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Originally Posted by Overdog
Modest:
Please do not assume that my empiricist challenge to your claim to knowledge is the same as the ontological one. I am still waiting for an explanation as to how you can know time has objective reality.
Why can't I know it, too? Prove it, show evidence, or admit it is your opinion.
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As I've replied to you before, the reality of time is an axiom and therefore by definition cannot be directly proved or disproved by a single observation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdog
I have no choice but to ask you this question, for the sake of my own integrity, and the integrity of science.
We have to answer to the same challenges we level against the creationists.
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As I've replied to you before, there is no real system of the universe that needs god to be fully and completely described while every real system of the universe needs time to be fully and completely described. The evidence is therefore for the axiom of time and against that of god. I'm not sure what about this is unclear or what about it needs clarified for the integrity of science. It's a pretty common opinion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdog
It's the right thing to do.
Otherwise, we cannot defend against their claim that science is religion, too.
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Science neither proves nor disproves things like time, gravity, and god. It uses whatever concepts are useful and does not add concepts that do not add value. God has never been needed in a physical law so it isn't yet part of science. Time is in almost every physical law and is therefore a useful part of science. I don't see the problem there, perhaps you can be more specific.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overdog
Edit:
One other thing I'd like to add. If it weren't for the contributions of Philosophy, I suspect you would probably be living in a cave.
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I actually agree that philosophy is very useful. I could talk in depth about the usefulness of greek philosophy and if you look around these forums you'd see I have to some degree. There is, however, no use in philosophy shunning modern science. The two need to work together. Only when that happens will physicists start to realize they need an ontological interpretation of the theory they have (which may work quite well without that interpretation yet are incomplete as they stand) and the philosopher realize that laws, theories, and models of physics are indeed a valid description of reality - and a quite good one at that. They need to work together. Since it's appropriate, I'll quote the same old essay from the same old philosopher:
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It is also, to an extent, a question that is separate from science--since a scientific theory may work quite well without out needing to decide what all is going on ontologically. Some realization of this, unfortunately, leads people more easily to the conclusion that science is conventionalistic or a social construction than to the more difficult truth that much remains to be understood about reality and that philosophical questions and perspectives are not always useless or without meaning. Philosophy usually does a poor job of preparing the way for science, but it never hurts to ask questions. The worst thing that can ever happen for philosophy, and for science, is that people are so overawed by the conventional wisdom in areas where they feel inadequate (like math) that they are actually afraid to ask questions that may imply criticism, skepticism, or, heaven help them, ignorance.
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And despite how you've taken my last few posts, I agree with this. So chew on that before calling out my intentions again.
~modest
