RE: [Fis] Consilience & patchiness of knowledge

Pedro wrote:
> then, I do not know, but it seems that an
> intermediate road between the internalist and the externalist
> may be taken. And given that effective social action --always
> in interaction with knowledge-- occurs at multiple
> organization realms, from individuals to groups, companies,
> institutions, cities, regions, countries, Empires..., not
> always capable of producing the adequate 'thought collective'
> interpnetration, the inherent patchiness of real knowledge
> becomes even more interesting. Consilience of closure appears
> as quite difficult a social enterprise!

There must be some common ground in order to exchange information. If I note
down the letters "dog", others have to know what this refers to. It's not
internalism + externalism. It's species-level internalism, a stage higher
than the subjective internalism, but it's still internalism.

Within this internalism, we can express a limited picture of ourselves. When
we do this, we have externalism, but it is within an internalist model, or
within a species-level internalist model. This is something C. Lofting has
been writing about:
http://members.austarmetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/general.html

Anyway, consilience is involved with the pursuit and development of this
common ground. Some initial examples that Malcolm gave were discoveries of
the common ground between two previously separate theories. And our present
discussion is about seeking the common ground where all our separate ideas
about consilience can coexist, and be represented efficiently.

Malcolm wrote:
> A more plausible explanation is that mathematics
> provides a precise way of representing the STRUCTURE of the
> world. It helps us see how things relate to each, not what
> things are in and of themselves. Taking this line of
> argument to an extreme, one might claim that if the
> consilience of scientific inductions, tools, models,
> communities is about the relationship of different things to
> each other, then consilience is the basis of all our knowledge.

I agree. And thanks for introducing Land's experiment!

The common ground only needs to provide the framework, the structure. The
details are filled in by each individual. It makes no sense to use English
sentences to describe the exact shape of a dog. Everyone knows what a dog
looks like, why communicate this explicitly, if it suffices to have a bunch
of dog exemplars around us. At the common ground, it suffices to say "dog"
or draw a picture of the exemplar.

One of the requirements for the common ground is that all the individuals
should be cognitively similar enough. This resembles the requirement for
sexual reproduction: the genomes should be similar enough, should be
compatible.

Malcolm wrote:
> Color
> pereception therefore involves the detection of DIFFERENCES
> in light frequencies, and not light frequencies per se.
> Color perception rests on the detection of relational facts.

We must be aware that we were not borne to be precise observers of the
reality. We were borne as being struggling to survive. Spotting a difference
between yellow and red is what lets us pick the ripest of the cherries.
There is a tremendous amount of truth all around us, yet we seek only those
aspects of the truth that helps us make better decisions.

Yellow in a rainbow is one concept, and yellow among the cherries is another
one. The context of the discussion specifies which of the two is meant by
the string "yellow". At the common ground, one needs some external reference
to base the concept upon. The unit of measurement is an example of an
absolute, so all measurements are expressed relationally to this one single
agreed-upon common ground reference. That's why there used to be a
meter-long rod, and a reference weight at the market. We need these solid
external references, otherwise our concepts may drift.

Aleks

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Received on Fri Nov 12 12:57:13 2004