Thank you for your reply! It’s certainly helped to clarify the matter. I wonder now if a language used in a hypothetical culture where people placed a much higher value on sense of smell or meditative states might have a far broader and more detailed vocabulary to describe them, resolving the problems with reconstructing the evidence. It’s almost Sapir-Whorf—regardless of whether or not language influences thought, it certainly influences the transmission of thought.
I think on reflection that most of my other objections relate to cases where the evidence isn’t in dispute but the conclusions drawn from it are (see: much of politics!) Those could, in principle, be resolved with a proper discussion of priors and a focus on the actual objective evidence as opposed to simply the parts of it that fit with one’s chosen argument. That people in most cases don’t (and don’t want to) reconcile the beliefs and view the situation as more complex than ‘cheering for the right team’ is a fault in their thinking, not the principle itself.
Thank you for your reply! It’s certainly helped to clarify the matter. I wonder now if a language used in a hypothetical culture where people placed a much higher value on sense of smell or meditative states might have a far broader and more detailed vocabulary to describe them, resolving the problems with reconstructing the evidence. It’s almost Sapir-Whorf—regardless of whether or not language influences thought, it certainly influences the transmission of thought.
I think on reflection that most of my other objections relate to cases where the evidence isn’t in dispute but the conclusions drawn from it are (see: much of politics!) Those could, in principle, be resolved with a proper discussion of priors and a focus on the actual objective evidence as opposed to simply the parts of it that fit with one’s chosen argument. That people in most cases don’t (and don’t want to) reconcile the beliefs and view the situation as more complex than ‘cheering for the right team’ is a fault in their thinking, not the principle itself.