Re: Karl Popper/False positives...life story

[Dan Fiscus <***>]

Jerry,

These are good points you raise. Some replies to a few
of them:

Jerry Zhu wrote:

snip

> To Lyotard, scientific
> knowledge can only be legitimated by a more gernal
> kind of knowledge, that is narrative knowledge. 
>
>  
snip

> THe understanding of
> knowledge can only portrayed as plurality of smaller
> stories that function well within particular contexts
> they apply.  
>
> Tarski formulated a theory of truth as the assertion
> of described statement in an object language by a
> metalanguage.  In another word, truth can not be
> proved by the same language, it must correspond to
> actual afair of another language.  Therefore truth is
> not universal or abosolute, it is an assertion of a
> sentence in one language by sentences of another
> language.

Another kind of knowledge or story or narrative or
language that I think is important and can help us
decide in various groups and communities what is
true or useful is the story of life. Or the values of
life itself. So for example, we could judge or critique
or evaluate a statement or concept or model or
process or science as a whole based on whether or
not it helps us to live. I recommend thinking of this
in terms of 1) to aid life of a diverse group or
community, 2) in a specific local plus global location
or context and 3) into the indefinite future, i.e., very,
very long term or in an open-ended sense. Using
these criteria I come up with things (some discussed
in the field of sustainability) as true and useful for life
(of community, in real earth environments, into the
open future):

1. Use renewable energy
2. Recycle materials
3. Use coupled complementary processes (CCPs)
like life does, e.g., autotroph-heterotroph,
male-female, binocular vision, dual hemispheres
of brain, etc. types of CCPs to achieve points #1
and #2 above while also providing resilience,
redundancy, robustness and re/combinatorial
generation of novelty.

By these criteria, most science nowadays does not
help people to live, nor does it even help itself to live
on into the open future. Instead, by missing these
simple truths or values gleanable from observation
of life itself, they/we choose an evolutionary dead
end. If not alive, then what is science? Dead or a
machine I guess. Hmmm...

Dan