Ray,
Owing to hurricane Irene, I will be in the air at the time of this week's meeting. Please go ahead without me.
Peter
On Aug 30, 2011, at 7:57 PM, Ray F. Cowan wrote:
> Hi Gentlemen,
>
> This week we'll hold our LQS meeting on Thursday, September 1, at 2:00 PM
> Eastern. We'll take round-table reports and discuss Chapter 1 of the book
> Peter mentioned last week: David Deutsch, "The Beginning of Infinity."
>
> Here are some quotes from Chapter 1 that I found interesting (there were
> many more):
>
> "How do we know? One of the most remarkable things about science is the
> contrast between the enormous reach and power of our best theories and
> the precarious, local means by which we create them."
>
> "Scientific explanations are about reality, most of which does not consist
> of anyone\u2019s experiences."
>
> "Discovering a new explanation is inherently an act of creativity."
>
> "Such ideas do not create themselves, nor can they be mechanically derived
> from anything: they have to be guessed \u2013 after which they can be
> criticized and tested."
>
> "But the real key to science is that our explanatory theories -- which
> include those interpretations -- can be improved, through conjecture,
> criticism and testing."
>
> "To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that
> knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where 'justified'
> means designated as true (or at least 'probable') by reference to some
> authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge."
>
> "The opposing position -- namely the recognition that there are no
> authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying
> ideas as being true or probable -- is called fallibilism."
>
> "Fallibilists expect even their best and most fundamental explanations to
> contain misconceptions in addition to truth, and so they are predisposed
> to try to change them for the better."
>
> "The quest for authority led empiricists to downplay and even stigmatize
> conjecture, the real source of all our theories."
>
> "Thus, although scientific theories are not derived from experience, they
> can be tested by experience -- by observation or experiment."
>
> "Instrumentalism is one of many ways of denying realism, the commonsense,
> and true, doctrine that the physical world really exists, and is accessible
> to rational inquiry."
>
> "Just as conflicting predictions are the occasion for experiment and
> observation, so conflicting ideas in a broader sense are the occasion for
> all rational thought and inquiry."
>
> "Good explanations are often strikingly simple or elegant."
>
> "The best explanations are the ones that are most constrained by existing
> knowledge -- including other good explanations as well as other knowledge
> of the phenomena to be explained."
>
> "Now we shall see how this explanation-based conception of science answers
> the question that I asked above: how do we know so much about unfamiliar
> aspects of reality?"
>
> "The theory [axis-tilt of the Earth] reaches out, as it were, from its finite
> origins inside one brain that has been affected only by scraps of patchy
> evidence from a small part of one hemisphere of one planet -- to infinity.
> This reach of explanations is another meaning of 'the beginning of infinity'.
> It is the ability of some of them to solve problems beyond those that they
> were created to solve."
>
> "Realism The idea that the physical world exists in reality, and that
> knowledge of it can exist too."
>
> "The real source of our theories is conjecture, and the real source of our
> knowledge is conjecture alternating with criticism. We create theories by
> rearranging, combining, altering and adding to existing ideas with the
> intention of improving upon them."
>
> "Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same
> logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The
> universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource.
> The bigger the better."
>
> "But they certainly do not experience such reflections as a result. I
> mention this because I often hear scientific research described in rather
> a bleak way, suggesting that it is mostly mindless toil."
>
> "After all, computers play chess mindlessly -- by exhaustively searching the
> consequences of all possible moves -- but humans achieve a similar-looking
> functionality in a completely different way, by creative and enjoyable
> thought."
>
> As usual, our call-in number the local ReadyTalk access number for your
> country (US: 866-740-1260, or check www.readytalk.com). Access code
> is 3144955.
>
> Thank you,
>
> --Ray
>
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