From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 11 2002 - 11:36:29 MST
Eliezer wrote:
>
> What I object to is not the existence of science, Belldandy forbid,
> but rather the way in which science is sometimes mistaken for the
> substance of rationality.
What, in your opinion, is the substance of rationality? (not to detract from
your statement about science being only a subset of rationality, with which
I of course agree)
Reality has no a priori bias to produce
> truths which can be proven by the standards of science at any given
> point in history; it is even possible that there are certain kinds of
> truths which can be correctly deduced from confirmed theories, but
> which are not testable even in theory - i.e., observable aspects of
> our universe's very early history lead us to deduce the existence of
> causally separated regions of the universe. If so, the correct
> statement would be that these truths are rationally known, but not
> scientifically known - they would not meet the deliberately tougher
> requirements of proof that define the social process of science.
> Some people would say that such untestable extrapolations are
> irrational, untrue, or even nonsensical; and *that's* what I object
> to.
### Can you really know something you cannot, even in principle, test, aside
from "knowing" it as a piece of poetry?
Rafal
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