[FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?

[Frank Wimberly]

"I don't care what you think you have deduced from formal logic, if you
jump when the empty gun is cocked, *you believe that the gun is loaded*."

Or you believe the gun might be loaded.  I have three revolvers hidden away
in a triply locked gun safe.  Two of them are cowboy style six-shooters.
One of them is a British 9 shot double action .22.

Do you see the problem?

Frank

----
Frank Wimberly

www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Thu, Jul 12, 2018, 7:03 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Glen,
>
>
>
>
>
> Frank and I have a long-running, somewhat facetious, argument about the
> meaning of probability statements.  We are friends, and we enjoy making
> each other squirm, a bit.  I talk to him in a way I would not talk to you.
> My argument with Frank is light-hearted and you may justifiably be
> impatient with it. So, some caution, here, therefore.
>
>
>
> One of the things Frank and I argue about is, Who exactly gets to say what
> I believe.  He credits first person accounts, perhaps unconditionally;  I
> credit third person accounts, conditionally.  Something like that.  So that
> is a part of what is going on, here.  There is another thread lurking here
> that concerns what logic, in the ordinary sense, is good for.  Put them
> together, and you get something like, "I don't care what you think you have
> deduced from formal logic, if you jump when the empty gun is cocked, *you
> believe that the gun is loaded*."  I am looking forward to Frank’s
> disagreement with that notion.  It's a bit like the distinction between
> signs and symptoms in medicine.
>
>
>
> I certainly don’t want to be an idealist.  I am trying to be an
> experience-monist:  everything else, ideas, matter, is irreducibly just
> patterns in experience.  But given the doctrine above, you have a lot to
> say about whether I am, in fact, an idealist.  Evidence?
>
>
>
> I stipulate that I have not answered your longer email of a week ago on
> this thread.  Given your assertion that I don't read [carefully] what you
> write, I am taking time to answer it.   Relatives in house, so that process
> is slow.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2018 6:30 PM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What's so bad about Scientism?
>
>
>
> So, to be clear, are you also making fun of reasoning like this?  I ask
> because it's equal in idealism to the trolley problem.
>
>
>
> On 07/11/2018 07:48 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> > Jones is in a gunfight
>
> > Jones Knows that his opponent has only a six shooter Jones knows that
>
> > his opponent has just fired six shots Jones’s opponent aims his gun at
>
> > Jones Jones reasons that his opponent’s gun is empty Yet he is afraid
>
> > of being shot.
>
> > Does Jones believe that the gun is empty?
>
> >
>
> > By the way, given the facts stipulated, you, as a mathematician, would
>
> > say that the probability that the gun is empty is 1.0, right?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
>
>
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