Quinean Narrative

So I was talking to a friend about causation and quantum physics (as you do), and got onto the topic of knowledge and the nature of reality and whether we can ever know the nature of reality and that of course we can't so what do we do instead. I reviewed my path through modern epistemology, up through Kant and the limits of pure reason, and finishing with my PhD supervisor, who belongs to a tradition in the philosophy of science that holds that scientific knowledge is all theory-laden, including the observations one takes as evidence for the truth of one's theories. That means you can never get objective evidence, from outside your theory, that would prove your theory is true.

My friend was saying that this perspective (or something similar that happens to him when he tries to imagine a world without causation) makes him angsty. But for me it's always filled me with exhilaration.

If one adopts this view of the theory-ladenness of perception and experience, and is post-Kantian about the limits of pure reason and all that, but then concludes that then there's no point thinking anything ever again if it's all going to be wrong, I could see how that could lead to angst, but there's another (exhilarating) alternative. Sure, everything is just a theory and you can't ever know for sure you have the right one, but that doesn't mean there aren't better and worse theories. One can make meaningful judgements based on theories' internal coherence, among other things. Or, one could take the pragmatist stance and judge a theory based on how it works for you when you try it on for a while.

And it only occurred to me just this morning while I was talking to my friend that one reason I'm perfectly comfortable with this is because I was an English major as well as being a Philosophy major. I learned the skills of analysing and evaluating literary works. Even though these works are fiction, some of them are better than others, I'd go so far as to say "more true". It only just occurred to me today that literary criticism is exactly the same as theoretic evaluation in the post-Quine-Kuhn ungrounded philosophy of science embraced and taught to me by my PhD supervisor.

And then this afternoon driving to the bank and then Subway in Neenah, past the white boxy restaurant with the bit neon sign that just says "Eat" on top (I must stop there for lunch instead one day), I was thinking about what this all means for human experience. Since you can't even have any perceptions at all without a theoretical framework, one that has to be created and maintained by you even as you're perceiving, then mere existence as a human being is one prolonged profoundly creative narrative act!

This thought made my red car look a little brighter and the summer trees look a little greener.