errors of the skeptics

skeptics of the erros

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• error
• philosophy
• skepticism
• relativistic

[magpiesmn]

So basicaly the question is how do I become more consistent in my beliefs as a skeptic? If im hearing you right? While I do agree that being consistent is kool I kinda dont agree that one should focus on being more consistent I have found it only leads to less of it instead...

[pyrrho314]

yes, I am asdvocating consistency in one's skepticism, among other things... but note, not really "consistency" but using consistency to figure out the logical and material ramifications.

[aaronhemeon]

"It is still questioned whether many of the objects of the most valuable and indispensable hypotheses in present use have actual existence; the existential status of the electron is still, for example, a matter of controversy. In many cases, as in the older theory of the nature of atoms, it is now clear that their worth was independent of the existential status imputed to their subject matter; that indeed this imputation was irrelevant and as far as it went injurious." John Dewey (QC) pp.191

[pyrrho314]

it depends what you mean by "exists"

[aaronhemeon]

By "exists" I mean to take issue with Ian Hacking's "Representing and Intervening."

[CPLains]

So because he developed a theory that was falsifiable, he therefore is both a materialist and skeptic?

Don't you see how broad and silly this gets? Cheif philosophical background of Einstein was Hume (a skeptic one might say), Kant (word starts to lose its meaning) and Karl Pearson (who took after Kant and went further into idealism).

The latter through his book "The grammar of science" has perhaps had the most direct influence on Einstein's revolutionary thought.

[pyrrho314]

odd, I see that oppositely, it's the connectivity of everything that makes the need for an "unconnected force" (oxymoron) or metaphysic.

[pyrrho314]

yes, and Einstein is an excellent example, relativist, materialist, willing to lay his ideas down on skeptical criteria, and still, very much the possessor of an idealized abstraction, his aesthetic about physics, how it conserved itself, what sort of balance that could be expected, which not.

[CPLains]

From a psychological standpoint i think the skeptics fail to appreciate the extreme leap of faith that any truth that will be acknowledged 50 years from now requires today. I use the word faith intentionally, because i don't think people quite understand how extremely high psychological pressure an Einstein or Copernicus must have felt early on, and how bold - and frankly - naive, they must have been originally.