The Problem With Science: It's Not Credible

[mfbukowski]

[ERayR]

There has been several references to "flat earth" in the context of ridicule.  If you don't believe the earth is flat just move out to the middle of Kansas.

[thesometimesaint]

I also never said that it's a horrible term or that it should never be used.

 

I don't have a problem with the term when used in the right context.

[Rob Osborn]

Supernatural means relating to God. It is a perfectly good LDS term when used correctly.

The word "supernatural" as used by science means outside of science and mythical and thus- false.

[Calm]

There has been several references to "flat earth" in the context of ridicule.  If you don't believe the earth is flat just move out to the middle of Kansas.

Lived there...can confirm the Truth of this statement.

[Tarski]

Mfbukowski,

 

I don't think anything I said commits me to a particular  fully developed theory of truth or even to the idea that such a thing is possible.  I certainly didn't need a reference to correspondence theory as I am 30 years deep into thinking and reading about philosophy. 

You might be interested to hear that even though I can't follow Rorty all the way off the cliff, I still count his book "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" as one of the top 10 book I have ever read and I have gone through it more than once--once with the help of the great Calvin O. Schrag.

 

Although my comments do not commit me to a particular metaphysical account of truth, it does make it clear that there are certain views that I would reject.  The truth of the matter is that we don't need to wait for fully developed metaphysics of truth in order to do science and catch on to the spirit of such.

 

Let me make a few comments of a philosophical sort even though I am sure it will do no good.

 

First, lets just take a look at your comment:

 

 

There is no metaphysical world of what is "rational" out there floating waiting to be discovered, because we can never get out beyond our constantly changing theories and data that changes according to how we observe it.

 

 

I want you to notice that from a purely deductive standpoint, the statement is a non sequitur. It has a form similar to the following statement:

 

"There is nothing at the center of the sun because we can never get beyond the surface."

 

Or more crudely: 

"That cookie doesn't exist because I can't reach it."

 

There is also the problem of degrees. If a thing only exist by virtue of an act observation, one wonders whether the cognitive agent must  have a good robust idea supporting the  observation. Does an electron exist once a scientist measures it or is it enough that my wife catches an electron or two from getting static electric shock or does she merely bring into existence an instance of what might be called a "zap". Can an ant bring an electron into existence? Is a thing existing if it is measured in the lab but sort of unconsciously because the measurement was so routine that all the lab techs were daydreaming about other things the whole time even though they technically recorded and responded to the measurements appropriately?

 

Please read the following slowly and charitably. I think you have a tendency to pigeonhole people and strawman their arguments. I actually hope that I am strawing you a bit, since it would be sad if anyone really thought the way I am afraid you do. I am not even sure you are on the same page from one day to the next.

Let's see.

 

The conflation of ontology with epistemology is misguided for many reasons but I must point out that there is a pragmatist way of making the point. A close look at how we (even Rortians) speak and think reveals that the distinction between knowing about a thing and that thing existing is not even cognitively optional. The giddy conflation of the two is a mere pretense and one might as well try to try to communicate without using verbs. 

Take a look again at your sentence above.  The final word is "it"? What is that referring to grammatically? Well, let's see. it is the object of the word "observe". Ok, while the sentence seems to be denying ontological status to something or another, it also clearly assumes good standing for something, namely, that which we are observing---the  "it".  In the very act of trying to deny something, you affirm it. It is almost like someone saying "I didn't break into that house and besides, I didn't even steal anything while I was inside." 

 

I continually notice how the conceptual distinction between a thing being known and a thing existing is really not optional for cognitive agents such as ourselves. We just can't think without the distinction operating at some level even if we are hiding it from ourselves in some kind of Asian fan dance!  It is funny to watch some people go on for a while explaining how there is no "thing" to be known, or that nothing exists until observed because a close look reveals that they end up employing the very distinction they wish were empty. For example, when Johnny (not you) says nothing exists except when and in so far as it is manifest in the human mind, one wonders if the human mind itself is a mere construct of the human mind and does an instance of observational cognition or consciousness have to be observed itself in some act of meta-cognition before it exist and if so, how can it do the magic of granting ontological status before it has any reality itself. An infinite regress threatens anyone who takes their constructionist fetish seriously.  Rorty used to talk about philosophers needing therapy rather than more metaphysics and he might have had a point. But ironically, in the end, he ends up in worse need of therapy than his targets.

 

The word, "observe" is a transitive verb and this reflects not only a grammatical fact but also a cognitive fact. There is that which we observe. The very meaning of the concept assumes that there is that which is to be observed and that the object of observation is not identical with or wholly created by the act of observation. (Of course, it sounds oh so deep and intimidating to deny this). The problem is simply that when a certain type of philosopher fails to find a completely self supporting and totally apodictic account of knowledge, he or she jumps to the conclusion that there is just nothing reasonable to say at all and that in fact we must just give up and descend into an anything goes mentality. In fact, mathematics is the same way. On the one hand, it is hard to come up with a more stable and clear area of thought. But, when one looks to foundations and asks questions at a certain level, it is found that there is no clear and stable foundation after all.  But, science, like mathematics, doesn't need a once and for all foundational metaphysics. Basically, the whole edifice  floats without the kind of foundation that the metaphysician seeks. On the other hand, an everyday metaphysical orientation is indispensable--we simply must think that there is an independent world that we seek to get right even if we fancy it to be nothing but subjectivity or mind. If ever there was an candidate for a necessary aspect of thought, it would be this distinction between existing and being known.  Nobody really believes that to say that a theory works is the very same thing as saying it is true because we know of plenty of cases where something works without it being true (it works for the wrong reasons). Sometimes, as in particle physics, we reach a level where we have to settle for the "it works" anzatz for truth but the conceptual distinction remains intact. There are procedures that students sometimes follow in math that give them the correct answers 99.99% of the time, but are actually bogus. 

 

But, all this is not to say that thinking about such things as epistemology is without value.  We just have to not go off the deep end when we repeatedly fail to spell out a final theory of knowledge. The correspondence angle doesn't warp things up for us as it was once hoped, but the basic idea of correspondence is still at work as are complementary approaches that emphasize pragmatics, coherence, falsifiability, representation, etc. 

Pragmatist considerations are a good corrective to metaphysically ambitious correspondence theories but it doesn't stand on its own any better in the end.

 

I think the situation with theories of truth is basically that we can identify certain things that are clearly correct at one level but simply fail to provide an exceptionless and fully self sufficient account. For example, there is something clearly roughly correct about the idea of correspondence and there is something clearly on target with the idea that the central value might be coherence.  Actually, these are all  partial viewpoints on a basic facts of our human (epistemic) condition.

 

How is there something right about correspondence?  Well,  Dennett was once saying how much he admired and learned from his friend Richard Rorty. He lamented Rorty's overwrought campaign against "Truth" with a capital T, but relates that he got Rorty to admit that there was a certain "vegetarian" notion of truth that was not only indispensable but had some of the very features that Rorty was so keen to deny. 

For example, (perhaps the best example),  any pragmatist will be happy to admit the usefulness of a road map.  Rorty would say we use maps because they serve our purposes. Of course, no one will deny that there are good maps and bad maps. If a map is failing us, a pragmatist might leave it at that but if it is failing us, it is failing us for certain reasons. One reason might be that it shows there to be a gas station where there is in fact none. Or it might indicate the existence of a road, bridge, or monument which we find missing when we dutifully follow the map.   Notice that this is a clear cut case of the representation (the map) not corresponding to that which is represented (the actual geographical facts).  It is also a case of the map not supplying us with a needed truth (hey! where is the frickn gas station?).  This notion of correspondence is a metaphysically innocent one that Rorty would accept according to Dennett's account.  

 

But, then, this innocent "vegetarian" notion of  truth is the only notion that science needs! Sure, if we try to follow this notion of truth down a metaphysical rabbit hole we will be in trouble. But so what? The world is full of things that make good sense at one level and even seem to commit us to some kind of unsustainable ontology but don't make sense on another level.  For example, from the point of view of mealtime, it is the case that my kitchen table is solid. But from the point of view of atomic physics, it is mostly nothing but empty space.  You might be saying "ah hah! that's pragmatism"! Yes but where we part ways is when you want to add that the table isn't really solid and then go on to imagine the world as a ghostly thing constructed by the whims of our own subjectivity or that nothing is real until observed and so on. It is just a case of getting carried away.

To say that by its very nature, knowledge is partial, perspective, tentative, mediated by concepts, sense apparatus, microscopes and other instrumentalities  and so on, is not the same as saying nothing exists or that it is all in our minds etc.  So depending on what one means, the various constructionist, pragmatist or subjectivist accounts of knowledge point out mundane trivialities that no one would deny or the are just a case of running off a metaphysical cliff. The simple test of where you stand is to ask whether what you claim about knowledge is supposed to sound profound, spooky,  or counter-intuitive. If it is then you are probably off the deep end. 

 

Good science is like a good map. One could say it is good if it works but that fact of life doesn't collapse every legitimate conceptual distinction. When something works, we would also like to keep track of why it works. Often that is best expressed in terms of faithful correspondence (the map indicated an entrance to the park and indeed such an entrance was found in the represented location).

If Dennett's account of his conversation with Rorty is true (not merely useful) then he would agree or at least had to concede at the time. 

Edited March 7, 2015 by Tarski

[mfbukowski]

Wonderful, wonderful.

I will respond in a day or so.

In the meantime, this might resolve the issue http://www.def-logic.com/articles/silby013.html

Edited March 7, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

The problem is not that there is a world out there or not, the problem is how we speak, and therefore think about it.

I will elaborate as I have time. Rorty says we know what "truth" means, it's just not too important an idea.

Same for "existence". Of course the world exists, but so what?

What is important is that we don't think language mirrors reality. All language can speak about is language. Science doesn't speak about the world, it speaks about how we speak about the world without realizing that. Speaking about a theory or an interpretation of data is just that, a DISCUSSION about an interpretation or a theory.

You just can't get around that.

Sure maps work for getting around, but they say nothing about this smells of getting there or the weather, or what it's like to meet a drunk on the way. A map is an abstraction for a given purpose and that's all.

I don't even know what existence means because I cannot imagine non existence.

That's the short reply. Existence is a pretty useless idea that doesn't tell us much about anything.

I mean if those of you out there who do not exist want to protest my prejudice against you, feel free to respond

Edited March 7, 2015 by mfbukowski

[Tarski]

That's the short reply. Existence is a pretty useless idea that doesn't tell us much about anything.

 

 I disagree. The concept is not optional and it is there in every cognition in one form or another.  If you think existence is a mute issue, then I guess you wouldn't mind if your attorney failed to bring up the issue of the existence or nonexistence of a murder weapon should you ever be falsely accused of murder. 

 

Also, I can't imagine what it would be like to not appreciate the existence of atoms. Often I am called upon to go out in the yard and grill steaks in the cool winter air while the rest of the family sit inside poking at their iphones. Its a nice meditative time alone. When I look at the hot wild flame leaping up into the surrounding coldness from the newly lit charcoal in my grill, I see something entirely much more thrilling knowing that it really is  comprised by a vast number of excited atoms and molecules emitting light and heat as their electrons drop to lower energy states. They are vicerally real to me and I can't imagine not having the wonderul access to reality that that knowledge gives me. I certainly can't see the charm in telling myself, "oh well those radiating atoms aren't really there. It's just a useful but optional fiction".  What after all was the significance of Einstein's seminal paper on Brownian motion. Existence!

The fact that our physical theories facilitate the creation of gadgets to be marketed is the shallow end of science appreciation. For me the real joy is in the fact that we are uncovering what was hidden and gaining insight into reality. Incomplete and conceptually conditioned insight, but brilliant profound insight nontheless.

I remember what an insight it was to learn why the temperature often rises a little right before it snows. The explanation of water vapor droplets having to give up bit of heat in order to form crystals of ice we call snowflakes caused me to never look at snow the same way.  I can't see that as a mere convenient story. It's just as true in the silent wilderness where it works according to the laws of thermodynamic despite being of no use to anyone except perhaps my appreciative soul and it was true (though not explicitly represented) before the appearance of human langauge.

[mfbukowski]

That's beautiful, genuinely!

 

Others might see the same thing and wax rhapsodic about God and his wonders and be no more right or wrong than you are.  Poetry is wonderful, even poetry masquerading as "science".

 

I really don't know how you pull it off though knowing that you are thinking in words you didn't create yourself, communicated to you by others who didn't think them up either. (Professors, etc.)

 

You are using what society has taught you.   Good, no problem with that, that is what humans do- learn from others what works and pass it on.

 

But it might as well have been all in the bible, except that teaches what works for humanity in ethics and morality.  We call those the "commandments".  Can't kill people, because then society will kill you or lock you up.   Mess with someone's wife, and you might end up dead.

 

We have no choice but to assimilate the pooled explanations that the human race has found expedient for survival.  We could not survive without them, from the golden rule to how to make fire and roast parts of a dead cow, and how internal combustion engines work to bring that dead cow to your back yard.   If it wasn't for language- none of it would be there.   We would not even be alive because our parents would not have learned it from their parents and they would not have lived either.

 

No society, no "things" because the concept of "things" would not even exist.  You would not even have "rocks erupting from volcanoes".  Would trees fall in the forest?   Who would care?

 

It still all boils down to descriptions that were made in words, argued in words and math, itself a language, which has evolved along with our brains to describe the rules by which we think, because it has survival value.

 

Which ways of thinking work and which do not are crucial. You can't teach your kids about fire without language of some kind even if it's non-verbal.  We don't come into this world able to fend for ourselves- we must learn what humans need to survive, and that is done with language in one form or another.  We pick the description which grabs our imagination and gives our lives meaning. 

 

It's nice to know someone still believes in "absolute truth" which is in principle, unchanging, even if others think the idea quaint. 

 

All we get is unspeakable "matter unorganized" and not even a "dead cow" to put on the "fire" because all those are linguistic concepts.  

 

I don't see how that is even debatable- do you?  Honestly?   Can we debate that without language?

 

It is up to humanity to take the "morning and evening" and define it into the "first day" and then write it down in Genesis for all the rest of our culture to use to make their personal lives meaningful.

 

No language, no observations, no interpretations, no theories, no science, no poetry no explanations for anything.

 

Rocks, but no word for them.  No-thing.  Especially no "atoms".  Can't even see them little guys

Edited March 8, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

I made a long edit- check it and see if you want to respond before you come back

[Robert F. Smith]

.............................................................................   

To say that by its very nature, knowledge is partial, perspective, tentative, mediated by concepts, sense apparatus, microscopes and other instrumentalities  and so on, is not the same as saying nothing exists or that it is all in our minds etc.  So depending on what one means, the various constructionist, pragmatist or subjectivist accounts of knowledge point out mundane trivialities that no one would deny or the are just a case of running off a metaphysical cliff. The simple test of where you stand is to ask whether what you claim about knowledge is supposed to sound profound, spooky,  or counter-intuitive. If it is then you are probably off the deep end. 

...............................................................................   

So, it's human to be Humean?

 

But, is it O.K. for mathematician Lewis Carroll to help young women negotiate the "rabbit hole" of their changing lives?  Is it enough at the pragmatic level that his books "speak" to them?

 

Most importantly, how do any of your comments help us with our ultimate concerns?  Is that the "deep end"?  Should we avoid it, perhaps for the same reason that we cannot use Wittgenstein's ladder to get up into the loft?  Are we all in an infinite regress?

[mfbukowski]

Right, Bob!

 

Tarski-

 

it's not that "It's all in our minds".   I am not a solipsist by any means.  Trust me.  I have fallen off my bike and roofs, and been in automobile accidents and made wrong turns etc etc.   I do not think I can walk through walls

 

But you cannot get around the idea that ideas themselves- language and words and what we know- is "in our minds"

 

It's not about what is out there- is is about what we KNOW about what is "out there", and all we KNOW is "in here".   There's no way around that.

 

Yes I have been hurt objectively in the objective world- blood, x-rays, etc. but what was IMPORTANT was my experience of BEING hurt.   It, uh...... HURT to be hurt.  It was quite REAL, but it was still ME that HURT.

 

YOU could not feel my broken leg- only I could.  I could tell you about it, you could feel sympathy, but it was MY MIND that was in real PAIN, not yours!

[Tarski]

Others might see the same thing and wax rhapsodic about God and his wonders and be no more right or wrong than you are.  Poetry is wonderful, even poetry masquerading as "science".

Yes and I take it most of them would not stand for the idea that God doesn't exist except as a convenient fiction. lol

You are using what society has taught you.  

 

Well society hasn't been giving me a consistent story.  The beauty of science is that it provides a sensible way to filter out at least some of the nonsense. As far as science goes, I have no problem standing on the shoulders of giants.

 

We have no choice but to assimilate the pooled explanations that the human race has found expedient for survival.

 

Well I can think of quite a few pooled explanations that I rejected so I seem to have some choice in the matter.  But I am really not sure why you think the fact that my being inextricably situated within the social and linguistic network undermines anything I have said. It seems fine to me. The fact that I know about the existence of atoms would be inconceivable without that unfathomable background of givens I was born into. 

 

No society, no "things" because the concept of "things" would not even exist. 

 

Not quite. No society, no knowledge of things.

There are things and then there is  knowledge of things. Why the conflation? Since those are different issues you can draw the conclusion you just did.

 

You would not even have "rocks erupting from volcanoes". 

 

Sure you would and did. The fact that nature had to wait for minds to evolve before such things were represented in language doesn't change the fact that nature had just that susceptibility to useful description in terms of rock and volcanoes. I could have been otherwise. 

When I say that  the Lava Creek eruption created the Yellowstone Caldera  640,000 years ago do I speak a falsehood? 

Would trees fall in the forest?  

 

 

Of course. 

Who would care?

 

No one at the time. So what? Why should my caring be at issue for the existence of such a thing. 

 

It still all boils down to descriptions that were made in words, argued in words and math, itself a language, which has evolved along with our brains to describe the rules by which we think, because it has survival value.

 

Yup. And?  In turn idea tend to have survival value if they carve nature at her joints. I take it that the main reason that people don't believe that water isn't flammable is that in fact it isn't.  We kick nature  and nature kicks back.

It's nice to know someone still believes in "absolute truth" which is in principle, unchanging, even if others think the idea quaint. 

 

I think I only defended a nonmetaphysical notion of truth. I wouldn't not describe myself as embracing a notion of absolute truth. The word absolute isn't doing any work by sitting in front of the word knowledge. It only invites us to attempt to envision the impossible situation of unmediated  knowledge which just doesn't make sense anyway. All knowledge is tentative and most of what we think of as knowledge is mediated by language and the conceptual structures made possible by language. (on the other hand, it would be fine to say that my dog knows how to get into the pantry)

 

By the way, I can make a parallel and equally valid point:

 

If nature had no actual dependable objective regularities then evolution and  biology would be impossible. Cognition as well as language would also be impossible without the underlying physical regularities on which to lean. So without the kind of independent and prior truths which I defend there would be no language.

 

No atoms no language. 

 

 

Rocks, but no word for them.  No-thing.  Especially no "atoms".  Can't even see them little guys

 

What is happening here is subtle equivocation that makes us speak past each other.

 

You say that there were no atoms before there was language.  This would be true if it meant the word atom wouldn't exist. It would also be true the the idea of an atom would also not exist. It might even make sense to claim that there the concept of an atom is picked out among many other possible and compatible ways of conceptualizing the world which means it would reflect our interests in that sense.

 

But.... I have something else in mind when I claim that there were atoms before language. Here I have to employ the word of course. But without denying anything in the above paragraph, it is still the case that 

 

 Nature has long been such that it is amenable to description in terms of the idea of an atom. It could have been otherwise but in fact was not. This fact is reflected in the fact that past events are explainable by appealing to what atoms were doing in day  long ago and this is true in a way that completely and fundamentally surpasses competing explanations in terms of  sprites, gods and defunct alchemical ideas. The difference being that the latter were not really grounded in careful empirical investigations.

 

So on the one hand there is the word "atom" and the concept of an atom. On the other hand, there are those features of nature that are amenable to description in terms of that concept. Those feature are, well, atoms! The fact that I can not refer to the discovered objective features without language is nothing to be alarmed by and does not undermine the independence of physical reality. 

 

People like to say that love is just a word. Well, not really.  It is the case the "love" is just a word. But love is something more than a word. 

 

This is called the use/mention distinction:

 

The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated for the word cheese:^[2][3]

• Use: cheese is derived from milk.
• Mention: "cheese" is derived from the Old English word "cyse".

 

 

 

 

I hope nothing like a confusion between use and mention is driving your strange philosophy which you seem to think is somehow standard wisdom. It's not. Rortian skepticism about truth is not just "what everybody knows". The backlash is immense from from where I sit and I think looks quaint to use you pejorative (very 80s).

[mfbukowski]

Let me put it this way

 

Everything Tarski "knows" about atoms are sentences that Tarski can say.  What he says is not "in the atoms", they are words.

 

There is nothing more that can be said about what Tarski can say about atoms.

 

Everything scientists "know" about atoms are sentences said by scientists.  What they say is not "in the atoms", they are words.

 

All we can "KNOW" are social constructs in language, in other words, reports about what we have seen and reports about what others have seen.

[mfbukowski]

Yes and I take it most of them would not stand for the idea that God doesn't exist except as a convenient fiction. lol

No more a fiction than the alleged "existence of atoms". I don't know why you cannot see that.

 

Well society hasn't been giving me a consistent story.  The beauty of science is that it provides a sensible way to filter out at least some of the nonsense. As far as science goes, I have no problem standing on the shoulders of giants.

No one has that problem. It doesn't "exist" We all had parents.

 

Well I can think of quite a few pooled explanations that I rejected so I seem to have some choice in the matter.  But I am really not sure why you think the fact that my being inextricably situated within the social and linguistic network undermines anything I have said. It seems fine to me. The fact that I know about the existence of atoms would be inconceivable without that unfathomable background of givens I was born into.

Agreed. Your point?

 

There are things and then there is  knowledge of things. Why the conflation? Since those are different issues you can draw the conclusion you just did.

KNOWLEDGE is linguistic. These are words. You know chairs but there are no chairs sticking out of your head. Objects are not ideas.

 

Sure you would and did. The fact that nature had to wait for minds to evolve before such things were represented in language doesn't change the fact that nature had just that susceptibility to useful description in terms of rock and volcanoes. I could have been otherwise. 

When I say that  the Lava Creek eruption created the Yellowstone Caldera  640,000 years ago do I speak a falsehood? 

Now you are arguing just to argue. Did you suddenly forget Rorty and the mirror of nature? And now we are back to true and false, without definitions? I am glad you think "Nature" made things. I will take that as "God" if you don't mind a small semantic difference. Nature described things? Oh come on!

 

On one hand you want to be anti-metaphysical and on the other you say that "Nature had to wait for minds to evolve before such things were represented in language"???  And you supposedly understand the problems with the correspondence theory of truth?  This is about as metphysical as it gets- you could substitute "God" for "Nature" and you would be an evolutionary theist. 

 

"God had to wait for minds to evolve before such things were represented in language"  That makes nature independent of minds and language independent of minds AND of nature.

 

Yup. And?  In turn idea tend to have survival value if they carve nature at her joints. I take it that the main reason that people don't believe that water isn't flammable is that in fact it isn't.  We kick nature  and nature kicks back.

Your point?  I don't recall saying that water was flammable.

 

I think I only defended a nonmetaphysical notion of truth.

Oh my- listen to yourself!!!   You said this!!:

 

The fact that nature had to wait for minds to evolve before such things were represented in language doesn't change the fact that nature had just that susceptibility to useful description in terms of rock and volcanoes.

 

I wouldn't not describe myself as embracing a notion of absolute truth. The word absolute isn't doing any work by sitting in front of the word knowledge. It only invites us to attempt to envision the impossible situation of unmediated  knowledge which just doesn't make sense anyway. All knowledge is tentative and most of what we think of as knowledge is mediated by language and the conceptual structures made possible by language. (on the other hand, it would be fine to say that my dog knows how to get into the pantry)

 

I have no clue how this is supposed to square with the rest.  We started this because it appeared that you thought that eventually science could absolutely "know" everything there was to know, in principle.   That is a belief in absolute knowledge- in the future yes, but no different in principle than "now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face".  You want to see the perfect mirror of reality- eventually in science.

 

By the way, I can make a parallel and equally valid point:

 

If nature had no actual dependable objective regularities then evolution and  biology would be impossible. Cognition as well as language would also be impossible without the underlying physical regularities on which to lean. So without the kind of independent and prior truths which I defend there would be no language.

 

No atoms no language. 

 

Yah sure you can say that.   That is called "Cartesianism" and is the main metaphysics of the man in the street.   Now you have to explain correspondence between the atoms and the language.  Back to square 1.

 

 

What is happening here is subtle equivocation that makes us speak past each other.

 

You say that there were no atoms before there was language.  This would be true if it meant the word atom wouldn't exist. It would also be true the the idea of an atom would also not exist. It might even make sense to claim that there the concept of an atom is picked out among many other possible and compatible ways of conceptualizing the world which means it would reflect our interests in that sense.

 

YES THAT IS WHY I PUT QUOTES AROUND THOSE WORDS.   Maybe you missed them or maybe I misplaced some.  But that was my point.  No equivocation intended.

 

But.... I have something else in mind when I claim that there were atoms before language. Here I have to employ the word of course.

Oops- that's the problem.  You can't get away without the word, can you

 

"In the beginning was the Word....."

 

 Nature has long been such that it is amenable to description in terms of the idea of an atom. It could have been otherwise but in fact was not. This fact is reflected in the fact that past events are explainable by appealing to what atoms were doing in day  long ago and this is true in a way that completely and fundamentally surpasses competing explanations in terms of  sprites, gods and defunct alchemical ideas. The difference being that the latter were not really grounded in careful empirical investigations.

Prove it.

 

Tell me pray tell all about "Nature" before there was a word "Nature".   Oh and by the way, don't use words.  You are explaining "wordless things" so to use words to do so would destroy your evidence.

 

So on the one hand there is the word "atom" and the concept of an atom. On the other hand, there are those features of nature that are amenable to description in terms of that concept. Those feature are, well, atoms! The fact that I can not refer to the discovered objective features without language is nothing to be alarmed by and does not undermine the independence of physical reality. 

Wow.  Now you sound like Aquinas.   Physical reality certainly is " independent of words".   I know what you mean even if the words don't work too well.  But talking about physical reality is not independent of words. Pretty straight forward stuff.

 

People like to say that love is just a word. Well, not really.  It is the case the "love" is just a word. But love is something more than a word. 

 

This is called the use/mention distinction:

 

 

 

 

I hope nothing like a confusion between use and mention is driving your strange philosophy which you seem to think is somehow standard wisdom. It's not. Rortian skepticism about truth is not just "what everybody knows". The backlash is immense from from where I sit and I think looks quaint to use you pejorative (very 80s).

 

Yes I know all about the use/mention distinction but it really is a pain to keep straight around these parts where folks don't know metaphysics from ontology.  Besides I am a Searle guy and I agree with him on this.

 

If you have references to recently raised points against Rorty which are not coming from positivists, I am all ears, but I have seen nothing to replace the deflationary theory of truth.   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

 

Seems pretty "state of the art" to me

 

I'm about done.   No progress made, none on the horizon.   I thought we were getting somewhere.   You can win if you like.  Chalk up one for your cheering section at the TP zone.   I really don't care.

 

But I hope you are least read the Wittgenstein piece.   I don't like the beginning but the last part is ok

Edited March 8, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

That's beautiful, genuinely!

 

Others might see the same thing and wax rhapsodic about God and his wonders and be no more right or wrong than you are.  Poetry is wonderful, even poetry masquerading as "science".

 

I really don't know how you pull it off though knowing that you are thinking in words you didn't create yourself, communicated to you by others who didn't think them up either. (Professors, etc.)

 

You are using what society has taught you.   Good, no problem with that, that is what humans do- learn from others what works and pass it on.

 

But it might as well have been all in the bible, except that teaches what works for humanity in ethics and morality.  We call those the "commandments".  Can't kill people, because then society will kill you or lock you up.   Mess with someone's wife, and you might end up dead.

 

We have no choice but to assimilate the pooled explanations that the human race has found expedient for survival.  We could not survive without them, from the golden rule to how to make fire and roast parts of a dead cow, and how internal combustion engines work to bring that dead cow to your back yard.   If it wasn't for language- none of it would be there.   We would not even be alive because our parents would not have learned it from their parents and they would not have lived either.

 

No society, no "things" because the concept of "things" would not even exist.  You would not even have "rocks erupting from volcanoes".  Would trees fall in the forest?   Who would care?

 

It still all boils down to descriptions that were made in words, argued in words and math, itself a language, which has evolved along with our brains to describe the rules by which we think, because it has survival value.

 

Which ways of thinking work and which do not are crucial. You can't teach your kids about fire without language of some kind even if it's non-verbal.  We don't come into this world able to fend for ourselves- we must learn what humans need to survive, and that is done with language in one form or another.  We pick the description which grabs our imagination and gives our lives meaning. 

 

It's nice to know someone still believes in "absolute truth" which is in principle, unchanging, even if others think the idea quaint. 

 

All we get is unspeakable "matter unorganized" and not even a "dead cow" to put on the "fire" because all those are linguistic concepts.  

 

I don't see how that is even debatable- do you?  Honestly?   Can we debate that without language?

 

It is up to humanity to take the "morning and evening" and define it into the "first day" and then write it down in Genesis for all the rest of our culture to use to make their personal lives meaningful.

 

No language, no observations, no interpretations, no theories, no science, no poetry no explanations for anything.

 

Rocks, but no word for them.  No-thing.  Especially no "atoms".  Can't even see them little guys

Just for the sake of argument, I put everything in quotes in red.  I don't think I missed the "use/mention distinction" at all.  Not once.  Maybe the second to the last sentence "N0-Thing" should have had quotes- debatable, but fergetaboutit

[Tarski]

Tell me pray tell all about "Nature" before there was a word "Nature".   Oh and by the way, don't use words.  You are explaining "wordless things" so to use words to do so would destroy your evidence.

OK this is just silly. 

Words can and do refer to things that aren't themselves words. Linguistic solipsism is no better than sense-data solipsism. 

What if I claim that there are no words at all because all that really exist is sound vibrations, traces of ink on paper and glowing computer screens.  To prove it I petulantly challenge you to show me a word without using any patterns of sound or of light.  You can't do it! 

Its a mugs game and you know it. 

 

I claim that words refer to things and state of affairs that are not themselves just words. In fact, to deny this is madness.

 

I claim that apples and atoms exist and the fact that we employ words to direct each others attention to such features of the real world does nothing at all to undermine that assertion. 

 

I claim that there really were rocks on this planet before there were humans.

 

Finally, I claim that there is every reason to believe that science is succeeding in improving our understanding of a reality of which we are simply a part in the same way that monkeys and spider are simply a part. In short, science is eminently credible when taken as whole over time. That's where you jumped in and accused me of irrationality as follows:

This is just semantics and an irrational belief in the metaphysics of what is "rational".

 

 

On what basis? I claimed (on fully pragmatic grounds!) that Newtonian mechanics was still had truth value since it still applied in the nonrelativistic macroscopic  regime. Or was it that I pointed out that the fact that science makes changes and refinement doesn't warrant rejection of science? 

 

I might use your own words to make my final plea for sanity. 

 

We do not need to  "get out beyond our constantly changing theories and data" in order to be rational since that is exactly  part of what constitutes our rationality.  OUr theories aren't changing in a willy-nilly fashion and our data isn't just changing, it is accumulating and being analysed with increasing care and sophistication.  Are you really under the impression that good philosophers have all abandoned any hope of proceeding rationally? Should we follow Tim Leary's advice and just drop acid and giggle at the squares at CERN who still think there is a reality to understand?

If so, then it make no sense to try to have a dialogue with such people who if they had the courage of their convictions should be just as happy to entrust their cancer treatment to  a witch doctor or faith healer as to a western oncologist. 

Edited March 8, 2015 by Tarski

[mfbukowski]

I hope nothing like a confusion between use and mention is driving your strange philosophy which you seem to think is somehow standard wisdom. It's not. Rortian skepticism about truth is not just "what everybody knows". The backlash is immense from from where I sit and I think looks quaint to use you pejorative (very 80s)

 

The deflationary theory has been one of the most popular approaches to truth in the twentieth century, having received explicit defense by Frege, Ramsey, Ayer, and Quine, as well as sympathetic treatment from many others. (According to Dummett 1959, the view originates with Frege.) The following passages all contain recognizable versions of the doctrine, though they differ on points of detail.

 

It is worthy of notice that the sentence ‘I smell the scent of violets’ has the same content as the sentence ‘it is true that I smell the scent of violets’. So it seems, then, that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. (Frege 1918)

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

 

 

d. The Deflationary Challenge

Throughout contemporary debates on truth pluralism, lurking in the shadows has been the challenge from deflationary theories of truth. In particular, there is an underlying puzzlement as to why we need to go beyond deflationism into pluralism. After all, deflationism and pluralism share some of the same motivations in that they are both dissatisfied with traditional ‘monist’ accounts of truth, yet the deflationary account seemingly offers a far simpler solution to this dissatisfaction, without a lot of the problems for pluralism we have discussed above. The basic worry seems to be: why bring in all of these complications when we can get by with far less? This challenge is compounded by the influence of deflationary theories of truth in current debates, with many holding that deflationism ought to be considered the default view of truth (see, for example, Field 1994, Armour-Garb Beall 2000, and Dodd 2012). As noted above, this challenge has not been ignored by pluralists, with Wright (1992) and Lynch (2009: Chapter 6) building arguments against deflationism into the motivations for their pluralist views. However, despite this work, it is probably still fair to say that one of the central challenges facing pluralists today is to convince those in the deflationary camp that there are strong reasons to consider pluralism an attractive alternative.

 

 

 http://www.iep.utm.edu/plur-tru/#SH5d

[Tarski]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

 

 

 

 http://www.iep.utm.edu/plur-tru/#SH5d

 

Yes I have been quite interested in Ramsey recently though partly in his theorem in combinatorics. Anyway, it amazes me how you can't detect how sympathetic my view is to Ramsey's version of deflationary theory at least as I understand it.  It seems to me that what is being deflated or rejected is a full on metaphysical theory of truth that tries to make sense of something beyond the vegetarian notion of truth that I was talking about before and the simple unobjectionable notion of correspondence that is exemplified by accuracy of road maps. 

I am fine in saying that to assert  that "it is true that snow is white" is just to say that "snow is (indeed) white".  It is simply a matter of convenience that I talk about scientific "truths". But I mean nothing more than the network of assertions we can make with confidence as a result of scientific investigation. I need not say "science has discovered the truth that electrons are subject to the electromagnetic force". I only need to say that "science has discovered that electrons are subject to the electromagnetic force" or even just "electrons are  subject to the electromagnetic force" as long as I am prepared to exhibit the evidence etc.  I can say why we have been led to assert that "electrons are  subject to the electromagnetic force".  A fully metaphysical theory of truth is not needed I don't know what made you think I was preaching the old metaphysically problematic correspondence theory of truth.  I also don't need to posit a free floating god given notion of rationality external to humanity. It is much simpler than that.   

However, I do assert that there are electrons and atoms and I see nothing in the basic  strategy of deflationary approaches to truth (no capital T truth!) that commits me to conflating knowledge with existence? Do you? Do you think Ramsey would feel committed to the idea that there were no rocks or volcanoes before there were humans or that for purely philosophical (not quantum mechanical) reasons the act of observation brings things into existence? 

 

I wish you would go back to my post where I mention Newtonian mechanics and ulcers and all that and clearly identify what you wish to oppose.  Where was the irrationality (your words)? 

 

Actually, if you are so keen on the idea that I can't or shouldn't make judgments about rationality (presumably because you deny that there is such a thing) then exactly how can you accuse me of irrationality? What standard of rationality were you measuring me against??  hmmmm?

Edited March 8, 2015 by Tarski

[mfbukowski]

OK this is just silly. 

Words can and do refer to things that aren't themselves words. Linguistic solipsism is no better than sense-data solipsism. 

What if I claim that there are no words at all because all that really exist is sound vibrations, traces of ink on paper and glowing computer screens.  To prove it I petulantly challenge you to show me a word without using any patterns of sound or of light.  You can't do it! 

Its a mugs game and you know it. 

 

I claim that words refer to things and state of affairs that are not themselves just words. In fact, to deny this is madness.

 

I claim that apples and atoms exist and the fact that we employ words to direct each others attention to such features of the real world does nothing at all to undermine that assertion. 

 

I claim that there really were rocks on this planet before there were humans.

 

Finally, I claim that there is every reason to believe that science is succeeding in improving our understanding of a reality of which we are simply a part in the same way that monkeys and spider are simply a part. In short, science is eminently credible when taken as whole over time. That's where you jumped in and accused me of irrationality as follows:

 

On what basis? I claimed (on fully pragmatic grounds!) that Newtonian mechanics was still had truth value since it still applied in the nonrelativistic macroscopic  regime. Or was it that I pointed out that the fact that science makes changes and refinement doesn't warrant rejection of science? 

 

I might use your own words to make my final plea for sanity. 

 

We do not need to  "get out beyond our constantly changing theories and data" in order to be rational since that is exactly  part of what constitutes our rationality.  OUr theories aren't changing in a willy-nilly fashion and our data isn't just changing, it is accumulating and being analysed with increasing care and sophistication.  Are you really under the impression that good philosophers have all abandoned any hope of proceeding rationally? Should we follow Tim Leary's advice and just drop acid and giggle at the squares at CERN who still think there is a reality to understand?

If so, then it make no sense to try to have a dialogue with such people who if they had the courage of their convictions should be just as happy to entrust their cancer treatment to  a witch doctor or faith healer as to a western oncologist. 

 

I really don't know what to say.   I will let Rorty say it and then you can argue with him.

 

Pages 4-5

We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out

there and the claim that truth is out there. To say that the world is out

there, that it is not our creation, is to say, with common sense, that most

things in space and time are the effects of causes which do not include

human mental states. To say that truth is not out there is simply to say

that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are

elements of human languages, and that human languages are human

creations.

Truth cannot be out there - cannot exist independently of the human

mind - because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is

out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the

world can be true or false. The world on its own - unaided by the

describing activities of human beings - cannot.

The suggestion that truth, as well as the world, is out there is a legacy

of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a

language of his own. If we cease to attempt to make sense of the idea of

such a nonhuman language, we shall not be tempted to confuse the

platitude that the world may cause us to be justified in believing a sentence

true with the claim that the world splits itself up, on its own

initiative, into sentence-shaped chunks called "facts." But if one clings to

the notion of self-subsistent facts, it is easy to start capitalizing the word

"truth" and treating it as something identical either with God or with the

world as God's project. Then one will say, for example, that Truth is

great, and will prevail.

This conflation is facilitated by confining attention to single sentences

as opposed to vocabularies. For we often let the world decide the competition

between alternative sentences (e.g., between "Red wins" and

"Black wins" or between "The butler did it" and ''The doctor did it"). In

such cases, it is easy to run together the fact that the world contains the

causes of our being justified in holding a belief with the claim that some

nonlinguistic state of the world is itself an example of truth, or that some

such state "makes a belief true" by "corresponding" to it. But it is not so

easy when we turn from individual sentences to vocabularies as wholes.

When we consider examples of alternative language games - the vocabulary

~f ancient Athenian politics versus Jefferson's, the moral vocabulary

of SaInt Paul versus Freud's, the jargon of Newton versus that of Aristotle,

the idiom of Blake versus that of Dryden - it is difficult to think of

the world as making one of these better than another, of the world as

deciding between them. When the notion of "description of the world"

is moved from the level of criterion-governed sentences within language

games to language games as wholes, games which we do not choose

between by reference to criteria, the idea that the world decides which

descriptions are true can no longer be given a clear sense. It becomes

 

hard to think that that vocabulary is somehow already out there in the

world, waiting for us to discover it. Attention (of the sort fostered by

intellectual historians like Thomas Kuhn and Quentin Skinner) to the

vocabularies in which sentences are formulated, rather than to individual

sentences, makes us realize, for example, that the fact that Newton's

vocabulary lets us predict the world more easily than Aristotle's does not

mean that the world speaks Newtonian.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have

programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it

cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can

do that. The realization that the world does not tell us what language

games to play should not, however, lead us to say that a decision about

which to play is arbitrary, nor to say that it is the expression of something

deep within us. The moral is not that objective criteria for choice of

vocabulary are to be replaced with subjective criteria, reason with will or

feeling. It is rather that the notions of criteria and choice (including that

of "arbitrary" choice) are no longer in point when it comes to change~

from one language game to another. Europe did not decide to accept the

idiom of Romantic poetry, or of socialist politics, or of Galilean mechanics.

That sort of shift was no more an act of will than it was a result of

argument. Rather, Europe gradually lost the habit of using certain words

and gradually acquired the habit of using others...This conflation is facilitated by confining attention to single sentences

as opposed to vocabularies. For we often let the world decide the competition

between alternative sentences (e.g., between "Red wins" and

"Black wins" or between "The butler did it" and ''The doctor did it"). In

such cases, it is easy to run together the fact that the world contains the

causes of our being justified in holding a belief with the claim that some

nonlinguistic state of the world is itself an example of truth, or that some

such state "makes a belief true" by "corresponding" to it. But it is not so

easy when we turn from individual sentences to vocabularies as wholes.

When we consider examples of alternative language games - the vocabulary

~f ancient Athenian politics versus Jefferson's, the moral vocabulary

of SaInt Paul versus Freud's, the jargon of Newton versus that of Aristotle,

the idiom of Blake versus that of Dryden - it is difficult to think of

the world as making one of these better than another, of the world as

deciding between them. When the notion of "description of the world"

is moved from the level of criterion-governed sentences within language

games to language games as wholes, games which we do not choose

between by reference to criteria, the idea that the world decides which

descriptions are true can no longer be given a clear sense.

 

 

p 20-21

I shall try to develop this last point in Chapters 2 and 3 in te~ms of

Harold Bloom's notion of the "strong poet." But I shall end thIS first

chapter by going back to the claim, which has been ce,ntral to w~at ~ have

been saying, that the world does not provide us WIth any cntenon Qf

choice between alternative metaphors, that we can only compare languages

or metaphors with one another, not with something beyond language

called "fact." .'

The only way to argue for this .cl~rn is to do wh~t ?hdosoph~r~ Idee

Goodman Putnam, and Davidson have done: exhIbIt the stenltty ()f

attempts t~ give a sense to phrases like "the way the world is" or "fitting

the facts." Such efforts can be supplemented by the work of philosophers

of s~i~~ce such as Kuhn and Hesse. These philosophers explain why

there is no way to explain the fact that a Galilean vocabulary enables .us

to make better predictions than an Aristotelian vocabulary by t~e clrum

that the book of nature is written in the language of mathematlCs.

These sorts of arguments by philosophers of language and of science

should be seen against the background of the work of intellectual historians:

historians who, like Hans Blumenberg, have tried to trace the

20

similarities and dissimilarities between the Age of Faith and the Age of

Reason. 11 These historians have made the point I mentioned earlier: The

. very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature - one which

the physicist or the poet may have glimpsed - is a remnant of the idea

that the world is a divine creation, the work of someon(!who had something

in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described

His own project. Only if we have some such picture in mind, some

picture of the universe as either itself a person or as created by a person,

can we make sense of the idea that the world has an "intrinsic nature."

For the cash value of that phrase is just that some vocabularies are better

representations of the world than others, as opposed to being better

tools for dealing with the world for one or another purpose.

To drop the idea of languages as representations, and to be thoroughly

Wittgensteinian in our approach to language, would be to de-divinize the

world. Only if we do that can we fully accept the argument I offered

earlier - the argument that since truth is a property of sentences, since

sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since

vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths. For as long as we

think that "the world" names something we ought to respect as well as

cope with, something personlike in that it has a preferred description of

itself, we shall insist that any philosophical account of truth save the

"intuition" that truth is "out there." This institution amounts to the

vague sense that it would be hybris on our part to abandon the traditional

language of "respect for fact" and "objectivity" - that it would be risky,

and blasphemous, not to see the scientist (or the philosopher, or the

poet, or somebody) as having a priestly function, as putting us in touch

with a realm which transcends the human.

On the view I am suggesting, the claim that an "adequate" philosophical

doctrine must make room for our intuitions is a reactionary slogan, one

which begs the question at hand. 12 For it is essential to my view that we

have no prelinguistic consciousness to which language needs to be adequate,

no deep sense of how things are which it is the duty of philosophers

to spell out in language. What is described as such a consciousness is

simply a disposition to use the language of our ancestors, to worship the

corpses of their metaphors.

 

Rorty, Contingency Irony and Solidarity

 

One can find a pdf for the entire book here:http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/rorty/rorty_CIS_full.pdf

Edited March 8, 2015 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Yes I have been quite interested in Ramsey recently though partly in his theorem in combinatorics. Anyway, it amazes me how you can't detect how sympathetic my view is to Ramsey's version of deflationary theory at least as I understand it.  It seems to me that what is being deflated or rejected is a full on metaphysical theory of truth that tries to make sense of something beyond the vegetarian notion of truth that I was talking about before and the simple unobjectionable notion of correspondence that is exemplified by accuracy of road maps. 

I am fine in saying that to assert  that "it is true that snow is white" is just to say that "snow is (indeed) white".  It is simply a matter of convenience that I talk about scientific "truths". But I mean nothing more than the network of assertions we can make with confidence as a result of scientific investigation. I need not say "science has discovered the truth that electrons are subject to the electromagnetic force". I only need to say that "science has discovered that electrons are subject to the electromagnetic force" or even just "electrons are  subject to the electromagnetic force" as long as I am prepared to exhibit the evidence etc.  I can say why we have been led to assert that "electrons are  subject to the electromagnetic force".  A fully metaphysical theory of truth is not needed I don't know what made you think I was preaching the old metaphysically problematic correspondence theory of truth.  I also don't need to posit a free floating god given notion of rationality external to humanity. It is much simpler than that.   

However, I do assert that there are electrons and atoms and I see nothing in the basic  strategy of deflationary approaches to truth (no capital T truth!) that commits me to conflating knowledge with existence? Do you? Do you think Ramsey would feel committed to the idea that there were no rocks or volcanoes before there were humans or that for purely philosophical (not quantum mechanical) reasons the act of observation brings things into existence? 

 

I wish you would go back to my post where I mention Newtonian mechanics and ulcers and all that and clearly identify what you wish to oppose.  Where was the irrationality (your words)? 

 

Actually, if you are so keen on the idea that I can't or shouldn't make judgments about rationality (presumably because you deny that there is such a thing) then exactly how can you accuse me of irrationality? What standard of rationality were you measuring me against??  hmmmm?

OK well then we are obviously closer than I thought.

 

I have a very full day tomorrow and have to get up early.  More to come on Ramsey.  It seemed you were defending a full-blown correspondence theory advocating correspondence with a world independent of our perceptions which we can never access - which would be metaphysics.

 

Incidentally I know I will get flak on that Rorty passage about God, but Mormons escape his analysis because our God is Human.

 

We live in a world socially constructed by humans, but for Mormons God himself- and all of us - are part of the Social Trinity- and the Patriarchal order, making us all "gods" in this context.

 

Some day we will grow up and be just like Dad.  But for now we are intraining, organizing our own little "worlds" of defined belief in the vocabularies we form.

[mfbukowski]

I just don't know how saying "Rocks existed before anyone knew anything about them" is useful.  There is no way to verify it and it seems pretty irrelevant to anything important unless it gives someone com fort.

 

I have no problem with giving comfort incidentally.  If one finds comfort in feeling that we are "getting closer and closer to Truth" in a scientific sense, to me, that is a statement of faith- a religious statement, and I certainly have no problem with statements made on faith.

 

Most of what I believe is "taken on faith".  And faith is perfectly "rational".   I probably just thought you were going all positivist on me and saying that "rational" = "Scientifically verifiable" which I have definite problems with

[Tarski]

I just don't know how saying "Rocks existed before anyone knew anything about them" is useful.  There is no way to verify it and it seems pretty irrelevant to anything important unless it gives someone com fort.

 

I have no problem with giving comfort incidentally.  If one finds comfort in feeling that we are "getting closer and closer to Truth" in a scientific sense, to me, that is a statement of faith- a religious statement, and I certainly have no problem with statements made on faith.

 

Most of what I believe is "taken on faith".  And faith is perfectly "rational".   I probably just thought you were going all positivist on me and saying that "rational" = "Scientifically verifiable" which I have definite problems with

 

It is useful because by allowing theoretical consitency over time was can explain past event in terms of affairs.  Just as fanciful example so I don't have to good read some actual archeology. Suppose that there is a puzzle about digestion of certain plants thought to be ingested by ancient bird like small dinosaurs of some kind. Suppose that we then find fossilizations that show small rocks in the are of the stomach that somehow help with the digestion puzzle.  Would you really be thinking that oh we don't even know that there were rocks back then?

Anyway, we certainly can know about those rocks. We can find them and date them. If the indirectness and the time span bothers you just keep in mind that when I find a rock in the backyard, it is still indirectly that I come to it since I only get a few sense data clues and there is even a nanosecond time problem since the finite travel time of light and nerve pathways means I come to know the rock as it was in the past. If indirectness and a temporal gap matters at philosophical level then its the same problem whether the gap is long or short. Perception isn't direct in the first place and there is a surprsing pausity of information coming into our sense organ. We have to fill in the gaps essentially. So, in some real sense we are percieving those ancient rocks.

But I think you would be amazed at how much we have learned about the prehistoric past. We can peek into that past in so many ways, We can tell what kind of flowers grew on the americas millions of years ago. We can find out what crops the ancient native americans were planting. We can learn about the migratory habits and dietart habit of ancient creatures.

 

We can find a certain rock that dates back to an ancient time and by certain means come to know underwhat conditions the rock formed. Then, having leaned that, we go on to conclude that there must have  once been countless similar rocks.

Perhaps we can later discover that those rocks were the very same rocks  being fashioned into weapons and cutting tools by early hominids.

 

I think a few months of actually doing archeolgy in the field would cure you of the idea that the entities of the past are beyond our powers to percieve.

[mfbukowski]

It is useful because by allowing theoretical consitency over time was can explain past event in terms of affairs.  Just as fanciful example so I don't have to good read some actual archeology. Suppose that there is a puzzle about digestion of certain plants thought to be ingested by ancient bird like small dinosaurs of some kind. Suppose that we then find fossilizations that show small rocks in the are of the stomach that somehow help with the digestion puzzle.  Would you really be thinking that oh we don't even know that there were rocks back then?

Anyway, we certainly can know about those rocks. We can find them and date them. If the indirectness and the time span bothers you just keep in mind that when I find a rock in the backyard, it is still indirectly that I come to it since I only get a few sense data clues and there is even a nanosecond time problem since the finite travel time of light and nerve pathways means I come to know the rock as it was in the past. If indirectness and a temporal gap matters at philosophical level then its the same problem whether the gap is long or short. Perception isn't direct in the first place and there is a surprsing pausity of information coming into our sense organ. We have to fill in the gaps essentially. So, in some real sense we are percieving those ancient rocks.

But I think you would be amazed at how much we have learned about the prehistoric past. We can peek into that past in so many ways, We can tell what kind of flowers grew on the americas millions of years ago. We can find out what crops the ancient native americans were planting. We can learn about the migratory habits and dietart habit of ancient creatures.

 

We can find a certain rock that dates back to an ancient time and by certain means come to know underwhat conditions the rock formed. Then, having leaned that, we go on to conclude that there must have  once been countless similar rocks.

Perhaps we can later discover that those rocks were the very same rocks  being fashioned into weapons and cutting tools by early hominids.

 

I think a few months of actually doing archeolgy in the field would cure you of the idea that the entities of the past are beyond our powers to percieve.

Now see, there you go again.  Metaphysics beyond language.  Evidence "Corresponds" to perceptions.  You just moved it to the past.  You are still talking about "existence".  Of course they "existed" it is just a trivial observation.  Every THING exists by definition. 

 

Perception is not the problem, the problem is that the story is still in language.  You just do not get this.  The past is just as "really" NOT "corresponding" to language as the present.  Old things are still things.  Did you read that Rorty piece at all?

 

Trust me, I am not going to be "cured" by evidence.  That is the whole point

 

Read this again and again until you are "cured" and call me in the morning

For as long as we

think that "the world" names something we ought to respect as well as

cope with, something personlike in that it has a preferred description of

itself, we shall insist that any philosophical account of truth save the

"intuition" that truth is "out there." This institution amounts to the

vague sense that it would be hybris on our part to abandon the traditional

language of "respect for fact" and "objectivity" - that it would be risky,

and blasphemous, not to see the scientist (or the philosopher, or the

poet, or somebody) as having a priestly function, as putting us in touch

with a realm which transcends the human.

 

Rocks don't transcend the human perception of them, or the "story" that they are from dinosaurs.

 

I don't doubt the scientific view that they WERE but that's not the point.  The point is about the nature of the view- not the data.

 

The story is an interpretation IN LANGUAGE of something beyond language.

Edited March 8, 2015 by mfbukowski