Peter Jones:
> > Theology is a subset of metaphysics. Metaphysics does not deal with
> > purely logical and/or empirical facts. T
>
> Metaphysics can. It depends on who is doing it.
>
> > his means you could come up with
> > any metaphysical theory consistent with the logical and empirical facts,
> > no matter how silly, and no-one would be able to rebutt it.
>
> Of course not, that is utterly wrong.
>
> Meaphysicians often invoke Occam's razor, for instance.
>
> In cany case, people who seriously think we
> are all living in Plato's heaven are already dealing in metaphysics of
> the most
> baroque kind.
>
> > For example,
> > I could say that friction is the result of tiny, undetectable demons who
> > try to grab my finger as I slide it against an object. Sure, there's no way
> > to prove these demons do or don't exist, but I'm going to believe in them
> > anyway as a metaphysical theory.
>
> And there's no way to prove we aren't computer-simulated...
Right! So if you claimed we were living in a computer simulation because you
liked the sound of it, that would be a metaphysical position. If Democritus came
up with the idea that everything was made of atoms because he liked the sound
of it that would have been a metaphysical position, even if happened to be true,
because it would only have been true *by luck*, not because there was some
good reason to believe it was true. If Democritus had come up with a good reason
for his atomic theory, that would then have been science, not metaphysics.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sat Aug 26 2006 - 00:28:43 PDT