[FRIAM] Abduction

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

 

Oh Joy.  Oh Rapture!  SOMEBODY understands me.  A new day is dawning.  A new year has begun! 

 

In the end, a methodologically-Peircian perspective is the best you can hope for, right?  I.e. *acting* like a Peircian is fantastic.  But it's not clear whether we can extrapolate such a "way of living" into a metaphysical claim.

 

Yes.  Even stronger.  It is clear that we can NOT extrapolate .*  Unless you regard “Given normal error, the mean of the population, μ, probably lies within +/-  s/n, the standard error” as metaphysics.  That’s the absolute best you can hope for.  Somebody once called it, “A kiss from your aunt” realism.  

 

Ok, Glen.  So now that you understand me, how can I understand you?  How do you break free from the he fact that when we speak of truth beyond human experience we inevitably extrapolate from human experience and that such extrapolations are inevitably human experiences? Honest.  I am not trying to be a jerk, here.  I just can’t see my way out of that box, given the brain-in-the-vat.  By the way, instincts, being the result of natural selection, are also taken as products of human experience.  

 

Happy New Year, 

 

Nick 

 

*  Some might claim that This Claim is self-contradictory.  In other words, I can be an agnostic about metaphysics but not an atheist. 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2018 11:30 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

 

 

On 12/28/18 4:43 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Ok.  What to do?  Well, we could admit that we are screwed and define truth as that which is beyond all experience.  But this is nonsense, right?  If truth is beyond all experience, how do we come to be talking about it.  If Truth is that which we cannot talk about, then and any statement that we make about it is necessarily untrue.  What to do?  Well, we could sneak a little God back in.  We could talk about true intuitions that come from the spirit world, etc.  Many people talk like that.  Sometimes,  I think of some of you talk like that, tho I won’t name names.  For me, that’s not a starter.  

> 

> So, Truth must be defined in terms of experience.

 

We authentically part ways, here.  I agree with the no spirit world thing, but disagree that we *must* define Truth in terms of experience.  I'm only saying this so that you know that I'm "playing along".  For this conversation, I'll playing along with your idea that Truth must be defined in terms of experience.

 

>  Some kinds of experiences are more enduring than others.  

> [...]

> Now nothing about this implies that there is a truth concerning all matters.  Peirce’s notion of truth is ultimately statistical and based on the central limit theorem.  He cheerfully admits that the world we live in is essentially random.  However, if some things are not random, if there is systematic pattern in our experience with regard to some things (such as, say, saber-toothed tigers) then it would be extraordinarily useful to know it, and the cognitive systems around today would tend to be those that had not been eaten by tigers, right?  

> [...]

>  And science is privileged because, on the whole, over the long run, it has proved itself to be the best at making those sorts of bets. 

 

And herein lies the problem.  This picture gives us ZERO efficacy.  If the method allows for a proposition/object to hold for, e.g., 5 billion years - i.e. it was real before earth and remains real after earth - this metaphysics tells us ZERO about whether or not that proposition/object is really real or whether it's just the transient brain fart of a super charismatic lineage of hucksters from ... somewhere.

 

Worse yet, it gives us ZERO sense of *how many* things are real versus how many things are fiction.  Is |real| << |fiction|?  Is |real| >> |fiction|?  How about |real| = |fiction|?

 

Even worser yet, all results of science depend fundamentally on the method of inquiry (all observations are taken from a theoretical perspective and vice versa).  So, BY DEFINITION, this convergence theory of the real will only ever suggest |real| << |fiction| because it would take more computation than atoms and lifetime of the universe to establish |real| = |fiction|, much less |real| >> |fiction|.  Hence, it (worthy of a mathematician!) is inherently elitist.  Elite facts only accessible to elite organisms/organizations that can live long enough to ensconce their self-fulfilling observational procedure.

 

In the end, a methodologically-Peircian perspective is the best you can hope for, right?  I.e. *acting* like a Peircian is fantastic.  But it's not clear whether we can extrapolate such a "way of living" into a metaphysical claim.

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

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