I don't mean that I think people ought to live in a bubble and just think a lot and that this will get them any closer to 'truth'. I mean, of course it won't. I don't know if fiction balances it out, but then, I can't write fiction.
It's been said that there are three logical ways of drawing conclusions--induction, deduction, and abduction. As far as I understand them (again, not a philosopher), induction is when you have a lot of 'concrete' things, you have instances as your logical premises, and you conclude from those instances some general regularity. It requires perception to be true. Deduction is when you have some general law/regularity as part of your premises, and you can derive from it something that must be true if the premises are true, possibly about individual instances. Deduction depends on true premises and the validity of the logical form, rather than perception. Anyway, abduction is the 'logic of hypothesis'. It comes from seeing similarities in things and concluding that it's possible that they might have some other relation. That's sorta vague, you ought to get it from someone other than me if you actually care, but yeah.
The point is that all three are necessary for good scientific process, and abduction is the most similar of all of them to the way art works. It has the greatest potential for error, yet it's the only way of reaching something better than generalizations about the data, of getting at explanatory principles. It's still subject to test, to falsification, but it's the most capable of getting beyond the data, which are interpretable in oh-so-many ways. Peirce and Bateson both demand this sort of thinking of science, which is why I really admire them.
"I am quite sure that a young man who spends his time exclusively in the laboratory of physics or chemistry or biology, is in danger of profiting but little more from his work than if he were an apprentice in a machine shop." -Peirce
Bateson has explicitly said that inductive thinking and the value placed on prediction has hindered the social sciences in figuring out any fundamental principles. And so that's all I mean about thinking only about concrete things. They're there, they need to be accounted for, theory is bullshit if it isn't tied to them, but scientific investigation needs more than that to progress.
I wasn't trying to explain insanity in politicians. I was just saying how I would define insanity, which is something like, 'that which doesn't follow cultural logic/knowledge/habit and offers no other explanation for itself but mental defect.' Of course to look at its actual relevance to politics, you'd have to look across cultures or whatever else might be helpful. I was trying to avoid actually making a hypothesis.
no subject
It's been said that there are three logical ways of drawing conclusions--induction, deduction, and abduction. As far as I understand them (again, not a philosopher), induction is when you have a lot of 'concrete' things, you have instances as your logical premises, and you conclude from those instances some general regularity. It requires perception to be true. Deduction is when you have some general law/regularity as part of your premises, and you can derive from it something that must be true if the premises are true, possibly about individual instances. Deduction depends on true premises and the validity of the logical form, rather than perception. Anyway, abduction is the 'logic of hypothesis'. It comes from seeing similarities in things and concluding that it's possible that they might have some other relation. That's sorta vague, you ought to get it from someone other than me if you actually care, but yeah.
The point is that all three are necessary for good scientific process, and abduction is the most similar of all of them to the way art works. It has the greatest potential for error, yet it's the only way of reaching something better than generalizations about the data, of getting at explanatory principles. It's still subject to test, to falsification, but it's the most capable of getting beyond the data, which are interpretable in oh-so-many ways. Peirce and Bateson both demand this sort of thinking of science, which is why I really admire them.
"I am quite sure that a young man who spends his time exclusively in the laboratory of physics or chemistry or biology, is in danger of profiting but little more from his work than if he were an apprentice in a machine shop."
-Peirce
Bateson has explicitly said that inductive thinking and the value placed on prediction has hindered the social sciences in figuring out any fundamental principles. And so that's all I mean about thinking only about concrete things. They're there, they need to be accounted for, theory is bullshit if it isn't tied to them, but scientific investigation needs more than that to progress.
I wasn't trying to explain insanity in politicians. I was just saying how I would define insanity, which is something like, 'that which doesn't follow cultural logic/knowledge/habit and offers no other explanation for itself but mental defect.' Of course to look at its actual relevance to politics, you'd have to look across cultures or whatever else might be helpful. I was trying to avoid actually making a hypothesis.