tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post1697892126702319100..comments2015-02-26T15:42:28.753-06:00Comments on Words, Ideas, and Things: Scientific Method in Practice (Pt. 6)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-40022852063440898892011-08-02T09:11:14.749-05:002011-08-02T09:11:14.749-05:00On second thought, I find that science doesn't...On second thought, I find that science doesn't quite presuppose Order and Comprehension. Rather, it hopes for them. It supposes variants of them tentatively, as hypotheses, rather than as presuppositions. <br /><br />For a fuller explanation, I wrote a post.<br /><br />http://thebiganswers.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/the-pressupositions-of-science/<br /><br />Yairיאיר רזקhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15798134654972572485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-87755751287440164592011-07-26T15:01:47.771-05:002011-07-26T15:01:47.771-05:00The idea that "science's presuppositions ...The idea that "science's presuppositions do not individuate uniquely" is... interesting. I can't see how it is true, fundamentally. I can see better or worse formulations and minor variants, but basically it appears to me that their essence is pretty much the same in either case. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I certainly haven't seen any proper discussion of this issue.<br /><br />As to whether any presuppositions are needed beyond the "Comprehensive" one, well, I can't see any per se, but one deep presupposition that is raised explicitly in physics is that the past happened in a "reasonable" way. This is not the same thing as assuming that it was Ordered. What I'm thinking of here is the idea of Boltzmann brains, in the context of cosmology and the second law of thermodynamics.<br /><br />You also need to reject more than just "radical" skepticism. You need, for example, to willingly extend the demand for the maintainance of the Order science reveals to far more than the "very mundane starting point" or common sense. It isn't trivial to assume that life didn't begin with a poof of magic by God a few thousand years ago, or that Israel suffered draught because of climatology instead of God's wrath. These extensions go far beyond mere "common sense" or the mundane starting point.<br /><br />Yairיאיר רזקhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15798134654972572485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-2070983776517067092011-07-22T08:02:59.544-05:002011-07-22T08:02:59.544-05:00Yair,
The 'fundamental assumption' is cal...Yair,<br /><br />The 'fundamental assumption' is called 'Science's Comprehensive Presupposition' by Gauch and he writes that "science's presuppositions do not individuate uniquely" (p. 138). So there would be a variety of ways to unpack the implications here.<br /><br />I'm more interested in knowing whether science requires any presuppositions that are independent of the comprehensive one, than arguing about how best to break it down. <br /><br />In broad strokes, the idea is that science can ignore debates about radical skepticism from philosophy and build knowledge about the world from a very mundane starting point.Garren Hochstetlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09689703486134811102noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-30755476220304076772011-07-21T06:04:14.640-05:002011-07-21T06:04:14.640-05:00Please unpack the "Fundamental Assumption&quo...Please unpack the "Fundamental Assumption". It appears to me from your post that it is really a host of assumptions - is this Gauch's position? I would enumerate the ones you raised as:<br /><br />1. Realism: There is a Reality that is independent of our beliefs about it. <br /><br />2. Rationality: The proper way to evaluate Truth about Reality is by Reason and logic.<br /><br />3. Reliabilism: Our senses are Reliable, in the sense that they reliably produce similar experiences/sensations for similar data.<br /><br />4. Internalism: Our memories of our experiences and the stability and rationality of our mental processing are generally reliable.<br /><br />5. Orderliness/Externalism: There are regularities in the world.<br /><br />and putting it all together,<br /><br />6. Comprehensibility (The Fundamental Assumption): The application of Reason by our Internal reasoning to the Reliable data our senses produce from the Orderly Reality can increase our knowledge of truth about [i.e. correspondence of our beliefs with] Reality.<br /><br />The above can be put more accurately. Note in particular that assumptions 2 and 3, at least, make a "Local Time & Causation" assumption - we are assuming that we're discussing the the Reason of an agent from within a causal world: the application of Reason to a stream of causal data in time. It is also not clear to me whether we can really make do without an explicit "Realism" assumption - the assumption that our "Folk Physics" is close-enough to the Truth so that e.g. notepads really do preserve what's written on them.<br /><br />The gist of my comment is that there isn't really just <b>one</b> Fundamental Assumption. There are a whole host of such assumptions, and I'm disappointed Gauach didn't elucidate them more.<br /><br />Also, I don't think science really assumes that the world is Orderly; it just assumed there are *some* regularities, and tries to establish them and build on that.<br /><br />I likewise don't think science assumes that the world is Comprehensible; it just assumes that to the extent that it is, the Scientific Method is the way to obtain that comprehension.<br /><br />Yairיאיר רזקhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15798134654972572485noreply@blogger.com