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[Hans Blom, 950912e]
(Bill Powers (950907.2000 MDT))
Do you mean that science is a _social_ enterprise, a search for
things that we, humans, can agree upon, rather than a search
for "truth" / reality? Or is that the same thing?
I have to be careful how I answer that, which means a long
answer.
Thank you for a thoughtful reply.
If that [consensus] were all that it is, then scientists could
simply ask each other what they want to be true, reach an
agreement, and it would be true.
Are you serious? Upto now, I had thought that you were an excel-
lent judge of human nature. I have to rebuild my model of you!
There is clearly something more to science than consensus. While
scientists do interact with each other and try to reach
agreement, they must also interact with something else: the
natural world.
No. With the natural world AS PERCEIVED BY THEMSELVES (in other,
similar experiments) AND BY OTHER SCIENTISTS (in repeats of expe-
riments). We cannot compare a voltage measurement reading with
the "true" voltage, only with another reading.
The natural world does not care what we want to be true. It
reacts to our actions on it only and exactly as it reacts, quite
independently of our beliefs or theories.
That is what I believe as well, although I won't ever be able to
be certain :-).
We compare what we do experience with what our world-models say
we should experience, and, ideally, we somehow use the differ-
ence to modify the world models to eliminate the difference.
That is modelling. Presumably, we also somehow use the difference
to modify (our perceptions of) the WORLD to eliminate the differ-
ence. That is control.
world models do not give us a "true" picture of the external
world; whatever truth they contain is in terms of a reality that
has already been transformed by the properties of our perceptual
systems.
And a "reality" that is severely limited by the properties of our
perceptual systems. We cannot "see" radioactivity unless we carry
a Geiger counter -- and even then our picture is extremely crude.
We cannot see through the back of our heads. We cannot see those
15 or more dimensions of space that string theorists claim must
exist. And so on. Remember "Flatland"?
If we want to control any given perception by acting on the
outside world, we are not free to choose any action whatsoever.
We are. People do the funniest things. But you are right, some
actions are more successful than others.
In this regard, consensus, mutual belief and agreements, social
influences, and so on have no effect at all.
No? Ever seen the results of a faith healer? Of a hypnotherapist?
Of a rain dancer?
It is that implacable fact that tells us we can't arbitrarily
decide what reality is even in terms of our private perceptions.
Yet an extremely wide range of "realities" can be and are built
by people. Some clients of faith healers, hypnotherapists and
rain dancers do seem to be satisfied. Witchcraft is practiced
widely. Werewolves are still believed in. Paranoiacs exist. Ever
met one and found out how extremely convincing they can be?
When we actually produce actions to control perceptions, we find
that we are subject to constraints that are not of our own
making. No amount of social influence or scientific consensus
will free us from those constraints, or even make them any
different. These constraints, of course, are all experienced
within a world of perception that each of us has constructed in
a unique way, but they ARE EXPERIENCED.
How constraining are the constraints? Not much, I would say. They
are there, of course, in our biological heritage. My world-model
model says that perceptions are interpreted according to the
information contained in the model. If the model is out of whack,
you may have some mighty whacky experiences...
This is why experiment, not social/scientific agreement, is the
final arbiter of truth about the natural world.
I do not accept your reasoning as logically valid. You reify
truth. But I appreciate your point of view.
It is true that we learn to perceive and think in ways that are
greatly influenced by the way others around us perceive and
think. But HOWEVER we learn to perceive and think, we can
always, individually, perform actions on the world to control
those learned perceptions and discover whether those perceptions
are consistent with the properties of the natural world.
No. We can perform actions on the world to control those learned
perceptions and discover whether those perceptions are consistent
with the properties of OUR WORLD-MODEL. The natural world as such
remains inaccessible. We cannot compare a voltage measurement
reading with the "true" voltage, only with another reading. If
the voltmeter is whacky, perceptions are of limited use.
It is by this means that one person can discover that EVERYONE
ELSE has been wrong.
That is not a logical conclusion based on irrefutable reasoning,
but it does seem to describe part of human nature. Don't all of
us at all times have the tendency to assume that everyone else is
wrong? <skip discussion on why this attitude is the basis of
One person, interacting only with the natural world, can be the
first one in the whole human race to discover that the world is
not, in fact, flat ...
Interacting ONLY with the natural world -- as in children reared
by wolves? Where would they get the idea that it might be
important to think about whether the world is flat or not?
Given any universe of similar perceptions, there are statements
about the natural world that can be made within that universe;
some of those statements are provably wrong, through experiment.
Those will not be statements about the universe, but about our
perception of that universe. We can prove that some of our per-
ceptions of the universe are wrong -- inconsistent with other
perceptions. That's all, regrettably.
Moreover, you seem to accept this as a natural given. I think
that "doing experiments" in this scientific fashion is a very
recent human invention, as science itself is, an invention that
is in no way basically given in human instinct, but rather
contradicts it. Even in science, authority is far, far more
influential than experiments. Alas. I know. I work there. But
even in PCT circles that attitude can be found: "Believe me, X is
a FACT". Plug in your favorite X. I find an awful lot of someone
trying to convince others of the correctness of his/her point of
view here, not excluding myself :-).
While a direct test [against the properties of the real world]
is impossible, a _consistency test_ is possible, because we can
learn what actions on the world will and will not result in
control of a given perception.
Yes! So you agree on the primacy of consistency?
So one person is extremely limited. It was the great invention
of science to pool all the knowledge of many individuals to
improve convergence, and average out the results -- where this
can be done.
I think this idea of pooled knowledge has its limitations. What
is the average of Priestley's and Lavoisier's theory of
combustion?
Every scientist stands on the shoulders of others, even if he
contradicts them. Averaging is not an operation that generates
information but discards some of it. Refining a theory, combining
two different perspectives into one all-round theory that des-
cribes both, is much more useful. We still do not have a good,
workable theory that combines the corpuscular and wave properties
of light. Or of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Simi-
larly, I suppose, we must all have inconsistencies in our intern-
al world-models. That makes us schizophrenics, all of us :-).
If all the individuals [of a group] come to perceive in the same
terms, any one of them can represent the group. So after
convergence, we are back to the case of a single person.
Except that we have, through cooperation, a single "person" with
vastly greater perceptual and actuator-ial powers, who could do
experiments that no single individual can.
That one person can then conduct experiments which entail acting
on the world and perceiving the consequences. This is not a
process of seeking consensus; it is a private matter, between
the individual and the natural world.
It IS a matter of consensus, at least where a common goal is
defined, and where individual sub-goals are agreed on. No single
person can do science. In the very least, he has to be willing to
share his new visions with others.
And that, luckily, seems to be an innate human trait as well,
that makes science possible: to disagree and to try to convince
others that we are cleverer. Science, it appears, is possible
only because we humans have tendencies both to cooperate and to
dissent. I wonder if other species do science. Beavers, maybe?
Did you ever notice how we all accept mutual agreement as a
strengthening of our own position? Could that be what science is
all about? For centuries, philosophers have attempted to formu-
late statements that every "healthy, thinking human" could agree
with. Thus far without success.
Why did I write this post at all? I'm not sure at this point,
because we don't really disagree much. Isn't that funny, by the
way, how disagreements stimulate discussion? I wonder why ;-).
Greetings,
Hans