[FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?

[Nick Thompson]

F

 

One might say, One trusts the logic a hundred percent; it’s just that one never quite trusts the premises on which the logic is based.  That was one of Peirce’s points.  It’s all very well to say that deduction is infallible, just so long as you concede that deduction is always based on prior inductions and abductions, both of which ARE fallible. 

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2018 9:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?

 

"I don't care what you think you have deduced from formal logic, if you jump when the empty gun is cocked, you believe that the gun is loaded." 

 

Or you believe the gun might be loaded.  I have three revolvers hidden away in a triply locked gun safe.  Two of them are cowboy style six-shooters.  One of them is a British 9 shot double action .22.

 

Do you see the problem?

 

Frank

----
Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly <http://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly> 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

 

On Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:03 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

Glen, 

 

 

Frank and I have a long-running, somewhat facetious, argument about the meaning of probability statements.  We are friends, and we enjoy making each other squirm, a bit.  I talk to him in a way I would not talk to you.  My argument with Frank is light-hearted and you may justifiably be impatient with it. So, some caution, here, therefore. 

 

One of the things Frank and I argue about is, Who exactly gets to say what I believe.  He credits first person accounts, perhaps unconditionally;  I credit third person accounts, conditionally.  Something like that.  So that is a part of what is going on, here.  There is another thread lurking here that concerns what logic, in the ordinary sense, is good for.  Put them together, and you get something like, "I don't care what you think you have deduced from formal logic, if you jump when the empty gun is cocked, you believe that the gun is loaded."  I am looking forward to Frank’s disagreement with that notion.  It's a bit like the distinction between signs and symptoms in medicine.  

 

I certainly don’t want to be an idealist.  I am trying to be an experience-monist:  everything else, ideas, matter, is irreducibly just patterns in experience.  But given the doctrine above, you have a lot to say about whether I am, in fact, an idealist.  Evidence?  

 

I stipulate that I have not answered your longer email of a week ago on this thread.  Given your assertion that I don't read [carefully] what you write, I am taking time to answer it.   Relatives in house, so that process is slow.  

 

Nick 

 

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 <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> ] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2018 6:30 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> >
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?

 

So, to be clear, are you also making fun of reasoning like this?  I ask because it's equal in idealism to the trolley problem.

 

On 07/11/2018 07:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Jones is in a gunfight

> Jones Knows that his opponent has only a six shooter Jones knows that 

> his opponent has just fired six shots Jones’s opponent aims his gun at 

> Jones Jones reasons that his opponent’s gun is empty Yet he is afraid 

> of being shot.

> Does Jones believe that the gun is empty?

> 

> By the way, given the facts stipulated, you, as a mathematician, would 

> say that the probability that the gun is empty is 1.0, right?

 

 

--

☣ uǝlƃ

 

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