The Hard Way

[Legion]

Philosophy is inescapable and I think many of you smart and hard heathens should familiarize yourself with the body of philosophy known as epistemology. This is an area of philosophy that concerns itself with what counts as genuine knowledge. Most of you probably employ various epistemologies of one stripe or another and are unaware that they can be loosely categorized.

 

I had some time to kill this morning and here is my quick stab at a scientific epistemology that I find congenial and to which I sometimes subscribe. Most all of this can be found in Life Itself, a book written by theoretical biologist Robert Rosen. And all the quotes are from there.

 

Science is built on dualities. Indeed every mode of discrimination creates one. – pg 40

 

I am aware of myself. I am. I may not know who, what, or why I am. However, I hold that I can observe at least my own thoughts and experience them and this implies that there is an observer or one who experiences. And not just my thoughts, but my emotions, my will, my perceptions, my imaginings, and the acts that arise from them, all bear witness to this self. This was pointed out by Descartes when he attempted to take skepticism to the extreme. I hold that this same discrimination or discernment of self gives rise to that which is not myself and thus belongs to my ambience. This partition of self/ambience has been referred to as the first basic dualism.

 

Next we can examine the ambience and the self. When we look upon our ambience we perceive that there are natural systems and their environments. Rocks, trees, oceans, communities, tractors, and the internet are all examples of natural systems and they have their attendant environments. This is the discernment of systems/environments and has been referred to as the second basic dualism.

 

When we examine ourselves we see that language is a part of us, or is an aspect of our self. Our discernment of language creates another dualism arising from a recognition that language is a thing in and of itself and involves syntax, and language also permits or requires referents external to itself and so involves semantics. This is the syntax/semantics discernment.

 

Upon further examination of syntax we can discern that it has propositions and production rules.

 

The syntactical production rules of a language are its internal vehicles of what I shall call inferential entailment. The rules thus allow us to say, without consulting any external referent, that one proposition or group or propositions implies others. – pg 43

 

We shall understand by a formalism any such ‘sublanguage’ of a natural language, defined by syntactic qualities alone. – pg 44

 

The study of formal systems is what compromises the subject of (in the broadest sense) mathematics. – pg 45

 

So, after an examination of ourselves we can see that there are sublanguages of natural language and we may call these sublanguages formal systems. Their behavior is governed by implication or inferential entailment and their study comprises mathematics.

 

Next we return to an examination of our ambience.

 

The fundamental question for us, at this point, is the following: is there in this external world, any kind of entailment, analogous to the inferential entailment we have seen between propositions in a language or formalism? Obviously, if there is not, we can all go home; science is not only impossible but also inconceivable. – pg 55

 

We have many compelling reasons for believing that there are entailments between phenomena which we will call causality. But in the end, we must take a small step of faith and posit or suppose that they do exist. Most of us are willing to accept this, but the hardcore skeptic is free to reject this and thereby deny the possibility of science.

 

So on one hand we have formal systems governed by inferential entailment, and on the other hand we have natural systems governed by causal entailment.

 

My final task is to show that these two entirely different modes of entailment are themselves related. The assertion of this relation is embodied in the concept of Natural Law; the crucial instrument in establishing this relation is the concept of model. – pg 57

 

And thus after a few observations and a few reasonable suppositions and assertions and we arrive at the concept of model. Science is in the model building business. Models establish congruencies between inference and causality. And they comprise the fruits of explicit understanding generated by science.

 

That’s it. That’s my stab at conveying a scientific epistemology that I find congenial. I welcome any comments, criticisms, questions, etc.

[Eric_PK]

Philosophy is inescapable and I think many of you smart and hard heathens should familiarize yourself with the body of philosophy known as epistemology. This is an area of philosophy that concerns itself with what counts as genuine knowledge. Most of you probably employ various epistemologies of one stripe or another and are unaware that they can be loosely categorized.

 

I had some time to kill this morning and here is my quick stab at a scientific epistemology that I find congenial and to which I sometimes subscribe. Most all of this can be found in Life Itself, a book written by theoretical biologist Robert Rosen. And all the quotes are from there.

 

Science is built on dualities. Indeed every mode of discrimination creates one. – pg 40

 

I am aware of myself. I am. I may not know who, what, or why I am. However, I hold that I can observe at least my own thoughts and experience them and this implies that there is an observer or one who experiences. And not just my thoughts, but my emotions, my will, my perceptions, my imaginings, and the acts that arise from them, all bear witness to this self. This was pointed out by Descartes when he attempted to take skepticism to the extreme. I hold that this same discrimination or discernment of self gives rise to that which is not myself and thus belongs to my ambience. This partition of self/ambience has been referred to as the first basic dualism.

 

Next we can examine the ambience and the self. When we look upon our ambience we perceive that there are natural systems and their environments. Rocks, trees, oceans, communities, tractors, and the internet are all examples of natural systems and they have their attendant environments. This is the discernment of systems/environments and has been referred to as the second basic dualism.

 

When we examine ourselves we see that language is a part of us, or is an aspect of our self. Our discernment of language creates another dualism arising from a recognition that language is a thing in and of itself and involves syntax, and language also permits or requires referents external to itself and so involves semantics. This is the syntax/semantics discernment.

 

Upon further examination of syntax we can discern that it has propositions and production rules.

 

The syntactical production rules of a language are its internal vehicles of what I shall call inferential entailment. The rules thus allow us to say, without consulting any external referent, that one proposition or group or propositions implies others. – pg 43

 

We shall understand by a formalism any such ‘sublanguage’ of a natural language, defined by syntactic qualities alone. – pg 44

 

The study of formal systems is what compromises the subject of (in the broadest sense) mathematics. – pg 45

 

So, after an examination of ourselves we can see that there are sublanguages of natural language and we may call these sublanguages formal systems. Their behavior is governed by implication or inferential entailment and their study comprises mathematics.

 

Next we return to an examination of our ambience.

 

The fundamental question for us, at this point, is the following: is there in this external world, any kind of entailment, analogous to the inferential entailment we have seen between propositions in a language or formalism? Obviously, if there is not, we can all go home; science is not only impossible but also inconceivable. – pg 55

 

We have many compelling reasons for believing that there are entailments between phenomena which we will call causality. But in the end, we must take a small step of faith and posit or suppose that they do exist. Most of us are willing to accept this, but the hardcore skeptic is free to reject this and thereby deny the possibility of science.

 

So on one hand we have formal systems governed by inferential entailment, and on the other hand we have natural systems governed by causal entailment.

 

My final task is to show that these two entirely different modes of entailment are themselves related. The assertion of this relation is embodied in the concept of Natural Law; the crucial instrument in establishing this relation is the concept of model. – pg 57

 

And thus after a few observations and a few reasonable suppositions and assertions and we arrive at the concept of model. Science is in the model building business. Models establish congruencies between inference and causality. And they comprise the fruits of explicit understanding generated by science.

 

That’s it. That’s my stab at conveying a scientific epistemology that I find congenial. I welcome any comments, criticisms, questions, etc.

 

Well, my first comment is that:

 

Philosophy is inescapable and I think many of you smart and hard heathens should familiarize yourself with the body of philosophy known as epistemology.

 

comes off as a bit arrogant.

 

As for the rest of the post, I studied philosophy for a while, but I find that the language is often impenetrable, and, from what I can tell, deliberately so. When I can finally discern what they are saying, it often seem obvious.

 

It's similar to my opinion of Principia Mathematica. Sure, it's an impressive achievement to derive mathematics from a set of logic axioms, but mathematics is useful whether or not such a work exists.

 

As for your specific statements, I think you are wrong in one respect.

 

Science does involve a lot of model building, but it's not *about* building models. It's about generating utility. Having an external world or causality exist is not a requirement for science to operate - it is sufficient that things behave *as if* there is an external world and causality.

 

There is utility in F=ma regardless of whether I'm observing an existant reality or I'm a simulation running in some computer. Whether such a theory is "true" in either case is a matter of semantics, and really orthogonal to a discussion of utility.

 

In the end, I find the question "is it useful?" to be a whole lot more interesting and practical to answer than "is it true?"

[Legion]

comes off as a bit arrogant.

Gracious! I don’t want to do that! I suspect it may be because I was advocating that many here should acquire a certain bit of knowledge about this. It’s just what I think, and I tried to mix some humor in it. I can see now how it could have been interpreted as arrogance. And I broke my big rule about saying “should”. But in the end, it’s only my opinion.

 

As for the rest of the post, I studied philosophy for a while, but I find that the language is often impenetrable, and, from what I can tell, deliberately so. When I can finally discern what they are saying, it often seem obvious.

If the language failed to connect with my audience then I certainly think I bear some responsibility for that, but I definitely didn’t strive to be opaque. And I agree that most of these ideas can be obvious.

 

Science does involve a lot of model building, but it's not *about* building models. It's about generating utility.

 

....In the end, I find the question "is it useful?" to be a whole lot more interesting and practical to answer than "is it true?"

I find that to be an interesting perspective. I have heard another advocate a similar position. I may even agree with you to some extent, but as I tried to point out I think these are possible philosophical underpinnings of natural science. In addition, I thought that models, the products of science, were useful. I am under the strong impression that models allow us to predict and anticipate both ourselves and the world around us.