John West wrote:

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Maybe this is very naive ​of me, but could most of the overlap disappear if a proper distinction is made between philosophy and science. Is a lot of the problem that philosophers and, in particular, scientists are thinking enough about where their discipline ends and the other starts?

Well, if metaphysical claims imply facts about empirical, physical reality (sight, sound, smell, feel, taste), then unless empirical investigation (which can include but is not exhausted by experimental testing done by scientists) can in principle rule out those metaphysical claims by modus tollens.

I think I would be greatly aided by an example of this. I cannot conceive of any possible empirical case that would, for instance, falsify the claim that 'all motion is the actualization of a potential,'

Last edited by iwpoe (8/19/2015 8:11 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

I think I would be greatly aided by an example of this. I cannot conceive of any possible empirical case that would, for instance, falsify the claim that 'all motion is the actualization of a potential,'

This is a red herring. I explicitly wrote about metaphysical claims implying physical, empirical facts relating to the five senses. Unless you're denying that metaphysical claims can imply these?

Last edited by John West (8/19/2015 8:21 pm)

iwpoe wrote:

I'm not offering that as an argument. I really did want a case- for my own sake. I'm curious.

Consider some position that implies everything is immaterial (spiritual as opposed to constituted by bosons and fermions).  If everything is immaterial, nothing is material. It can be empirically verified that something is material. Hence, not everything is immaterial.
 
The immaterialist position can be defended by positing massive hallucination—as per Quine’s famous thesis—but this runs into severe counterarguments.

Last edited by John West (8/19/2015 8:39 pm)

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

But if one reasons correctly from basic inputs (which would include sense data), and if the science stays within its alloted place, could there be a clash at all. I suppose it amounts to much the same thing, although it is because the philosopher wasn't correct in his reasoning, or the scientist strayed into the realm of philosophy, that there is a problem, rather than there being a clash between actual philosophy and natural science (I suppose Socrates might put it that it is not as a philosopher {or scientist} that one causes these conflicts, but so far as one falls away from being a philosopher {or scientist}).

Right. Assuming something like Aristotelian methodology anyway (which I'm sure you are). 

iwpoe wrote:

Would these *also* be empirical in the narrow scientific sense?

John West wrote:

Well, if metaphysical claims imply facts about empirical, physical reality (sight, sound, smell, feel, taste), then empirical investigation (which can include but is not exhausted by experimental testing done by scientists) can in principle rule out those metaphysical claims by modus tollens. This may be metaphysics that takes into consideration scientists' work, but the scientists' work would still be playing a key role.

Last edited by John West (8/19/2015 11:26 pm)