Le 27-déc.-06, à 02:46, Jef Allbright a écrit :
>
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> But our main criterion for what to believe should be
>> what is true, right?
>
> I find it fascinating, as well as consistent with some difficulties in
> communication about the most basic concepts, that Stathis would express
> this belief of his in the form of a tautology. I've observed that he
> is
> generally both thoughtful and precise in his writing, so I'm very
> interested in whether the apparent tautology is my misunderstanding,
> his
> transparent belief, a simple lack of precision, or something more.
I don't see any tautology in Stathis writing so I guess I miss
something.
>
> If he had said something like "our main criterion for what to believe
> should be what works, what seems to work, what passes the tests of
> time,
> etc." or had made a direct reference to Occams's Razor, I would be
> comfortable knowing that we're thinking alike on this point.
This would mean you disagree with Stathis's tautology, but then how
could not believe in a tautology?
> But I've
> seen this stumbling block arise so many times and so many places that
> I'm very curious to learn something of its source.
From your "working" criteria I guess you favor a pragmatic notion of
belief, but personally I conceive science as a search for knowledge and
thus truth (independently of the fact that we can never *know* it as
truth, except perhaps in few basic things like "I am conscious" or "I
am convinced there is a prime number" etc.).
To talk like Stathis, this is why science is by itself always
tentative. A scientist who says "Now we know ..." is only a dishonest
theologian (or a mathematician in hurry ...).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Wed Dec 27 2006 - 09:26:35 PST