Reality, Understanding and Survival

[iconoclast]

Establishing what's true and acting rightly in relation to it is a normative paradigm - ubiqitous to human action and interaction. The roots of this paradigm are the roots of the tree of life itself. The simplest primordial organmism had to be physiologically correct to reality in order to survive, in order to give rise to animals that had to behave rightly in relation to reality, else equally, become extinct. Consequently, human animals have an innate, behaviourally intelligent and pre-intellectual appreciation of this paradigm - and employ it unconsciously all the time, whilst also being capable of a conscious intellectual relation to reality.

Establishing what's intellectually correct to reality is not a simple matter however, such that falsehood is equally ubiquitous to human action and interaction. Whether borne of ignornace of what's intellectually correct or a deliberate deception posed as truth, designed to pervert the outcome of right action in relation to it - nevertheless, the former, normative paradigm must be assumed to be operative in order to justify action and validate the outcome of such action. Upon discovery of falsehood - deliberate or otherwise, both action and outcome must be considered invalid and revised in light of what's true.

Relative to religious, political and economic ideological conceptions of reality - a scientific conception of reality, at the very least constitutes the discovery of falsehood - it's necessary we acknowledge in order to survive - else equally, become extinct. Science isn't (yet) a complete or entirely coherent conception of reality - but isn't borne of ignorance or deception either. Methodologically designed to recognize and reject falshood within the body of knowledge thus constituted, science is an intellectually intelligent relation to reality - and therefore entirely consistant with this ubiquitous paradigm.

Despite the heights to which we have built upon ideological falsity - and thus the epic implications of a need to revise what people ignorantly or dishonestly maintain justifies action and validates the outcomes of such action as we see played out in the world around us, acknowledging ideological falsity by accepting a scientific understanding of reality in common isn't a departure from current behaviour - but consistant with the normative practice of life itself.

[Austro]

Our existance controls the methods used to understand combined human economical ideoligy which determines the control we have on each other. Natural instinct in to survive but as time elapsed the earth became deluded from various forces that could have been here before our intial existance. These forces could be sub-continent forces that had powerful energies that fro humans remained harsh to exist in in. How could we survive and become a human race in these areas.

The existance on earth remains a mystery, but to survive the species needed to be strong enough to exist from birth. As we have no conrete evidence on where man first existed the truth that could have devided us could have continetal plates that are surrounded by energy. These could have been divisions that later bought us together. Humans thousands of years ago could ahve been stronger in survival terms.

These days the earth seems to have completed a strategy that has once again controlled our behaviour that could have seen us extinct. Like a lion that crossed the river, the lion that had been noticed on numourous occasions murdered a human family. This lion would'nt have controlled the behaviour of the humans he killed so what's the reason for this event. Our existances here on earth were and i believe are slowly understanding that to be together we have to find a control and balance of each other without been to far apart. To be to familier and to tresspass on other lands without natures balance could mean a repeated event. The control over others for some is a containment but i'm unfamilier with the answer to wether this containment of others is postive.

[Lomax]

I'm sure that very few of us here would disagree with the normative ideal of searching for truth. However, that we have evolved to do so is not as obvious as it sounds. I quote Professor Robert L. Trivers from his foreword to the first edition of The Selfish Gene:

For example, if (as Dawkins argues) deceit is fundamental in animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.

[wolfhnd]

then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced.

That of course is why science has devised means to remove the subjective and focus on what can objectively be confirmed. Experiments must be repeatable and confirmed by objective third party analysis before they are accepted.

The distinction between accurately accessing and responding to the environment instinctually represents a sort of reality but doesn't tell us much about truth in the more abstract meaning anyway.

Ecologist in recent years of course have found deception to be common in non-human species, self deception is of course more difficult to prove.

DNA analysis in the 1980s revealed that male partners of many nesting bird pairs often reared chicks that weren't their own. Females, it was shown, are not terribly faithful.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... vorce.html

The fact that ethology is a less than exact science being noted.

[mtbturtle]

It is as if before humans created Science, we didn't know any thing...

[Forest_Dump]

Any reason why this one shouldn't be merged with a nearly identical thread in "Anything Philosophy"?

[owleye]

I'm sure that very few of us here would disagree with the normative ideal of searching for truth. However, that we have evolved to do so is not as obvious as it sounds. I quote Professor Robert L. Trivers from his foreword to the first edition of The Selfish Gene:

For example, if (as Dawkins argues) deceit is fundamental in animal communication, then there must be strong selection to spot deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious so as not to betray - by the subtle signs of self-knowledge - the deception being practiced. Thus, the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naive view of mental evolution.

There's something about this argument that is odd. Right off the bat, however, I don't see Dawkin's 'fundamental deceit' as all that plausible. But even if it is, and it follows that there would be strong selection pressure to spot deception then this in and of itself implies that truth seeking also is fundamental. So, ok, in communication there is some kind of equilibrium reached between truth seeking and truth hiding (though possibly varying dramatically within the population). Given this, though, how does it imply that the conventional view, which covers all uses of the nervous system, is naive? This is a great leap, I think. Obviously animals can be fooled. But just because they can be fooled doesn't mean that observations can't be corrected by more careful observations. Part of an animals perceptual apparatus is associated with attention and focus. These are corrective aspects of perception. There may be other modes of perception that would overcome possible errors.

Before going down this path any further, I think the main problem is in the characterization of the conventional view. (Before I get into this, I can't help but think that 'accuracy' should be amended to mean 'sufficient accuracy'. When I see a frog's long tongue spring forth, capturing some delicacy at a certain position in relative space and drawing it back to its mouth, I have to believe that deception or not, accuracy of location has to be something amenable to evolutionary pressures.)

In any case, I don't think 'image' is the target that should be applied to accuracy. Rather, the target should be information. What's important is what can be extracted from the environment, not so much that it requires the image to be exact. The image can be distorted as long as it (in effect) emphasizes the information needed by the organism (in so far as it relies on the perceptual organs anyway) to be biologically successful. As such, it would seem that truth seeking should win out over deception.

James

[wolfhnd]

It is as if before humans created Science, we didn't know any thing...

The odd thing about science is that it tells you as much about what you don't know as it adds certainty to what you think you know. In a way science teaches us that we don't process the means to obtain absolute certainty. All theories are, even after being accepted as absolute truths, confounded by being incomplete. Religion in contrast is about what can't be known and paradoxically provides absolute knowledge. The human mind seems to be at odds with itself seeking absolutes while knowing at some level that life is uncertain.

I think the real answer to what humans knew before science is that there isn't a time before science. While the rules have been formalized the process of experimentation and even peer review can't be dated.

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child.
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whe'er better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

William Shakespeare,

[mtbturtle]

Forest,

I haven't reviewed the other thread, but the titles certainly seem similar enough.

Wolf,

I've no idea what you mean by absolute certainty. Generally the feel I get when people use such words is they are setting up unrealistic, impossible standard (ala omniscience, god) which always strikes me as a strawman.

Also what you were saying previously about science and the means we've devised for truth on an abstract level doesn't match your recent comment that there was no time for humans before science. You seem to be talking about two different things. Related perhaps but in our modern understanding there are important distinctions or at least most of the Scientists I know and those around here would maintain.

[Forest_Dump]

While I am not sure wolfhnd is suggesting that science gives answers with absolute certainty (that wouldn't be very scientific) I would disagree that religion gives answers with absolute certainty either. Again, IMHO, quite the opposite from my experience. In religions I have been most closely associated with, there is a lot of emphasis on "faith" and plenty of things are left as "mysteries" which, in the end, is often the problem with religion. Science progresses by addressing questions that religion often treats as divine mysteries that cannot or perhaps should not be explored.

I also disagree that science is as old as claimed. We certainly could (and perhaps should) look closely at what science is (yet again), but IMHO at least, science should be distinguished from simple experimentation to solve techno-economic problems such as Australopithecines would have been doing and, in short, science should be distinguished from technological advancement (although, of course, I know technological advancement and science have both enjoyed benefits from being inter-connected). If science is as old as some seem to want to claim, then I am not sure how science would be distinguished from, for example, experimentation with religious rituals to achieve pragmatic ends. For example, if a group were to "experiment" with throwing virgins into volcanoes in order to prevent eruptions, does it could as science just because the "experiment" seems to work? Personally I think science was really only born when some threshold of intellectual rigour was applied to remove the action of supernaturalism as a cause and frankly I am not sure "science" really existed much before the 19th century. Of course I have respect for the great ancestors of science like Galileo or Newton, I am not sure they were scientists in the modern sense primarily because although they were making observations that were more "objective" they were not really getting at the underlying cause in a manner that was all that free of religion. In some ways I think Darwin could be a better marker because although although he still was influenced by religion and believed "nature" was ultimately driven by "God's plan", his hypothesized mechanism (natural selection) was more mechanistic and free of the intellectual confines of teleology. Natural selection might have had lingering supernatural influences but it was not necessarily so. I am not sure this kind of claim can be made for the older "scientists" often cited.

[wolfhnd]

I suppose that there are as many definitions of science as there are people thinking about it.

Is this an acceptable definition of science?

Science (from Latin: scientia meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

While we have a better understanding of the best practices in science today, I don't see any reason to complicate the issue beyond a definition that everyone can agree on.

MTB I understand your position concerning the strawman issue of defining what absolute means. I think I have been consistent in trying to show that absolute ( free from imperfection; complete; perfect:) is so abstract an idea that it is necessarily ambiguous and unscientific. When scientists start stating that such and such is a fact that cannot be refuted it opens up the charge that science is a religion based on the faith that absolute certainty is possible. I have no problem with statements like, evolution is a fact, but I do not think we will ever have a understanding of evolution that is complete, perfect, and free from imperfections. Philosophy, math, logic can aid the progression of science but science itself is relativistic in it's certainties which define it to some extent from other forms of knowledge like math. Philosophy therefor is so removed from science that having a philosophy of science is almost like having a science of religion. One advances through incremental progression in accuracy while the other starts with the abstract idea of perfection and progresses like math by perfecting this abstraction. I see science as a totally "practical" pursuit like bricklaying.