Messages

Also I apologize for the jackassery, I didn't meant to bother you up to that point

A little late for that now.  You may as well ride it down in flames.   

I guess this thing will follow me as long as I remain in PD.com... it is OK, I really enjoyed it

I guess, the discussion has already finshed for me, I'm just playing with semantics so I can learn more from your answers by applying unnecessary stress. After the definition there shouldn't have been any discussion on semantics.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE ACHIEVED "SOCIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT"!

Well, "learn more" not in a "sociological experiment" way, but in a "he has the pertinence and knowledge to explain things I understand differently" way... now that the patience part has ended, I'll simply stop

Take sources and statements. Use them via consistency to develop models/hypotheses of patterns/situations/events/etc. Test models with congruence with additional sources and statements. Rinse, repeat ad infinitum. Thats how we do historical sciences such as comparative biogeography, paleontology, geology, astronomy, systematics, and historical anthropology, also known as *gasp* history.

And if you use your sources in a respectful critical way and don't modify the information so that fits into your model, but rearrange the model so it explains the phenomenon you can attain objectivity.

The point should be, I'm using my terms in a very specific way. I have described and defined my terms clearly, and you obviously know what I mean. But right now, you aren't attacking my argument, you're playing with semantics even though there's no need because I clearly defined my terms. The reason isn't because you don't agree with it, it's because you don't LIKE it.

I guess, the discussion has already finshed for me, I'm just playing with semantics so I can learn more from your answers by applying unnecessary stress. After the definition there shouldn't have been any discussion on semantics.

What we have here is two people not communicating, because they aren't speaking the same language.  One is speaking English, and the other is speaking hippie.

maybe not hippie, just a little stubborn

I'd argue that in history there still is an objective reality (The Truth), it's just much harder to get at than in biology. But you can STILL test hypotheses, with congruence of data.

Yes, there is an objective reality (the facts, the processes and the phenomenons), but then we can only know it from the sources, which usually don't describe the event the same way... but most of the time we can't consider them to lie... just understood it differently... And then the ways they understood them are by itself part of the historical reality (and a really interesting part, if you ask me).

Ikelos, I think you're using "truth" to mean a person's deeply held beliefs or opinions. That's definitely not what I mean when I use it.

Not exactly... it is more something like how people understand reality based in their beliefs, opinions and cultural context (mentality and ideology), but I get your point here.

Bullshit.

Perspective, in a relativistic sense, is your position relative to the phenomena in question.  Can you opinion your way across the street?

maybe the problem is in how I use the words. I don't know, I'll need further definition or simply leave it for another time...  Dok, you are mean, I salute you

perspective can change according to opinion

Balls.  The truth is the truth.  

If you jump off a building, you're going to fall.  Period.  That's the truth.

Wow... I didn't saw that coming

Do you want me to answer?

I guess it's how you define "perform". The hole is there, but if you're not ready to put anything in it, the experience can be uncomfortable. I wouldn't call that performing.

And if you don't mind the other being comfortable and enjoying it, you could as well simply masturbate or fuck a hole in the wall.

The way I'm using The Truth is different than that. The Truth /is/ objective reality, and through recursive and reciprocal illumination we draw closer and closer as a sort of asymptote.

I assume you study/work in some of the natural sciences, I'm a history student the difference in how we understand The Truth could be easily explained by the demands of our respective fields of study.

As to your final statement in that, how can you know?  You seem so sure of yourself, as if you...possess The Truth?

Hell no, in fact I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and discussing about it. I'm just defending my current beliefs, that may just change in any moment in the future. I guess I can't really really know, but again, as you just said, we need to find patterns to develop knowledge. When studying the way people understand their world we find that what they consider The Truth isn't usually (in fact, almost never) the same that the person studying them considers to be The Truth. If then we decide that our understanding of The Truth is the correct one it is easy to disregard the way the other one sees the world (objective reality) and reacts to it as wrong. But then, if we decide that it is not wrong, but different and usefull within its own context (even if it is useless in our own) then, and just then, we can start to understand why they reacted like that to the situations they had to face. And right or wrong are moral categories, and I think we can agree that critical knowledge as we use it seeks to understand, not to judge.

So it is not The Truth, just a truth I think I can share with others that like me seek critical knowledge, simply because it allows an understanding of a greater quantity of phenomenons. Then, if we were talking about religious, mythical, daily knowledge, along with many others this thread would be completely different.

And yes, you can be two kinds of thinkers. A person can be one kind of thinker or two kinds of thinker, or maybe no kind of thinker at all. I would expect the majority of people don't meta-think enough to be more than one kind of thinker.

I guess not everyone can be the two kinds of thinkers, but I believe that to make a leap in the way we understand the world and in our knowledge about it there needs to be people who can be both kinds of thinker and don't need to rely just in the criticism of others. Just as you said, you can't be the both at the same time, that doesn't mean you can't be one and then the other and then again the first kind.

[You can be both, but not simultaneously]

So, let me see if I understand the whole thing correctly, if there is something missing then tell me.

Perhaps there is no enemy except solipsism, disinterest, complacency and ignorance.

Agreed

If the current epistemological premises do not work, they will find other epistemological premises which work. It goes back to what I said below that you agreed with. Science finds patterns, solves problems. It's true, I agree in many ways with Kuhnian philosophy of science as a problem solving enterprise in essence, and use strong inference as a guide to solving problems faster, and Popper as a guide on what to do when there is incongruence, BUT. There is still a requirement for a pattern, some sort of order to follow, and that's what leads the way to scientific discovery.

Order is needed so we can have knowledge. Agreed. Science as a hole can advance and evolve in order to solve problems. Agreed.

In other words, better to act as if everything is possible and work towards ultimate knowledge, even when complete ultimate knowledge isn't possible, than to believe it's not, when it is, and never reach it.

I believe Ultimate Knowledge isn't possible. But nevertheless agree that is worth the try to attain it in a critical and dinamic way...

True. You weren't doing that. But some people do.

Agree

I agree. That isn't what I was saying though. What I was saying is that by looking at history you can see a progression of knowledge regardless of the losses, especially in the recent times. This is where I get pragmatic, and say, it works, even if it needs refining.

Agree, progression of knowledge works even when it needs refining.

I might say, not that I understand it better, but I understand it more completely.

I didn't said better, just differently

And I would argue there is The Truth, objective reality, and it's by reciprocal illumination that we continually strip away the filters of culture and mind to see through to that. Even if we never reach it, the task is worthy.

I make a difference between The Truth and objective reality because what we consider to be The Truth is an interpretation of the objective reality, even in the most trustworthy cases. As I see it we will never strip away the cultural filters in knowledge completely, even when science has made a great advance in that enterprise.

Yes, science and The Truth are separate things. The Truth is objective reality, and science is a system by which to reach ever closer to objective reality, even if we never reach it. And I think that's a good thing, which is a moral statement and therefore an opinion, but so is everything else in philosophy.

Agree, it is a good thing to try to reach objective reality, it's also a moral statement.

I think Wilson definitely allows that as a possibility. Something he talks about frequently is the ocean of discovery as a metaphor, that most people hug the coasts but a few venture out into deeper waters. On the other hand, they have to be careful not to venture too far or the people won't be able to put into context what the explorers have to say. The poem Slanted Truths by Emily Dickenson comes to mind.

I would have to investigate his work and his context to make an argument. So I will take your word on it.

And that sort of person in your last statement would be an activist, not a scientist. You can be both, but not simultaneously.

So you can be both, there is no need to have "two kinds of thinkers".

And I don't want this thread to go off on a tangent about the impossibility of total objectivity due to monkey mind, because I've already covered that with reciprocal illumination, so I'll just leave it at that.

Agreed, there is no need to discuss that further.

Mwa ha ha ha!

and another...

  something is really really wrong with this thread, I couldn't even end listening to all the links....

[should]

1) Again, I dislike the words he uses, but it's true: disordered systems don't exist in continuity; they quickly fall apart. That's what he means.

I guess that is what he means, and that's how things work, as simple as that. The problem is what it involves in "those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder", when

2) "hostile forces" is a metaphor for criticism. He's not talking about physical violence, but verbal criticism of knowledge in the form of antithesis (ala Hegel's dialectic). And it's good to remember that when he talk's about "defending" it's in the Popperian sense, that scientific hypotheses need to be tested and refined/eliminated in order to progress in knowledge. That is of course the Popperian philosophy of science; Kuhnian philosophy depicts science as puzzle solving with very little hypothetico-deductive reasoning. And then there's Strong Inference, which like Popper rather than like Kuhn is a model of how science should work, not how it does on a regular basis. But I digress. Wilson very much follows Popper and Platt's Strong Inference and it shows in his statements.

I'm not talking about physical violence neither, just that "hostile forces" involves some kind of enemy. If "Wilson very much follows Popper and Platt's Strong Inference and it shows in his statements", which are models "of how science should work, not how it does on a regular basis"; then we are not discussing things as actually happen, but as should happen. If things were as they should and not as they are I probably wouldn't have any problem with what he is saying.

3) When he says "against all evidence", he means against all the combined evidence and testing that has resulted in our present understanding, and when he says "against all reason" he's referring to Popper again. He's allowing for change, just like every good scientist.

4) Again, "we will start over again" does not translate to "we are in charge". Wilson will seek to understand the universe even if everything he knows so far turns out to be wrong. He will "start over", with new basic hypotheses if needed. Again, the mark of a good scientist.

Start over again... even if it means to accept the limits in their current epistemological premises? He says yes and if he is talking about scientists in a general, present and future I can belive the premises will with time evolve (and in fact are probably evolving). If he talks about the scientists alive today, I hardly think most of them would accept it. The change is possible because people had made science a somewhat dinamic structure. But it is the people, not science per se

5) To your comment on "we must know", solipsism gets a person no where. While a solipsist sits in their impenetrable fortress, neither can they sally forth, so the scientist leaves them behind. My opinion is that people who are uninterested are also uninteresting. "We can't know, we won't know" aren't useful statements, to anyone.

I'm not saying we can, in some way, know. I'm saying that there is no MUST in that process that ensures that we WILL know.

Describing order (ie processes) is the only way we can gain knowledge about the universe. Order is pattern. Disorder is not pattern, and therefore cannot be described or utilized in any meaningful way unless we can put it in the context of order.

Agree

And again, if you want to throw up your hands and say we can't know anything at all, good for you, but it sounds very much like the cries of religious fundamentalists who can't accept evolution yet enjoy modern medicine.

Straw man fallacy

And given that this is coming at the end of a chapter on The Enlightenment, yes, of course he's going to take that thesis. To do otherwise, to say there is no order in the universe, that no reason can understand it, would be (IMO) stupid. While I disagree with utopianism, there is a progression in knowledge, either by reciprocal illumination or revolution. To think otherwise is to disregard human history, and makes you look foolish.

Progression of knowledge isn't something that happens just by itself. It is a complex phenomenon related to HUMAN processess such as comunication and the development of ideas. Knowledge can be lost, regained, refuted, etc. There is not such thing as an unavoidable advance of Reason, Logical Thinking, and Common Sense, as they are cultural related and depend on the people that use them.

In science, The Truth (cf. Dok Howl's dictionary) exists, and it is uncovered by reciprocal illumination, a cycle between induction and deduction. Induction provides the model pattern, and is supported by data (empirical facts) being consistant with that model pattern. Deduction provides further support or refutation by congruence or incongruence of additional data. Incongruence leads to additional questions, leading back to induction and a refining/revamping of the model pattern. This means scientific understanding takes a spiraling course downward towards The Truth, becoming tighter and tighter as knowledge progresses.

And finally, we arrive to the epistemology. At least in most historical studies it is considered that The Truth is, in fact, something that must be culturaly accepted. That is because even when there are objective conditions the way we understand them requires come kind of interpretation. That interpretation involves the context of the interpreter (in this case the scientist), that is previous knowledge, religious and philosophical beliefs, epistemological premises, the situation that the interpreter is living, the simbolic structures by which he communicates, economical structures, etc. There is no objective Ultimate Truth, in the end all we can understand is culturally defined, and the way we understand it is in constant evolution. For example, you probably understand evolution in a different way to which Darwin understanded it, even when it is basically the same theory and the same overall idea.

So yes, we can know, but the way we know it has validity in the context we are knowing it. Also Knowledge, Science and The Truth are distinct things, even when they are related. This kind of thing is what I find hard to believe that Wilson will accept. And I'm not even talking about post-modernism, I'm talking about ideas that have been developed since the 1930s by the first generation of the schools of Frankfurt and Annales, both of social studies. Mentality, in the Ginzburg's way of understanding it (as the unconcious, recurrent elements in a determinated way of understanding the world) are a long durée phenomenon, that evolve in a really slow way.

As I understand the fragment of the opening post Wilson is accepting the necessity of criticism, but don't seems to be willing to accept the possibility (the really really big possiblility) that it is not they (the scientist that are at this moment "important", or those who are likeminded) but new generations of scientist that will understand Science, Knowledge, and Truth in a different way that Wilson and his peers, the ones who will do the "start over". Maybe even some kind of post-modern scientist, who will create disorder in order to allow future generations to create a new order or maybe even to do both himself. This way disorder isn't a "hostile force" but an inside force that allows evolution of knowledge.

[I suggest there have always been two kinds of original thinkers, those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder.]

I agree that it was right of me not to polarize, but at what point does that predict your argument?

I think, I agree with you... I still don't agree with Wilson. And while my first answer was kind of rushed, here is why of my disagreement:

And to others concerned about the growing dissolution and irrelevance of the intelligentsia, which is indeed alarming, I suggest there have always been two kinds of original thinkers, those who upon viewing disorder try to create order, and those who upon encountering order try to protest it by creating disorder. The tension between the two is what drives learning forward.

Here he proposes two kinds of thinkers, the creators of order and the creators of disorder, so far so good.

It lifts us upward through a zigzagging trajectory of progress. And in the Darwinian contest of ideas, order always wins, because--simply--that is the way the real world works.

But here he states that "order always win", leaving to a secondary place disorder.

[...]We will always need post-modernists or their rebellious equivalents. For what better way to strengthen organized knowledge than continually to defend it from hostile forces?

There isn't a dialectic movement between order and disorder... disorder is a hostile force, a threat to knowledge

John Stewart Mill correctly noted that teacher and learner alike fall asleep at their posts when there is no enemy in the field. And if somehow, against all the evidence, against all reason,

Here he says something like "yeah, I'm really really sure I'm right and they are wrong"

the linchpin falls out and everything is reduced to epistemological confusion, we will find the courage to admit that the post-modernists were right, and in the best spirit of the Enlightenment, we will start over again.

And here "and EVEN if we are wrong, we (the creators of order) are the ones that will still be in charge."

Because, as the great mathematician David Hilbert once said, capturing so well that part of the human spirit expressed through the Enlightenment, Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know, we will know.

And here I ask... really we MUST know? really we WILL know?

While he talks about the relation between order and disorder as necesary to the creative proces, he is describing disorder as subsidiary to order. Also he is defending the XVIII century notion (he even says it...) that Reason will triumph, simply because it HAS TO triumph, giving the development of human knowledge some kind of "greater meaning".

[some]

Systems in continuity by emergent properties require some sort of order. Without at least some ordering of systems, they fall apart. In that sense I would propose it is truly impossible to have a fully disordered system, because if there was no order whatsoever at some level of emergence it would, as I said, fall apart and not exist. This is true from atoms up to ecology and societies. The idea that order always wins out is by the concept that systems possessing no order cease to exist shortly after they come into existence. Perpetual and complete unorderedness does not last long, it disintegrates, it never WAS integrated.

The flip side of this is that a universe with perpetual order would be static and fall to entropy without much happening. It's a discordian cliche that order and disorder are two sides of the same coin. Order provides a system with some stability, and disorder provides impulse for creativity and change. Wilson is saying this is true for change in knowledge as well, and to hear him use the above terms is refreshing and interesting coming from the world's premier biologist.

Agree, but the bold words are vital