Re: Polanyi on science (was Re: [asa] C.S. Lewis on ID)

Bravo, Bravo, Mr. Hogg! As always, it is a pleasure to read your
discourse; and I found myself soaking it in with unreserved agreement
until I reached the paragraph (the last one shown below) in which I
think you overstate your case, claiming that to think of "objective"
facts as no more than mental states is to accept all claims of those
mental states as equally true. I'm going to hazard a guess, Murray,
that you don't actually think sunflowers are pink or have green polka
dots, so those notions would have equal claim to validity only if
someone actually did claim that mental state. Produce somebody who
actually thinks so, and then we'll talk. I know I may be abusing your
argument that this "would be" so IF somebody actually did, and so you
are being hypothetical about it. But there still could be a grain of
objectivity in these mental states --perhaps making it significant that
this particular conjecture of yours required a hypothetical example.

But again, I find myself in full agreement with your main thrust that
"hard" science has no ultimate philosophical privilege on objectivity
over other fields of knowledge excepting perhaps in precision of
instrumentation. Please comment if this summary statement mis-states you.

-- argumentative citizen of the [yellow] sunflower state,
Kansas. ('yellow' modifies flower --not the state [or maybe it
modifies my mental state?])
--Merv

Murray Hogg wrote:
> Hi Moorad,
>
> You cite Schrödinger's claim "there is no nervous process whose
> description includes the characteristic 'yellow'" whilst overlooking
> the obvious counter: that neither is there a nervous process whose
> description includes the characteristic: 'electromagnetic wavelength
> of 590 nanometers'.
>
> What your attempting to do - in basic terms - is selectively apply a
> Kantian distinction between noumena (that which really is) and
> phenomena (that which one perceives to be) to favor your own
> philosophy of science. This is naughty.
>
> On the one hand, when it comes to talking about "yellow things" you
> want to argue that ones' perception has no relation to what actually is.
>
> On the other hand, when it comes to reading the output of a
> spectroscope you want to argue that one's perception does have a
> relation to what actually is.
>
> Not only is this quite inconsistent BUT it overlooks the fact that, in
> Kantian terms, science NEVER deals with noumena but only with
> phenomena - i.e. scientific "data" actually consist solely of our
> perceptions of reality - never with reality itself - and if you want
> to dismiss such perceptions as "subjective" mental constructs - well,
> so much the worse for "science" as you define it.
>
> Critical here is to understand that just as I can never go beyond my
> perception of 'yellow' to ask "what the colour 'really' is" so too I
> can never go past my perception of the data to ask "what the data
> 'really' are."
>
> Frankly, your simply trying to uncritically privilege certain kinds of
> empirical observation (the reading of outputs on instruments) over
> against other types of empirical observation (seeing the color yellow).
>
> What's really problematic, however, is to ask what you're actually
> trying to assert about our use of language.
>
> You're claiming that the use of the term "yellow" is "subjective"
> despite the fact that I learned the meaning of "yellow" through shared
> social discourse - i.e. in EXACTLY the same what I learned the meaning
> of "electromagnetic" and "wavelength" and "of" and "590" and
> "nanometers". So NONE of these terms have a more "objective" referent
> than any other.
>
> Or, to put it another way, the agreement of scientists as to the
> meaning of "electromagnetic wavelength of 590 nanometers" is based on
> PRECISELY the same sort of shared social discourse as the meaning of
> "yellow". Indeed, the only way that scientists can make the claim that
> "yellow = electromagnetic wavelength of 590 nanometers" is precisely
> because "yellow" is NOT a "subjective" notion.
>
> To take this one step further, if the claim "sunflowers are yellow" is
> merely a comment about my own mental states and not a claim about the
> colour of sunflowers then "sunflowers are yellow", "sunflowers are
> pink", "sunflowers are pink with green polka dots" are ALL equally
> "true". And, to push this to it's ultimately absurd limit, the
> following would also all be equally "true": "yellow has an
> electromagnetic wavelength of 590 nanometers", "yellow has an
> electomagnetic wavelength of 3.8 nanometers" and "yellow has an
> electromagnetic wavelength of 3.8 kilograms". These are all equally
> "true" give your argument because what you've done is assert our terms
> of discourse (like "yellow") have no objective referent.
>

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Received on Sun Nov 30 17:41:42 2008