Might you say a few more words about the method you refer to?
sure. Its known as doubt.
I know that I may be asking a lot with the following so please ignore
it if inconvenient: about this "method": is there a body of work
based upon this method?
Yes. Science.
Is it at all falsifiable?
is anything?
What other practitioners have
there been?
Anyone who has thought, "hmmm. Maybe its just me!" or "Goodness! That cant
be right".
Think of Descartes. On the way down he employs his method. Doubt, born of
subjectivity. THis part of his journey is successful. Its when he abandones
it and tries to re-establish the 'objective' realm that things go wrong.
Chris. ;)
From: "Lee Corbin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "EverythingList" <[email protected]>
Subject: RE: subjective reality
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 06:31:22 -0700
Chris writes
> I admire Descartes as a man [I would have said scientist and
mathematician],
> not so much as a philosopher. I admire his method more than his results,
> he looked inwards.
He also did a tremendous amount of good work in science and math.
> Like Hume, Berkley , Locke and countless others. These people were the
> forefathers of science, not the resistance to it. Europe, having been
freed
> from the authority of dogma by commerce and free enterprise, these
people
> voiced a challenge that had been long suppressed.
Yes
> Brent wrote
>
> > I think you are attacking a straw man "realist".
>
> Im challenging comments and attitudes I saw on this board. Introspection
was
> deemed an archaic relic of pre 16th century superstition, when in fact
the
> cogito was the cornerstone of the enlightenment and has been important
ever
> since.
Interesting that you denigrate the guy's philosophy (so do I), but
then say this. Yes, he did contribute to the foundations of rationalism.
> Not just in substance but in method too. People might not be happy
> about 'souls' and worse 'soul stuff', but really Descartes participated
in
> putting thinking and rationalising back on the map.
Yes.
> I doubt very much for instance that there would be cognitive psychology
were
> it not for the work of Descartes filtered through Chomskian Linguistics.
Our
> conscious robot is a product of the idea that there are innate mental
> structures. Its the pattern and/or process computable function - that
has
> become important in philosophy of mind - even if its at the most basic
level
> of a stimulated neural nets, weighted sums et al. We have reached this
point
> because in a subjective sense we all experience these intractable
> processes first hand, like finding a word once lost at the tip of your
> tongue. How do we know about that? Because we experience it!
Yes, that's right. That's how we first knew something was going on
in humans. So far as I know, the best way to then investigate the
phenomenon is not through further introspection---however helpful
that may be in suggesting hypotheses---but by actual lab work in
psychology.
> Its the method thats worth saving, not the indivisible soul
languishing
> somewhere near the penal gland. Its not even whether souls provide a
good
> account of identity, its the method that Im defending, and the method
that
> I saw attacked. So far, Im still convinced Im right, which is very
rare.
Might you say a few more words about the method you refer to?
I know that I may be asking a lot with the following so please ignore
it if inconvenient: about this "method": is there a body of work
based upon this method? Is it at all falsifiable? (perhaps an
unfair question---I don't know.) What other practitioners have
there been?
Lee
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