Technical Matters - The End.
Doc, there is no confusion in my account. Actually, I do not say anything new. This is what everyone says about Logical Positivism : that it cannot even give a proper account of what is universally counted as science. Look about what I found in an undergrad philosophy term paper gleaned on the internet :
Though the verification principle was formulated as scientific method it actually rules out much of modern science. [...] Scientific theories are not verifiable: they always go beyond their experiential base, otherwise they would be useless. At most they are falsifiable. Thus Karl Popper. Indeed even this is naïve.
You say :
To which Wittgenstein answers :There is no logical defect in science, otherwise the outcome of an experiment could never falsify any theory.
This was our paradox : no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. (PI 201)Replace 'course of action' with 'experiment' and 'rule' with 'theory'. What do you get ? R. Foeglin (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, already cited) puts it in an even more straightforward manner :
Wittgenstein sometimes seems to condone contradictions - or at least not to take their threat with the seriousness that others do. I think that this is right. Appreciating why exhibits the depth of his critique of traditional ways of doing philosophy.Well, what all this is supposed to mean ? Something very simple, that the Galileo example has just shown once more; that contradictions are not a problem per se. We can live with them very well and even do physics and the other sciences. Indeed, as we cannot know things in themselves (Kant), our theories never coincide with experiment perfectly and therefore, there is always some contradiction somewhere. Therefore, no experiment outcome ever falsify a theory by itself. We choose to pronounce that it does. Or we choose not to. This is basically what Popper, Kuhn, and all the recent advances in Socioogical Epistemolgy have shown.
How is it that the sky does not fall on our heads when we say contradictions are acceptable in science ? Because it is merely to Logic that they are repellent, not to science itself. As you point out, science deals in 'reasonable approximations' which are always more or less accurate. But classical logic is two-valued, true or false. This black and white approach just does not fit a scientific practice that is always in some shade of grey. And this has nothing to do with a particular theory being the Theory of Everything or not. Having one would not mean having all things in white all of a sudden, just that they would all be covered with grey paint coming from a single pot. What have we shown ? not much actually. Just that classical logic is not an adequate tool to describe scientific practice because it is way too crude. Few people are still convinced of the contrary nowadays.
That said, I cannot help but feel awe at this renewed display of the power of 'the picture that holds you captive', as Wittgenstein would put it. You have practiced science yourself but faced with a choice between logic and science, you choose to blame science 'because nature is not contradictory'. You even come close to saying that Galileo, the father of modern physics, was an incompetent physicist : 'Galileo's T is false because it does not predict the experimental results'. Oh Boy !
You are asking yourself where my confusion may lie. Well, I think I see where yours is. When you say 'nature is not contradictory', I cannot help thinking 'how do you know ?' But this not even the main problem. Again, it lies in our use of language and the way it misleads us. The word 'contradictory' normally applies to human artefacts like sentences, theories, commands. Things that are all part of the generic category we call 'language'. But the word 'nature' does not belong to this category. We use it to designate the things language is about but not language itself. So what sense does it make to apply the adjective 'contradictory' to it ? What do you get when you apply a word to another that lies outside its domain of applicability ? A statement like 'Love is green'. Some would call that poetry. Others would be less kind.
The question is now why you feel this compelling need to express yourself poetically about nature and logic ? It is actually the only question that matters to me. Answering it is the very purpose of this Blog. But it is not a technical question, so I will leave it for a later post.
posted by fi11222 @ 11:16 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Jeepers, doc and Nicholas, axiologist feels that he's
stumbled into that famous meeting between Alice and
Humpty Dumpty where Humpty tells Alice the question is
not what the words mean but rather who is to be master.
Nicholas accuses doc of poetry, but Wittgenstain wrote that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a
form of poetry" (CULTURE AND VALUE). But the "poet"(?)
Samuel Beckett wrote: "If the subject of my novels
could be expressed in philosophical terms, I would have
had no reason to write those novels." Carnap tells us
that if we must commit poetry (metaphysics), we should
try Nietzsche's THUS SPAKE ZARATHRUSTRA. Mallarme writes that "a poet is one who seeks solitude to sculpture his own tomb", and R. P. Blackmur tells us
that "poetry gives us the lie we need to remain alive."
Delbruck tells us that everyone thinks he's immortal to avoid anxiety. And what is anxiety: "All anxiety is
fear of death."--Wilhelm Fliess. doc tells us that LP
was attacked because it threatened the jobs of the metaphysicians. This introduces value into the equation. Some jobs are good; others are not. But after this demolition is over, what has LP constructed
to replace it? Perhaps that's the next ("positive"?)
task of LP. there's a good paper on the internet explaining how Heidegger (non-LP) stripped ethics from phronesis and started down the road to Fascism. One
might even make the case that Hans Nelbock's rejected
paper did not really conflict with the views of Moritz
Schlick (who rejected the paper). Obviously, one would
have to read the paper to verify this. Chase and others,
in effect, accuse LP of undermining ethics. doc seems
to disagree. The Heidegger paper is "There Must Be
Some Architectonic" (subtitle: 'Heidegger and Aristotle on the Politics of "Phronesis"').
Nicholas is perhaps unfair to both poetry and especially
science in his criticism of the statement "Love is green." Not only can "love" be green, but "blue" can
be red. Here's how: Certain synesthesiacs perceive numbers as having color. Say one of them sees the number 2 as having a green color. Fill a white page
with random numbers that the synesthesiac perceives normally (black). Place numerous 2's among the other
numbers. Have the 2's spell out the word "love".
Now hook a subject's brain up to a fMRI or PET scan and
show him or her the word BLUE colored red. Ask the subject what color the word is, and there will frequently be a delay in the brain's response becaue
it's haveing a debate with itself.
doc and Nicholas, I still think we need to focus more on
constructing an ethics/exiology--perhaps beginning by
resolving the ethical conflict between Plato's SYMPOSIUM
and Aristotle's NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS.
Some of this reminds me of what the Germans referred to
as "das Wissenschaft uber nicht das Wissenswerten":
knowledge (or belief) about that which isn't worth
knowing (or believing) about.
Perhaps Wittgenstein should have said: "What should be
said should be said clearly" rather than "What can be
said can be said clearly." "Should" is a value choice.
"If you tell a man he will be hanged in a fortnight,
it concentrates his mind wonderfully."--Samuel Johnson
Hi Nicolas,
A lot of people do say that LP cannot give a proper account of science. However, I think they are incorrect. I am perfectly happy with my current formulation of LP. Certainly, early formulations of LP were flawed. Verification was replaced by falsification. Deductive theories of science were replaced by inductive ones. My feeling is that the LP project was fundamentally correct, but there was a lack of motivation to complete the project (this, in due course, will bring us to the topic of motivation which you wish to explore further).
I reiterate, there is no contradiction in my formulation of science. Science is a search for models based on constraints from empirical fact. There are an infinite number of models consistent with a finite set of empirical facts, and we have no systematic way to efficiently and exhaustively search for solutions. As a consequence, scientists debate about which models deserve the most study. Furthermore, devising and evaluating new models is expensive, so extending existing models is often cheaper than building completely new ones. In other words, "loyalty" to an existing successful theory is a means to preserve investments in scientific research. Eventually, a theory will become unable to compete for the attention of the scientific community and will be superceded. Of course, one can study the psychology of the community or of individuals who make these decisions (e.g., Kuhn, Quine). Nonetheless, loyalty to a theory is not as strong as belief, and is not at all the same as logical assertion.
You assail my formulation by saying that it is not based on simple two-valued logic. On that issue, my understanding is that my mathematical formulation of science is no less logically valid than a crude and oversimplified method based on two-valued logic. Russell's Principia Mathematical demonstrated the logical underpinnings of the mathematics of real numbers, and it is generally accepted that logic provides the framework for all of mathematics.
Now a break to discuss motivations...
doctor(logic)
First, I must compliment axiologist on his knowledge of philosophical works. Unfortunately for me, it will probably take me several weeks of research to place his recent postings into context! I have a lot of reading to do.
Meanwhile, I'll fire the first broadside in the motivation discussion. Here's what I feel (i.e., don't parse this for LP consistency because it is driven largely by emotion).
To humans, life is all about pain and pleasure. We want to minimize pain more than we want to maximize pleasure. Pain and the stress caused by anticipation of pain are to be avoided.
Certainty is more desirable than uncertainty, especially where pain is concerned. Some of us want certainty through logic, mathematics and science. Others want certainty through faith.
People can always find relief in faith, at least temporarily. They simply pretend that some theory is true independent of any facts or empirical evidence. If they pretend hard enough, they can forget empirical facts altogether and wallow in a self-induced trance.
Now, the universe really doesn't care what happens to us. There is no authority to say that self-delusion isn't the best way to make us happy.
I personally feel that self-delusion is no better than drug-induced delusion (See Marx!). If a man is alone in a totally helpless situation that will result in extreme suffering, who would deny him an easy way out?
However, the equation changes when you apply emotion to people you care about. Who would be indifferent to a loved one's faith-based decision to forego a simple medical procedure that would eliminate suffering and save his or her life?
Likewise, when people rely on self-delusion, they are setting up me, my loved ones, themselves and their loved ones for suffering.
Furthermore, maintaining self-delusion is not free. To maintain the illusion, you must suppress scientific reality. This is done by maintaining absolutes that are out of bounds for reasoning and study. Religions do this all the time.
Note that faith is not the same as being stubborn. I can stubbornly refuse to kill someone despite knowing that there is no absolute system of ethics. I can decide to sacrifice my well-being to save someone else. Some would say that acting selflessly with knowledge that you are doing so is the only true altruism. Acting selflessly when you are deluded about the outcome (e.g., an afterlife) is not selfless intent.
Finally, I would say that a life is unfulfilled when it refuses to even see the universe with all its faculties (including reason). If the universe is cold and uncaring, so be it. Let us build a world we want to live in with the components the universe gives us.
doctor(logic)
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