Re: Beliefs and Theories


"John W Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:f63fpl$2ddu$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

JE:-
As everybody knows, string theory was and remains, irrefutable.
:-)
"As everybody knows": :-))

You do have some humor - which I appreciate. :-)

<snip>
The big problem with any belief (besides its non refutable status)
is that it may become tribally entrenched because that is what beliefs
evolved to do. Unless beliefs remain intractable they cannot
psychologically
bind individuals to their tribe.

I would easily underwrite this your view of what beliefs have been
"phylogenetically good for".

However, I would wish to extend your view to encompass the fact that before
beliefs came to be [i.e., previously phylogenetically and physiologically
realized patterning potentials in the form of innate, acquired,
conditioned-in, reflexive, and habitual neural states became elaborated and
fortified by subsequently evolved and ontogenetically expressed
language-functions], the various physiologies of fauna had tended to evolve
under the pressure (and in the context) of multifarious environmental forces
[i.e., different simultaneous positive AND negative {i.e. primarily and/or
predominantly adverse} environmental "pressure factors"] in 'a direction'
that on the whole has 'manifested itself' as "ambiadvantageously" (here
meant in a more general than my usual sense) adapted (neuro)physiologies and
(likewise ambiadvantageous) 'mental' and motor functions/behaviors.

Here what I mean by bioevolutionary ambiadvantageousness *in a general*
sense, is (IOW) heritable pleiotrophic mutations that tends to get
selected-in on grounds of that they in one stroke meet different opportune
AND different adverse lifetime challenges.

[This is consideration is more general than usual for me since I am not (at
least not yet) emphasizing and specifying the role of "specific/synaptic
hibernation imploring type predicaments" and of correspondingly
conditioned-in "CURSES (type states)"]

Exemplification of what is EPTly thought of as "ambiadvantagously evolved
functures":

1. The (to a significant extent by lifetime challenges naturally selected)
functural organization of the actention selection serving systems (of
animals) '*approximately* assure' that the sumtotal of all concurrent
(intrinsic and extrinsic) motivational forces (that affect an individual)
give rise to focuses of actention that are approximately the relatively most
adaptive and that "actentions paid" are maintained (always transiently -
though more or less tenaciously so) by "lateral inhibition" (here meant in a
generalized sense) between adaptively incompatible actention modules (i.e.,
'a modularity' meant in a sense that does not at all necessarily imply
structural compactness or neatness);

2. The "lateral inhibition", which *can be learnt in an automatic and highly
selective or specific fashion* (and is most abundantly, hence most
typically, mediated by GABArgic and opioidergic synaptic signal-gating
activity] works in tandem with other functions to the effect that the ASSS
(alt. ASS or AS) is on the whole approximately capable of not only allowing
us to avoid having to pay actention to (and becoming fully or at all
conscious of) potentially *self-defeatingly distressing* sources of
motivation (endogenous as well as exogenous such) but that it is organized
and functioning (by having evolved according to the principle implied by the
concept AEVASIVE) in such a way that especially we humans can reroute and
"make the most out of" motivational energy from endogenous such sources
(i.e. from CURSES).]


JE:-
In my opinion it does a lot more than that: it eliminates string theory
as
a
valid theory reducing it to be just a belief. This does not matter to
Post
Modern epistemology because it does not even attempt to separate theory
from
belief (simply because it cannot do so).

What then is a belief without the backing of any kind of objectively
testable theory behind it?

JE:-
I agree that within a reasoned argument a belief can be built from a
theory
using the imagination. This does not mean that a belief is the same thing
as
a theory. What this means to me is that theories, mostly after they have
been tested to refutation, somehow, metamorphose within somebodies
imagination into a new belief. The job of any scientist is to convert this
new belief into a new theory and not just leave it as the new belief.
Discussion of belief within the sciences is ok, if and only if, discussion
leads towards the creation of a refutable theory derived from that belief,
i.e. not away from establishing such a theory. The deliberate deletion of
refutability from Neo Darwinism remains catastrophic.

(I suggest it is a phylogenetically evolved pain/fear-suppressing
neuropsychological state/functure.)

JE:
People defend their beliefs to the death because that is the best way to
evolve ideas as contesting beliefs. A more civilised solution is to
convert
the belief into a theory and only allow theories to contest and not the
people themselves (because theories can contest to refutation while
beliefs
cannot). However, the conversion of a belief into a refutable theory
remains
_a lot of hard work_. The deliberate deletion of the Popperian process of
refutation from Neo Darwinism has allowed the Post Modern mantra of
"anything goes" to become valid as just a belief within theories of
science,
i.e. allow theories which provides no testable frame of reference, _as
science_ and not as just another belief. This dire situation should have
remained unacceptable to every thinking person, yet it remains endorsed by
the majority of Neo Darwinian researchers.

Only after a theory is sufficiently understood (or theoretically related to
different *relevant*, and *realistically* perceptually and conceptually
*resolved*, aspects of Reality) is it amenable to experimental and/or
observational refutation *or confirmation*.

If somebody is working '*too* hard' on making a particular theory
experimentally refutable, then it might very well be an indication of that
the person *has not understood* (or has an unrealistic or philosophically
naive attitude to) the nature of that particular theory (such as, e.g.,
string/M-theory).

If your are interested in cutting-edge interpretations of string physics
(and much else beyond) by an unusually versatile and fearless young
physics-professor, then I recommend you www.motls.blogspot.com.

P



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