Two posts ago I claimed that<\/p>\n
The goal of science is, therefore, to separate the settled from the anomalous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So what is the settled?\u00a0 What is the anomalous?\u00a0 How are they separated?<\/p>\n
If we take these concepts to be fundamental then we are unable to analyze the concepts of settled, anomalous and separation scientifically: if they are at the bottom of all science, then everything within science depends upon them.<\/p>\n
How then to understand?<\/p>\n
At the bottom of it all is our ability to understand. We learn and we understand.\u00a0 With this comes the ability to determine what we believe we understand and what we do not:\u00a0 For certain things we have reasons that explain those phenomena and for other things we will not have reasons nor explanations.<\/p>\n
These abilities are not based in science; they are metaphysical and logical.\u00a0 Claiming that you cannot understand (in general) is paradoxical.\u00a0 If you claim to not understand what it is to understand, then you must understand what it is not to understand.\u00a0 But if you understand what it is not to understand, then you must know what it is to understand not understanding.\u00a0 So you must understand what it to understand. But then you are denying being able to understand…\u00a0 Hence it is nonsensical to deny understanding understanding.<\/p>\n
Therefore we get understanding, not understanding and the difference on non-scientific grounds.\u00a0\u00a0 Insofar as reasons and explanations are part of understanding, we get them too.<\/p>\n
How do we understand what is settled and what is anomalous?<\/p>\n
Again paradox:<\/p>\n
If you claim that it is not settled what it means to be settled then you must have known what it is to be not settled, that is, it is settled what it is to be not settled.\u00a0 Then you must know what it is to be settled, i.e. it is settled.\u00a0 But then you claim that it is not settled… Therefore you cannot claim that what it means for something to be settled is not settled.<\/p>\n
If we assume that not settled and anomalous are identical in meaning (not settled = anomalous; not anomalous = settled) then we have nearly all the concepts we need.<\/p>\n
But here comes the hard part: how do we separate<\/strong> the settled from the not settled?<\/p>\n
Well, since we already have understanding, this requires doing actual science, as in creating a theory and then\u00a0 going and seeing if that theory actually makes something that was anomalous no longer so by predicting it accurately.\u00a0 This isn’t the post for me to get down off my metaphysical cloud, so Good Luck, you’re on your own (for now at least).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two posts ago I claimed that The goal of science is, therefore, to separate the settled from the anomalous. So what is the settled?\u00a0 What is the anomalous?\u00a0 How are they separated? If we take these concepts to be fundamental then we are unable to analyze the concepts of settled, anomalous and separation scientifically: if they are at the bottom of all science, then everything within science depends upon them. How then to understand? At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,25,26,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metaphysics","category-ontology","category-philosophy","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}