From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 05 2004 - 22:11:46 GMT
Hi Anthony
Realy enjoyed this attachment. I agree with many of its points but think
it is too strongly anti-Rorty overall. The whole thing on Rorty's side is
really
about making room for the humanities in a science dominated culture.
It states:
"Providing a good argument that we do not and cannot accurately represent
the world as it is itself does not automatically entail, as Rorty assumes,
that we do not interface with one world that responds evidentially to our
webs of belief, such that we learn that some belief networks are better than
others. This poor inference is another species of the same
general post-foundational mistake that we have seen in another guise. That
we can never achieve either certainty or a secure resting point at any node
within a web of belief does not mean that some webs do not hang together
better than others. "
I am increasingly being drawn to the idea that science is a conversation
with nature. But as Rorty strongly points
out it is a conversation in which the scientists construct the language.
This fact results in all the assertions of
post-modernism. Clearly as nature does not speak the language of the
scientists we have to interpret the 'gestures'
that nature makes in response to our questions. And we find that the answers
we get depend on the questions we ask
and the interpretations we make of nature's 'gestures' of response. We most
interestingly find that the answers put
together for different questions are incompatible and we sometimes resolve
this by changing our language.
This is a very fragile relationship in terms of gaining any useful knowledge
about what is occuring in nature. Clearly
a great deal of science is merely description and the capacity to repeat
things -in fact this is rather technology.
Actual gains in knowledge are much rarer as are revisions in the language of
science that we are developing. Where Kuhn
says that different languages/approaches to nature by us mean that we are
living in different life-worlds he is 100% corrrect
not at all vague. This is a notion to be found in Nietzsche,Wittgenstein and
Heidegger. If you live with someone you are in
love with you are living in a very different world if you fall out of love.
Language both embellishes and creates the world,
or rather new worlds, the world from an MOQ perspective is very different
from the world from an SOM perspective.
Language is something new in the world and adds to the world and reveals and
uncovers new worlds, how new are these worlds? well they clearly exist as
possible worlds, new language/perspectives make potential worlds into actual
worlds.
So I am with Rorty all the way up to a certain point but then I agree with
your posting that we can make make good choices
about which language games seem to be working well and those in which nature
seems to give the most answers that hang
together and make sense, but such a fragile exercise of questioning. You've
got to find the right questions and you've got to make the right sense of
the answers. (My position is very-critical realist, and the
realist-conversation with nature stuff makes a lot more sense of why
sciences does make some progress, unlike Rorty's position. This is the
position taken by a number
of scientists e.g. Polkinghorne.) Hence Nietzsche's truth is like seducing a
woman.
regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: <ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 4:19 AM
Subject: MD Measuring values
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