In message of 16 Feb, Haines Brown <brownh@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> wrote: <snip> > In the philosophy of science, all observations entail unproven > observational hypotheses (Lakatos). This is perhaps the core of your somewhat positivistic analysis. The question to ask is how could you possibly prove any observational hypothesis? I suspect your notion of proof does not allow you to establish the trust of any observational hypothesis. So all observations are rubbish! But this goes against the thoughts of the majority of mankind, if not all of such. Observations are not rubbish, they may be mistaken, they may be misremembered but they can very definitely be true, in fact the overwhelming majority of observations are true. If you start from there, you have a very different analysis of truths and far less difficulty in coping with the truths or not of written reports and inferences from facts. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org              For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

Tim, At the risk of being OT, let me briefly reply to your comments. >> In the philosophy of science, all observations entail unproven >> observational hypotheses (Lakatos). > > This is perhaps the core of your somewhat positivistic analysis. I assume you refer to logical positivism here. I'm certainly not in that company, although there are elements that have been picked up and become rather universal. In particular the idea that knowledge contains non-observational facts. > The question to ask is how could you possibly prove any observational > hypothesis? You can't, and that's the point. It is an axiom, a presumption, and so truth that arises from observation depends on what is unproven. An observational hypothesis depends on our understanding of how phenomena arise and become intelligible. In broad terms, there's no fundamentalist reductionism by which we can certainly know something is true (outside religion, of course), but only true in relation to our present understanding. Since an empiricist reductionism is no longer considered valid, the question is, how to we validate our understandings? Well, not an easy question to answer, and various approaches have been suggested. > I suspect your notion of proof does not allow you to establish the > trust of any observational hypothesis. So all observations are > rubbish! No, as I tried to point out, data constrain facts. I watch the sunrise for a while and am constrained by observational data to be likely to infer that what I'm witnessing is not a sunset. The longer I watch, the less likely I am to mistake it for a sunset. There are all sorts of observational hypotheses here, but they are probably well justified. That is the basis of my trust in them, not proof. > But this goes against the thoughts of the majority of mankind, if not > all of such. Observations are not rubbish, they may be mistaken, they > may be misremembered but they can very definitely be true, in fact the > overwhelming majority of observations are true. I did not intend to imply that observations are rubbish in the sense of being untrue, but merely that observations in themselves do not have the quality of being "true". A rain drop falls from the leaf. In itself, this does not engage consciousness, for I may be oblivious of it. There all kinds of things happening in our universe that do not have the status of facts. When I witness the drop, it becomes a datum of observation, but it is still only data. My eyes perceive a plethora of colors and shapes that are not facts until they register in my brain and impinge on some level of consciousness. It becomes a fact when I make a statement that the drop fell from the leaf, and only the statement acquires the quality of being true or false. Observation is a mere sense-impression per se, and is indeed rubbish in sense of being at all meaningful. It is only when I think about it to make it a fact that it ceases being rubbish. Just in case there is any misunderstanding, there are an unlimited number of things that affect me that I do not observe. The bacteria in my gut are hard at work, but I'm happily oblivious of them. But if I were to make the effort to observe them and bring their existence to consciousness, they become a fact. The confusion may be that we sometimes use the word "fact" to mean "real". We have become more cautious about this association. We know there are real unobservables (causal potencies) and there are unreal observables (chimera), and so reality and observation need to be distinguished. > If you start from there, you have a very different analysis of truths > and far less difficulty in coping with the truths or not of written > reports and inferences from facts. I don't know if you are arguing for a radical empiricism. Being from the UK, that is entirely possible, since that is where it primarily flourished. But if so, you are surely aware that not many people still hold to that position today, and it really isn't just "common sense" as used to be assumed. To bring this back a bit more to the theme of this forum, it is not a question whether a bit of evidence, such as a document, should be taken seriously or not. Many people felt that the alpha and omega of knowledge was empirical observation because that is how we engage the world, but in fact we engage the world through action, not observation, and in nearly any action, there is contained something of ourselves as social beings. The increasingly sophisticated means at our disposal for gathering and evaluating evidence remains of utmost importance. What we do have to admit, I believe, is that truth does not simply arise from the evidence plus logic, but is constructed in terms of it. The former may have been the creed of Sherlock Holmes, but it would impoverish our lives if it were so. As Nietzsche pointed out, we would become slaves to the past; we would betray our creative power to shape our own destiny. An illustration of this might be the earlier hint that genealogy has traditionally served as part of ruling class ideology unless, of course, it is viewed as a pleasant hobby or as a tool for use in historiography. These functions do not challenge its validity, but only posits that validity in a broader context. -- Haines Brown, KB1GRM