gmsizemore2 at yahoo.com (Glen M. Sizemore) wrote in
news:6e2f1d09.0406190814.412512a1 at posting.google.com:
> GS: What you have just said IS the naïve philosophical view, and it is
> precisely what doesn't work. Progress is not the result of mindless
> application of some simplistic rules about testing hypotheses
It has been for 4000 years.
> B:[…]so in my mind, even if someone is experimenting on the brain
> with completely a whack hypothesis, the results shouldn't care what he
> thinks.
>> GS: Obviously, I disagree.
I can't see how it is possible to disagree with that statment. If I am
experimenting about the nature of gravity, and I hypothesis that things
always fall towards my feet, and I drop a rock, and it falls by my feet,
then of course, these results support my hypothesis, even though we now
know that hypothesis is wrong. It still doesn't detract from the result
that the rock feel towards the mass.
> B: Meanwhile, whether or not "goal cells" make any sense, or whether
> we
> should be talking about "goal arrays" or "goal recursive neuronal
> circuitry", if you find a correlation between two things (cell spiking
> and behavior) whether its causative or not, it is going to tell you
> something.
>> GS: Only once it is placed in some particular context. And it is
> likely that when it is done, the meaning of the fact will not be the
> same as the original mentalistic meaning.
Exactly.
