I gave a bunch of concrete criticisms. For those reasons I think it's flawed as a practice and approach to discourse. What's there to be confused about?
Are you saying that global scepticism is wrong or indefensible? Or just that it is presupposition of the street Epistemologist's, and so that the problem is done kind of bias.
The second is closer to what I'm saying. SE makes a whole bunch of loaded assumptions about knowledge and method which are baked into the structure of the conversation but which the conversation is designed to avoid discussing. Hence what I say in the last two paragraphs.
In my experience, when laypeople use special pleading
What does this have to do with special pleading?
Thanks for bringing his work to my attention, looks very interesting.
According to https://streetepistemology.com/publications/street_epistemology_the_basics , street epistemology is a "conversational technique" which is intended to be "a more productive and positive alternative to debates and arguments." Street epistemologists assume a role similar to Socrates in Plato's dialogues, asking questions of his interlocutor to try to create a realisation of ignorance in them. The goal of street epistemology is to find incoherences in people's beliefs, and to convince them of the value of "scepticism."
A street epistemologist tries to remain calm and pleasant throughout the entire interaction, and to build rapport at the beginning in order to make their interlocutor comfortable with the exchange. After introductions and rapport are established,they can ask... (read 1829 more words →)
As best as I can tell, you're trying to get at the coordination problem between theory and reality. That problem is usually phrased this way: how do formal terms and parameters in a scientific theory refer to features of reality? By themselves, the terms and parameters are just abstract structures with no empirical content. So, how are they given empirical content?
You kind of stumble through a bunch of semi-related topics, though. What have you been reading, if you don't mind me asking? Here's what I (Master's in HPS) would consider the most important works on the topic to read and digest:
In what ways do they diverge, and why?
Hi folks, I'm the organiser. Very eager to get this reading group started. Any lurking Vancouverites who haven't become involved in the core community should feel very free to show up.
If a practice is flawed and fruitless, isn't that a reason to avoid it? That was the idea, anyway. What I said about it has to do with its structure and content, not with what I "dislike" about it.