Important post. The degree to which my search for truth is motivated, and to what ends, is something I grapple with frequently. I generally prefer the definition of truth as “that which pays the most rent in anticipated experience”; essentially a demand for observability and falsifiability, a combination of your correspondence and predictive criteria. This, of course, leaves what is true subject to updating if new ideas lead to better results, but I think it is the best way we have of approximating truth. So I’m constantly looking really hard at the evidence I examine and asking myself, am I convinced of this for the right reasons? What would have to happen to unconvince me? How can I take a detached stance toward this belief, if ever there comes a time when I may no longer want it? So in what way my truth-seeking could be called motivated, I aim to constrain it to at least being solely motivated by adherence to the scientific method, which is something I am unashamed to simply acknowledge.
Important post. The degree to which my search for truth is motivated, and to what ends, is something I grapple with frequently. I generally prefer the definition of truth as “that which pays the most rent in anticipated experience”; essentially a demand for observability and falsifiability, a combination of your correspondence and predictive criteria. This, of course, leaves what is true subject to updating if new ideas lead to better results, but I think it is the best way we have of approximating truth. So I’m constantly looking really hard at the evidence I examine and asking myself, am I convinced of this for the right reasons? What would have to happen to unconvince me? How can I take a detached stance toward this belief, if ever there comes a time when I may no longer want it? So in what way my truth-seeking could be called motivated, I aim to constrain it to at least being solely motivated by adherence to the scientific method, which is something I am unashamed to simply acknowledge.