Ayla: Hi, Grampa. How are you today? 

Grampa: I'm good. You're looking a bit mischievous. What's up? 

Ayla: Guess who I brought over. 

Grampa: Cleopatra. 

A: Oh, be serious. No, it's ...ta dah ...Katy. Home from university for reading week. 

G:. Well, well. The grad student. Masters of Arts in History, isn't it? 

Katy: Hi, Grampa. Yes. History. I've had enough of Philosophy. I got fed up. But now you've infected Ayla with philosophiasis. You infect us all. 

G: You're right. Be a History teacher. Way less stressful. 

A: I was telling her on the way over here about your thoughts on thinking. 

G: Oh, oh. Now I'm in trouble. Well, sit down. I know those looks. 

K: I know what you think about what thinking is. I just wonder now how you would answer people like Descartes and Plato and their followers. 

G: They were decent men, I think. They just were mistaken. They tried to build up systems of illusions so they could go and hide in them. They didn't like the world as it really is. 

K: So for you ...they had nothing to say that is of any use to us now? 

G:. Not much, Katy. Descartes' ideas had a few good effects, Plato's had almost none, though he did give the world a way of discussing ideas that is still useful. You know. Socratic dialogue. 

K: But Plato's forms and Descartes' clear and distinct ideas are illusions? 

G: Yes. What Samuel Johnson called "chimerical". Fantasy creatures. Discussing them can be good mental exercise though. 

K: But the forms that Plato described and Descartes' distinct ideas are useless. To you. 

G: Pretty much. They're actually harmful, Katy. They lead people away from reality. 

K: I didn't care for Plato either, but I feel like you deep down hate him. 

G: Not hate. He's twenty-three centuries dead. Hate would be silly. But let me plunge in here by saying that my goal always is to get results. Ideas should steer people to actions that get good, life-affirming, long term results. 

K: And to you, that's what science is about, isn't it? I seem to recall that about some of our past talks. You want understandable ideas that yield reliable results over the long haul. I think that's how you used to put it. 

G: That's right. The word "science" is just a name for a way of living by observing and testing the things in material reality. And add in careful thinking before, during, and after the testing activities. And scientists also keep careful records and then they talk to each other about what they've been seeing in reality and how they think those events can be explained. They get an idea about how some process in reality works, they think of a way to do a test to see whether they're right, they record the results, then they check to see how well their idea can explain what they saw. Then, they talk to colleagues in their branch of science, refine their theories, and do more tests. Science is mostly testing and speculating and discussing. There are very few brilliant breakthrough moments. 

K: But Plato doesn't trust the physical world and its reams of details. He says they're never reliable, they keep changing and wavering around. 

G: Oh, I know. But he was wrong. We have a lot more data and a lot more theories about it than he did, remember. The world does keep changing in its reams of details, but we can watch and test and learn. Learn how the changes happen, I mean. And Plato's ideas get results in the real world too, when people try to live by them. The problem is that those results are nearly always bad. In the meantime, Science has some harsh things to say about men like Plato and Descartes. 

K: I think you're going too far there, Grampa. Most scientists don't discuss Philosophy, not even Philosophy of Science. They ignore Philosophy altogether. They think it's a waste of time. 

G: I'm not saying scientists have ever openly explained why they disagree with Plato. Or agree with him for that matter, because a few have. I'm only saying that we can use some ideas from some branches of Science -- Psychology, especially -- to inform our thoughts about Plato. 

A: Alright. Now we're getting somewhere. These ideas I want to hear. 

G: In Social Psychology, a couple of guys named Feistinger and Aronson put forward a concept of what they called "cognitive dissonance". It's just the unpleasant feeling we get inside when we catch ourselves trying to believe or speak up for two ideas that contradict each other. 

K: Like saying you believe in freedom of speech and then later saying you think some political leader should be banned from going online or publishing. 

G: Yes. Or saying that you think young people have to be allowed to live their own lives and learn from their own mistakes and then telling your teenage daughter that she can't go with her friends to the lake for the weekend. 

K. & A.: We know about that one. You're being mischievous, Grampa. 

G: Or saying you believe in the law and then paying your housekeeper in cash so she doesn't have to report those earnings to the tax department. 

K: But what does this concept of cognitive dissonance have to do with Plato? Or Descartes? 

G: They didn't like reality, Katy. So they invented an alternative way of dealing with their experiences in life, then gradually convinced themselves that their alternative was the real reality. That's what was really going on in their writings. 

K: Yipe! That's a pretty harsh condemnation. 

G: We don't gain anything by mincing words when we're talking about philosophies. You know that when you or any person catches herself in a contradiction, that's an unpleasant moment. No one likes feeling like a hypocrite. So we invent excuses for ourselves. We tell ourselves we have to make an exception for that housekeeper because she needs the money so badly. Or that some political leaders are so dangerous that they have to be silenced. 

K: So Plato and Descartes are just dreamers to you? 

G: Dreamers with big vocabularies and vivid imaginations. 

K: And even Kant then .... 

G: I'm afraid so. All these men imagined mysterious dimensions of perfect, unchanging entities because they weren't very good at life. The reward was that they and a few followers could comfort themselves. Read about Plato's trip to Syracuse or Descartes' dealings with Queen Christina in Sweden. These men did not like reality. They longed for security. When they couldn't find it in physical reality, they retreated into their heads and made up a secure world of their own. 

K: So to you, Plato's forms are pretty much the same as Tolkien's ents. Fantasy creatures. 

G: Good example. Yes. We can read Tolkien's novels and get some amusement from them for a while. Some readers get lost in Middle Earth for lifetimes. But there are no ents. Philosophy should give us something a bit more useful. Philosophers claim they're seeking the truth about life. The "rationalists", as they're called, are going the wrong way. 

K: So are you saying that even numbers and proofs in math and logic and computing science are just daydreams? Descartes ...even Kant ...these guys were pretty attached to their "pure intuitions" as Kant calls them. 

G: Math and geometry are useful, Katy. People invented them centuries ago so they could count things and tell other people about what they just counted. Deer in a clearing. Fruit trees in a ravine. And later how much land each farmer owned and how his land could be marked out so that even after a flood they could agree on where the fences between farms should be. 

A: Geometry was invented by farmers! That's so cool. 

G: Probably by men who were bosses over a lot of farmers, but yes, that's basically right. We invent ideas as naturally as we breathe. That's part of being human. But over the long haul, we only keep the ideas that turn out to be useful. 

K: But ...just to be clear ...there aren't really any pure forms or clear and distinct ideas or pure intuitions. 

G: No. It's very human to wish we had some such things, but in this reality -- where we have to live remember -- there aren't any such things. 

K: Then what are the laws of science? Just more wishful thinking? 

G: No. They're statements about ways of thinking that are useful. They help us to direct our actions so that we get results that keep us healthy, alive, and growing. But we don't ever want to get so attached to any of them that we can't imagine ways to update them when we discover new data. New ideas about science keep coming to people because humans have survived by thinking about what they see and trying out different ways of reacting to those things they see. Inventing theories of how reality works is as human as having forty-six chromosomes is. And most new ideas don't replace the reliable ones that we are already using to operate in this world. But once in a while, a new idea turns out to be more useful than any of the ones we already have, so we keep it. 

K: So scientific laws like ...say, Newton's law of gravity ...even they're not completely reliable?   

G: Perfect example, actually. For over two hundred years, scientists and most ordinary people thought that Newton's law of gravitation was a perfect example of a scientific law. 

K: Are you saying it's not?

G: Einstein's Theory of Relativity says it's not. Newton's law is a mathematical way of stating what happens when things are travelling at slow speeds. But it keeps getting less and less reliable the faster we go. 

K: Alright, now that I think about it, I had heard that. Light bends around really heavy things too, doesn't it? 

G: Yes. Things as heavy as stars, like our sun. 

K: So then how do we decide when a new scientific theory, a proposed law, is ready to replace an old one? 

G: We keep doing tests. Ones that test the old idea against the new one. And we talk to each other about what the tests are showing. Then we go with the theory or model that seems to be best for explaining what we're seeing and especially the one that can predict what is going to happen when we run more tests. 

K: So we always go with a new theory if it can predict experimental results. 

G: Smart people do. But that's only after they've gone over and over all of the experiments, old and new, and weighed them as carefully as they can. Most new theories fizzle out, you know. So be skeptical. You always go with what looks like the smartest gamble. 

A: That's because old ideas are like old guys. They get respect if they keep making sense. 

K: Oh, Ayla, don't encourage him! But seriously, Grampa. Are you saying life can be lived by this "smart gambling" system of yours? 

G: It's not my system. It's called "Bayesianism". And yes, it describes how human life, especially on the scale of whole societies, keeps moving forward. Sometimes individuals stay mired in the ideas that they find comforting, but whole societies can't afford that. They have to keep evolving. 





K: There are always some people who disagree bitterly with any change or new idea. 

G: I know. And they die out with their old idea or rather, it dies out with them. An obsolete idea dies out when a new idea outperforms it. 

K: And "outperforms", as you put it, means what? 

G: The new idea lets people who understand it and use it get better real world results, more often and faster. In farming, or medicine, or economics or whatever. Useful results. 

K: Useful to whom? 

G: People in general. 

K: Then the ultimate goal of all of our thinking is making human life more ...what? ...vigorous? 

G: It always has been, Katy. We're learning now that caring about other people and other living things is just smart practice, for our planet, but for ourselves too, in the long haul. 

K: I'm going to make a jump here. So "wise" and "kind" turn out to be the same thing in the end? 

G: I love how smart my grandchildren are. But, anyway, that remark would lead us into a whole other discussion if we let it. And I'm hungry. Do you two want some of Grampa's famous burritos?

A: And beer? 

G: Of course. They don't taste right with anything else. 

A: Now that is real love. 

G: Just don't tell your parents. 

A. & K.: Yes!