[MD] Faith/Skepticism

[Michael Poloukhine]

> dmb wrote:
> If you define "hunch" as an explanatory model that successfully handles
> all the known data into a coherent picture and successfully guides future
> investigations and experiments, then sure MP, I agree. In that case, a
> theory is just a hunch.

MP: I use the commonly accepted definitions of hunch: "a premonition or 
suspicion; guess; conjecture"

What you define above is more the definition of "theory" and then, specifically 
"scientific theory." Scientific theory takes a hunch and builds on it. The building 
is the theory part, the underlying foundation is the hunch.

Definitionally, though, the two are not the same. You can have hunch without 
theory, but not theory without hunch. Rhetorically, all the "successful handling of 
known data bla bla bla" simply makes the hunch more believable as a fact than 
a guess. But its *still* a hunch; just more believable as fact the longer it hangs 
around un-dis-proven. 

The problem with science (but by no means unique to it, religion has the exact 
same problem as I am sure you will attest) that the longer theory hangs around 
un-dis-proven the more static it becomes. The more static it becomes, the 
greater the DQ required to unseat it.

Hume, Locke, you know what they say about reason. Its all just a guess at 
what's going on; we can never consider anything "real", we can only consider it 
consistent. Reason as a means of understanding doesn't get us very far and so 
neither do scientific theories. They just make experience more predictable.




MP
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"Don't believe everything you think."