Hi Struan, Horse, LilaQs,
I've been following this thread with interest.
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?
HORSE on 15th Jan:-
<<<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.
[snip]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
[snip]
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.
>>>
Well said Horse. If you include the scientists' 5 senses as "measuring
equipment", you have given an excellent classical definition of
empiricism.
On 10th Jan I wrote [Re: MD SUBJECT/OBJECT METAPHYSICS]:
<<<My understanding of Pirsig is
that he places intuition and inspiration completely within the realm of
empiricism by extending the realm of empiricism beyond the 5 senses.
>>>
By acknowledging the role of intellect in design and interpretation of
experiments, scientists go beyond classical empiricism. There is no
absolute meaning to be derived from an experiment - it's all contextual.
Furthermore, you can't even fully define the context, which is basically
Goedel's theorem.
Jonathan
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