[Corpora-List] ANC, FROWN, Fuzzy Logic

[John F. Sowa]

Nicholas,

I agree that this thread is wandering off topic, but I
intended every point I made in absolute seriousness.
The following summary is my last note on this thread:

  1. There exists a reality that is independent of our
     subjective experience or ways of thinking and talking.

  2. What we call truth is determined by the correspondence
     between our statements and that reality.

  3. The testing of our statements is an iterative process:
     gather evidence, form hypotheses, derive implications,
     test consequences, and repeat.

  4. Scientific methods differ from ordinary experience in
     the care and discipline in carrying out the procedure
     and in the sensitivity of the measuring instruments,
     but there is a fundamental continuity from ordinary
     experience to the most sophisticated science.

  5. However, all our methods are fundamentally fallible:
     there is no way of determining whether any particular
     statement is true beyond the range of evidence on which
     it has been tested.

  6. Science is a social process, which is open ended in both
     space and time.  Many things we believe today will be
     accepted indefinitely, but they will be refined, qualified,
     and placed in more general frameworks as time goes on.
     An example is Newtonian mechanics, which is just as true
     as it ever was for macroscopic bodies at low speeds, but
     which has been supplanted in extreme conditions by the
     refinements of relativity and quantum mechanics.

  7. The ultimate test of our conviction in any belief is our
     willingness to bet our lives on its predictions.  As I
     mentioned in previous examples, there are many such beliefs,
     which we depend on every day of our lives.

These seven points are a brief summary of C. S. Peirce's logic
of pragmatism -- or "pragmaticism", a term he later used to
distinguish his version from William James' watered-down version.

John Sowa