Posted by
glen e. p. ropella-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-Direct-conversation-tp3137870p3144346.html
Nicholas Thompson emitted this, circa 09-06-23 10:42 AM:
> Perhaps in my first response to this thread I should have distinguished
> clarity from verisimilitude. Let's imagine a situation in which my
> understanding of some situation .... say consciousness .... is vague. Do I
> sometimes advance the discussion more by advancing a more precise
> formulation than I actually can justify?
Obviously the answer to that is "yes", because you included "sometimes".
[grin] Sometimes you progress the discussion by being overly precise
and sometimes you regress the discussion by being overly precise. I
think one immanent problem with modern science (immanent to modern
science but not to science writ large) is the tendency to be
unjustifiably precise. Such over-precision does a criminal amount of
damage to our ability to lay out what we actually know from what we
think we might know.
The over-precision is done for many reasons, some of them altruistic and
some nefarious. The climate change and abortion debates are examples
with overly precise (arrogant) rhetoric on both sides of each.
Now, I'm NOT a scientist; so what I say holds little water. But I think
it's the obligation of scientists to _avoid_ being overly precise, even
if they _posit_ that being overly precise will progress the discussion.
And if/when they launch into an unjustified extrapolation, they should
loudly, emphatically, and repetitively shout that they are speculating
and have no reason to trust what they're saying.
Similarly, they should be able to be just as precise about their
ignorance as they should about their knowledge. If you don't capture
your ignorance just as precisely as you capture your speculation, then
you are an irresponsible speculator. ;-)
> On sober reflection, I guess I think the answer is sometimes yes and
> sometimes no and that a lot of wisdom is required to know what rule applies
> to a given discussion. I do believe the the power of a dialectic, in the
> intellectual energy that is generated when two clearly stated ideas contest
> over facts. But I also think that wonderful things can happen when a
> thinker truly and honestly describes his confusion.
You set that up as a dichotomy and it's a false one. One can
simultaneously be clear about one's ideas _and_ describe one's confusion
about those ideas.
But this is all just an aside. The real point is that there is no
single method for approaching the truth. Often, the best method is an
INDIRECT one, as with parallax, paradox, koans, etc. But often the best
method is direct, as well. (To boot, we almost always end up
equivocating on the word "best"!) So, I'd have the same criticism if
someone fixated on the conviction that riddles are the only or best way
to communicate.
--
glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://agent-based-modeling.com============================================================
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