Nicholas,
I agree that this thread is wandering off topic, but I
intended every point I made in absolute seriousness.
The following summary is my last note on this thread:
1. There exists a reality that is independent of our
subjective experience or ways of thinking and talking.
2. What we call truth is determined by the correspondence
between our statements and that reality.
3. The testing of our statements is an iterative process:
gather evidence, form hypotheses, derive implications,
test consequences, and repeat.
4. Scientific methods differ from ordinary experience in
the care and discipline in carrying out the procedure
and in the sensitivity of the measuring instruments,
but there is a fundamental continuity from ordinary
experience to the most sophisticated science.
5. However, all our methods are fundamentally fallible:
there is no way of determining whether any particular
statement is true beyond the range of evidence on which
it has been tested.
6. Science is a social process, which is open ended in both
space and time. Many things we believe today will be
accepted indefinitely, but they will be refined, qualified,
and placed in more general frameworks as time goes on.
An example is Newtonian mechanics, which is just as true
as it ever was for macroscopic bodies at low speeds, but
which has been supplanted in extreme conditions by the
refinements of relativity and quantum mechanics.
7. The ultimate test of our conviction in any belief is our
willingness to bet our lives on its predictions. As I
mentioned in previous examples, there are many such beliefs,
which we depend on every day of our lives.
These seven points are a brief summary of C. S. Peirce's logic
of pragmatism -- or "pragmaticism", a term he later used to
distinguish his version from William James' watered-down version.
John Sowa
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