From: fudley (fuddley@fastmail.fm)
Date: Wed Nov 02 2005 - 23:29:19 MST
On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 "Olie Lamb" <olie@vaporate.com>
> my point is that the scientific method is not
> final measure of truth.
The only thing that would take priority is my direct experience of
physical sensation; if you hit me on the head with a hammer I don’t need
the scientific method to know that it hurts, but other than that the
scientific method is indeed the final measure of truth.
> The scientific method is a sub-branch of rationality,
> which is itself a sub branch of ways-of-looking-at-the-world.
Yes, there is the branch of looking at the world in ways that work and
there is the branch that does not work. If voodoo could predict how
variations in doll manufacture affected performance of the curse; if a
Fundamental Theorem Of Voodoo could determine the shape of the "needle
penetration of doll versus distress of victim" plot, then voodoo would
be as much a science as quantum mechanics. The important difference
between magic and science is not that one deals in chants, incantations
and crystal balls and the other deals in equations, computer code and
electron microscopes. The difference is that one works and the other
does not.
> The soul may be a load o crap, but just because you
> can't run physical tests for it doesn't make it so.
Just because?! Good god man, that means you can never disprove any of
those silly soul theories, if that’s not crap what the hell is?
>>> I have serious doubts about the continuity of
>>> Css across things like sleep. I'm pretty much
>>> undecided about whether there is an absolute
>>> "personal identity".
Me:
>>I believe the above contains absolutely no meaning;
>> you are just playing with words.
> I'm saying "I don't know". That has meaning!
You’re saying you don’t know if the statement is true or false. I’m
saying I know, I'm saying it is not true, I'm saying it is not false,
I'm saying it’s gibberish. I have a little gibberish detector that comes
in handy, especially in philosophy; first I assume the statement is true
and figure out what that would mean to the world, then I assume the
exact opposite to be true; if there is no difference in the resulting
world view then the statement has no content, in other words it is
gibberish.
> Romans and Greeks did damn fine jobs of
> building bridges without a zero.
Oh my God, I hadn’t thought of that! OK, you win, you’ve convinced me,
the Greeks knew how to make bridges so obviously the soul must exist.
John K Clark
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