The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 79 - The Intricate Web of Paradigms and Perception

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Could our entire understanding of reality be nothing more than a house of cards, swayed and reshaped by our underlying beliefs and theories? As we embark on a captivating journey through the realms of scientific methodologies and paradigm shifts, we challenge the notion of objective reality by questioning whether evidence ever stands alone, untouched by pre-existing frameworks. Join us as we dissect the contrasting positivist and holistic worldviews, pondering the cosmic dance between evidence and belief. From the engineering feats of ancient Egyptians to the hypothetical communication barriers with alien species, we unravel how diverse perspectives can still lead to practical victories, questioning the existence of a singular, ultimate theory behind success.

In this episode, we draw from the philosophical musings of Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn to enrich our exploration of direct and indirect hypothesis confirmation. Witness the creative chaos of theory formation and the subjective elements interwoven with evidence interpretation. We shine a light on the concept of incommensurability, probing the challenges faced when individuals with starkly different background beliefs engage in dialogue. As we venture into this intricate landscape, our discussion navigates the hidden currents of human observation, seeking to expand our grasp on reality while acknowledging the inherent limitations of our scientific endeavors. Prepare to have your perspective flipped as we delve into these profound themes, leaving you with more questions than answers.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-centered cosmic civilization. And we are still deep down in the innards of scientific methodology. And where we've got to is we're trying to ask how can a worldview change so if the way we see the world is determined by our background beliefs? But yet people do learn to see the world in a totally different way and scientific paradigm shifts happen and new ways of seeing the whole world. But even just even in a on a small scale, data and observations are seen differently as things are discovered or as better to say, as hypotheses are changed, modified in the light of what is apparently seen, and so on. But how does that happen? How is it possible to confirm or reject our hypotheses and theories if the way we see the world is determined by those hypotheses and theories? How is it possible to realize that they are wrong and replace them with better ones? Well, let's think of two accounts of this, what we will call the positivist account and the holistic account. The positivist account I'll first of all summarize them, then we'll dig into them deeper, then we'll kind of critique those things. So, first of all, the positivist approach says we can see the world in a quote objective way quote, objective way we can see what is really there beyond our theories and hypotheses, and because we can do that. So although what we see is affected by our background beliefs, nevertheless kind of reality imposes itself upon us. Less kind of reality imposes itself upon us and what is really there shouts louder than our background beliefs and therefore we can kind of test our hypothesis, or like what a theory is made up of, usually like a whole range of hypotheses made up of, usually like a whole range of hypotheses. A theory is a way of viewing the world or a way of viewing part of the world, and that comes about because there's certain hypotheses saying we think this is true, this is true, this is true, this is true and this is true. And because we think all those things are true, that means we should look at the world this way, and that's what a theory is, a conclusion, a perspective, a viewpoint, and saying this is how we should view the world, because we think this, this, this, this and this are true. But how can you test those hypotheses? Well, the positivist would say, yeah, like the way we see the world is shaped by our background beliefs. But we can examine one of the hypotheses, for example, like a theory. It rests upon all, like several hypotheses. But we can look at one of those hypotheses, says the positivist, and examine whether the evidence supports that one. So it's saying, is the direct, obvious proof from evidence and observation that will validate this one hypothesis? And then we could do the same with another hypothesis, another one, and another one, until the whole theory is proved right or wrong.

Speaker 1:

The other view, what we'll call the holistic view, says no, we cannot see the world in an objective way like an impersonal way. See the world in an objective way like an impersonal way. We cannot see what's like quote really there we always see through the lenses of our theories, that's all. We can only ever see through the lenses of our theories. So we see through our theories and hypotheses. So we see through our theories and hypotheses. And that means that everything we say, everything we think we're seeing about the world, what they see and how they understand the world, is so different from each other that they actually cannot understand one another. And they experience the world in such a different way that literally there isn't even a way of having a proper conversation anymore. So like, let's take these, like the positive would say, if we meet aliens, klingons or centauri or people from other galaxies, actually, uh, if they're using the scientific method and we're using the scientific method, we ought to actually be able to communicate quite comfortably, because reality like is, you know, we'll all be basically seeing the same things and arriving at the same conclusions. But into the holistic approach it would be be no, we could the, the aliens from other galaxies may perceive the universe fantastically differently and there may be absolutely no basis for communication whatsoever, because they will see it all through their own theories and we'll see it through ours, and we can't, like, go hang on, let's get the correct one. There is no way to get a correct one because we're all seeing it through our theories.

Speaker 1:

And just as a little footnote to this, we might say but the right theory will be successful, successful, whereas the wrong theories will be unsuccessful. No that that doesn't work because of the, the way we see the world, can be very successful, but we like let me give an example the ancient egyptians, uh, seem to have viewed the world in a fantastically different way than really anyone in the modern world would do. I don't want to say anything too much about that now because that will distract us. But let's take it that whatever the Egyptians were up to, they thought of the world in an amazingly different way and saw the world and interpreted the world in an amazingly different way than, say, a post-enlightenment European. But the Egyptians were incredibly successful at engineering and agriculture, and architecture and so on. So they would say, we know our theory theories of the universe are correct, because look how successful, look how fantastically successful our engineering is, our agriculture is, our architecture is, is our agriculture is, our architecture is.

Speaker 1:

And we would say, no, like you're successful in spite of your theories. But then we go. But we, on the other hand, know that our theories are right because, look, we have mobile phones, we have computers, we have cars, we have planes, computers, we have cars, we have planes. But you see, the Egyptian might say, oh yeah, those things are right in spite of your theories. Because they, what if and I just put this out there what if the Egyptians had capacities to do things that we cannot do? You know, we might say, well, they cannot make a mobile phone, and they might say, no, we can't do that, but we can do this. And what if they did something that we cannot do? Would they be validated, as that is definitely the right view of the universe, because they can do things that we cannot do. So we have to just be a tiny bit careful in assuming that the success of our technology is a complete vindication of our theory.

Speaker 1:

Technology is technically quite separate, actually, from science. Like technology is about knowing how to do things. Science is a knowing things. It's an attempt to know, it's an attempt to see things better, understand them better. So you could have someone who's brilliant scientist but terribly bad at technical ability, and on the other hand, you can have people who are very, very good at doing things and producing results, but they may have very little understanding of how they're doing it. So that differentiation between technos and scientia is quite important.

Speaker 1:

So I say all that just simply to say it's not. There isn't a way of sort of cutting through all this by saying, ah, but look, we have x-ray machines or we have tube trains or we have people somehow always seem to think mobile phones are the ultimate proof that we have the right view of the universe. So let's say that then. The universe, so let's say that then. But it may be that we know how to produce results using silicon chips and things like that. But does that validate all the ways in which we see the universe? Well, it can't do. Or take ancient romans look how brilliant they were at roads and aqueducts and architecture and so many things. What? What does that validate all the uh theories of the universe? So we just need to be cautious.

Speaker 1:

There that sit that because again, people in the uh 18th century and there was some guy wasn there in the early 19th century who said everything that can be invented has been invented Because he was so amazed at the progress of scientific knowledge and inventions that he kind of believed we're done now, we've finished it, there's nothing more to discover, there's nothing more to invent. We look back on that 200 years later and we sort of laugh because we're like you had no idea how little you knew and how much more there was to invent. And then the temptation is to go. Mind you, we, on the other hand, we are quite close to the finish line. We are right to conclude that we have invented so much and know so much that we know that we're almost 100% right about everything. And again, could we imagine I just asked this could we imagine that there might be somebody in 200 years, 300 years, a thousand years or whatever. Who might laugh at us at the absurdity of our smallness of vision? So I put that out there as to say right, the positivist vision or the holistic vision, let's examine those more closely.

Speaker 1:

The positivist tradition argues, then, that it is possible to take all that's been said about background beliefs and still sift through background beliefs to determine which correspond to reality and which do not, to determine which correspond to reality and which do not. So there's a guy called Clark Glymore, and he proposed this kind of bootstrap strategy, and that's the idea. So he said, let me quote him. It's not a simple quotation that I'm going to give, but see if you can handle it. He says a hypothesis H is confirmed by using other hypotheses from the theory T, of which H is a part. So he's just saying there's a theory labeled T and that's made up of a series of hypotheses, and we want to test the truth of it, or we can confirm one of those hypotheses, h, by using other hypotheses that are part of the theory, to deduce instances of H from data obtained by established observational and experimental procedures. Now note that. So he's like saying that there are things that are established observational and experimental procedures. So, with the certain things we've worked out are true, correct, the right way of observing. So there are things that are established and on the basis of them we can test a hypothesis. Let me carry on with the quotation.

Speaker 1:

A hypothesis H is said to be directly confirmed by evidence E relative to T if instances of H are deduced from E and a set of auxiliary hypotheses of T. So then, this is the idea there's a theory and there's a bunch of hypotheses that support that theory. Here is some evidence, and if the evidence that can be used to examine one of the hypotheses, now, if that evidence is consistent with the theory and all the other hypotheses that support it, but that evidence is specifically relevant to just one of the hypotheses, that that will confirm the hypothesis that we're trying to test. A hypothesis H is said to be directly confirmed and notice, directly confirmed by evidence E relative to T if instances of H are deduced from E and a set of auxiliary hypotheses of T. An auxiliary hypothesis of T essential to the direct confirmation of H byE is indirectly confirmed relative to T. Ok, look, in other words, we may have a sophisticated theory composed of a variety of interconnected hypotheses, if the hypotheses are mutually supporting and one of the hypotheses is directly confirmed by a piece of evidence and notice, he believes it is possible to directly confirm a piece of evidence, and that's the thing that we're like.

Speaker 1:

Is it, though? Can you, what do you mean by directly confirmed? Like there's something that confirms the hypothesis in such a way that it requires no interpretation, no theorizing, no perspective. Is that possible? So he would say that if one of the hypotheses is directly confirmed by evidence, then we have indirect confirmation of the auxiliary hypotheses. Thus, the network of background beliefs relevant to the hypothesis confirmed by the evidence is indirectly confirmed. So let's just summarize that by the evidence is indirectly confirmed. So let's just summarise that we might say here's a hypothesis, and if evidence directly supports that one, and then that begins to confirm the supporting the other hypotheses that support the theory, and then we could get direct evidence for another one of the hypotheses and then for another one of the hypotheses, and then what we're doing is confirming each of the kind of legs on which the whole theory sits. But again, it's that word directly. It's that we've seen. Background belief is always present. Can we have direct confirmation?

Speaker 1:

Well, what's good about this theory is. It describes well the preference for a range of evidence that is common in scientific practice. So it's good to say it's not enough to just say this confirms the whole of this theory. Rather it's saying no, this piece of evidence confirms this bit of a theory, and we need lots of examples of evidence to confirm each of the little bits of a theory. So you can't just say this one bit of evidence confirms this huge theory. You have to have lots and lots and lots of different kinds of evidence and that builds up confidence in a theory. That's yeah, that's good, that's good practice.

Speaker 1:

But it doesn't remove the problem of contextual values Because you know, theories are not built up with directly confirmed hypotheses. Theories are created over time with a range of auxiliary hypotheses that are doing their best to account for the information, the observations, the data. It's a way of trying to account for it all. But the theory is I suppose Paul Feyerabend would say it's a creative process. Paul Feyerabend would say it's a creative process. So we can't rule out the influence of values or subjective preferences. We can't do that.

Speaker 1:

There isn't a way of getting to a kind of direct confirmation of a hypothesis and the auxiliary hypotheses may or may not be free of the contextual values that Gleimer wants, but it'd be impossible to discover whether something is free or not of background beliefs. You know how do we do that? We can only assess the truth of a hypothesis by consulting relevant evidence. But we've seen that we don't have access to evidence that is not part of a system of background beliefs. So let me quote here to maintain that there is a distinction between what is taken to be evidence and what is really evidence, is to suppose that there is some non-empirical way to discover the truth of falsity of background assumptions. Okay, now, all of that, in a way, is Paul Feyerabend's way of viewing this, and he goes to great lengths to kind of emphasize this fact that there isn't a way of directly confirming a hypothesis, because we are always viewing the world, interpreting the world, weighing the evidence on the basis of background beliefs, on the basis of theories that we hold prior to seeing the data, collecting evidence. So let's have a quote from him, paul Thireben. So let's have a quote from him, paul Thireben.

Speaker 1:

A prevalent tendency in philosophical discussions is to approach problems of knowledge subspecie eternitatis, as it were. So that is, it's as if we could see the truth of it from the perspective of eternity, as if we knew the perfect truthfulness of something. Paul goes on. Such a procedure makes sense only if we can assume that the elements of our knowledge, the theories, the observations, the principles of our arguments, it only makes sense if we thought that all those elements of our knowledge are timeless entities which share the same degree of perfection and are all equally accessible and are related to each other in a way that is independent of the events that produce them. So what he's trying to say is like, in reality, that produce them.

Speaker 1:

So what he's trying to say is like, in reality, we, our theories, come kind, we'll have a theory, or we'll say I wonder if the world is like this, or I think the world's like this, and then we see the world that way and collect evidence for that, and then we might test that and say, well, oh, hang on, does that work? No, it doesn't. But this seems to be another way, and we have observations, we have hypotheses and we have theories, and the ideal, the picture of science that the positivist in a way would have, is to say that we collect all the observations together, then we formulate hypotheses and only finally do we come up with a big theory, but he's saying that isn't what happens. We might begin with the theory. We might say I actually think the universe is like this, and then we might start viewing it that way. Then we might start collecting some hypotheses together.

Speaker 1:

But there isn't a sort of neat way in which first observation, then hypothesis, then theory, because even when we're collecting the evidence, we already have beliefs and theories and hypotheses that are driving the collection of the evidence, the observation of the data and so on. See, there isn't a way that we don't have a timeless, eternal set of data that just exists perfectly for us to, or a timeless, eternal set of hypotheses or theories or anything. All of it the observations, the hypotheses, the theories, all of it is constructed in messy, complicated ways and they may come in all sorts of different orders, like theories might come first, hypotheses might come first some observations, and they're all mixed up in when and how they happen. Okay, now let's just have another little think about that holistic tradition. That's the alternative, because here, do you remember, the idea is that it's the background beliefs that are the most important thing and they're driving it all, and and that, if you want to change the way like if if a person changes their background belief, then what they thought of as evidence changes also. So they might have used to say I think this is evidence for that, but then, if you view the world really differently, you might no longer say that observation is evidence for that. You might say oh, now that I see the world differently, that thing that I saw, my observation, my data I don't think that's evidence for this hypothesis anymore. Now I think it's evidence for something completely different.

Speaker 1:

See, the holistic tradition, then, is trying to say that the background beliefs are actually the most important thing in the way we observe and theorize. So here's a quotation If some state of affairs is evidence for a hypothesis only in light of background beliefs or assumptions, then changes in background beliefs will result in changes in evidential status. Thus it is not necessary to suppose that we must account for all cases of apparently conflicting theories supported by what seems to be the same body of evidence, by saying that terms in the two theories have different meanings. Rather, we can say that the relevant background beliefs have changed. So the point here is that people with totally different background beliefs can look at the same kind of data, the same observations and see them as evidence for very different hypotheses and theories and we don't need to say, for example, that one of those set of people are viewing it wrongly and one is viewing it correctly. We don't necessarily do that. We can say, given these background beliefs, that is how that person is going to see that evidence and draw these conclusions. But, given different background beliefs, this other person is going to see that evidence and draw these conclusions. But, given different background beliefs, this other person is going to see that evidence in a totally different way.

Speaker 1:

Now Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend both use this to argue for what is called incommensurability. Incommensurability is the idea that people who have incredibly different background beliefs, or very different background beliefs, can't even understand each other. And when they try to have a discussion to find out, to argue about or discuss which is the right view of the world, if their background beliefs are really distant from each other, they can't even have a discussion because everything they say belongs to a totally different kind of sphere of meaning. So each of them will be saying but can't you see this? And the other person says I can't see that, I can see this, or that means this, and the other person's like I don't understand what you're talking about. That means this and you can actually have a situation that what they call an incommensurable dialogue, where the different people literally just cannot understand one another anymore, that using terms in accordance with the rules of one theory make it impossible to construct and even to think of the concepts that arise when terms are used in accordance with the rules of the other theory. Now then, what does that mean then?

Speaker 1:

So what we've done in this time together is we've just dug down into the positivist approach and the holistic approach and just tried to appreciate the difficulty that the positivist is trying to say reality imposes and shouts louder than background beliefs, whereas the holistic person is saying no, the background beliefs are always going to shout loudest and you can't hear reality. You only ever really hear reality as it is filtered through our background beliefs. Positivists will say no, the reality can get past that and we can actually engage with reality in like, in a, in a, in a direct way. Now, what do we make of all that? And and the reason we're exploring all this is, again, remember we, we are because our game is.

Speaker 1:

What our goal is is to push into this truly cosmic appreciation of the heavens and the earth. That includes dimensions and aspects seen and unseen, a huge vision of reality that is very, very hard to capture in just the limits of human theories and hypotheses and observations. And so we're just trying to acclimatize ourselves to the one. We want to recognize the strength of this christian thing called the scientific method, but we're also trying to say but the, the uh, scale and grandeur, heights and depths of the christ-centered cosmic civilization is such that we should not settle for a particular theory of the universe that falls short of that huge cosmic, multidimensional, seen and unseen heaven and earth grandeur that is this cosmic civilization.