On 26 May 2017 2:26 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
On 26/05/2017 9:11 am, David Nyman wrote: On 25 May 2017 23:18, "Brent Meeker" < <meeke...@verizon.net> meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: I have told you my theory of virtuous circular explanations. "Invoke" is a pejorative attribution. The physical universe is an *inference *to explain appearances (and a very successful one at that). Vocabulary. The point is, assuming mechanism (and please do tell me if you're reasoning in a different theory), that the inference is to a particular *selection* of computations from the computational plenitude. And why is that? Because they 'explain' the appearances. But do they really? Are those computations - in and of themselves - really capable of 'explaining' why or how they, and no others, come to be uniquely selected for our delectation? Are they really capable of 'explaining' why or how those selfsame appearances come to be present to us? I think you and Brent are using different notions of "explanation". As I understand your (David's) position, it is a notion of "explanation" originating with Plato: Plato's theory of Forms offered at the same time both a systematic explanation of things and also a connected epistemology of explanation. (Summaries from Jonathan Cohen in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy.) In other words, the Platonic ideal is that "Ontology precedes epistemology", to vary Brent's slogan. In the case of mechanism, the ontology is the natural numbers (plus arithmetic) and for an explanation to be acceptable, everything has to follow with the force of logical necessity from this ontology. As I understand Brent's position (and that is essentially the same as my position), his concept of "explanation" follows the tradition of British empirical philosophy, stemming from Bacon, through Hume, to Russell and others. In this tradition, to explain an observed characteristic is to show its relationship to a law in accordance with which the characteristic occurs or can be made to occur, and there is a hierarchy of such laws -- the more comprehensive laws are deemed more probable. This leads to the dominant model for explanation in the natural sciences, which requires the citation of one or more laws which, when conjoined with the statement of relevant facts, entail the occurrence of the phenomenon or uniformity that is to be explained. This does not rely on any assumed ontology; hence, "Epistemology precedes ontology". Interesting analysis Bruce. However, I'm not sure if I can follow you on all points. I think you're right that in a strictly pragmatic sense epistemology does indeed precede ontology in that observation provides data on behalf of theory. But as Popper points out, what counts as data is already theory-dependent. And the reductive aspect of theory is itself an implicitly ontological commitment. So if a hierarchy of laws were to imply mutually inconsistent ontological commitments it would be to that extent incomplete and unsatisfactory. Indeed the holy grail of (Aristotelian?) science is a hierarchical "Theory of Everything" that is, in precisely this sense, ontologically consistent "bottom up all the way down", if you'll permit me a slogan of my own. For these reasons I can't accept that your distinction between Platonic and Aristotelian modes of explanation has much real force. In practice, *any* effective mode of explanation must inexorably be constrained by its fundamental ontological commitments, on pain of inconsistency. If these are unclear, then part of the explanation is to make them explicit, on pain of obscurantism. And finally of course to count as an explanation it must be susceptible of constraint by evidence, on pain of pusillanimity. David Wherever we want to derive a technology from scientific knowledge, we shall need to know what causes a desired effect. So we need to distinguish between different levels of explanation, in that while, for example, the disappearance of a patient's infection may be causally explained by his antibiotic injection, the operation of that causal process is in its turn to be explained by correlational laws of biochemistry. Hence, the understanding of consciousness in any effective way will be linked to the creation of effective AI. This is the paradigm of current scientific practice. Sure, as Bruno says, this stems ultimately from an Aristotelian approach to science rather than the Platonic approach. But the history of Western thought has shown the scientific, or Aristotelian, approach to have been overwhelmingly more successful, both in developing technology and in reaching understanding of the nature of reality. Bruce Or is this really just the latest case of "If I can't see it, it doesn't exist?" Perhaps you will be content to say that whatever those computations are capable of explaining sets the absolute limit of what we can ask in explanation. But if that's the way it is, I can't help being put in mind of that old huntsman John Peel, who would assert, with a remarkable satisfaction in the virtue of invincible ignorance, "What I don't know ain't knowledge." David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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