So theorising is more about affiliation; less about relative explanatory potential and valid reasoning, and more about being bound together as a community by the interpretations of the theory produced by the community. And these interpretations serve as icons that the community can rally around and should celebrate.
David Rose replied on asflanet on 25 Mar 2024, at 14:31:
I don't believe those theoretical ideals can be excised from the embodied consciousness that produces them, as Edelman teaches us and you wrote about so brilliantly all those years ago, in terms of homeostasis. No matter how loftily we ideationalise our criteria for validity, it still comes down to feelings. Perhaps the loftier the criteria, the more feelings we invest.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be be clear, the false assumption here is that assessing the explanatory potential and validity of theories would require excising them from consciousness, whereas it is consciousness that interpersonally enacts the propositions of theory, and consciousness that interpersonally assesses them for explanatory potential and validity.
[2] To be clear, for Rose, choosing between theories, say, Newton's or Einstein's construal of gravity, comes down to feelings: which one the community feels happier with, without regard for explanatory potential or validity. This is analogous to a fundamentalist religious community preferring Creationism to Natural Selection because they feel happier with it. Again, see The Culture Of 'Faith' In The SFL Community at What Lies Beneath
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