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From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Knowledge and the Academics
Message-ID: <8705240306.AA24547@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sat, 23-May-87 23:06:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: brahms.8705240306.AA24547
Posted: Sat May 23 23:06:35 1987
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In article <6779@mimsy.UUCP>, flink@mimsy (Paul V Torek) writes:
>>By Kenn's own reasoning, there *is* an adequate basis.  His thesis has
>>received repeated tested over the centuries.  (NB-Kenn did not say "re-
>>peated".)
>
>Tested how?

Look in the history books.  Kenn's own reasoning was that "induction
works".  And he *can* justify it--by induction.

Now, perhaps you don't accept Kenn's basis.  Fine.  Then you will prob-
ably find that Kenn does not have an adequate basis for knowing induc-
tion works.  But you have found so by a non-Kenn method.

>	      A bunch of techie types get together and decide that other
>bases for knowledge have repeatedly produced "inadequate" results?

Where did this come from?

>								     To put
>it less confrontationally, what standard of "adequacy" is being used here?
>Not mere agreement, I hope.

I hope not too.  But Kenn's point was you won't even find "mere agreement"
in the social sciences, except of the most general kind.

>But even if he uses a better standard of adequacy, Kenn faces a regress
>problem here.  How does he know that his test for adequacy of knowledge-
>bases is a reliable one?  By yet another test?  Regress beckons...

Regress--or perhaps Loeb's theorem.  No one has adequately formalized
induction--some believe it impossible--but the idea of solving Hume's
problem by self-reference, as opposed to infinite regress, is attrac-
tive.

Not that I know how to, nor expect that anyone would accept such a solu-
tion in the first place.

And while I'm at it, what's wrong with infinite regress anyway?  Some-
times philosophers seem scared off by infinity the way physicists were
from black holes for decades.

So there're one or two points here.  What's wrong with self-referential
bootstrapping, and what's wrong with infinite regress?

For example, what do you say when an intuitionist tells you that excluded
middle is theological fiddle-faddle?  (I usually say, "well fine, I've got
the faith. I BELIEVE! Now go away."  I'm not scared off by the pejorative
power of words.)

>I saw your review, but "Hume's dilemma"?  Which?  You owe us phil.tech
>readers some filling in of context here -- I don't read religion.misc.

Sorry about that--I coined the phrase on the fly.  I meant the problem of
induction, which is what was being discussed.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
I should mention .... that I say aporia without knowing what it means.