[lit-ideas] Re: Patty Duke & The Apriori [part 2of 2]
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:19:16 +0900
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>wrote:
>
> Yes, this piece of Heideggeriana has had its stock increase in value thanks
> to
> the likes of Dennett and Brandom. The problem, though, is that such an
> approach
> doesn't allow for mistakes in people's/groups' understandings of what
> constitutes an explanation. Cutting off a chicken's head in order to see
> the
> colour of its blood may, after all, not be a very reliable method of
> determining which woman in the community is pregnant or will become
> pregnant.
I wonder about the relation between "doesn't allow for mistakes" and "not be
very reliable." To me the term "mistakes" implies a categorical right or
wrong: mistake=not right. "Not very reliable" implies at least an ordinal
metric, e.g., Very reliable> reliable,> not very reliable > not reliable at
all. One need not say that cutting off the chicken's head is a mistake,
i.e., categorically wrong, to demonstrate that as a procedure it is less
reliable than over the counter pregnancy kits. The latter, in turn, may be
less reliable than more rigorous screening procedures conducted by medical
professionals. Does that make their use a "mistake"?
The real problem here is the use of "mistake" to draw a line between between
a "they" who believe irrational things and a "we" who know better, which
assumes a religious view of science/scholarship that the history of science
amply demonstrates is flawed. Once one gets used to the idea that all human
understandings are partial and, while some are demonstrably better than
others, there is no need to assume that those who asserted the worse ones
were fools, civil discussion replaces pretentious claims to certainty. To me
that seems a good thing. Why, except for a childish fear of being "mistaken"
do we need anything more?
Just asking.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
Other related posts:
