So Anscombe is not, in criticizing Lewis, defending naturalism. She is questioning the grounds on which he criticizes it, even though she agrees that there is not a sufficiently good reason for maintaining it.I do not think that there is sufficiently good reason for maintaining the “naturalist” hypothesis about human behaviour and thought.
What sorts of thing would one normally call “irrational causes” for human thoughts? If one is asked this, one immediately thinks of such things as passion, self-interest, wishing only to see the agreeable or disagreeable, obstinate and prejudicial adherence to the views of a party or school with which one is connected, and so on.
Given the scientific explanation of human thought and action which the naturalist hypothesis asserts to be possible, we could, if we had the data that the explanation required, predict what any man was going to say, and what conclusions he was going to form.
The dark matter can be black holes — Haglund
nature seems to follow mathematically describable laws — Agent Smith
In my humble opinion, that's a matter of taste. Does the thrown stone follow the parabola or the parabola the stone? What comes first, the parabola or the trajectory? — Haglund
This has already been referred to but it's always worth another mention, https://math.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html — Wayfarer
That's been ruled out — Wayfarer
In what sense does a parabola follow a stone — Agent Smith
The parabola form is traced out by the stone. It's not there before. — Haglund
So Anscombe is not, in criticizing Lewis, defending naturalism. — Wayfarer
A stone, given the laws of physics, must trace a parabolic path through the air. — Agent Smith
Can you parse Haglund's claim that a parabola "follows" a stone? — Agent Smith
You'll live another 10 years. — Haglund
I don't think that's correct. But scientists and philosophers both have long noticed the uncanny relationship between maths and the world, going back to the Pythagoreans (and probably before.) I've read a couple of books on it, Mario Livio - Is God a Mathematician? being one.
My view is that in some fundamental sense, number is real. Not that there aren't imaginary numbers and imaginary mathematical systems, as there surely are - but that in grasping mathematical truths, you're grasping something real, not subjective, not a product of the mind. Loosely speaking that is called mathematical platonism and it's a favourite subject of mine, although not being highly proficient at maths is a handicap. — Wayfarer
Well, through air, the path is not a parabola actually. But it looks like one. The very concept of a parabola follows from math. There are no parabolas in nature. The water rays shot from fountains resemble parabolas but before we invented them, it was nowhere to be seen. They are imaginaries. Of course some natural phenomena have mathematical shapes, but do they have them because they have to follow it? — Haglund
To me, the structure of nature is perfect (mathematical) and that, to my reckoning, is (true) beauty.
What we believe is beauty though is, on that view, imperfection — Agent Smith
For me, sheer interest. Nothing more or less. Simply put.....how do I know stuff. What explains how I know stuff. What is the knowing of stuff? Any fool can learn practically anything, given enough time, which I was already pretty good at, but....what happens between my ears that explains how that happens to me? — Mww
That is where it all comes back to defining a reciprocal relation between bounding extremes. — apokrisis
So quit digging and start climbing. The view is better. — apokrisis
when one's goal is to dispel illusion, digging down is much more productive than climbing higher. — Metaphysician Undercover
Slightly off-topic, but perhaps on point.But if logical necessity is separable from physical causation, then this claim can't be maintained. A logical inference is, in very simple terms, "that if this is the case, then that must be so". And here the 'must' is that of logical necessity. — Wayfarer
A physicist writing about Quantum Theory, clarified her use of the word "information" : — Gnomon
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