RE: virus: Social Metaphysics
Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 10:01:10 +0100
> From: David McFadzean[SMTP:david@lucifer.com]
>
> The question of how someone would know about the existence of
> something is
> epistemological and therefore orthogonal to the question of whether
> something
> exists. To confuse the two is a well-know logical fallacy.
>
I don't think so. It is certainly widely viewed as confusion,
between epistemology and ontology, but that particular
dichotomy can be questioned, and there is only a logical
fallacy if it is accepted without question. Personally, it
makes a great deal of sense to me to connect the
question about whether something exists with the
question as to how we can know about it. Science
certainly does so, and it is only classical Western
philosophy (as far as I know) that does not.
This may be an appropriate point for me to drop in
one of my pet theories: most people are either
subjectivists or objectivists[1]. That is, they tend
towards one or other of the poles of a dimension of
personality, like Jung's ones of thinking vs feeling,
neurotic vs ??, extraverted vs introverted. Those
who say that the concept of objective reality
derives from subjective experience are subjectivists.
Those who say that subjective experience derives
from objective reality are objectivists. Those who
are balanced, tending towards neither extreme, say
you can look at it either way. Comments, please?
:-)
Robin
[1] Note the lower case "o"!