Judging models

So basically I'm saying that answers can come from direct experience or through the understanding of models. I'm further claiming that direct experience is beyond justification and even perhaps communication, that the best one can do is create a model that leads its listener to the edge of the experience as Joyce's epiphanies, works of scripture or music do. You cannot share the experience itself. If this is the case, then everything that we know collectively is in terms of models.

I'm afraid that I may be accused of re-hashing Platonic idealism. I want to draw the distinction as clearly as possible. I am not saying that it may be possible for a given person to gain enlightenment, come up out of the cave, or what have you, and gain direct experience which they can then attempt to communicate to their less fortunate brethren. It seems likely to me that everybody has about the same level of direct experience as anyone else, and that far from being a path to enlightenment it often constitutes a tremendous barrier to understanding. My point, however, is not that one kind of answer is superior to the other, but that they operate in very different domains. As far as using models to propel answers based on direct experience, perhaps an example would help to clarify what I mean.

Take solipsism, Descartes old dilemma which he solved by appeal to God, I think therefore I am, but what if nothing else is? What if it's all a hallucination produced by my mind? (this differs from Descartes specific case, but works better for the example). I can prove to my own satisfaction that the world is external to my mind, because I have had the direct experience of genuine surprise: of recognizing that something in the world operated in a way that was contrary to how my mind would have ordered it. I therefore have knowledge of the independence of the world, but I cannot communicate this knowledge. I can only share the mechanism that I used to reach the knowledge (as I have above). If someone were to come to me and say that they had never been surprised in their life, I would have no power to transfer my knowledge.

So again, models are all we have to collectively learn. Further, models are how we typically function as individuals (though whether this is learned or inherent is more than I know). But models can say anything, they can say absurd things about the king of France or non-Euclidean space. Models are independent of reality. Have I stepped into Relativism by accepting as our only shared grounding a medium which is wholly independent of Truth? Do I need to reject the possibility of the existence of Truth because of this?

Actually, I think that the existence of direct experience is far more problematic for Truth than model-based understanding. After all, people frequently claim direct experience of radically different things. Where direct experience is concerned, either most people are liars, Truth plays favorites (and is therefore no universal Truth at all), or both. Model-based understanding actually saves Truth from this damnation because, unlike direct experience, we can share our models and build consensus. It turns out that building consensus doesn't primarily involve majority vote (which would be the case in a Relativistic cosmos), but judging the models against other models and finding the ones that fit together best. The convergence of this process is the best evidence of Truth of which I know.

We seem to judge models in two distinct ways. Again, I am at difficulties labeling them, but I will use "internal power" and "extensive power" to distinguish the two. "Internal power" in a model allows one to determine what will happen within the confines of that model's domain. "Extensive power" is the ability of a model to migrate to other domains. For example, Evolution is a model with extraordinary extensive power, but very limited internal power as currently understood.

An interesting case for the consideration of these attributes of models is the rise of the heliocentered model of the solar system. If you were to accidentally allude to a belief that the sun goes around the earth at a party, you would likely be laughed out of the room. Yet, the geocentered model is not only valid, but has so much internal power that it is still used by all of us (every time you say "what time will the sun come up"). However, while there is no fault in assuming the earth to be fixed and determining the motion of all heavenly bodies around it, and in fact such a model can be sufficiently codified to be useful to agrarian engineers (i.e. a Farmers Almanac), the heliocentered model (or rather the gravitational model that it prefigured) has as much Internal Power and adds huge Extensive Power. It is a superior model. Not more true, just more powerful.

No end of contention has arisen questioning whether various models are true or false. I think we would be better off considering them strictly in terms of their power. Models are never "true" (if they were, they wouldn't be models), and attempting to use relative comparisons (more true, less true) presupposes an access to Truth that we simply don't have.

However, the fact that models have predictive power at all (or more to the point, the fact that some models have greater power than others) seems to me powerful evidence of the existence of an absolute Truth by which models are indirectly judged.