From: ed@somewhere.in.the.uk   
      
   D wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   > On Tue, 18 Mar 2025, Ed Cryer wrote:   
   >   
   >> I don't doubt that the mind is a product of the brain; and that the   
   >> brain is   
   >> physical. Nor have I ever seriously doubted that the world is physical   
   >> and   
   >> real. I'm a naive realist by temperament. I like to call myself a   
   >> "western   
   >> scientific rationalist".   
   >   
   > Hooray, I'm not alone! ;)   
   >   
   >> All this seems rather unphilosophical. I guess I'm no philosopher. I   
   >> just like   
   >> talking with intelligent people, and having my mind stimulated by   
   >> interesting   
   >> speculation. Let the dialogue of reason continue. It's the breeding   
   >> ground of   
   >> new ideas and change.   
   >   
   > Well, it can be! Discuss with quantum physicists and then discuss if you   
   > should   
   > or should not infer things from formulas that can never be proven or shown   
   > evidence or disproven (choose your favourite). Are you justified in   
   > believing   
   > the inferences?   
   >   
   > Also, debating idealists can be fun, but as soon as it devolves into   
   > eternal   
   > doubting and skepticism, I bow out, because there is no reason to   
   > continue the   
   > discussion.   
   >   
      
   I think scepticism is fundamental to empiricism. You only have to   
   consider the history of scientific theories that have been abandoned   
   along the way.   
   About the end of the 19th c people thought science was complete apart   
   from one or two small anomalies. And then along came a major paradigm   
   shift with Relativity and quantum mechanics. The unsplittable atom was   
   shattered, and a micro world almost beyond human understanding revealed.   
      
   And look at today's looming questions; black holes, dark matter &   
   energy, how did life begin, what is consciousness, alien intelligence,   
   other universes. Collectively they make you think that we're only at the   
   start of the journey toward knowledge; and that in a few hundred years   
   we of today will look as unknowing to a scientist as Aristotle seems to us.   
      
   Why do I stick with it? It's the best available for all its faults;   
   rather like what Winston Churchill said about democracy.   
      
   Ed   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)