From: snodgras@cyber.net (John E. Snodgrass)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: The Cosmological Bad Dream
Date: 16 Oct 92 07:14:22 GMT
Organization: The Cyberspace Station

In article <1992Oct14.071006.43834@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>In article <exukjb.293.718490050@exu.ericsson.se>, exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell) writes:
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>> Can scientists qua scientists call any theory "well-confirmed" or "true"?
>> Can a scientist say "It is true that p" where p is some scientific statement 
>> like "The sun is 93 million miles from earth" or "Metals expand when 
>> heated" ? Would not such remarks be epistemological and not scientific? 
>> 
>> Just wondering what a Searlian speech-act theorist would say about that.
>
>I think such statements as you mention may or may not be ordinary
>assertions; what I'm mainly interested in is assumptions that science
>has no evidence for in the usual sense, but which are necessary in
>order to carry on the scientific enterprise.  For example in my field,
>Linguistics, we assume that all the languages ever spoken had pretty
>much the same properties as the languages we know first-hand.  If we didn't
>assume this we would be free to "write off" any funny-looking
>phenomena from the past as due to arbitrary changes in the nature of
>language, instead of being forced to try to explain them.
>

      I would say more but I find it difficult to talk about "speech acts"
as though they are something separately analysable from the intent of the
speaker. After all, speech acts are really just a category of voluntary
behavior directed toward rearranging the external world in a manner more
uitable to the speaker, i.e. causing or preventing events etc. Scientists
use language as a medium for storage and transference of models of the
external world, in order to promote cooperative efforts to manipulate it
for social purposes (whether they admit this or not -- this is my "assertion"
anyway). IMO, no sense can be made of actions viewed outside the context
of why they are performed, and no explanation is possible within the
merry-go-round of concepts alone: you must assume a purpose somewhere, and
then explain behavior as an attempt to serve that purpose. Hence if you
wish to explain scientific use of language, you must investigate how
scientists cooperatively conceive of, build, and sell models of reality
for society's use, i.e. as guidelines for the manipulation of 'things' to
human purposes. In this context, scientific hypotheses are simply guesses
about the nature of things, yet to be thoroughly investigated, while
assertions are seemingly sufficiently bolstered by fact to serve as the
support for further hypotheses.

      My objection in all this, however, is how a sense of science in the
context of society is lost, i.e. the purpose of these hypothesis/assertion
steps, while the process runs wild, under no social guidance whatsoever,
(scientists taking off into their insular self-created reality like so
many players of Dungeons and Dragons) and eventually leading to cosmic
conclusions which might very well be highly socially destructive, not to
mention banal and groundless. This trend seems harmless enough, in a sense,
until you begin to realize how much cultural force these ideas come to
have -- because of the longing of everyone for a sense of cosmic place,
of understanding "what its all about". This is for real. And deny it as
much as he will, every physicist/cosmologist would like to feel he is
penetrating these matters for the communal mind. What is forgotten in this
quest for greatness, however, is the shoddy foundations -- and the poor
credentials -- science has for establishing itself as an authority in this
area. Running amok as they are, they are creating dismay and even despair
amoung those seeking enlightenment -- and finding Steven Weinberg.

>-- 
>-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
> OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor          


      John E. Snodgrass [snodgras@cyber.net]