From: Josh Martin (martin.907@osu.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 08 2001 - 21:50:45 MST
> >> > Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> >> > > There might be
> >> > > certain kinds of truths, even the most important, which are
> inaccessible to
> >> > > scientific approaches, let alone to falsification tests.
>
> I should probably stress that I was *not* especially concerned with
> *religious* claims or experiences, although that was the context in which
> Eliezer's own claims arose. I was worried that a scientistic framework
> seemed to be advocated by Eliezer (and others), that is, a metaphysical
> framework which appeared to claim that truth is identifiable with
> falsifiable (a.k.a. publicly testable) knowledge. In its extreme
> form, this
> doctrine is logical positivism, a view in eclipse for some half a century
> after being beaten to a bloody pulp. Eliezer stated in response
> that he was
> *not* proposing such an equation, but then went on as if he were.
>
> Some people, of course, will say rather that `truth' is a term appropriate
> only to deductions from premises which themselves are simply
> asserted--although perhaps grounded in experience--which would make `true'
> isomorphic with `valid'. I find this, too, absurdly constricting.
>
> Damien Broderick
This is very interesting. What, in your opinion, does good epistomology
look like?
Josh Martin
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