did not by
itself show that the Earth moved around the Sun. Do you have some notion
that you are smarter than Ptolemy because you think it is "obvious" that
the Earth moves?
> >...than Newton did to question the assumption that his theory would break
> > down at high velocities or near the Sun. Why are you so hard on poor
> > Ptolemy and so easy on Newton?
>
> Because Newton had no way of knowing what would happen at high velocities
> near the sun.
So it was "arbitrary" for him to assume what would happen there. He had
no way of knowing. Of course, he had never been out to the Moon, either,
so his assumptions about it were "arbitrary" as well.
> It's also irrelevant because what he said with regard to the
> other planets was true.
No, it's just more difficult to measure the discrepancies for the other
planets.
> In fact, Bob is telling us his theory is still
> applied to spaceflight.
And Ptolemy's theory can be used for navigation on the surface of the
Earth. A theory can be quite false and still quite useful.
...
> > Let me guess. You will define "arbitrary" so that what Ptolemy did was
> > arbitrary, but what Newton did was not.
>
> Well, you guessed wrong as usual. The situations are entirely different,
> even by your own account. Perhaps, it was understandable that Ptolemy
> assumed that earth was the center of the solar system, but in actuality
> there is no basis for that assumption.
What does it mean to say "no basis for the assumption"? Would the word
"arbitrary" do? But I really don't care what word you use. Why did
Newton have a basis for his assumptions and Ptolemy not?
...
> > When we looked for something like the gravity in Newton's theory, we did
> > not find it.
>
> Just that it coincedentally and by happenstance explained most planetary
> motion, predicted the discovery of Uranus,
Don't forget Neptune! It was a damn good theory.
> and gets us to the moon and back
> within inches and seconds of predictions?
The "within inches and seconds of predictions" shows that gravity is not
what Newton's theory said it was.
> Now consider the drug example and make it comparable to Newton. In
> actuality, it is 100% effective on 90% of the patients (most of the
> planets). You don't know why yet it doesn't work on the other 10% (for
> example Mercury).
Sorry, Fred, but this doesn't work. You need a theory for /why/ the drug
is effective in order to make the analogy. Newton's theory for /why/ the
planets move as they do was that there was a force with certain
properties. You need an analogue in your drug example, something
hypothesized that, if present, would explain why patients are cured. We
can already measure where the planets are and how many people are saved
by the drug without having any /theory/ at all. The point of the theory
is to explain why the planets are found where they are or why patients
get cured. If your theory says the drug is effective in 90% of the cases
/because/ of "factor X", and then no factor X is found, your theory is
not compatible with realism, even if giving the drug does cure 90%.
...
> So just as a better and more effective drug does not "falsify" the previous
> drug, a better theory of gravity does not falsify Newton.
It falsifies Newton if you believe that gravity cannot be two things at
once, something that behaves as Newton says /and/ as Einstein says. I
think that Objectivists call this the Law of Identity or some such.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c73ca9e...@news.charter.net...
>..... As far as I can tell, your conclusion is
> that we should never make conjectures in the form of an unqualified
> affirmative or an unqualified negative because such conjectures would be
> "arbitrary." But if scientists followed your advice, scientific
> progress would come to a grinding halt. And the same thing would happen
> in other fields of knowledge as well. Imagine, for example, how few
> arrests of real criminals we would make if detectives refused to
> speculate on possible suspects early in their investigations.
This is all nonsense. I never said any of this, nor is it implied in
anything I've said. Sollars has levelled the same accusation. Bob did at one
time (but thankfully doesn't anymore).
The fact that you are not justified in claiming that "all x" (where that is
taken to mean "universal" in your sense), does not preclude valid
conjectures or hypotheses, so long as they are based on something. "Perhaps
it is the case that" or "based on suggestive hints, maybe", etc. is not the
same thing as "all are", nor is the claim that "all are" necessary to make
valid conjectures or hypotheses.
>... Real progress is made when we make such conjectures -- and then
> rigorously test them to see if they hold up to the actual facts of
> reality.
Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
nothwithstanding.
>What matters is whether the theory is
> true, ....
Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
nothwithstanding.
>..or comes closer to the truth than a competing theory
How can something be closer to the truth, if truth is not possible?
May I quote you?
"I said that if you have an unqualified, universal statement (either
affirmative ["all S is P"] or negative ["no S is P"]), then you can never
prove that such a statement IS true"
So what can we achieve? May I quote you again?
"But you CAN prove that such a statement MAY be true, or is PROBABLY true,
or
is true "all or for the most part," "
Notice the dichotomy you have set up here. In order to know that something
is true, we have to be omniscient. Since we are not omniscient we can only
know that something "may be" true. Now notice the dilemma both you and
Sollars have gotten yourself into. Newton, one of the greatest geniuses of
all time, who made earthshaking discoveries which are at the foundation of
modern physics, couldn't even identify what is true. His theory, you both
have said, is false.
So, I'd like to know how any of us, if even he couldn't, can have any hope
of ever knowing what's true. Here's a guy who did everything you said he
should - he conjectured, he hypothesized, he was bold. All down the drain.
False.
Ah, but Einstein has The Truth, right?
> -- and this
> determination is made through rigorous testing of the theory,..
By we poor souls who can never get to the truth?
> I have certainly contended that according to Objectivism, the principle
> that retaliatory force is proper only against those who initiate force
> is universal in application, although it has a special application in
> wartime because of the problem of unavoidable collateral damages to
> civilians and property. It would certainly be dogmatism on my part if I
> refused to consider possible counter-examples that, if accepted as true,
> would refute this principle.
Refute the NIOF? But the whole point is they don't refute it, unless you
hold it as non-contextual absolute.
> On the other hand, the counter-examples
> themselves are subject to criticism, discussion and debate. It would not
> be dogmatism to reject such proposed counter-examples that do not stand
> up to these tests, as long as I continue to remain open and receptive to
> consideration of additional possible counter-examples.
Ken, you're duckin' and dodgin' here.
<snip Malenoid type distracting, irrelevant and gratuitous criticisms of
Objectivism... and returning to the discussion>
> > I think
> > that those who make the irrational universal statements need to do the
> > qualifying, i.e. alert everyone that they are making an unqualified
> > statement. The reason I say this is because true statements are in fact
> > always qualified, i.e. pertain to a specific context and only to a
specific
> > context. Or, in other word, truth is contextual.
>
> Not truth, but knowledge.
Truth and knowledge. Not facts (jk nothwithstanding).
>
> > Btw, you implicitly agree with me. You've said that "universal"
statements
> > are unprovable. Well, if something is unprovable, how could it possibly
be
> > true?
>
> If the referents of the statement correspond to the facts, of course.
> Either they do or they don't, and the metaphysical question of whether
> they do or don't is different from the epistemological question of
> whether we know it or even whether we have any way of knowing it.
Yes, but if you have no way of knowing which, you're in the same place. So
what difference does it make?
>
> > Give me a single example of an unprovable but true (non-axiomatic)
> > statement.
>
> Take the pair of statements "there is at least one spider on Pluto" and
> "there are no spiders on Pluto." Currently we have no way of knowing
> one way or the other and, therefore, no way to prove that either
> statement is true. However, because these two statements are
> contradictories and have referents in reality, one of them is
> necessarily true and the other is necessarily false. The first
> statement is true if, and only if, there is, in fact, at least one
> spider on Pluto. Otherwise, the second statement is true. Whichever
> statement is true, we cannot prove that it is true.
Even if I granted (which you know I don't ) that it is true that: either it
is the case or it isn't that "there are spiders on Pluto" - you are merely
asserting one of an endless variant examples of applications of the LEM. You
are not saying anything at all about Pluto or whether *in fact* there are or
aren't spiders on the planet. In other words, you are providing a variant of
an axiom, which I have already acknowledged is non-contextual because it
applies to knowledge as such.
>
> > > This is a better example. The correct answer (with a tip of my goalie
> > > mask to Aristotle) is that this statement is true all or for the most
> > > part. But is it true, because your car has successfully started for,
> > > say, 200 straight times, that it will always start right up in the
> > > future? I don't think so!
>
> > No, it is true because that's how cars work (under normal conditions)
which
> > you can prove because they will always work (under those conditions).
>
> You said nothing about normal conditions. But look what you are doing
> here. You are essentially saying that a car will always start up under
> normal conditions because you define "normal conditions" always to
> include the condition in which a car starts up. Well, duh! :)
"Normal conditions" is a matter of fact, not definition. Any engineer or
auto mechanic could tell you what it is. The car being out of gas or the
battery being dead is not - in fact - a normal condition. If you couldn't
tell what the normal conditions were, you wouldn't have auto mechanics who
could fix the abnormalities.
I brought this up because when we say "a car starts when you turn the key in
the ignition", it does not mean "under any and all conditions", nor need it.
(That was also the point of my hockey examples).
Fred Weiss
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> This is all nonsense. I never said any of this, nor is it implied in
> anything I've said. Sollars has levelled the same accusation.
I have said that universals are needed in science, if that is what you
mean.
...
> The fact that you are not justified in claiming that "all x" (where that is
> taken to mean "universal" in your sense), does not preclude valid
> conjectures or hypotheses, so long as they are based on something. "Perhaps
> it is the case that" or "based on suggestive hints, maybe", etc. is not the
> same thing as "all are", nor is the claim that "all are" necessary to make
> valid conjectures or hypotheses.
This is thoroughly confused. "Perhaps it is the case that" /what/? The
only interesting answer is "Perhaps is it the case that all S is P". If
we already know that some S is P, then "Perhaps is it the case that some
S is P" can't add anything to what we already know.
All conjectures or hypotheses have "Perhaps it is the case that"
implicitly prepended to them. That is why they are called "conjectures"
or "hypotheses". You are correct that universal statements are not
necessary to make conjectures. I can conjecture that you are confused,
but that conjecture doesn't tell us much. A better conjecture is that
"all those who accept the 'context doctrine' are confused". If that were
true, it might tell us something about the doctrine itself.
> >... Real progress is made when we make such conjectures -- and then
> > rigorously test them to see if they hold up to the actual facts of
> > reality.
>
> Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
> nothwithstanding.
What is never achievable? That theories cannot be tested?
> >What matters is whether the theory is
> > true, ....
>
> Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
> nothwithstanding.
I'm not sure what Ken has said, but I have never said that a theory
cannot be true. We cannot know (in the sense of "justified belief") that
it is true, of course, only that it is false.
...
> Notice the dichotomy you have set up here. In order to know that something
> is true, we have to be omniscient.
Your alternative is that we can "know" theories are true "in a context",
even when they are false. I would prefer to live with the idea that I am
not omniscient than with the idea that I know false things that are true.
> Since we are not omniscient we can only
> know that something "may be" true.
We only know if a theory is false, yes. Those that are not false, may,
of course, be true.
> Now notice the dilemma both you and
> Sollars have gotten yourself into. Newton, one of the greatest geniuses of
> all time, who made earthshaking discoveries which are at the foundation of
> modern physics, couldn't even identify what is true.
This is more nonsense. For example, Newton identified it is true that
white light could be split into colored light by a prism.
> His theory, you both
> have said, is false.
Yes. It makes a number of predictions that are not true. You want to
say that a theory that does this is "true", if it also makes a number of
true predictions. Thus we have many different theories that disagree
with each other that are all true. This should bother a realist, one who
thinks that theories make claims about real things and are not just
calculating devices.
> So, I'd like to know how any of us, if even he couldn't, can have any hope
> of ever knowing what's true.
If you mean can we be justified in thinking that a theory is true, the
answer is no, we can't. But a theory could be true, unless we find a way
to see that it is false.
> Here's a guy who did everything you said he
> should - he conjectured, he hypothesized, he was bold. All down the drain.
> False.
It is false, but "down the drain"? No, it is still a very useful theory.
> Ah, but Einstein has The Truth, right?
Could be, unless GR has made a false prediction. We know that there is
trouble lurking somewhere, though, even without a falsification, since no
one has put GR and quantum mechanics together.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
[...]
> >... Real progress is made when we make such conjectures -- and then
> > rigorously test them to see if they hold up to the actual facts of
> > reality.
> Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
> nothwithstanding.
Such statements are invariably a waste of time.
> > What matters is whether the theory is
> > true, ....
> Which you claim is never achievable, your protestations to the contrary
> nothwithstanding.
I'll let my posts speak for themselves, thank you.
> May I quote you?
By all means...
> "I said that if you have an unqualified, universal statement (either
> affirmative ["all S is P"] or negative ["no S is P"]), then you can never
> prove that such a statement IS true"
And you said several times that you agreed with me on this point. Are
you beginning to change your mind?
> So what can we achieve? May I quote you again?
> "But you CAN prove that such a statement MAY be true, or is PROBABLY true,
> or is true "all or for the most part," "
> Notice the dichotomy you have set up here. In order to know that something
> is true, we have to be omniscient.
But I didn't say "something." I said "an unqualified, universal
statement." And, several times, I contrasted such statements with
particular statements (I statements and O statements on the square of
opposition) as well as properly qualified universal statements (see the
quote above). Have you forgotten about that?
> Since we are not omniscient we can only know that something "may be" true.
Stop right there. Do you agree or disagree with what I said? If you
disagree, please provide an example of an unqualified, universal
statement that you think is true, and explain how you know it without
also assuming an omniscience that you do not possess.
> So, I'd like to know how any of us, if even he couldn't, can have any hope
> of ever knowing what's true. Here's a guy who did everything you said he
> should - he conjectured, he hypothesized, he was bold. All down the drain.
> False.
His theory ultimately proved to be false, but it helped pave the way for
Einstein to discover an even better theory. And someday there may be a
future genius for whom Einstein plays the role of Newton. Just as the
false but useful initial conclusion that "all A blood types are
compatible" eventually gave way to the even more useful theory that "all
A blood types are compatible if their RH factors are matched."
> Ah, but Einstein has The Truth, right?
Wrong. Einstein has a theory that, to date, has stood up to rigorous
testing. This fact doesn't prove that Einstein's theory is true, any
more than the fact that Newton's theory stood up to rigorous testing for
several hundred years proved that his theory was true. It does suggest,
however, that Einstein's theory may be true, at least unless and until a
future genius refutes it and replaces it with an even better theory.
> > -- and this
> > determination is made through rigorous testing of the theory,..
> By we poor souls who can never get to the truth?
You mean omniscience, do you? There is simply no way to know whether a
theory such as Einstein's theory of relativity is true. Again, I
thought that you agreed with me on this point, but now you seem to be
backtracking. Which is fine, as long as you provide some defensible
explanation for why you are doing so.
[...]
> > > Btw, you implicitly agree with me. You've said that "universal"
> > > statements are unprovable. Well, if something is unprovable, how coul
> > > d it
> > > possibly be true?
> > If the referents of the statement correspond to the facts, of course.
> > Either they do or they don't, and the metaphysical question of whether
> > they do or don't is different from the epistemological question of
> > whether we know it or even whether we have any way of knowing it.
> Yes, but if you have no way of knowing which, you're in the same place. So
> what difference does it make?
First you asked how an unprovable statement could possibly be true. Now
you are asking what difference it makes whether an unprovable statement
can possibly be true. So I guess I persuaded you that an unprovable
statement could possibly be true.
In any event, the answer to your second question is that it reflects a
realist metaphysical view of the world -- an independent reality that
has primacy over consciousness and is the same for all of us.
Objectivism, as a philosophical system, is merely a species of realism.
> > Take the pair of statements "there is at least one spider on Pluto" and
> > "there are no spiders on Pluto." Currently we have no way of knowing
> > one way or the other and, therefore, no way to prove that either
> > statement is true. However, because these two statements are
> > contradictories and have referents in reality, one of them is
> > necessarily true and the other is necessarily false. The first
> > statement is true if, and only if, there is, in fact, at least one
> > spider on Pluto. Otherwise, the second statement is true. Whichever
> > statement is true, we cannot prove that it is true.
> Even if I granted (which you know I don't ) that it is true that: either it
> is the case or it isn't that "there are spiders on Pluto" -
Isn't it a fact either that there is at least one spider on Pluto or
that there are no spiders on Pluto? Can we at least agree on this much?
> ...you are merely
> asserting one of an endless variant examples of applications of the LEM. You
> are not saying anything at all about Pluto or whether *in fact* there are or
> aren't spiders on the planet. In other words, you are providing a variant of
> an axiom, which I have already acknowledged is non-contextual because it
> applies to knowledge as such.
I'm making two distinct statements: (1) there is at least one spider on
Pluto and (2) there are no spiders on Pluto. I know right now that one
of the statements is necessarily true and the other is necessarily
false, but I don't know and cannot prove which is which -- thus showing
that there is such a thing as a true statement that I cannot prove is
true. Which, of course, is what you originally asked me to do.
[...]
Ken
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c7a72b3f...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <u5rin49...@corp.supernews.com>, Fred Weiss writes...
> >
> > "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> ...
> > > No, because Newton's theory /also/ broke down eventually as well.
> >
> > When facts of which he was both unaware of - and unable to know - in his
> > time came to light.
>
> So if Newton had lived longer, /then/ he would have known his theory was
> false?
Gee, Gordon, if we all lived long enough we'd know everything there is to
know and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Furthermore, if lesser
lights like Newton were only as smart as you, they'd never "discover" false
theories.
But /we/ did live longer. So it was true for Newton, but false
> for us?
You're forgetting what I said. Pay attention this time. It is still true. It
has not become false. The difference is that now we know more, so we know
that there are facts it doesn't explain. Those facts do not contradict his
theory. They only would if it was assumed to begin with to explain all
planetary motion, anywhere and everywhere, and under all conditions, known
and unknown.
>This is the sort of subjectivist nonsense you get when you focus
> on the psychological state of the theorizer instead of the logical status
> of the theory itself.
This is the sort of context-dropping which renders you incapable of grasping
how knowledge is achieved. And I never said it had anything whatever to do
with his "psychological state". Newton wasn't omniscient - for which he now
stands accused in your all-knowing eyes.
>
> > We now
> > > see where it fails to predict properly, just as we do with Ptolemy.
> >
> > Are you saying that Ptolemy couldn't have seen it himself? That by
> > continually adding these epicycles, it still breaks down.
>
> Suppose that Ptolemy died before more accurate measurements were taken,
> so that he did not see it? Now Ptolemy's theory was true! So on you
> view, a theory is true if the theorizer has the good fortune to die
> before he can learn anymore about it.
Just think how fortunate you would be then, Gordon, if you were to die now
before this debate is concluded.
>
> Have we got a reductio yet?
Of the contradictions in your position?
>Or are you willing to admit that these
> objections you have raised about what Newton or Ptolemy knew or didn't
> know are beside the point?
According to you, they knew nothing. But if they knew nothing, on what is
your knowledge based and why is it superior to theirs? Or are you claiming
the omniscience, you are damning them for lacking?
>..... I said that epicycles were needed to deal with retrograde
> motion. Ultimately it didn't work, but that it didn't work did not by
> itself show that the Earth moved around the Sun.
That's like the socialists, despite the fact that virtually every variant of
it has been tried and failed , who continue to claim that it doesn't prove
that it can't. At some point perhaps you need to question the basic
assumption. Many honest ones have done so.
Do you have some notion
> that you are smarter than Ptolemy because you think it is "obvious" that
> the Earth moves?
On the contrary, I'm willing to give Ptolemy the benefit of the doubt since
someone had to begin the process of starting the field of scientific
astronomy. We owe him that gratitude whatever his errors. And he identified
some true things in fact and method in the process, even if his basic
assumption was incorrect.
Do you have some notion that we should all be smarter than we are and
predict facts which we are unable to know but which will falsify any theory
we can imagine?
It is on the shoulders of men, even like Ptolemy, who identify some truths
which lead to the discovery of other truths, though they lack the
omniscience you demand of them.
>
> > >...than Newton did to question the assumption that his theory would
break
> > > down at high velocities or near the Sun. Why are you so hard on poor
> > > Ptolemy and so easy on Newton?
> >
> > Because Newton had no way of knowing what would happen at high
velocities
> > near the sun.
>
> So it was "arbitrary" for him to assume what would happen there.
It would have been arbitrary for him to have assumed that he knew all the
facts in the universe and that his laws applied anywhere and everywhere and
under all conditions, including those unknown to him.
> And Ptolemy's theory can be used for navigation on the surface of the
> Earth. A theory can be quite false and still quite useful.
No, then that aspect of it is true, obviously. Ptolemy was after all an
astronomer, not an astrologer. If his basic assumption was incorrect, he was
still attempting to observe the actual facts and explain them.
> > > ....When we looked for something like the gravity in Newton's theory,
we did
> > > not find it.
> >
> > Just that it coincedentally and by happenstance explained most planetary
> > motion, predicted the discovery of Uranus,
>
> Don't forget Neptune! It was a damn good theory.
But just coincedentally and by happenstance, since you are claiming it was
false.
Have we got a reductio yet?
>
> > and gets us to the moon and back
> > within inches and seconds of predictions?
>
> The "within inches and seconds of predictions" shows that gravity is not
> what Newton's theory said it was.
I'm just going by what Bob has said.
But it doesn't really matter, because you are continuing to miss the point.
Whether his specific explanation was correct or not, what he did know is
that the planets moved in predictable patterns and he identified the laws
which govern them, to the extent of the facts available to him. And he was
correct with respect to those facts.
> > Now consider the drug example and make it comparable to Newton. In
> > actuality, it is 100% effective on 90% of the patients (most of the
> > planets). You don't know why yet it doesn't work on the other 10% (for
> > example Mercury).
>
> Sorry, Fred, but this doesn't work.
Yes, Gordon, not only does it work, it has to work. It obviously works
because human knowledge has progressed, both in physics and medicine. At
each step of that progress we know more, not less, and that would not be
possible if all proceeding theories upon which we build our current ones
were false, i.e that we had not learned anything true from them. Not to
mention, that on your view, we have no way of knowing if even our current
theories are true. And your sophistry doesn't change that fact. On your view
we know more...of nothing.
But I'd like to hear your alternate explanation for the progress of human
knowledge. How on your view did we get from oxcarts to spaceships with a
succession of false theories leading to more false theories leading up to
the present day where our current theories only may be true, but who knows,
although it is likely they will also be proven false, even as we proceed
based on those theories toward intergalatic space travel and doubling and
tripling human life expectancy on these theories which only may be true, but
are likely false.
Have we got a reductio yet?
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Ken Gardner" <kesga...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c7cc48a...@news.charter.net...
According to you:
> > Since we are not omniscient we can only know that something "may be"
true.
>
> Stop right there. Do you agree or disagree with what I said?
Ken, you are playing games now. Of course you know I disagree with that.
That in fact is the whole substance of our debate.
If you
> disagree, please provide an example of an unqualified, universal
> statement that you think is true, and explain how you know it without
> also assuming an omniscience that you do not possess.
You mean provide you with an example that allows you to beg and duck the
question
>
> > So, I'd like to know how any of us, if even he couldn't, can have any
hope
> > of ever knowing what's true. Here's a guy who did everything you said he
> > should - he conjectured, he hypothesized, he was bold. All down the
drain.
> > False.
>
> His theory ultimately proved to be false, but it helped pave the way for
> Einstein to discover an even better theory.
How could a false theory pave the way for anything? How can you use the idea
of "even better" applied to a view which you claim is false? It would not be
better. It would have to be starting from scratch. There have been actual
false theories in the history of science, theories based on arbitrary
nonsense or to promote political or racial agendas. How do you distinguish
between those and what Newton did?
How could a false theory have made the remarkable and important predictions
Newton's did or have provided an important foundation for modern physics?
Sollars apparently thinks Newton was just lucky.
And someday there may be a
> future genius for whom Einstein plays the role of Newton. Just as the
> false but useful...
How can a false theory be useful? A theory is an attempt to explain an
aspect of reality. If it doesn't explain it, if it is false, how can it be
useful?
>... initial conclusion that "all A blood types are
> compatible" eventually gave way to the even more useful theory that "all
> A blood types are compatible if their RH factors are matched."
You mean as we learned more which shouldn't - and doesn't - diminish what we
knew before, though it was (in the nature of things) less. (We've been over
this a million times).
> > Ah, but Einstein has The Truth, right?
>
> Wrong. Einstein has a theory that, to date, has stood up to rigorous
> testing.
So did Newton. Just change the dates.
> This fact doesn't prove that Einstein's theory is true,
Yes it does unless you accept unqualified universal statements as the
standard for truth. Do you? And if not, why did you start this thread
playing games about it? And if you don't, why are you saying that his theory
is still unproven?
>...any
> more than the fact that Newton's theory stood up to rigorous testing for
> several hundred years proved that his theory was true.
Same comment. But if I point out to you that if your view is that even
rigorous testing is not a prescription for truth, you go into a dither. Dare
I ask it again: if even rigorous testing is not a prescription for truth,
what is? And if you are not implicitly assuming unqualified universal
statements in that view, what are you assuming?
It does suggest,
> however, that Einstein's theory may be true, at least unless and until a
> future genius refutes it and replaces it with an even better theory.
Does or doesn't it explain more facts than Newton's did? That's all you have
to know. Why speculate about what may or may not happen in the future when
you have absolutely no idea what future discoveries may be made.
We do know that there are facts not explained by Einstein's theory. That
does not mean that Einstein's theory is false anymore than Newton's was.
That's simply absurd on its face as is your understanding of the "blood
types" example - unless and only unless you are on an "unqualified universal
statement" premise. Neither Einstein or Newton made any claim to having
explained every motion of every existent anywhere and everywhere in the
universe. In fact they claimed the opposite. They have accepted a
"contextual" view implicitly, if not explicitly, but you insist on forcing
them into a dogmatic view.
> > > -- and this
> > > determination is made through rigorous testing of the theory,..
>
> > By we poor souls who can never get to the truth?
>
> You mean omniscience, do you? There is simply no way to know whether a
> theory such as Einstein's theory of relativity is true.
But we already know it's true - with respect to a whole wide range of facts.
Just as we know that Newton's theory was true with respect to a narrower
range of facts. Some future theory presumably will explain an even wider
range of facts than Einstein's.
> Objectivism, as a philosophical system, is merely a species of realism.
Perhaps, but if it is, it differs from the traditional view in ways that
obviously you don't grasp.
> Isn't it a fact either that there is at least one spider on Pluto or
> that there are no spiders on Pluto? Can we at least agree on this much?
No. What exists on Pluto, to whatever extent we don't know it now, remains
to be discovered. You are engaging in an arbitrary exercise of the LEM which
is not it's purpose in a rational epistemology and in any event it is
irrelevant to what we are discussing and you are using it to the duck the
real issue.
So, I'll remind you what that issue is: your continual equivocation on what
constitutes truth. If I say "Newton's theory was true". You say, "no it
wasn't because facts since discovered have proven it false". So I say, "Oh,
what facts? Facts he knew about it or facts he didn't". And you say,
"Doesn't matter". And I say, "oh so he had to be omniscient and anticipate
facts he had no way of knowing". To which you reply, "he had part of the
truth, but now we're closer to the truth (Sollars is more radical and
vicious in this regard. He says Newton didn't have the truth at all. The
whole thing was false). And then I reply, "so which part was true, you mean,
the part he knew about?" At which point you usually launch into a
gratuitous diatribe against "contextual truth" and how it will eviscerate
science and how we need to speculate, and conjecture, and hypothesize and
how it will elevate certainty and destroy the pursuit of truth and that's
why Objectivists are dogmatists and want to nuke Tehran and call Milton
Friedman a red. And then we are back right to where we started as to what
you mean by truth and we do this whole number all over again.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c76615e7...@mail.nji.com...
> > On your view, Newton didn't discover anything (even tho' you
acknowledged he
> > did). How could one discover a false theory? You might say he concocted
it,
> > made it up, imagined it - but you couldn't say he discovered it.
>
> I believe I said that he discovered that he could explain the motions of
> the planets very well by assuming the existence of a certain force.
Which indeed he did. Something which apparently though you consider not very
important. But just consider the impact that had on the field of physics in
his day and in the period that followed. Contrast that if instead they were
still trying to hammer round epicycles into the square assumption that the
earth was the center of the solar system. But instead they discovered new
planets and much else.
> But
> I am just as happy to say that he "concocted" or "imagined" his theory.
Well, if it was false and truth is a recognition of reality, then that's
what he must have been doing. You might even say that he was deluded, right?
> Theories are always guesses. If and when we discover a false prediction,
> they are then false guesses.
No matter how many true, even important, predictions it makes? And even if
the false prediction pertains to a type of phenomenon not even previously
known to the theorist? You see, I would say that the latter is not a false
prediction.
> I do not have any /justification/ for thinking that a theory is true -
> but it /could/ be true - at least until I find evidence that it is not.
> > ...That, however,
> > is self-refuting - even on your own terms (a "stolen concept" in
Objectivist
> > terms.).
>
> It might be "self-refuting" if in order to be true a statement also had
> to be justified.
It does. Truth doesn't exist in a universe of its own independently of our
ability to grasp it. Facts do.
> Fortunately, it only has to be true to be true.
If someone grasps it.
.
> > Nothing can be true except in a context, i.e. unless you specify the
> > context. So, there is no sense whatever in the true *not* being in a
context
> > (with the exception of axioms which pertain to truth as such).
>
> If this were true, it might well undercut my "first problem" above.
Ok, so we've taken care of that one.
It
> would still not make Newton's theory "true in its context", as my "second
> problem" shows (assuming realism). Let's deal with the second case
> first, OK?
Sure, why not.
>
> > That is why, as I've been discussing with Ken, I reject the validity of
> > "universal" claims as he regards them, namely, as applying to anything
and
> > everthing, now or in the future, known or unknown, and under any and all
> > conditions. Such claims are arbitrary and of course therefore
unprovable.
>
> I don't think that you can do science without making universal claims -
Neither do I, so long as you at least implicitly specify "the universe", the
context and conditions, that you are making the claim about. In this
instance, the aspects of reality that you know about, since there is no way
that you can or should make claims about facts you don't know about. As in
the case of the infamous white swans, that you are making claims about the
ones on earth, not the ones which may or may not exist in some distant
galaxy and which, for all we know, may be able to quote Shakespeare. And
that the knowledge we acquire about swans on earth remains true, regardless
of how we may need to integrate the knowledge of the Shakespearean ones even
to the point of developing entirely new theories not just of swans but of
animal life, and perhaps life in general, upon this planet's discovery 1,000
years from now. I assume you would agree that we don't need to be wringing
our hands in concern about it until then.
Well, neither did Newton in his time with regard to his field of knowledge.
And we should be eternally grateful that he didn't have you as his
philosophic counsellor warning him that if any single fact of which he had
no knowledge turned up to not be explained by it that it would render his
entire theory false and he would be considered deluded, despite all the
brilliant discoveries and observations he had made in the process of
formulating it and all the important discoveries that were made as a result
of it.
Fred Weiss
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> >
> > Don't forget Neptune! It was a damn good theory.
>
> But just coincedentally and by happenstance, since you are claiming it was
> false.
>
> Have we got a reductio yet?
You are aware of the difference between a true conclusion
drawn within a defective theory and a defective (invalid) theory?
A conclusion is true by virtue of being in correspondence
with fact.
A theory is valid if and only if all of its conclusions
(qualified by conditions if necessary) are true, i.e.
in correspondence with fact. That is why invalid theories
can be used to produce true(therfore useful) conclusion.
The truth of an assertion does not go away just because
the theory in which it was drawn has produced (other) false
conclusions.
Newton's theory is wildly out of whack where bodies move
with speeds approaching the speed of light (in vacuo).
I am talking big time in accurate. Special relativity
has mechanical laws that approach Newtonian lows when
the speed of the bodies in an inertial frame approaches
0. Thus relativistic momentum becomes Newtonian momentum
when the speed is low.
In Newton's day, the only thing that went at or nearly
the speed of light was light itself, or particles
produced by cosmic rays (undetectable for Newton and
his contemporaries). There was no way Newton could know
how the mass of a body grew with speed.
Newtonian mechanics is unusable for material bodies
moving at very high speed. If Newtonian mechanics
were valid you could get particles with the same
energy as produced in the SLAC accelerator, with an
accelerator a foot long. SLAC is a couple of miles
long.
Bob Kolker
Don Watkins III
>A conclusion is true by virtue of being in correspondence
>with fact.
>A theory is valid if and only if all of its conclusions
>(qualified by conditions if necessary) are true, i.e.
>in correspondence with fact.
Well, by this standard, I think Fred is right about Newton. All of Newton's
conclusions are true, so long as the conditions are specified.
IOW, it holds for all bodies not moving at or near the speed of light.
Don Watkins
Gordon G. Sollars
> > for us?
>
> You're forgetting what I said. Pay attention this time. It is still true. It
> has not become false.
Then why is Mercury not where the theory says it should be?
> The difference is that now we know more, so we know
> that there are facts it doesn't explain. Those facts do not contradict his
> theory.
I think the following very straightforward way of speaking has a lot to
recommend it. If a theory predicts something that is false, the theory
is false. How about this: If you get to a false conclusion, you have a
bad premise somewhere. Does that make more sense to you?
> Newton wasn't omniscient - for which he now
> stands accused in your all-knowing eyes.
This is silly; I don't "accuse" Newton of anything. And I don't know
everything; I just know that Newton's theory made a false prediction.
...
> >Or are you willing to admit that these
> > objections you have raised about what Newton or Ptolemy knew or didn't
> > know are beside the point?
>
> According to you, they knew nothing.
I already gave an example of one thing that Newton knew; I think that he
and Ptolemy undoubtedly knew many things. Why not address what I
actually say, instead of what it would be convenient for your argument if
I had said?
> But if they knew nothing, on what is
> your knowledge based and why is it superior to theirs?
I know, as they did not, that certain predictions made by their theories
are false. OTOH, they could have known a great many things that I do
not. But what I know means that their theories are false.
> Or are you claiming
> the omniscience, you are damning them for lacking?
I hope it is obvious by now that I do not, and need not, make such a
claim.
...
> Do you have some notion that we should all be smarter than we are and
> predict facts which we are unable to know but which will falsify any theory
> we can imagine?
You're not making any sense. Making predictions about things that we do
not yet know is one of the points of having theories. We don't need to
predict what we already know.
...
> > So it was "arbitrary" for him to assume what would happen there.
>
> It would have been arbitrary for him to have assumed that he knew all the
> facts in the universe and that his laws applied anywhere and everywhere and
> under all conditions, including those unknown to him.
How were the conditions beyond the surface of the Earth known to him?
Why weren't any assumptions he made about them arbitrary?
> > And Ptolemy's theory can be used for navigation on the surface of the
> > Earth. A theory can be quite false and still quite useful.
>
> No, then that aspect of it is true, obviously.
What "aspect" is that? The theory says the planets revolve around the
Earth. I would have thought that that was enough even for you to see
that the theory is false.
...
> > Don't forget Neptune! It was a damn good theory.
>
> But just coincedentally and by happenstance, since you are claiming it was
> false.
I've already pointed out that a false theory can make true predictions.
A false theory is not one that can /only/ make false predictions.
...
> Whether his specific explanation was correct or not, what he did know is
> that the planets moved in predictable patterns and he identified the laws
> which govern them, to the extent of the facts available to him. And he was
> correct with respect to those facts.
His explanation assumed the existence of a force that behaved in a
certain way. There is no such force, based on what we observe. If you
are a realist, that should be enough.
> > Sorry, Fred, but this doesn't work.
>
> Yes, Gordon, not only does it work, it has to work. It obviously works
> because human knowledge has progressed, both in physics and medicine.
By "this", I meant your argument, Fred, not whether we have more
knowledge. You were arguing that because we observe certain things, like
that a drug has a cure rate of 90% or that planets are in certain places,
it means that a theory is true. This is a non sequitur. These things
are true irrespective of a particular theory. A theory offers an
/explanation/ for why the facts are observed, and that explanation can be
wrong without affecting the facts in any way. (That is why they are
called "facts".)
> At
> each step of that progress we know more, not less, and that would not be
> possible if all proceeding theories upon which we build our current ones
> were false, i.e that we had not learned anything true from them.
Why do you assume that we cannot learn from a false theory?
> Not to
> mention, that on your view, we have no way of knowing if even our current
> theories are true.
We can know if they are false. I think we should stick to what we can
know, and not go off longing for things we can't know.
...
> But I'd like to hear your alternate explanation for the progress of human
> knowledge. How on your view did we get from oxcarts to spaceships with a
> succession of false theories leading to more false theories leading up to
> the present day where our current theories only may be true, but who knows,
Because we can and do learn from false theories as well as true ones (if
we have any). We learned of Uranus and Neptune, for example.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Ken Gardner
> > > Since we are not omniscient we can only know that something "may be"
> > > true.
> > Stop right there. Do you agree or disagree with what I said?
> Ken, you are playing games now. Of course you know I disagree with that.
> That in fact is the whole substance of our debate.
Disagree with what, since it was you, not me, who used "something"
rather than "universal affirmative" or "universal negative?"
In other words, do you agree or disagree that an unqualified universal
statement in the form "all S is P" or "no S is P" can be proven to be
true? If so, can you provide an example of such a statement?
Now, I thought you agreed with me that such statements cannot be proven
to be true. On the other hand, if instead you are asking that we can
prove at most only that "something" may be true, I thought you agreed
with me that SOME statements -- the ones that are NOT unqualified
universal statements -- can be proven true.
> > If you disagree, please provide an example of an unqualified, universal
> > statement that you think is true, and explain how you know it without
> > also assuming an omniscience that you do not possess.
> You mean provide you with an example that allows you to beg and duck the
> question
Fred, can you answer my question or not? I don't think you or anyone
else can do it. But here is your chance to prove me wrong.
Right now you are the only one who is ducking questions.
> > His theory ultimately proved to be false, but it helped pave the way for
> > Einstein to discover an even better theory.
> How could a false theory pave the way for anything?
How many times must I and others answer this question? The answer,
again, is that even a false theory can successfully explain and predict
-- or at least appear to successfully explain and predict -- at least
some facts. A false theory is not an all or nothing proposition. It
can get, say, 15 observations and predictions right and then get the
16th prediction wrong. Then you replace that (false but promising)
theory with a better theory that correctly explains all 16 observations,
and then the process of testing and, if necessary, replacing the new
theory with an even better theory begins anew. Think of the blood type
example as representative of how this process works.
[...]
> Same comment. But if I point out to you that if your view is that even
> rigorous testing is not a prescription for truth, you go into a dither. Dare
> I ask it again: if even rigorous testing is not a prescription for truth,
> what is? And if you are not implicitly assuming unqualified universal
> statements in that view, what are you assuming?
The standard for truth is the facts of reality. A statement -- or a
theory -- is true if it corresponds to the facts.
Fred, I think the reason why you keep asking the same questions and
raising the same confusions over and over is because, deep down, you
reject (or, at least, do not fully accept) the correspondence theory of
truth and the realist view of metaphysics upon which it rests and
depends. As a result, you seem to be incapable of distinguishing
between whether a statement or theory is true, on the one hand, and how
we grasp whether a statement or theory is true on the other hand -- and
conflate the first into the second.
[...]
> > Objectivism, as a philosophical system, is merely a species of realism.
> Perhaps, but if it is, it differs from the traditional view in ways that
> obviously you don't grasp.
Interesting, and somewhat telling, that you would say this, in light of
what I just got done saying. You don't exactly seem confident that
Objectivism is a species of realism, as indicated by the first five
words of your response.
> > Isn't it a fact either that there is at least one spider on Pluto or
> > that there are no spiders on Pluto? Can we at least agree on this much?
> No. What exists on Pluto, to whatever extent we don't know it now, remains
> to be discovered.
Same comment. Go back to two comments ago and re-read my last sentence
-- the one that begins, "As a result..."
> You are engaging in an arbitrary exercise of the LEM which
> is not it's purpose in a rational epistemology and in any event it is
> irrelevant to what we are discussing and you are using it to the duck the
> real issue.
That's why you are completely confused and lost, Fred. You don't know
what is relevant or irrelevant, and also you have lost the ability to
distinguish between the metaphysical and the epistemological.
> So, I'll remind you what that issue is: your continual equivocation on what
> constitutes truth. If I say "Newton's theory was true". You say, "no it
> wasn't because facts since discovered have proven it false". So I say, "Oh,
> what facts? Facts he knew about it or facts he didn't". And you say,
> "Doesn't matter".
You got at least this much right: the theory is false because it fails
to correspond to the facts. Whether Newton knew or had any way of
knowing that the theory was false is completely irrelevant to whether
the theory itself fails to correspond to the facts. If and when you
grasp this fact, you will understand everything.
> And I say, "oh so he had to be omniscient and anticipate
> facts he had no way of knowing". To which you reply, "he had part of the
> truth, but now we're closer to the truth (Sollars is more radical and
> vicious in this regard. He says Newton didn't have the truth at all. The
> whole thing was false).
I'm not sure he did either, although I would defer to someone like Bob
Kolker on this question. What he did have was an explanation that, at
the time, seemed accurately to explain and predict many facts. That's
different.
> And then I reply, "so which part was true, you mean,
> the part he knew about?" At which point you usually launch into a
> gratuitous diatribe against "contextual truth" and how it will eviscerate
> science...
Look what it has already done to your ability to distinguish what is
true from how we grasp what is true.
[...]
> that's why Objectivists are dogmatists...
I never said "Objectivists."
> and want to nuke Tehran and call Milton
> Friedman a red. And then we are back right to where we started as to what
> you mean by truth and we do this whole number all over again.
Unfortunately, I thought we were making good progress this time, but
apparently not.
Ken
Gordon G. Sollars
> > I believe I said that he discovered that he could explain the motions of
> > the planets very well by assuming the existence of a certain force.
>
> Which indeed he did. Something which apparently though you consider not very
> important.
More unsupported nonsense, Fred. What Newton did was enormously
important, and I have never said otherwise.
> But just consider the impact that had on the field of physics in
> his day and in the period that followed. Contrast that if instead they were
> still trying to hammer round epicycles into the square assumption that the
> earth was the center of the solar system. But instead they discovered new
> planets and much else.
And if we were still looking for a mysterious planet to explain Mercury's
motion? We have much additional knowledge now that does not fit with
Newton's theory, just as we have with Ptolemy.
> > But
> > I am just as happy to say that he "concocted" or "imagined" his theory.
>
> Well, if it was false and truth is a recognition of reality, then that's
> what he must have been doing. You might even say that he was deluded, right?
I think Newton held a number of beliefs that might qualify as "deluded"
today. But his psychological state is irrelevant. What matters is if
his theory is true. I think part of your problem is the idea that truth
is a "recognition of reality". Truth is correspondence to the facts. A
true statement is true whether anyone "recognizes" it or not. Let's be
objective, OK?
> > Theories are always guesses. If and when we discover a false prediction,
> > they are then false guesses.
>
> No matter how many true, even important, predictions it makes? And even if
> the false prediction pertains to a type of phenomenon not even previously
> known to the theorist? You see, I would say that the latter is not a false
> prediction.
And, as I said in another post, when you get to a false conclusion, one
of your premises is false. A theory is a set of premises.
...
> > It might be "self-refuting" if in order to be true a statement also had
> > to be justified.
>
> It does. Truth doesn't exist in a universe of its own independently of our
> ability to grasp it. Facts do.
So what is a statement that corresponds to the facts but has not been
justified? One common description for such a statement is "true".
> > Fortunately, it only has to be true to be true.
>
> If someone grasps it.
It should be clear that I don't agree with that. I have been trying to
defend my disagreement with a variety of arguments. The one I asked if
we could focus on was what I called the "second problem" in an earlier
post. It argues that you cannot be a realist about theories and talk
about a theory being "true in its context".
...
> It
> > would still not make Newton's theory "true in its context", as my "second
> > problem" shows (assuming realism). Let's deal with the second case
> > first, OK?
>
> Sure, why not.
So why don't you deal with it? You followed that "Sure..." with nothing
that addressed it. Here, let me sketch it out for you:
1) A realist thinks that the theoretical terms in a theory refer to real
things.
Example: a theory could use a certain theoretical term to refer to a
force with certain properties, e.g., "gravity". A realist would say
that, for the theory to be true, gravity as defined by the theory must be
a real thing, not merely a convenient assumption.
2) A theory that is "true in context Y" can have theoretical terms that
do not refer to real things.
Example: Some Objectivists say that "Newton's theory is true in its
context". But Newton's theory contains a theoretical term, "gravity",
whose definition ("an instantaneous force that obeys an inverse-square
law") does not refer to a real thing. For example, if such a force were
real, the planet Mercury would have a different orbit than what it is
observed to have.
3) You cannot be both a realist and hold that "theory X is true in
context Y"
4) At least some Objectivists are not realists.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> In Newton's day, the only thing that went at or nearly
> the speed of light was light itself, or particles
> produced by cosmic rays (undetectable for Newton and
> his contemporaries). There was no way Newton could know
> how the mass of a body grew with speed.
This talk of "could know" is only feeding Fred's error, Bob. There is
"no way" Ptolemy could have known that the Earth moved. Yet, for Fred,
Newton's theory is true and Ptolemy's is false.
If Newton had known that mass increased, his theory would /still/ have
made good predictions. He might not have advanced his theory in that
case, but that is a psychological not a logical issue.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> Fred, I think the reason why you keep asking the same questions and
> raising the same confusions over and over is because, deep down, you
> reject (or, at least, do not fully accept) the correspondence theory of
> truth and the realist view of metaphysics upon which it rests and
> depends. As a result, you seem to be incapable of distinguishing
> between whether a statement or theory is true, on the one hand, and how
> we grasp whether a statement or theory is true on the other hand -- and
> conflate the first into the second.
This is the problem with the ARIan context doctrine. To say that
something is true in some context seems to mean that it is justified to
believe it, not that it is actually true. Since we can be justified in
believing something, Peikoff says we can "know" that it is true with
certainty. Certainty is thus relative to a context, but we are not
"relativists" because we are "certain". Why anyone finds this sort of
cotton candy to be nourishing, I have no idea.
...
> You don't exactly seem confident that
> Objectivism is a species of realism, as indicated by the first five
> words of your response.
I have shown that ARIanism - or any view that relies on "theory X is true
in context Y" - at least, is not a species of realism.
> >(Sollars is more radical and
> > vicious in this regard. He says Newton didn't have the truth at all. The
> > whole thing was false).
I can't directly catch all the posts in which Fred makes up views for me.
"The whole thing was false" is ambiguous. It is true that Newton's
theory makes many relatively accurate predictions; it is true that
Newton's theory is false.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bob Kolker
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
>
> I think the following very straightforward way of speaking has a lot to
> recommend it. If a theory predicts something that is false, the theory
> is false.
Better terminology is that the tbeory is invalid. True/False pertains to
statements and their correspondence with facts. Valid/Invalid pertains
to theories which do/do not infer true conclusions from true premises.
This distinguishes the theory, which may be defective from the truth of
some of its conclusions. A true statement remains true regardless of how
it was derived or inferred. This is why science can make headway with a
series of theories that at some point are shown to be invalid.
How should we deal with invalid theories.
1. Restrict their domain of application. For example, Newtonian
mechanics works well at low speeds.
2. Modify premises.
3. Discard the entire theory because it is based on a wrong conception
of how the world works. This is what was done with geocentric
cosmologies.
Bob Kolker
Bob Kolker
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
>
> This talk of "could know" is only feeding Fred's error, Bob. There is
> "no way" Ptolemy could have known that the Earth moved. Yet, for Fred,
> Newton's theory is true and Ptolemy's is false.
Newton was half way to a correct relativistic formulation. He defined
force as a time change in momentum, which is true in Special Relativity.
If he had tumbled onto the fact that at high speed, a massive body
behaves as though its mass were increasing he might have formulated his
mechanics somewhat differently. Newton was smart enough to understand
that his idea of motion and force flowed out of his conceptions of time
and space. With different data Newton might have been "Einstein" as far
as the mechanics went. But this is speculation, and we will never know
for sure.
Bob Kolker
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> >
> > I think the following very straightforward way of speaking has a lot to
> > recommend it. If a theory predicts something that is false, the theory
> > is false.
>
> Better terminology is that the tbeory is invalid. True/False pertains to
> statements and their correspondence with facts. Valid/Invalid pertains
> to theories which do/do not infer true conclusions from true premises.
But what if a theory confers "true" on a false statement? For example,
if a theory says that Mercury should be right /here/, and Mercury is in
fact over /there/, then the theory has conferred "true" on a false
statement. When this happens we know that the theory contains a false
premise. That is modus tollens. But a "premise" is just a statement or
something that can be formulated as a statement. So a theory that
confers "true" on a false statement contains a false statement, not an
"invalid" statement, but a pure and simple "false" statement.
As long as we agree on that, terminology is unimportant. Now, for
myself, I like to say that theories that contain false statements are
false. YMMV.
> This distinguishes the theory, which may be defective from the truth of
> some of its conclusions.
Only those who have been damaged by an exposure to an inadequate
epistemology are in danger of missing this distinction.
> A true statement remains true regardless of how
> it was derived or inferred. This is why science can make headway with a
> series of theories that at some point are shown to be invalid.
Bingo!
> How should we deal with invalid theories.
>
> 1. Restrict their domain of application. For example, Newtonian
> mechanics works well at low speeds.
>
> 2. Modify premises.
>
> 3. Discard the entire theory because it is based on a wrong conception
> of how the world works. This is what was done with geocentric
> cosmologies.
Is "gravity as a force" a wrong conception of how the world works?
Surely "gravity as an instantaneous force that obeys an inverse-square
law" is a wrong conception of how the world works. If there were such a
force, we would not observe what we do observe.
Now, to an instrumentalist or pragmatist it does not matter that a theory
refers to things that do not exist, as long as the theory works, but to a
realist it does matter. Hence, Objectivists who rely on the "context
doctrine" are not realists and are in bed with their enemies. Q.E.D.
Don't applaud, just throw money. Thank you, and Good Night!
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c88065ae...@mail.nji.com...
>Certainty is thus relative to a context,.."
Of course. It is not otherwise possible.
>... but we are not
> "relativists" because we are "certain".
It has nothing whatever to do with "relativism", although it might correctly
be called "relational", i.e. a relationship of the state of our knowledge to
the facts. That in fact is what Ayn Rand meant by "objective" vs.
intrinsic/subjective - a distinction Ken has never grasped.
You and Ken are trying to hammer the round peg of Objectivism into square
pegs of the various traditional views on the subject. Ken has difficulty
with Objectivism (as do a great many other people) anytime it converges from
some traditionalist or conventionalist approach (note the current thread on
logic) - or if he can't hold it as some variant of "common sense". In the
recent thread on monopolies he hadn't even recalled the Objectivist
distinction between the definition and the concept, so he fell right into
your trap - as he did in your discussion of military tribunals with regard
to "not dropping context".
> I have shown that ARIanism - or any view that relies on "theory X is true
> in context Y" - at least, is not a species of realism.
And I have shown that any view which demands that we be omniscient to
achieve truth is not a species of realism.
> I can't directly catch all the posts in which Fred makes up views for me.
> "The whole thing was false" is ambiguous.
You said it, not me. You said you would be quite happy to say that Newton
had "imagined" or "concocted" his theory and Bob was quite happy to chime in
with his view that all of our theories are "contrivances" in which we
attempt to "model" reality, implying that we can never know reality "in
itself". That in my view is pure Kantianism.
> It is true that Newton's
> theory makes many relatively accurate predictions; it is true that
> Newton's theory is false.
Which is the (un)realistic view that any theory must explain everything at
once and doesn't explain how it was able to make those correct predictions.
Or in other words, your "realism" continually involves dropping context.
Except that *in reality* at any given time that is what we are living in and
that is what we know - some specific context.
Fred Weiss
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss wrote:
>
> You said it, not me. You said you would be quite happy to say that Newton
> had "imagined" or "concocted" his theory and Bob was quite happy to chime in
> with his view that all of our theories are "contrivances" in which we
> attempt to "model" reality, implying that we can never know reality "in
> itself". That in my view is pure Kantianism.
Nonsense! Theories are contrivances because the facts do not determine
the theories in all their details. Two distinct theories could explain
and conform to the same set of facts. Example: Lagrangian and
Hamiltonian physics based on energy is equivalent to Newtonian physics
based on force.
There are several covariant theories of gravitation that agree in most
of their predictions to a high degree of accuracy.
As far as knowing reality, that consists of being able to take a
statement, however derived or inferred and checking it against fact. The
basic premis of all scientific theories (as opposed to religious dogma)
is the the output of the theories can be * tested * and perhaps
falsified. The testability of statements pertaining to the world is
tantamount to knowing what the world is (within the limitations of our
senses and instruments, a time varying bound).
Just because theories are contrived does not mean that truth (or the
lack of it) is a contrivance or a phantom.
Think of it this way. The facts, the way the world is, is the way it is
whether anyone cooks up a theory or not. Nature does not care (so to
speak) what we contrive or think.
Bob Kolker
Fred Weiss
"Bob Kolker" <bobk...@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3C5EEBBE...@mediaone.net...
>
>
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> >
> > You said it, not me. You said you would be quite happy to say that
Newton
> > had "imagined" or "concocted" his theory and Bob was quite happy to
chime in
> > with his view that all of our theories are "contrivances" in which we
> > attempt to "model" reality, implying that we can never know reality "in
> > itself". That in my view is pure Kantianism.
>
> Nonsense! Theories are contrivances because the facts do not determine
> the theories in all their details.
That's an interesting and revealing way to put it. In my view the facts
don't "determine" the theories at all. A million people could have been in
the same lab on the same day that Fleming noticed the mold which led him to
discover pencillin and not a one of them could have made the identifications
he did. He had a "context of knowledge" which enabled him to see something
significant in the phenomenon. But he had also had no way of knowing the
future advances in antibiotics which would follow his work. We can only
grasp the facts a step at a time.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c87ca92e...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <3C5E917B...@mediaone.net>, Bob Kolker writes...
> ...
> > In Newton's day, the only thing that went at or nearly
> > the speed of light was light itself, or particles
> > produced by cosmic rays (undetectable for Newton and
> > his contemporaries). There was no way Newton could know
> > how the mass of a body grew with speed.
>
> This talk of "could know" is only feeding Fred's error, Bob.
Don't be concerned about it, Gordon. Later today he will say something that
will feed your error.
But of course in this instance, Bob, is absolutely correct and it supports
my view entirely.
Fred Weiss
Fred Weiss
"Gordon G. Sollars" <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.16c89a38e8...@mail.nji.com...
> But what if a theory confers "true" on a false statement? For example,
> if a theory says that Mercury should be right /here/, and Mercury is in
> fact over /there/, then the theory has conferred "true" on a false
> statement. When this happens we know that the theory contains a false
> premise.
This begs the very question. Mercury would only have to be here if it had
the same relevant properties as the other planets in relation to the sun.
But look, even if it had, sooner or later (as we now know and probably
Newton knew as well) some phenomenon or other wouldn't be explained by his
theory. But then I don't believe Newton was claiming that he had explained
everything which you are demanding of him.
> > This distinguishes the theory, which may be defective from the truth of
> > some of its conclusions.
This distinguishes any theory, none of which can explain everything.
>
> Only those who have been damaged by an exposure to an inadequate
> epistemology are in danger of missing this distinction.
So you are, Gordon, so you are. But I'd like to believe there is hope for
you.
> Is "gravity as a force" a wrong conception of how the world works?
> Surely "gravity as an instantaneous force that obeys an inverse-square
> law" is a wrong conception of how the world works.
What would you have said in 1800? And I don't know how you can claim to know
"how the world works". It's all guesswork to you, capable of being disproven
tomorrow if the right inconvenient "false prediction" comes to our
attention.
> If there were such a
> force, we would not observe what we do observe.
Given your suddenly god's-eye view of it. What did Newton observe? And what
about all the things you are not observing? What effect might they have on
any claim you might make about what you are purportedly observing?
> Now, to an instrumentalist or pragmatist it does not matter that a theory
> refers to things that do not exist, as long as the theory works, ...
You mean, as in this instance, things that don't exist like Uranus and
Neptune - or spaceflight?
Fred Weiss