: I'll check it out, thanks. Kant's ethical arguments (or
: the summaries in the World Book) made quite a bit of
: sense to me, so I imagine I'll enjoy it.
This is MUCH MUCH better than Kant on ethics.
: He's Benson Mates, professor emeritus at UC Berkeley.
: Specializes in Greco-Roman skepticism and Logical
: Positivism, so you see where my leanings come from.
: :-) He's published quite a few books--the ones you're
: most likely to have seen are an introduction to
: elementary logic and a discussion of the Greek skeptic
: Sextus Empiricus.
Two dead schools of thought! LOL
Just kidding. Logical positivism, what a topic.... Actually, "what's wrong with positivism" could be another term for modern philosophy. Everything since then is a reaction to it, trying to synthesize what was right about the spirit of the movement while getting rid of all that was wrong. Theories of mind, unfortunately, are still saddled with positivism's grandchild: functionalism.
: True. I would say, though, that the conventions our
: brains operate by--whether or not we could be taught a
: more efficient operation via some advanced and
: probably horribly sadistic method of
: child-rearing--make some expressions which involve
: non-observables less complicated than their
: counterparts which do not involve such.
If you substitute 'mind' for 'brain' I may be in line with you--just because I don't think the brain operates by convention any more than the heart does. But I'd agree that complicatedness and observability are not essentially linked concepts. That's what you're saying, right?
: Still
: non-observable--unless the Earth becomes
: transparent--but what immediate reason is there to
: reject it?
Maybe my point is better stated that, ceteris paribus, adding non-observables to a theory will make it less useful, more complicated. That's because it'll have more terms, and ones that aren't going to do much explanatory work. They are terms you're going to have to 'pay for'. They're not going to be 'paying for' any terms on their own. I don't know if you follow that metaphor, but the idea is that the more things your theory supposes, the more 'expensive' it is to adopt. If you add terms that explain many other terms in the theory, the addition had essentially 'paid for itself'. I can't think long about science without getting into metaphor.
ANYWAY, my point's not supposed to refute the point-that-may-or-may-not-be-Bertrand-Russell's, just point out a curiousity about it. I find it a (at least semi-)fascinating point, if true. That's all.
***
OK, so did this really all start from the Myth Lacks an Apocalypse thread? Wow. I bet this is a world record for 'Long Jump Away from Topic'.
