3 ms·
The essay as a whole has several interesting moments. Though rehabilitations of Kuhn like this remain troubling: > In Kuhn’s view, reality is out there, but it
by brownbat 8y ago
The essay as a whole has several interesting moments. Though rehabilitations of Kuhn like this remain troubling:
> In Kuhn’s view, reality is out there, but it doesn’t speak our language. It remains forever alien, non-linguistic, regardless of how well we seem to describe its various parts.
"Reality is indescribable" becomes a bit of a liar's paradox. Why should anyone think the sentence is an accurate description of the world, if accurate descriptions of the world are in fact out of reach?
Of course, it's possible this essay is a sometimes insightful and sometimes poor critique of a separate critique, that in turn is sometimes insightful and sometimes poor, and in turn comments on a treatise that wavers between obvious and overgeneralized depictions of scientific discovery.
Nobody's perfect.
- olavk 8y ago> "Reality is indescribable" becomes a bit of a liar's paradox. There is a difference between an imperfect description and a lie. Kuhn does not say that all descriptions of the world are lies, or that "anything goes", although he have sometimes been misunderstood as saying that.
- brownbat 8y agoAh. That's not exactly what I meant by liar's paradox. I just meant it's a paradox of self reference. The liar's paradox is the most famous, but the set of all sets that do not contain themselves is another. So it's true the Kuhnian proposition is much closer to "Every claim about reality is (somewhat) inaccurate." But we still have a massive issue. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-reference/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/self-reference/ Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_paradoxes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Self-referential_pa...
- olavk 8y agoI don't see the paradox though. The problem with the liars paradox is not the self reference itself, the problem is that the self reference leads to a contradiction. I don't see any contradiction the sentence presenting Kuhn's view.