SUO: Re: Question about Example in KR Book
Jay,
I just covered a lot of this in my response to Tom, but
you raise some other points that are worth discussing.
> So, there is no problem involved in justifying inductions,
> then? Are you perhaps a vindicationalist -- induction is
> as induction does?
Attacking induction by itself is the strawman because
induction can only describe past observations. What is
significant makes scientific methodology dependable is
testing by successful predictions about the future.
> Your car example is that of an unconscious process, not
> a rational reconstruction; while it was Hume who emphasized
> the role of habit in the belief-forming processes. His challenge
> lay in asking if there was anything more than habit involved
> in belief formation which could be _rationally_ (and
> consciously, explicitly) justified.
My point is that the unconscious beliefs that people routinely
trust their lives to are the ultimate foundation. In any
society, the beliefs that are never consciously questioned
are always the most important ones. People don't being to
question or "rationalize" their beliefs until they begin
to doubt them.
Having said that, I also believe that a rational analysis of
one's beliefs is important for making progress toward newer,
perhaps better beliefs. But that doesn't deny the fact that
the most important beliefs in anyone's life are the unconscious
ones that nobody would dream of doubting.
That exposes is the fundamental flaw in Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum".
The existence of the world is a phony issue that neither Descartes
nor his readers would ever seriously doubt. The result was a
fundamentally flawed rationalization: what Descartes really doubted
was not the existence of the world, but the existence of God.
So he created a roundabout pretence that he was trying to justify
a belief in the world by calling upon a belief in God as a
foundation for what he never doubted at all.
> What is an 'unreal' aspect of the world, and when would a
> hypothesis reflect that? What would disconfirm a hypothesis?
It's very easy to disconfirm a hypothesis. Just one incorrect
prediction is sufficient to show that it is false.
> ... Your last clause is interesting. You propose to derive or
> to support in some sense, metaphysical theses from science?
> I'd like to see a sketch of that argument.
Not from any scientific theory, but from scientific methodology.
The assumption that scientific methodology can produce realiable
theories about reality is a metaphysical statement. I call it
moderate realism. Tom calls it moderate nominalism. But whatever
you call it, it is metaphysics.
> I'm also not too happy with your notion of 'unknown natures' --
> the 'something, I know not what, but it's real, damnit, whatever
> it is'. I don't think that's quite what nuclear scientists,
> for example, are thinking when they're at work. I hope not :)
That most certainly is what nuclear scientists are thinking when
they work. They don't know what an electron really *is*, and they
are the first to admit it. But they do believe that there is
something in reality that is accurately characterized by their
theories of electrons within the limits of experimental error.
The more recent work on string theory, for example, illustrates
that point very nicely. It hypothesizes an 11-dimensional universe
in which things we call electrons are "really" vibrating strings.
That doesn't invalidate the previous theories, but it digs down
to a deeper level that explains electrons in terms of strings.
But then it introduces another 7 dimensions that are more obscure
than anything else that anyone has ever imagined.
> I doubt that many contemporary scientists would want to maintain
> that the phlogiston theory referred (in any interesting way) to
> something real, and still does, to boot.
In most of the statements of phlogiston theory, you can interpret
phlogiston as hydrogen and "dephlogisticated air" as oxygen.
In fact, James Watt proposed that water was a combination of
phlogiston and dephlogisticated air. In that sense, phlogiston
theory was an important step toward the modern theory. See
the following bit of history:
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/sci/history/AHistoryofScienceVolumeIV/chap5.html
A History of Science Volume IV - Part III
> However, I think that the point of those questioning the reality
> of physical entities like atoms, is to ask for some epistemological
> warrant for accepting them. And surely that is a serious question,
> since how are we supposed to distinguish atoms from, say, quiffles
> (something I just made up, but which are the tiny cubes which
> comprise all matter).
I'm all in favor of questioning and theorizing, since that's what I
do best. But what I have said is that the ultimate basis for all
our beliefs is not some blue sky theory that we have just invented,
but those unquestioned, unconscious beliefs that we are willing to
stake our lives on.
I remember a friend of mine in college who was studying aeronautical
engineering. He said that when he learned how airplanes were designed,
he became afraid of flying.
Bottom line: Theories don't make your beliefs more believable --
they make them more precisely and more accurately doubtable.
John