Editing 2855: Empiricism
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
| β | [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are discussing | + | {{incomplete|Will be created by a REJECTIONIST TABULA RASA - Please continue to expand and refine the explanation. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}} |
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| + | [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are discussing New Year's resolutions. Cueball says that his resolution for this year was to reject empiricism. Megan asks him how that worked out for him, to which Cueball gives a dismissive response. | ||
{{w|Empiricism}} is the practice of testing a hypothesis based on direct observation and testing. The joke is that, since Cueball succeeded in rejecting empiricism this year, he doesn't care or think about how it went, since doing so would be empirical. | {{w|Empiricism}} is the practice of testing a hypothesis based on direct observation and testing. The joke is that, since Cueball succeeded in rejecting empiricism this year, he doesn't care or think about how it went, since doing so would be empirical. | ||
| β | + | Randall's joke may not be as on-point as he had hoped. Cueball's response can be more accurately characterized as a rejection of empiricism alternatives such as constructivism and pragmatism. Constructivism suggests that knowledge is constructed by the individual through his or her interactions with the world. Pragmatists argue that the worth of a belief is determined by its success in practical application; if a concept works or has practical effects, it can be considered worthy. It would be fair to say that what Cueball is truly rejecting in his response is constructivism or pragmatism, not empiricism, which focuses more on experimentation and testing hypotheses. If Megan had asked, "Did that work out for you as well as you had expected?" then Cueball's response would have been more clearly a rejection of empiricism. This is just a technicality, though; Randall is probably using a more layman's definition of empiricism, which can reasonably be defined as the theory that any and all knowledge comes from sensory experience. | |
| β | In the title text, Cueball attributes past problems ("my problems started") to his future ("next year") resolution, which is to reject temporal causality. {{w|causality|Temporal causality}} is the principle in physics that the cause of an event always precedes the event. The joke is that his past/current problems are being caused by a future event, since his sense of causality is no longer time-based. This is Randall's second joke about causality in | + | In the title text, Cueball attributes past problems ("my problems started") to his future ("next year") resolution, which is to reject temporal causality. {{w|causality|Temporal causality}} is the principle in physics that the cause of an event always precedes the event. The joke is that his past/current problems are being caused by a future event, since his sense of causality is no longer time-based. This is Randall's second joke about causality in 3 weeks; a similar joke was published [[2848|7 comics prior]] to this one, in which a Breaker Box switch can turn off causality. It's unclear if either joke caused the other one. He-he-he! |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
