Rainer said:
I'm sure you've heard that analogy of the chicken that based its belief that the farmer (which had fed it every morning that had preceded this morning) would come out to feed it again, when instead the farmer sloughtered the chicken. This experience contradicted the chicken's conclusion based on past experience to the highest possible degree--the contradicting experience was the diametric opposite of what the chicken had in mind.
Your certainty in experientialism is based on past experience--which is flawed, as you can see.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see the flaw. In fact, you’ve made my case for me. That chicken may have thought he knew breakfast was coming the next morning, but he didn’t know did he? It was his mistake to assume that the past automatically determines the future, because no one can see the future. The chicken
thought he knew, but he didn’t really know anything
except what had gone on in the past.
Surely you understand that it is humanity’s past experience with reality that has given us our understandings today. Do you think we understand what we have absolutely no experience with? So-called universal laws are only considered that because things have consistently behaved a certain way. We only know light speed is constant in a vacuum, or that people die, or that alcohol impairs driving because that’s how it has proven to be in the past.
I still think the problem you are having is not being able to properly differentiate experience from the interpretation of experience. Nothing about the chicken’s experience lied to him. The problem was his mentality making assumptions about the way reality works. Here is how I would be in that chicken’s place; notice I clearly distinguish between what I know, and how I interpret:
1. Knowing: If asked if I “know” I will be fed in the morning, I would answer, “My experience has been that every morning so far I’ve been fed, but I don’t
know if tomorrow morning I will be fed.
2. Interpretation: If you ask me what logic tells me will happen tomorrow then I’d say, “I can only base my logic on the evidence I now have. I haven’t seen a bloody axe, I haven’t heard about any chickens being killed . . . for God’s sake I didn’t even know Farmer Joe eats chickens
! The ONLY think I do know is that he has been great to me, feeding me every morning nice delicious handfuls of seed (which thinking about now is making my beak water, mmmmmm
). So, with the evidence I have, it is logical to say that
most likely I will be fed tomorrow morning.”
So knowing is what experience has established, and interpretation is what logic does (hopefully with as many facts as are available).
Rainer said:
Next, in order to understand the certainty you have in your hypothesis, you must factor in the degree of uncertainty in your hypothesis based on the highest possible degree of contradicting experience. Since the chance of your hypothesis being completely contradicted by experience always exists, you must factor it in. (BTW, this is how you've presented your views.) And when you extend it to experientialism as a whole, you will see that after you factor in the possibility of it being completely wrong, you've negated the entire system.
Are we talking about working in the lab, or living life. If you think I’ve been talking about the epistemology of science, I haven’t. More stringent rules are needed for verification in science because other researchers may want to rely on what people claim they have discovered, or because possibly a discovery is going to be used by the public, or it’s going be the basis for obtaining grant money, etc.
I have been talking about how a human being decides what he knows in his existence
for himself. For that I don’t need all that nonsense about factoring in my degree of certainty, or contradictory experience. I know what I am most sure of, what I least certain of, and everything in between. Of course, somebody living “in their mind” might get all confused trying to figure out what he is and isn’t sure of, but not the person living in the experience of now.
Rainer said:
The pragmatic standard of what "works" is based on the practicality of the system--or, only validated by the practice of the system--or, only validated by how it is field tested. That is, you need to place experience as supreme in order to assume that "what works" is a proper standard. You are trying to validate experientialism with its self-contained standards--this is just blatantly wrong.
I pay attention when I hit a ball on my racquet. When I hit it on the periphery of the racquet, I don’t hit as hard as (and break more strings than) when I hit in the middle of the racquet. I can therefore say it “works” best to hit in the center, and I find that out by paying attention (experience) when I hit. This is just being conscious, there’s nothing mysterious or complicated about what I am saying in regard to pragmatism.
Rainer said:
A pencil in water appears to bend. Do this several times in different kinds of water. Experience will tell you that logic is false--that is, reality does not conform to identity. A pencil's identity is that of a rigid wooden structure that fractures when bent...but it bends and does not break in water, as it appears. If you place experience primary to reason, you will conclude that identity is nonexistent in reality--that the pencil magically bends and contradicts identity (and reason). If you place reason above experience, you will say that the pencil does NOT bend at all--and that something else is happening. The scientific approach is to understand what is occurring, to resolve the apparent contradiction with the reality of a pencil.
In the process, we discovered that our perception of the pencil bending was EXACTLY what one ought to see. After reason resolved the issue, we know that no contradiction with reality occurred and that experience did not contradict reason.
You are majorly confused about experience and reason. You say, “If you place experience primary to reason, you will conclude that identity is nonexistent in reality--that the pencil magically bends and contradicts identity (and reason).”
What part of you “concluded” something? It certainly wasn’t perception. How do you find out what your reason “concluded” about your perception is incorrect? You take the pencil out of the water to
see the pencil is still straight. With enough information, your logic can then give the correct answer. Without no more information than that one experience of seeing the pencil appear bent, reason is left starving for what it needs to explain the observation. Experience is linked to information because it has been proven over and over that the most reliable info is that which someone has personally experienced (seen, touched, tasted, smelled, felt, etc.).
Now, that doesn’t mean in trying to find out if something is true, one won’t have theories and hypotheses. And of course, good induction is part of the theoretical process. But as Ayer said, the entire purpose of a hypothesis is the anticipation of experience (i.e., that will confirm the hypothesis). So even if one does theorize, nothing is “known” until theoreticals are observed actually occurring.
I honestly don’t know why you are fighting me so strongly. Nothing I am saying is all that radical. Even to say I am going to devote more of my consciousness to experiencing reality than to thinking about it is not all that strange. I claim that by prioritizing my consciousness that way, it helps me think more clearly when I do want to think.
I have practiced both thinking more than experiencing, and experiencing more than thinking. The fact that I now choose the latter approch is because, I say, I have found out it “works” better than the former approach. How can you dispute that?
Science IS experientialist, or at least more experientialist than pure intellectualism. I'd grant that it isn't as radically experientialist as I like things. But then, I don't know very many people who'd be willing to put in thirty years of mind-stilling work in order to practice what I'm recommending either.