[lit-ideas] Re: Is 'All men are mortal' unscientific?
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:09:13 +0700
Donal McEvoy wrote:
"I feel Phil is simply missing or obfuscating the underlying
philosophical/logical point which concerns ..."
Ah, that oh so mysterious 'philosophical point'. There is the
ordinary meaning of the sentence 'All men are mortal' and then there
is that special way of speaking/reading the sentence so that it has,
as well, a 'philosophical meaning'. Perhaps one breathes heavier or
speaks more reverently? It seems to me that either the ordinary
meaning of the sentence 'All men are mortal' is important for any
philosophical points one wants to make regarding that sentence, or
one's philosophical point has nothing to do with the sentence.
My initial comment regarded a quote provided by Donal, given here:
"Quine also discusses 'All men are mortal', but he takes 'x is mortal'
to mean 'there is a time t such that x dies at t'."
This quote may be in the context of a discussion of what counts as
scientific and what doesn't, surely a pointless discussion in and of
itself since there is nothing that makes a statement scientific, but
it is wrong, in several ways, to claim that the sentence 'All men are
mortal' means 'there is a time t such that x dies at t'. First, it is
sloppy in that the word 'mortal' has a meaning beyond simply dying.
But that is quibbling. Second, the reduction of the meaning of the
sentence to being about a point in time strikes me as mistaken.
Mortality is not about a point in time but rather being subject to
death. Hence my comments about a mortal being being one who would die
if ... and here one gives a list of events that would normally lead to
death. Finally, reducing mortality to time leads to the absurd notion
that we somehow carry around our time of death as a function of being
mortal.
I couldn't care less about an argument over what does or does not
count as a scientific statement, but I am happy to clear up confusions
surrounding what the sentence 'All men are mortal' means.
Donal continues:
"... all persons who are living do face, whether consciously or not,
the 'fact of death' - and in this sense the 'fact of death' applies to
all living persons."
I agree that it applies to all living persons, but it does not apply
as a point in time. It may apply as an existential fact, as for
example in Heidegger, or it may apply as a medical fact, as in a
medical diagnosis, but only for a god does the fact of death include a
point in time. Alas, I am not a god but a mere ...
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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