Newsgroup sci.philosophy.tech 20943

Directory

In article <32D2AE22.2CAA@amdahl.com>, Al Case   wrote:
>G*rd*n wrote:
>
>> The problem Dr. Lewontin had with Dr. Sagan was similar to
>> the one I had, but he expressed it better and more fully:
>> Dr. Sagan, in the end, did _not_ recommend inquiry,
>> imagination, and reason, but only education, that is,
>> submission to authority. 
>
>Can you show even one instance of this in Sagan's writings? Can you also
>define how education is submission to authority?
Consider the format of COSMOS. He sat at this big desk
and showed you the Wonders Of The Universe on a big screen
while he explained them to you. Did he ever once suggest that
you go outside and take a look? Well, maybe he did, but I think
the authoritarian tone was prominent.
Lew Mammel, Jr.

In article <32D3C228.69DB@slc.unisys.com>, Helge Moulding Feyerabend's thesis is that science must proceed without any paradigm.
No, that is not his thesis.
Perhaps you ought to reread the article you were responding to.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)

On Wed, 08 Jan 1997 03:11:38 -0400, moggin@mindspring.com (moggin)
wrote:
>Ian:
>[...]
>
>>The power to discover truth, whatever that may be, lies in an 
>>enquiring, imaginative, rational and educated mind.
>
>     But as you note, we don't know what the truth is -- so
>it's possible that none of those things help to discover it.
Perhaps.  But if there is some "truth" to be discovered I can think of
no better way of equipping some one to find it.
Ian
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian H Spedding  
'To the relativists, one can only say - you provide an excellent
account of the manner in which we choose our menu or our wallpaper.
As an account of the realities of our world and a guide to conduct,
your position is laughable.'
           Ernest Gellner: 'Postmodernism, Reason and Religion' (1991)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 8 Jan 1997 07:57:06 -0500, gcf@panix.com (G*rd*n) wrote:
>I don't find Dr. Sagan's position that strange.  Given the
>breadth and complexity of modern science, no one of us can
>personally check -- or even understand -- all of its
>findings and theories.  That being the case, one must
>believe in what others say and do.  But which others?  For
>Dr. Sagan, the answer was clear: the scientific
>establishment as he saw it -- that is, a submission
>to a certain authority.  I'm sure I need not recite
>the problems with this approach -- the reasons why it
>does not scatter creationists and abductionists with
>a single blow?
>-- 
>   }"{    G*rd*n   }"{  gcf @ panix.com  }"{
I think it is not unreasonable to appeal to an acknowledged expert in
a given field for an opinion on something within their competence,
_providing_ that it is stressed that this is very different from a
religious believer citing the Word of his or her God as a final and
unchallengeable authority.  The most you can say of an expert's
judgement is that it has a higher probability of being right than that
of a non-expert.
Ian
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian H Spedding  
'To the relativists, one can only say - you provide an excellent
account of the manner in which we choose our menu or our wallpaper.
As an account of the realities of our world and a guide to conduct,
your position is laughable.'
          Ernest Gellner: 'Postmodernism, Reason and Religion' (1991)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ron Hardin wrote:
> 
> Richard Harter wrote:
> > >>The power to discover truth, whatever that may be, lies in an
> > >>enquiring, imaginative, rational and educated mind.
> >
> > >     But as you note, we don't know what the truth is -- so
> > >it's possible that none of those things help to discover it.
> >
> > "Truth" and "the truth" are two different things and that's true.  But
> > it takes an enquiring, imaginative, rational and educated mind to know
> > the difference.
> 
> Being basically a bad person, I found myself entertained by a Carl Sagan
> thread and a thread entitled ``Airbag Deaths,'' which I wrongly assumed to
> be a subthread.
> --
> Ron Hardin
> rhh@research.att.com
> 
> On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.
Ron,
True, you are bad.  But brilliant.
-- 
Mitchell Coffey
********************************************
I read a book on cognative dissonance once,
but it only proved my point.

Jim Balter wrote:
In article <32B9FB56.BA1@joyl.joensuu.fi>,
> Marko Toivanen   wrote:
> >The myths about Feyerabend live and prosper, even after 20 years of > >the publication of the book and Feyerabend's attempts at 
> >correction. This appears to be so because the views misattributed 
> >to Feyerabend are such that they form a self-perpetuating picture, > >making it unlikely that someone who holds these views about 
> >Feyerabend will ever take the measures to correct them.
> 
> A rather self-fulfilling view, much as skeptics in the room with Uri > Geller produce bad vibes that interfere with his powers, I suppose.
There do not seem to be any obvious structural similarities between the
two views, so I guess you lumped them together because you dislike both,
to try some guilt by association (which doesn't exist), to taint my view
of the persistence of the trivially false conception about Feyerabend. 
Here's another attempt: The misconceptions about Feyerabend are such
that the people holding the misconceptions are not likely to take the
steps needed to correct them. For example, they will not read
Feyerabend's criticism of those misconceptions. Heck, they may not even
read AGAINST METHOD, not to speak of the whole of it. Instead, they
produce crude apologetics for not reading Feyerabend, basing them on
their misconceptions about him. Do you understand what a vicious circle
is? My claim is that such is at work here.
Cheers,
Marko
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Marko Toivanen _/_/_/_/_/ co-moderator of bourdieu & feyerabend on
marko@joyl.joensuu.fi _/_/_/  majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ http://www.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/feyerabend/
For the modern mind doctrine and influence suggest heroes and cults.
Any persistent opinion gets traced back to a personal origin, and we
depend upon history to explode or inflate the myth that results. 
 - Scott Buchanan

Jim Balter wrote:
> In article <32B9FB56.BA1@joyl.joensuu.fi>,
> Marko Toivanen   wrote:
> >reviews. They were extremely poor: the reviewers attributed to
> >Feyerabend views he had never defended, overlooked Feyerabend's 
> >detailed warnings against misinterpretation even in the early 
> >chapters of the book.
> 
> Any support?
I think I have already given the main references, which in turn contain
references to the other material of interest. The best short summary is
Feyerabend's "The Lessing Effect in Philosophy of Science: Comments on
Some of My Critics", in NEW IDEAS IN PSYCHOLOGY 2 (2), 1983, pp. 127 -
136; a longer and more detailed one, responding to other critics is
"Farewell to Reason" in his FAREWELL TO REASON (London: Verso, 1987),
published originally in German as "Rückblick" in VERSUCHUNGEN, 2. Band
(Frankfurt am Mail: Suhrkamp, 1981). But the main source is the third
part of SCIENCE IN A FREE SOCIETY (London: NLB, 1978) which contains
Feyerabend's reviews of the early book reviews of AGAINST METHOD
(London: NLB, 1975; Revised Edition, Verso, 1988; Third Edition, 1993).
Feyerabend's reviews of those reviews contain references to the
bookreviews themselves.
Cheers,
Marko
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Marko Toivanen _/_/_/_/_/ co-moderator of bourdieu & feyerabend on
marko@joyl.joensuu.fi _/_/_/  majordomo@lists.village.virginia.edu
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ http://www.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/feyerabend/
For the modern mind doctrine and influence suggest heroes and cults.
Any persistent opinion gets traced back to a personal origin, and we
depend upon history to explode or inflate the myth that results. 
 - Scott Buchanan