Another response to controinfo...

This might be my last response to controinfo as this conversation seems to be going nowhere…but maybe not since it's usually not in my nature not to respond to arguments made in opposition. The problem is that it feels as though there is a profound miscommunication or lack of understanding that keeps happening here. He continues to ignore my positions for reasons I don't understand and I don't intend to keep repeating myself over and over. He continues to misunderstand my arguments or occasionally criticizes me on positions I actually don’t even hold. He says: 1) 1Given a corpus of hypotheses and a large amount of evidence we have the first problem: no matter how much evidence you can collect there is always the possibility that one day more evidence will falsify the theory (see Hempel on the logical structure of Scientific theories). Great. I never said it was otherwise. That is exactly why science evolves and a theory is chosen over another. I'll repeat once again: I NEVER said that a theory is absolutely true in every sense of the word. I also never said that it’s impossible for another theory to arise that will prove to work better than the previous one. Infact we know that is exactly how science works. We know that’s how science evolves as more evidence comes in. This is about the 6th time I've said this now and yet you continue to attack me on this position as though I had blind faith in any scientific theory. (By the way a theory being preferable to a previous one is going to show where the last theory failed and explain everything the previous one did plus what it didn‘t explain and often what it was wrong about). You keep on believing for some reason I don’t understand that I’m seeing a theory as absolutely and completely true. If you don’t understand what I mean by truth I’ll repeat it one more time: Something “out there” is a certain way. Through science we can understand certain patterns and gain a glimpse of what that is. That’s all. I’m amazed that you keep on trying to call this mentality religious when it is the exact opposite. You really are basically ignoring what I've been saying all this time and the fact that you keep trying to say I have a "religious faith" in science only makes me think more that you don't understand the methods of either. (see science and see religion) 2) "Given a theory T and a corpus of hypotheses H, we can always construe a theory T1 with a corpus of hypotheses H1 logically incompatible with H and yet supported by all the evidence that supports T. The reason why you don’t find many of these incompatible theories around is because it is a waste of time to construe them." This is the usual claim that is not backed up by any evidence. It seems to me that this idea misunderstands how scientific processing actually works. (If this is what philosophers of science are actually saying) Regardless, for the sake of argument, lets say that I was to accept this theory as conceivably possible. You say that the only reason “more” examples to back this theory up have not come about is because “it is a waste of time to construe them” I say it’s because it’s actually not possible to do so. You seem to think of scientific theories to be just constructed models that just “happen” to work and different models using different approaches could explain all the same phenomenon’s. (This is certainly more of a religious view of science than my own) As I already said I think this is an incorrect view of science and the claim is untrue based on how I perceive science to actually work but even if I accepted your theory the point is the following: You have NEVER been able to come up with a SINGLE example within science that proves this theory. Not once since you first mentioned this idea. You’ve failed AGAIN in trying to do when you make the following example: “A little example may be two different quantum mechanics Theory one asserting the existence of muons(I think they are called) and the other denying it (muons are particles faster than light) . Still another could be a unification of Relativity and quantum mechanics call it theory T and, relativity, quantum mechanics and M Theory (superstring theory) call it theory T1. The two theories are logically incompatible, given the fact that T1 includes the assumption that there are symmetries of all kinds in the universe and T does not. In addition the two theories are constructed on different geometries, T on a four dimensional geometry and T1 on a much larger dimensional geometry. Since there might be no way to ever find out if reality consists of more than four dimensions they are supported by all evidence, present past and future, the only difference being in the fact that T1 can explain on a logical (mathematical) ground Relativity and Quantum mechanics together, they say, and the other does not. But the possibility of discovering new dimensions although technically difficult is not impossible.” The problems with this is you’re fundamentally mistaken from the start. Particles in quantum mechanics are not introduced into the theory by hand. There is a tight connection between each species of particles that can be predicted from the theory. The positron was predicted by theory as a result of the symmetries of group theory, which is pure mathematics, yet nature behaves according to group theory. To say that you could simply have one theory with one particle and another that doesn't have that particle means you have thrown out the entire structure underlying quantum field theory, which constitutes a successful unification of quantum mechanics and special relativity. The kind of statement made above is exactly what you expect when someone fails to appreciate the statement that 'nature is mathematical'. There are no two different quantum mechanics! "Still another could be a unification of Relativity and quantum mechanics call it theory T and, relativity, quantum mechanics and M Theory (superstring theory) call it theory T1. The two theories are logically incompatible, given the fact that T1 includes the assumption that there are symmetries of all kinds in the universe and T does not. " ....The problem with that statement is that M-theory IS the unification of relativity and quantum mechanics.….so yeah…sorry. Alright, moving on. “LOL OBSCURE YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT NEWTONIAN PHYSICS: ONE OF THE CLAIMS OF IT IS THAT GIVEN TWO THINGS MOVING OR ONE STAYING STILL AND OTHER MOVING YOU MAY SAY WHICH ONE IS MOVING AND THE OTHER IS STATIONARY, OR BOTH MOVING AT DIFFERENT SPEED ONLY REFERRED TO A THIRD OBEJCT THAT WORKS AS A REFERENTIAL FRAMEWORK . NOW DO YOU SEE THE CHILD REASONING IN NEWTONIAN TERMS? ( OK HE SAYS TO HIMSELF, I AM MOVING BECAUSE I SEE THE GROUND REMAINING BACK INCLUDING THE TRAIN STATION AND OTHER TRAINS!!!) IN ORDER TO KNOW ALL THIS HE HAS TRAIN STATIONS BUILT IN IN HIS BRAIN/ MIND, INNATE KNOWLEDGE. NOT EVEN PLATO WOULD BE SO INNATIST!!!” Again I’m left bewildered. You completely misunderstand my position and ignore what I’ve said so far. Not ANYWHERE did I talk about the child “reasoning” his way through anything. I even went along with your general idea that he is not making conceptual separations and still “believing” everything is an aspect of the same thing. I was simply saying that, when old enough to use his senses (but still without the use of language) he can detect differences between these “aspects“. Your “response” wasn’t a response…I’m not talking about “innate knowledge” or reasoning of any kind. Did you completely miss the example of a young child being able to textually feel the difference between a stuffed toy animal and his bottle of milk? Even if he doesn’t separate the two things as different entities the whole point is he is on some level aware of certain differences between the two simply based on his senses. Your response had nothing to do with what I wrote and it argued against positions I never mentioned. Then you say: "OUR ABILITY TO PREDICATE SAMENESS OF AN OBJECT AND DISTINGUISH IT FROM OTHERS DEPENDS ON THE APPARATUS OF REIFICATION WHICH INCLUDES WORDS : THIS, THAT, IT IS THE SAME, IT IS DIFFERENT AND SO ON... HOW DOES THE BABY KNOW THAT THE TREE HE SEES IN THE YARD IS THE SAME EVERY DAY? THE SUN IS THE SAME SUN EVERY DAY IN THE SKY, AND THE MILK HE DRINKS IS A DIFFERENT QUANTITY EVERY DAY? THINK ABOUT IT !!!HAVING LEArNED A LANGUAGE AND THrOUGH IT A LOT ABOUT THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN ,YOU REASON RETROACTEVeLY ATTRIBUTING TO THE CHILD THINGS SHE CANNOT KNOW YET. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THAT PERIOD IS A VERY DIFFICULT JOB, WE DO NOT HAVE THE LANGUAGE TO EVEN EXPRESS THIS ANTE LITTERAM KNOWLEDGE. SEE ALSO NATURLIZED EPISTEMOLOGY, IS THE NAME THAT USUALLY IS GIVEN TO A NATURAL APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE. Basically what I just said applies to this too. A child can instinctively (and because of his senses) feel and see differences between objects. This doesn’t mean he is necessarily making separations between them and certainly not that he understands “meanings” of any kind. That was never the point. I don’t know how to explain it any simpler and maybe that is my fault…I don’t know. Moving even further on. Now regarding the arts I don’t have the time or the will to go through each example and each point one by one but I will address the general claims. To begin with, you now have shifted the original conversation of creativity and speculation to a different one regarding intuition. So I really should stop right there because yours wasn’t a response, it was the introduction of a completely different topic. Despite of that fact, I will deal with some of the claims made. It should be clear to everyone that whatever impact certain scientific knowledge has on artistic movements has nothing to do with the intuition of either. If an artist is inspired to transform his/her style based on a scientific theory, that says nothing about there being similarities between the speculation and thought process between an artist and a scientist. Also as I’ve already said a number of times before, even if there was a similarity at the initial stage science has a framework to go beyond that initial step. The problem is that the introduction of art and music don’t have anything to do with the initial argument that was being had. We weren’t talking about intuitions and inspirations. What we were discussing was why the general speculation of certain individuals has no way of evolving to anything else but speculation while if there is a scientific speculation (in the initial steps) it can and it does. The rest of that particular response is just a general mixing of things that don’t necessarily have much to do with each other (and even when they do so what?). You say: "Summer surprised us, coming over the StarnbergerseeWith a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,And I was frightened. He said, Marie,Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.In the mountains, there you feel free.I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter."(Eliot, 1)In this excerpt he takes on the persona of a girl, presumably Marie, and talks first about sitting around a lake, drinking coffee. The speaker then fades into her childhood, remembering with fondness how her cousin took her out sledding. She remembers being scared and then going down anyway. Then abruptly the speaker changes topics again and goes off on a different tangent. This is a prime example of how relativity has influenced T.S. Eliot in the way in which he is able to frame and write this poem. It departs from the common fluid, single event poetry and changes speakers and topics almost as if remembering a flash of a life, catching only pieces of each memory along the way." So let me get this straight…in your mind the fact that a poet chooses to change between time frames shows that he had an intuition of relativity? That he was influenced by the scientific knowledge of relativity? That the theory of relativity is embedded in literature because of a poet’s choice to move through time in a non conventional way? The connections seem absurd but even if they were correct I miss to see what it has to do with anything. Basically anything that mentions time and space in a different way somehow has the theory of relativity embedded in it is what you seem to be saying…I don’t really know what to say to that. You can endlessly play connect the dots with anything. That is basically like saying this: (And I quote Sam Harris once again) “I have literally walked into a book store, the cookbook aisle of a book store, randomly opened a cookbook, found a recipe for wok-seared shrimp with ogo relish or something, and then came up with a mystical interpretation of the recipe. And you can do it! I mean, you can play connect the dots with any crazy text and find wisdom in it” The purpose of that example is that based on what you’re saying you can pretty much connect the ideas of relativity to anything you find it fit…whether or not there are some similarities of concepts. In that example Harris did it with food recipes and mysticism…but you can do it with anything. Attempting to move further on… Art and music usually have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of something the way science does. The most you could really say is that there are certain questions we as humans ask ourselves such as what is human happiness, loss, emotional states, and purpose. Those same questions could be approached by these different fields. An artist could make a depiction in a drawing or a musician could create a musical piece that expresses his own interpretation of what that idea means to him. What does this have to do with science? All you are saying is that there are similar questions which are dealt with in different ways by different domains. You also forget that a great deal of art and music develop in relation to cultural situations of that time. It has nothing to do with knowledge of how the universe seems to work. You go back to the 60’s and 70‘s where a lot of music dealt with the Vietnam war or the drug and sexual revolutions. Or maybe the music reflected particular philosophies about society and altered mental states. Looking back and studying these movements you may gain and understanding of what was going on socially at a specific time period. But you forget that while the works themselves are powerful expressions of individuals which explore certain important questions, they are not systems from which you derive an objective understanding of what is in part true or false about the world. You are trying to connect areas of self expression with one which attempts to comprehend the workings of the universe. “It has been necessary to understand the Theory of Relativity and how it has been applied to the many different styles of literature, art and music that came about in the early twentieth century. That idea alone has completely reshaped art, music and literature and had a profound impact upon how artists, authors and musicians create and convey their works of art.” That may be so but that has nothing to do with this conversation…I ask again: So what? The fact that scientific theory may have influenced artistic direction is not a response to anything I’ve said. You go on to quote Einstein who says: “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” Not at all considering that science itself…RELATIVITY itself has shown some of our initial intuitions of space and time to be WRONG. I don’t understand the point you’re even trying to make…even if there are intuitions that drive different people to do different things so what? Science is so much more than intuition…a scientific theory is not solely composed of “intuition” if it’s part of it at all. The whole point of what I’ve been saying so far is that even if you chose to incorporate certain things like creativity, speculation, or intuition (that exist in other fields too) the framework that leads to scientific results is one that is completely different than the frameworks or often the purpose of the other fields you‘ve mentioned. It really is starting to seem to me that we’re having completely different discussions. Einstein “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle” I could not disagree with that statement more and I could care less that it was Einstein himself who said it. (You’re using argument from authority? Really?) Einstein certainly was not a theist, despite the pathetic attempts of religious people to bring him to their side. (Which even if he was, so what? It wouldn’t make them anymore right in their beliefs) Einstein is at best a Deist, but even that is debatable. It is very possible that he used the word God and Universe interchangeably. The contexts of many of his quotes need to be examined before making any claim. Either way it is once again completely irrelevant. As I’ve said many times before you can have a scientific mindset towards certain aspects of your life and then abandon that same mindset for a religious one in other parts of your life. This doesn’t mean that there is no conflict between the scientific mindset and the religious one. Science doesn’t disprove god but the scientific approach is very different then the “faith” approach to things. There IS a conflict and you can only ignore it by 1) ignoring the obvious of how people behave in this world 2) misunderstanding the processes of both It has been shown over and over again that people can hold on to multiple contradicting beliefs or mindsets simultaneously so there is no surprise there in the quote you presented. What good does it serve you to keep ignoring this fact? Now why should any wonder and appreciation of the universe brought on by scientific knowledge lose its importance without religion? It doesn’t have to in any way shape or form unless you care more about what satisfies your emotional states than what is possibly in part true or false about the world. It is simply a matter of how it is you’re looking at things. Importance or even purpose would not be lost at all to many scientists and people who do not believe in god. So the fact it may have been lost to Einstein serves no argumentative point whats so ever. “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle" This seems to me a completely meaningless statement. What is it that he is meaning by miracle? How does not believing in the suspension of physical laws mean that you don't aknoweldge mysteries in the world? It doesn't. Some of the conflicts between the religious and scientific mindset I’ve mentioned in my first couple blogs, and I will return to discussing them at a later time. “Intuition might turn out to be the most undervalued source of knowledge” Intuition is not a source of knowledge. It may be a drive that steers us towards knowledge (whether that knowledge turns out to prove the initial intuition correct or not depends on the situation, but any knowledge gained is never through intuition alone but by much more. Intuition plays only a part in the very early stages). “The greatest scientific discoveries of all times are discovered by intuition” Again, this is false. Intuition might have been the starting step, the initial drive that eventually pushed an idea to go through a vast number of different processes. Those processes in turn in the end result in a scientific theory. At best you can say these discoveries are indirectly driven by intuition...but to say they are discovered by intuition is again to misunderstand the scientific process. That is why I keep saying that comparing the scientific method to an artistic one of a painter and an empty canvas is redicolous. Let’s say that from an intuition an idea arose followed by experimentation, mathematics, etc. etc. Let’s go on to say that through this process certain discoveries are made that result in the scientist throwing out the original hypothesis in exchange for a new one in light of the evidence. Would you still say that the discoveries were made by intuition? The whole point is the scientific process is much more than that even though apparently you fail to acknowledge it. The discoveries are made through the process that is part of science (experimental, mathematical, and theoretical) and that goes far beyond intuition even if intuition may have been the first step. Maybe I’m wrong but there seems to me a difference between intuition and logical deduction. For example… whether or not the sun will rise again tomorrow seems to me a deduction not an intuition. But again who cares? What all this talk of intuition has to do with anything I’ve said in my previous blogs is beyond me. I also fail to see the connection you keep attempting to make between intuition and art. “In the arts, intuition works in an abstract manner. Our intuition makes us draw the distinction to what is a piece of art and what is not. My intuition tells me that a piece of art lies in what the artist wants it to be. If someone takes a map of the world, tears it apart and places the pieces into a glass jar and exhibits it as art, mirroring the conflicts of the earth. I would say it is art, just as a blank canvas titled ‘emptiness’ would be. However a blank canvas with no purpose would not be art.” This is still completely pointless to the conversation but I’ll address it anyway. It doesn’t seem to me at all true that it’s intuition which is making you arrive at the distinction between a work of art and an empty canvas. It all has to do with our understanding of the terms…we know that art is produced by people…that art works require intent of some kind…I don’t see how any of this is intuitive. When you decide that a blank canvas is a work of art (which by the way different people have different standards for what they consider art to be and I‘m sure some people would not consider an empty canvas titled “emptiness” to be a work of art) is based on the aknowledgement of these facts: 1. The canvas is in a gallery 2. It has the title “emptiness” which intends purpose behind the work and stirs a certain image in mind and self reflection on the concept. 3. It has the name of an artist by its side which also results in the deduction that there was purpose involved in the creation of the piece. You would go through none of those acknowledgements I just mentioned if you saw an empty canvas on the ground with no title or anything because the whole context of the situation would be shifted. How you think any of that is intuitive and not simple observation and deduction of one’s environment I just don‘t understand. Regardless, I’ve still answered all these points even if we were to accept that intuition was present in all those circumstances. “People will follow their intuition to deviate from the complimentary colour theory if they have enough intuition. Art revolves around breaking laws. Therefore intuition is needed to interpret a piece of artwork. Is it not intuition that makes us associate certain images to certain feelings, influenced by our own experiences?” Again what the hell does intuition have to do with it? There is no intuition that the artist is having in relation to some artistic “objective truth”. It is just a choice of what color an artist wants to use. Art is a expression of feelings, a creation of what they’re experimenting with or a depiction of what it is that they see. For example: A theme like death is something that many people would find depressing. So if an artist makes the choice of depicting death is he going to paint a picture of smiling people walking through a sunny field picking up flowers? Most likely no because that has nothing to do with death. He will consciously create a certain atmosphere that is serious or dark because most of us don’t see death as a happy process to be joyous about and it doesn‘t make us think of sunny fields. If a musician wants to write a song about death and create a somber sad atmosphere is he going to use up beat rock dancing music or tempo? NO. These are rational choices based on what feelings certain facts of life stir within us. Please…It’s my very humble opinion that you should maybe try to understand a little bit of the process that goes on when someone creates a song for example. If you don’t understand the artistic techniques and methods used in the creation of a song how can you make claims of what similarities exist between music and anything else? If anything, when someone writes a song in the attempt to stir an emotional response within an individual it is through a long analysis and observation of what it is people can relate to and in what way and why. Maybe in the future I can explain to you a little bit more about these things since I am a musician and have been playing for many years and for once you can’t claim I don’t know what I’m talking about. Now regarding ethics I agree that we have certain “intuitions” though I would instead use the term instincts. The discourse to be had about our understanding of right and wrong is vast so I’m not going to go into discussing ethics now. It would just take way too long and I’ve already written enough. I will return to it later on. However I will just say that I have a problem with the word intuition here too because it suggests that there is an absolute moral truth that exists in the universe outside of us. Instead I would put it into natural terms…what results in our perception of right and wrong is based on natural instincts which are embedded in the natural system and especially in our relations to our environment. The instincts are naturally universal but which instincts are empowered or suppressed depends a great deal on the environment and struggles we find ourselves in therefore there is a kind of “social relativism” in a sense. (NOT a moral relativism. There is a big difference between social and moral relativism and I am not a moral relativist at all. Also, in contrast to what many people believe, I actually do see place for scientific understanding of human happiness and morality and why it is that we find certain things to be right or wrong.) Intuition may play a role as a DRIVE in different areas of knowledge but it is NOT a source of knowledge itself. Science proves that to be the case. Einstein may have had an intuition that drove him before the creation of the actual theory, but what the theory itself consists of (and why we accept it) is much, much more than that. What showed Einstein’s intuition to be better than Newton’s intuition had much more to do with the mathematics, experimentation, and theoretic components that are involved in the scientific process then the intuition itself. Both had intuitions and what showed one to be better than the first are the steps that I keep on mentioning to you that you keep ignoring. This is why I keep repeating over and over again (Apparently for no reason because it keeps flying right over your head) that science has a number of next steps that allows any creativity or intuition you may be thinking of to turn into something infinitely bigger than that. That is the HUGE difference between science and the kind of speculation and fantasy I’ve argued against all this time. I don’t understand how many times I have to say that even if we accept the idea that at the bottom of any discourse or idea lies fantasy, speculation, creativity, and now intuition even if all those are involved there is a world of difference between which frameworks result in those things actually becoming productive in our understanding of how the universe seems work and which frameworks fail to do so. That is all for now…but I really do wonder am I just that ridiculously mediocre at explaining my positions or do you occasionally have trouble paying attention and deriving the right meaning from what it is you’re reading?