On 3 July 2014 04:46, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > That is no excuse! The technology at the time was good enough to > demonstrate that a heavy rock does not fall faster than a slightly lighter > rock, and Aristotle was supposed to be a master of logic and should have > realized from pure logic alone that contradictions followed from that idea. > And I must say I think this ancestor worship for the ancient Greeks is > downright unhealthy and the idea that they (or even some 18th century > philosopher) could help us solve today's cutting edge scientific mysteries > is just ridiculous. >
You have some good points, especially about the rocks. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we use Aristotle's ideas on physics (or Plato's ideas on philosopher kings) - as I understand it we use their names just as convenient shorthand for "primary materialism" and what I believe is called neutral monism. (As someone pointed out, Democritus might be a better person for the former in any case.) However, it *does* appear that a mindset introduced around the time of Aristotle is seen as the only answer to religious views - that to oppose the supernatural you can ONLY use primary materialism. At least that is the impression I have got from discussions with and reading things by many self-styled atheists, and it's certainly implicit in a lot of posts on this forum which say "such and such is obvious / common sense / etc" - what is "obvious" is always what we're calling primary materialism, and generally this is a view I would adhere to as the default common sense view of things myself (as for example when looking for problems with a DIY theory like tronnies or Edgar Owenism, I would certainly start by asking how it stacks up on a primary materialist front - and indeed these theories are both examples of the assumption that the world is only made of space-time and mass-energy). However this is a forum for discussing the possibility that the world isn't necessarily as common sense would dictate, with comp being the main contender for a relatively counter-intuitive view but several others floating around. So I think having convenient shorthands for various stances on these matters is a handy convention, which I would hope everyone who contributes to the forum recognises. (Although personally I'm still not sure who Plotinus was or what he had to say about these matters :( -- 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/d/optout.
