From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Sat Dec 06 2003 - 22:16:42 GMT
Matt
Well I think that the distinctions
are valid but not in SOM terms, so I want to change the terms.
Science is a specialist form of agreement, and within the confines
of agreeing the conceptual frameworks facts can be established
where as opinion/belief for me implies (in a non-specialist form of
agreement)
that we often don't have the same conceptual frameworks,
sure it is complex but it is a range of how stable/agreed upon the
conceptual frameworks are. In science there is more of an attempt to
stick to an agreed conceptual framework. I think we can probably
agree here if we can clarify how we are using our terms. However,
many scientists are SOM in their outlook, they would say that they
obtain objective knowledge of science, I have no sympathy with
their SOM outlook but do feel that there is more to their realism
than a post-modernist would accept. My compromise is to suggest
that within the conceptual frameowrk of science there is a place
for experimentation that is a form of listening to nature. Now as a
critically aware person I know how problemetic this is. There is no
language of nature for us to hear. However, we play a strange game.
Experiments clearly pose questions. They therefore require an answer.
Somehow something happens in an experiment where we go, aha! the
answer could have been a or b or c, but a result occurs and it is b.
This is not 'belief' it is a result, or an answer I suggest because it is
an event after a question. You know what a scientific fact is. You know what
a belief is.
I agree that the subjective/objective is not the way to distinguish them.
I associate my beliefs with what are the best ways of describing things that
I have come across. Facts are elements of occurence that are reported to me
within a conceptual framework quite often by other people who I accept as
using
the same conceptual framework. Hence we generally accept that WWII happened.
Laws are conceptual structures that allow us to generally predict the
'behaviour'
of certain simple and closed systems. I take opinion as being when 3 girls
are
discussing if they like the same actor and they can't agree. You can't work
out if they like different sorts of guys (conceptual framework) or have seen
different films (they've got different experiences of the actor in mind) or
what.
Take this example. You are shown some circles and squares and asked to
separate
them. Easy. Now you have just the circles. I ask you to confirm that there
are only circles.
You say 'sure' only circles. I now tell you that there are in 'fact' either
circles or balls to separate.
You now turn them over wit your hands and seperate the circles from the
balls. Now what is
a fact is that on investigation you can 'discover' which are balls and which
circles. Of course
you have to come up with theories about what are balls and what are circles
and how you tell
them apart (critical position) but then you need to examine your experiences
to confirm the
existence of balls and circles and how many of each the world contains, and
perhaps how heavy
balls are compared to circles, etc, and this is how science builds up its
interactive descriptions.
You can't do science without experiencing a world, and experiencing a world
is dependent on
language but also on the openness of the world, its openness to language.
This is the more complex
position developed by Heidegger as opposed to Rorty's rather bland
physicalism and causality,
as if understanding the world of our experience is to do with the way it
pushes us around. Most
of the time we can step aside. When it comes to knowledge its alot more to
do with us pushing
nature around. We discover a lot by how nature responds to our promptings.
Although we might push too hard one of these days. Darkly, as per Nietzsche,
man is only an
experiment. An experiment that will most probably go wrong.
When I reject Plato's rejection of the world of Becoming for the sake of
Being, I do not
want to throw out the world, how could we? But if there were no patterns
within the flux there
would never be anything like the sort of evolution that appears to have
occurred. The balance between
the dynamic and static aspects of the cosmos are incredibly well matched as
stated by the anthropic principle.
I could almost accept the theist arguments of Polkinghorne, but I find the
world sadly too dark and too full
of freedom. Somehow I think the creative power that perhaps acted on a
broader front to produce a cosmos
and then life, has had to shrink itself to something as small as an
individual to attain a higher level of possibility/freedom,
what is possible for the individual is perhaps our best/only hope.
My simplifications may leave holes in my case, but I await your response.
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 12:12 AM
Subject: Re: MD When is an interpretation not an interpretation?
> David,
>
> David said:
> Sorry Matt, the rock fits the bucket is not a belief it is a fact, a
critical realist accepts that facts only exist within a conceptual
framework, but when we test our theories we are dealing with the sort of
factual stuff that has made science the success it is.
>
> Matt:
> Hmm, strange that a Heideggerian and anti-SOMist should erect the
fact/opinion dichotomy. From the pragmatist viewpoint, Quine rid us of
that, and what we have left is a continuum of intersubjective agreement:
facts on one side (which lots of people agree with) and opinions on the
other (which perhaps only one person agrees with). The pragmatist point is
that the "fact" only exists as a belief (which Pirsig agrees with as in his
Ghost Speech on gravity in ZMM), which you try and go with, but I have no
idea why you would need to add "we are dealing with the sort of factual
stuff that has made science the success it is." It's pretty redundant to
say that after you've said that "facts" only exist within a conceptual
framework, which as far as I can tell is the same as saying it only exists
as a belief. The only way we can determine what the belief is dealing with,
either "factual" stuff or "opinion" stuff, is by consensus because we are
always dealing with "stuff" in "conce
> ptual frameworks", i.e. beliefs.
>
> I wouldn't normally agree to a dichotomy between "stuff" and "conceptual
frameworks" for Davidsonian reasons See his "On the Very Idea of a
Conceptual Scheme" and Rorty's first interpretation of it in his "The World
Well Lost". To the point, though, is that I think it is because you make a
dichotomy between "stuff" and "conceptual frameworks" that is causing our
differences. If that is the only difference between critical realists and
pragmatists, then I can only suggest reading the above essays which will try
and convince you that the scheme/content distinction (and vicariously the
fact/opinion distinction) is just as Platonically and SOMically tainted as
the subject/object distinction.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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