00:00:00.000 David, you have this concept of explanation, which is a normal sounding word, but you use it
00:00:07.420 to really probe not just the fundamental aspects of reality, but where humanity can go in
00:00:20.180 So I'd like to understand what you mean by explanation.
00:00:24.260 An explanation is a statement of what is there in reality, and how it works and why, basically.
00:00:34.200 But the important distinction is between a good explanation and a bad explanation because
00:00:40.400 explanations are too a penny, but good explanations are extremely hard to come by, and
00:00:46.240 this is what the growth of knowledge is actually about.
00:00:50.080 So a good explanation is one that is hard to vary while still explaining what it purports
00:01:03.920 Suppose you're watching a conjuring trick and you're trying to explain what's happening.
00:01:10.200 Now, a bad example of a bad explanation would be, well, it's actually magic, and the
00:01:17.480 reason that that's a bad explanation is that you could apply that same explanation to
00:01:22.000 absolutely anything, including to the conjuring trick happening a different way or to a
00:01:30.920 So those, those that claim about reality that it really is magic is not actually an explanation
00:01:40.920 Oh, yes, another example of a bad explanation just to show you that a bad explanation
00:01:51.280 It's just maybe completely inadequate is to say, well, the conjurer did something.
00:01:58.360 So that may be enlightening for a person who believes in magic to tell them that, in fact,
00:02:05.880 it was the conjurer that did it, but it doesn't explain the trick.
00:02:09.760 If we take a biology with the laws of physics and trying to explain things in a natural
00:02:17.640 world, we could say, what is the origin of species, what is the origin of adaptations
00:02:25.760 You could say, well, it's just caused by atoms.
00:02:27.800 Now, that's true enough, but it doesn't explain.
00:02:32.280 The explanation is Darwin's theory of evolution or rather the modern neo-d Darwinist theory
00:02:40.480 So you've now differentiated good explanations from bad explanations.
00:02:45.840 How does this supply, for example, explanations in science, normally have a reductionist
00:02:52.440 approach, which says that in order to explain what's on higher levels, like we're human
00:02:57.200 beings, you have to understand systematic organs and the organs, you have to understand
00:03:02.840 cellular structure and go cellular structure biochemistry and then physical chemistry and
00:03:06.920 down to physics and fundamental physics, and now you have a complete explanation.
00:03:15.440 It's historically understandable because the physical sciences, especially physics, were
00:03:22.600 the ones that developed fastest, and it so happens that the best explanations in physics
00:03:28.200 are have been, at any rate, from the ground up, from space and time, elementary particles,
00:03:35.920 And it's never been the case, even within physics, let alone in other sciences, that all
00:03:44.320 And in fact, my basic principle, if you like, that we should be looking for good explanations,
00:03:49.960 which I think is the foundation of scientific rationality, implies that we must not have
00:03:56.280 that prejudice, because if we do find an explanation that's on a higher level of emergence,
00:04:02.040 say, and we find a fundamental law at the higher level of emergence, and it's a good explanation
00:04:07.640 that it's simply irrational to reject it just because it doesn't have the form, which historically
00:04:13.040 we have been taught is the one we should pursue.
00:04:16.320 So by really understanding the deep power of explanation, you become more open to different
00:04:25.000 That is exactly right, and I think with deep explanations, it's nearly always the case
00:04:31.280 that when somebody finds a new and much deeper theory, it's not only a better explanation
00:04:39.320 that they've found, it's also a better mode of explanation.
00:04:43.480 So for example, in physics, Einstein's explanation of gravity, in terms of curved space
00:04:50.840 time, was not just a new explanation of gravity, that would have been something like
00:04:56.120 Newton's laws, but instead of an inverse square law, an inverse 2.03 or something,
00:05:01.600 law, it's not like that, it's a different kind of explanation.
00:05:06.520 It's saying that space and time aren't which in Newton's theory are immutable background
00:05:12.760 entities that aren't part of the theory, become, in Einstein's theory, dynamical objects
00:05:19.080 which buck and weave and explain all sorts of things apart from just the emotion of planets.
00:05:26.880 What I like about your approach to bad explanations is that they're not only false, but
00:05:33.200 they disturb your ability to even make progress or to find out what are good explanations.
00:05:38.480 Actually, that definition is what I call bad philosophy, so bad philosophy is a subset
00:05:47.320 Bad philosophy is false philosophy is not harmful.
00:05:53.680 In fact, error is the standard state of human knowledge that we can expect to find error
00:06:00.040 everywhere, including in the theories that we think that we most cherish as true.
00:06:05.920 But there has grown up, especially since the Enlightenment, ironically, since good explanations
00:06:12.920 have begun to take over, bad explanations have become worse, and bad philosophy has dominated
00:06:24.600 Bad philosophy is philosophy whose effect is to close off the growth of knowledge in
00:06:33.000 The kind of thing that says not just so and so is true when, in fact, it is false, but
00:06:39.520 you must think about so and so, or it's bad to investigate so and so.
00:06:47.240 Logical positivism is a prime example of a bad philosophy.
00:06:51.520 Which restricts your ability to even address questions as meaningless because it's not
00:06:56.280 either sense data or logic or something like that.
00:06:59.840 So it's saying that trying to understand what the physics is of unobserved objects is
00:07:10.280 Now that means really that it's trying to reduce us to an anthropocentric worldview
00:07:17.200 rather like the medieval worldview because it's saying that the only things that are worthy
00:07:27.520 But of course human experiences are themselves to be understood in terms of unexperienced
00:07:34.200 So the whole philosophy collapses and it in addition, it declares itself to be meaningless
00:07:41.600 because this distinction that it draws applies to itself as well and rules out positivism
00:07:55.360 The ones that are closest to my mind are the ones that have impinged on physics.
00:08:00.880 So the positivism, logical positivism was one example of that.
00:08:07.880 But when in recent times statistical analysis of experimental results has started to use terminology
00:08:24.560 that assumes that certain things will never be worth studying.
00:08:29.080 So for example, the very term explanation has come to mean a mathematical formula.
00:08:35.680 They say a mathematical formula explains the results.
00:08:40.120 But since the results are anthropocentric and they are not reality, they're just a tiny
00:08:45.560 sliver of reality through which we are trying to understand the unobserved reality.
00:08:50.680 This idea that a formula is an explanation prevents real explanations from being discovered.
00:09:02.400 So it's almost not just circular reasoning but it confines you within an area that you're
00:09:15.600 I think that all progress historically and today comes from the quest for good explanations.
00:09:23.160 That is explanations that are hard to vary without what while still accounting for what
00:09:31.840 This principle, one of the reasons I like this principle is that not only does it explain
00:09:39.920 what the criterion for success is in science where it leads to things like the principle
00:09:44.920 of testability of theories because a test constrains the explanation so that it's hard
00:09:52.680 But it also applies outside physics in philosophy, in epistemology, in metaphysics and so on.
00:10:01.080 The same thing applies and even beyond that in political philosophy, moral philosophy and
00:10:07.000 aesthetics, the same principle applies everywhere and draws a distinction between ideas
00:10:15.080 that have a chance of making progress and ideas that have no chance of making progress.
