Posted: Mar 20, 2017 10:21 am
John Platko wrote:I didn't find Deutsch's explanation of explanations to be vague. I found him to be shining light on something fundamental to all attempts at understanding. The mode we use to try to explain something has an effect on the quality of the explanation. So in order to get the best understanding that we can, we must search out the best mode of explanation.
Sure, but that's not exactly detailed (or novel) is it? 'A lot of words' is not necessarily the equivalent of 'detailed'.
John Platko wrote:The Greeks had an explanation for what was responsible for creating different material things that they observed - the atom. Dalton improved on that explanation and he used a new mode to do it. As did Bohr. Followed by Heisenberg, Dirac, etc.. And now people are searching for better modes of explanation so better understanding will be obtained.
'The Greeks' were not homogenous, of course. It was the atomists who thought in terms of atoms. And in their case, they turned out to be the very lucky winners of the good explanation lottery in hindsight. I thought we'd done this already. The analogy with the atom only works if CT is in fact useful and/or accurate, which we will have to wait and see about, because at this time it's vague and speculative.
John Platko wrote:Deutsch highlights the problem of insisting that one must stick to the current mode of explanation - and how especially bad that is when the explanation is false.
Deutsch claims that, but I don't think it's clear yet whether the existing mode of explanation is false or that his is true or better.
John Platko wrote:Closer to this discussion, some here seem to be stuck in a mode of explanation for the observable commonly described as: the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. I presented a new mode of explanation for that observable. One which I think provides better understanding, so it is therefore a better explanation.
Possibly. Possibly not. I've been running with it with an open mind and it's interesting and I'm enjoying talking to you about it.
I will say this, there's that word immortal again. You keep using it, even though we agree it's inaccurate. And recently you've used the word immaterial again too. You haven't by any means won me over about either of those. In fact I'd say that you are on a sticky wicket with both of them. I think 'reasonable values of immortal' is a bit of an optimistic fudge, and implies at least 'a very long time', which I do not think pertains to for example a human IP. As I said, I'm thinking 'very fragile' is more the case. 'Substantially gone very soon after death', etc.
John Platko wrote:And we can apply this fundamental concept of increasing our understanding by searching out other modes of explanation to all sort of things.
In principle yes, but this doesn't mean that every new speculative mode we alight upon is going to add anything. That's where I'm at.