There’s a lot to take in here, and I may post further replies after I’ve had a chance to re-read your comment a couple of times and give it some thought. However, for now, I do have one quick observation to make:
Vaniver’s example with mashing potatoes. The “ritual” or “procedure” that his friends had was “get the potato masher, use it to mash the potatoes.” But Vaniver had some more general knowledge that enabled him to generate a new procedure when that procedure failed because its preconditions weren’t in place (i.e. there was no potato masher on hand). That general knowledge (the “generators” of the thought “use a glass,” which would have allowed his friends to generate the same thought had they considered them) was probably something like:
Potatoes are pretty tough, so you need a mashing device that is sufficiently hefty
A glass is sufficiently hefty
This is not an accurate account of Vaniver’s example! Let’s analyze the error:
“Potatoes are pretty tough” is, of course, wrong! Before mashing potatoes, you coarsely dice and boil them; at this point, they are not tough at all, but are quite soft—soft enough to come apart in your hand, too soft to even handle without the pieces breaking apart!
Thus, “you need a mashing device that is sufficiently hefty” is also not true. Heft, in fact, has nothing whatever to do with the reason why a fork was a poor tool, and a glass was a better tool.
What does, then? It’s a matter of shape; a fork is problematic because it has much less surface area to transmit the force of your hand to the potatoes, and because the fork’s mashing surface (such as it is) is not perpendicular to its primary axis (i.e., its handle), it is very awkward to bring it to bear on the potatoes in the pot or saucepan.
A glass, on the other hand, has a nice big surface area—the bottom—and, because it’s simply a cylinder, that surface area can easily be brought to bear on the potatoes, without the pot/saucepan interfering.[1]
Do you see? You constructed an explanation which was totally wrong; and not just wrong, but wrong in a way that (a) would become apparent if you actually went out and did the activity being described, and (b) the wrongness of which is not even difficult to see by thinking about—ask yourself, “what if Vaniver’s friends had used a fork with a core of solid lead, but otherwise the same shape as a regular fork? and what if instead of a glass made of… glass, they used a glass made of a lightweight plastic? would the rank ordering of these tools’ applicability to potato-mashing thereby reverse?”
I don’t mean to come down hard on you for this; it’s an error which I don’t think there’s any good reason to expect you not to have made. But that’s my whole point. It’s very easy to deceive oneself that one has a good “generator” or a good “zetetic explanation” or a good what have you, when in reality what one has is just wrong. It’s not a big problem when the explanation is about mashing potatoes; if your explanation encounters reality and is instantly shattered, well, big deal, right? You live and you learn… but when the matter is more serious than that, relying on such “knowledge” is tremendously dangerous.
[1] Indeed, there exist potato mashers which are simply cylinders—not of glass, but of wood—with coaxial handles attached.
There’s a lot to take in here, and I may post further replies after I’ve had a chance to re-read your comment a couple of times and give it some thought. However, for now, I do have one quick observation to make:
This is not an accurate account of Vaniver’s example! Let’s analyze the error:
“Potatoes are pretty tough” is, of course, wrong! Before mashing potatoes, you coarsely dice and boil them; at this point, they are not tough at all, but are quite soft—soft enough to come apart in your hand, too soft to even handle without the pieces breaking apart!
Thus, “you need a mashing device that is sufficiently hefty” is also not true. Heft, in fact, has nothing whatever to do with the reason why a fork was a poor tool, and a glass was a better tool.
What does, then? It’s a matter of shape; a fork is problematic because it has much less surface area to transmit the force of your hand to the potatoes, and because the fork’s mashing surface (such as it is) is not perpendicular to its primary axis (i.e., its handle), it is very awkward to bring it to bear on the potatoes in the pot or saucepan.
A glass, on the other hand, has a nice big surface area—the bottom—and, because it’s simply a cylinder, that surface area can easily be brought to bear on the potatoes, without the pot/saucepan interfering.[1]
Do you see? You constructed an explanation which was totally wrong; and not just wrong, but wrong in a way that (a) would become apparent if you actually went out and did the activity being described, and (b) the wrongness of which is not even difficult to see by thinking about—ask yourself, “what if Vaniver’s friends had used a fork with a core of solid lead, but otherwise the same shape as a regular fork? and what if instead of a glass made of… glass, they used a glass made of a lightweight plastic? would the rank ordering of these tools’ applicability to potato-mashing thereby reverse?”
I don’t mean to come down hard on you for this; it’s an error which I don’t think there’s any good reason to expect you not to have made. But that’s my whole point. It’s very easy to deceive oneself that one has a good “generator” or a good “zetetic explanation” or a good what have you, when in reality what one has is just wrong. It’s not a big problem when the explanation is about mashing potatoes; if your explanation encounters reality and is instantly shattered, well, big deal, right? You live and you learn… but when the matter is more serious than that, relying on such “knowledge” is tremendously dangerous.
[1] Indeed, there exist potato mashers which are simply cylinders—not of glass, but of wood—with coaxial handles attached.