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To: dynachrome
Who will volunteer for the inspector position?

Probably a job that calls for a brothelyzer...

6 posted on 01/21/2007 6:32:58 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
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To: snarks_when_bored
"Probably a job that calls for a brothelyzer"

Or a pianist! SWB, I have to ask you a question that transcends this "mortal coil" existence. Do you believe that reason and logic are theory laden to the point that reason is considered conventional and arbitrary: based on language and that it can never describe or know reality? I have just read a book by Stephen Hicks who claims that the Analytical School came to the fatal conclusion in the 1960s that reason could never describe reality, that reason was devoid of factual content, that it was a question of how we decided to use words and what combination of words we chose to privilege. They argue concepts are merely nominal: we could have divided up the world differently. Reality does not dictate concepts but rather we do: we allow them to be universally true. Hicks argues that by the 1950s these conclusions were commonplace -- language and logic were not seen as reality-based tools of consciousness. Therefore, science really can't speak of truth or reality (e.g., according to Thomas Kuhn's the Structure of Scientific Revolutions). There is no objectivity or universality, there's only subjectivity and the psychological, which are conventional and variable: in other words, there is no external metaphysical basis for language and logic.

My next question is, how in the hell did we go to the moon in the 1960s if reason couldn't know reality? The scientific community must have had faith in reason and logic even as the Analytic School was imploding.

I'm curious as to your take on this issue. I know science and logic have limitations but is it all as subjective and conventional as described or can we know something coming close to reality or truth?
9 posted on 01/22/2007 9:31:56 PM PST by Blind Eye Jones
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