thread: 2005-06-06 : Happenings
On 2005-06-06, The Metallian wrote:
anon.: You said: "This is true sometimes, with some schools of rationalist philosophy and when talking about actual science with people who have a scientific view—that is they judge things on proof and disproof. However, most people, IME, do not do this. They take on a suite of related philosophies, axioms, and hypothoses and act on them with the same faith (and same lack of proof) as the religious do."
Yep. That's why I threw in."(Not everyone actually behaves this way, of course, but that's how it's "supposed" to work.)" Heck, even professional scientists don't always act that way!
Mind you, I don't expect everyone to walk around in an active state of conditional quasi-belief, thinking up disproval scenarios for gravity or whatever. That would be a pain in the butt. I just mean in a philosophical sense, they should be willing to revise any assumption given contradictory evidence.
"Plus, one must ask if only reason can prove or disprove something."
Yes. I happen to believe that we can't ever be 100%, really, really sure of anything except the fact that we are thinking a particular thought at a given moment. (Which is the only really "axiomatic" belief I've been able to accept so far.) I just don't think it can be done. The best we can do, IMHO, is to accept certain assumptions as "conditionally true" based on the number of observations that affirm the assumptions vs. those that contradict them. It's acceptable to call this "truth" for everyday purposes. (Otherwise it's annoying.)
"Like you I don't have a lot of answers. One of the few that I've come up with is "We need to spend more time talking to each other and less time talking at or about each other." Thus my move towards post-positivism over the last few years."
I sure think that would help! I just wish I knew how to do it properly when there's such a big impasse in terms of fundamental assumptions about not just "what is truth?" but about, "how can truth be found?" That's more or less what I was trying to get at in my first post here.
