From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Wed Oct 27 2004 - 05:01:43 BST
Hi Erin,
It's true that you have direct access to your own experiences, but
not to the experiences of others. You know when you are thirsty, but
you can't be sure that someone else is thirsty just because they say
so. Rational empiricism does not claim that everything anyone SAYS
they've experienced must be true. People make mistakes; people are
deceived; people lie.
So, say, when someone tells you they've witnessed a resurrection,
this doesn't mean that it's possible to bring dead people back to
life, and a rational empiricist philosophy is by no means committed
to such an idea. The report of a resurrection does not constitute
empirical evidence of a resurrection. Rather, it might be a starting
point for further rational and empirical investigation, which would
include the real empirical evidence of of what happens to human
bodies after death, and the logical argument, supported by empirical
evidence, that its impossible to reactivate a human brain after the
brain has physically disintegrated.
Let me just leave it here for now, and see what you think.
Best,
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
--
InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors
Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983
Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com
"Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is
everything." -- Henri Poincare'
On 26 Oct 2004 at 18:20, Erin wrote:
Simon Magson <twix_570@hotmail.com> wrote:
ERIN: >You used the example of being thirsty and drinking (drinking
is
>observable, your being thirsty isn't
SM: Everybody knows when they are thirsty, it is completely
observable by
anyone.
ERIN: I would say everyone experiences thirst. It is not observable
though. For example, a young kid at a party is he drinking because
he is thirsty or from peer pressure, I don't know because I can not
observe his thirst.
SM: Philosophy should start with these simple observations and not
some
physiological theory resulting from a chain of deductions. Thirst,
like
hunger, pain, heavy, light, hard, soft are all present and immediate
in the
real world from which we develop our rhetoric and start
philosophising.
ERIN: again the difference one really is observable and the other is
reasoned about. It is a reasonable assumption that when somebody
drinks he it is because he is experiencing thirst. (but i still
think it is the drinking that is being observed not the thirst)
ERIN: >The actions that stem from values are observable but values
are not so
>don't feel comfortable with "value is empirical" statement.
SM: The lack of comfort you are describing is itself an empirical
value. It
seems you have been conditioned to perceive value in, and ascribe
existence
to, only that which you can see.
ERIN: The lack of comfort is when a definition is stretched so far
that it is being used in situations that isalmost theopposite of
the meaning and so the word loses all meaning. NO, I am not
conditioned to perceive value to only what I can see, I am
"conditioned" to using the dictionary meanings and applyingthe word
empirical to which is observable (not only see, but hear, touch,
taste, etc. JUST SO IT ISOBSERVABLE). I do experience values that
are not observable but ***I*** don't label them as "empirical",
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