Clashing paradigms

Three possibilities for questioning Popperism seem to arise, and I think they leave the main issues unchanged.

This posting deals with the first, mentioned by Chris Lavers: there can be no comparison of completely different paradigms. As he relates it, it is a question of following everything back to its basic roots, and if the basis of two people's views are completely different, they can never come to terms sufficiently to have any meaningful dialogue.

In palaeontology things aren't that bad though; we can agree often enough that a tooth is a tooth, that something is from the Bathonian, etc. More than that, we can perhaps agree on the general principles of Popperism, or some variant of it, as well as evolution, and lots more besides.

(If things were so bad nothing could be meaningfully discussed, it would mean a descent into pure democracy or authoritarianism, but surely no-one thinks we're in danger of getting into that state.)

I'll risk some email graphics to illustrate a point or two about the significance of common ground in discussions:

Think of your entire belief structure as a simple genome:

|xxxxxxxxxx~~~~~~~~~~~............--------------xxxxxxxxxxxx|

The tildas, dots and dashes are your beliefs on vert. pal., the dots being a particular theory on bird evolution. The x's cover everything else you believe.

Here's my belief structure, and as you can see, we agree on everything except bird evolution and one other part of vert. pal.:

|xxxxxxxxxx===========,,,,,,,,,,,--------------xxxxxxxxxxxx|

When we discuss one particular topic, you hear me describe my commas, and you check them for clashes with parts of your belief system. That I believe is actually what usually happens, but it is only an approximation to what ought to be happening. You should be comparing my commas only against other parts of MY belief system. In other words, attempting to bring down an argument by identifying inconsistencies within itself is not just A way to argue, it is the ONLY way. It is valid to identify clashes between say my commas and your dashes only when they're my dashes too - in other words when the clash is also effectively entirely within my belief system.

This squares with the Popperian view that the only way to test a theory is by seeing if the theory itself predicts well, and not involving anybody else's theory in the judgement process. Of course, if a prediction involves a lunar eclipse, theories might still be involved if one of us believes it's one ball of rock or fire getting in the way of another, and the other person says it's a dragon swallowing the moon. Luckily, our genome illustration will still cover this since even if observations are taken to be an internal part of our belief system, we will be looking for clashes within our own beliefs. In the more straightforward example, when we all agree on the nature of the observation, we will be comparing one person's theory against some external entity everyone can agree on. But this will in effect still be the same thing as comparing my commas with the dashes we both share.

The problem Chis Lavers mentioned arises when my commas clash with your tildas. Since the clash is not within the same belief structure, nothing can be resolved - unless you set about convincing me that I should have tildas too, perhaps because the equals signs I have instead, clash with something else in MY belief system. Usually you will try to convince me my equals signs clash with something we both share, for example dashes. This is not necessary though and theoretically it is ok to argue two points in my theory clash with each other, neither of which are part of your theory. (This is quite an interesting sort of argument, but usually people start to get very confused at that point, and give up.)

As I say, the theoretical possibility of neither of us having enough beliefs in common to make discussion worthwhile probably doesn't apply.

Until someome tells me the name already given to the process of identifying clashes between two different belief structures, I will refer to it as "criticising a false hybrid". Anyone used to arguing from a minority viewpoint, eg evolutionists, or anti-cladists, will be familiar with it. Inevitably I can't think of a really good example offhand, but when one arises, as no doubt it soon will, I will pass it on. The reason it's always obvious to the person being asked to defend a false hybrid that something is wrong, is because he is being asked to defend something he doesn't believe. The reason it's nothing like as obvious to the other person is that when you're attacking someone else's theory, you usually feel you're dealing with a mix of your opponent's belief and your own, whether it's actually all part of your opponent's theory or not.




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