>> Is anyone suggesting that we should never even
>> question the idea that
>> scientific paradigm shifts form a successive
>> approximation to truth?
> Question it all you want Tim... but if you expect to
> be taken seriously, you'd better have a pretty good
> alternate explanation with something that approaches
> supporting evidence.
It's not actually necessary to be able to answer a question to demonstrate
that the existing answers are inadequate. In fact this is pretty key to
Kuhn's historical model, in which anomalies are noted well before new
theories explain them.
For myself, my closest philosophical affiliation is to Pyrrhonism, also
known as classical skepticism. A recent essya on the subject may be found at
http://maroney.org/Essays/The_Freedom_of_Doubt.html . There are serious
anomalies in the entire idea of "truth," which I regard as a moral judgment.
However, I do not disregard the idea of progress through science, only the
idea of progress towards the purely speculative idea of absolute truth. An
alternative model that seems to bear consideration is the evolutionary model
of "anomalistic selection." (This idea will probably only be understandable
to those who have read Kuhn -- I'm not going to try to provide that
background here.) Just as species develop longer lives and greater
reproductive success by evolving to survive in an environment littered with
obstacles, so theories develop greater longevity and broader applicability
by surviving an onslaught of anomalies. This does not imply that there is
any theory which will never encounter any anomalies, which would be another
way of saying "absolute truth." The model is a naturalistic view of the
development of theory which tries to deal with the fact that we seem to wind
up with better theories over time, without postulating unobservable
metaphysical ideals.
Ob.transhuman: As we look towards increased intelligence, we should be
considering the cognitive modes such beings would exhibit. From my own
observations of where both science and philosophy are going, it seems to me
that we will be looking at less absolutist, less essentialist, more
multi-valued, more skeptical, more existentialist beings, who are
increasingly comfortable with ambiguity and increasingly unconvinced by
absolute and dogmatic assertion, who are thoroughly self-aware of their own
role in constructing reality by modeling it. They will be smarter than we
are, but they will also be, strangely, more tentative.
-- Tim Maroney tim@maroney.org
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