----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, June 23, 2009 9:54
AM
Subject: Incisive cf Critical
Epistomological Enquiry
Dear All,
I have recently been engaged in a bruising
conversation with someone - the founder of a discussion group that I have
participated in - who believes that the only valid kind of logic is
propositional logic and argues that this strong 'two-value' (i.e. true or
false) logic is necessary for the critical evaluation of ideas
by testing them against experience (i.e. he is a dedicated follower of
Popper - not withstanding the Kinks - oh yes he is! - NB this
joke based on the Kinks' 1960s popsong may reveal my age!). He admits that
this logical process is 'independent from reality', yet insists
that just such independence is needed to test ideas about reality. He
recognises and wishes to correct the 'catastrophic error' of 'standard
empiricism' (the value-free knowledge-enquiry characteristic of objectivist
science) in occluding any consideration of 'what is truly valuable in life',
yet sees no connection between this occlusion and the form of logical
enquiry that engenders it. The effect of this is that he rules out of
consideration all kinds of approaches to enquiry that members of this
list have birthed and cherished. I have found this galling, especially when
he has accused me publicly of repudiating proposition, logic and truth in my
inclusional epistomology. It might not matter if he was a 'lone voice', but
in many ways he epitomizes what sets itself up against and ignores us/me as
we seek a less brutalistic and dare I say more realistic and wiser approach
to understanding nature and human nature.
I have tried, first subtly and then
not-so-subtly to draw attention to the inconsistency in his argument,
whereby he is claiming that the only way to evaluate ideas about
reality/truth is by means of a logic that is independent of reality/truth. I
have tried to show how propositional logic is predicated in the Aristotelian
notion that Nature is definable into discrete categories (i.e.
discontinuous), and can hence only be applied to falsifiable (i.e.
definitive) propositions - which are by their very nature unrealistic if
Nature isn't definable into discrete categories (as shown up by Goedel's
theorem and the Cretan Liar paradox, for example). I have pointed out that
Popper's influence on scientific enquiry has been to reify the notion that
the only hypothesis of any utility is a falsifiable hypothesis. The
disastrous result has been the increasing tendency to confine scientific
enquiry to the testing of unrealistic hypotheses using unrealistic
quantitative approaches predicated on the treatment of nature
as if it is a stultified
discontinuum of discrete objects (figures) instead of a dynamic continuum of
form-full space.
My efforts have as yet been to no avail.
But as long as one doesn't get too sensitized
by head-butting such walls (as tends to happen to me), the process can help
'clarify the mind'.
I'd like to draw your attention and
consideration to one such possible clarification that emerged in my mind
during the conversation. I found myself describing the approach to 'reality
enquiry' that I have always used as a research scientist. Instead of asking
the problematic and restrictive question, 'is this proposition true or
false?', I have asked myself (and others) a two-pronged question, along the
following lines: 'is this understanding consistent with evidence* and
does it make consistent sense?'
It occurred to me yesterday that this
two-pronged approach actually provides a key to what I
might call incisive enquiry, as a co-creative process
that brings clarity of focus to an issue and enables us continually to
update our provisional understanding in an improvisational (imaginative and
creative) way as we learn more, as distinct from adversarial
critical enquiry where we argue one way OR the other
(propositional) or one way AND the other (dialectic) in a staccato dance
that stumbles from pillar to post on the occlusions of its own eternally
prescriptive, definitive premises, bringing about all manner of 'collateral
damage' and misunderstanding along the way.
That is, we have two grounds for not accepting
a theory of reality (epistomology):- (1- empirical grounds) It is not
consistent with evidence; (2- explanatory grounds) It does not make
consistent sense (i.e. it is not free from contradiction/paradox).
Hence we cannot accept a theory of reality that
is consistent within its own self-reference but inconsistent with evidence,
AND we cannot accept a theory of reality that is consistent with evidence
but does not make consistent sense.
In a way, to fall on one count would implicitly
mean to fall on both counts. Hence all current theories and approaches based
on objective definition could be shown to be only partially true or
truthful, and thereby in need of radical revision, including, for
example, natural selection theory, atomic theory, wave theory, relativity
theory, quantum theory, chaos theory, thermodynamics, complexity theory,
systems biology to name but a few... And along with that revision
would come an appreciation of human feelings and values as a natural
inclusion of an inclusional process of philosophical, artistic and
scientific enquiry.
Correspondingly the only
'theory'/'understanding'/'natural epistomology' that, to my mind, can
currently be answered affirmatively on both counts is..... transfigural
inclusionality. Perhaps that's how it came to impress itself so much upon me
- first tacitly then explicitly - in the first place, before I knew much
about the current state (note the stultified postmodern oxymoron!)
of (un)natural philosophy, with its vast unfathomable variety of
definitive theories and history of fixed and broken paradigms.
Warmest
Alan
* I first wrote 'experience' here, but during
last night's educational conversation this proved problematic, so I have
changed to 'evidence' (not that what we perceive as 'evidence' isn't also
problematic, especially when positivistically we
only accept 'concrete material evidence' as valid and ignore
'immaterial evidence' signifying the omnipresence of space as limitless
receptive openness).