Hi Alberto First, the experimentation can not be done ever in every science. Not only cosmology and meteorology but also in human sciences it is almost impossible to perform a controlled experiments. Some economy laws, not to tell in other old discipliones like moral sciences and so on, many laws have a time span for verification that may range from years to generations, and apply to a great number of individuals. Others, like in the case of philosophy, study the world of the mind, not the phenomena. Logical positivist would say , and in fact say, that they are not sciences. The result is the unlearning of the empirical laws learned trough this greatest experiment of all, that is life across generations. This vital knowledge configure the common sense, bot innately in the form of instinctive intuitions as well as culturally, in the form of learned traditions, sometimes a mix of the two. Positivism and its last incarnation falsacionism presupposes an unlearning of anything still not tested. The consecuences are disastrous policies and ruined individual lifes. It is no surprise that this narrow criteria of truth is a sure path for social engineering and totalitarianism. In the other side, as Feyerabend said, there is no such thing as pure experimental data. To gather data you need a theory in the first place. there are no data devoid of any preconceived theory. That is not a marxist, nor relativist interpretantion of science but something simple to understand. That is easily verifiable if you think that to construct a method of measure, you often must make use of the very theory that you have to test. Galileo had the experimental data against him, because, nobody detected that earth was moving. He had to reinterpret the experimental data, in complicated ways to make it credible, while the geocentrism was locally a simpler theory of the terrestrial facts, the ones for which me most abundant data were available. Very nicely put. I agree that what was pernicious about Popper was the attempt to demarcate between what was and was not science and to recommend the imposition of a single method upon the whole endeavour. All the best. Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 07:09:54 -0700 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name?
> Free will doesn't seem to mean, in control of events. Free will doesn't seem to mean anything, not one damn thing; Free will means that your own will is relatively unopposed. When nothing is overtly coercing you 'against your will', then you are free to exercise your own will as you wish. In your imagination, your are relatively free to conjure up may more dreams and actions than you can ever actualize publicly. Your will is therefore more free within yourself than beyond the confines of your body. Free will doesn't have to be absolutely free, it just refers to whatever degree of freedom we are used to. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
