The horror. The horror. How do we know what we know?
In your circles it might considered insane to evaluate the Iraq War relying largely on information from DoD, VOA, CSIS, and the major media. Not so in mine. That’s OK by me.
I have attempted to be a good sport, reciting basic material from sophomore college courses, referencing famous experts on the process of science, and giving fairly long explanations of my analytical process.
I see nothing comparable from most of you, in detail or length. Again, that's OK by me, since I am confident that you are all reasonable and knowledgeable people – and that your analytical processes are least as good as mine.
But there I believe there is no way to resolve this kind of debate about the nature of knowledge. At this rate soon we’ll be debating how can we know if we’re disembodied brains in jar, and exchanging lines of dialog from the Matrix movies.
All I asked was for comments or challenges to the facts or logic in my little article. The first question was about the uniforms of the Peshmerga (an unusual but interesting start), and have gone off into the blue sky from there (amidst some challenging and relevant exchanges along the way).
Topic drift is a fact of life on the internet. I’ve done this as much as anyone over the years. However, in my opinion, this is drifting a bit far a field.
I am catching a plane soon and will be off-line until next weekend. Best wishes to all of your for a good week!
Someone agrees with me on something, at last!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fabius Maximus
Probably not too many SWC discussions range to include Epistemology, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand.
One fun thing about this thread... if I said the "sun will rise tomorrow" someone would immediately deny it! In the spirit of the many micro-challenges to my little op-ed, I await with interest a list of SWC threads including "Epistemology, Aristotle, and Ayn Rand."
As for "There are some very intelligent people here", thank you for agreeing with what I just said. That is, perhaps, a first for this thread!
Lots of interesting comments here!
No time to deal with all of this now. Too much good material to look at here, and some requires a bit of thought. But this is too good to let pass ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
marct
Weber called an appeal to Traditional Authority, gets you absolutely nothing in an article when all you do is mention their names without invoking their arguments.
You say "appeal to authority" like it's a bad thing. OK, what's the length of the Nile River? No appeals to authority, please.
That's an extreme example, of course. But not that different from what I did when challenged on my statement that modern science is generally reductionist. I quote some authorities. The alt is to whip out a quick 200 page PhD thesis.
Nor was my comment exactly an appeal to authority. I said that this was the consensus opinion, but I specifically cited a major figure taking the opposite side of the debate.
Also, this does not seem to me a significant point to debate. Reductionish/holistic was introducted just to distinguish the approach of my "brief, hopefully provocative introduction” from Krepinevich’s overview.
concept of emergent properties of systems
Marct, thank you for introducing this concept to the discussion. It might have many applications to the military arts (that is for another thread, perhaps).
Its relevance here is to the discussion of reductionism. The use of reductionist methods to understand high-level properties of systems is perhaps one of the triumphs of modern science. To use the metaphor in GEB, it has proved most fruitful to study the behavior of ants to understand the intelligence of the anthill.
Consider evolution, “solved’ by the development of mendelian genetics and later biochemistry (DNA, etc).
Economics, where the grand insights of previous generations are being replaced by mathematical modeling of social systems using specific human behaviors. The schools unable to do this, such as the Austrians, have steadily lost influence in this discipline to those viewpoints that work well with reductionism (e.g., neo-Keynesians).
Psychology, where the extreme reductionists of sociobiology and neuroscience increasingly dominate the discussion – and some even deny the existence of high-level phenomena such as intelligence.
The pursuit of artificial intelligence also shows this trend. Until the last few decades the major thrust was directly modeling high-level activities. Now the focus is on tiny behavior. Sight, hearing, movement, speech, decision-making in small domains using a small set of data and rules (expert systems). The evolution of programs to play chess illustrates this trend. As we all know, there are always exceptions to any trend, such as neural networking in AI.
A historical note to illustrate the role of reductionism in this area. One milestone in the modern study of emergent properties was the John Horton Conway’s “game of life.” (Scientific American, October 1970). Only four rules, but capable of displaying highly complex and sophisticated behavior. Got many people thinking how reductionist methods might apply to their fields
That might not have been clear.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fabius Maximus
Marct, thank you for introducing this concept to the discussion. It might have many applications to the military arts (that is for another thread, perhaps).
What Marct might have had in mind when introducing this concept to the thread (just guessing) was that combat is a powerful instance of emergent behavior.
To over-simplify (am in a hurry), let’s contrast top-down and bottom-up perspectives.
Many factors encourage a top-down analysis in the military arts. The hierarchical command structure of most armies. The top-down perspective of space given by maps. The top-down view of time given by military history.
But combat outcomes result from bottoms-up activity. Such as the specifics of logistics and terrain. But most importantly, the behavior of soldiers as individuals.
The military professionals might learn from study of emergent behavior in theory and reality in other fields.
That is not a new insight, of course. Perhaps would be an interesting thread on SWC, if there is not already one. I for one would be interested in reading it (not competent to say much more about it, except after many brews).