Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!mordor!lll-tis!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU!gsmith
From: gsmith@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Scientific Epistemology
Message-ID: <8706301520.AA01304@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Tue, 30-Jun-87 11:20:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: brahms.8706301520.AA01304
Posted: Tue Jun 30 11:20:28 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 06:40:58 EDT
References: <3587e521.44e6@apollo.uucp> <680@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU> <103@snark.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: brahms.Berkeley.EDU!gsmith@brahms.Berkeley.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 63

In article <103@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:

>Richard Carnes writes: There is no such animal as `the scientific
>> definition of knowledge' or `the scientific epistemology'.

>I think it's quite fair to speak of `the scientific epistemology',
>since in order to believe that science is anything but futile
>you must at some level be an empiricist and/or operationalist.

  Unless the definitions you are using are vague or non-standard
(which I suspect is the case) this does not follow. In particular,
you seem to be implicitly employing a pragmatic epistemolgy to
support your claim that one must be an empiricist or (not the
same thing, fella) an operationalist.

>Yes, there are scientists who profess to have other philosophies
>in connection with their religious beliefs or whatever -- but
>*in the lab* they must function as operationalists or give up.

  This is complete rubbish. Why can't they function just as well
as rationalists or pragmatists? Most scientists think they are
finding out truths about how the world really is, and I believe
this helps motivate them and so is a Good Thing.

>Knowledge is instrumental. Humans gather knowledge in order to
>*predict* things and *do* things.

 This is one motivation, but is not the only one. Even if it was,
it would not prove that all knowledge was merely instrumental.

>Humans form beliefs (including philosophical beliefs) in order
>to organize knowledge so they can *do* things and *predict* things.

>Therefore, the choice between empiricism and anything else as a
>philosophical stance is *not* ultimately a 'philosophical question'
>(i.e. one addressable via a debate on the high-order abstractions
>we study in philosophy) it is an *instrumental* question: what
>works? What maximizes our ability to predict and do?

  This is pragmatism you are talking here, Buster. Extreme empiricisms
have trouble explaining mathematical knowledge. Do you view this
as "instrumental" (whatever you really mean by that?)

>The philosophical revolution that came with experimental science gave us the
>Universe's answer. Empiricism, verificationism, and operationalism *work*.

  You mean physics, biology and chemistry work, not some philosophical
theory about *how* they work works. There is a difference though it appears
you don't see it.

>I therefore invite Mr. Carnes (and through him, Charles Taylor
>and anti-empiricists in general) to put up or shut up. Show us
>how a non-empiricist epistemology can yield a model with *instrumental*
>success exceeding that of empiricism. If you think instrumental
>success is somehow the wrong criterion, pick another criterion
>and defend it.

  Mathematics "works". Mathematics does not require an empiricist
epistemology to support it, quite the reverse I would say. So put
up or shut up.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
ucbvax!weyl!gsmith    "Slime is the agony of water" -- Jean-Paul Sartre