Greetings,
None of it was personal insult David, it was simply a correct appraisal of your
conduct and I note
that you don't even bother to address the points made or give some account of your
actions. Your
standards fall well below those acceptable and your failure even to register the
complaint properly
is a very good example of precisely that complaint.
Your appraisal of my position is (at last) correct but your refutation fails.
STRUAN
"the specific accusation that mainstream empiricists admit only to verifiability by
the biological
senses, is quite wrong". (Thank you for quoting correctly, it makes sense now).
is compatible with this:
QUOTED BY DAVID AS REFUTATION:
"An idea is empirical if it is derived ultimately from the five senses, to which
introspection is
sometimes added."
Although I would take issue with your dictionary definition, it clearly allows
introspection as part
of empiricism and so I will accept it, if only for the purpose of this reply.
Introspection is not a
biological sense therefore I am correct in my assertion. The simple fact is that I'm
not saying what
you think I'm saying. But wait, perhaps I simplify it too much in a bid not to be
misunderstood. I
know I'm going to regret this and am inviting a crass response like your last one, but
here we go
anyway.
Of vital importance here is David's statement that, "It's like saying that the blank
tablet itself
is a source of sense data rather than the receptor of that data." Firstly, sensations
are not the
data of perception. The data are neural signals of action potential from the
transducer senses and
so to claim veracity for either of the positions you describe is wrong, although the
latter is more
'wrong' than the former. The concept of 'sense-data' itself is flawed and almost all
philosophers,
and certainly all scientists in the field, have abandoned it for the reason given.
Indeed it is
David who is insisting upon, and delineating between, subject and object, while I, far
from
confusing them, am pointing out the complexity (simplicity!?) of the relationship
BETWEEN and WITHIN
an intertwined subject and object which, as I understand it, is very MoQ. David seems
to be pointing
towards a subject which receives sense data from an object and then makes up its mind
what it is
seeing, but this is far too simplistic. Just as physics is not ultimately concerned
with substance
(please leave the dictionary on the shelf David) but RELATIONS (ask a physicist what
an electron is
made of!!), so sensations cannot be thought of as some kind of, 'mind stuff."
Struan
------------------------------------------
Struan Hellier
< mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"All our best activities involve desires which are disciplined and
purified in the process."
(Iris Murdoch)
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
