Rex Kerr
1 min readSep 28, 2022

--

Nativism is wrong (experimentally) in a naive formulation, as is "the 'blank slate' worldview" (experimentally).

Things are more complicated than that.

That's kind of what science does, you know. "Hey, I wonder if X is purely innate? Let's see if we can find cases of not-X? Let's see if we can induce it." A little later,"Huh, yep! I guess it's at most partly innate." Then: "Hey, I wonder if anything is possible? Then we shouldn't see, hm, Q." A little later: "Oh, but we do see Q."

I really don't see what you're arguing against.

Our best evidence is that everything is material, but some things are very complicated (we know this for certain) and even though there doesn't seem to be anything else going on (whose effects we can measure), we shouldn't expect to be able to understand it now. Maybe we will in the future, but also, we should keep our minds open for solid evidence that indicates an alternative view is superior.

That's the standard scientific approach.

You keep wanting to make that approach adopt rigid dogmas. And because people are people, and rigidity is simpler for us, sometimes people do. But the moment you start turning science into a religion, it isn't science any more. It's like a square circle--just can't do it*.

(* In dimensions greater than 1, in a Euclidean space with an L2 norm.)

--

--

Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

No responses yet