Science Forums 2

[Doctordick]

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

Are you including zero in this to allow for the fact that our constructs can be false?

I am assuming that by “our constructs” you are referring to the ontology under discussion and not any specific epistemological construct. (I am subtly confused by your comment because, as I have defined it, the valid ontology is not a construct; it is no more than what really exists and what the epistemological construct was created to explain.) Now certainly all of our epistemological constructs (our scientific explanations) are based upon created (or constructed) ontologies so the issue of invalid ontological elements must be taken on eventually and I will give you my take on that issue shortly; however, for the moment, I am merely pointing out that the foundation I am laying out (that any explanation is based on some “real” foundation, even if that “real” foundation is NULL) does not assume solipsism is invalid (i.e., essentially that this is all nothing more than a figment of my imagination). The fundamental issue being, even if that scenario seems totally ridiculous to all of us, I can not “prove” it is false and I am merely pointing out that my attack does not presume it is false. If we are to be truly rational, we need to suspend belief in unsupportable issues.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

My dear friend, 'clearly' is not a word I would use here.
My clarity isn't equal to yours. My mind is racing trying to put boundaries on what you've said.

This is exactly the kind of response I want to see. If I say something which you find to be unclear, I want to know about that so I can clarify my comments. First, there is the issue of “something real” out there which we are trying to understand: i.e., philosophically speaking, “What can we know of reality?” is itself a very vague thing to ask. It immediately brings up the issues of, what do you mean by “know” and what do you mean by “reality”. We can get ridiculous and ask, what do you mean by “what”. From a fundamental philosophical perspective, English itself is a “squirrel” construct and you cannot prove your understanding of the meanings of any of these terms is identical to mine; this is why I made so much noise about being “rational”. I am willing to leave the meanings of the rest of the words in that sentence as rationally understood by all of us; however, the two words “know” and “reality” are another matter. Their exact meaning is so important to the discussion that I want to do my best to assure you understand what I mean. (In fact, understanding is another rather important word.)

My first comment, that defining reality to be a valid ontology was a tautological definition, was there to clarify the fact that I was intending to use the idea that ontology was the study of what exists to imply that the entirety of (whatever it is that is actually behind our world view) was fulfilled by the thing being referred to as a “valid ontology”. That is to say, if you knew the entirety of that ontology, you would know the entirety of reality. At that point the only problem still confronting you is to understand and/or explain that reality. (Though, philosophically speaking, the words explain and understand sort of lose meaning if you truly were to know all there was to know of reality; that's an issue which becomes clearer down the road.)

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

Now if I substitute 'things that can be sensed' with 'ontological elements' it clears it up a little.

The problem with that scenario is that it presumes the epistemological construct referred to as “your senses” is a valid epistemological construct. We can't do that as the whole issue here is to discover the exactly what constraints exist on such constructs. If we presume any specific construct to be valid, we have violated the constraints on the problem: we have presumed something we cannot prove to be valid.

What is very important for you to understand the difference between being rational and being correct. They are not at all the same thing. We are being rational with regard to the communications here but we are making every attempt to be correct with regard to the logic of our analysis: A must always follow B, we cannot become vague on any issue of those logical steps.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

If I allow that I might not be able to sense all ontological elements in reality, that clears it up a little bit more.

The issue is not that you are unable to sense these ontological elements but rather that they are simply not available to you. An epistemological solution can not be a function of information which is simply not available. Why that information is not available to you is not an issue of the discussion. In fact, it is possible that the entire ontology is available but I don't think that would be a provable assertion. Any rational argument must assume you are not “all knowing”: i.e., the validity of such a statement generates severe doubts in my mind as to its validity.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

..... you just slipped 'meaningful' into the conversation and I have a lot of baggage with that term. That implies (to me) a living thing, since it is only to a living thing that meaning applies. Therefore, you have given implied life. Now it is clear (I almost used the word 'true') that since it is a construct of yours, and that it has meaning to you (and if I comprehend it, me too) that you are the reason it has life.

Well, I didn't take the meaning to be so serious. What I meant was simply that the definition I gave carried very little information with it and serves little purpose beyond mere substitution. I, personally, can't think of another definition for the term which does not introduce unprovable material and I really hate the idea of using the term “valid ontology” over and over as “reality” just seems more convenient in many cases.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "I determine it thus! (he kicks the tree)".

The problem with that is that it also presumes his world view is valid, but that is the central issue under examination here. The only kind of proof which begins with the assumption that the central issue is valid, is one who's purpose is to prove it is not (i.e., a proof by contradiction). And here, I will accede to the fact that I cannot prove his statement invalid but that does not mean that it is valid (think "brain in a vat" sort of thing).

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

Your ability to skewer a referent and hold it in place is masterful. Unfortunately, with me, it's like trying to pick up a drop of water with my fingertip.

I am not exactly sure of your intention here; was this a complement or are you trying to display confusion about something I have said?

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

And there is the connection to explanation. So, in short, an epistemological construct is an explanation in the abstract sense. I'm looking at the explanation itself, not at the thing it is explaining. Yes, and I think this is what drove you to explain it in mathematical terms.

Well, yes the connection is there but I am of the opinion that the connection has to be more firmly established so that we can understand exactly what the problem is we are trying to solve. It is held by many people that epistemology is the essence of science (as opposed to ontology which is the essence of “metaphysics”). All of us, I think, have our own interpretation of what is meant by this (what makes sense to us).

The Wikipedia Encyclopedia says:

Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims. In other words, epistemology primarily addresses the following questions: "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?".

I read in that a rather general statement of the philosopher's perspective on science itself. I would say that the one word expressing what is being searched for there is “understanding” (though the word “understand” is used but once in the Wikipedia entry I quoted from).

The question I ask is, how does one judge the existence or nonexistence of understanding? In yourself it is a hard question to answer as it amounts to what I consistently refer to as a “squirrel” decision: when you understand, you just feel like you understand. So, in the interest of being objective, I move the question over to, how does one judge the understanding of another. As you try to communicate a new idea to another, what is it that moves you to believe that they understand? Certainly their saying that they understand is no real evidence, that's why professors create tests.

I suggest that, since you generally have a firm belief that you understand what you are trying to communicate, you will judge that the listener understands when his (or her) responses begin to become consistent with what you feel are reasonable responses had you been in their shoes so to speak. That would be when your expectations of events and their expectations of events begin to become essentially the same (their reactions with regard to the pertinent issues are no longer surprising). So it appears that the issue of expectations is central to understanding itself: i.e., when you understand something, you possess definable related expectations. I present this only as the chain of thought which led me to conclude that the ability to “explain” something is the central issue of understanding it.

By this means, I came to define “an explanation” as a method of obtaining expectations from given known information. I think that is an accurate representation of the common meaning of the term explanation. If you are to disagree with me then it behooves you to either give me an example of “an explanation” which engenders no expectations (something which is considered to be an explanation which does not satisfy my definition) or a method of obtaining expectations from information which would not be accepted as an explanation (something which satisfies my definition which is not an explanation).

Essentially, I view an epistemological construct as a formally defined explanation and it is indeed the “nut of the whole thing”. The issue I am examining is, “can one put any logical constraints on the possibilities here (without specifying the underlying ontology: i.e., knowing anything of reality) or are the possible valid explanations totally unconstrained”.

Originally Posted by Qfwfq

Just to make sure:I can get your drift if I suppose you meant "unknown" and that researchers must discover the "new" info, unless you meant a lacking logical argument, yet to be found. Which way should we read it?

I am not at all sure what you mean by “lacking logical argument”. Nonetheless, there is an issue here which I need to clarify. My position is actually quite simple. By a flaw free explanation (where I am now presuming that any reference to an epistemological construct can be referred to as an explanation) I mean that it is an explanation within which no flaw can be found: i.e., the explanation is perfectly consistent with all known information and contains nothing which can be used to prove it is wrong (no internal inconsistencies). If a flaw can be found, sufficient work will find it and, once that flaw is uncovered, that explanation can no longer be accepted as valid and, more importantly, would not have been accepted as valid the moment it was suggested, had the flaw been evident then.

I am not talking about discovering additional information which invalidates that explanation. That issue is an entirely different thing. In fact that is exactly the issue I was referring to with my first constraint, “whatever the ontological elements underlying this epistemological construct are, there exists a possibility that additional ontological elements may arise later which were unavailable when the the epistemological construct was conceived”. The use of the words “later” and “when” should be a clue as to the issue of significance here. We are talking about circumstances changing. If an explanation is a method of obtaining expectations from “given known information”, we need a mechanism for allowing that “given known information” to change. It should be clear to you that the common mechanism (within the common world view) which yields such a possibility is called “time”.

In my arguments here, I will solve that problem with the introduction of a concept which I will call “time”; however, it is not exactly the common concept put forth by your subconscious. My concept is nothing except a defined mechanism which allows the given known information to change. I will define the past to be "what is known" and the future to be "what is not known". The present is defined to be "a change in what is known" (essentially, the boundary of the past). In this perspective, the past can be seen as a collection of presents and we can use the index “t” to refer to a specific present in that past.

I will use exactly the same mechanism to represent differences between the underlying ontological elements. It should be clear that exactly what any specific ontological element is, is something which is part and parcel of the explanation itself. That is to say understanding what the ontological elements are, is part of the problem of understanding the explanation itself: i.e., we actually have nothing to go by except the status played by that ontological element in the explanation and we must divine what is being meant from the references to it. What symbolism is used to reference those elements is an open issue as understanding the symbolism (learning a language) constitutes solving exactly the same kind of problem. The only information we have to go on are the apparent references. Thus it is that, in my universal map of reality, I will use numerical indices to identify these references to ontological elements. Oh, by the way, I use the term "element" to imply indivisibility as infinite recursion is not an achievable goal. It should be clear that we cannot "know" an infinite collection of ontological elements even if that were the correct representation of reality.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

This is hard for you to do, isn't it. You're attempting to put into words the content of your formulation on explanation.

Yes it is hard, because I want you to see it as an absolutely general view. It is not being put forward as an accidental stab in the dark which just happens to be right but rather as a logical analysis which must be right. I am presenting a specific solution to a very important problem (important from the perspective of scientific objectivity). What I am laying out is a tautological construct capable of representing any possible explanation of anything. It is not a theory; no more than the Dewy Decimal System could be thought of as a theory: it is the fabrication of a logical mechanism for representing an explanation with out making constraints on what is being explained.

Originally Posted by ldsoftwaresteve

You have that in mind at all times, whereas we don't. So, when I wander off subject, you have to deal with something you wouldn't have to deal with if we were staring at the math. It's hard to contemplate the same thing happening there.
In addition, when we talk we are used to letting emotion drive the way we say what we say. That is not true in mathematics. So, in a real sense, we have to learn how to discuss from scratch.

There is probably a lot of truth to that. What I am doing is laying out a set of definitions which can be applied to any collection of information and I am going to show that these definitions lead to a mathematical relationship which can not be avoided: i.e., there always exists an interpretation of any explanation which must obey my fundamental equation (which we will get to down the line). Because it must apply to any explanation, it is important that all these meanderings off the subject be handled. After all, I want to be rational. I know I am not dealing with facts here, I am dealing with possibilities and it is imperative that I don't presume something which I can not defend as necessary.

If anyone has a problem with what I have proposed so far, let me know. -- Dick