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Truth, Falsehood and Fiction
Manuel Alejandro Rodrguez Pardo
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Proem:
I have re-written this essay as an English language writing sample, to show you that
beyond the inherent easiness of my statement of purpose, I have sufficient command
of this language to deal with much more intricate topics in support of the wide range
of my future class contributions.
The present essay aims to show the failure of the inductive method to guarantee
objectivity and certainty, through critical analysis of Ayers verificacionsm and Poppers
falsifiability. We will attempt a solution which encompasses the relevant problems that
are the realism vs antirealism debate as well as its various dimensions. I feel obliged to
point that you are dealing with a philosophical creative work. It will include some
boldness, for which I apologize.
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The problem of induction
Human knowledge is supposed to be covered by scientific objectivity since Galileo and
Newtons works were popularized in the XVII century. Francis Bacon developed the
inductive method largely due to the influence of those works. A method that Augusto
Comte would be so prone to implement into his system, to progressively comprehend
the world regardless of any first or final causes. Metaphysics could distort the purity of
scientific observation which produces the laws of nature in the ultimate positive stage
of humanity in the XIX century. Soon acid critics to the inductions inconsistency arose,
even obviating the antagonism between positivism and the German hermeneutical
philosophy of Wilhem Dilthey or the romantic philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
David Hume, in mid XVIII century, reported the circularity of a method that requires of
itself in order to be justified. The use of induction to justify induction does not look like
an acceptable method; nonetheless Hume did not want to destroy Comtean positivism
especially its consequences aimed at saving us from metaphysics and allowing us to
advance. Hence he strives to save probability from the sinking induction.1
He lowers
the scientific certainty to probability but leaving everything else as it was before. The
hypostatic experience is allowed to generate theories which his mitigated skepticism
holds under close scrutiny. There are no absolute certainties, but metaphysics must
burn whilst the probabilities that science requires relies on the custom. That is Humes
line of thought. The neopositivism will then have to face the newer criticism against
probabilistic criteria. That criticism conveys that although the probability of a theory
1David Hume, Investigacin sobre el conocimiento humano, Alianza Editorial 1999, Seccin 6, pag 90.
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increases to the degree to which confirming events take place, one refuting event is
enough to nullify that previous probability. And hence it becomes evident that all
decisions taken under the guidance of that criterion were mistakes induced by a
contingent probability. That is why it is necessary to find new grounds to hold the
grand structure of science.
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Commit it then to the flames:
for it can contain nothing
but sophistry and illusion.
David Hume
Alfred Jules Ayer:
The British philosopher can be considered a high representative of the logical
neopositivism, especially in his main work Language, Truth and Logic where he
develops the milestone of his philosophy which is the verification principle. Ayer is
ready to give conclusive reasons to eradicate metaphysics, as were his predecessors in
the Vienna Circle. He claims that he could establish a sentence validity attending to the
criterion of significance, which consists on whether a sentence has content or it is
empty and has to be dismissed as nonsense.
Its convenient to point out here, that despite the fact that we are talking about the
verification principle, Ayers attention is now focused on significance rather than
the propositions truth or falseness. Notice the meaning reduction he performs: The
words and are just affirmative or negative signs on the
sentence.2
He develops this purification labor in the same line as Rudolf Carnap did some years
before in his article from 1932 The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical
2Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, CapV, pag 103.
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Analysis of Language.3 They configure a brief array of rules that any proposition must
fulfill in order to be meaningful. These rules are, of course, beyond metaphysics. And
the array is preceded by the old empirical principle which states that there is no
meaningful utterance unless it describes what could be experienced. According to this,
Bertrand Russell conveyed in 1912: Every proposition we can understand must be
entirely formed by constituents that we are already familiar with.4 Ayer shared some
ideas with the former philosophers, but he did not go into depth on his predecessors
ideas. He did, however, formulate a much more liberal criterion, with which to define
the limits of thought.
Before any definitive formulation, he argues from, not so normative postulates, and
under the same aim that: From empirical premises no over-empirical consequences
can be inferred.5 He considers it evident and immediately tries to guess the
metaphysical objection, the so called intellectual intuition.
But is it really self evident? He seems to forget the origin of some disciplines such as
Logic or Mathematics (the consensual formal sciences). They came from the operative
intelligence, from the empiricism, but they do not belong to it. They are in a particular
over-empirical place, which certainly does not mean their transcendence.
He keeps this question unstated until the fourth chapter.6
His solution is a statement
against Kant, he considers them analytical and tautological disciplines. Therefore, they
dont need to refer to any real phenomenon, but would reveal the relations within the
3Rudolf Carnap, berwindung der Metaphysik durch Logische Analyse derSprache in Erkenntnis,
vol. 2, 1932.4
Bertrand Russell, The problems of Philosophy 1912, pag 91. 5Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Cap. I, pag. 38.
6Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Cap IV, pag 82.
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rules with which we manage our symbols. Formal sciences are hence necessarily true
just because they cannot be the other way around. They are tautologies whose
predicate is included in the notion of the subject. The author of Language truth and
Logic may have considered that we are not facing an over-empirical subject, but an
under-empirical one attending to the evident distinction between these two planes.
Anyway, it is convenient to ask ourselves a question at this point. Are the analytical
structures (self referential ensembles of rules and its vocabulary) independent from
the synthetic structures that make the alleged reality of the experience? Or were these
analytical structures born steady and self-sufficient in an under-empirical, and scarce
in significance, world?
Other considerations may help us with these questions. Ayer is committed to the
phenomenal theory that understands the things like beams of accidents, in the way of
Berkeley or Scout in the XX century. The theory substitutes the theist reference to an
absolute which experiences the accidents, for the ensembles of properties formulated
by the Gestalt school of psychology: we can accept as an empirical fact that authentic
or organic ensembles (of properties) exist.7 Due to the Logic is merely tautological,8
Ayer is free to elude some relevant questions. Accidents for what? Properties of what?
These questions would require an analysis, respectful of the definitions of those terms.
Instead of asking those questions, he briefly refers to the Gestalt school, which brings
to mind the Latin proverb: Excusation non petita, accusation manifiesta (He who
excuses himself, accuses himself) due to the speculative origins of the school. Max
7
Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Cap. II, pag. 65.8Vase, que sobre los conjuntos de percepciones de la Gestalt, llega a decir que s algn mtodo
analtico la negara, esto mostrara que el mtodo es errneo.
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Wertheimer, Wolfgang Khler and Kurt Koffka founded the school upon the studies of the
apparent movement of the so called Phi phenomenon. They developed the laws with
which the perceptive experience tends to perceive forms. As we can see in its fundamental
principle the Prgnanz law (pregnancy) that establishes the perceptive experience
tendency to adopt the simplest form possible.9
Needless to say that these laws cannot be
the ground for a rigid objectualism, without the subject that the properties require, and
therefore without any metaphysical reference. They are not rigid laws or deterministic
laws but they still attempt a response to the question; properties of what?
Ayer allows himself to stand that, as we said, because he identifies philosophy with a
linguistic analysis, and the former is understood as an epiphenomenon of Logic. Which
just, to quote Ayer, can be useful to increase our knowledge about the sentences where
we refer to the material things, so we can translate sentences of a certain kind (factual
content sentences), although there is already a sense in which we understand such
sentences. 10 These considerations push us back to the analytical propositions we saw
before. Are they invariable per se? And, are they independent from the synthetic
structures?
Verification Principle
The rule with which Ayer determines the language significance is no other than the
verification principle. He proceeds as follows. Firstly, he notes that in his view, every
indicative sentence will be declarative in its linguistic use, and its sense will have to be
9
J. F. Brown, Sistemas de psicologa: fenomenologa, psicologa de la Gestalt, psicologa delindividuo, Paids, 1966.10
Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdady lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Cap. III, pag. 78.
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literal if the proposition that it conveys to is an analytical proposition, in the sense we
saw before, or empirically verifiable. Secondly he presents a new criterion of
significance in the first chapter of the book, but he will correct it in the introduction,
added fourteen years later. That circumstance makes the criteria notably difficult to
interpret, however it is still quite helpful.
In his first approach to the verification principle, the author distinguished between a
strong meaning, linked to the tradition, and a weaker version: A proposition can be
verified in the strong sense, when its truth can definitely be established through
experience, and verified in the weaker sense, when it is possible for the experience to
make it probable.11
As seen in its most general formulation from the introduction, the verification principle
stands that a phrase would be significant if it could be known by what observations the
phrase came (under certain conditions), to be taken as true or false. In a new twist to
encircle and thus fortify verifiability, Ayer added the use of "certain premises" to the
process. Now, a proposition would be verifiable (a genuine factual proposition), if we
can deduct from it one or more experiential propositions (real or potential
observations) along with other premises. Other premises cannot be deducted from
such a proposition exclusively. His eagerness to get as close as possible to a valid
principle for the actual use of scientific theories, this last definition, gives meaning to
any inductive proposition, which did not please him when he wrote the earlier
formulation in 1946. He introduces a restriction saying that premises have to be
verifiable or analytic. This would again avoid the danger of metaphysics, but making his
11Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Cap. I, pag. 41.
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significance lean towards the delimitation of analytics. We discussed the topic in
previous lines and we will find in the following lines new and interesting unresolved
issues which we will undertake to explain. The delimitations were not likely to satisfy
the author, because that correction to which we refer introduces a new reflection on
the analytics; more specifically, on the principle of verifiability in analytics:"While the
statements containing those terms do not seem to describe anything that anyone has
ever observed, a can be done, which would be able to transform them
into verifiable statements, and the statements that constitute the dictionary can be
considered as analytical.
So after all, the analytics can be verifiable because it is in a dictionary, which makes it
analytical. The arguments circularity and hence its invalidity is unavoidable. He
allocates every unsatisfactory statement under the analytical label and closes the file.
Are not we clear about the presence, in a dictionary, of terms such as: God ((From
lat. Dues) A Supreme Being who is considered by monotheistic religions, the world
maker) or Entelechy (Real thing which carries in itself the original cause of its action
and tends by itself to its own purpose)? Ayer insists and adds: I consider that the
characteristic feature of metaphysics, in the pejorative term of my understanding, is
not only that his statements do not describe anything that is susceptible, even in
principle to be observed, but also that there is no dictionary where such statements
could be changed into verifiable, directly or indirectly. 12 That is to say; the verifiability
of the analytic lies in its ability to be circumscribed by the dictionary, and that is
precisely what makes analytic the analytics, and also what makes metaphysics
12Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971, Introduccin 1946,
pag. 21
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unverifiable. If clarity is the philosophers politeness and the aim was not a display of
rhetoric. Would it not be better for Ayer to say: The dictionary shows analytic
declarations, which are never metaphysical and always verifiable, to conclude: my
arguments are, as I showed, none! Even though, I do not t think we should be too
worried about the lack of distinction between science and metaphysics that the
authors misdirection would imply, since he says in another chapter: A conclusion that
does not follow from its premises, is not sufficient to prove that it is false". However it
is enough to say that the conclusion has not been proven. We should not be worried
overall because he did not offer also a single argument, to link his lack of ability to
reject metaphysics from the plane of meaningful propositions, to his lack of distinction
between metaphysics and science.
With regard to the circularity of the revision from 1946 I will ignore it for what is to
come with the intention of stressing the most relevant flaw of his theory. Namely, all
reasoning, that leads the author to discard metaphysics, assume an excessively limited
consideration about analytical propositions. A range we will reconsider before dealing
with the verification principle.
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The illusion of the worlds illusory
could always accompany us
within the most real world of them all,
but the belief in the reality of the world
can accompany us
in the most illusory of all worlds.
Antonio Machado
Karl R. Popper:
Popper also does not agree with the induction to distinguish what is science from what
is not, since the inductive verification is limited to observations, it is unable to make
universalizations from the regularities detected. Science and metaphysics, under this
point of view have not been distinguished: "The reason is that the positivist concept
of" meaning "or "Sense" (or verifiability or inductive confirmability, etc.), is inadequate
to allow this demarcation, simply because it is not necessary that metaphysics would
be meaningless so it cannot be science."13
His arguments against inductivism do not
end there: "the principle of induction has to be a universal statement. So, if we try to
say that we know from experience that it is true, the same problems that led us to its
introduction just reappear. In order to justify induction we have to assume an
inductive principle of higher order, and so on. Therefore the attempt to ground the
inductive principle on the experience, inevitably leads to an infinite regress ()Kant
tried to escape from this difficulty admitting that inductive principle (which he called
13Karl R. Popper, Conjeturas y refutaciones, Paidos, 1994, pag. 309.
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"principle of universal causation") was " a priorivalid, but in my opinion, failed in his
ingenious attempt to give a priorijustification of synthetic statements ".14
The verification principle does not work because it is too intertwined with the
inductive method, so one has to find another demarcation criterion (to differentiate
between science and metaphysics). It is widely known that this criterion in Poppers
thought is falsifiability, although he calls it refutability in some texts: A system
should be considered scientific, only if it makes claims that may conflict with the
observations. And the way to test a system is, in fact, trying to create such conflicts,
namely, trying to refute it. Thus, testability is the same as rebuttal and can be taken as
well, therefore, as a criterion of demarcation.15
Falsifiability
This new criterion of demarcation allows him to delimitate scientific propositions from
pseudo-scientific propositions. Theorists must therefore pursue the falsity, to discover
the errors of the theory, and so create a flood of new information which again creates
new problems. As indeed what follows is also a problem: The theoretician who is
interested in the truth, must also be interested in falsehood. The discovery of a false
statement is equivalent to discovering that its negation is true. The presence here of
an analytic truth allegedly allows him to recognize the progress of scientific knowledge
through falsification.
14Karl R. Popper, La lgica de la investigacin cientfica, 1982, pag. 29.
15Karl R. Popper, Conjeturas y refutaciones, Paidos, 1994, pag. 312.
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Each successful falsification contributes to the construction of new theories capable of
repelling successive attempts of falsification. With this method, one should distinguish
between the convenience of coexisting and competing theories, and choose those that
show greater resistance to falsification. Another difficulty implied by falsifying a theory
is about the time when a theory becomes obsolete. Popper regards a theory as
falsified from the moment it is refuted, while for Kuhn a theory will only be discarded
when it coexists with another, citing Bacon, Truth will sooner come out from error
than from confusion.16 To be fair we should point out that Popper concluded through
dialogue with the American philosopher, thatthe theory (that replaces the coexisting
immediately falsified one), should succeed both in the area where the former was
successful, as in the area of the field where it was falsified. Despite having found a
truth in the logical sense within the falsifiabilistic structure, Popper agrees: "This
disposal system can give a true theory.But although it was true, this method cannot
establish its truth in any way, as the possible number of true theories remains infinite
at any time after any number of crucial tests." This statement diverts from the
inductive aspirations, which anticipated the result of natural phenomena from the
former ones. It also diverts from the risk of considering that former and present
conditions were completely evaluated, and they will intervene again as they did
before.
What we may ask next is how is it possible that without hope of getting any truth, yet
they speak of logical truths, objectivity and scientific progress? Where would it be
addressed? These questions force us to introduce his theory of the three worlds. "The
world is composed of at least three sub-antagonistic worlds: the first is the physical
16Francis Bacon, El avance del conocimiento, 1605.
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world or the physical states,the second is the mental world or the states of mind,the
third is the intelligible world or the ideas in the objective sense,the world of possible
objects of thought: the world of theories in themselves and their logical relationships,
arguments, issues and situations taken by themselves ".17
Thanks to his theory, the
objective world is not directly associated with the scientific world, which in turn is a
part of the subjective world (second world), but is the product of man but, not just
coming from his whims, it is an autonomous world. Although Popper, finally accepts
that the three worlds interact between them, the third being modifiable by culture,
not by men. Let me tentatively stress that the distinction made here between the
second and the third world, is comparable with the delimitation of analytic
propositions in Ayers main work.
But, if what has been said up to now is correct then we have to face the relevant issue
of, in what sense is the term truth as used by Popper throughout his work. He
applies the theoretical formulation of the term developed by Tarski: Arrive at a
definition of truth and falsehood simply by saying that a sentence is true if it is satisfied
by all objects, and false if otherwise (...) the semantic conception of truth does not give
us, so to speak, any choice among various non-equivalent definitions of this
concept.18Popper notes that this conception of truth is incorrect notwithstanding that
there may be others. He simply uses it knowing it is necessary to keep working on it,in
its complexity and diversity,but also enjoying the benefit of returning to the intuitive
notion of truth as adequacy to the facts, to the things. It is an objective and absolute
truth, which he overtly operates, while adopting the Kantian notion of the man
17
Karl R. Popper, La lgica de la investigacin cientfica, Tecnos, 1982, pag. 148. 18Alfred Tarski, La concepcin semntica de la verdad y los fundamentos de la semntica, Nueva
Visin, 1972., pp. 33-35.
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imposing laws on nature and not the other way round: "Our intellect does not get its
laws from nature () but it imposes them on nature a claim that needs to be
compatible with the assertion that calls for theories to speak of empirical reality to the
extent they impose limits.
I believe I have shown the enormous difficulties Popper faces to hold some reality
without truth, so then, with the intent to circumvent them, he coined his credibility
as an approach to the concept of truth. A notion that represents some measurement
of the approach of one theory against another, towards the truth.The inconsistencies
of this resource are recognized even by its author, unable to deny the possibility that
corroborated hypotheses are increasingly becoming less credible.There seems no way,
even in colossal Popperian construction for a realism founded in extrinsic truths.
The awareness of the unsolvable difficulties showed by the logical neopositivism (for
whose analysis we looked at Ayer as its exponent), does not make the Austrian-British
philosopher give up in his mission to preserve science and metaphysics distinction. His
criticism is destructive and contains no apparent constructive criticism. Although
building is more difficult than destroying, which is in fact the support (once
discovered), to his philosophy; the repeated attempt to destroy theories that grounds
likelihood. Likelihood (inconsistent if it has no direct relationship with the truth that
Popper denies),that emanates from the third world,from the analytical world (where
we detect a glimmer of hope placed by the author), in which lies the objectivity that
grounds the falsification that distinguishes science, from the mental speculative and
illusory phenomena.
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The Karl Popper's ontological realism is extremely paradoxical, since it claims that
reality exists and is unable to provide some objective truth, just a structure that we
generously call arguable. Where there is no more solidity to delimitate the thought,
thanthe scope of the analytics, or third world. Is this something new?
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To live is essentially,
and before anything else, a structure:
a dreadful structure
is better than none.
Jos de Ortega Y Gasset
Conclusion:
The strenuous efforts to overcome the failure of induction, preserving the traditional
role of science, have led us through different argumentative structures, which made
the theories an aggregate of the empirical experience, through the filter of analytics.
This tradition manifests itself as an implicit prejudice where the theories have a
secondary and derivative character (probably psychologically motivated by their
continuous variations). It is however a wrong bias that shifts the direction of our
discussion to barren regions.
The empirical experience, as it is well known, is to observe passively or actively
(intervening), the phenomena of the externality. This tradition, has invested the
observation (originally just watching) with a high status, as a pristine objectivity
reminiscent of the "blank slate". We found the opposition to the bias in 1958 in the
book "Patterns of discovery" where J. Hanson studying visual observation reveals that
the theory is always present and even prior to the stimulation. Hanson claims that
"scientists do not see the same thing," referring to Kepler and Galileo (notice that this
example encompasses much more than an allusion to the visual cortex), and studies
perceptual variations between subjects with different pre-theorizations of the
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phenomena, using series of figures characteristic of the psychological theory of
Gestalt. His thesis could be succinctly formulated in these words: "The vision is an
action that carries a theoretical load. The observation of X is shaped by prior
knowledge of X, " or in these other words: Knowledge is in the vision and it is not
something attached to it. "
Following Hansons examples, like the one of Kepler and Galieo, and the fact that the
laws of the composition of the Gestalt are not limited to the sense of sight, it does not
seem too risky to make a broad interpretation of Hanson's thesis, which encompasses
both the perceptions derived from the senses we might call direct (although they are
basically mediations) and the indirect from the use of technical instruments such as
telescopes or positron emission tomographies. In this sense the extended argument
would be: "We perceive the external firstly as mediated by theories." We hear the
words we expect to hear, select within the multiplicity of what we see through a
microscope based on what we know about its structure, and we move slowly and
creatively to a new speculation.
What (how could it be otherwise), brings us new challenges. When we track back the
chain of perceptions and theories then perceptions and so on, to reach the first
insights and guesses; in the early moments we have to guess the existence of some
proto-conjectures of the ancestral use. Conjectures that can be detected and traced, in
the well documented genetic intuitions or the prenatal patterns of recognition.
Once overcoming this bias, I would like to turn to other flaws in these theories that I
call traditional. They often intend to take account of the truth (of the reality of the
whole world), which incurs a difficult self-referentiality. Here we come finally to the
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referred question of the analytics and its treatment and delimitation. We can not
justify that a system that defines the Truth would be true. We can not violate the
second incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gdel which states: "No consistent system
can be used to prove itself".19
Although he is not the only one who recognizes this
need.Alfred Tarski in his theory of the mandatory separation between object language
and meta-language says: "No philosophical language used could have a self-reflexive
meaning," or Wittgenstein himself (the second) in his theory of the anti-theoretical
language game:"The language games are only understandable in certain contexts and
having a background of a certain lifestyle. Therefore there are no meanings
(propositions) related to all language games, since there is only a family resemblance
between them".This steady approach can be even found in the logical framework of
the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" of the early Wittgenstein, when it refers, in that
permanently cryptic and terse tone (sensu lato), to thearbitrariness of its notations.20
Therefore, we have the inability to close the analytic field, as it has been claimed,
because it requires the establishment of begging questions by way of lists of axioms.
Perhaps a prime example is the logical studies of Gotthard Gnther, which calls for a
three-valued logic, which was "strong and ductile enough to start to embrace the
complexity"and where the principle of the "tertium datur" by which a proposition may
be true or false, or something else that participates in both, would be accepted
(contrary to classical logic and its axioms). This new system of axioms was proposed
after trying to overcome the paradoxes of Church and Gdel's theorems, which in turn
Bertrand Russell considered. But this of course, is not the only possible example of
19
Kurt Gdel, 1931 Sobre proposiciones formalmente indecidibles de los Principia mathematica ysistemas afines, Teorema, 1980 y 2. edicin: 1981. 20
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus 3.342.
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different logics with question-begging flaws. In fact, other logics have been found in
different cultures as Jujjien Franois has shown for China, and as does the
"Tetragrammaton" the logic of Buddhism in India. Consequently, the eradication of
creative imagination or philosophical speculation, including the scope of analytical
propositions is a chimera. With no induction, verification, or falsification as a criterion
to explain reality, it seems we are obliged to give our consent to a dynamic view of the
world. Not a view in the way ofthe lie that Nietzsche defends:"only as an aesthetic
phenomenon is the existence of the world justified",21
but in the way of reasoned
fiction. Not as an interventive realism of entities such as Hackings,22 but an
interventive antirealism of theories as "the art of simulation," aesthetic and creative,
as an unrestrained sense of touch.
How can we distinguish under this assumption between observable and unobservable
entities?With regard, for example, to the widely argued electron phenomena, Ernst
Mach responded (when somebody came to ask him about the atoms),"Have you ever
seen any?" Despite the many differences between his neo-positivistic proposal and
ours, he also argued that atoms like everything else whether observable or
unobservable, are mental constructs of perceptions which are consistent in space and
time. He adds in another passage: "science can only reproduce or represent collections
of those elements we ordinarily call sensations. That is the connection of these
elements ". Here our positions diverge, because, as we have pursued through the
earlier pages, if there are sensations as well as properties and accidents, these will
have to be referred to something. As long as we deny solipsism (thus accepting the
21Nietzsche El nacimiento de la tragedia Alianza, 1998, pag 31.
22Ian Hacking, Representar e intervenir, Paidos, 1996.
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externality) for which we do not have enough space, and we do not jump out of our
creative ability, an issue equally verbose. A different question would be venturing to
say what the object of our ignorance is and what our elaborated fictions (such as
multiple and dynamic forces) are, beyond summarizing them in what has been called:
the being.
The noble aspirations of so many illustrious men of the last three centuries;
determinedto eliminate all kind of opinion from knowledge, as well as any speculative
imagination, in the pursuit of the ultimate epitome of that definitively proven and
objective science; they must face the nobler aspiration for adaptability, to which we
must lean.
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Bibliography:
Primary
-Alfred Jules Ayer, Lenguaje verdad y lgica Ediciones Martnez Roca, 1971.
-Kurt Gdel, Sobre proposiciones formalmente indecidibles de los Principia
mathematica y sistemas afines, Teorema, 1981.
-Ludovico Geymonat, Historia de la filosofa y de la ciencia,Crtica, 2006.
-Ian Hacking, Representar e intervenir, Paidos, 1996.
-David Hume, Investigacin sobre el conocimiento humano, Alianza Editorial 1999.
-Karl R. Popper, Conjeturas y refutaciones, Paidos, 1994.
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Secundary
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