If you’re already aware that your system doesn’t work, due to this regress problem,
That isn’t what Viliam said, and I suggest that here you’re playing rhetorical games rather than arguing in good faith. It’s as if someone took your fallibilism and your rejection of probability, and said “Since you admit that you could well be wrong and you have no idea how likely it is that you’re wrong, why should we take any notice of what you say?”.
why does no one here study the philosophy which has a solution to this problem?
You mean “the philosophy which claims to have a solution to this problem”. (Perhaps it really does, perhaps not; but all someone can know in advance of studying it is that it claims to have one.)
Anyway, I think the answer depends on what you mean by “study”. If you mean “investigate at all” then the answer is that several people here have considered some version of Popperian “critical rationalism”, so your question has a false premise. If you mean “study in depth” then the answer is that by and large those who’ve considered “critical rationalism” have decided after a quick investigation that its claim to have the One True Answer to the problem of induction is not credible enough for it to be worth much further study.
My own epistemic state on this matter, which I mention not because I have any particular importance but because I know my own mind much better than anyone else’s, is that I’ve read a couple of Deutsch’s books and some of his other writings and given Deutch’s version of “critical rationalism” hours, but not weeks, of thought, and that since you turned up here I’ve given some further attention to your version; that c.r. seems to me to contain some insights and some outright errors; that I do not find it credible that c.r. “solves” the problem of getting information from observations in any strong sense; that I find the claims made by some c.r. proponents that (e.g.) there is no such thing as induction, or that it is a mistake to assign probabilities to statements that aren’t explicitly about random events, even less credible; that the “return on investment” of further in-depth investigation of Popper’s or Deutsch’s ideas is likely worse than that of other things I could do with the same resources of time and brainpower, not because they’re all bad ideas but because I think I already grasp them well enough for my purposes.
the epistemology issues [...] are prior to the physics issues, and don’t involve that kind of measurement error issue.
A good epistemology needs to deal with the fact that observations have errors in them, and it makes no sense to try to “resolve epistemology” in a way that ignores such errors. (Perhaps that isn’t what you meant by “we can talk about measurement error after resolving epistemology”, in which case some clarification would be a good idea.)
What we have, knowledge, is something else which is (contra over 2000 years of philosophical tradition) different than certainty.
You say that as if you expect it to be a new idea around here, but it isn’t. See e.g. this old LW article. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not claiming that what that says about knowledge and certainty is the same as you would say—it isn’t—nor that what it says is original to its author—it isn’t. Just that distinguishing knowledge from certainty is something we’re already comfortable with.
I do not value certainty as a feeling.
You would equally not be entitled to a 100% certainty, or have any other sort of 100% certainty you might regard as more objective and less dependent on feelings. (Because in the epistemic situation Viliam describes, it would be very likely that at least one error had been made.)
Of course, in principle you admit exactly this: after all, you call yourself a fallibilist. But, while you admit the possibility of error and no doubt actually change your mind sometimes, you refuse to try to quantify how error-prone any particular judgement is. I think this is “obviously” a mistake (i.e., obviously when you look at things rightly, which may not be an easy thing to do) and I think Viliam probably thinks the same.
(And when you complain above of an infinite regress, it’s precisely about what happens when one tries to quantify these propensities-to-error, and your approach avoids this regress not by actually handling it any better but by simply declaring that you aren’t going to try to quantify. That might be OK if your approach handled such uncertainties just as well by other means, but it doesn’t seem to me that it does.)
you haven’t cared to try to write down, with permalink, any errors in CR that you think could survive critical scrutiny.
by study i mean look at it enough to find something wrong with it – a reason not to look further – or else keep going if you see no errors. and then write down what the problem is, ala Paths Forward.
the claims made by some c.r. proponents
it’s dishonest (or ignorant?) to refer to Popper, Deutsch and myself (as well as Miller, Bartley, and more or less everyone else) as “some c.r. proponents”.
you refuse to try to quantify how error-prone any particular judgement is.
no. i have tried and found it’s impossible, and found out why (arguments u don’t wish to learn).
anyway i don’t see what your comment is supposed to accomplish. you have 1.8 of your feet out the door. you aren’t really looking to have a conversation to resolve the matter. why speak at all?
you aren’t really looking to have a conversation to resolve the matter
Your understanding of “resolve the matter” is very peculiar—as far as I can see it means “go read what I tell you to read so that you will agree with me”.
I notice that you show considerable lack of flexibility: you follow a certain pattern of interaction which, to no great surprise, tends to end up in the same place, you get nowhere and accuse people of bad faith and unwillingness to learn.
You’ve been hanging around the place for a few weeks by now—how about you, did you learn anything? Or this is strictly a bring-civilization-to-the-savages expedition from your point of view?
Correct: I am not interested in jumping through the idiosyncratic set of hoops you choose to set up.
it’s dishonest (or ignorant?) [...]
Why?
arguments you don’t wish to learn
Don’t wish to learn them? True enough. I don’t see your relationship to me as being that of teacher to learner. I’d be interested to hear what they are, though, if you could drop the superior attitude and try having an actual discussion.
I don’t see what your comment is supposed to accomplish.
It is supposed to point out some errors in things you wrote, and to answer some questions you raised.
you have 1.8 of your feet out the door.
Does that actually mean anything? If so, what?
you aren’t really looking to have a conversation to resolve the matter.
I am very willing to have a conversation. I am not interested in straitjacketing that conversation with the arbitrary rules you keep trying to impose (“paths forward”), and I am not interested in replacing the (to me, potentially interesting) conversation about probability and science and reasoning and explanation and knowledge with the (to me, almost certainly boring and fruitless) conversation about “paths forward” that you keep trying to replace it with.
why speak at all?
See above. You said some things that I think are wrong, and you asked some questions I thought I could answer. It’s not my problem that you’re unable or unwilling to address any of the actual content of what I say and only interested in meta-issues.
[EDITED because I noticed I wrote “conservation” where I meant “conversation” :-)]
that’s an impasse, created by you. you won’t use the methodology i think is needed for making progress, and won’t discuss the disagreement. a particular example issue is your hostility to the use of references.
Yup. I’m not interested in jumping through the idiosyncratic set of hoops you choose to set up.
that’s an impasse, created by you.
Curiously, I find myself perfectly well able to conduct discussions with pretty much everyone else I encounter, including people who disagree with me at least as much as you do. That would be because they don’t try to lay down a bunch of procedural rules and refuse to engage unless I either follow their rules or get sidetracked onto a discussion of those rules. So … nah, I’m not buying “created by you”. I’m not the one who tried to impose the absurdly over-demanding set of procedural rules on a bunch of other people.
your hostility to the use of references
You just made that up. I am not hostile to the use of references.
(Maybe I objected to something you did that involved the use of references; I don’t remember. But if I did, it wasn’t because I am hostile to the use of references.)
That isn’t what Viliam said, and I suggest that here you’re playing rhetorical games rather than arguing in good faith. It’s as if someone took your fallibilism and your rejection of probability, and said “Since you admit that you could well be wrong and you have no idea how likely it is that you’re wrong, why should we take any notice of what you say?”.
You mean “the philosophy which claims to have a solution to this problem”. (Perhaps it really does, perhaps not; but all someone can know in advance of studying it is that it claims to have one.)
Anyway, I think the answer depends on what you mean by “study”. If you mean “investigate at all” then the answer is that several people here have considered some version of Popperian “critical rationalism”, so your question has a false premise. If you mean “study in depth” then the answer is that by and large those who’ve considered “critical rationalism” have decided after a quick investigation that its claim to have the One True Answer to the problem of induction is not credible enough for it to be worth much further study.
My own epistemic state on this matter, which I mention not because I have any particular importance but because I know my own mind much better than anyone else’s, is that I’ve read a couple of Deutsch’s books and some of his other writings and given Deutch’s version of “critical rationalism” hours, but not weeks, of thought, and that since you turned up here I’ve given some further attention to your version; that c.r. seems to me to contain some insights and some outright errors; that I do not find it credible that c.r. “solves” the problem of getting information from observations in any strong sense; that I find the claims made by some c.r. proponents that (e.g.) there is no such thing as induction, or that it is a mistake to assign probabilities to statements that aren’t explicitly about random events, even less credible; that the “return on investment” of further in-depth investigation of Popper’s or Deutsch’s ideas is likely worse than that of other things I could do with the same resources of time and brainpower, not because they’re all bad ideas but because I think I already grasp them well enough for my purposes.
A good epistemology needs to deal with the fact that observations have errors in them, and it makes no sense to try to “resolve epistemology” in a way that ignores such errors. (Perhaps that isn’t what you meant by “we can talk about measurement error after resolving epistemology”, in which case some clarification would be a good idea.)
You say that as if you expect it to be a new idea around here, but it isn’t. See e.g. this old LW article. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not claiming that what that says about knowledge and certainty is the same as you would say—it isn’t—nor that what it says is original to its author—it isn’t. Just that distinguishing knowledge from certainty is something we’re already comfortable with.
You would equally not be entitled to a 100% certainty, or have any other sort of 100% certainty you might regard as more objective and less dependent on feelings. (Because in the epistemic situation Viliam describes, it would be very likely that at least one error had been made.)
Of course, in principle you admit exactly this: after all, you call yourself a fallibilist. But, while you admit the possibility of error and no doubt actually change your mind sometimes, you refuse to try to quantify how error-prone any particular judgement is. I think this is “obviously” a mistake (i.e., obviously when you look at things rightly, which may not be an easy thing to do) and I think Viliam probably thinks the same.
(And when you complain above of an infinite regress, it’s precisely about what happens when one tries to quantify these propensities-to-error, and your approach avoids this regress not by actually handling it any better but by simply declaring that you aren’t going to try to quantify. That might be OK if your approach handled such uncertainties just as well by other means, but it doesn’t seem to me that it does.)
you haven’t cared to try to write down, with permalink, any errors in CR that you think could survive critical scrutiny.
by study i mean look at it enough to find something wrong with it – a reason not to look further – or else keep going if you see no errors. and then write down what the problem is, ala Paths Forward.
it’s dishonest (or ignorant?) to refer to Popper, Deutsch and myself (as well as Miller, Bartley, and more or less everyone else) as “some c.r. proponents”.
no. i have tried and found it’s impossible, and found out why (arguments u don’t wish to learn).
anyway i don’t see what your comment is supposed to accomplish. you have 1.8 of your feet out the door. you aren’t really looking to have a conversation to resolve the matter. why speak at all?
Your understanding of “resolve the matter” is very peculiar—as far as I can see it means “go read what I tell you to read so that you will agree with me”.
I notice that you show considerable lack of flexibility: you follow a certain pattern of interaction which, to no great surprise, tends to end up in the same place, you get nowhere and accuse people of bad faith and unwillingness to learn.
You’ve been hanging around the place for a few weeks by now—how about you, did you learn anything? Or this is strictly a bring-civilization-to-the-savages expedition from your point of view?
Correct: I am not interested in jumping through the idiosyncratic set of hoops you choose to set up.
Why?
Don’t wish to learn them? True enough. I don’t see your relationship to me as being that of teacher to learner. I’d be interested to hear what they are, though, if you could drop the superior attitude and try having an actual discussion.
It is supposed to point out some errors in things you wrote, and to answer some questions you raised.
Does that actually mean anything? If so, what?
I am very willing to have a conversation. I am not interested in straitjacketing that conversation with the arbitrary rules you keep trying to impose (“paths forward”), and I am not interested in replacing the (to me, potentially interesting) conversation about probability and science and reasoning and explanation and knowledge with the (to me, almost certainly boring and fruitless) conversation about “paths forward” that you keep trying to replace it with.
See above. You said some things that I think are wrong, and you asked some questions I thought I could answer. It’s not my problem that you’re unable or unwilling to address any of the actual content of what I say and only interested in meta-issues.
[EDITED because I noticed I wrote “conservation” where I meant “conversation” :-)]
you have openly stated your unwillingness to
1) do PF
2) discuss PF or other methodology
that’s an impasse, created by you. you won’t use the methodology i think is needed for making progress, and won’t discuss the disagreement. a particular example issue is your hostility to the use of references.
the end.
given your rules, including the impasse above.
Yup. I’m not interested in jumping through the idiosyncratic set of hoops you choose to set up.
Curiously, I find myself perfectly well able to conduct discussions with pretty much everyone else I encounter, including people who disagree with me at least as much as you do. That would be because they don’t try to lay down a bunch of procedural rules and refuse to engage unless I either follow their rules or get sidetracked onto a discussion of those rules. So … nah, I’m not buying “created by you”. I’m not the one who tried to impose the absurdly over-demanding set of procedural rules on a bunch of other people.
You just made that up. I am not hostile to the use of references.
(Maybe I objected to something you did that involved the use of references; I don’t remember. But if I did, it wasn’t because I am hostile to the use of references.)