No, CR/CF is consistent within itself as a matter of symbolic logic. It is successful at avoiding errors. But it is a category error as a matter of metaphysical reality. Volitional and non-volitional information are fundamentally different. Concept formation (including Darwin’s idea of natural selection itself) is a product of induction. Yes, induction can lead to errors. Yes, it is not perfect. But I acknowledge it, the abstraction from particulars into general truths, as the necessary mechanism for understanding.
I understand what CR/CF is arguing. It says that we need to solve problems and we solve problems by making guessing and testing them. Then, since we are fallible, the conjecture is regarded as refuted or not yet refuted (to use your improvement from Popper’s strong or weak explanations).
If we take swimming as an example, I would say that there is a bottom to the lake somewhere. CR/CF would say that it is irrelevant when swimming at your near the surface. What is important is swimming. You can improve your strokes and techniques and can get better without knowing where the bottom is. I would agree with this. But I would also say that there is a bottom somewhere that must exist in order make the concept of swimming possible as a lake without a bottom is an impossibility. CR/CF doesn’t care about this metaphysical necessity because it doesn’t help us improve our swimming technique.
I know this is a perhaps weird example but I hope that it shows that I understand the arguments. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I think we use our experience as the foundational starting point. Then we adapt from there. It starts with experience of particular things and ends up with more generalized truths.
I believe that trial and error is not a monolithic thing and the way Popper uses it equivocates the meaning. Biologically, variation and selection are achieved through mating or death before mating. Conceptually variation and selection is achieved through volition.
Knowledge must be known. And to know you must have a brain. Genes don’t know anything. They have information but not knowledge, I would claim.
What is the metaphysical necessity CR/CF doesn’t care about?
What happens in between? What is the method? Feel free to point to some literature you agree with.
The claim is that variation and selection are the fundamentals that make knowledge creation work. So any methods that implement variation and selection are fundamentally alike, even if the implementations have different details like volition vs mating.
CR doesn’t contradict that existence exists. But your issue is that CR doesn’t use it as an axiom to be the foundation of all other knowledge?
I guess you would point to IToE for abstraction, but do you have any details on induction?
I can only see that you pointed out differences in BE and EE. I don’t see where you showed how variation and selection can’t be the fundamentals of knowledge creation.
It starts with experience of particular things and ends up with more generalized truths.
AM:
What happens in between? What is the method? Feel free to point to some literature you agree with.
AT:
Abstraction. Induction.
AM:
I guess you would point to IToE for abstraction, but do you have any details on induction?
He already answered that negatively:
Given this context, I find a lot of the discussion afterwards strange because it e.g. treats “induction” like an established, meaningful concept, not a pre-hypothesis where someone has some sort of idea or lead but hasn’t yet formed it into a specific hypothesis.
I don’t think you do. My position is not that induction is imperfect or can lead to some errors.
I don’t remember reading “Volitional and non-volitional information are fundamentally different.” in Rand or Peikoff, and the concept of volitional information sounds to me (and Gemini) like a category error.
CR/CF doesn’t say that. I don’t know where that’s coming from. I cannot recognize it as coming from any Popper book or from my essays.