Re: The law-inferred constraint (was: Tell me the rule...)
From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 06/16/04
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Date: 16 Jun 2004 13:47:29 -0700
daniel009@webtv.net (Daniel Weston) wrote in message news:<23301-40CF3603-106@storefull-3138.bay.webtv.net>...
> Patrick Reany says inter alia, that we can never be sure that we have
> accurately stated some aspect of reality. But note the obverse of that
> coin, something that Patrick ignores. And that is, that we can never be
> sure that some of what we have defined as part of reality, is not in
> fact absolutely correct.
>
> Therefore the statement or inference that all of realty is unknowable in
> an absolute sense, is false.
I am accused quite often of "talking philosophy" on this newsgroup,
yet I at least try to keep the discussion within the boundaries of the
philosophy of science. This is a perfect example of my opponent
"talking philosophy" rather than me. This is not too surprising,
however, as my opponents are wont to adopt fallacious arguments left
and right.
How is it that my discussion of my personal standards of knowledge
about the physical realm which I connected to my claims of what ought
to be the standard of knowledge used in science (along instrumentalist
lines), has been generalized by the nitwit Weston to a standard of
knowledge for all purposes enforced on everyone. I have never made
such a proposal!
Weston would have you adopt as a dogma of knowledge a class of truth
which is "admittedly uncertain yet unprovably absolutely true anyway."
Where's that going to get science? He hasn't even offered a criteria
to distinguish truths that are in this class from truths that are not.
And even if he did, what good is this distinction to science?
Weston seems to need to clarify what it is he really means when he
says he "knows" something. He seems to have some funny ideas about
this. Science is not the place to have funny ideas about truth. All
science needs as a standard of truth to make knowledge claims is the
minimum criteria of "truth" that will get the job done. (The job being
the production of scientific laws.) The standard should be clear and
agreeable to millions of people called scientists. The ultimate output
of "truth" in science are the laws of science -- those invariable
relationships on values and/or events which are 1) empirically
determined (nomological) and/or 2) conceptually determined by free
invention within a theoretical context (prescriptive), such as the
wave function of QM.
There is no purpose in contemplating the possible existence of
"absolute truth" obscured so that we can't recognize it as such,
especially in science. If we don't have empirical criteria to decide
when truth is or isn't "absolute," it's pointless (because it's
scientifically meaningless) to try to bring the concept into science
(a form of verificationism). The fact that a concept might have
meaning to an individual is no justification by itself for bringing
that concept into science. There are two reasons for this: First,
science is minimalistic because it needs to be founded on the common
acceptance of dogmas and principles which are acceptable to millions
of people of various mutually conflicting beliefs. Science works
because it has found a way to find that small but effective set of
shared beliefs within the intersection of those thousands of beliefs
about what is real and what is true. Scientists accept this foundation
because they reserve for themselves the right to hold beliefs which
are in addition to, or even contrary to, the doctrines of science.
Second, every concept added to science has to carry its own weight,
sotospeak. No concept or dogma that adds nothing to the creation of
the laws of science has any place in science.
Weston is free to formulate for his personal epistemology any personal
standard of "absolute truth" that suits his fancy. But what seems to
satisfy his delusions of truth should not be enforced on science. Now,
let's get one thing clear. Weston is not a jerk just because he has
his own "delusions of truth." We all have our own "delusions of
truth." Weston is a jerk because he makes fallacious arguments. My
point is that we should keep science free of our collective "delusions
of truth." It seems to me that one motive to have science ratify our
personal "delusions of truth" is that we would then no longer have to
take personal responsibility for them. That's cowardly. Let's keep
science out of the Politics of Truth.
My main point is to argue that SCIENCE should adopt this standard of
knowledge: The scientific method provides us with a reasonable basis
to believe as a form of foreknowledge that the laws of science work
faithfully. I do not, however, even claim that all that is worth
knowing is embodied in the laws of science. Science is in the
prediction game. It pretends that its laws of empirical content are
necessary truths, but we humans "know" better, which is why I claim
that we hold to our beliefs in the laws of science as "reasonable,"
not as absolute.
It seems to me that we can assign two distinct meanings to the
adjective "absolute" in this context:
A law is "absolute" means that
1) although the law is manifestly in terms of anthropomorphic
variables whose relationship to "deep reality" is unknowable, the law
itself, as a constaint on those variables, is a necessary truth for
all time; or
2) not only is the law a necessary truth for all time, its variables
are metaphysical truths of deep reality (pure dogma out of scientific
realism).
Epistemology is a tradiational rational inquiry that recognizes that
there is a potential infinite number of criteria to declare truth.
What it studies is the logical structure of those justifications for
truth. It is able to work best on justifications which are "rational"
in some sense. It uses standard techniques of analysis in philosophy:
It looks at the
1) the concinnity, consistency, clarity, necessity,
simplicity, and verifibility of systems of criteria
for making knowledge claims, and
2) how well the actual claims conform to the stated
criteria.
In short, epistemology is the justification of knowledge claims.
Patrick
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