Posted by Andy [65.123.82.177 - ] on 20 July 2002 at 06.05.44 ZuluTime:
In Reply to: Not really.... posted by Gremlin on 20 July 2002 at 05.34.27 ZuluTime:
The point is that we believe things are the way they are due to how well our methods have worked so far. Anything is up to scrutiny. I sit in my room and look at this monitor. This is evidence to me that I have a monitor. What if I have a mental disorder and hallucinate? What if's can go on forever as you probalby know. Yes, we can control hypotheses by testing and testing and testing them until the probability of their being correct is 99.99999999% but there's still an element of doubt. You have to ignore the element of doubt. You have to believe that your testing is complete.
There is a difference between blind belief and evidential belief. Those who believed the world to be the center of the universe are blind believers (don't get into the Bible saying this was true, because it doesn't). Those who believed the earth to be flat were blind too.
If you perform the evidence tests, you still are unable to completely be certain that something is true. Which undermines the scientific method. Things work as well as they do because they have built on top of prior ideas. This leads us to believe that we are doing well.