Magnus Berg (qmgb@bull.se)
Thu, 26 Mar 1998 04:59:38 +0100
Hi Struan
Struan Hellier wrote:
>
> No I'm not. A very odd conclusion. You are reducing the author to the
> argument. I am only too aware of the underlying assumtions of my beliefs but
> as I considered this to be a forum for argument rather than a personal ad I
> prefer to let the argument speak.
But your argument that the MoQ is emotivism means nothing to us since
emotivism (the doctrine that moral evaluations ultimately represent nothing
more than expressions of personal preference, attitude, or feeling) is
a philosophy near the S on the one-dimensional SOM scale.
On the other hand, you refer to logical positivism when you want to be
near the O on the SOM scale. The question is, how do you decide which
philosophy to apply to which problem?
> Are you joking here? Of course it is a philosophy. All investigation into
> the fundamental assumptions that govern our understandings is philosophy and
> if that doesn't include quantum mechanics then I don't know what does. How
> strange.
Yeah, we're a strange bunch. Are physics, chemistry and medicine philosophies
too?
> I have never said that it does mean bad. I simply point out that if you are
> going to be 'not rational' then it is bizarre to try and rationalise your
> irrationality. There is no value judgment here whatsoever. I love being
> irrational, but I obviously can't rationalise it. The whole concept of even
> attempting to do so is absurd.
You say "there's no value judgment here whatsoever". So you have obviously
not yet grasped what the MoQ is about which makes your arguments even less
worth.
> Yes I can see the problem if that is how you view rationality. I would
> suspect that to most people rational means 'based upon reason'. If we find
> that current theories are not based upon reason because we find new evidence
> that refutes them, then we reject them and formulate a new theory which
> conforms better to reason and so becomes more probable. In this way any good
> new theory is totally reasonable and entirely rational.
The keywords here are formulate and good. How do you know if a newly
formulated theory is good? You can't use the old theory, that was just
abandoned. And the new one is based on old theories and the new evidence.
But given the old theories and the new evidence there are an infinite
number of new theories that explains reality. It doesn't matter how many
experiments you perform to narrow the new theories down to a minimum.
There's still an infinite number of them. Which one do you choose?
There are no rational means to do it. Phaedrus discovered this in
the chemistry lab in ZMM. Take a look, it's much more fun to read than
my ramblings.
Magnus
-- "I'm so full of what is right, I can't see what is good" N. Peart - Rush-- post message - mailto:lilasqd@hkg.com unsubscribe/queries - mailto:diana@asiantravel.com homepage - http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4670
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