[lit-ideas] Re: Is 'All men are mortal' unscientific?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:16:54 -0230
A very fine and informative post, Donal. Thank you.
Walter O.
MUN
Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
>
> --- On Sun, 16/3/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > From: wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> > Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Is 'All men are mortal' unscientific?
> > To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Donal McEvoy" <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Date: Sunday, 16 March, 2008, 6:56 PM
> > How's this for a possible mediated resolution to the
> > dispute? "All men are
> > mortal" is indeed not a scientific claim given the
> > sense of "scientific" and
> > the sense of "mortal" being used by Donal. The
> > sense of these terms are
> > legitimate within the specific problematic Quine and Popper
> > are addressing, and
> > the questions involved are genuinely philosophical
> > questions.
>
> This is welcome bar perhaps one point, see below.
>
> > But it remains the case that we are justified in believing
> > that all men are
> > mortal in a more comprehensive sense of "mortal"
> > and that all scientists (and
> > all other rational persons) either believe this too or at
> > least act as if they
> > too believed the truth of this claim.
>
> In a perhaps similar vein Eric Dean wrote:-
> > The
> > point to Quine's logical analysis of the sentence is to
> > highlight the impossibility of falsifying [that meaning of]
> > the sentence, thereby making clear (it was to be hoped, I
> > think) why "all men are mortal" doesn't
> > qualify as a scientific hypothesis.
>
> The caveat is that Quine's and Popper's claims are limited to "All men are
> mortal" per se. That is, if that is all you have by way of theory and the
> existence and death of people is all you have by way of evidence, then it is
> not scientific. But it _may_ take on a scientific character if considered as
> part of some theoretical framework that is itself well-tested: for example
> theories of cell-death, of how muscle atrophies over time, of how organs like
> the heart (a pump) wear out, of how bone thins, of how the body becomes more
> susceptible to cancers and the like. Embedded in this context, the theory
> _may_ be regarded as _indirectly_testable, and the death of persons in line
> with this theoretical framework may be taken to corroborate the framework and
> thus the theory so embedded.
>
> This goes some way to explain how the claim it is not scientific per se may
> be squared with our common sense intuition that human mortality (as with
> animal and plant mortality - rock mortality, as JLS points out, raises
> different considerations) is something that is borne out by much
> observational evidence. It is, but not quite in the straightforward way that
> because all known people have died that means "All men are mortal".
>
> This leads on to the issue of how scientific theories relate to overall
> frameworks and how either might be revised in the light of a disconfirmation.
> On this Quine and Popper agree substantially but also disagree crucially.
> Hey, philosophy.
>
> Donal
>
>
>
>
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