Confabulation in the humanities
matthewlincoln.net
Confabulation in the humanities
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Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#2This is interesting and entertaining, but rather than a warning sign, it is just a good demonstration of the limits of our knowledge.
We should not be alarmed that we can only come up with post-facto explanations for the behavior of complex, chaotic systems such as human society, because that is a direct consequence of what they are: complex systems. In fact, we should be alarmed if the opposite were true, and by analyzing current trends, current data, we were able to predict future events. If that were true, then society would be no more than a simple system, completely predictable, whose complete dynamics could possibly be described some closed-form formula.
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#3Evolutionary psychology fits this paradigm.
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#4Evolutionary psychology fits this paradigm.
"You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#5Evolutionary psychology fits this paradigm.
"You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."
What's wrong with that, if it works and is correct? What's the point made there?
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."
What's wrong with that, if it works and is correct? What's the point made there?
The point was probably that this is not scientific. Whatever model you come up with won't really have any predictive power. See arguments against pseudo-science, e.g. Freud and Marxist theories.
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#7Not sure if the author is around here, but the style sheet on this seems to be broken on an iPad 2 in landscape mode. It seems to be right on the edge of a CSS breakpoint, and flips back and forth between two different layouts every time I scroll. Makes it very very hard to read...
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with that, if it works and is correct? What's the point made there?
The point was probably that this is not scientific. Whatever model you come up with won't really have any predictive power. See arguments against pseudo-science, e.g. Freud and Marxist theories.
In other words, if your theory can't help you recognize a wrong answer, it can't tell you when you've got the right one.
Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#9F.A. Hayek[0] wrote in great depth about this "confabulation" (which he termed Scientism), and, ironically enough, lectured about it directly in his Nobel Prize speech of 1974[1].
"It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world. This view, which is often quite naively accepted as required by scientific procedure, has some rather paradoxical consequences. We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information. And because the effects of these facts in any particular instance cannot be confirmed by quantitative evidence, they are simply disregarded by those sworn to admit only what they regard as scientific evidence: they thereupon happily proceed on the fiction that the factors which they can measure are the only ones that are relevant."
[0] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Hayek.html
[1] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/lau...
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Re: Confabulation in the humanities
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with that, if it works and is correct? What's the point made there?
The point was probably that this is not scientific. Whatever model you come up with won't really have any predictive power. See arguments against pseudo-science, e.g. Freud and Marxist theories.
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