J refers to this truism. Is it true?
Surely one can get what one does not see. But let's not look for the negative sides. While J prefers "What you see is what you get" I prefer,
"Seeing is believing".
In both idioms, the phrase 'see' occurs.
But there are variants:
"What you see is what you get" possibly uses 'is' where the horseshoe should be preferable:
If you see x, you get x.
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In "Seeing is believing" the implicature seems different:
It is NOT said that "I see" is isomorphic with "I believe". It's more like 'seeing' is the 'proof of the pudding'.
Oddly, the pudding idiom is my favourite: because the proof of it (the pudding) is hardly the seeing.
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Well, note that I said I don't hold to WYSIWYG, but in many if not most cases it holds. I'm not sure where you're going with the discussion--philosophy of science, ala Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend etc to me seems fairly...obvious...tho' I admire some of Feyerabend's writing on the issue.
ReplyDeleteReally, the phil. of science tends to echo what scientists say (or do). So at times things are settled (ie, newtonian mechanics, the periodic table), or appear to be. Then they are revised, falsified (in part or whole) etc. I respect Popper to some degree, but...well, a bit passe. At least he understood to some degree that theories even "facts' might be provisional (though he probably overestimated, and overvalued subjective aspects...)
The theory of gravity issue seems a bit interesting (ie, still some dissenting voices to Einstein's gen. rel.), but more interesting, or at least...relevant might be Feyerabend's approach to the politics of academic science, his criticism of academic and corporate research institutions, so forth. Ie. should citizens allow billions to be spent on a Hubble (some nice photos, maybe some data...but that's about it), NASA, or even the recent collider? Do the massive projects really pay off, or are they sort of massive slushbuckets, or covert military-industry operations, etc. Perhaps the billions spent on the Hubble would have been better spent on medical research, education, ending poverty, or improving health conditions....
Yes -- science is a bit overrated. Perhaps I should write on 'scientific implicature'.
ReplyDeleteThat's not exactly what I said, JL. Im not an anti-realist (or postmod) and am all for sound, applied science. Really most 'Mericans at least (and I'd say mexico and Latin Amer. as well) have an innate fear of science, except perhaps when the US Military's involved (F-18s and supercarriers! the benefits of science and technology). Yet the application issues do matter, as Feyerabend realized--granted, that may concern applied technology rather than science per se.
ReplyDeleteMost so-called scientists are more or less nurses, bottlewashers, technicians. The work--say with bio/chem. research-- is usually mundane , number crunching, lab-tech stuff.. Not that difficult. Rocket science itself is hit and miss, trial and error. Hardly logical, or axiomatic--it's "proof is in the pudding", which is to say WYSIWYG (, which is to say, were JL interested in poisoning an enemy--an old classics professor! ...you would hand him the pudding with the...arsenic (or maybe just morphine since yr feeling nice), and ...watch to see effects).
But the meta-question still counts--do we really need shuttles, even if they work, and do the job they were built to do? What are they really doing anyway. Normativity--if not the division of labor (nurses rather than doctors perform a great deal of the medical work)-- enters the discussion--then what are philosophers for? (one reason I ...break with Quine at some point...who consistently supported the academic science business...and pick up my beer stainded notes to Feyerabend (and even Lord Russell did not blindly worship academic science/research institutions...)...
Perhaps part of the problem is that I never met a scientist. I hardly read science, either. I suppose it is interesting. Consider birds. I like to watch birds, but surely I won't say that ornithology fascinates me qua science.
ReplyDeleteGrice at one point speaks of ichthyological necessity (as if it existed). I.e. 'necessity about fish'. Grice wants to claim that necessity is pretty much simplistic. Each science cannot carry its own standards of 'necessity'.
I would think cosmology and quantum physics are the most important or basic sciences, though. One of my mentors there has been Mario Bunge who's written loads on what he calls "A treatise of Basic Philosophy". He takes 'physics' to be the basic science per se.
Grice, just because he is playful, wants to argue that OTHER schemes are just as valid. And he was especially irritated when in his rhetoric worse, Russell spoke of 'ordinary language' as embracing 'stone age metaphysics'. Why not stone age physics? Grice charmingly asks.