Prior to Popper

[oncelost]

you misunderstand, my point is that there is no QUALITATIVE difference, the only difference is amount of evidence and maybe types of evidence. Both memories of yesterday and ideas of what happened 10kya are formed in the same basic way, by investigating the evidence. the notion of a boundary is no more than a bad epistemological lead in to the false YECism distinction between origins and operational science.

And my point is that if you assert something that 1) you've never observed and 2) no one else has ever recorded being observed, then the assertion is of less QUALITY empirically.

 

[Deamiter]

And my point is that if you assert something that 1) you've never observed and 2) no one else has ever recorded being observed, then the assertion is of less QUALITY empirically.

That's fine, as long as you define "quality." I certainly find recent evidence to be more reliable.

Using the word "qualitatively" is not the same as saying "better quality" though. Qualitatively means a different category -- something that is not directly comparable. Nobody claims that recently recorded records are generally less or as reliable than older evidence, but there is absolutely no point at which you can say, "before this is history, after this is science." That WOULD be a qualitative difference, and it absolutely does not exist.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

And my point is that if you assert something that 1) you've never observed and 2) no one else has ever recorded being observed, then the assertion is of less QUALITY empirically.

you misunderstand, my point is that there is no QUALITATIVE difference, the only difference is amount of evidence and maybe types of evidence. Both memories of yesterday and ideas of what happened 10kya are formed in the same basic way, by investigating the evidence. the notion of a boundary is no more than a bad epistemological lead in to the false YECism distinction between origins and operational science.

And my point is that if you assert something that 1) you've never observed and 2) no one else has ever recorded being observed, then the assertion is of less QUALITY empirically.

Using the word "qualitatively" is not the same as saying "better quality" though. Qualitatively means a different category -- something that is not directly comparable. Nobody claims that recently recorded records are generally less or as reliable than older evidence, but there is absolutely no point at which you can say, "before this is history, after this is science." That WOULD be a qualitative difference, and it absolutely does not exist.

re: (1)
I certainly would not desire to make epistemological reliability revolve around my observations., that is the quickest route to solipsism. Why should my ability to observe or remember something be important to the overall human ability to gain knowledge from the created world?

re: (2)
by extension, why should the presence of human beings matter as to the reliability of knowledge? especially to a Christian, i believe it is from God that we gain the ability to have knowledge at all, being in His image and living in his world. why should something that happened before human beings existed and left tracks in the sand (both literally and as a metaphor) for us to read today be less reliable then tracks left yesterday or 10Kya?

i prize the intersubjectivity present in science, i would argue that God's creation and man in the image of God secure the basis of it's epistemology and that YECism's desire to drive this wedge between origins science and operational science via this elaborate epistemological QUALITATIVE distinction that somewhere in the past knowledge becomes distinctly unreliable simply because of it's age is nonsense and attacks the basic principles of knowledge and needs to be vigorously challenged. It ends up in a radical solipsism that in the ends denies the ability to know anything reliably about God's creation, and as a matter of fact, denies the ability to know anything in Scripture reliably as well.

 

[billwald]

One needs to differentiate between metaphysical belief and knowledge gained from experiment and observation. Metaphysical belief is generally absolute to the believer but it is not falsifiable thus not "scientific."

Scientific knowledge is always tentative and dependant upon scale.

History is a middle sort of information that becomes less sure as time passes. We know more about WW2 than about Joshua taking Jerico.

 

[busterdog]

One needs to differentiate between metaphysical belief and knowledge gained from experiment and observation. Metaphysical belief is generally absolute to the believer but it is not falsifiable thus not "scientific."

Scientific knowledge is always tentative and dependant upon scale.

History is a middle sort of information that becomes less sure as time passes. We know more about WW2 than about Joshua taking Jerico.

The modern sciences and technology, Heidegger claims, may try to conceal or deny their metaphysical origin, but they cannot dispense with it. In the wider sense of this term, metaphysics is thus, for him, any discipline which whether explicitly or not, provides an answer to the question of the being of beings.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm

 

[Deamiter]

http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/heidegge.htm

Gosh, there's a quote mine if I ever saw one. You can't have read the entire article, because you've taken this quote by a 20th century philosopher so far out of context, you're using it to say the opposite of what the philosopher intended!

Here's a larger portion for context:

Nevertheless, metaphysics as understood by the later Heidegger is not just the philosophy which asks the question of the being of beings and of their ground. At the end of philosophy, i.e. in our present age where there occurs the dissolution of philosophy into particular sciences, the sciences still speak of the being of what-is as a whole. The modern sciences and technology, Heidegger claims, may try to conceal or deny their metaphysical origin, but they cannot dispense with it. In the wider sense of this term, metaphysics is thus, for him, any discipline which whether explicitly or not, provides an answer to the question of the being of beings. In medieval times such a discipline was scholastic philosophy which defined beings as entia creatum and provided them with the ground in ens perfectissimum, God; today it is modern technology, which Heidegger mentions so often in his late works, by which the contemporary human being establishes himself in the word "by working on it in the manifold modes of making and shaping." In modern technology there speaks the today's claim of being. It masters and dominates beings in various ways.

(emphesis mine)

Note that he's first redefined metaphysics as whatever gives us a sense of being (or defines the "being of our beings"). As far as a quick review can tell, he's arguing that because our lives are dominated by technology, our lives are therefore defined by technology, and since what defines us is metaphysics (by his definition) technology, and by extension science is rooted in metaphysics.

It's standard philosophical gibberish, and certainly doesn't mean much in this context. mswilliamsll was contrasting belief with conclusions. That he used the phrase "metaphysical belief" has absolutely nothing to do with the point that Heidegger is trying to make in the quote you so roughly ripped out of this biographical page.

 

[oncelost]

Both memories of yesterday and ideas of what happened 10kya are formed in the same basic way, by investigating the evidence. the notion of a boundary is no more than a bad epistemological lead in to the false YECism distinction between origins and operational science.

Using the word "qualitatively" is not the same as saying "better quality" though. Qualitatively means a different category -- something that is not directly comparable. Nobody claims that recently recorded records are generally less or as reliable than older evidence, but there is absolutely no point at which you can say, "before this is history, after this is science." That WOULD be a qualitative difference, and it absolutely does not exist.

I don't think I'm saying "before this is history, after this is science." I'm just saying history is history and science is science. What happened in the past is history. Developing knowledge of how our world operates is the business of science.

How life came to exists in all of its forms is a matter of history. And, you seem to conceed that ideas of our history 10kya are generally less reliable than ideas of history yesterday.

re: (1)
I certainly would not desire to make epistemological reliability revolve around my observations.

Me either. Did I say that?

re: (2)
by extension, why should the presence of human beings matter as to the reliability of knowledge? especially to a Christian, i believe it is from God that we gain the ability to have knowledge at all, being in His image and living in his world. why should something that happened before human beings existed and left tracks in the sand (both literally and as a metaphor) for us to read today be less reliable then tracks left yesterday or 10Kya?

God is the source of all knowledge. The way, the truth, and the life. But, you just said, "Nobody claims that recently recorded records are generally less or as reliable than older evidence." So, our conclusions drawn from tracks left yesterday are generally more reliable than conclusions drawn from tracks left 10kya. God's word, however, is certainly more reliable than conclusions drawn from 10k y/o evidence. Perhaps you beg the question when you say "something happened before human beings existed." Perhaps humans existed contemporaneous with the evidence, and Adam's grandson passed the truth on to Noah, and that truth found its way to Moses and, thus, into Genesis.

 

[shernren]

And my point is that if you assert something that 1) you've never observed and 2) no one else has ever recorded being observed, then the assertion is of less QUALITY empirically.

Why does inserting a human observer into the chain of communication make empirical evidence more reliable? From everything I know it would make the evidence less reliable than if we had no human observer in the chain.

An accident occurs
-> photons reflecting off the cars enter an observer's eyes
-> observer's brain processes visual signals
-> observer's brain records memories
-> observer retells the accident
-> I hear observer's words
-> I reconstruct accident

vs.

An accident occurs
-> photons reflecting off cars hit digital camera's CCD
-> digital camera's electronic processing unit collects signals and forms image file
-> digital camera records image file onto memory card
-> digital camera displays image file on LCD screen
-> I see image
-> I reconstruct accident

Note first that all witness evidence still begins with physical evidence.

Also note that what goes on in the observer's brain (italicized) is unrepeatable, occasionally unreliable, and not well understood. Whereas what goes on in the digital camera's electronics is repeatable, reliable, and understood as a human design product.

Which is more reliable?