I am not following you. I simply said, in full, that "Materialism is the view that our understanding of the physical world is complete in all important respects." You appear to have a workable understanding of the sentence along with some strong opinions, we appear superficially to agree, but I am afraid that I miss your point.
I expected an explanation of why the sentence is not a valid criticism of materialism. With respect, Steven On Aug 18, 2011, at 1:32 PM, vony wrote: >> 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] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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]
