On Aug 27, 6:45 pm, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> I don't know whether you're hair splitting or speaking loosely, but the above is off the point in a couple of ways. In the first place empirical science is inductive not deductive; so there is a trivial sense in which you can't deduce any empirical fact, such as someone's aesthetic preferences. More broadly you can deduce aesthetic preferences, though of course that takes a theory. A theory is non-physical, but it isn't necessarily an assumption - it may be very well supported inductively. In fact I can give and easy example of such deduction and I don't even need to directly observe your brain. I predict that you prefer the appearance of nude young women to that of nude young men.
>
> Brent Meeker
Well yes, science is both deductive and inductive (with the deductive
thought of as a special case of the inductive). Yes, you can infer
aesthetic preferences from a theory, which doesn't have to be an
assumptuion. You are off-topic though. The discussion was a debate
over whether non-physical aspects (for instance aesthtics preferences)
are entirely explainable in terms of physical aspects (ie particles,
forces and fields). I've argued convincing that they aren't, since
any level of non-physical description has to slip in non-physical
components -ie subjective experiences about nude young woman ;)
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Received on Mon Aug 27 2007 - 03:01:49 PDT