Re: past/future in present
David Dirlam (ddirlam who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Tue, 2 Sep 1997 11:36:42 -0700 (PDT)
To anyone with knowledge about limits on prolepsis/imagination:
I keep thinking that keeping up with xmca is a luxury and the
thought keeps getting abruptly destroyed, this time by the Douglas/
Ekeblad/Vaz comments on time, which has generated a query related to
the problem that occupied much of my last summer.
The problem was how to differentiate between false and productive
paradigms in science. The false memories literature lists the necessary
ingredients as (1) social pressure to remember, (2) encouragement to use
imagination, and (3) discouragement from seeking corroborative evidence.
Our sciences have (1) social pressure to create answers and (2)
encouragement to create models. Whether we add the third ingredient was
Popper's problem, but the existence of computer models such as games of
"life" and many of the dynamic models I have seen have taken this problem
to a new level. Now, the models are becoming viewed as providing empirical
evidence in themselves. This seems to have taken what the journalists did
to Diana to a more abstract (and thus easier to miss) level. Maybe this
is not much different from what phrenology and introspection did. Those
movements brought world-wide attention to their proponents. Abusers
throughout history have turned images into excuses to inflict real abuse.
So now my query: Does our use of prolepsis doom us to repeatedly
fall for the temptation to treat imagination as if it is reality or is
Popper's hope possible -- can we or have we developed defenses against
reification?
David