Re: Definition of LET and SR (was: Re: MMX, Contraction and Constancy)

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gerald L. O'Barr) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (EL) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Reany) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > 
> > > So, if you're up to it, prove that a hydrogen atom exists. The first
> > > question to ask onesself is what it means to say that a hydrogen atom
> > > exists. 
> > 
> > [EL]
> 
> <delete by O'Barr of EL's very good answers>
>  
> Gerald L. O'Barr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> comments:
>    Thank you, EL.  And you did not even have to 
> mention how repetiveness applies, or how important
> it is that any one fact might be able to be
> established in a multitude of different ways.
>    Once you have consistant and repeatable results,
> with confirmation coming from many different ways,
> then it quickly becomes a certainty that certain 
> things are true or correct.  
>     Technically, you can always say there might be
> a liltte doubt, but on the practical level, there
> really is no doubt.  Science is totally different
> than philosophy, since science has a way to determine
> if something is to be accepted or not, and philosophy
> has no way to tell what is right or not.  Philosophy
> is not for us. 

Is that your new philosophy?

> It is only a game, to be played
> only if there is nothing else to do.
> 

O'Barr, does science demand that we employ Occam's Razor or not? Does
it demand that we use constructive theories or not? Does science
demand that we use wavefunctions or not? Does science demand that we
use Lagrangian principles or not? Do we have to use spacetime, phase
space, or contact manifolds?

You make false comparisons about what philosophy can do, probably out
of pure ignorance of what it really is. Philosphers quite often
philosophize similarly to how scientists scientize. They have a formal
point of view and adopt some postulates upon it and seek out the
logical consequences of those postulates. The two big differences
between the two groups are that philosophers have a larger domain of
theories they can make and they are only restricted by the requirement
of logical consistency, unless they freely adopt empirical
constrainsts as well. Most philosophers who philosophize about science
assume scientific knowledge as a starting point. A very good example
of what philosophers do -- for better or for worse -- is to argue for
or against the existence of analytic knowledge, know as the
analytic-distinction debate. Carnap argued for analytic knowledge;
Quine argued against it. (The argument is now considered over and
resolved in favor of Quine's view.)

Other philosophers believe that a large part of the job of philosophy
is to clarify intellectual issues. Wittgenstein championed this view.
For example, your notion of being able to "tell what is right or not"
is vague and in need of clarification.

Patrick