Re: The greatest scientific philosopher of all time

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 16:54:33 +1000, in talk.origins , John Wilkins
<john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> in <diic0q$vai$5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>> John Wilkins wrote:
>>

[snip]


>>>He held that reasoning worked to the extent that it was like a natural
>>>selection process ("creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a
>>>pathetic, but praiseworthy, tendency to die before reproducing their kind")
>>>and that we had a workable epistemic "quality space" because of our past
>>>evolution.
>>
>>
>> Yes, I think this one is really nice. If there really is a true and
>> proper epistemology that lies at the foundation of the universe, then
>> according to the evolution paradigm it only makes sense that we should
>> have evolved into becoming closer and closer to that notion.
>
>Problem with this (now called "evolutionary epistemology") is that evolution
>can lead you into local optima that are globally suboptimal, that selection
>doesn't work on some fitness landscapes, and that what happened in the past
>cannot be regarded as a good guide to the future (the problem of induction
>isn't overcome).

We are all on the same page here since my response to the above, like
both yours and Stephen's below, was about "TRUTH". My solution to the
problem of induction is to abandon "TRUTH" as achievable and, so,
abandon it as a goal. Hume has removed the philosophic support for
induction, so let it go. Just pick it up again as you leave the
philosophy room. The future is not guaranteed to be like the past, it
is even guaranteed to be somewhat different from the past, but the way
to bet is that the future is pretty damn close to the past.

>> In my view, finding true epistemology is not a matter of getting the
>> definitions right, but of looking into our inner selves as to what we
>> really think truth really is. Well, its our best hope of finding it,
>> anyway. And evolution suggests that this is probably a good approach,
>> or at least as good an approach as we will ever find.
>
>Truth is in the interaction of knowing subjects with the objective world -
>when you can do things reliably, then you can call it "true".

[snip]

>>>He argued that a theory cannot be falsified in isolation.
>>>If you get a bad experimental result, then you have falsified not the theory,
>>>but the theory plus all other theories employed, and all technical
>>>methodologies, observations and other bits and pieces. In short, you falsify
>>>*something* but you don't know what. This is known as the Duhem-Quine
>>>counterargument to Popper.
>>
>> I really love this one, because it seems so reminiscent of my recent
>> discussion with John Harshman on his use of the chi squared test to
>> decide which apes are more closely related.
>>
>>>Quine held that theories exist in holistic webs of belief (a book published by
>>>that title) and that the entire corpus evolved by a process of something akin
>>>to selection and accommodation over the entire corpus.
>>
>> That one seems incomprehensible to me.
>
>Read The Web of Belief by him and a student of his, Ullian. It's pretty
>accessible to nonspecialists.

(Adding the book to my list.) Seems to make sense to me and fits with
my notion of history. Once we toss out the Great Man theory and all of
its vestiges, we realize that all steps in (human) history, not just
science, are tiny ones. And the whole web, expanding the metaphor a
bit, is moving as once. Einstein could do his work because hundreds of
people did work on accurate clocks and telescopes and so on. Each of
those steps is a touch of an (expanded or implemented) theory of how
things work.
[snip]


--
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