User talk:Gkochanowsky/explanatism

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Yes, myles back here. Just read your explanatism page which proposes some very interesting ideas. Suggest you fix up last 3 lines, as they are the important ones, and something has gone wrong with your typing or whatever. Will comment later. I think Karl Popper's stuff is very pertinent here. One day he yelled out in a lecture theatre, "Observe". And the students were puzzled. Observe what? they asked. Exactly, he replied.

People can't just observe indisciminately. They observe to attain certain ends, or solve puzzles. Or in the case of the "burning bush", because of the unusualness of what is happening. I think Popper's point would be that a being who was "observing" in a completely fashion comletely detached from any presuppositions as to WHAT he was observing, would be simply snowstormed by a huge avalanche of visual stimuli, none of which had much meaning. Or all of which could have as much meaning as you wanted. --Myles325a 05:46, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi myles,

Thanks for reading and commenting on my ramblings. It is the result of several observations.

1) We agree there is a universe. 2) We want to explain it. 3) There are many competing and conflicting explanations.

Now certainly not all humans are concerned with these observations, and certainly there are many human traditions that may be concerned with these observations in some peripheral way but they are not of central concern. But there are certainly several human traditions that have tried to explain the universe and thus have contributed to 3. Examples would be science, religion and philosophy.

What interests me is how they differ. And I have considered the hypothesis that they differ on their criteria of preference among competing explanations and on how willing and under what circumstances they reapply those criteria when new competing explanations come along.

It occurs to me that in science the criteria of preference for explanations is to prefer those explanations that excell in fidelity and predictablity of observations of reality. Philosophy seems to prefer some kind of consistency and in many cases it may be just a matter of personal perference. And religion perfers explanations that extend hope, comfort or special status.

So that is what prompted my ramblings about explanations. But I am still very much in the observing stage.