John, List: > On Jan 31, 2017, at 1:05 AM, John Collier <colli...@ukzn.ac.za> wrote: > > 5. The assertion "Empiricists typically claim that we don't need anything > more to do science.” appears rather problematic to me. > > I don’t see this, Jerry. A typical example of a contemporary empiricist who > argues specifically this is Bas van Fraassen, who specifically takes this > view in his work, such as The Scientific Image. Classic empiricists like > Locke, Berkeley and Hume also take this view. I would hasten to add that I > distinguish between empiricism as a reductive sceptical constructivist > movement and empiricism as the view that our interactions with the world are > our only reliable touchstone for clarifying meaning and discovering the > truth. I agree with the latter, and I don’t think it implies nominalism. But > it also goes beyond classic empiricism, being more open to methods than > reliance on observation and combining and projecting observations > inductively. I would agree with Edwina and John Sowa that classic empiricism > has been tied together with certain sociological views, but I don’t think > that these are implied by the logic of empiricism. Stan Salthe is one who, it > seems to me, ties the sociological aspects into a common “discourse” that he > takes to define empiricism (but I think his alternative discourse makes the > same errors). I am not keen on discourses as unanalysable wholes. I think > they can be examined both internally and externally in a critical way. I > think the external criticism is often opened up by internal criticism (e.g., > Feyerabend’ s “Problems with empiricism” and Hanson’s work, as well as > Kuhn’s, of course, and Quine’s “Two dogmas of empiricism”). > > John
You touch many bases in this paragraph, often rather adroitly. I agree with several points. But, more importantly, it is what I find missing from this paragraph is the essential need to expand the scope of view from the science of physics to the science of biology and medicine. Belief in raw empiricism does not negate the need for deep abstractions. Internality and externality are essential to systems as well. This requires a grammar of speciation that is remote from predicate logic and your oft-cited set theoretical deductions. It (empiricism) requires new symbolic competencies to integrate the meanings of the symbol systems in the perplex or organic sciences. It also requires elaboration on the roles of electrical symbols as parts of wholes and as attractors and repellers that contribute to the spontaneity of life. Quine? Hmmmm… From my perspective, I long ago discarded any role for Quine’s scientific illiteracy in the perplex number system or organic mathematics. Why? Because his well known quote, ‘To be is to be a variable’ contradicts the logic of the table of elements and the derivation of the genetic code from it. Let me suggest an alternative that can be derived from the table of physical elements: "To be alive is to be a species.” The logic of “The union of units unifies the unity” under natural physical constraints (Newton’s and Coulomb’s laws) can be used to derive the graphic pathways. Or, have I missed your point completely? Cheers Jerry
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