- #106
Canute
- 1,568
- 0
I'm not quite clear whether we really disagree on this or not.
I agree totally with pragmatically assessing the usefulness of new ideas based on what happens. But surely this can only be done after we have defined what we mean by useful, and defining 'useful' has nothing to with pragmatism, it has to do with our agenda and goals. If we want to reduce the population of rabbits then spreading a fatal disease amongst them is useful. However it's not at all useful if we are trying to increase the population. 'Usefulness' only has meaning relative to a goal or overall purpose. Without this context it can only be an empty term.
This is what I meant by saying that 'usefulness' should not be applied to scientific discoveries and methods prior to defining what science is trying to achieve. The term can have no meaning before that is done.
So I'm not in any way against pragmatism, just saying that we have to know what we're being pragmatic about before we start making judgements of usefulness.
At the moment we seem to assume that a discovery is useful if something can be done with it, but this strikes me as a misuse of the term.
I agree totally with pragmatically assessing the usefulness of new ideas based on what happens. But surely this can only be done after we have defined what we mean by useful, and defining 'useful' has nothing to with pragmatism, it has to do with our agenda and goals. If we want to reduce the population of rabbits then spreading a fatal disease amongst them is useful. However it's not at all useful if we are trying to increase the population. 'Usefulness' only has meaning relative to a goal or overall purpose. Without this context it can only be an empty term.
This is what I meant by saying that 'usefulness' should not be applied to scientific discoveries and methods prior to defining what science is trying to achieve. The term can have no meaning before that is done.
So I'm not in any way against pragmatism, just saying that we have to know what we're being pragmatic about before we start making judgements of usefulness.
At the moment we seem to assume that a discovery is useful if something can be done with it, but this strikes me as a misuse of the term.
Last edited: