Re: Reasons and Persons

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Bruno Marchal writes:

> > In any case, it is telling that even Parfit's philosophical 
> > adversaries do not focus on lack of scientific plausibility as an 
> > argument against *philosophical* validity. For the most part, he could 
> > have made the same points had he been writing a century ago, drawing 
> > on religious mythology rather than science fiction for his thought 
> > experiments.
> >  
> > Perhaps a philosopher on the list could comment?
>
>
>
> Oops, sorry. But perhaps I am a philosopher too? After all Pythagoras 
> invented the term :)
> In any case I agree with you. Thought experiment on soul and identity, 
> including what happens in case of duplication appears already 
> implicitly in Plotinus, and explicitly in Augustine.
>
> Bruno

I feel I can intuitively recognise the difference between scientific statements and
philosophical statements, but I don't think I've done a good job articulating this
difference in recent posts. It's not just empirical versus theoretical, because I
would say maths is more like what physicists or chemists do than what
epistemologists or ethicists do, for example. Logic is an exception, claimed by
both philosophers and mathematicians, but I understand that even here there
is a difference in emphasis depending on the logician's background. Of course,
"philosophy" was a generic term for multiple scholarly fields not so long ago,
but I am talking about current usage. Can anyone pin down the distinction I'm
looking for?

Stathis Papaioannou

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