Where do you end up drawing the line between a system of thought and a method of thinking? Feels a little like splitting hairs. Scientific method—okay, a method. Economics? Surely a system. That offshoot of economics, dialectical materialism?
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Replying to @FirstClassHack @chaosprime
Systems are inherently schematic, which means they impose theory on the facts. Method--at least, a correct method--deduces theory from the facts.
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Replying to @StevenBrust @chaosprime
Fair enough, but it’s very difficult to determine what data might be relevant to answering a given question, gather that data and then analyze it without a preexisting schema both helping you make those decisions and also putting its thumb on the scale.
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Replying to @FirstClassHack @chaosprime
That's exactly why the study of epistemology is important, and has a practical effect. There is a difference between having a schema, and having a method, particularly a method one has examined and analyzed and tested.
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Replying to @StevenBrust @chaosprime
I hear you, but then I think of all those earnest 19th century thinkers diligently studying phrenology using a bastardized scientific method. At the very least, we probably need a lot more neuroscience before we can make major strides in correcting this stuff.
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Replying to @FirstClassHack @chaosprime
I keep thinking of those other 19th Century scientists: Darwin, Marx, Doppler, Curie, Pasteur, &c &c &c. What they accomplished wasn't small beans, and that all of them studied epistemology (I think; not sure about Curie) isn't accidental.
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Replying to @StevenBrust @chaosprime
That’s why I mentioned neuroscience, because many of the fundamental questions of epistemology should ultimately be answerable by it.
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Replying to @FirstClassHack @StevenBrust
don't really think so; in a sense all questions of biology are questions of chemistry, but we don't look to sufficiently advanced chemistry to answer our questions of biology this is like that but a couple more abstraction layers apart
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Replying to @chaosprime @StevenBrust
Is it though? Someday, when you ask “how do I know what I know,” they’ll be able to walk you through it neuron by neuron, structure by structure. Granted, they’ll need a very powerful computer to do it, but why not?
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Replying to @FirstClassHack @StevenBrust
because the attempt to comprehend a painting molecule-by-molecule will leave you dead of old age not very far into it and with no idea what it was a painting of
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the hilarious part will be that that approach will mostly tell us we literally don't know anything, we just manage to act very approximately similarly to how we would if we knew any things
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Replying to @chaosprime @StevenBrust
sure, but how we actually do that is pretty important. As are knowing the ways in which our approximation fails.
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