- #36
metacristi
- 265
- 1
Hugo Holbling said:Thank you for telling me what I'm doing.
I do not understand what you are talking about here.You are talking from books but without really managing to build a coherent view from those chunks you mention so often.If we shift the accent from the problem of meaning toward the demarcation between science and pseudoscience by allowing even metaphysics inside science,where valuable as I've argued,my stance is absolutely viable.Ayer's principle was meant to eliminate metaphysics,which he failed to do,but the idea that only fruitful theoretical constructs are allowed within science is still viable and in fact all scientists use it widely.I do not think Quine supported the introduction of redundant constructs in science or preference for programmes which use redundant constructs.Why do you believe for example that the sentence 'God (a certain model) has created our universe' is not a part of science?Because for the moment is a redundant construct.No one says that a research programme having God as an extra axiom (the rest of assumptions being almost unchanged) is not viable,it is,but it cannot have primacy.The principle of sufficient reason is the base of rationality,also at the heart of the whole science.Otherwise even in our usual scientific quest we would be always entitled to introduce inside science constructs which have no role for the predictions the theory makes.For example if by using the usual inductive methods of agreement and so on we establish that the sufficient observed causes for a phenomenon Z are A,B,C there is no good reason to claim also that D is another cause which always appears in conjunction with A,B,C but we cannot observe it for the moment.When sufficient reasons will be produced then D will become also part of science,for the moment its introduction inside science is redundant.Likewise if from a set of assumptions let's say a,b,c,d,e,f ('a' being for example metaphysical,seemingly nontestable itself:strings for example it's hard to believe that we will ever be able to 'probe' at Planck's level) we deduce some predictions potentially testable g,h,i,j,k,l (some of them confirmed experimentally) but we observe that if we renounce at premise 'f' the predictions are the same then we are fully entitled to discard it till new evidence (be it in the form of a theory where it cannot be discarded) will force us to allow it inside science.Why do you insist to a different approach when dealing with the whole scientific programme vs alternative ones (containing redundant constructs)?Even creationists realized that they must prove that God hypothesis is fruitful within scientific theories in order to be entitled to claim epistemological primacy.
I said that 'a' could be metaphysical,it is part of science but there is no obligation for all scientists or would be rational people to believe in it's existence until we will have indirect or direct experimental confirmation.For example if I had lived around 1870 I would have certainly believed in the atomic hypothesis which even made predictions (it was able to accomomdate many observed phenomena in a wide area,previously thought as totally separated) but I would have not condemned physicists as Mach,Herz,Planck for not believing in the existence of atoms.The mistake was that the atomic hypothesis was marginalized when in fact it was theoretically and empirically progressive,even at that time more superior experimentally to the continuous hypothesis.
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