(06-15-2012 5:52 PM)Planchet Wrote:  I find this ironic.

Re falsification, is the basis upon which you assert this falsifiable?

See Pasteur's experiments for an example of how science actually progresses. As Pheroquirk has pointed out, Kuhn is very good on the difference between abstract ideal and reality.

Which of Pasteur's experiments? Those with vaccines? Phage? Chirality?

I made several assertions in the reply I gave. I have time to provide evidence / outline falsification criteria for one of them. Which would you like?

If you're asking for falsification that "x happens" I could provide falsification of the null hypothesis "x does not happen." The proof of black swans is the observation of a black swan. After that, it's just a matter of discussing frequency and causes.

Obviously I don't provide footnotes for everything I write since that would take forever. But I can provide evidence for a point if you consider it to be truly critical. Do you? Will evidence for the point alter your beliefs about anything in some meaningful way?

If you want some sort of clinical support for my assertions, that's much narrower (as already stated) than simple objective evidence. But I still might be able to find it. Not quickly, though, so please don't make the request unless you're sincerely willing to alter your beliefs based on the evidence returned. Thanks.

I've read fairly detailed summaries of Kuhn's "Structures of Scientific Revolutions" in the past. I've never had time for the full text, unfortunately. I don't think that the notion of a theory which slowly accumulates flaws until it's replaced by a new paradigm really contradicts anything that I've said. The paradigm still needs to be falsifiable and make predictions to have value.

I don't find a focus on science as "text" to be useful to the formalized process of peer-reviewed science or even of understanding science, however. Definitions like whether Pluto is or is not a planet seem ancillary to the process of producing predictive value. But that gets more into Kelso and followers of Kuhn, perhaps. Forgive me if I confuse Kuhn with his supporters at times. Mass comm majors have put a lot of emphasis on Kuhn, while actual researchers, when they've studied the matter, have tended to prefer Popper. That's not evidence, of course, but it is an interesting red flag that results from one discipline may not be relevant to the discipline they're claiming to study.

Taxonomy is a language and a method of categorization, not inherently a science. You can have an infinite number of competing taxonomies. It's not till they start making non-tautological predictive claims (like monophylectic relatedness and correlate genetic relatedness for instance) that they start having predictive value and being a science in and of themselves.

Also, re: Kuhn, most scientific revolutions are not like the Copernican revolution so that's a singularly bad example for him to use. Most scientific revolutions are not just more elegant descriptions of earlier observations, but actually make different predictions. See the examples previously given.

Further, I've said this already in other words, but Popper was a proscriptivist describing how things should be done. Kuhn was attempting to describe an institution. So as mentioned previously, saying "research isn't done the way popper thinks it should be" even to the extent it could be supported, doesn't matter much to me. People, even researchers, make a lot of mistakes. I'm not here to try and formalize those mistakes. If you could argue that research shouldn't or can't conform to Popper's epistimology that'd be more interesting to me.

Edit: Incidentally, all systems are based on certain axioms. If a person held that sensation was entirely illusory, for example, or that the universe was not regular (based on apersonal patterns) then their differing base assumption might lead them to different conclusions. An appreciation for a person's axioms can be helpful because if two people share different root assumptions it's unlikely that any amount of argument will bring them into agreement. (Unless, possibly, one axiom can be shown to be inherently self-contradictory.)

"[Pasteur's] iconic experiments on spontaneous generation occupied him for several years in the 1860s.... To him, these experiments showed that spontaneous generation of micro-organisms does not occur, and he won the public debates with a colleague, who repeated his experiments and often found organisms swarming in the fluid. Analysis of Pasteur's laboratory notebooks has shown that Pasteur's experiments also sometimes 'failed' (i.e. had flasks with organsims in them), but that he quietly discarded these results. He was working with the hay bacillus...and the spore form of this bacterium is resistant to heat, so one would expect 'negative' results to Pasteur's experiments. By suppressing these, Pasteur got the better of his opponents. He always had the most amazing knack of backing the right horse, and sticking to his guns." Prof. W. Bynum The History of Medicine

Such stories are the norm, rather than the exception, in the history of medicine.

Hi.

Having spent a little time setting out my perspective, I shall await your more complete response point by point once you have more time. If one does not approach things in this more structured manner, then one can generate the appearance of having addressed the substance of somebody's point, without actually having done so on the basis of valid argumentation.

Regarding your brief partial response:-

“Quote:A great deal has been written about the topics you raise, yet you assert your point of view as if it were the only valid one, and all others are simply invalid. I think that at the very least you may be able to develop a more complete understanding of your own perspective by considering others that you find at face value unconvincing.

This is an inaccurate paraphrasing of my beliefs. Do I belive some views are invalid? Yes. So do you. So does Planchet.
You've both indicated you hold to the possibility of invalid beliefs and the rejection of perfect relativism through the criticisms that you've made of my views, among other things. Do I believe that some views are inconsistent or sub-optimal by their own standards and fairly judged on that basis? Yes, of course. “

I have not attempted to paraphrase your beliefs (to paraphrase is to restate an argument in different words); merely to critique their salient features. You make certain normative assertions regarding metaphysical and cultural questions (statements regarding how things ought to be) without explaining your basis for doing so, and implicitly denying the possibility that others may legitimately hold different beliefs.

My point of view is not a relativistic one. I do not hold the position of my esteemed countryman, Tony Blair, who might ask “what is your truth?”. Truth exists, and at felicitious moments we can, informed by our senses, intuit directly its nature, and point to it with words, refining our shared understanding by exposing errors and incompletenesses in the perceptions and beliefs of our interlocutors. This is something entirely different from believing that the results of measurement or a study constitute truth itself. What you call objective evidence, I call observations – these may prove useful material to suggest further investigation, or to construct an argument about how we may better make sense of the world.

I do not believe truth is essentially axiomatic – this is really the point. It is a sad truth that no representation of reality can be both complete and coherent. Therefore, all we can do with representations is accept that as a simplified, reduced and useful distillation of the much more complex world that exists out there, and remember always to never ever mistake our simplified representation as being the world itself.

What follows from this, by the way, amongst other things, is the impossibility of optimality. It's fashionable to speak in such terms – to describe a most unsatisfactory state of affairs as 'suboptimal'. I myself started speaking in those terms many years before it became fashionable to do so. But this conception of optimality only makes sense if you presume that you have the knowledge and the confidence in the knowledge needed to optimize things. In reality one simply doesn't know what one would need to to achieve such. The idea that often one doesn't know what one doesn't know, and that this is an important truth, certainly precedes Rumsfeld, and is very pertinent to this point. Therefore, I personally strive to achieve the more robust excellence, a concept which is much more robust than your fragile optimality. I think Nassim Taleb is an impersonation of a truly great thinker, but his points on this matter are well-founded.

I am certainly not surprised that you hold to the Whig view of progress in intellectual history - “everything keeps getting better and better”. That is the dominant narrative in our society today, and it is only natural that most people who have benefited from our era's many attractive features are predisposed to find this narrative appealing. The only way that you will ever arrive at a variant perspective on this is to dig deep into the messy details of real intellectual history, rather than the sanitized version told in textbooks (which means reading original authors, and those critiquing them). I do not expect you to undertake this exercise any time soon, and therefore I shall not try to persuade you otherwise.

“To be clear, I don't hold with the platonic definition. I prefer Popper's epistimology. “ So you keep saying. Beyond questions of proper spelling (something that does matter in this domain, because it can lead to an obscuring from oneself the deep origins of the meaning of words), on the one hand you assert the superiority of potential falsification as a standard for assessing the worth of knowledge, and on the other refuse to explain why others would want to choose to share your point of view.

Falsification does not in actuality describe how genuine breakthroughs in science take place and, as Planchet points out, does not explain why others should prefer falsification as a standard when more sophisticated, older approaches to understanding the growth of knowledge have proven more fertile. The flourishing of science over the past few centuries can demonstrably be related to open inquiry, free speech, and a belief in honesty; it cannot be considered a consequence of falsificationism, since Popper only gained influence after WW2. Furthermore, it's always a problem to apply falsification in the laboratory, because you never know what hypothesis is being falsified, since you are always testing a joint system of interlocking hypotheses.

“I see what definition of intuition you're using here. If you want to say that A = A is based on intuition, that may be passable except that all the definitions of a priori knowledge given in your encyclopedia entry are tautological and definitional/taxonomic. I take knowledge to mean models with predictive value of the natural world. “

Once again, you are dictatorially defining words in the English language to mean things other than what they have been understood to mean for many centuries. There is a multiplicity of nuances to the meaning of 'intuition', but it always has a sense of direct access to truth, and is opposed to what is purely the evidence of the senses. Knowledge does not mean “models with predictive value of the natural world”, and it matters that it does not. If I develop a sense that there is a subtle difference between androsterone sulphate, and Androtics' TAA – this may not fall under the category of any kind of knowledge that can be well grasped within the framework of a model; but it might be an important insight. As a practical man (although not one entirely ignorant or ill-disposed towards theory), I struggle to see the benefit of agreeing to pretend this is not knowledge.

“Further; given that quantum mechanics and relativity are generally observed but non-intuitive, I believe intuitive knowledge to the extent that it might related to the world is demonstrably trecherous and limited. The notion that a line is the shortest distance between two points might be called intuitive, but that model doesn't hold up against relativistic physics. Similarly, some intuitive beliefs seem challenged by quantum mechanics, giving experiment and prediction an edge over intuition.”

Are you not aware of how Einstein discovered relativity? It was not via doing the experiment in the laboratory, and realizing that the surprising results falsified all previous insights, throwing science into a crisis. Quite the opposite! He arrived at his insights essentially via intuition – Gedankenexperiments. This demonstrably falsifies your claim that relativity is non-intuitive. Of course, I do not claim it is intuitive to every person. But neither are the principles of long division, and I have argued elsewhere for the existence of a hierarchy of discernment and ability.

“Quote:Therefore you need to argue for the superiority of your view and not just assert it.

Certainly. If what I've posted so far is not sufficient let me know what point you'd like me to support. But I'm not even arguing for the ultimate superiority of my view. I am arguing that objective judgements like the existence of "falsehood" is necessarily predicated on some measure of a belief in objective truth, and cannot be arrived at through subjective or intersubjective means. (though if it were universally intersubjective among all involved parties, noone would know the difference as far as conflict resolution were concerened.) So statements grounded in relativism combined with assertions of falsehood of some system or other are likely due to an inconsistent application of one's epistemology. “

I have no idea what you mean. An understanding of the meaning of falsehood of course requires an understanding of the meaning of truth. One cannot understand a concept without at least having some idea of its negation. This does not appear to be a very profound point.

Nobody here is arguing for relativism. I am arguing that truth exists, and that we can point to it and critique others pointing and discussion of it. You may run an amazing study of 100,000 pheromone users in order to 'objectively' establish the truth of a certain point. But actually, this will never definitively establish the truth as such of anything – it is one set of observations made in a particular context, and one must then infer from this set what the broader implications might be. Context is always important, as we are increasingly realizing from drug trials. (People are not interchangeable blobs, and never were – even before we were capable of making distinctions based on inherited qualities).

“Quote:Yet I do not see you objecting to the formation and dissemination of what must seem like arbitrary personal opinions not grounded in objectivity.

An arbitrary personal opinion might be something along the lines of "You should have slept with that woman" or "Interest from females is desirable." I don't think that such views are invalid and they are certainly useful in predicting the behavior of the person making them. But I don't hold them to be capable of logically persuading those who don't already agree with them, either, and so they can be unreliable when it comes to conflict resolution. An objective assertion might be "androstadienone tends to lower physical distance with women when worn by a man." This is objectively testable regardless of whether it has been studied clinically. It can be proven true or false based on observations. Those observations may need certain qualifications to become more predictive, such as if the mood of the tester influences the results, for instance. Pheromones don't really allow a clinical-style separation of tester and subject. But the result of Jim in New York can probably be repeated in California.
“
But testing is not really objective. For it to be such, one would need to control for all the conditions that matter. And one cannot, even considering only the obvious factors that indubitably shape response to pheromones like the climate, the particular weather on that day, the general mood in the region, the state of the economy, the phase of the moon, the diet of the local population, age groups, ethnicity, cultural factors like restraint and social conditioning, the characteristics of the tester, and one could go on forever. Even in drug trials with very large samples, one repeatedly discovers that particular characteristics of the patients matter.

Therefore, if one finds a mix works very well in Manhattan, but not so well in LA, what is one to make of this? One can say very little in the general case, except that one must delve deeper and try to establish what the particular factors at work might be. In general we do not see knowledge progressing by falsification – routines and intuition are much more important in the general scheme of things.

“I do not think you will find that the best are distinguished by the degree to which they have made their epistemological views articulate

Without addressing what distinguishes the best from one another ( a very interesting, contentious and difficult question), I certainly believe that the worst in a field might be distinguished, if they are not hindered by their lack of basic knowledge, then by the flaws in their epistimology. If we grant that incompetent people tend to be bad at recognizing their own incompetence (I have no idea if this is true or not, but it's often asserted) then this might very well point to an epistimological problem of some variety. “

It seems to me that you are just dancing around rather than addressing the point. You made a claim about the high importance of making epistemological beliefs explicit:

“Our epistemology can typically be made far more explicit than it usually is, and there are powerful benefits to doing so.
An explicit understanding of our epistimology allows for testing that epistemology, improving it and sharing it with others to promote a common understanding which can be used to resolve problems with less ego involvement. “

I asked you to show us the benefits of doing so for the kind of pheromone research we do here, and also to demonstrate the practical improvements that might be achieved by a superior understanding of epistemology. So far you have declined to do so.

Furthermore, I suggested that the best people are not in fact distinguished from others by their high attention to epistemology – one important reason being that for profound and essential reasons (see McGilchrist, epistemology can not really be made explicit).

Draw up a list of the most talented pheromone testers and commentators – this is after all, a highly empirical field. They are quite clearly not distinguished from the rest by their explicit and profound consideration of epistemological theory. And this is true in almost all fields where recognition is driven by demonstrated performance rather than conformity to the Shibboleths of the field (the latter happening when bureaucracy is running the show, as happens in much of official science these days).

“I certainly believe that the worst in a field might be distinguished, if they are not hindered by their lack of basic knowledge, then by the flaws in their epistimology. “

There is no doubt that the worst in all fields are distinguished by their ignorance and weak characters. However I see no reason to believe that they are distinguished especially by their ignorance of epistemological questions in particular (when compared to ignorance of all the other important things that are important to know), although I look forward to seeing your demonstration to the contrary.

I note in passing that you made certain claims about the merits of different kinds of work done in this field. Since you do not believe so much in intuition or discernment, on what basis do you make the claim that “I'd note that there are some of each group of professionals that you mention who do make their epistimology explicit, indicating it's possible to do so. Popper did some of the best work in this area in regards to science”.

“A number of experimenters, myself included, have noted that they got hits in situations where the person could not possibly have smelled their pheromones. “

This is a very interesting observation about which I have written at a reasonable length before. It may well be in full, or in part a question of body language, but that is an assumption. I suspect that body language plays a part in this phenomenon, but there is more going on than just body language. One must probably consider the work of Rupert Sheldrake on morphic fields to more deeply comprehend everything that is going on here.

“his suggests to me that mones exert an effect both on a user's body language and also on their target. We should be cognizant (as many are, already) of such an effect as we test, and try to account for the separate as well as combined effects. To what extent does dampening one's sense of smell diminish the effect of the particular mone? What's relevant? Length of exposure time by the target or the wearer? The androstenols seem particularly hard hit by user-resistance to their effects while androstadienone is diminished much less, if at all.

Determining the mechanism by which mones work (VMO? Nerve Zero? Mucosal Absorption ) would also bear on
which non-androstanes, if any, are likely to have a pheromonal effect.

While clinical data isn't synonymous with objective data, questions like "what is the relationship between the endogenous effects of hormones and their effect as pheromones" give the potential to apply a huge amount of accumulated clinical data on hormones to novel molecules with pheromonal potential.

“
These are all interesting questions. But I fail to see the connection with a formal study of epistemology, with making epistemological assumptions fully explicit, and with the belief in objectivity and measurement as the important criteria, whose controversy formed the initial basis for our discussion. Indeed all of these points have been raised before by those who are really not especially oriented towards epistemological questions.

“If I've answered your question poorly, I apologize. I don't really separate my epistimology from "how I think", so “

Well – if we are just to arrive at the pragmatic conclusion that when there is confusion it may very well be helpful to set forth some of the principles and assumptions about the way we look at the world, then that is a destination I think we can all agree on. But it's a very long way from asserting the superiority of what can be objectively ascertained, and of the philosophy of Karl Popper.

“It's been said that in formal research, ideas aren't falsified. Old scientists die off and young scientists take their place. There may be some small truth to that, though it seems overstated. There are plenty of examples of scientists changing their views based on contrary evidence “

That is not very Popperian of you – to observe the 'plenty' of examples of scientists behaving in a Popperian manner and consider this support for the Popperian view of science. It is rather the point that the great preponderance of scientists do not behave as if they sincerely believed in falsificationism.

And whether people change their minds about small things is not the question. It's that science does not tend to make its larger advances by the slow and progressive falsification of older beliefs. What happens is that observations at variance to the reigning paradigm start to accumulate but are mostly ignored as nuisances, or if not possible to ignore as curiosities that cannot seriously call into question the reigning paradigm because the latter has proven to be of such usefulness, and by now has great prestige. It then takes a collapse of prestige for the torch to be handed to a competing schema of explanation – such collapses in prestige only occasionally happening as the result of a single instance of falsification, and more usually the result of the cumulation of many different forces, as well as a shift in the spirit of the time (something that includes old scientists dying off).

There are great advantages of separating a description of what actually happens from what ought to happen, because one can not really make any statements about the latter to one first understands reality. Understanding precedes a practical description of how work ought to be done. I suggests that Popper fails to meet this test, and therefore is not a good guide to thinking about how one ought to proceed. Nothing that you have written appears grounds for believing anything to the contrary.

(06-16-2012 5:53 PM)Planchet Wrote:  "[Pasteur's] iconic experiments on spontaneous generation occupied him for several years in the 1860s.... To him, these experiments showed that spontaneous generation of micro-organisms does not occur, and he won the public debates with a colleague, who repeated his experiments and often found organisms swarming in the fluid. Analysis of Pasteur's laboratory notebooks has shown that Pasteur's experiments also sometimes 'failed' (i.e. had flasks with organsims in them), but that he quietly discarded these results. He was working with the hay bacillus...and the spore form of this bacterium is resistant to heat, so one would expect 'negative' results to Pasteur's experiments. By suppressing these, Pasteur got the better of his opponents. He always had the most amazing knack of backing the right horse, and sticking to his guns." Prof. W. Bynum The History of Medicine

Such stories are the norm, rather than the exception, in the history of medicine.

I agree (and have agreed) that there are human problems with "how science is done" as an institution. Mendel seems to have cleaned up his results as well.

And there are also numerous cases where prominent scientists "backed the wrong horse." ( The experimental errors of scientific heavyweight Alexis Carrel vs upstart Leonard Hayflick in regards to the mortality or immortality of cells.)

That debate went the wrong way for a little while, with lesser scientists being instructed that they were doing things wrong or getting the wrong result, but eventually it corrected itself. As it would have done eventually if Pasteur had attached himself to an incorrect notion. (You're not a proponent of spontaneous generation, after all. And if spontaneous generation were correct I don't see why Pasteur would have gotten even mixed results. ) As I've said earlier, there are reasons why people shouldn't and don't accept any single study as conclusive.

But falsifiability (the theoretical potential for a theory to be proven wrong) is still a good rough measure of its predictive power. A theory which cannot be proven wrong by ANY experimental result is not predictive at all.

This distinction is important because there are many people who laud the "explanatory power" of a theory. "Explanatory power" is a headfake, since a non-falsifiable theory can potentially "explain" a great deal of experimental results after the fact but still be of no actual predictive power.

Assertiveness in its proper place may be a virtue interpersonally, but asserting things without persuasive justification is probably not.

This whole discussion started because of your claim that it is generally possible to depend upon objective assessment, and my scepticism that this is the case (scepticism based more on experience than in theory, although it is not as if I have not given it some thought).

After all of this (and I do hope you will in time address the points raised by Planchet, and by me) it seems to me that you are now merely asserting the usefulness of falsification as a way to explain what is objective (albeit now downgraded to 'a good rough measure'), and of the validity of an objective standard as the dominant criterion for assessing performance. Whereas I believe that I have explained in some depth why I do not believe that 'objective' tests can distinguish between high quality and mediocre work. So far, I do not believe you have really made a serious breach in the wall of my position. Do feel free to correct me, and to refine and restate your argument if you think that you have.

Note that within your framework, you ought to be able to provide objective falsifiable evidence to justify the superiority of your belief in objectivity. After all, the belief that objective standards are superior is indeed a potentially falsifiable belief if it is true.

By the way, to depend only on objective criteria when studying people is to throw away information, and to risk turning artefacts of your particular sample into real things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verstehen

I read this thread and I can agree with everyone's point to some degree. Can we all agree that humans generally are unreliable narrators whether it be in personal/online (especially online)? I know that as much as best as I try to convey myself in person/online, my words have different meaning to other people.

Quote:I have not attempted to paraphrase your beliefs (to paraphrase is to restate an argument in different words); merely to critique their salient features. You make certain normative assertions regarding metaphysical and cultural questions (statements regarding how things ought to be) without explaining your basis for doing so, and implicitly denying the possibility that others may legitimately hold different beliefs.

Whatever you call it, your criticism misrepresents my beliefs. I've already explained why I do not hold my system of beliefs and values to be the only valid one.

Quote:My point of view is not a relativistic one

Glad to hear it.

Quote:This is something entirely different from believing that the results of measurement or a study constitute truth itself.

I've neither claimed that the results of a study was "truth itself" (Or at least tried to avoid such phrasing and disclaimed such a view several tiems. I've focused on falsification and questioned our capacity to know perfect truth) nor have I asserted infallibility of clinical studies or measurements. All measurements have margins of error, flaws in study designs and sometimes include outright human deception or bias. Which is part of why we don't rely on a single study for falsification, regardless of whether one holds with Popper's view or idealizes Kuhn's description of scientific bureacracy.

Quote:I do not believe truth is essentially axiomatic

I'm not certain what you mean here. If something is "axiomatic" that ususally means that it is assumed as a basis for other beliefs. All I've said is that all systems of knowledge are based on certain axioms that cannot be proven. Truth is not axiomatic, but it is always derived from systems based on axioms. And that's a potential flaw in any system of knowledge.

Quote:It is a sad truth that no representation of reality can be both complete and coherent. Therefore, all we can do with representations is accept that as a simplified, reduced and useful distillation of the much more complex world that exists out there, and remember always to never ever mistake our simplified representation as being the world itself.

Agreed. This is in line with what I believe and what I've written. The map is not the territory and a map which was the territory would be useless.

Quote:What follows from this, by the way, amongst other things, is the impossibility of optimality

There's a reason I've focused on falsification and predictive value rather than assertions of perfect truth.

Quote:a concept which is much more robust than your fragile optimality.

Strawman. Here's what I wrote;
"Do I believe that my views are the only valid views or the most optimal? No...Many long-standing practices were later demonstrated to be objectively incorrect or suboptimal.
"

To demonstrate that a previous idea was suboptimal, one only need introduce a demonstrably more optimal idea. None of this addresses which idea is the most optimal. Optimality is terribly difficult to prove, as you note.

Quote:I am certainly not surprised that you hold to the Whig view of progress in intellectual history - “everything keeps getting better and better”

Strawman, again. I specifically disclaimed chronology as a reliable tool for indicating improvement. Progress is a general trend, (especially if you believe that some ideas can be historically demonstrated to be false) but not inevitable or irreversable.

Quote:The only way that you will ever arrive at a variant perspective on this is to dig deep into the messy details of real intellectual history

I'm pretty acquainted with history compared to most folks. The better portion of my friends are involved in historical reenactment. (We're talking people who secure the types of grains used in the 1400s, along with relevant equipment to serve their friends period-appropriate beer.) Condescension isn't persuasive.

Quote:on the one hand you assert the superiority of potential falsification as a standard for assessing the worth of knowledge, and on the other refuse to explain why others would want to choose to share your point of view.

I've addressed this. See the contrast of valuing theories with "explanatory power" vs. theories which produce "predictive value." I've explained why methods of objective observation are scalable while finely tuned perception is not. (Though the results may be.) I've given several criticisms of Kuhn's view of science, both from a descriptionist and proscriptionist standpoint.

If you'd like any particular point further explored, please acknowledge it and ask for more information. If you think it's invalid, please address it and explain why you think it's invalid. But the points have been made.

Quote:Falsification does not in actuality describe how genuine breakthroughs in science take place and, as Planchet points out, does not explain why others should prefer falsification as a standard when more sophisticated, older approaches to understanding the growth of knowledge have proven more fertile.

1. I've explained why falsification/predictive value is a superior value to 'explanatory power.' The 'explanatory power' of a theory has been preferred for most of history, (myths, legends, and even what passed for academic theories in ancient and modern history.) At this point, I'm really not sure what evidence you're asking me to give you.

2. I haven't seen evidence that "older theories" have "proven more fertile." (You've complained about assertions without evidence. That's one.)

While most objective evidence is not clinical data, modern academic systems of citation and sharing of objective data have produced an explosion of information. Even with some new area of research like pheromones, I'm able to look at other portions of the scientific literature and apply portions of that knowledge to my own understanding of pheromones, re-using and bolstering that knowledge. The more open the process of discovery, the more that information can be shared and biases can be identified. Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" is a good critique about how intersubjective standards can intrude on the pursuit for knowledge, while objective standards correlate with a decrease in experimental bias. Differing standards are applied, even to scientific results, in order get the "correct" social/racial conclusions. The greater the experimental margin of error, the proportionately greater the introduction of bias.

Quote:The flourishing of science over the past few centuries can demonstrably be related to open inquiry, free speech, and a belief in honesty; it cannot be considered a consequence of falsificationism, since Popper only gained influence after WW2.

1. I'll agree that there are many factors in the flourishing of modern peer-reviewed science and that political openness was critical among them. I'm not asserting that Popper's work, in specific, was particularly influential.

2. Your above objection assumes that the notion of falsification only became popular with Popper's work rather than already being one of many trends observable in formal science. This seems to be an example of the fallacy of the excluded middle, "If the process of formal science doesn't strictly adhere to x philosophy, then it cannot contain that philosophy at all." I've already explained why Kuhn's choice of model (Copernican revolution) was flawed as a representative sample of scientific revolutions. (And the Copernican revolution even precedes Bacon and what could be called modern scientific method. And the geocentric model isn't even technically false, given that there are no privileged frames of reference. That kind of 'revolution' from one true paradigm to another is RARE. ) You haven't seen fit to defend his specific choice yet. I've given a number of particular examples from the past 150 years or so which supported my point. If you'd like to address them, great. But it does little for me to hear repeatedly that I haven't supported my assertions when the support I do give isn't addressed. In contrast, I've at least addressed all specific counter-examples whether you find my consideration persuasive or not.

And incidentally, science has 'flowered' a lot more in the 20th and 21st centuries than it had previously. It wasn't until roughly the 20th century that any theoretical estimate of a physical property was shown to be more accurate than the experimentally obtained value at the time. I'm not arguing that Popper, specifically, was the motive force. But despite huge restrictions in terms of ethical constraints on human testing during the second half of the 20th century and after and the rising cost of research equipment, science has flourished during that period far more than in previous times.

3.

Quote:"Furthermore, it's always a problem to apply falsification in the laboratory, because you never know what hypothesis is being falsified, since you are always testing a joint system of interlocking hypotheses."

I don't believe that it is. You make a prediction. If that prediction is false, you take apart the system piece by piece till you find which portion has confounded you. (Granted, reductionism isn't the only valid epistemology. But it is a useful troubleshooting tool.) I'm not sure why you're making this assertion. See my previous example about calcium from diet vs. pills, for example, to see this process midway complete.

Quote:There is a multiplicity of nuances to the meaning of 'intuition', but it always has a sense of direct access to truth, and is opposed to what is purely the evidence of the senses.

Are you asserting that people can know something about the material world, infallibly, without sensation? I'd disagree with that. But if you just want a category for things like mathematical "knowledge" or definitional "knowledge" I won't argue much. But these ideas are produced only by brains which have been exposed to and evolved from interaction with the material world. I think modern work with neural nets places the residence of Platonic forms inside of brains rather than in some external 'heaven.'

Even object permanence (an intuitive belief disproved by Quantum Mechanics, as noted previously) is likely a learned response, as backed up by Jeff Hawkins work, previously cited. Similarly, instincts are evolved through a process necessitating sensation.

Quote:Knowledge does not mean “models with predictive value of the natural world”, and it matters that it does not.

"To the extent that the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not true; and to the extent that they are true, they do not refer to reality." -Einstein

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality" - Nikola Tesla

If knowledge is "Justified true belief" and we acknowledge that we can give evidence for truth but not conclusive proof in many instances (As you have) then we're left asking what "justification" means. I take it to mean "predictive value." This is something of an axiom of my beliefs rather than a conclusion. i.e. I value that information which allows me to make accurate, falsifiable predictions. Newton's theories were believed to be "true" for a long time. The fact that they were actually imprecise emphasized to people that the actual attainment of truth was difficult to demonstrate as a positive and that 'predictive value' was a more honest goal for those seeking to understand the relationship between cause and effect. For those who don't consider that search primary or who don't communicate literally, my arguments won't persuade them.

Quote:But this conception of optimality only makes sense if you presume that you have the knowledge and the confidence in the knowledge needed to optimize things. In reality one simply doesn't know what one would need to to achieve such...a concept which is much more robust than your fragile optimality

We don't know what is required to make a system "optimal." We can show a system was "sub-optimal" by demonstratably improving the system.
"Better" is "better" whatever terms you use for it. And such strawman-based posturing as "therefore, I personally strive to achieve the more robust excellence, a concept which is much more robust than your fragile optimality" is really un-interesting to me. Not to mention a blatant misrepresentation of what I've said.

Quote:Beyond questions of proper spelling (something that does matter in this domain, because it can lead to an obscuring from oneself the deep origins of the meaning of words)

I'm writing a long essay in very limited time. My wife majored in linguistics in college, and I can hold my own in a conversation with her discussing the origins of various words. If you want to have a conversation about etymology, I feel I'm reasonably well equipped.

Quote:Are you not aware of how Einstein discovered relativity? It was not via doing the experiment in the laboratory, and realizing that the surprising results falsified all previous insights, throwing science into a crisis. Quite the opposite! He arrived at his insights essentially via intuition – Gedankenexperiments. This demonstrably falsifies your claim that relativity is non-intuitive.

You'd be very hard pressed to demonstrate that Einstein could have arrived at his conclusions without being aware of Lorentz's or Michaelson and Morely's experiments.

Relativity required the disproof of the ether via experiment, among many other things. You defined intuition as being apart "from the evidence of the senses." That assertion simply doesn't hold here.

If your assertion is simply that where hypotheses come from is often obscured from observation as a matter of practice, I'll agree. But you seem to be arguing for far more than that.

If you remove a person's senses; sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and any others they might have do you really hold that they'll develop the capacity to do long division or understand relativity? We're looking at a shell game where processes derived based on sensation are attributed to other sources or no source at all. Plato's forms don't exist in heaven or externally. They are part of the human thought process, as hinted at by the construction of neural nets and the comparison of the layers of the cerebral cortex to a neural net with some interesting feedback loops and the incorporation of time (relating one moment to the next, not trying to identify stillframe photos.) Forms are abstracted from sensory observations. In a few cases, we might defer to instinct. But even those instincts are best described as deriving from an evolutionary process of some kind, which requires sensory feedback as a component.

Ryan: I am arguing that objective judgements like the existence of "falsehood" is necessarily predicated on some measure of a belief in objective truth

Quote:I have no idea what you mean. An understanding of the meaning of falsehood of course requires an understanding of the meaning of truth. One cannot understand a concept without at least having some idea of its negation.

You seemed to be leaning towards a relativistic viewpoint ( or at least one which would have the same effect, if your standards of evidence were applied universally) and I was arguing against that. You've since clarified that you're not a relativist. You do believe in truth but don't seem to believe that modern humans have any kind of heuristics or procedures for recognizing their mistakes that they did not possess in the past.

Quote:You may run an amazing study of 100,000 pheromone users in order to 'objectively' establish the truth of a certain point. But actually, this will never definitively establish the truth as such of anything – it is one set of observations made in a particular context, and one must then infer from this set what the broader implications might be.

Again, there's a reason that I've focused on falsification and falsifiability rather than 'truth' in terms of what humans know. (I use the term 'truth' occasionally, more out of social convention than belief.)

Quote:But testing is not really objective.

I suspect you're using a different definition of 'objective' than I am


"... existing independent of thought or an observer as part of reality."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objective

Quote:But testing is not really objective. For it to be such, one would need to control for all the conditions that matter.

I don't hold that a controlled experiment is required for an objective observation. I've noted that a few times. We seem to be going back and forth on this without resolution.

For example; I can test whether a person touches my hand when I wear a pheromone. I don't control for many things in this experiment. I don't control for self effects. (I could, perhaps, with flonase.) I don't control for variables in the setting including all those you mentioned. I don't properly control for my own behavior (I do try, if the interaction is short.) Whether the person touches me or not is still an objective observation, not a subjective opinion or an impression. A video or observer could confirm the result.

Is this flawed? Sure. Is it still useful? Yes. Is it objective? Yes. because it describes a state apart from the person observing the state.

You seem to keep asserting that an objective observation is equivalent to a controlled experiment. I say it's not. Then you respond as if I'd never even asserted a difference and continue to answer as if I'd equated objective observations with controlled clinical trials. If you want to discuss whether objective assertions are equivalent to controlled experiments, lets address that explicitly.

Quote:Therefore, if one finds a mix works very well in Manhattan, but not so well in LA, what is one to make of this?

We say that we have a red flag that something needs exploring. We'd create various hypotheses informed by various models (dominant and non-dominant since unexpected results should put us on our toes.) First, are our results accurate. How small is our sample? Can it be accounted for by chance?

If we had several reports of such results enough to confirm some actual trend between the cities we'd have a lot on our plate, but we could work through the results. We'd work through things one at a time if possible;

temperature, humidity, local culture, drug use of local inhabitants, racial trends of local inhabitants, conditions of mones in transport, self effects and trends among the users etc. Once we saw the trend more clearly we might start asking about aspects of the trend. If the issue is heat, is the issue regarding the propensity of the wearer to sweat? Or the diffusion of the mones? Or the bacteria on the person's skin? Can adjustments in fixatives correct for a hot or cold climate? If yes, great. We've made a testable prediction, tested it and found a result that can be shared. If not... try something else. Maybe spraying mones on clothes to lessen bacterial contact or even cotton pads etc. With lots of feedback from users we would get a better sense of things through guess and check, though it still wouldn't be complete (maybe there's more than one issue at play, for instance.)


Re: The benefits of epistimology; An understanding of trends in bias is useful in producing information. I've also noted experiments related to self effects. I've noted the use of blind testing. I've noted integration with the wider corups of scientific knowlege (particularly since the ability to critically read scientific literature is helped by an understanding of study design.)

Among other things.

Quote:I asked you to show us the benefits of doing so for the kind of pheromone research we do here, and also to demonstrate the practical improvements that might be achieved by a superior understanding of epistemology. So far you have declined to do so.

As noted, I've given a few examples. I don't see the point in discussing the point further if you don't acknowledge what I've already written already.

If you don't find it persuasive, that's fine.

Quote:Draw up a list of the most talented pheromone testers and commentators – this is after all, a highly empirical field. They are quite clearly not distinguished from the rest by their explicit and profound consideration of epistemological theory.

dbot and Chris of Alpha dream are certainly familair with epistimology in some form, at least as it relates to the production of scientific knowledge. Chris's understanding of structure-activity relationships has been a most helpful contribution. Similarly, dbot has promoted as many new molecules as any new member. There are some aspects of testing like user sensitivity which are likely unrelated to any kind of model, granted. But I see a very different pattern than you do. Mark has an understanding of blind studies, as do other members on the forum.

The people who find truth are often also those who can give a good explanation of how they sought it out, or else they just happen to listen to someone with this skill.

For another example, I'd point to a number of statements by P.Z. Meyers equating evolution with 'randomness' and his inability to predict epigenetic effects as another example of failed epistemology, but that's another kettle of fish and far more than I have time to cover properly.

Quote:I suggested that the best people are not in fact distinguished from others by their high attention to epistemology – one important reason being that for profound and essential reasons (see McGilchrist, epistemology can not really be made explicit).

You've suggested this, but I've given examples of how epistemology can be made explicit. The notion of logical fallacies is another example of how epistemology could be made explicit. Demonstration of bias, clinical experimentation, heck, simply knowing the basis a person usually has for forming rapport or building trust with others. These are all relevant to how one comes closer to "truth", and all have been studied, clinically and non-clinically.

Further, such knowledge is helpful in transmitting knowledge to others. It's one thing to be a black belt and another to teach martial arts. As mentioned several times.

Quote:They are quite clearly not distinguished from the rest by their explicit and profound consideration of epistemological theory. And this is true in almost all fields where recognition is driven by demonstrated performance rather than conformity to the Shibboleths of the field (the latter happening when bureaucracy is running the show, as happens in much of official science these days).

I've personally noticed that the best researchers do consistently have some knowledge of epistimology. This is not to say that they read books on the topic. They often pick it up through a kind of osmosis, or learning study design. A lack of such knowledge often causes serious problems. If you go to any popular science forum, as I often have, and find the worst fallacies being promoted there, you can almost always trace the problem back to the writer's lack of rigor in searching for truth and their willingness to simply repeat what trusted authorities have told them repeatedly. The ability to interpret a study design critically is a matter of epistimology. Without that skill, a person is left to repeat what the 'experts' have told them.

Quote:There is no doubt that the worst in all fields are distinguished by their ignorance and weak characters. However I see no reason to believe that they are distinguished especially by their ignorance of epistemological questions in particular (when compared to ignorance of all the other important things that are important to know), although I look forward to seeing your demonstration to the contrary.

I'd go into this in greater detail, but my time is limited. I've given some evidence. There are likely a confluence of other factors besides epistimology that influence a person's success (capacity, desire, humility etc.) As far as weighting one value against another, I suppose I'd note that the people with the highest IQs are not necessarily those who get nobel prizes. Feynmann didn't even qualify for Mensa. So that points to some factor other than capacity than simply raw ability, at the least. And some of Feynmann's stories include things like teaching kids proofs from numbers theory.

If I believed that more evidence would be more persuasive, I'd provide it.
But the fact that the points I've made so far have been miscontrued lead me to believe that there wouldn't be much in the way of positive results for either of us relative to time invested. This isn't intended as a personal affront against you. Just an observation.

Quote:I note in passing that you made certain claims about the merits of different kinds of work done in this field. Since you do not believe so much in intuition or discernment, on what basis do you make the claim that “I'd note that there are some of each group of professionals that you mention who do make their epistimology explicit, indicating it's possible to do so. Popper did some of the best work in this area in regards to science”.

1. I don't equate intuition with discernment. Discernment is judgement. I've already agreed that judgement is valuable. But judgement can (theoretically) be made explicit. What I've objected to repeatedly is the notion that judgement is necessarily obscure and inexplicable.

Quote:This is a very interesting observation about which I have written at a reasonable length before. It may well be in full, or in part a question of body language, but that is an assumption.

There's at least a little clinical evidence for the body language hypothesis as at least a contributing factor. I didn't review the study design, so it could be absolute junk. But in passing; they seemed to assert that movies of men exposed to pheromones were rated as more attractive while still frame photos eliminated the effect.

Similarly, women who are ovulating are rated as more attractive, while makup mimicks that attractiveness in non-ovulating women. Many styles of female makeup application are, of course, mimicing sexual arousal (sex flush.)

These observations may not be comprehensive, of course. There may be more 'out there.' But I hope studies asserting other effects at least take these observations into account.


I admit to knowing nothing about "morphic fields" though I've heard dbot refer to them and watched a video on them some time ago whose contents I've forgotten entirely.

Quote:Well – if we are just to arrive at the pragmatic conclusion that when there is confusion it may very well be helpful to set forth some of the principles and assumptions about the way we look at the world, then that is a destination I think we can all agree on.

Excellent.

Quote:...that is a destination I think we can all agree on. But it's a very long way from asserting the superiority of what can be objectively ascertained, and of the philosophy of Karl Popper.

Superiority relative to what?

I suspect I have a more general view than you of the set of things which can be objectively known (observed.)

This may account for much of our disagreement if you interpret my statements too narrowly.

Quote:That is not very Popperian of you – to observe the 'plenty' of examples of scientists behaving in a Popperian manner and consider this support for the Popperian view of science. It is rather the point that the great preponderance of scientists do not behave as if they sincerely believed in falsificationism.

First, I've given support that a number of scientists changed beliefs when their beliefs were disproven regarding critical issues or that prominent theories were debunked through falsification. Second, I question to what extent history is a 'science.' It's iffy at best. But admittedly the incidents I'm familiar with are not a representative sample. Further, I'm not making a primarily descriptivist argument. As noted previously, I'm not primarily concerned with what the majority of scientists do or what science is as a political institution (relevant though that is.) Neither are you, given your comments regarding bureaucracies, 'natural authorit' etc. If a majority of people or even scientists believed in the notion of 'explanatory power' as determining the value of a theory I'd still disagree with that majority from a proscriptivist standpoint because I favor predictive value. It's worth noting that Popper provides a more persuasive grounding to actively criticize the scientific bureaucracy that you've said you disliked.

My desire for predictive value is almost axiomatic, though the benefits are not. If someone simply wanted a "just so story" for whatever reason, I have little grounds to argue with that value, though I hold a different one.

The evolutionary biologists who point to the explanatory power of the evolutionary paradigm (PZ Meyers, for instance) didn't seem particularly capable of predicting phenomenon such as epigenetics. And he had a large number of followers. What would you proscrible to correct that problem? Better insight? How is that developed if one's teachers are unreliable? How does one realize that one's teachers are unreliable? Popper provides a method for that. But this is just a layman's observations, not a controlled study. So take it for what you will.

The question of which theories are responsible for the benefits of science could be argued. I admit that I mostly have only a long string of anecdotal evidence to back up by beliefs. Perhaps some other political reality is waiting to make a hash of my ideals. If so, I admit, I'm probably not prepared now to argue against it.

Quote:And whether people change their minds about small things is not the question.

The disproof of a static universe vis a vis the Red Shift was a huge thing. It implied the universe had a beginning. The implications can't be understated.

Quote:such collapses in prestige only occasionally happening as the result of a single instance of falsification,

I never claimed that things happened based on a 'single instance.' Quite the opposite. I'm not sure you're seeing the difference between falsifiablity and falsification.

Lets say that we have two theories. One which predicts that "all things fall towards planets" and another which predicts that "all things fall towards planets at
9.8m/second ^2"

The first theory is true. The second theory is demonstrably false under the right circumstances. If you're on another planet, it will give you the wrong value. But the second theory is more "falsifiable", and thus has more predictive value when it does apply. Do you see where I'm going with that? More 'falsifiable' is more predictive.

I don't hold that a single experiment has to disprove a dominant theory, and in fact claimed the opposite as there are mistaken experiments all the time.

But once the effect is real, that's a starting flag to begin looking for a new explanation.

Quote:I suggests that Popper fails to meet this test, and therefore is not a good guide to thinking about how one ought to proceed. Nothing that you have written appears grounds for believing anything to the contrary.

1. You complained about bureaucracies in science, noted effects of prestige, etc.
2. You said you preferred alternate and more natural systems of authority.
3. You conclude by holding with Kuhn's view of science which essentially describes a bureaucracy, and criticizing popper whose theories provide a basis for actively critiquing, undermining and reforming those bureaucracies.

This is a great thread by the way. Intellectually stimulating... "Just when you thought you heard everything"

Quote:Whereas I believe that I have explained in some depth why I do not believe that 'objective' tests can distinguish between high quality and mediocre work.

I've said the same thing. Objective tests tend to focus on deficiency, which separates the bad from the mediocre. You've argued that intersubjectivity led to convergent beliefs, however, and I've said it didn't. I mention at a few places that it's very hard to tell the difference between the top performers in an intellectual field. Intersubjectivity hasn't led to a belief in a single preferred type of artwork, say, but to different styles and genres (which might, at least, be said to intersubjectively exist.)

Quote:Note that within your framework, you ought to be able to provide objective falsifiable evidence to justify the superiority of your belief in objectivity.

Several points;

1. The existence of humanity's inability to know when they have achieved perfect truth was demonstrated by widespread assertions of perfect truth in regards to Newtonian physics and the subsequent disproval of such claims with relativity and quantum mechanics. In short, this demonstrated the tenuous nature of classical beliefs in knowledge of absolute truth as verifiably true by humans. Thus, "predictive value" is the search for truth which acknowledges that beyond the horizon of our experience, other pattern may hold. I've contrasted this with valuing explanatory power, and assertions of collective agreement as the highest truth.


2. I take as axiomatic the regular nature of the universe and the desirablity of understanding this nature. If the universe is not regular in some way
or if this regularity is not worth knowing and of enough importance to override other considerations, a person will disagree with my epistemology.

3. One of pheroquirk's primary objections seems to be that the process of judgement is necessarily obscure and unknowable, or that we will not benefit from understanding that process. (He may have changed his mind here, at least to some extent. It's late, and I'm addressing an earlier post after a later one...) Such an assertion of unknowability honestly seems strange to me, like suggesting that we don't need to understand how to build cars in order to build a better car or fix one. (Admittedly, sometimes people make good judgements without understanding them. But human history being the mess it is, I'm not inclined to trust to put too much faith in human instinct.)

I think we've mostly hammered out this issue, and I suspect his stance on the remainder is the result of a very different (narrower) definition from myself of what "objective knowledge" is, but I'm not sure that he's acknowledged that suggestion. I'm really not sure where pheroquirk wants me to begin here. While AI has stalled for a time, (despite the interesting advance showing that multi-layered neural nets could overcome the problems inherent in simpler models) Hawkins seems to have produced at least some valid advancements in terms of video pattern recognition. I'd note that Hawkins is a guy who not only is making advances in an area where brilliant minds have stalled for decades, but that he's very meta-cognitive and his writing is suffused with a desire to explore how we think and understand. That exploration seems to have helped him. Granted, the plural of anecdote isn't data. But this is still evidence.

I've also described how an understanding of study design was helpful in reviewing studies so that a person could make their own opinions. The capacity to understand proper study design or flaws represents an instance of understanding epistemology.

Pheroquirk had asserted that those he considers knowledgeable aren't familiar with epistemology. I've given evidence that they were, at least to some extent and also gave my personal experience with people who weren't familiar with epistemology and the problems that that lack caused. We seem to agree, I think, that such understanding can facilitate problem solving in disagreements (and in recognizing such disagreements as intractable ), which was a large part of my original assertion.

I suppose I could test this hypothesis more formally through some kind of controlled survey instead of just relying on my own experience.

Re: George Soros

I don't claim to know any other people who explicitly refer to Popper, so I can't really give any accounts of their beliefs.
It sounds like your anecdote invalidates Soros's stated beliefs more than it does Poppers, though.

Quote:So one should be careful not to downplay the literal role of somatic phenomena in cognition.

If I didn't believe in the role of somatic phenomena in influencing preference and behavior, I wouldn't be here. ;-)

But that's because I want people to like me like ice cream, not to believe me like gravity.

Quote:But I think you are wrong to suggest that there is a dichotomy between following an objective standard and "going with our gut".

The difference is that the first can potentially copied, critiqued, understood and potentially improved by others and the second is obscure. Otherwise, they seem similar enough. To the extent that repeatability, improvement and general knowledge is desirable the first should be preferred when possible. But objective standards are not always possible. I learn from people who relate objective experiences. Some people may have great instincts, but if they don't understand those instincts it will be hard for them to teach me.

Quote:There is a difference between the intersubjective assessment of expertise and popularity contests, because the former considers the fact that there is a hierarchy of ability between people whereby the best are very much better than everyone else.

If the assertion is simply that we can model behavior which we find favorable, I agree we have that capacity. That makes our models objectively desired by us (our behavior makes it more or less obvious that we hold certain preferences) but does not make those preferences objectively correct. If a person with experience regarding suits claims that they hate wearing the things and prefer t-shirts you might show that they won't be accepted in certain circumstances, but you can't objectively prove that their preference in clothing is invalid. It may even garner them status in certain countercultures.

Further, if you believe that there is a hierarchy of ability and that people have a capacity to recognize ability and converge to a common assessment of ability then you should believe in the validity of popularity contests. Rejecting the validity of popularity contests does not reject the notion of a single, universally valid hierarchy of skill, as you claimed. On the contrary rejecting popularity contests rejects the notion that people in general are capable of recognizing skill. But you've also said that there was a smaller group than the general population who were familiar with a subject and whose opinion was valid. And if that's true, you need to ask yourself two questions;
1. What determines if a person is able to or unable to recognize skill?
2. How can you tell if you're one of those people who can't recognize skill?

If you can answer #1, you'll end up with a popularity contest among those who possess that trait.

Quote:The definition of the word pair "genuine expertise" is perfectly clear, as reference to the oxford english dictionary will demonstrate. Of course it may be that you are not willing to accept that this actually exists in the world because of your prior commitment to a set of values – but that is entirely a different question.

The Oxford dictionary doesn't include "genuine expertise" as a term of art.

In response, I wrote; "My point is not to deny the existence of something we might call expertise but to unpack the term so that our common understanding of it (and how we measure it) is explicit rather than vague."

After that, pheroquirk responded;

Quote: Of course it may be that you are not willing to accept that this (genuine expertise) actually exists in the world

Do I consider some people to be experts? Yes. Do I think assessments of expertise are convergent? Beyond a basic competence, no. After a certain point, assessments of expertise are often subjective rather than objective. This isn't because of any "prior committment to a set of values." (ad hominem. You need to accurately summarize or paraphrase my views, then disprove my views, before you start trying to attribute them to personality flaws. )

I think that preferences aren't convergent because I talk to people with divergent preferences. If everyone who read a lot had the same favorite author, I'd have a different opinion about people's preferences.

Different people have different favorite authors, different favorite directors, different favorite artistic styles etc.

I see this as good evidence that even educated people familiar with a topic have different, subjective measures of quality. But some authors and directors and styles are very popular, which demonstrates some measure of convergence.

Quote:("expertise is a concept which we use to model and predict behavior and capacity"), but it is not what the word and older predecessors (such as skillfulness

Capacity is not skillfulness? The ability to do a thing is not the ability to do a thing?

Quote:It is the height of absurdity to suggest that because you can not write a manual on how to be a great conductor, a great opera singer, a great mechanic, a great investor, or a great pheromone formulator, the quality of having great expertise in this area does not exist!

Again, you're not responding to what I've written. Your post is a line of straw men. You've tried to assert that all people who were familiar with a topic will have a roughly convergent assessment of who has expertise. I'm saying that that convergence of non-objectively verifiable opinions doesn't describe how people typically behave.

Regarding how to interview a network engineer;

Quote:To a reasonable extent here, you are smuggling in discernment and judgement into your process without admitting it.

I've never once been opposed to discernment or judgement. You're welcome to try and quote me where I made that assertion.
I simply said that the process behind those things didn't have to be obscure.

Quote:For example, Enron was the poster boy for leading management consultants and business writers, and the perception of their success shaped how other people behaved even though it was based on lies and delusion.

Enron is worth nothing at this point. That's a pretty objective result, I'd note. And now I'm guessing you're going to try and group me with some number crunchers who said Enron was worth a lot and who you reflexively associate with terms like "objective" even though they were nothing more than dupes who swallowed a line of BS. (Note, people who "follow their gut"
also swallow BS. )

Again, objectivity is not about a blind belief in numbers. People can lie with numbers just as well as they lie with words. I've mentioned that several times and you return to the topic as if I'd never said anything at all. This gives me the impression you're not addressing my arguments. This is why I emphasize things like understanding study design and epistemology.
So that people can better avoid that raw credulity.

Quote:Similarly, sometimes a company does very well or very badly because it is sitting in the right place at the right time.

Sure. As mentioned previously, you don't base an worldview on a single experiment. You make sure the trend holds.

Quote:Much of life is cyclical, but we tend to forget this when we want to fit the messy world into our simple models.

That may be what some people do, but to be clear this is not what I am doing. I have argued repeatedly against simply extrapolating from trends with no understanding of the underlying model. To no effect, it seems.

Quote:And finally 'science' is catching up to the darned obvious. See, for example the following:-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...239.x/full

Um... did you read the article?

1. It was arguing for a disproof of a bell curve distribution of talent, in favor of a 'superstar' model.
It was NOT arguing for a convergence of opinion regarding the skills of those superstars, which was the point you were trying to support.

So while Madonna and Alice Cooper are both 'superstars' they don't share the same fan base. This article does NOT support a convergent view of "genuine expertise" as you asserted.

2. The methods behind the study you cite as authoritative are precisely the variety that you've been criticizing for the past three pages and trying to falsely attribute to me and my belief system.

Ryan:Why does it matter whether a practice is a 'culmination of a trend' or not? Why should we believe that trends in beliefs can be used to indicate the truth or falsehood of those beliefs?

Quote:A degree of self-awareness, in my experience, tends to reduce arrogance and misplaced self-confidence in one's particular approach to the world. Travel broadens the mind, and so does reading that places one's worldview into a broader context. Europeans often observe that it is a peculiarly American trait to think that the American way is the only way, and to struggle to understand other ways without relating them to what the person already knows.

You're missing the point. Your argument that the belief was recent has no impact whatsoever on its truth value. It's at best a non-sequiter. As mentioned, I've traveled quite a bit. In addition to living various places within the US (it's a very big country and I've lived in a number of places) I've been to El Salvador, Mexico, homestayed in Australia and New Zealand and visited the UK. I've lived and worked in China (6 months) and the Philippines (9 months.) You seem to be trying to apply stereotypes (like "Americans are insular and arrogant") rather than responding to the actual person you're talking to.

In any case, I've been the one arguing in favor of self awareness and an understanding of one's own mental processes. Your argument has been that such understanding was not useful. I'll be the first to agree that self awareness is a beneficial trait.

Quote:Implicitly you are saying that every way of looking at things is a model.

Well, yes. If it's not explicit already, I'll make it so. "Every way of looking at things is a model." Some of those models may be as simple as a set of positive or negative associations. ("our gut") All our knowledge of reality is a filtered slice. Nobody has "actual reality" in their head. It's too big. We have something that we hope relates to actual reality. Which is, almost by definition, " a model."

Quote:But this is a metaphor, and metaphors often break down.

Sure. Models have limits. All patterns of thought have limits. I'm not arguing for my personal omniscience or anything close to that, as I think I've made abundantly clear. Ideally, we understand the basis for the model we use, have some appreciation for its potential limits and know when to switch to other models or balance one incomplete model against another.

Quote:The approach of trying to break everything into fragments, and proceeding as if one can standardize and objectively assess these fragments is one approach. It has had some benefits that make it popular in 2012, and some costs that are less well understood by most. In time, I suspect that the popularity of this approach will ebb, as happens with all approaches.

I'm sure it will be supplemented by other approaches and I hope that it is. Of course, if you've ever fixed a computer or any complex device you know how useful such an approach can be at the start of the troubleshooting process. There's some "looking for our car keys under the lamp post, not because that's where we lost them but because that's where the light is" now as well. Certainly. There are some scientists doing the tests they can do ("blood flow to parts of the brain") rather than the ones they would benefit from but can't do. (People get so TICKED when you spin parts of their brain in a centrifuge). But if we want to model complex systems we may be forced to incorporate more holistic approaches at times. That much I do look forward to. Fewer equations. More cellular automata/"Swarm Intelligence" and Markov models. And it's horrifically hard to predict the behavior of some self modifying systems. But we just aren't there yet. Not in terms of the modeling capacity. Not in terms of the raw data. In any case, while reductionism is a good starting point for many things, I'm not an obligate reductionist. Just to be abundantly clear.

But please do be very careful of attributing to me certain assertions or worldviews that I haven't explicitly claimed.

Quote:I cannot blame you for rather liking it.

*sigh* yes. That. Please don't do that.

Quote:But one should be aware that consciousness shapes the world that one sees

Sure. I've acknowledged that we can't get close to a perfect separation of observer and observed when studying the world.
Especially with social topics like pheromones.

Quote:I hate to insist on the proper spelling and usage of words, but if you are going to use high-flown words such as 'epistemology', it would be better to spell them correctly consistently

This isn't a term paper. I'm writing a lot with very limited time. I don't think epistemology is particularly "high-flown." If you prefer a simpler term like "the methodical search for truth" or similar, I'd be happy to substitute.

You can get your points addressed or you can get proper spelling. Your choice as to how much a few typos really bother you.

Quote:otherwise it detracts from the effectiveness of the argument.

If you're willing to indulge in ad hominem logical fallacies, it might, but that issue is on your side of the screen, not mine. Otherwise you can consider things based on their merits.

phive pluz phive styll ekwals ten. ;-)

No?

Quote:You say "I also have no objection to intersubjectivity as long as appropriate descriptors are used to indicate intersubjective agreement. Or at least that people realize internally that they're describing a subjective experience and not stating an objective truth. "

Well, the English language has been around much longer than you or I. I fail to see why we should demand its mutilation in order to fit to an ideologically imposed standard of how things ought to be phrased.

Um...That's why I added "or at least people realize internally."
You had the option to say "I realize that I'm not stating an objective truth here, just following the conventions of the language."

I mean, I was pretty explicit on the point.

Quote:He has a disingenuous, not-sincere aspect to him", then I am using words to point to something that I believe to be objective. I believe you would dispute both the language, the objectivity (because potentially intersubjective) and potentially even the likelihood of of such an intuitive observation being true. But it is unreasonable to expect people with different cultural and metaphysical beliefs to conform to your own values and preferences in how to communicate.

After you make a dozen or so incorrect inferences about what I would believe in a particular case and I say "That's not what I would believe" I would hope that you can acknowledge the mistakes and adjust your beliefs accordingly. You're simply not accurately summarizing my beliefs. Repeatedly. Dozens and dozens of times.

I'll walk through this with you.

First; You're making a prediction; "this guy seems more likely to hide the truth or lie." I believe falsehood exists. You're predicting that the things this imaginary person says are more likely to be false. WHY would I have a problem with that?

Quote:and potentially even the likelihood of of such an intuitive observation being true.

First, the word "intuitive" as you use it here is not opposed to evidence of the senses as you used it before.

I said that if you didn't understand your metacognition that you'd have trouble teaching your judgement process to others, hammering out differences between yourself and others who don't share your beliefs, improving it, etc. I suppose in the long term such lack of self awareness might lead to actual deficits in predictive power, but I certainly wouldn't jump to the conclusion that a person lacked metacognition just from their statement alone.

On the contrary, I'd usually assume that a person was self aware until they gave indication that they weren't.

... I was going to keep going, but I'm just saying "no, that's not actually my view" over and over... I'm sorry, but that's just not interesting and there are things I really need to get done. Hopefully we'll meet elsewhere in the forum on a more productive topic.


All the best to you.