From: Tim Maroney (tim@maroney.org)
Date: Sat Sep 01 2001 - 23:10:16 MDT
>> It's not actually necessary to be able to answer a
>> question to demonstrate
>> that the existing answers are inadequate.
> But you haven't done that... amd you can't do that by
> merely stringing together a few syllables.
>
> Anomalous data is what demonstrates the existing
> answers are incomplete (to show they are actually
> wrong you'd still have to come up with something
> better). Where's the data? I need data, not hot air
> and hand waving.
The anomalies in the idea that science is a progression toward absolute
truth are many. From a historical perspective, Kuhn documents with great
precision how scientists have adjusted the historical record of their
practice to make it fit this model, and how much of a misrepresentation this
is. From a theoretical perspective, Goedel demonstrated that no formal
system can be both consistent and complete, which seems to be a death blow
to the idea of a final theory. Other problems can be found in philosophy,
from Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus through Hume to Nietzsche and beyond.
Nowhere is there any workable theory of this "absolute truth." The more we
know, the more we know that our knowledge is relative to evolved modes of
knowledge which have no necessary validity beyond their arbitrary domain.
I've snipped some of the rest of your diffuse critique cum personal attack.
> As soon as you demonstrate to me that people with
> different beliefs get different outcomes for the same
> experiment, I'll give your theories a bit more
> attention.
This is, of course, a straw man argument, having no bearing whatsoever on
any claim I have made or any idea I have put forth for consideration. I do
not accept the idea that the beliefs of an experimenter determine the
outcome of a properly constructed experiment. (Of course, a psychological
experiment carried out without double-blind precautions could easily be
influenced by an experimenter's preconceptions).
> Until then they are the equivalent of the gigantic
> invisible purple alien who sits atop the world trade
> center and controls the thoughts of everybody in New
> York.
That's just how I feel about "absolute truth" and the progression thereto.
It's a chimera. No one can point to it, yet some people feel a great
certainty that it exists. To me this is a mystical belief, in the negative
sense of the word mystical. One might as well believe in God as in this
"absolute truth," which apparently exists only in God's mind.
-- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org
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