I added the bolded, underlined parts. IOW it is not necessarily that science cannot confirm or measure these things/areas/phenomena, but rather than science does not or cannot now. There can be all sorts of reasons for that: necessary technology is not present, interest by that community is not present, paradigmatic shifts need to take place such that energy will be put in those areas...perhaps other reasons also. Science is not finished, it is in the middle, and will continue to be.There are some subject areas, or ideas, OR PHENOMENA which are not amenable to the kind of analysis NOW that will yield the kind of empirical evidence that is considered scientific, so questions about those kinds of topics aren't considered legitimate at all by scientific standards. — Wayfarer
it is not necessarily that science cannot confirm or measure these things/areas/phenomena — Coben
So I think one way of putting that is that Hume is arguing that we can't actually perceive a necessary relationship between cause and effect, but that Kant counters that, without the 'categories of the understanding', which intuitively perceive such relations, then experience itself wouldn't be cohesive - we literally couldn't think, let alone argue. — Wayfarer
There is no consensus, of course, over whether Kant’s response succeeds, but there is no more consensus about what this response is supposed to be. There has been sharp disagreement concerning Kant’s conception of causality, as well as Hume’s, and, accordingly, there has also been controversy over whether the two conceptions really significantly differ. There has even been disagreement concerning whether Hume’s conception of causality and induction is skeptical at all. — SEP
3. Nothing, at first view, may seem more unbounded than the thought of man, which not only escapes all human power and authority, but is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects. And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived; nor is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction.
But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous horse we can conceive; because, from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue; and this we may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an animal familiar to us. In short, all the materials of thinking are derived either from our outward or inward sentiment: the mixture and composition of these belongs alone to the mind and will. Or, to express myself in philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. — Hume
It cannot be doubted, that the mind is endowed with several powers and faculties, that these powers are distinct from each other, that what is really distinct to the immediate perception may be distinguished by reflexion; and consequently, that there is a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this subject, and a truth and falsehood, which lie not beyond the compass of human understanding. There are many obvious distinctions of this kind, such as those between the will and understanding, the imagination and passions, which fall within the comprehension of every human creature; and the finer and more philosophical distinctions are no less real and certain, though more difficult to be comprehended. — Hume
Well, first off, I said it is not necessarily that kind of thingIn some cases, it is exactly that. Cases such as 'Does God exist?', where there is no (scientifically-acceptable) evidence. Cases such as 'What is Objective Reality?', where there is also no possibility of us gathering evidence. And so on. — Pattern-chaser
though I could have made my wording clearer. I meant, that just because cannot test something empirically now, does nto mean will not be able to later.it is not necessarily that science cannot confirm or measure these things/areas/phenomena — Coben
Notice the emphasis on the 'synthetic a priori' - this is the idea that, unlike purely a priori truths which are tautological, in some sense, the synthetic a priori 'synthesis' rational arguments to arrive at a novel conclusion, i.e. one which is not implicit in the premisses. — Wayfarer
IOW it is not necessarily that science cannot confirm or measure these things/areas/phenomena, but rather than science does not or cannot now. There can be all sorts of reasons for that: necessary technology is not present, interest by that community is not present, paradigmatic shifts need to take place such that energy will be put in those areas...perhaps other reasons also. Science is not finished, it is in the middle, and will continue to be. — Coben
I lean toward saying that yes there is a kind of faculty that projects necessity. But what do we mean by this? How is this so different from expectation? — g0d
We aren't born knowing the Pythagorean theorem but only with a shared spatial intuition that makes the perception of its truth possible for all of us, more or less independently of our cultural-linguistic software. — g0d
I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man.
Dennett does not believe in reason. He will be outraged to hear this, since he regards himself as a giant of rationalism. But the reason he imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else. (In this respect, rationalism is closer to mysticism than it is to materialism.) Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.
This actually is a really deep conundrum in modern philosophy, we can't just brush it off. — Wayfarer
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap08It is, therefore, a question which requires close investigation, and not to be answered at first sight, whether there exists a knowledge altogether independent of experience, and even of all sensuous impressions? Knowledge of this kind is called a priori, in contradistinction to empirical knowledge, which has its sources a posteriori, that is, in experience.
But the expression, “a priori,” is not as yet definite enough adequately to indicate the whole meaning of the question above started. For, in speaking of knowledge which has its sources in experience, we are wont to say, that this or that may be known a priori, because we do not derive this knowledge immediately from experience, but from a general rule, which, however, we have itself borrowed from experience. Thus, if a man undermined his house, we say, “he might know a priori that it would have fallen;” that is, he needed not to have waited for the experience that it did actually fall. But still, a priori, he could not know even this much. For, that bodies are heavy, and, consequently, that they fall when their supports are taken away, must have been known to him previously, by means of experience.
By the term “knowledge a priori,” therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience.
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In all judgements wherein the relation of a subject to the predicate is cogitated (I mention affirmative judgements only here; the application to negative will be very easy), this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as somewhat which is contained (though covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it. In the first instance, I term the judgement analytical, in the second, synthetical.
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The science of natural philosophy (physics) contains in itself synthetical judgements a priori, as principles. I shall adduce two propositions. For instance, the proposition, “In all changes of the material world, the quantity of matter remains unchanged”; or, that, “In all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal.” In both of these, not only is the necessity, and therefore their origin a priori clear, but also that they are synthetical propositions. For in the conception of matter, I do not cogitate its permanency, but merely its presence in space, which it fills. I therefore really go out of and beyond the conception of matter, in order to think on to it something a priori, which I did not think in it. The proposition is therefore not analytical, but synthetical, and nevertheless conceived a priori; and so it is with regard to the other propositions of the pure part of natural philosophy. — Kant
But the synthetic a priori enables us to acquire a kind of deductive certainty with respect to phenomena that you might think were only inductively true. — Wayfarer
I am not doubting the fact that it's valid, but I'm questioning the sense in which it exists. In what sense does such a theorem exist? You can't perceive any such thing through the unaided senses, its existence is purely intellectual, but it's real, just as Einstein says. — Wayfarer
So the Pythagorean theorem is not 'out there somewhere', it doesn't exist in a phenomenal sense at all. Rather it is close, I think, to what ancient philosophy designated an 'intelligible object' - something the existence of which is mind-dependent, but it is not dependent on a particular mind; it is a noetic device, if you like, through which we then view and explain phenomena. — Wayfarer
And another text:Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong. — Popper
To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe. There is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important sub-universe, that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of conscious experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the world of organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.”
“The feedback effect between world 3 and world 2 is of particular importance. Our minds are the creators of world 3; but world 3 in its turn not only informs our minds, but largely creates them. The very idea of a self depends on world 3 theories, especially upon a theory of time which underlies the identity of the self, the self of yesterday, of today, and of tomorrow. The learning of a language, which is a world 3 object, is itself partly a creative act and partly a feedback effect; and the full consciousness of self is anchored in our human language.” — Popper
Feuerbach made his first attempt to challenge prevailing ways of thinking about individuality in his inaugural dissertation, where he presented himself as a defender of speculative philosophy against those critics who claim that human reason is restricted to certain limits beyond which all inquiry is futile, and who accuse speculative philosophers of having transgressed these. This criticism, he argued, presupposes a conception of reason that is a cognitive faculty of the individual thinking subject that is employed as an instrument for apprehending truths. He aimed to show that this view of the nature of reason is mistaken, that reason is one and the same in all thinking subjects, that it is universal and infinite, and that thinking (Denken) is not an activity performed by the individual, but rather by “the species” acting through the individual. “In thinking”, Feuerbach wrote, “I am bound together with, or rather, I am one with—indeed, I myself am—all human beings” (GW I:18). — SEP
So if or when a paradigmatic shift occurred away from physicalism, it will be very interesting to see what emerges in its place. — Wayfarer
The point of the synthetic a priori proposition, is that it enables a kind of deductive certainty with respect to contingent outcomes. — Wayfarer
↪Wayfarer
On the contrary I understand what you've written and I see clearly that the mere fact of the general form of our mental constitutions and social and cultural conditioning being more or less the same could only explain commonality between the ways in which we perceive not the common content of what we perceive. If you disagree then you will need to explain how it could. — Janus
This seems to me a misrepresentation of Dennett's faith in rationality. I take it that Dennett thinks rationality is effective in getting to the truth precisely because it has evolved as a tool which has been honed and refined by natural selection. — Janus
That's a good point, but Nietzsche comes to mind. Is what helps us survive therefore the truth? I'm not against pragmatism's 'truth,' but I think it's fair to point out a tension in this or that position. — g0d
My contention was more modest: that the general efficacy of reason to draw valid conclusions has been augmented by natural selection. — Janus
And it does seem plausible to think that theories which entail predictions that are confirmed by observation and experiment are more likely to be true to the nature of things than those which do not. — Janus
A successful scientific theory reveals nothing known either true or false about nature's unobservable objects, properties or processes.[4] Scientific theories are assessed on their usefulness in generating predictions and in confirming those predictions in data and observations, and not on their ability to explain the truth value of some unobservable phenomenon. The question of "truth" is not taken into account one way or the other. According to instrumentalists, scientific theory is merely a tool whereby humans predict observations in a particular domain of nature by formulating laws, which state or summarize regularities, while theories themselves do not reveal supposedly hidden aspects of nature that somehow explain these laws.[5] Initially a novel perspective introduced by Pierre Duhem in 1906, instrumentalism is largely the prevailing theory that underpins the practice of physicists today.[5]
Rejecting scientific realism's ambitions to uncover metaphysical truth about nature,[5] instrumentalism is usually categorized as an antirealism, although its mere lack of commitment to scientific theory's realism can be termed nonrealism. Instrumentalism merely bypasses debate concerning whether, for example, a particle spoken about in particle physics is a discrete entity enjoying individual existence, or is an excitation mode of a region of a field, or is something else altogether.[6][7][8] Instrumentalism holds that theoretical terms need only be useful to predict the phenomena, the observed outcomes.[6] — Wiki
I don't see how we could test, however. — g0d
to say that reason is an evolved, rtaher than some kind of "absolute", faculty would not be to undermine it. — Janus
That said, I think that if some metaphysical theories were to be "true" (whatever you might take that "truth" to mean) then it would more likely be those which are in accordance with scientific understanding than those which are not. In assessing such likelihood and hence plausibility of metaphysical theories i don't see that we have much else to go on. — Janus
When I speak of reason or rationalism, all I mean is the conviction that we can learn through criticism of our mistakes and errors, especially through criticism by others, and eventually also through self-criticism. A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it. — Popper
Reason is but one aspect of human life; it is by no means the sole medium we "swim in". It is good that reason should be "demoted" in my view; who (apart from Hegel) would want it to be the absolute? — Janus
The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.”
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This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae...It is only on the theory that no word is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory. — Nietzsche on Christ
I take it that Dennett thinks rationality is effective in getting to the truth precisely because it has evolved as a tool which has been honed and refined by natural selection. — Janus
That natural selection operates in a way analogous to the the processes of experience, observation and experiment is arguably a valid way to think about evolution provided we do not fall into anthropomorphization by imputing human-like intention to the process. — Janus
In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy. — Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason
What does it mean for something to be? Do different entities have different modes of being? I say yes, different modes of being. — g0d
Heidegger argues that we ordinarily encounter entities as (what he calls) equipment, that is, as being for certain sorts of tasks (cooking, writing, hair-care, and so on). Indeed we achieve our most primordial (closest) relationship with equipment not by looking at the entity in question, or by some detached intellectual or theoretical study of it, but rather by skillfully manipulating it in a hitch-free manner. Entities so encountered have their own distinctive kind of Being that Heidegger famously calls readiness-to-hand.
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Tools-in-use become phenomenologically transparent. Moreover, Heidegger claims, not only are the hammer, nails, and work-bench in this way not part of the engaged carpenter's phenomenal world, neither, in a sense, is the carpenter. The carpenter becomes absorbed in his activity in such a way that he has no awareness of himself as a subject over and against a world of objects. — SEP
Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle.-Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing.---But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language?---If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty.--No, one can `divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.
That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of `object and name' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible---though unverifiable---that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. — Wittgenstein
I quite agree - but this only supports a point made in the Aeon essay - that 'if ‘physical reality’ means reality according to some future and complete physics, then the [current] claim that there is nothing else but physical reality is empty, because we have no idea what such a future physics will look like.' — Wayfarer
One can hope they drop a word with no longer useful metaphysical baggage, but they don't seem to care about that now. I suspect a paradigmatic shift may take place while the term lives on.So if or when a paradigmatic shift occurred away from physicalism, it will be very interesting to see what emerges in its place. — Wayfarer
If, then, the perfect life is within human reach, the man attaining it attains happiness: if not, happiness must be made over to the gods, for the perfect life is for them alone.
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It has been shown elsewhere that man when he commands not merely the life of sensation but also Reason and Authentic Intellection, has realised the perfect life.
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To the man in this state, what is the Good?
He himself by what he has and is.
And the author and principle of what he is and holds is the Supreme, which within Itself is the Good but manifests Itself within the human being after this other mode.
The sign that this state has been achieved is that the man seeks nothing else.
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Once the man is a Sage, the means of happiness, the way to good, are within, for nothing is good that lies outside him. Anything he desires further than this he seeks as a necessity, and not for himself but for a subordinate, for the body bound to him, to which since it has life he must minister the needs of life, not needs, however, to the true man of this degree. He knows himself to stand above all such things, and what he gives to the lower he so gives as to leave his true life undiminished.
Adverse fortune does not shake his felicity: the life so founded is stable ever. Suppose death strikes at his household or at his friends; he knows what death is, as the victims, if they are among the wise, know too. And if death taking from him his familiars and intimates does bring grief, it is not to him, not to the true man, but to that in him which stands apart from the Supreme, to that lower man in whose distress he takes no part.
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If the Sage thinks all fortunate events, however momentous, to be no great matter—kingdom and the rule over cities and peoples, colonisations and the founding of states, even though all be his own handiwork—how can he take any great account of the vacillations of power or the ruin of his fatherland? Certainly if he thought any such event a great disaster, or any disaster at all, he must be of a very strange way of thinking. One that sets great store by wood and stones, or . . . Zeus . . . by mortality among mortals cannot yet be the Sage, whose estimate of death, we hold, must be that it is better than life in the body.
But suppose that he himself is offered a victim in sacrifice?
Can he think it an evil to die beside the altars?
But if he go unburied?
Wheresoever it lie, under earth or over earth, his body will always rot.
But if he has been hidden away, not with costly ceremony but in an unnamed grave, not counted worthy of a towering monument?
The littleness of it! — Plotinus
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.
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The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. — Marx
For at the stage of romantic art the spirit knows that its truth does not consist in its immersion in corporeality; on the contrary, it only becomes sure of its truth by withdrawing from the external into its own intimacy with itself and positing external reality as an existence inadequate to itself. Even if, therefore this new content too comprises in itself the task of making itself beautiful, still beauty in the sense hitherto expounded remains for it something subordinate, and beauty becomes the spiritual beauty of the absolute inner life as inherently infinite spiritual subjectivity.
But therefore to attain its infinity the spirit must all the same lift itself out of purely formal and finite personality into the Absolute; i.e. the spiritual must bring itself into representation as the subject filled with what is purely substantial and, therein, as the willing and self-knowing subject. Conversely, the substantial and the true must not be apprehended as a mere ‘beyond’ of humanity, and the anthropomorphism of the Greek outlook must not be stripped away; but the human being, as actual subjectivity, must be made the principle, and thereby alone, as we already saw earlier [on pp. 435-6, 505-6], does the anthropomorphic reach its consummation.
The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom. This inherently infinite and absolutely universal content is the absolute negation of everything particular, the simple unity with itself which has dissipated all external relations, all processes of nature and their periodicity of birth, passing away, and rebirth, all the restrictedness in spiritual existence, and dissolved all particular gods into a pure and infinite self-identity. In this Pantheon all the gods are dethroned, the flame of subjectivity has destroyed them, and instead of plastic polytheism art knows now only one God, one spirit, one absolute independence which, as the absolute knowing and willing of itself, remains in free unity with itself and no longer falls apart into those particular characters and functions whose one and only cohesion was due to the compulsion of a dark necessity.[1]
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God in his truth is therefore no bare ideal generated by imagination; on the contrary, he puts himself into the very heart of the finitude and external contingency of existence, and yet knows himself there as a divine subject who remains infinite in himself and makes this infinity explicit to himself. — Hegel
Popper — g0d
I never said I swim only in reason, and are you really setting me up as knee-deep in scientism? — g0d
That's the point of the criticism, though. If you have to underwrite 'reason' by appeal to 'what helps us survive', then how much confidence can you have in the faculty of reason? — Wayfarer
That is nothing unique, though; the truth of any theory cannot be tested. My point, in any case, was that IF it is true that evolution has honed the efficacy of reason, then to say that reason is an evolved, rather than some kind of "absolute", faculty would not be to undermine it. as Wayfarer and Nagel's passage he quoted claim. — Janus
In some cases, it is exactly that. Cases such as 'Does God exist?', where there is no (scientifically-acceptable) evidence. Cases such as 'What is Objective Reality?', where there is also no possibility of us gathering evidence. And so on. — Pattern-chaser
Well, first off, I said it is not necessarily that kind of thing
it is not necessarily that science cannot confirm or measure these things/areas/phenomena — Coben
though I could have made my wording clearer. I meant, that just because cannot test something empirically now, does nto mean will not be able to later. — Coben
How do you deal with the claim that this is simply relativism, that the only truth we can know is the truth 'for us'? — Wayfarer
That may well be the case, and the brain in vat/solipsism examples, I think are stronger examples than the God one. I think another stronger one would be the is this a simulation issue, since if the simulators are vastly further advanced then us they might be able to eliminate any possible clue. The three examples share properties since they are going after minds being separated from reality type issues. I think the God one is less easy to predict. It might be beyond science. It might not be. This raises another issue. If such an issue, as any of these, is beyond science, is it beyond any way of knowing? I would say 'not necessarily'.But let's not concentrate on this one example. There are others too, e.g. solipsism. The point is that there exist problems that science cannot address, and will never be capable of addressing. — Pattern-chaser
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