On 26/05/2017 8:44 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 26 May 2017 2:26 a.m., "Bruce Kellett" <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 26/05/2017 9:11 am, David Nyman wrote:
On 25 May 2017 23:18, "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
I have told you my theory of virtuous circular explanations.
"Invoke" is a pejorative attribution. The physical universe
is an */inference /*to explain appearances (and a very
successful one at that).
Vocabulary. The point is, assuming mechanism (and please do tell
me if you're reasoning in a different theory), that the inference
is to a particular *selection* of computations from the
computational plenitude. And why is that? Because they 'explain'
the appearances. But do they really? Are those computations - in
and of themselves - really capable of 'explaining' why or how
they, and no others, come to be uniquely selected for our
delectation? Are they really capable of 'explaining' why or how
those selfsame appearances come to be present to us?
I think you and Brent are using different notions of
"explanation". As I understand your (David's) position, it is a
notion of "explanation" originating with Plato: Plato's theory of
Forms offered at the same time both a systematic explanation of
things and also a connected epistemology of explanation.
(Summaries from Jonathan Cohen in the Oxford Companion to
Philosophy.) In other words, the Platonic ideal is that "Ontology
precedes epistemology", to vary Brent's slogan. In the case of
mechanism, the ontology is the natural numbers (plus arithmetic)
and for an explanation to be acceptable, everything has to follow
with the force of logical necessity from this ontology.
As I understand Brent's position (and that is essentially the same
as my position), his concept of "explanation" follows the
tradition of British empirical philosophy, stemming from Bacon,
through Hume, to Russell and others. In this tradition, to explain
an observed characteristic is to show its relationship to a law in
accordance with which the characteristic occurs or can be made to
occur, and there is a hierarchy of such laws -- the more
comprehensive laws are deemed more probable. This leads to the
dominant model for explanation in the natural sciences, which
requires the citation of one or more laws which, when conjoined
with the statement of relevant facts, entail the occurrence of the
phenomenon or uniformity that is to be explained. This does not
rely on any assumed ontology; hence, "Epistemology precedes ontology".
Interesting analysis Bruce. However, I'm not sure if I can follow you
on all points. I think you're right that in a strictly pragmatic sense
epistemology does indeed precede ontology in that observation provides
data on behalf of theory. But as Popper points out, what counts as
data is already theory-dependent.
I think it is the interpretation of the data that is theory-dependent.
But then you have a hierarchy of theories -- what is a new cutting-edge
theory today is tomorrow's instrument for data taking.....
And the reductive aspect of theory is itself an implicitly ontological
commitment.
Not for the pragmatic instrumentalist. Even committed scientific
realists would only claim that it is only for our best,
well-established, theories that there is any suggestion that the
suggested entities actually exist.
So if a hierarchy of laws were to imply mutually inconsistent
ontological commitments it would be to that extent incomplete and
unsatisfactory. Indeed the holy grail of (Aristotelian?) science is a
hierarchical "Theory of Everything" that is, in precisely this sense,
ontologically consistent "bottom up all the way down", if you'll
permit me a slogan of my own.
The search for such a TOE has a chequered record in the history of
science. Some still hope that such a theory is possible, but the
negative induction from the past record would not lead one to be
optimistic that any such theory exists or is possible.
For these reasons I can't accept that your distinction between
Platonic and Aristotelian modes of explanation has much real force. In
practice, *any* effective mode of explanation must inexorably be
constrained by its fundamental ontological commitments,
That is the case only on your account of "explanation". If explanation
does not rely on an underlying ontology, then it is not constrained by
any such assumed ontology. Not all explanations need be reducible to
your model of explanation.
Bruce
on pain of inconsistency. If these are unclear, then part of the
explanation is to make them explicit, on pain of obscurantism. And
finally of course to count as an explanation it must be susceptible of
constraint by evidence, on pain of pusillanimity.
David
Wherever we want to derive a technology from scientific knowledge,
we shall need to know what causes a desired effect. So we need to
distinguish between different levels of explanation, in that
while, for example, the disappearance of a patient's infection may
be causally explained by his antibiotic injection, the operation
of that causal process is in its turn to be explained by
correlational laws of biochemistry. Hence, the understanding of
consciousness in any effective way will be linked to the creation
of effective AI.
This is the paradigm of current scientific practice. Sure, as
Bruno says, this stems ultimately from an Aristotelian approach to
science rather than the Platonic approach. But the history of
Western thought has shown the scientific, or Aristotelian,
approach to have been overwhelmingly more successful, both in
developing technology and in reaching understanding of the nature
of reality.
Bruce
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