> From: Steven Ericsson-Zenith > Dear Drake, > > You said: > > I repeat, to my mind the assertion is absurd, and it plays no part > > whatsoever in how I understand the doctrine of "materialism". > > > This was not clear to me before from what you have said. Perhaps you can > explain why. >
Steven, I've explained, but you snipped past that. Putting my explanation another way, the sentence "our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important respects" has a caveat, "in all important respects", which makes it virtually unfalsifiable since (1) "all important respects" is indefinite and hence subjective, yet (2) the understanding the sentence purports to speak of is "scientific understanding". If we eliminate that caveat, the sentence becomes false - since our understanding of the physical world deepens and broadens every day. However, unlike unfalsifiable hypotheses which posit the existence of an invisible, unknowable, omniscient, ... God, which given that context I wouldn't call "absurd", this hypothesis doesn't purport to be religious. Since it purports to somehow be explanatory of our understanding of science or the state of scientific theory when in fact there's nothing whatsoever scientific or empirical about it, I categorize it as being simply absurd. Drake --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to [email protected] with the line "SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L" in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to [email protected]
