The failure of theory, and necessity of it.

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A theory is essentially an explanation for something that our five senses cannot (currently) explain.

Every theory requires a leap of faith type of thing, you have to believe that the principles governing the theory are logical and reasonable enough to make the theory make sense.

There is a bit of a leap of faith involved, but the fact is that I can't see an atom. Does that mean the atom isn't there? No. Does that mean that the atom might not be there? I suppose so, but there is more than enough proof for me to look outside my sense and say that indeed, atoms more than likely exist.

A theory is essentially an explanation for something that our five senses cannot (currently) explain. Every theory requires a leap of faith type of thing, you have to believe that the principles governing the theory are logical and reasonable enough to make the theory make sense. Plato himself said that true good is reaching beyond your five senses for the answer, he says that our senses confuse us and block us from being to truly understand things. So is the basis of a theory. There is a bit of a leap of faith involved, but the fact is that I can't see an atom. Does that mean the atom isn't there? No. Does that mean that the atom might not be there? I suppose so, but there is more than enough proof for me to look outside my sense and say that indeed, atoms more than likely exist.

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Sensory input is the only source of knowledge about the world we have. Theory is simply an amplifier of intuitive induction from our experience. Without sense data we know nothing.

ruveyn

Carry on using the models, but being aware that everything is "only" a model/theory may make it easier to change the models/accept changes to them ... and we may, perhaps, be able to benefit from/take advantage of the flexibility ( because of detachment ) that the understanding brings with it?

No other suggestions for the moment! :lol

Well, right, but even our sensory input represents theories about reality, at least theories on the best ways to model it to find what is needed. Optical illusions all give blaring messages to us that we aren't just directly perceiving things.

Also, pandabear, that is a very good quote.

How does it? I mean, when I see rain falling outside, I do not visualise the Newtonian model that would enable one to predict the velocity of the drop at a certain time, or indeed any other such model. So there is not only a (possible) distinction between reality and what we can sense, but also a very definite distinction between what we can sense and what scientific models we've come up with so far for predicting certain events.

Then you ask each to decide which two -- of a panda, a monkey and a banana -- go together. The Japanese man selects the monkey and the banana; the Brit, the panda and the monkey.

Like many scholars of human thought since at least Hume and Locke, today's cognitive psychologists tend to be "universalists," assuming that everyone perceives, thinks and reasons the same way.

"There has long been a widespread belief among philosophers and, later, cognitive scientists that thinking the world over is basically the same," says psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. Although there have always been dissenters, the prevailing wisdom held that a Masai hunter, a corporate raider and a milkmaid all see, remember, infer and think the same way.

But an ever-growing number of studies challenge this assumption. "Human cognition is not everywhere the same," concludes psychologist Richard E. Nisbett of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in his new book, "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently ... and Why." Instead, he says, "the characteristic thought processes of Asians and Westerners differ greatly."

The book compares people from East Asia (Korea, China and Japan) with Westerners (from Europe, the British commonwealth and North America).

AS THE MONKEY-PANDA example shows, Westerners typically see categories (animals) where Asians typically see relationships (monkeys eat bananas). Such differences in thinking can trip up business and political relationships.

The cognitive differences start with basic sensory perception. In one study, Michigan's Taka Masuda showed Japanese and American students pictures of aquariums containing one big fast-moving fish, several other finned swimmers, plants, rock and bubbles. What did the students recall? The Japanese spontaneously remembered 60% more background elements than did the Americans. They also referred twice as often to relationships involving background objects ("the little frog was above the pink rock").

The difference was even more striking when the participants were asked which, of 96 objects, had been in the scene. When the test object was shown in the context of its original surroundings, the Japanese did much better at remembering correctly whether they had seen it before. For the Americans, including the background was no help; they had never even seen it.

"Westerners and Asians literally see different worlds," says Prof. Nisbett. "Westerners pay attention to the focal object, while Asians attend more broadly -- to the overall surroundings and to the relations between the object and the field." These generalizations seem to hold even though Eastern and Western countries each represent many different cultures and traditions.

Because of their heightened perception of surroundings, East Asians attribute causality less to actors than to context.

How does it? I mean, when I see rain falling outside, I do not visualise the Newtonian model that would enable one to predict the velocity of the drop at a certain time, or indeed any other such model. So there is not only a (possible) distinction between reality and what we can sense, but also a very definite distinction between what we can sense and what scientific models we've come up with so far for predicting certain events.

I didn't say you did. The issue is that the mind is using theoretical constructs to conceptualize reality. You don't directly "see rain falling outside", but rather your mind structures the acquisition of information, and the processing of information to allow you to see the outside. If your brain was not applying models to your external world, it would be downright incomprehensible.

I don't think that the distinction is so definite, actually. The human body represents a lot of stored ideas about how things can work in reality. Science just makes the testing process faster.

ouinon's own citation is also relevant in this regard as well. There is a lot about what your brain is doing that you are not directly aware of. In fact, you aren't aware of most of what it is doing.

Now, it is continually true that in reality that it is complex, and it is continually true in our theories that they are parsimonious, and even further, it is continually true that we as theorists don't recognize how much we are theorizing and how our basic ideas are just theories and models that seem to work.

The issue is that regardless of what we think, we do not directly perceive reality, but rather that there is a huge gap for all sorts of unknown blind spots and perceptual illusions to occur. The problem is that because we do not recognize our theories, we fail to recognize when reality ends and theory begins. So, when our theories are false, it seems as if the distortion is not within ourselves but rather within reality itself. If a person loses faith, then it is a death of God, where the very essence of the world dies. If a person is suffering great mental strife, then the fabric of the world has become weird and distorted, ontology perverted, when it is just that the perceiver is having problems. When something contradicts a theory that we think is "just basic intuition" it is an impossibility until we come to find the insight of that theory ourselves.

The problem is that if we are caught in our theories, if we cannot see essences, then we are always trapped in our confusion. Lurching forward blindly, rather than as a matter of our deep insight. Knowledge is contingent. Every Platonism a historical occurrence, rather than an ahistorical reality. In such, we are lost. What does it mean to see the cracks in our own shallow faiths? What should we think when there is no thought that remedies the emptiness of our loss of theory? How is an ironist supposed to view the world? Is there anything of real import that isn't itself a theory, and itself not potentially false? And so, AG rants on.

Why conflate scientific models with how one's mind processes what one senses? I guess this just leads me back to my conviction that there is a pretty clear distinction between what one can sense and what scientific models tell us. The distinction, or at least a distinction, is that different people may sense objects in different ways (for example, maybe my conception of what the colour pink is is different from yours), but good scientific models account for many phenomena in such a way that their predictions can be independently shown to be reliable by any one competent and resourceful experimentalist.

How is this the case? I'm not sure I even understand what you mean, here.

Well, of course I'm not aware of a lot of what my brain does. Though I'm not sure how that or ouinon's citation clashes with my point: that there is a clear distinction between scientific models and what we sense. If anything, they help to strengthen that distinction between sense and science: it is significant that a scientific theory can be successfully verified by different people of differing cultural and genetic make-up, with a suitable level of competence and resourcefulness.

How does it? I mean, when I see rain falling outside, I do not visualise the Newtonian model that would enable one to predict the velocity of the drop at a certain time, or indeed any other such model. So there is not only a (possible) distinction between reality and what we can sense, but also a very definite distinction between what we can sense and what scientific models we've come up with so far for predicting certain events.