Re: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for this, Tim.  Most interesting, not least for the chemical analogy
about what it is like before and after the effective insight, ideas falling
into place 40 years ago (cf. Algol68),  what he says about aphasia (a
problem in which I have an interest), and a tantalising hint towards the end
about interface conditions. 

Would you mind saying a bit more about where you see it as relevant to the
present discussion?  I would guess bottom p.16:

>"One consequence was that the concept of "body" disappeared.  There 
>is just the world, with its many aspects: mechanical, chemical,
>electromagnetic, optical, mental - aspects we may hope to unify 
>somehow, but no-one knows how".

No-one he knows of, anyhow; and "body" surely remains as localised energy.

Dave


-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tim
Murphy
Sent: 18 June 2007 15:45
To: 'Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List'
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

A 16 page PDF with Noam Chomsky's thoughts on topics related to this thread
is here:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/2000----.pdf

http://www.chomsky.info/

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 [mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jan Straathof
Sent: 18 June 2007 15:44
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] rts2-11

Hi Tobin, you wrote:

>Well, first, knowing "how to" and knowing "that" are very different
>things: the fact that I know how to climb a ladder says nothing about 
>how many steps are on the ladder. Errors of one aren't errors of the 
>other.

Agreed, but knowing "how to" and knowing "that" are both abilities.
Knowing how to play chess is the ability to play that particular game.
Knowing that it is raining is the ability to differentiate between rain and
snow etc. and also the ability to be guided by the fact that you will get
wet and decide to use an umbrella if you want to go for a walk. Further,
knowing how to climb a ladder implies that a ladder minimally has steps, i
mean, how many doesn't really matter, there must be some (one, two ?) for it
to be called a ladder.

Of course these types of errors are not all the same, but that isn't the
point here. The point is that a person must possess a some amount of ability
(i.e. knowledge cq. evidence of the world) before being able to make an
error.

>But you don't need *any* knowledge in order to make an error.
>Complete newborns make errors. They wave their arms and legs, and 
>merely bumping them into things are errors, which demarcate the radical 
>difference between self and not-self.

No, i don't agree with this. Either complete newborns make errors because
they possess knowledge, or complete newborns do not make errors because they
do not possess any knowledge. If newborns do not possess knowledge (cf.
Locke's tabula rasa) it does not make sense to call their behavior
erroneous. Their waving and bumping is just that, waving and bumping. That
adults interpret this behavior as errors says more about adult experiences
than that of the newborns'
intentions

But if newborns do possess knowledge, and i think they do, then their errors
only make sense in the context of possessing certain abilities and
knowledges. Child psychology shows evidence that there is some rudimentary
learning already taking place in the womb (body schemes, tactile and sound
discrimination, and even social behavior in the case of twins). Whether we
are born with (Platonic or Cartesian) innate ideas i claim ignorance, but
some evolutionary psychologists maintain that our mental make-up at birth
(both in the cognitive and moral sense) is much richer and elaborate than
commonly accepted. (see f.i. Frans de
Waal: Our Inner Ape)

--snip--
>To treat the child's background assumptions (e.g., "pretty is good") as 
>knowledge exaggerates their status: at most, they are hypotheses.
>As we grow up, we make increasingly sophisticated hypotheses and many 
>of them gain the status of -- fallible -- knowledge.  I don't think we 
>can say more.

Okey, exaggerated or not, i think hypotheses are a species of knowledge.
If you accept that child's background assumptions are only hypotheses, then
we agree that only on the bases of these hypotheses errors can be
meaningfully made, and that's my whole point.

>But note the significance of "fallible": fallibility is *intrinsic* to 
>all knowedge claims.  It is the condition of possibility for knowledge.

Agreed, but from the fact that fallibility is *intrinsic* to all knowedge
claims, does not necessary follow that error is prior to knowledge. It only
says something about the truth-status of theories. Fallibility, in my
opinion, is not a condition of possibility but a characteristic or property
of knowledge claims. There is a big difference between the conditions and
the properties of knowledge.

>The converse is not the case: my ability to make a mistake about 
>something does not depend on my actually knowing anything about it, and 
>the mistake may not lead me to know anything about it afterwards either 
>(I could procede to another faulty hypothesis, e.g., that this 
>particular flame was being mean and badly behaved).

I don't quite follow this Tobin, i can't see how someone could make an error
in whatever circumstances without actually knowing anything about the why,
how and what he is doing. All human behavoir is always already ability- cq.
knowledge-laden, whereby knowledge, of course, is more or less hypothetical.
And at minimum, in normal circumstances, a mistake always leads to some
(new) knowledge, viz. not to repeat that mistake.

There is a lot more to say about the relation between knowledge and errors.
In a Wittgensteinian vein i tend to look at errors as a family resemblance
concept and in this sense difficult to apply in transcendental
(knock-down) agruments for realism. Take f.i. a mathematician, let's say an
Intuitionist, who makes an error in her calculations; would this error count
as a proof of an external world ? And a composer or a poet, when he altered
the score or the poem afterwards (Beethoven did, as Whitman), does it make
sense to say here that they corrected errors ? Can humans err emotionally,
i.e. err with their feelings, and say f.i.: "Sorry, i had the wrong feeling
then, i.s. of joy i should have felt sorrow." ? Or animals, can they make
mistakes ? And if error is impossible or meaningless in (some of) these
situations, what does this say about what knowledge is and how it works ? I
have more questions than answers here.

yours,
Jan



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