Intelligibility and he Birth of Paradigm
"Paradigm" is a word that refers to the grand unifying ideas that underpin our understanding of a phenomenon - perhaps all phenomena. Paradigms shift slowly as the old "believers" die and a new generation is open to new ways of thinking.
"Understanding" in this case is mostly about language: about how we talk to each other. If two people subscribe to the same paradigm what they say to each other is intelligible - it "makes sense". Challenges to the paradigm always come in the form of impertinent questions. Why impertinent? Because the question comes out of left field. It makes no sense.
A successful challenge to the paradigm expands and revises language itself, so that it becomes possible to speak in new ways that "make sense". In the new paradigm, the old language is no longer intelligible. For example, we don't expect to see references to "phlogiston" or the "luminous aether" in modern scientific journals because "we" no longer speak of fire as a substance and no longer think electromagnetic waves are waves in a substance.
Accordingly, we entertain a few "impertinent questions" in this blog, recognizing that, to many readers, such questions "make no sense". The challenge is not simply to convince the reader of a proposition that makes sense but doesn't seem "true", but to drag the reader into a new way of thinking and speaking. Extending language.
"Understanding" in this case is mostly about language: about how we talk to each other. If two people subscribe to the same paradigm what they say to each other is intelligible - it "makes sense". Challenges to the paradigm always come in the form of impertinent questions. Why impertinent? Because the question comes out of left field. It makes no sense.
A successful challenge to the paradigm expands and revises language itself, so that it becomes possible to speak in new ways that "make sense". In the new paradigm, the old language is no longer intelligible. For example, we don't expect to see references to "phlogiston" or the "luminous aether" in modern scientific journals because "we" no longer speak of fire as a substance and no longer think electromagnetic waves are waves in a substance.
Accordingly, we entertain a few "impertinent questions" in this blog, recognizing that, to many readers, such questions "make no sense". The challenge is not simply to convince the reader of a proposition that makes sense but doesn't seem "true", but to drag the reader into a new way of thinking and speaking. Extending language.
- One of the core questions asked in my blogs is "Assuming you need a brain to have a mind, is that all you need?" This challenges two paradigms - the religious claim that the "soul" is independent of the body and the skeptical one that claims that mind is an epiphenomenon of physical brain activity. For most readers, it's hard to imagine what a third alternative would look like.
- Another impertinent question asks if there is any reason to suspect that money measures value. The entire discipline of economics assumes that value is somehow measurable and that the best measure is money. I equate economics with astrology - a "science" based on fundamentally wrong assumptions about the way the world works. It's just a way for "economists" to talk to each other with words that they all agree "make sense". It's a paradigm.
Comments
Post a Comment