The ontological assumptions of science.

More rhetorical point scoring ?

The key issue in the above discussion is not the rules for JLN (who is pedagogically exposing them), but that for Terry they are axiomatic. It is Terry who appears to have the traditional concept of "truth" (ontic reality) against which "logical argument" can be "empirically verified. If it can be demonstrated to the user that such rules lead to incoherence then that should be sufficient grounds for a paradigm shift. However, as we all know as in the case of fundamentalist religious beliefs, logical inconsistency is covered by catch-all clauses like "the Lord moves in mysterious ways". The irony is that some "scientists" think their belief system is immune from such barricading on the assumption that "all will become clear with more research". In fact the opposite seems to be the case!

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fresco wrote:

More rhetorical point scoring ?

Give it a rest.

fresco wrote:

The key issue in the above discussion is not the rules for JLN (who is pedagogically exposing them), but that for Terry they are axiomatic. It is Terry who appears to have the traditional concept of "truth" (ontic reality) against which "logical argument" can be "empirically verified. If it can be demonstrated to the user that such rules lead to incoherence then that should be sufficient grounds for a paradigm shift.

Terry's position is perfectly consistent and paradox-free. No need for a paradigm shift there, as far as I can tell. Your position, on the other hand, is the one that doesn't work, even on its own terms.

fresco wrote:

However, as we all know as in the case of fundamentalist religious beliefs, logical inconsistency is covered by catch-all clauses like "the Lord moves in mysterious ways". The irony is that some "scientists" think their belief system is immune from such barricading on the assumption that "all will become clear with more research". In fact the opposite seems to be the case!

The only people here who have positions akin to religious dogma are you and JLN.

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And your score for that was....

Parasitic Denials 3 - Independent Thoughts 0

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fresco wrote:

And your score for that was....

Parasitic Denials 3 - Independent Thoughts 0

As usual, you condescendingly dismiss that which you cannot refute.

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I reserve condescension for those whose aggressive style deserves it.

As usual you have said nothing worth "refuting"....i.e. you have said nothing (period). You have merely indulged in your tedious game of reproduction of your logic lecture notes although thankfully you have spared us the latin this time. If you cannot understand the simple point that "normal logic" is seen as a product of these systems and not axiomatic to their coherence, what are you doing here ? The last time you condescended (ho ho) to dip into Maturana you came up with the enthralling one liner that "He was wrong !"....not "why he was wrong" or "why his system has been seminal in several fields"...no, that would be too much like work perhaps. It might even lead to "muddle-headedness" and we can't have that, can we ?

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fresco wrote:

I reserve condescension for those whose aggressive style deserves it.

Sounds like someone needs his mommy to kiss his boo-boo.

fresco wrote:

As usual you have said nothing worth "refuting"....i.e. you have said nothing (period). You have merely indulged in your tedious game of reproduction of your logic lecture notes although thankfully you have spared us the latin this time. If you cannot understand the simple point that "normal logic" is seen as a product of these systems and not axiomatic to their coherence, what are you doing here ? The last time you condescended (ho ho) to dip into Maturana you came up with the enthrawling one liner that "He was wrong !"....not "why he was wrong" or "why his system has been seminal in several fields"...no, that would be too much like work perhaps. It might even lead to "muddle-headedness" and we can't have that, can we ?

Actually, I explained why he was wrong in several posts, including this one. But maybe you can do a better job than Maturana in defending his position, so let me ask you this: if it's true for you that there's no "ontic reality," how do you know that that's true for me too?

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That exchange amounted to your denial that Maturana could "escape" from the bounds of "language". My refutation was based on Maturana's paradigm being a non-anthropocentric vantage point from which "language" could be subject to analysis and deflation, hence Maturana's idiosyncratic linguistic style. Once again your "argument" relied solely on traditional axiomatic re-assertion.

And once more you come up with a question about "truth". Rolling Eyes

Truth is "what works" ! We all conduct our everyday transactions as though "reality" were independent of us. In that respect it seems to work. But once we question the nature of those transactions which is the province of philosophers and "frontier scientists", it does not seem to work so well. Denial of that is tantamount to ignorance.

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Nobody reads the subject line

fresco wrote:

That exchange amounted to your denial that Maturana could "escape" from the bounds of "language". My refutation was based on Maturana's paradigm being a non-anthropocentric vantage point from which "language" could be subject to analysis and deflation, hence Maturana's idiosyncratic linguistic style. Once again your "argument" relied solely on traditional axiomatic re-assertion.

Or, in other words, you think it's wrong but you can't figure out why it's wrong. Eh, whatever. After all, that's pretty much the same response you gave in the other thread too.

fresco wrote:

And once more you come up with a question about "truth".

Truth is "what works" ! We all conduct our everyday transactions as though "reality" were independent of us. In that respect it seems to work. But once we question the nature of those transactions which is the province of philosophers and "frontier scientists", it does not seem to work so well. Denial of that is tantamount to ignorance.

Denying the validity of "truth" is, of course, to take the position that there is at least one thing that is nevertheless true: that there is nothing that is "true." Indeed, the claim that "'truth' is what works" is itself something that you apparently claim to be true. And if you and Maturana don't think that you're talking about the "truth" (that is, an accurate description of what is), then you've been fooling yourselves and wasting everyone's time in the process. The fact is that you constantly make "truth-like" claims, like this one:

There is no "reality out there" consisting of things with "properties" independent of observers. Such a view is suggested by the illusory nature of words as "static pictures of things" rather than words as triggers for "dynamic re-experiencing".Sorry, but you can't make a claim that there is "no reality out there" unless you intend to make a true statement -- one that is as true for me as it is for you. On the other hand, if that's merely a description of "what works," it is singularly deficient. In terms of usefulness and workability, naive realism beats your naive idealism every time -- as you yourself seem to admit.

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Joe, I said to Terry that all egos are either mythic or real, not as a conformity with the law of non-contraction: I DO believe that IN REALITY, if not in logical principle, something CAN both be and NOT be. This is so because all things are continuously changing. No "thing" is a "static being"; it is is-ing, so to speak with continuous modification. There are no things, only processes in reality.
My reference to the ego was as a hypothetical abstraction which is or isn't what Terry indicated it to be. In that sense all "egos" are the same, as definitional members of a category (but not as ontologically identicals in nature--even pennies, while belonging within a single logical category, are different, as the ontological rule would have it: there are no identities in nature.

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Quote:

Or, in other words, you think it's wrong but you can't figure out why it's wrong.

Baloney! "Wrong" is not a word in my philosophical vocabulary...only in that of a naive realist,

Quote:

Denying the validity of "truth"

Total gibberish. ! I stated the standard functionalist definition of "truth" which avoids the philosophical pitfalls of assuming "ontic reality" which have been well documented from Kant to the present day.

You are totally besotted with that word "truth" yet you cannot see the quasi-religious status you ascribe to it. I speak of paradigmatic coherence NOT truth. I do not suggest of Maturana's system anything more than contemporary superior paradigmatic status with respect to current competing models....and that shifting situation may be all we are ever going to get.

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JLNobody wrote:

...there are no identities in nature.

How do you know that?

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fresco wrote:

Baloney! "Wrong" is not a word in my philosophical vocabulary...only in that of a naive realist,

Really?

fresco wrote:

Total gibberish. ! I stated the standard functionalist definition of "truth" which avoids the philosophical pitfalls of assuming "ontic reality" which have been well documented from Kant to the present day.

You are totally besotted with that word "truth" yet you cannot see the quasi-religious status you ascribe to it. I speak of paradigmatic coherence NOT truth. I do not suggest of Maturana's system anything more than contemporary superior paradigmatic status with respect to current competing models....and that shifting situation may be all we are ever going to get.

Well, I suppose if I espoused a position that was not "true" under any definition of that term -- including my own definition -- then I too would deny that "truth" had any importance.

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Joe, "how do you know?" is not a request for evidence; it is a challenge of the kind we expect from lawyers, not philosophers. I can ask how you know there ARE identities in nature, but then you would probably come back with something pale, but "defensible", like "I don't know". I can then ask you how you know that the rules of formal (textbook) logic tell us with philosophical authority anything about the world. But such sophistry is a waste of my time. At least Fresco introduces us to ideas that are provocative and promising of new "truths" or perspectives.

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JLNobody wrote:

Joe, "how do you know?" is not a request for evidence; it is a challenge of the kind we expect from lawyers, not philosophers. I can ask how you know there ARE identities in nature, but then you would probably come back with something pale, but "defensible", like "I don't know". I can then ask you how you know that the rules of formal (textbook) logic tell us with philosophical authority anything about the world. But such sophistry is a waste of my time.

Or, in other words, you don't know how you know that. I figured as much.

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I rest my case.

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Nice try with that link Joe. Maybe you hadn't figured out that my conspicuously alliterative "wrongs" there were a parody of your own adversarial style which has little relationship with that of philosophers. Stylistics is obviously not one of your familiar areas as indicated by your failure to understand its semantic significance within Maturana's exposition.

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fresco wrote:

Nice try with that link Joe. Maybe you hadn't figured out that my conspicuously alliterative "wrongs" there were a parody of your own adversarial style which has little relationship with that of philosophers.

Well, it appears that you also don't know the definition of "alliterative."

fresco wrote:

Stylistics is obviously not one of your familiar areas as indicated by your failure to understand its semantic significance within Maturana's exposition.

Maturana's "stylistics" could best be described as "turgid." If that's semantically significant, then so be it. Go with your strengths, I always say.

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JLNobody wrote:

I rest my case.

You get tired easily.

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Joe. You've got something there. Technically I should have used "repetitive" or better still "turgid", instead of "alliterative". Smile

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JLN,

I thought you might like one of M's one-liners.

Quote:

To live is to know.

Epistemologically, this in agreement with your redefinition of "reality" as dynamic process rather than "things". It also equates "cognition" with "living" and hence extends the concept of "knowledge" beyond the realm of organisms with languaging/self-evoking activities.

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The ontological assumptions of science.

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