Furthermore you resort to ad hominem when you realize that none of your objections are valid, and that you occasionally object to what I'm saying with the very point that you were objecting (in effect).
So what? You already where playing to the man in posts #13, #16 and #26... Just because I then indulge in a tu quoque fallacy, you're going to point ME out as the cause of that bs?
I'm not saying that there aren't things that exist outside of pure thought, but that neither you, Einstein, Popper, Hawking, Godel, nor even William James Sidis could understand it.
This, I just want to save for posterity. LMAO :yim_rolling_on_the_
I'll be waiting for your 'groundbreaking' work on the logic of the scientific method. :yim_rolling_on_the_
As an aside, you can follow up with a point about the fall of idealism. But, do you know what slew idealism? Logic, and it's obvious that you don't understand it.
Uh-huh, logic slew idealism. Right. Got that. :yim_rolling_on_the_
I'm pretty sure it was Kant, who synthesised both the empiricism and idealism of his time, but whatever you say, dude. You seem to be such an authority on all these matters.
but logic 101 is an important prerequisite for grasping Philosophy, any Philosophy.
Oh, so that's why I've been wasting 5 years of my life on understanding philosophy fruitfully, without any knowledge whatsoever of propositional logic. :yim_rolling_on_the_
Want evidence? I'm moderator at philosophyforums.
I'm mucking up 'reason' with 'logic'? Logic is the study of reasoning.
Ever heard of dialectics and rhetorics? Apparently not. The name
propositional logic already says it, doesn't it? It's a sub-study of reasoning.
Anyway, what's your position on Frege's logic and the one developed by Russell and Whitehead? Boolian logic? How about other (less rigorous) forms, then? How about aristotelian and kantian logic?
What do you think about the relationship between informal logic, rhetorics and propositional logic? Or the axiomatic diagrams employed by Fries and Nelson?
Enlighten me, since I really don't know that much about formal forms of logic in general, besides informal logic and the art of argument (rhetorics).
Or where you just using the term 'logic' in an
amphibolous way (as in, mucking up 'logic' with 'reason')?
Therefore, you don't truly understand the Philosophy of Science.
...
You could? Nope. It's just you showing me that you're not capable of grasping the nuances of my arguments. Simple strawmen won't do, here.
My main point still stands, wich was:
Because religion isn't about constructing logically coherent systems, but actually tries to talk about reality, those systems can't actually be judged on their coherency (wich is what children are asking for).
Religion, just as science, is a posteriori, and with that property, also always is ad hoc. Exlanations of why things are the way they are always trail behind the actual observations being made (problem of induction from wich science also suffers, as evidenced by periodic paradigmatic revolutions...). Because science is immanent and religion holds a trancendent position, science can be constructed in such a way that it explains systems immanently while religion can not. Religion is unscientific, because of it's trancendent way of explaining the world, wich is untestable.
This doesn't mean that it has less explanatory power than science though, because it does incorporate (theoretical) higher levels of the universe wich can't be seen by us, because of our own immanent position.
And science falls on that point if regarded as bringing closure, since we can't possibly know if there are higher trancendent levels from our position in the entire scale of matter and mind. This doesn't mean that science itself is fruitless, though, because it does explain how the way things operate from our own (relatively) trancendent position in regards to the lower levels of reality (like phenomenological, neurological, molecular, atomic, nuclear and quantum).
But adhereing to a solely immanent theory dogmatically just because it has relative explanatory power doesn't mean that from higher levels, such a theory would cease to be the case; without the knowledge of nuclei, three quarks floating together would just would be that; three quarks floating together (as oposed to them construeing either a proton or a neutron, dependent on their configuration). Again, science does provide ways of manipulating and understanding reality, but our own meddleing into those regions does show that we're not nearly at a level of understanding to make accurate predictions about each and every outcome as evidenced by the various ecological disasters of our own making. This, incidentally, also shows how our reasoning about these matters is completely ad hoc, that is, trailing behind the facts. Yes, we usually learn how the actual systems operate, but most of the time this happens after the damage is already done. And this in turn, also shows the errors in our ways of reasoning; if our intellect would be as good as some profess it to be, then why on Earth are we generally destroying our planet? Maybe because our conjectures, either supported or created by reason, logic or fantasy aren't as perfect as we usually think they are? And that's why I was lamenting the fall of epistemic idealism, wich would hold that we
would (should?) be able to know reality through reasoning alone; and this worship of reason would be a scholastical view of reality, wich has been abandoned a while ago...
On to the scientific method (bored yet?):
Experimentation is a result of conjecture in wich logic can be employed, but I agree with Popper, in that fantasy plays an even more important role in the finding of theories wich in turn can be tested (I already mentioned this in post #20, but you apparently missed that); logic can play a role in constructing conjectural theses and making more solid predictions (see that link to Einsteins philosophy of mind, on why I prefer pointing to epistemology as oposed to logic alone, regarding these matters), but doesn't play a part in judgeing if a theory is 'scientific' or not. This is done through experimentation (ie. setting up a controlled environment for the eventual replication of the outcomes of said experimentation) or observations of phenomena open to all (and this observation is also done during controlled experiments). The quotes I provided in post #17 already pointed to this, but you didn't get those, apparently. Anyway, the predictions being made by said theories either have a possibility to be refuted (testability) or they don't (unscientific theory).
So in short, what makes a theory scientific is that it makes predictions wich can be tested, and this testability is what makes a theory scientifically valid or not.
But the above is mere theory; what actually happens exhibits the problem of induction more clearly...
What actually happens is that during a scientific experiment, observations are provided wich either corroborate or refute existing theories within the paradigm... And when a refutating observation is made (anomalies in Kuhnian lingo), this is reasoned away ad hoc, untill enough anomalous observations cause a 'crisis' within the ruling paradigm, eventually leading to a pardigmshift (maybe through reasoning, maybe through the more romanticist notion of a single briliant mind. Romanticism is a philosophical movement, btw). The change from newtonian to relativistic physics, or the changes from a ptolomaic to copernican astronomy clearly show how this process works (or Lavoisiers impact on chemistry or Georges Cuviers impact on geology)...
In all those instances, observation played a key part in the disproving of ruling paradigms (next to the deaths of people from 'the old guard', as Kuhn put it, lol), a reason why I put observation into such a key position regarding the judgement of the 'scientificality' of theories.
But... well... according to you, I don't truely understand the philosophy of science, so go read those books yourself. :yim_rolling_on_the_