uwot wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 10:37 am
Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amI take issue with the "(or logic)" part and believe that you can use more local initial empirical observations.
As it happens, that parenthesis was tacked on by the editors. Didn't challenge it when the proofs came back, because I can see their point, but I'm not going to argue it.
Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:39 amIf nature by itself 'created' itself, even such a non-observing reality had to have had some rationale that brought about our reality without a need for special laws that come from gods to dictate.
I've no idea whether nature created itself. Nor why there had to be some rationale. I suppose that's where logic comes in, as I cannot imagine any sound argument that could demonstrate any necessity.
If we treat everything as a container with a question mark with any possible ports (inputs and/or outputs) or contact points of the structure representing the interface of the rest of reality, I think of science (in general) as using observation to try to interpret how the exchanges of environmental factors ("data" in the most general way) interact with or through this unknown container. This is reverse engineering of particular parts of reality to determine its logic. Since everything is just about finding patterns of behavior, the patterns form the rules of the logic of this machine [as a container, portal, or point that exchanges information]. Then we test it to see if it conforms to the presumed logic and if it does, it becomes convenient to become a successful discovery that we may use for prediction purposes or to create new technology.
If you also treat each environmental factor (the relative 'data') that gets input, output, or bounced off of it as 'containers' also, then everything can be reduced to LOGIC. Nature, for our contingent Universe, is just a subset of all the possible abstract logics in which those that 'fit' to consistent stories (or worlds) just happen to be interpreted by our perspective as those "laws" of physics.
We don't necessarily have to know what is inside the box -- at first -- to begin our 'science' in determining the how the box exchanges information/energy. But then when or where we can, we then try to break that container open into subcomponent unknowns and repeat this process. We don't necessarily NEED to always know for certain what is precisely inside if we can find elemental
machines (another word for these containers) but we can still induce ACROSS all machines to determine the smallest logical-type units. If we can use these to
explain everything from this induced set of meta-logical elements, these can then act AS the elements without having to literally prove it because we've already agreed that science is about determining the PRACTICAL truths.
Another way of thinking of this is to imagine us using computer programs to create virtual worlds such that if we could recreate a world within it that simulates ours precisely, this demonstrates the possibility of whatever logic used to get us there to infer that we too were possibly derived similarly. That would then also 'prove' the component logical elements suffice to describe reality without needing to know if it was exact. Then we only requestion this if we find the machine does something unexpected OR we can seek different computer languages to see which architecture COVERS all cases. [This can also require a collection of architectures and where the limits in a single logic doesn't mean there is no real overall reality consisting of logic but rather a SET of logics.]
uwot wrote:
Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:57 pmAgain, I am troubled with this presumption. It's one of those logical circular claims: that there is absolutely no certainty. If this statement is an exception, then the choices made to 'determine' what is or is not true is related to the subjective person's capacity to observe.
Granted we can't be absolutely certain there's no certainty. So, er, there is absolutely no certainty. Yeah, it's not very impressive, but I don't see how you break the circle. Underdetermination is no biggie, it's basically the fact that we cannot know that all our predictions will come true until they do. Or don't.
What is important is to recognize the contradiction and then stop using it as a blanket statement about the supremacy of the institute of science. This contradiction proves that the resolution HAS to be political only. And since nature's truth could care less about how popular any collection of humans deem it is, then we at least can use logical dialectic through 'philosophy' to try to find the mechanism of reality that everyone can agree to regardless of what background they have. This is where philosophy to me is more important to keep open to all topics of human concern. It 'governs' all areas in this way.
What is 'certain' to us about reality, especially physics, is that our existence assures we are founded on some 'logic of patterns' that themselves don't have to be anything more than accidental pixels on a screen that form pictures that give us the illusion of meaning. And THIS CAN BE determined as a certainty without a need for a 'qualified' scientific consensus. The premises in logic that we treat as initial assumptions can have a mathematical-calculus like solution that demonstrates approaches to zero where we know we can never get to but KNOW it still exists.
Then we can reintroduce the 'a priori' reasoning that usually gets abused and what caused the questions raised about demarcation of science in the first place: the inappropriate uses of logic by the 'religious' thinking (or any similar
artistic imposition of truth upon reality). The problem was assuming that as long as A logic is sufficiently functional and true for some, that it is 'universal'. Then it gets
abused by permitting inputs that are not 'sound' (formal meaning of the word). This errors we have made are like the child attempting to put a toaster waffle into the opening of a VCR. The VCR is a real logical machine but we cannot allow just ANY inputs to it. The same has been used of reasoning that goes against physics that compete against other human concerns politically.
I don't like HOW Hegel expressed his philosophy but recognize it as just someone recognizing multivariable logic. Something is A, not-A, or both (which equals neither in this context). As such, The paradigms of Kuhn may be thought of as the cultural political and real environmental limitations of a time, an era, or place, that FRAMES how the politics of the ANALYTICAL types to which science is one behaves in practice. Given A = Ancient Egypt at the time of the pyramids, the limitations are such that even if we could travel in a time machine back to that time with all the intelligence in the world about things, we would not 'fit' and thus be a factor of "not-A". There is no possible way we could actually be successful, for instance, in 'proving' to anyone a cellphone could exist because that tech depends upon all the infrastructure evolved through the times along with the general population's wisdom that goes into producing all the parts for it, etc. THIS is what I understood of Kuhn's 'paradigms'. All the factors of a time and place contribute into the political institute that becomes the defining ruler of what 'science' can discover, what 'tech' can follow, etc.