Avoidance of self- & other-deception in proofs

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Nelson

All you´re arguments show you didn´t recognize the entire article is a summation of the "Scientific Method"

... because it's not any such summation.

For instance, see an introduction to the scientific method at http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/PHY...AppendixE.html

The article you link to describes a religious approach to determining truth, but it does not have key elements which distinguish science from religion, as was previously discussed in this thread, and it certainly does not summarize the scientific method.

You can make all the claims you want that a religious approach is "scientific", but until you actually demonstrate that the approach incorporates enough elements of science to qualify it as a scientific method, all you're doing is trying to cloak religion in science's clothing -- which may show that you admire science's clothing without understanding the body of science within it.

- - -

You still haven't said anything about ways to avoid self-deception when determining whether something is true or not. Will you?

[Nelson]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

... because it's not any such summation.

Thank you Cheesehead for giving a summation of the scientific method which is acceptable to you. now let´s see if your proposition is true.

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

The descriptive argument focuses on a careful description and presentation of specific cases to see what can be learned from them about truth.
"truth bearer = > correspondence relation = > truth maker
Observation and description applied: First, what is a truth bearer? What kind of thing can bear truth? The thing that is either true or false is not a sentence, but a proposition. A proposition is the content of a sentence. For example, "It is raining" and "Es regnet" are two different sentences that express the same proposition. A sentence is a sense perceptible string of markings (such as the consonants and vowels on this page) or sounds (such as those made speaking, in normal conversation) formed according to a set of syntactical rules; it is a grammatically well-formed string of spoken or written sounds or marks. A sentence can rightfully be called true only if its content is true, only if it expresses a true proposition."

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

"In its simplest form, the correspondence theory of truth says that a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to reality, when what it asserts to be the case is the case. More generally, truth obtains when a truth bearer stands in an appropriate correspondence relation to a truth maker:
truth bearer = > correspondence relation = > truth maker"
Hypotheses and theories are also propositions. The article merely begins with the proposition of Correspondence.
"A proposition is the content of a sentence."
Thus any statement will be testable for deception self- or otherwise by application of the principles of correspondence.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

"What about truth makers? What is it that makes a proposition true? The best answer is: facts. A fact is some real state of affairs in the world, a way the world actually is."
"Put differently, evidence allows us to tell if a proposition is true or false, but reality (the way the world is) is what makes a proposition true or false."
Many facts may have some bearing and evidence may point in some direction. However evidence of physical characteristics is only not sufficient by itself to give any validity to the truth of a proposition.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

An experiment is set up: by ordering the book. "While in his office, Joe receives a call from the university bookstore saying that a specific book he had ordered — Richard Swinburne's The Evolution of the Soul — has arrived and is waiting for him." The numerous examples are also distinct observations and anyone can perform similar observations.

Your proposition is false! In fact Moreland´s article is the foundation of the scientific method however if I had stated that at the very beginning You would have denied the truth of the statement with no posssible recourse. The means of avoiding deception which you don´t seem to grasp is by applying the principles discussed.

Another thing that will help to avoid deception is to talk a lot less and listen a lot more. Like hearing, talking is a physical process listening is a mental process.

The article you link to describes a religious approach to determining truth, but it does not have key elements which distinguish science from religion, as was previously discussed in this thread, ....and it certainly does not summarize the scientific method.

The article does no such thing at all it merely shows how to avoid falsehood whether religious or scientific. ....I´ve already shown how it summarizes the scientific method.

You can make all the claims you want that a religious approach is "scientific", but until you actually demonstrate that the approach incorporates enough elements of science to qualify it as a scientific method, all you're doing is trying to cloak religion in science's clothing -- which may show that you admire science's clothing without understanding the body of science within it.

I never claimed that a religious approach is scientific actually you´ve been wrapping your religion in scientific clothing that perpetuates the lies that you believe and can´t see any truth because the starting point is invalid. Which is why you immediately dismissed the article as useless in avoiding deception. That is how far from truth the deception you cling to has taken you.

You still haven't said anything about ways to avoid self-deception when determining whether something is true or not. Will you?

Avoiding self deception is all I ever talked about but you were never listening. I´d bee greatly surprised if you are now.

Truth, in other words, is prerequisite both to accountability and success. Sometimes the truth hurts, but in the end, it is the only way to navigate reality.

[cheesehead]

Nelson,

It's going to take quite a few words to explain the flaws of your last post and the falsity of its conclusions to our readers, and I have only a short time right now to compose, so keep in mind that this post is only the first part of a response that I intend to extend later.

Originally Posted by Nelson

Thank you Cheesehead for giving a summation of the scientific method which is acceptable to you.

There was also, earlier in this thread, a link to the Wikipedia article on "Scientific method". Did you read that one? (If not, please do so before proceeding.)

In particular, did you happen to notice the following sentences in the rochester.edu article and the Wikipedia article:

Originally Posted by rochester.edu

It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Note that this method can never absolutely verify (prove the truth of) [the conjecture being tested]. It can only falsify [the conjecture being tested].

Now, let's look at what Moreland´s article says about its method.

"In its simplest form, the correspondence theory of truth says that a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to reality, when what it asserts to be the case is the case. More generally, truth obtains when a truth bearer stands in an appropriate correspondence relation to a truth maker:

. . .

The thing that is either true or false is not a sentence, but a proposition. A proposition is the content of a sentence. ... A sentence can rightfully be called true only if its content is true, only if it expresses a true proposition.

What about truth makers? What is it that makes a proposition true? The best answer is: facts. A fact is some real state of affairs in the world, a way the world actually is."

Note that it portrays the main thrust of its method to be determining the truth of a proposition, not disproving a proposition as does the scientific method. So right there we have a significant fundamental difference between the method described in Moreland´s article and the scientific method ... before we even get to the specific description of the first step!

Moreland's idea that we can determine the truth of reality seems to be based on the assumption that we can directly know what reality is. The article declares that "grass's being green, an electron's having a negative charge and God's being all-loving are all facts." But the last item is a belief (there having not been shown any evidence of its correspondence to objective reality), not a statement of realistic fact, thus inadvertently revealing that Moreland has a flaw in his truth-finding method.

As far as I can see, Moreland doesn't explicitly discuss the possibility that what we consider to be reality at one time could later change once we become aware of additional evidence.

The scientific method is less arrogant than Moreland's method. It does not presume that we can directly know reality -- only that we can rule out some conjectures about reality.

Originally Posted by Nelson

now let´s see if your proposition is true.

. . .

Your proposition is false!

Since you didn't consider tha fundamental question of whether Moreland's method and the scientific method are congruent in what they seek to determine, you overlooked what I spotted right away. That difference was the basis of my being able to declare "it's not any such summation".

You missed a basic chunk of what determines whether my proposition is true or false, so your declaration was unfounded.

- -

Later, I'll go back to point out other differences in the four steps, and other flaws in your conclusions.

Another thing that will help to avoid deception is to talk a lot less and listen a lot more.

Perhaps, if one listens to the correct stuff (quality, not quantity).

(to be continued)

[cheesehead]

(continuation of my preceding post)

To introduce the next part of my refutation of the claim that "Moreland´s article is the foundation of the scientific method", a little story:

In my college freshman physics lab, the first experiment was something about really, really simple physics; it involved making measurements and reading the amounts of those measurements from a scale with a pointer in front of it, near the right-hand side of the apparatus. (Hmmm... it may have been about weights hanging from springs, Hooke's Law and so on, but I'm not sure.) Afterwards, we each wrote a lab report of the experiment.

The purported purpose was simply to perform the experimental steps and write up the report on it. We soon found out its real purpose, or at least its emphasis, at the next session. The lab's teaching assistant, after returning our reports -- all marked "F" -- tore into us about our ... poor (he actually used multiple other denigrating adjectives) ... error analyses. He detailed a number of ways in which we had failed to mention possible sources of error.

Yes, we'd done all the arithmetic such as standard deviations, but none of us had really written anything about how the figures that went into that arithmetic could be in error.

Similarly, if Moreland's article were to be graded as some summary of the scientific method, one of its failures would be its failure to say anything significant about error. It does make some brief mentions about falsity, but never tells us anything about causes of errors in determining truth/falsity or how to avoid such errors. Let's look at those mentions:

Originally Posted by Moreland's article

. . .

... Also, there are numerous passages that explicitly contrast true propositions with falsehoods. Repeatedly, the Old Testament warns against false prophets whose words do not correspond to reality (for example Deuteronomy 18:22: "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken"), and the ninth commandment warns against bearing false testimony, that is, testimony that fails to correspond to what actually happened (Exodus 20:16).

. . . If, however, a proposition represents Marks's having blonde or blue hair, then Mark's actually having black hair makes that proposition false. . . . Reality makes propositions true or false. A proposition is not made true by someone's thinking or expressing it, and it is not made true by our ability to determine that it is true. Put differently, evidence allows us tell if a proposition is true or false, but reality (the way the world is) is what makes a proposition true or false.

. . . One philosopher said that reality is what you bump up against when your beliefs are false! . . . Because ideas have consequences, and false ideas generally have bad consequences.

... but there's no mention of the possibility that one's perception or portrayal of reality could be sincere but mistaken.

There is this passage about "Sally"^*:

It's important to note that Mark's having black hair makes the content of Sally's statement true even if Sally is blind and cannot tell whether or not it is true. In fact, Mark's having black hair makes it true even if Sally does not believe it, even if she thinks she was lying when she said that Mark's hair was black.

... but this is concerned only with inability or insincerity, not sincere mistakes.

- -

The rochester.edu page has several paragraphs about errors and mistakes, with a cryptic reference to "the appendix on Error Analysis". Exploration of the website may eventually lead one to Appendix B at http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/PHY...AppendixB.html where there is more detailed discussion of numerical error but no reference to nonnumerical sources of error as far as I can tell.

This omission of discussion of nonnumerical errors (such as the several dozen types of cognitive bias listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) from many descriptions of the scientific method is all too common. IMO it reflects what I think is the chief weakness in science courses I had (and, I suspect, current ones) in school -- failure to teach the basics of what separates science from non-science, especially from non-science masquerading as science.

This is not to claim that scientists have always understood or worried about every type of experimental error. For an example of confirmation bias in real science history, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millika...o_cult_science

But in the long run, science seeks to account for all types of human error and to devise ways to avoid letting them cause faulty conclusions.

- - -

^* Note that the only character Moreland includes who might be deceptive or mistaken is also the only one with a female name. (There's no clue to "prophet"'s gender.) None of the male-named are portrayed as possibly deceptive or mistaken -- in line with the usual monotheistic sexism. But I digress.

(to be continued)

[cheesehead]

(continuation of my preceding post)

First this time, a couple of responses to your statements about deception, then a discussion about point #1 in your post #68:

Originally Posted by Nelson

The means of avoiding deception which you don´t seem to grasp is by applying the principles discussed.

But Moreland never discusses anything about means for avoiding deception!

To which "principles discussed" are you referring?

Avoiding self deception is all I ever talked about but you were never listening.

Oh? Where, exactly, have you previously discussed methods of avoiding self-deception? Where, exactly, did you describe any specific way in which you avoid self-deception in your own life? Where, exactly, did I miss these previous instances of your talking about avoiding self-deception?

For instance, where did you ever discuss the difference between truth and belief, as the Wikipedia article does at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...uth_and_belief ?

Anyway, let's proceed to consider your point #1:

Originally Posted by Nelson

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

The descriptive argument focuses on a careful description and presentation of specific cases to see what can be learned from them about truth.

Right away, you've mixed "what can be learned" with actual observation and description.

"What can be learned" belongs in a later step, doesn't it?

Furthermore, if one observes and describes with too much of what one hopes to learn in mind while doing the observing and describing, ones attention is divided. This often leads to oversights. It's all too humanly possible to dismiss some part of the observation or description because one has a preconception of which details are "important" (i.e., relevant to what one hopes to learn) and which can be ignored.

Also, there is the danger that the Wikipedia article states as:

"Belief can alter observations; those with a particular belief will often see things as reinforcing their belief, even if to another observer they would appear not to do so."

truth bearer = > correspondence relation = > truth maker

Observation and description applied: First, what is a truth bearer? What kind of thing can bear truth?

Suppose we consider, for purposes of discussion, any genuine part of reality to be a "truth bearer". That is, one observes and describes truth whenever one accurately observes and describes a part of reality.

Then, the answer to "What kind of thing can bear truth?" is "any genuine part of reality". Let's see where that leads later.

The thing that is either true or false is not a sentence, but a proposition. A proposition is the content of a sentence.

Whoops. We've constrained reality to speaking in sentences.

So, my proposed definition of "truth" isn't congruent with Moreland's discussion.

Instead, Moreland has constrained truth to be contents of sentences!

What about the parts of reality that are not sentences? Isn't Moreland saying that anything not contained in a sentence cannot be true or false?

That seems extremely anthropocentric ... except that gorillas have been taught to communicate in sentences, too. (I haven't kept up with the latest findings on sentence communication by parrots, dolphins, and chimpanzees.)

For example, "It is raining" and "Es regnet" are

< snip >

A sentence can rightfully be called true only if its content is true, only if it expresses a true proposition."

Doesn't all this discussion of sentence just reflect that Moreland has restricted the scope of his article to (presumably, human) sentences?

The scientific method doesn't impose any such restriction. That is, while we humans do use sentences to communicate ideas such as those considered in the scientific method, the scientific method itself is not confined only to parts of reality that are contained in sentences.

Or did you mistake Moreland's exposition on language for a summation of the scientific method? If so, doesn't that mean that my proposition "because it's not any such summation" is actually true rather than false?

On to point #2 in the next installment ...

(to be continued)

[cheesehead]

(continuation of my preceding post)

Originally Posted by Nelson

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena.

Before proceeding further, we need a definition of "hypothesis" in the context of the scientific method.

The rochester.edu page has:

Originally Posted by http://teacher.pas.rochester.edu/PHY_LABS/AppendixE/AppendixE.html

In physics and other science disciplines, the words "hypothesis," "model," "theory" and "law" have different connotations in relation to the stage of acceptance or knowledge about a group of phenomena.

An hypothesis is a limited statement regarding cause and effect in specific situations; it also refers to our state of knowledge before experimental work has been performed and perhaps even before new phenomena have been predicted. To take an example from daily life, suppose you discover that your car will not start. You may say, "My car does not start because the battery is low." This is your first hypothesis. You may then check whether the lights were left on, or if the engine makes a particular sound when you turn the ignition key. You might actually check the voltage across the terminals of the battery. If you discover that the battery is not low, you might attempt another hypothesis ("The starter is broken"; "This is really not my car.")

Wikipedia has:

Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Hypotheses[26][27] (theoretical, hypothetical explanations of observations and measurements of the subject)[28]
. . .

A hypothesis is a suggested explanation of a phenomenon, or alternately a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible correlation between or among a set of phenomena.

Normally hypotheses have the form of a mathematical model. Sometimes, but not always, they can also be formulated as existential statements, stating that some particular instance of the phenomenon being studied has some characteristic and causal explanations, which have the general form of universal statements, stating that every instance of the phenomenon has a particular characteristic.

There are other definitions of "hypothesis", such as

Originally Posted by http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Hypothesis

1 a : an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument b : an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action
2 : a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences
3 : the antecedent clause of a conditional statement

... but none of those apply to its use in the scientific method.

You quote from Moreland's article:

Originally Posted by Nelson

"In its simplest form, the correspondence theory of truth says that a proposition is true just in case it corresponds to reality, when what it asserts to be the case is the case. More generally, truth obtains when a truth bearer stands in an appropriate correspondence relation to a truth maker:
truth bearer = > correspondence relation = > truth maker"

... but even though Moreland never mentions "hypothesis", you try to make it seem relevant by stating:

Originally Posted by Nelson

Hypotheses and theories are also propositions.

... but that isn't meaningful to this discussion unless we specify the additional qualities that distinguish "hypothesis" as used in the context of the scientific method from other uses of "hypothesis".

("Hypotheses" and "theories" are also plural English nouns, just like "propositions", too. So what?)

- - -

Next, on to point #3 ...

(to be continued)