By way of introduction, I'm a professional scientist. And a brain scientist to boot. Being that I do this stuff for a living, I see first hand day in and day out how unobjective the process of validation really is.
Gosh... I find myself... skeptical.
When you start to follow this, and similar, sociological aspects of the scientific enterprise through to their logical conclusions, then you begin to see how imperfect the process is.
You don't seem to quite understand what post-modern means.
Pomos don't argue that scientists ask the questions that society pays them to ask (which strikes me as a deeply uncontroversial position); pomos argue that scientists find the results that society pays them to find.
A rather different kettle of fish, don't you think?
All knowledge stems from the brain
We do not know how the brain creates knowledge
Therefore we do not understand how we know anything.
How is this any different than Plato?
We've never known how the brain works. Now you, after many years of school and a fancy degree, don't know what I started out not knowing.
This is news, why?
You think you see something, but upon closer inspection, it becomes vapid.
Irony is my favorite flavor.
Look at matter. We used to think it was solid. Now we know its mostly empty.
And how has that observation changed anything?
For 250,000 years we thought of matter as solid. We used that model to evade being eaten by tigers. And you know what? Every single person that dodged a tiger is still right; the model they had is still adequate to dodge tigers.
Newton is still true.
That our understanding floats, like a cloud.
Sounds like somebody needs to be acquainted with the patented Yahzi Baseball Bat Test (TM).
Step 1. Obtain a baseball bat.
Step 2. Fix your mind firmly on the notion that you don't understand anything.
Step 3. Strike yourself forcefully in the head until step 2 is no longer possible.
Viola! Understanding!
Again, I challange everyone here to show me that the mind is not the center of all knowledge.
Step 1. Obtain a baseball bat...
And that, since we do not understand the mind, we do not understand knowledge.
Have you ever heard of Goedel's theorem?
Here's Yahzi's Theorem:
Goedel's Theorem shows that a formal system cannot prove every true statement in that system. But it is itself an extremely formal proof, thus ensuring that the kind of people who argue that formal proofs must prove everything are precisely the people who won't understand it.
