homunculus
September 8, 2003, 10:13 AM
Hello Board,
I'm new here, check my profile for some info about me. Saw a thread on materialism elsewhere, and ended up writing this by way of introduction. Not sure what thread my contribution should go in, really, but it seems to relate to the question of wether there are any gods (or an invisible world of "supernatural" forces)...perhaps I'll post it in the philosophy section, too...
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I suppose I would be a materialist of sorts, but it seems to me that the criteria we impose on scientific theories already exclude those entities and forces to which no consistent, measurable effects can be attributed. This will always be a lazy, ad hoc approach to explanation. If our theory fails to say anything definite about what we should, or should not expect to happen, then we can have no way to test it.
Not only this, but if no concieveable state of affairs would refute our theory, then no actual state of affairs can be adduced as evidence in support of it. So we have no need to deny the existence of gods, spirits, souls, magic etc. (this position of denial is itself logically untenable).
It is enough to lay heavy stress on the importance of our explanations being vulnerable to the possibility of empirical tests, in some publically observeable space. Where experiment cannot help us decide between competing theories (by outruling the wrong ones) we have no rational grounds for relying on any of them.
This is not to say we can dismiss all metaphysical theorizing as "meaningless". On the contrary, it may be the source of important insights. Plus, a change of circumstances (or a different approach) may render a previously untestable theory, testable.
Cheers,
Paul.
P.S. Having said all this, a strong case for a particular (non-supernatural) kind of dualism, was put forward by Karl Popper and John Eccles, who argued that unless we accept that mental states are qualitively different from physical ones, science is simply impossible, because a commitment to the search for "truth" depends entirely on the assumption that our theories stand in purely logical relationships to one another (and to the world of our experience). All argument, and all criticism requires this.
Just some "grist for the mill", as they say...
I'm new here, check my profile for some info about me. Saw a thread on materialism elsewhere, and ended up writing this by way of introduction. Not sure what thread my contribution should go in, really, but it seems to relate to the question of wether there are any gods (or an invisible world of "supernatural" forces)...perhaps I'll post it in the philosophy section, too...
****
I suppose I would be a materialist of sorts, but it seems to me that the criteria we impose on scientific theories already exclude those entities and forces to which no consistent, measurable effects can be attributed. This will always be a lazy, ad hoc approach to explanation. If our theory fails to say anything definite about what we should, or should not expect to happen, then we can have no way to test it.
Not only this, but if no concieveable state of affairs would refute our theory, then no actual state of affairs can be adduced as evidence in support of it. So we have no need to deny the existence of gods, spirits, souls, magic etc. (this position of denial is itself logically untenable).
It is enough to lay heavy stress on the importance of our explanations being vulnerable to the possibility of empirical tests, in some publically observeable space. Where experiment cannot help us decide between competing theories (by outruling the wrong ones) we have no rational grounds for relying on any of them.
This is not to say we can dismiss all metaphysical theorizing as "meaningless". On the contrary, it may be the source of important insights. Plus, a change of circumstances (or a different approach) may render a previously untestable theory, testable.
Cheers,
Paul.
P.S. Having said all this, a strong case for a particular (non-supernatural) kind of dualism, was put forward by Karl Popper and John Eccles, who argued that unless we accept that mental states are qualitively different from physical ones, science is simply impossible, because a commitment to the search for "truth" depends entirely on the assumption that our theories stand in purely logical relationships to one another (and to the world of our experience). All argument, and all criticism requires this.
Just some "grist for the mill", as they say...