Arnold Cornelis and "social theory of knowledge"

[Scarpia]

Though I agree with you about many things, in this you are referring only to synthetic knowledge.  Even intellectuals know that ice cream tastes good, that they love their children, that great beauty moves them to tears, and so on, via direct intuitive knowledge--and it is far more reliable than synthetic knowledge, which is only as good as its premises.

Somehow the premise that two parallel lines will never intersect seems easier to justify than that ice cream tastes good.

[Henk]

I actually have a degree in the social sciences. It's empirical research, at least the ones who know what they're doing.

Well, what kind of observation instrument do you use? Social sciences work a lot with statistical data as far as I know.

Mathematical calculation is logical deduction, nothing else. You're still in the realm of empiricism and logic. There is no other *reliable* means of knowledge acquisition. Anyone who claims otherwise just wants to be a guru to the feebleminded.

Sigh. Well I'm engineer. Do you really think I use empirical observation by constructing a building? Wake up, we don't live in just a natural world anymore, humanity is constantly busy changing the natural world into an artificial world.

Henk

[DavidRoss]

Somehow the premise that two parallel lines will never intersect seems easier to justify than that ice cream tastes good.

What's true by definition is pretty hard to argue with. 

[Henk]

What's true by definition is pretty hard to argue with. 

Exactly, definitions can be regarded as "steering intentions".

[MishaK]

Though I agree with you about many things, in this you are referring only to synthetic knowledge.  Even intellectuals know that ice cream tastes good, that they love their children, that great beauty moves them to tears, and so on, via direct intuitive knowledge--and it is far more reliable than synthetic knowledge, which is only as good as its premises.

You use the term "knowledge" very loosely. The things you describe are preferences and hormonally caused desires, not "knowledge". It has nothing to do with the acquisition of knowledge. You may cease liking ice cream one day, just as well as you could end up in a blood feud with your kids or come to have a completely different concept of "beauty". This is not at all reliable "knowledge" in any meaningful way. And "synthetic" is a misnomer.

Sigh. Well I'm engineer. Do you really think I use empirical observation by constructing a building? We don't live in just a natural world anymore, humanity is constantly busy changing the natural world into an artificial world.

I certainly hope you use scientific principles derived from empirical observation. Otherwise please publish a list of your works, so I don't accidentally set foot in one of them.  the distinction of natural vs. artifical one is merely one of human intervention vs. a world without human intervention. An arbitrary distinction, really, when you consider that other animals are also constantly changing the world, if not as intensively and speedily as humans. Nonetheless, the fact that humans change the world constantly, doesn't mean that empiricism and logic have no place. I'm not sure how you jump from one to the other.

Exactly, definitions can be considered as "steering intentions".

This is the old chicken and egg question but misapplied. It is easy for you who didn't come up with the original definition to think that the definition steers our intentions, when it is at least as likely, if not more so, that one person simply observed that  there is a category of lines that never intersect that need a new term, and thus the word "parallel" was coined. Unless you can show that there are parallel lines that do in fact intersect, thereby proving the definition false or useless, your discussion is without any merit.

[DavidRoss]

Synthetic knowledge is a technical term.  Look it up, since you don't care to consider what I have to say.  Dismissal is certainly easier than deep consideration that might cause a global shift in one's world view.

[MishaK]

Synthetic knowledge is a technical term.  Look it up, since you don't care to consider what I have to say.  Dismissal is certainly easier than deep consideration that might cause a global shift in one's world view.

Sorry, I take that back. I understand what you mean by "synthetic". I guess my issue is more that you take intuition to be of higher value than synthesis, which it isn't. Intuition is great in emergency situations when there is no time for careful deliberation. But only empirical research yields reliable knowledge. What you may intuitively feel is not "knowledge" at all.

[DavidRoss]

Sorry, I take that back. I understand what you mean by "synthetic". I guess my issue is more that you take intuition to be of higher value than synthesis, which it isn't. Intuition is great in emergency situations when there is no time for careful deliberation. But only empirical research yields reliable knowledge. What you may intuitively feel is not "knowledge" at all.

You are reading something into my statement that isn't there.

Epistemology is an interesting field of study.

[Scarpia]

What's true by definition is pretty hard to argue with. 

Well, using empirical experiments it is possible to verify the apparent fact that two parallel lines never intersect with any level of precision that you find necessary.  That at least serves as a strong motivation for being interested in conclusions reached by deductive reasoning from this and other similarly justified assumptions.  (Of course on a surface which is not flat or in a curved space (in the sense of general relativity) two parallel lines will intersect, which is a whole new geometry.

[DavidRoss]

Well, using empirical experiments it is possible to verify the apparent fact that two parallel lines never intersect with any level of precision that you find necessary.  That at least serves as a strong motivation for being interested in conclusions reached by deductive reasoning from this and other similarly justified assumptions.  (Of course on a surface which is not flat or in a curved space (in the sense of general relativity) two parallel lines will intersect, which is a whole new geometry.

Two parallel lines (or three, or twenty-seven) cannot intersect, by definition--not observation. 

[Scarpia]

Two parallel lines (or three, or twenty-seven) cannot intersect, by definition--not observation.

You are correct.  Parallel lines do not intersect by definition.  It can be empirically determined that it is possible to construct straight lines that are parallel.  In a curved space (such as on the surface of a sphere) it is not possible to construct straight lines that fail to intersect.

[Henk]

Two parallel lines (or three, or twenty-seven) cannot intersect, by definition--not observation.

Agreed, not any definition can be verified by empirical observation. Cornelis proposes to regard definitions in terms of steering-meanings. All kinds of definitions in science and with science in our whole culture hide all kinds of steering-meanings in which we get lost.

Cornelis argues that the problems of philosophy of science are the consequence of the lack of logical concepts to judge and adjust steering-meanings in terms of values.

Henk

[MishaK]

Two parallel lines (or three, or twenty-seven) cannot intersect, by definition--not observation.

The point is: the lines were there before the definition. If you see lines that don't intersect, they merit being defined as "parallel". It isn't the definition that is bending lines away from each other by sheer force of will. The definition is neither causing nor falsifying observable fact.

Agreed, not any definition can be verified by empirical observation. Cornelis proposes to regard definitions in terms of steering-meanings. All kinds of definitions in science and with science in our whole culture hide all kinds of steering-meaning in which we get lost.

Cornelis argues that the problems of philosophy of science are the consequence of the lack of logical concepts to judge and adjust steering-meanings in terms of values.

This is an entirely different issue: namely how our prior education and familiarity with certain concepts makes us force our observations into convenient categories and concepts that don't always really fit, a mismatch that an outside observer untainted by such prior experience would immediately spot. These are issues of bias that show the fallibility of humans. They don't invalidate empiricism at all. Eventually, through experience, and learning from trial and error we come up with more appropriate concepts to explain what we mis-explained in the past.

[DavidRoss]

The point is: the lines were there before the definition. If you see lines that don't intersect, they merit being defined as "parallel". It isn't the definition that is bending lines away from each other by sheer force of will. The definition is neither causing nor falsifying observable fact.

Nope.  A line--let alone parallel lines--are concepts.  The exist only in the mind, not in the material world.

I would not have thought you a Platonist.

Agreed, not any definition can be verified by empirical observation. Cornelis proposes to regard definitions in terms of steering-meanings. All kinds of definitions in science and with science in our whole culture hide all kinds of steering-meanings in which we get lost.  I don't know what any of this means, if anything.

Cornelis argues that the problems of philosophy of science are the consequence of the lack of logical concepts to judge and adjust steering-meanings in terms of values.

But (a) there's no lack of logical concepts in Philosophy of Science, and (b) do you mean "problems in Philosophy of Science?"

[Scarpia]

Nope.  A line--let alone parallel lines--are concepts.  The exist only in the mind, not in the material world.

The fact remains that geometry gives us a recipe for constructing parallel lines and we can use this recipe to empirically verify that they do not intersect at whatever level of resolution we choose.  You can also verify that parallel lines you construct on the surface of the earth do intersect, since the space involved is not flat.  You can treat Euclidean geometry as a purley abstract system but people would have been much less interested in pursuing it if it the concepts did not map to empirically verified reality.

[DavidRoss]

The fact remains that geometry gives us a recipe for constructing parallel lines and we can use this recipe to empirically verify that they do not intersect at whatever level of resolution we choose. You can empirically verify infinity?  Thou art God?

You can also verify that parallel lines you construct on the surface of the earth do intersect, since the space involved is not flat. Uh, are you confusing lines with arcs? 

You can treat Euclidean geometry as a purley abstract system but people would have been much less interested in pursuing it if it the concepts did not map to empirically verified reality.

Of course.  The value of math, as with all language, is its utility.  But let's not confuse the concept or the descriptor for its real-world cognate.

[Scarpia]

The fact remains that geometry gives us a recipe for constructing parallel lines and we can use this recipe to empirically verify that they do not intersect at whatever level of resolution we choose. You can empirically verify infinity?  Thou art God?

You can also verify that parallel lines you construct on the surface of the earth do intersect, since the space involved is not flat. Uh, are you confusing lines with arcs? 

You can treat Euclidean geometry as a purley abstract system but people would have been much less interested in pursuing it if it the concepts did not map to empirically verified reality.

Of course.  The value of math, as with all language, is its utility.  But let's not confuse the concept or the descriptor for its real-world cognate.

Regarding your first point in red, I did not claim that "infinity" can be verified.  If you construct parallel lines, you can verify that they do not intersect after 1 meter, 10 meters, 100 meters.  You can verify that they don't get any closer to each other within 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%, 0.00000000001%.  You can't get to infinity, but you can get as close to infinity as necessary for the purpose at hand.

Regarding your second point, I am not confusing lines with arcs.  On the surface of a sphere every straight line becomes a geodesic, or a great circle in geographic terminology.  (For instance, if you had a perfect automobile and stared driving straight in any direction from any point on the surface of the earth you would unavoidably travel on a great circle, a circular arc whose diameter is the diameter of the earth, assuming the earth is a sphere.)  If you use the Euclidean procedure to construct two parallel lines on the surface of a sphere, you will actually construct two geodesics that are locally parallel.  But it is impossible to construct distinct geodesics that don't intersect, so your apparently parallel lines will intersect.  In other words, there are no parallel lines on a sphere.

[drogulus]

     Straight lines are concepts, like numbers, whose relations are also true by definition. Yet, I wonder where these concepts would be if the relations they describe were not first suggested by observation. Objects were counted and parallel lines observed before the concepts regulating their behavior were formulated, though the lines were only approximate. We had to get the idea of perfect lines from somewhere. That could only be from observation.

    I also dispute the idea that intuition is a superior experience than reasoning from observation. There's no reason to think so, and good reason to conclude that empirical processes were developed to correct for the high error rate of intuitive judgments. We think we see a ghost. That's what unaided intuition tells us. How do we ever get to understand the ghost is a figment of our imagination if we don't test our intuition against a more reliable standard? In addition, it seems to me that intuitive judgments can and do play a role in empirical knowledge, not as conclusions but as evidence that can be weighed along with other evidence.

    Scarpia, you got there first, I see, on the empirical validity of the nonempirical.

[MishaK]

     Straight lines are concepts, like numbers, whose relations are also true by definition. Yet, I wonder where these concepts would be if the relations they describe were not first suggested by observation. Objects were counted and parallel lines observed before the concepts regulating their behavior were formulated, though the lines were only approximate. We had to get the idea of perfect lines from somewhere. That could only be from observation.

    I also dispute the idea that intuition is a superior experience than reasoning from observation. There's no reason to think so, and good reason to conclude that empirical processes were developed to correct for the high error rate of intuitive judgments. We think we see a ghost. That's what unaided intuition tells us. How do we ever get to understand the ghost is a figment of our imagination if we don't test our intuition against a more reliable standard? In addition, it seems to me that intuitive judgments can and do play a role in empirical knowledge, not as conclusions but as evidence that can be weighed along with other evidence.

    Scarpia, you got there first, I see, on the empirical validity of the nonempirical.

What he said.

[MishaK]

Nope.  A line--let alone parallel lines--are concepts.  The exist only in the mind, not in the material world.

Next time you have to wait in a long line, try skipping it and tell the skippees that they don't exist but are merely concepts, figments of the mind. See how far that gets you.