Asian and Western thinking

[Kirby]

I was sick in bed all of yesterday and catching up on missed studying today and so wasn't able to respond to this for a while, but I just want to clarify that what I was calling delusional wasn't the belief in this-or-that superstition. What I was calling delusional was holding a belief for the sole reason that it makes you feel good, without any regard for its truth value.

Sure. And like I said, I share your opinion about the value of the scientific method.

It's just that, to some people, the way they evaluate something's "truth value" would not seem scientific to every person, and it's hard to say that their way is inferior if they are making rational decisions based on their experiences.

Objectivity is a nice concept, but is what is believed to be objective really objective? I don't really know, but I suspect that it's a complicated question that might have different answers, depending on who you ask.

Stay in good health...

[leichtloeslich]

Since you persist on opening that can of worms here..

It's just that, to some people, the way they evaluate something's "truth value" would not seem scientific to every person, and it's hard to say that their way is inferior if they are making rational decisions based on their experiences.

I don't think there are any other widely accepted methods except the scientific one for establishing "objective truth", but I am intruiged. What other method that draws conclusions from experiences is comparable to the scientific one in terms of credibility?

Your earlier example of the guy who thinks throwing salt over his shoulder increases his luck is actually a theory that produces verifiable predictions about the future, so it can be tested with the scientific method. And I'm sure you would agree that the tests will actually come to the following conclusion: it's bullshit. All of it.
Now if, after experiments have basically falsified his "belief", he would still cling to it, I would call him delusional.

Anyway, here's a quote from a famous pop-sci book/author that came to mind:

The theory of quantum electrodynamics has now lasted for more than fifty years, and has been tested more and more accurately over a wider and wider range of conditions. At the present time I can proudly say that there is no significant difference between experiment and theory!
Just to give you an idea of how the theory has been put through the wringer, I'll give you some recent numbers:
experiments have Dirac's number at
1.00115965221 (with an uncertainty of about 4 in the last digit); the theory puts it at
1.00115965246 (with an uncertainty of about five times as much).

To give you a feeling for the accuracy of these numbers, it comes out something like this: If you were to measure the distance from Los Angeles to New York to this accuracy, it would be exact to the thickness of a human hair. That's how delicately quantum electrodynamics has, in the past fifty years, been checked--both theoretically and experimentally. By the way, I have chosen only one number to show you. There are other things in quantum electrodynamics that have been measured with comparable accuracy, which also agree very well. Things have been checked at distance scales that range from hundred times the size of the earth down to one-hundredth the size of an atomic nucleus. These numbers are meant to intimidate you into believing that the theory is probably not too far off!

Taken from this book but also publicly viewable on youtube.

I think general relativity has been verified with comparable accuracy.
We know both GR and QED are not the "objective truth", since both theories break down at certain places. But to my knowledge they're the best we have so far, and their inception and verification are both deeply rooted in the "scientific method".


edit: typos

[Monadology]

Since you persist on opening that can of worms here..

It's just that, to some people, the way they evaluate something's "truth value" would not seem scientific to every person, and it's hard to say that their way is inferior if they are making rational decisions based on their experiences.

I don't think there are any other widely accepted methods except the scientific one for establishing "objective truth", but I am intruiged. What other method that draws conclusions from experiences is comparable to the scientific one in terms of credibility?

Your earlier example of the guy who thinks throwing salt over his shoulder increasing his luck is actually a theory that produces verifiable predictions about the future, so it can be tested with the scientific method. And I'm sure you would agree that the tests will actually come to the following conclusion: it's bullshit. All of it.
Now if after experiments have basically falsified his "belief" he would still cling to it, I would call him delusional.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scien ... rmination/

Have fun.

(A relevant excerpt in case you don't want to read the whole thing):

Duhem's original case for holist underdetermination is, perhaps unsurprisingly, intimately bound up with his arguments for confirmational holism: the claim that theories or hypotheses can only be subjected to empirical testing in groups or collections, never in isolation. The idea here is that a single scientific hypothesis does not by itself carry any implications about what we should expect to observe in nature; rather, we can derive empirical consequences from an hypothesis only when it is conjoined with many other beliefs and hypotheses, including background assumptions about the world, beliefs about how measuring instruments operate, further hypotheses about the interactions between objects in the original hypothesis' field of study and the surrounding environment, etc. For this reason, Duhem argues, when an empirical prediction turns out to be falsified, we do not know whether the fault lies with the hypothesis we originally sought to test or with one of the many other beliefs and hypotheses that were also needed and used to generate the failed prediction:

A physicist decides to demonstrate the inaccuracy of a proposition; in order to deduce from this proposition the prediction of a phenomenon and institute the experiment which is to show whether this phenomenon is or is not produced, in order to interpret the results of this experiment and establish that the predicted phenomenon is not produced, he does not confine himself to making use of the proposition in question; he makes use also of a whole group of theories accepted by him as beyond dispute. The prediction of the phenomenon, whose nonproduction is to cut off debate, does not derive from the proposition challenged if taken by itself, but from the proposition at issue joined to that whole group of theories; if the predicted phenomenon is not produced, the only thing the experiment teaches us is that among the propositions used to predict the phenomenon and to establish whether it would be produced, there is at least one error; but where this error lies is just what it does not tell us. ([1914] 1954, 185)

[leichtloeslich]

Have fun.

I've read the excerpt you gave, which appears to be from the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", is that correct?

Isn't the argument just a variation on the idea that in order to conclude anything beyond Descarte's cogito ergo sum, we have to make certain ad hoc assumptions about reality?
And what alternatives to the scientific method does it propose? Because it seems to me any model of reality will have to make these kinds of assumptions, so I don't really see any better method.

(Btw, this certainly is getting slightly off topic.)

[Monadology]

Have fun.

I've read the excerpt you gave, which appears to be from the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", is that correct?

Yep!

Isn't the argument just a variation on the idea that in order to conclude anything beyond Descarte's cogito ergo sum, we have to make certain ad hoc assumptions about reality?

That all really depends on what you mean by that and why you draw that conclusion. The only basic claim is that the empirical methodology of scientific observation doesn't ever establish fully determinate theoretical results.

And what alternatives to the scientific method does it propose? Because it seems to me any model of reality will have to make these kinds of assumptions, so I don't really see any better method.

Well, the article itself is only concerned with arguments that scientific theories are underdetermined by observation. Some of the major supporters of this view, such as Quine, were very much on board with science.

I think the point here is two-fold: One, the idea that a single hypothesis (such as the salt-throwing) can be straightforwardly 'verified' or 'falsified' is far too simplistic and doesn't actually describe the operations of science (or the scientific method). Two, it suggests that whatever standards scientists often apply to decide which ad hoc move to make (if there are common standards) need explicit argument in favor of them. Arguing that they are "better" at getting at the truth, without going in a circle (one can't appeal to observation any more), is a philosophically non-trivial exercise.

(Btw, this certainly is getting slightly off topic.)

[hyperpape]

Have fun.

I've read the excerpt you gave, which appears to be from the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy", is that correct?

Not sure what the italics are doing here, so I won't assume that my comment applies to you. If it doesn't, I think it's still of general interest:

I'll throw this out there: many people's conception of what contemporary philosophy is like would be heavily challenged by reading anything about philosophy of science.

I took a look at the front page of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philisophy and picked the article on experiment in biology: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/biology-experiment/. Read the intro, and see if it matches what you thought philosophy was like.

I don't know much about philosophy of biology, except a tiny bit that got covered in my intro class. I don't know if philosophers of biology are largely asking useful questions or not, or whether they're doing a decent job of addressing the questions they are asking. My point is that if you look at philosophy of science, it is very far away from what most people think philosophy is.

[skydyr]

(Btw, this certainly is getting slightly off topic.)

That's why it's in the off-topic section, right?

[leichtloeslich]

the idea that a single hypothesis (such as the salt-throwing) can be straightforwardly 'verified' or 'falsified' is far too simplistic and doesn't actually describe the operations of science (or the scientific method).

Well, first of all I meant "falsifiable predictions";
"verifiable predictions" sounds weird.

Second, I never said it'd be straightforward, only possible.

If luck can't be measured, then the statement of our hypothetical simpleton doesn't mean anything in the first place. So I assumed we can do that (by using a fair die, playing card games, whatever).

After that we need many trials + a basic understanding of statistics to be able to interpret the results. Seems easy enough to me.

In fact, the "having better luck by throwing salt over one's shoulder"-hypothesis might qualify for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.

[hyperpape]

If luck can't be measured, then the statement of our hypothetical simpleton doesn't mean anything in the first place.

This is, suffice it to say, a rather big assumption.

[Monadology]

the idea that a single hypothesis (such as the salt-throwing) can be straightforwardly 'verified' or 'falsified' is far too simplistic and doesn't actually describe the operations of science (or the scientific method).

Second, I never said it'd be straightforward, only possible.

If luck can't be measured, then the statement of our hypothetical simpleton doesn't mean anything in the first place. So I assumed we can do that (by using a fair die, playing card games, whatever).

After that we need many trials + a basic understanding of statistics to be able to interpret the results. Seems easy enough to me.

I'm a little confused. You begin by saying you don't think it would be straightforward, but end by saying it seems easy enough.

Let me clarify, though. What I mean by "straightforwardly 'verified or 'falsified'" was the idea that there was a direct relationship: that one could go from the observation to draw the conclusion that the hypothesis had been falsified as an implication of the observation itself.

[daal]

I never denied that there was cultural influence from common sources. but I do deny that there's any interesting level of common culture.

What qualifies for you as "interesting?" If there is in fact any commonality, how can you be sure that it is not relevant for playing go?

Or anything else for that matter. Do you take it as a given that there are no mental traits, be they genetically, culturally, or environmentally triggered, that might give people of one group an advantage in some types of mental activity over others?

[snorri]

This discussion reminds me of the following quote:

“Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.”

― Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Monadology]

I never denied that there was cultural influence from common sources. but I do deny that there's any interesting level of common culture.

What qualifies for you as "interesting?" If there is in fact any commonality, how can you be sure that it is not relevant for playing go?

That's not easy to define univocally. But I can say that one sort of common culture I doubt, that would qualify as interesting, is the sort proposed by the book mentioned: that cultures have a different focus on form vs substance or other such metaphysical distinctions.

Do you take it as a given that there are no mental traits, be they genetically, culturally, or environmentally triggered, that might give people of one group an advantage in some types of mental activity over others?

I don't deny that there are any mental traits that could give a group an advantage in some types of mental activity over others. That would be an absurd thing to deny, but denying that such traits occur at the level of a culturally non-existent unity called 'the East' does not require me to deny that mental traits can have a bearing on mental activity.

[cyclops]

If eastern culture makes easterns better go players then one also expects that easterns outperform in some other sports, Quantum Mechanics for example. To an extend that cannot be explained by better education or being a national hobby.

[Mef]

Historically, at one point of time in the 20th century, Japan was THE powerhouse in go. China and Korea were much weaker comparatively. It would seem that Japan helped plant the seeds of professional go into these countries and help them become stronger. Japan also tried to help out the Western world to become stronger at go. So the question becomes, how did China and Korea became so much stronger compared with the West when they all received help from Japan? Is it due to differences in culture or thinking or perhaps other factors?

If this is a thread for pulling theories out of leftfield, I'd like to go ahead and bring back the baseball hypothesis (=