humanities.philosophy.objectivism

In article 13g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>, davids@webmaster.com says...
> On Mar 28, 6:21 pm, Gordon Sollars wrote:
>
> > That is where an insistence on certainty gets you. For me, and
> > fortunately for science, all that knowledge requires is tested
> > unfalsified conjectures. Am I *certain* that the Sun is larger than the
> > Earth? Of course not. Do I *know* that the Sun is larger? Of course.
>
> I do not insist on certainty. I insist that scientific conclusions not
> be severed from the evidence that justifies considering them to be
> knowledge.

I remember that you saying this in an earlier post, but I don't see the
point. First of all, the only scientific "conclusions" are predictions
from theories that follow deductively from particular initial
conditions. The theories themselves are not conclusions, but
hypotheses. They are not "concluded" from evidence, but rather are
guessed and then tested.

Second, if by "justifies" you mean "tests", then we always have lots of
background knowledge at any point in time that theories may be tested
against. (Which knowledge is also conjectural and subject to revision.)
There is no concern that the two will be "severed", since the background
knowledge is routinely - indeed unavoidably - used in conjunction with
scientific theories.

If you mean something else by "justifies", then you are talking your eye
off the ball, which is truth. We want true statements. True statements
are always sufficient; justified statements may be false.

--
Gordon