Hi modest, you seem to be awfully close to understanding what I am saying.
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Originally Posted by modest
Would I be correct that a parallel is to be made between hypothesized information (including the explanation) and a worldview?
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Well, I wouldn't put it that way (I think it oversimplifies the issue) but I guess the comment is not totally “off the wall”. Suppose we just let that idea slide for the moment as I don't really see that it adds anything to what I am saying.
Other than that, I find your response to be very acceptable except for one subtle misunderstanding. That has to do with my comment!
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Originally Posted by Doctordick
Let me suggest that an explanation need not actually do such a thing. If we turn the proposed solution around, one could say that, given an arbitrary prediction, an acceptable explanation could tell us if that prediction were acceptable or not.
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You seem to think that specification is insufficient and I think you are wrong for a very important reason.
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Originally Posted by modest
I prefer testing the prediction as a means of "testing" the explanation.
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First of all, we are not talking about “testing the explanation” here. If we are going to “define” an explanation via the assertion, “an explanation transforms non-comprehensible and non-understandable information into comprehensible and understandable information” (which, by the way I agree with completely), we are directly faced with the problem of determining if an explanation is understood. This is a subtly different question and your constraint is just not sufficiently general to include all possibilities. At the same time, that very constraint is actually included in my specification. Let me try to clarify the situation with an example taken from the circumstance I have already presented.
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Originally Posted by Doctordick
So, how do we come to the conclusion that a body of information is “understood”? Actually, this is a problem faced by every teacher in the history of the world. They attempt to discover the answer to that question by testing their students. The tests can easily be seen as an interaction where the teacher provides some information and then examines the students response to that information (that is why they call them “examinations”  ). If the student's response is consistent with the possible responses the teacher would give to the same information, then the teacher will presume the student understands the information. I think any conceivable test which can be given can be cast into that format. |
There are many circumstances in many explanations where a specific answer does not exist (understanding something does not always lead to a single incontrovertible response to a specified circumstance). Furthermore, if you constrain the possibilities for a specific circumstance to a single specific answer (essentially a specific prediction) then you are actually testing the information available to the respondent, not his or her understanding of that information.
That is why I suggest turning the proposed solution around. Instead of allowing only one specific answer, allow all possible answers and require the explanation to tell us if the obtained response were acceptable or not. Your case, allowing only one specific response, is included in such a definition (all the explanation need do is yield “unacceptable” for all responses except the one specific response desired for the specific circumstance under examination) while at the same time the more complex circumstances mentioned above are still included.
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Originally Posted by modest
I say this because additional information can invalidate a seemingly sound explanation.
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Once again, you indicate that you do not understand what Anssi and I are talking about. We have mentioned many times that the explanations we are talking about are “flaw-free”; that means that no information is available which invalidates the explanation. New information invalidating an explanation merely makes that explanation no longer flaw-free and thus no longer a member of the possibilities we are interested in.
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Originally Posted by modest
So, I'd say it's true that "given an arbitrary prediction, an acceptable explanation could tell us if that prediction were acceptable or not", but that would not necessary mean the prediction would be correct.
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Nowhere have Anssi or I suggested that any explanation under consideration was “correct”. What we said was that it was flaw-free, a very different matter. This whole presentation has to do with designing a flaw-free explanation of arbitrary given information. To do that, I need to define exactly what is meant by “an explanation”. I very much like your definition: “an explanation transforms non-comprehensible and non-understandable information into comprehensible and understandable information” (it is very much exactly what I have in my mind for the definition). And that definition requires a method of determining whether the explanation is understood.
An explanation which is either not understood or not flaw-free is a pretty worthless construct. Does any of this make sense to you?
Have fun -- Dick
