Hi Struan 'n' All
On 14 Jan 99, at 12:22, Struan Hellier wrote:
> HORSE:
> I'm not sure I understand your distinction between scientific materialism
> and philosophical materialism. A scientist collates and interprets data in
> his own specific field. It is the case that there are things for which
> present science has no means of data collection but I don't think that any
> scientist would infer from this that there is nothing beyond his/her own
> measuring equipment. Or do I misunderstand?
It depends on which scientists you refer to. A scan through various science
magazines and books shows a range of opinions from different writers.
The form of Scientific materialism I refer to is similar to that referred to by
Jonathan in his post of Sun, 10 Jan 1999 17:01:24:
JONATHAN:
> The majority of us non-philosophy academics follow the SO approach without
> questioning its metaphysical basis.
and
JONATHAN:
> I take the point, but why concentrate on the "less popular", the
> philosophers version of materialism, when the more popular naive version
> is what dominates everyday thinking? Your "correct" materialism is
> virtually irrelevant.
The more popular or naive version of materialism to which Jonathan refers I
labelled, for the sake of convenience, Scientific Materialism and surrounded it with
quotes in my post of Tue, 12 Jan 1999 02:28:39 and the "less popular" or
"correct" version I refer to as Philosophical Materialism .
The point I was making in that post was that there is a perceived materialism
associated with science, which indicates that science only deals with the
physical aspects of the world, and there is the materialism associated with
philosophy which is of a different nature and generally more encompassing. This
is not to say that either interpretation is necessarily correct or accurate and it is
this aspect of how materialism relates to the MOQ that I think needs to be
clarified.
It may well be that few scientists "... would infer from this that there is nothing
beyond his/her own measuring equipment" but it is equally rare that this spills
over into a thesis or paper which will generally deal with the measurable and
quantifiable aspects of the world, although this attitude is gradually changing.
Horse
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