Whenever I find myself in a situation where I’m around people arguing about -isms or definitions, I usually find that the meaningful parts of the disagreement get hidden in the small words in the sentences. Like when I try to find a concise definition of empiricism, I’m told it’s that “all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.” Well, what does “derived from” mean? That phrase can easily include all of epistemic rationality. What does “all” mean? Obviously some level of information comes from our genes instead, but is that “knowledge”? And is knowledge quantitative or categorical? What is sense-experience? Does it include every bit of physical or chemical information that affects our biology from the moment of conception, or only what registers to our conscious awareness through the traditional five senses, or something else?
In other words, I’m saying it’s very important that EY labeled the sixth virtue “empiricism,” and not “Empiricism.” That capital “E” can hide a lot of assumptions. And, of course, the he labeled empiricisim the sixth virtue, after argument and four others. I’m also saying that in many of the cases where the structure of language forces us to use words as if they drew fairly firm boundaries, the underlying reality is often continuous and nebulous.
In a literal sense, Eliezer said, “The roots of knowledge are in observation.” If we took this statement in isolation to Deutsch, he would vehemently disagree and tell us, “No, we interpret observations through explanatory theories.” However, I don’t think Eliezer and Deutsch disagree here. Both agree that there is a map and a territory and that the map comprises models, i.e., explanatory theories.
Whenever I find myself in a situation where I’m around people arguing about -isms or definitions, I usually find that the meaningful parts of the disagreement get hidden in the small words in the sentences. Like when I try to find a concise definition of empiricism, I’m told it’s that “all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.” Well, what does “derived from” mean? That phrase can easily include all of epistemic rationality. What does “all” mean? Obviously some level of information comes from our genes instead, but is that “knowledge”? And is knowledge quantitative or categorical? What is sense-experience? Does it include every bit of physical or chemical information that affects our biology from the moment of conception, or only what registers to our conscious awareness through the traditional five senses, or something else?
In other words, I’m saying it’s very important that EY labeled the sixth virtue “empiricism,” and not “Empiricism.” That capital “E” can hide a lot of assumptions. And, of course, the he labeled empiricisim the sixth virtue, after argument and four others. I’m also saying that in many of the cases where the structure of language forces us to use words as if they drew fairly firm boundaries, the underlying reality is often continuous and nebulous.
In a literal sense, Eliezer said, “The roots of knowledge are in observation.” If we took this statement in isolation to Deutsch, he would vehemently disagree and tell us, “No, we interpret observations through explanatory theories.” However, I don’t think Eliezer and Deutsch disagree here. Both agree that there is a map and a territory and that the map comprises models, i.e., explanatory theories.