Maybe a better way to put it would be that agreement on meta-level principles more reliably forces agreement on simple object-level issues?
I think it’s important, valuable, and probably necessary to work out theoretical principles in an artificially simple and often “abstract” context, before you can understand how to correctly apply them to a more complicated situation—and the correct application to the more complicated situation is going to be a longer explanation than the simple case. The longer the explanation, the more chances someone has to get one of the burdensome details wrong, leading to more disagreements.
Students of physics first master problems about idealized point masses, frictionless planes, perfectly elastic collisions, &c. as a prerequisite for eventually being able to solve more real-world-relevant problems, like how to build a car or something—even if the ambition of real-world automotive engineering was one’s motivation for studying (or lecturing about) physics.
Similarly, I think students of epistemology need to first master problems about idealized bleggs and rubes with five binary attributes, before they can handle really complicated issues (e.g., the implications on social norms of humans’ ability to recognize each other’s sex)—even if the ambition of tackling hard sociology problems was one’s motivation for studying (or lecturing about) epistemology.
Imagine being at a physics lecture where one of the attendees kept raising their hand to complain that the speaker was using abstraction to “obfuscate” or “disguise” the real issue of how to build a car. That would be pretty weird, right??
Maybe a better way to put it would be that agreement on meta-level principles more reliably forces agreement on simple object-level issues?
In cases I can think of, this is the reverse of what happens. In fact, agreement on (simple, often too simple) object-level issues allows abstractions which can be agreed on.
Physics is a great example. Intro physics lectures include a massive number of demonstrations. These are simple (too simple to use to build a car), but are clearly and incontrovertibly real-world behaviors. There is object-level proof that the abstractions have at least some tie to reality.
Maybe a better way to put it would be that agreement on meta-level principles more reliably forces agreement on simple object-level issues?
I think it’s important, valuable, and probably necessary to work out theoretical principles in an artificially simple and often “abstract” context, before you can understand how to correctly apply them to a more complicated situation—and the correct application to the more complicated situation is going to be a longer explanation than the simple case. The longer the explanation, the more chances someone has to get one of the burdensome details wrong, leading to more disagreements.
Students of physics first master problems about idealized point masses, frictionless planes, perfectly elastic collisions, &c. as a prerequisite for eventually being able to solve more real-world-relevant problems, like how to build a car or something—even if the ambition of real-world automotive engineering was one’s motivation for studying (or lecturing about) physics.
Similarly, I think students of epistemology need to first master problems about idealized bleggs and rubes with five binary attributes, before they can handle really complicated issues (e.g., the implications on social norms of humans’ ability to recognize each other’s sex)—even if the ambition of tackling hard sociology problems was one’s motivation for studying (or lecturing about) epistemology.
Imagine being at a physics lecture where one of the attendees kept raising their hand to complain that the speaker was using abstraction to “obfuscate” or “disguise” the real issue of how to build a car. That would be pretty weird, right??
In cases I can think of, this is the reverse of what happens. In fact, agreement on (simple, often too simple) object-level issues allows abstractions which can be agreed on.
Physics is a great example. Intro physics lectures include a massive number of demonstrations. These are simple (too simple to use to build a car), but are clearly and incontrovertibly real-world behaviors. There is object-level proof that the abstractions have at least some tie to reality.