[lit-ideas] Re: Bishop Berkeley -- and Popper
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:14:54 EST
R. Paul writes,
"If a tree falls in a wood, but there's nobody there to hear it fall, then
it did not fall, and therefore, there is, a priori, no tree (falling)."
Andy Amago brought in the oil and the dinosaurs:
>This [argument by R. Paul, of Berkeleian echoes] would imply there
>were no trees when there were only dinosaurs. The fact that there
>is oil proves there were trees long before there were humans,
>among, no doubt, other proof.
McEvoy adds:
>Popper would ... agree with Andy's dinosaur
>argument, inconclusive as it is.
Note that the argument touches the dinosaurs only tangentially. It's,
although less colourfully labelled, the 'oil' argument.
If there is prehistoric oil, there were trees.
This is still different from Berkeley's scenario of a tree _falling_, since
the existence of prehistoric oil (or prehuman oil, strictly) does not prove
what Berkeley was talking about: a tree _falling_.
Cheers,
JL
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