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From my article:
[I]sn’t the difficulty of changing an explanation at least partly a property not of the explanation itself but of whoever is trying to change it? If I’m having difficulty changing it, maybe that’s because I lack imagination. Or maybe I’m just new to that field and an expert could easily change it. In which case the difficulty of changing an explanation is, again, not an objective property of that explanation but a subjective property of its critics. How could subjective properties be epistemologically fundamental?
Isn’t this asking for a formalization of creativity, which is impossible?
No, see #3706. I’m open to user input (within reason). That covers any creative parts. The non-creative parts can be automated by definition.
Isn’t this basically asking for a specification of the creative program? Isn’t this effectively an AGI project?
Even if we allow creative user input, eg a score for the quality of an explanation, we run into all kinds of open questions, such as what upper and lower limits to use for the score, and unexpected behavior, such as criticisms pushing an explanations score beyond those limits.
Deutsch’s stance in my own words:
The distinguishing characteristic between rationality and irrationality is that rationality is the search for good explanations. We make progress by searching for good explanations.
A good explanation is hard to vary “while still accounting for what it purports to account for.” (BoI chapter 1 glossary.) A bad explanation is easy to vary.
For example, the Persephone myth as an explanation of the seasons is easy to change without impacting its ability to explain the seasons. You could arbitrarily replace Persephone and other characters and the explanation would still ‘work’. The axis-tilt explanation of the earth, on the other hand, is hard to change without breaking it. You can’t just replace the axis with something else, say.
The quality of a theory is a matter of degrees. The harder it is to change a theory, the better that theory is. When deciding which explanation to adopt, we should “choose between [explanations] according to how good they are…: how hard to vary.” (BoI chatper 9; see similar remark in chapter 8.)
The act of making different types of idea jibe (propositional ideas, feelings etc.), doesn’t seem to me to be best explained as a rational process. They don’t have a shared metric or inter-translatability that would enable comparison. If feelings and other non-rational mental contents cannot be reduced to explicit reasons, then the process of integrating them cannot itself be arrived at through reasoning alone. This doesn’t mean reason cannot critique feelings or other non-rational content, only that the integrative process itself operates differently than rational deliberation.
Thanks for asking good questions.
Is it accurate to view reason more as a process than a static state?
Yes.
Where the process might be summed up by
1. Being open to criticism
2. Truth-seeking (commitment to getting ideas to jibe)
Yes. Aka ‘common-preference finding’.
Some of the virtues that @benjamin-davies* has put together are part of it, too.
I think I agree. But to formulate a general theory for agents, the term ‘people’ is too strong when speaking of what’s relevant for a bacterium (which also has problems that shape its actions, what it finds relevant, etc.). But I agree that persons and agents should be differentiated, since people exceed the pre-given problems set by evolution.
I don’t think so, but I don’t know enough of the history. But the framework emerged out of biology trying to make a theory of organisms in general (innate theories like autopoiesis/self-preservation, for example). Then it’s been used specifically in cognitive science to try and integrate the general framework with human cognition. Even though it is dehumanizing, there is some value to viewing at least parts of human cognition in these terms. Whatever creativity is, most of human experience is already pre-given moment to moment, not willed by the person. I don’t think we as people derive our sense of autonomy from this world construction and pre-given coupling (we receive automatic responses/affordances). The only real change I seem to have is in every conscious moment.
the other alters
This part sounds redundant (‘other others’). Also, ‘alter’ can’t be used as a noun, only as a verb (meaning ‘to change’).
feelings and other nonrational mental contents
Feelings aren’t “nonrational” per se. There’s a rational place for feelings. See #3632: I mean no disrespect when I say this but I think you don’t yet understand the notion of rationality I use.
It sounds like you have a different conception of knowledge and rationality from Popper’s/Deutsch’s.
Rationality means finding common preferences among ideas. Why should that not be possible for the types of knowledge you mention?
perspectively knowledge
I’m not sure that’s what you meant to write. Adverbs don’t go in front of nouns.
I think your challenge asks for the wrong kind of thing. Deutsch’s “hard to vary” is a guideline for criticizing explanations, not a step by step decision algorithm. In this paper he says scientific methodology does not prescribe exact procedures, and that “better” explanations are not always totally rankable in a clean, mechanical way. “Hard to vary” mainly means avoiding explanations that can be tweaked to fit anything, because then they explain nothing, so the lack of a universal scoring program does not refute the idea.
THE LOGIC OF EXPERIMENTAL TESTS, PARTICULARLY OF EVERETTIAN QUANTUM THEORY
From the paper (p. 3):
An explanation is better the more it is constrained by the explicanda and by other good explanations,5 but we shall not need precise criteria here; we shall only need the following: that an explanation is bad (or worse than a rival or variant explanation) to the extent that…
(i) it seems not to account for its explicanda; or
(ii) it seems to conflict with explanations that are otherwise good; or
(iii) it could easily be adapted to account for anything (so it explains nothing).
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Accurate translation can be very difficult though.
But is not Tarski's notion of truth a relative notion? Is it not relative to the language to which the statement whose truth is being discussed belongs?
Fallibilism refutes the relativism on which the myth rests because fallibilism provides an absolute standard:
[T]here exists a very different attitude towards absolute truth, in fact a fallibilist attitude. It stresses the fact that the mistakes we make can be absolute mistakes, in the sense that our theories can be absolutely false – that they can fall short of the truth. Thus to the fallibilist the notion of truth, and that of falling short of the truth, may represent absolute standards – even though we can never be certain that we are living up to them. But since they may serve as a kind of steering compass, they may be of decisive help in critical discussions.
The myth stems from a “disappointed over-optimism concerning the powers of reason …”. (P. 44)
People think truth should win decisively. But discussions usually don’t lead to such a decisive victory (see #3568). So then people become pessimistic about the fruitfulness of discussions.
Science, a tradition of criticism, is unlike previous traditions, whose “Their function is, and has always been, to preserve the purity of the teaching of the founder of the school.” (P. 43)
Historically, Western culture is the result of culture clash between Romans and Greeks, Greeks and Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians. (P. 38)
Such clashes led Xenophanes draw important epistemological conclusions about truth and guesswork (p. 39).
Historically, Western culture is the result of culture clash between Romans and Greeks, Greeks and Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians. (P. 38)
Such clashes led Xenophanes draw important epistemological conclusions about truth and guesswork.
Historically, Western culture is the result of culture clash between Romans and Greeks, Greeks and Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians. (P. 38)
The myth Popper criticizes, in one sentence:
A rational and fruitful discussion is impossible unless the participants share a common framework of basic assumptions or, at least, unless they have agreed on such a framework for the purpose of the discussion.
By ‘framework’, Popper means an intellectual framework (as opposed to, say, certain attitudes like a desire to find truth).