Ben, Garys, list,
seems i took some things down the wrong pipe (see my post to Gary).
There is not much in what you say that I'd disagree with. But there is
still the truth-problem, but maybe this is just a problem of labeling.
For me truth has no little errorbars, but i'm apodictic here like "god
doesn't throw dices". What is true now, can't be false later. Yes, truth
is not changeable. And we don't have this truth.
But by introducing the "distincton between opinion and true opinion" it
seems to me you are trying to reintroduce truth under a new flag.
Something is true or not true, do we know with absolute certainty that
something is true or not true? No, we can't and therefore you have to
introduce the errorbars. But errorbars and truth don't fit together,
something is true or not and not possibly-maybe-a-little
-less-than-true. Samples can have errorbars but not truth and hence true
opinion as something actual existent doesn't seem sound to me.
This Foucault quote shows the paradox "Mendel said the truth but he
wasn't within the biological truth of his time" you are already
adressing. Now exchange Mendel with Newton. Is Newtons mechanics true or
false? Hmm, i would say neither, it works under certain circumstances.
So yes, inquiry can be succesful! In this little example we had three
meanings of truth: as actual opinion, truth as better viable opinion and
truth as true opinion at the end of all time.
That's the reason why i wouldn't use truth and opinion as opposites. I
belief the better distinction is knowledge and opinion like the greece
doxa and episteme. Important is wether you can give a sound
justification for your belief or not. Knowledge is justified belief and
opinion unjustified belief.
Is there much difference between what you and i said except not using
the word "truth"?
Best
Stefan
P.S.: Introducing the errorbars into this topic is problematic, because
it assumes bayesian statistics. But yes it is important to argue for the
reasonableness of a knowledge claim and to point at possible
shortcomings but this just means to justify.
Stefan, Gary R., Gary F., list,
I'm not sure how much there is in what you say that I'd disagree with.
I'd point out that I wasn't attempting to describe social influences
on research in real depth, but just to indicate that I believe that
they exist and that I had given them at least a little thought.
"Light pseudo-hallucinatory fun" was just my way of referring to
fanciful fun in the mind. I wasn't jumping to the end of "the long
run" or of sufficient investigation except in that sense in which
every one of us does in asserting a proposition, making a declarative
statement. To assert a proposition is to say that anybody who _/were/_
to investigate it far enough _/would/_ find it to be true. Note the
conditional modal 'would' as per Peirce's repeated formulation of
truth as the end of inquiry.
All this idea of truth as _/only/_ at the end of the longest run, as
attainable _/only/_ by a perfect sign incorporating all possible
perspectives at the end of all times, goes against Peirce's idea that
inquiry can succeed without taking forever or almost forever. When you
think that you've reached the truth about something, then you think
that your actual opinion coincides with the final opinion that would
be reached by sufficient investigation. That final opinion to which
sufficient research would be destined is not affected by any person's
or group's actual opinion. The idea of the final opinion is a way of
defining truth pragmatically in relation to investigation. You can't
have absolute theoretical certainty that your actual opinion coincides
with the final opinion that would be reached; but you can have strong
reasons to think that it does. But even then, being scientifically
minded, you would not _/define/_ the truth as yours or anybody's
actual opinion.
Now, statisticians add error bars to their graphs. One way, pointed
out by Peirce, to close a suspected gap between actual opinion and the
ideal final opinion is for one's actual opinion to include a
confession of its own possible error, its being merely plausible, or
likely, or whatever, so that, in asserting your opinion, you're
asserting that anybody who were to investigate far enough would find
it likely that such-and-such is the case; or even that anybody who
were to investigate far enough would find it likely that anybody who
were to investigate far enough would find it likely that such-&-such
is the case.
The proposition that I asserted was that conflating the ideas of truth
and opinion, making them the same thing in the mind, leads, like by
having a drink or a toke or both, to fanciful fun in the mind, the
thought of somehow having one's cake and eating it too, for example,
some idea of people's conflicting opinions/truths as involving
conflicting realities, various actual worlds, somehow intersecting,
maybe in a somewhat magical way like in an old _Dr. Strange_ comic
book. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe some people never get any pleasurable
sensation out of it at all.
The distinction between opinion and truth, which can also be
formulated as the distincton between opinion and true opinion, is one
that Peirce certainly held with; he strongly opposed James's idea of
changeable truths. Peirce held that opinions, propositions, etc., can
be true and can be false. He did not believe that truths can be false.
Sometimes it is hard to arrive at a firm conclusion about which
opinion is true, and sometimes something that one firmly believed
turns out false, it feels as if one's truth turned out to be false. As
Robert Creeley wrote somewhere, "What I knew / wasn't true". That
doesn't make the truth-opinion distinction spurious. But there won't
be a 'constructive' definition of truth from philosophy that will
empower philosophy to hand out warrants of truth, validity, soundness,
etc., to particular conclusions claimed by researchers in the special
sciences.
I certainly agree that it is good to approach the object from multiple
perspectives. The idea of convergence is not just the idea of one
person approaching every more closely to the truth from a single
direction, but also of various researchers converging from various
starting points (and zigzagging too) till things fit together like in
a crossword puzzle, as Haack said.
Best, Ben
On 9/24/2014 8:36 AM, sb wrote:
Ben, Gary, R., Gary F.,
i've got to start from the end of your post. You speak of the society
"rewarding diciplines" and this sheds a light on your idea of
sociology in this discussion. Your sociology consists of conscious
actors who reward, strive for power, wealth or status. This is more a
rational choice approach which is not the thing i was trying to hint
at with my Fleck example. And thats also not the thing sociology of
knowlede is interested in. It's about the knowledge underlying
societal habits. There are so many things we take for granted and we
should explore why we (did) take them for granted. And this not only
the case in society it is also the case in the sciences.
Why did microbiologist search for syphillis in the blood? They
searched there because for centuries it was taken for granted that
there is something like "syphillitic blood". Was it possible to
reproduce the results? No, it was almost impossible to stabilize the
results. Nowadays we would stop researching with results like this.
But they kept on trying and trying until Wassermann found a way to
stabilize the experiment. Why did the retry and retry? Because it was
clear that it had to be there!
The snake example: The snake example is so trivial and easy to
understand that we don't have to discuss it. Yes, it bites you -> you
are dead in tradtion A or B. There is no incompatiblity. But this is
not a real world example of a living science. Sciences are complex,
they consist of assumptions, crafting in the lab/the field, cognitive
training etc.. They are much more than the simple "if A then B" of
logic. Much knowledge and training is needed to come to the point
where one can write down a proposition like "if A then B".
Nobody doubts that when you do exactly the same as another person
that the same will happen. "Experiences whose conditions are the same
will have the same general characters". But since scientific
paradigms are such complex structures it is not an easy task to
create the same conditions. You think its easy, just go to a lab and
try to re-cook a Wassermann-test! You say opinion and truth are not
the same thing. Yes, sure ,but how should we deal with the idea of
the syphillitic blood? Is it opinion or truth? They found it in the
blood! And the idea to find it in the blood is certainly a cultural
import into science.
But there are different Problems: a) Can there be different truths
about one object of investigation b) are there cultural imports into
science that influences the content of science and not only the
organizational context of research. What is organizational context?
Org. context is for me all the stuff you named: funding, rewarding,
strive for power, money etc.. An influence on the content instead is
everything which is part of the "how we see the object" of investigation.
Karl Mannheim uses in "Ideology and Utopia" a good metaphor. He says
that we can look at a object from different perspectives and
objectivation is for him to take different positions relative to the
object. Trying to investigate the object beyond this is an absurdity
like seeing without perspective.
You distinct between opinion and truth. Do you have the truth? No you
don't, like i don't. We both have beliefs we are willing to put on
test. But when you write somthing like:
"Conflating opinion with truth seems to produce some light
pseudo-hallucinatory fun, at least that has been my consistent
experience since I was a teenager (as I said I do look at other
perspectives). It's the fun of absurdity. Yet, to build a theory on
the acceptance of that conflation is to build on broken logic,
inquiry with its bones broken, inquiry more susceptible than ever to
social manipulation, inquiry less likely than ever to be fruitful."
it seems to me that you have the truth and you are able to destinct
between pseudo-hallucinations and non-hallucinations. You talk like
you are one of those who has left the cave and reached the light.
Ben, i don't really insinuate this, because it was written by you in
the heat of the moment. We are not far away from each other, but
nonetheless this paragraph shows we are still standing on different
sides of a water devide. There is a hair between us. My impression is
you are trying to pull the long-run-perspective on truth into the
/now/ to safe some kind of non-perspective-truth in science.
Now, truth is for me a perfect sign which incorporates all possible
perspectives on an object. But we will be there only at the end of
all times. As long as we are not there we only have beliefs we are
willing to act upon. And as long we have not reached the
all-perspectives-mode we take in positions on objects and phenomena
that are influenced by our societal position, tradtions and our
culture. The point is now that modern science with its
non-prespective-truth tries to erase these influences in its
representation. Part of this strategy is to make influences, where
the cleaning has not been finished, to exceptions or to reduce the
cultural influences to failed knowledge.
* Just take insulin shock therapy. How was it possible that psychic
ill were tortured that way? It was only possible in a certain
culture of medicine. A culture where a real phycicist had to cut
or give drug. But psychatrist didn't have these instruments and
so they were inferior to real phycicist. That's the reason why
they were so eager to use insulin shocks, because when they used
it they were real phycicists.
* Look at nazi science. It is widley branded as pseudo-science to
clean science from this era. But there were nazi scientists whose
experiments would hold our standards today. But people say: Huh,
in the greater part it was pseudo science. Yes, so what? Just
think of Feynmans great "Cargo Cult Science", it shows that a lot
of science today is pseudo. How was nazi science possible? It was
a child of nazi germany.
* Take the scientific revolution. Where did the knowledge of the
scientific revolution come from like Steven Shapin asks? The "new
scientists" laughed about the scholastics who discussed "how many
angels can dance on top of a needle", but the logic of the new
scientists grounded on the work of scholastics. In the field of
chemistry the techniques of the bench work stemmed from alchemy.
Newton himself was an alchemist.
All three examples are examples of the cleaning strategy.
But back to the two problems: a) Can there be different truths about
one object of investigation? b) Are there cultural imports into
science that influence the content of science?
* Ad a): No, this is not possible. If there are two truths about
one object, then it is due to different perspectives. But since
the perspectives are different there are not the same conditions
and hence not the same conclusions. But within one perspective
the results are intersubjective and reproducable.
* Ad b) Yes, there are such imports and there are less dramatic
examples than those mentioned above. From my study time i knew at
last 6 different soil classifications. I googled it now and found
out there are even more and that pedologist have lost every
confidence that there ever will be a universal classification. If
you look at the classification you will reckon they are dependent
on the soil usage and engeneering techniques. But these both vary
greatly with different cultures.
But pedology, physics or chemistry are not the main battle field.
We find examples there, they are insteresting and shed a light on
the cleaning practices, but they are not of vital importance.
Like Foucault identified it, the main battle field is
anthropology. There are everywhere cultural and ideological
components in the content of the sciences arround anthropology.
And that is the reason why people in the 60ies and 70ies read his
historical investigations, which ended in the 19th century, as
critiques of the then contemporary psychatry, medicine and
criminology. He showed what was implicitly taken for granted and
people didn't like to see that.
All of this hasn't something to do with fallibilism. Fallibilism
works only in one perspective, the tertium non datur works only in
one perspective. It has to do with pluralism and the possibility of
other world views. And therefore it is a legitimate endeavour to
search for traces of culture, tradition, ideology within the content
of sciences. They are not free of them. Its like Fleck writes in
"Wissenschaftstheoretische Probleme": "It is an extraordinary
interesting thing, how far scholars who dedicate their whole life to
destinct hallucinations from reality, are unable to destinct their
own dreams about science from the true form of science".
Best
Stefan
Stefan, Gary F., list,
I was indeed addressing the snakebite example, just not mentioning
it by name. If two traditions, two people, two of anything, arrive
at incompatible conclusions about snakebites, then at most one of
their conclusions is true. That's what "incompatible conclusions"
means. It doesn't take Peircean semiotics or pragmatism to see it,
it's elementary definitions and logic.
I haven't ever argued or believed that judgments, that two given
traditions' conclusions are incompatible, are infallible. I haven't
ever argued or believed that society does not influence, help, or
hinder inquiry, or contribute to focusing it in some directions
rather than others. This sort of thing will result in society's
influencing the opinions that result from actual inquiry.
But opinion and truth are not the same thing.
Conflating opinion with truth seems to produce some light
pseudo-hallucinatory fun, at least that has been my consistent
experience since I was a teenager (as I said I do look at other
perspectives). It's the fun of absurdity. Yet, to build a theory on
the acceptance of that conflation is to build on broken logic,
inquiry with its bones broken, inquiry more susceptible than ever to
social manipulation, inquiry less likely than ever to be fruitful.
A challenge for inquiry and society is to overcome capricious or
mischievous skews produced by society's influence on inquiry,
without keeping society from helping inquiry thrive and vice versa.
It's one thing for society to reward some disciplines more than
others. In various cases there can be good reasons for that, bad
reasons for that, and so on. The economy of inquiry itself may
sometimes impoverish inquiries that would not have been all that
costly and whose findings would have corrected and improved the
inquiries that do proceed, but people can't know everything in
advance, and people need to make choices. So inquiry will tend, even
when going comparatively well, to have defects. But it can also
correct and improve itself. It's another thing for society to reward
disciplines with power, wealth, glamour, status, only for producing
conclusions that suit society's preconceptions. And so on.
Best, Ben
On 9/23/2014 5:20 AM, sb wrote:
Gary F., Ben, List,
yes, it is an extremist position. Ludwik Fleck in some of his texts
about the /Denkkollektive/ (thought collectives) comes close to this
point. But his microbiological bench research maybe prevented him to
fall prey to such solipcism. Also Latours (maybe polemic) can be
read this way, but even he says now, facing the threat of climate
change deniers, that he has gone to far. Apart from these two (and
alleged epigones of social constructivism of different strives) i
would say this is a crude misrepresentation of social constructivism.
Yes, you may be right that you and Ben are just responding, but i
have the imression that Stans polarization fell on just too fertile
ground. Maybe it activated an already existent resentiment?! Now
when Gary and Cathy applaud Bens post, i would follow them if it was
not under the label of social constructivism. If we call it
solipcism/relativism/culturalism i'd be fine. Nevertheless i feel
uncomfortable with Bens post since it doesn't try to understand
Stans position.
Stan braught up the example "one must not tease certain snakes". If
you tease the snake, it bites you, injects enough poison and there
are no lucky circumstances that safe you, then you will die! These
are the plain facts. But there can be different mythologies/theories
arround this snake type. At this point i always remember the end of
Ecos "Name of the Rose" when Adson and William discuss retrospective
what has happend. Adson says to William: "Over the whole
investigation we had the false premisses and the false hypothesis'
but we came up with the right conclusion". Important in this example
is now that they start with predjudice which turns out to be false.
In the same manner scientists start with personaly, socially or
tradionally conditioned predjudices.
All scientific theories have a social import which is not forced
upon us by reality. E.g. Fleck shows in his book that until the
20th century and the discovery of the Wassermann-reaction the
syphillis research was influenced by the religious idea of the
syphillitic blood as a punishment of god. In an enlightment
perspective it is important to understand and explore such imports.
Ben argues in his response only from an epistemological standpoint
and ignores the importance of the sociologcal view Stan brings in.
Sociologically the "claim of truth" as "truth" and the will to act
upon this truth is a interesting phenomenon. At the same time Stan
mixes up the epistemological and the sociological perspective and
thinks we can conclude from the sociology of knowledge to
epistemology. Once again, i do follow Bens critique, but it should
also pick up the sociological perspective.
Science is not only brought forward by empirical research and new
theories, it is also brought forward by the critique of its own
social boundedness. Sure, the sociological is from a different
sphere but since it is from a different sphere it could and should
inform science. From my point of view social constructivism/
sociology of knowledge and pragmatism are complementary, means
pragmatism delivers the right epistemology for the sociology of
knowledge.
Best
Stefan
Am 22.09.14 14:22, schrieb Gary Fuhrman:
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