OT - Scientific proof that there is no afterlife!

[geoschmo]

Jack and Fyron. Go to your corners please.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Jack and Fyron. Go to your corners please.

Sorry Geo - I ought to have phrased things differently.

[ August 22, 2003, 01:53: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Fyron]

I have no interest in continuing this discussion (and will not respond to such Posts), but will provide some closure... this is from my philosophy text book Thinking Philosophically, by Richard Creel:

"Within philosophy every claim that anyone makes is considered to be an appropriate target for critical investigation by means of reason. What is reason? What does it mean to investigate something by means of reason? That is difficult to say, but it means something like this: taking nothing for granted and asking of every claim, 'What evidence is there for believing it? What arguments are there to support it? Are those arguments strong enough to justify believing it?' Philosophy examines every position and asks what reasons there are for accepting or rejecting it; philosophy allows nothing to be sacrosanct and beyond the pale of rigorous investigation - not even reason itself! In brief, philosophy is the attempt to see what we can know just by depending on ordinary human experience and the powers of the human mind."

[ August 21, 2003, 23:59: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I have no interest in continuing this discussion (and will not respond to such Posts), but will provide some closure... this is from my philosophy text book Thinking Philosophically, by Richard Creel:

"Within philosophy every claim that anyone makes is considered to be an appropriate target for critical investigation by means of reason. What is reason? What does it mean to investigate something by means of reason? That is difficult to say, but it means something like this: taking nothing for granted and asking of every claim, 'What evidence is there for believing it? What arguments are there to support it? Are those arguments strong enough to justify believing it?' Philosophy examines every position and asks what reasons there are for accepting or rejecting it; philosophy allows nothing to be sacrosanct and beyond the pale of rigorous investigation - not even reason itself! In brief, philosophy is the attempt to see what we can know just by depending on ordinary human experience and the powers of the human mind."

(emphasis added)

When ordinary human experience is included in the list of things something depends on, it is not "all logic" nor "ENTIRELY based on logic"; The excerpt you use denies your own thesis.

[ August 22, 2003, 01:53: Message edited by: Jack Simth ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Human experience sounds to me like observing the universe for empirical facts, so you have something to philosophise logically about.

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Human experience sounds to me like observing the universe for empirical facts, so you have something to philosophise logically about.

Perhaps, but when empirical data gets added to the mix, it is no longer "all logic" nor "ENTIRELY based on logic", which is what I was arguing against. With observations thrown into the mix, it becomes "logic and observations", not "all logic".

[Suicide Junkie]

So, are you saying that you consider the observations part of the philosophy, or did you have something else in mind?
Observations can be used to support a position, but ISTM they hardly provide a reason for believing something else. It is the logic (or whatever alternative you propose) that links the ideas to observations. The observations simply anchor the argument to our reality, rather than say the starwars "universe" or the matrix "universe".

The logic or alternative would be the gist of the philosophizing that philosophers do, as far as I see.