Greetings,
Cory, this evening I came home after a long, cold and wet motorcycle trip. As I walked through the
door, saw the whiskey bottle and had an idea that I would pour myself a large one and drink it. This
was a good idea . It was immediately recognised as good and needed no intellectualisation from me.
In fact the sense of good almost preceded the idea - a notion that I feel Pirsig would approve of.
Along with all good empiricist sceptics I do however agree with Dave's caveat upon trusting the
senses too much.
DLT, G.E Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' has been the subject of some debate here and one or two have
claimed that the MoQ is indeed a form of naturalism. Whatever the merits of the argument (and I am
happy to get into it if you would proffer your own stance and back it up with the MoQ) it doesn't
preclude a non-naturalistic definition, merely a naturalistic one. This does narrow the field
somewhat, but is not a great concern for the art of definition.
Popper I like very much, although his falsificationist position has been seriously undermined in
recent years by the realisation that theories cannot be conclusively falsified because the
observations that lead to such falsification may, at some point in the future, themselves prove to
be false. He was convinced that each scientific discovery brings us one step closer to the 'truth.'
Most on this forum would reject that notion. Was Galileo more 'wrong' than Newton? Important is his
idea of approximation to the truth and I suppose one could construct a valid argument along those
lines, however, I think our search is more for the 'good;' not a very Popperian ideal methinks.
Struan
------------------------------------------
Struan Hellier
< mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
"All our best activities involve desires which are disciplined and
purified in the process."
(Iris Murdoch)
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