Peter McBURNEY wrote:
Surely a fundamental difference between scientific argument and legal argument is that the former concerns argument over beliefs, about what is true of the world, while the latter is argument over actions, about what to do in some situation. Any rational consideration about what to do should take into account the consequences of different alternative actions, and how these consequences are valued relatively to one another by the decision-maker(s). Science, on the other hand (or, at least our current western mythology of science) expressly ignores the consequence of beliefs when choosing between alternative beliefs:
The assertion that science only concerns about beliefs, not about actions, may be true for basic science, but not for applied science. Would you say that decision analysis or any of its branches (for instance, medical decision making) is not science?
science, famously, has no place for the scientist's opinions as to what he or she would like to be true.
I partially agree with you. The scientist's opinions, beliefs, and preferences often guide his/her research, in some cases for good, in other cases for bad. Certainly, a scientist must be able to abandone his/her prior beliefs when there is enough evidence, and this is usually the case, but there are also many examples in which even great scientists have refused new ideas even for their whole lives.
According to Feyerabend, this was the crux of the difference between Galileo and the RC Church, Galileo pursuing beliefs regardless of their wider consequences, with the Church considering the social and political consequences of alternative cosmologies to the then official one. The Church was behaving rationally, given its position as an actor in the world, in suppressing Galileo's new ideas.
I have not read Feyerabend's work, but I think that the Galileo affair had more to do with human conservatism (his theory contradicted several psychologic, "scientific", and theologic ideas deeply rooted in the people of his age) than with an analysis of long-term social and political consequences. In any case, I apologize for the off-topic, I would not like to start here a discussion about this subject.
Best regards, Javier Díez
----------------------------------------------------------------- Francisco Javier Diez Phone: (+34) 91.398.71.61 Dpto. Inteligencia Artificial Fax: (+34) 91.398.88.95 UNED. c/Juan del Rosal, 16 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 28040 Madrid. Spain http://www.ia.uned.es/~fjdiez _______________________________________________ uai mailing list uai@ENGR.ORST.EDU https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/uai
