Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 02:16:35 +0100 From: Jan Straathof <janstr-AT-chan.nl> Subject: RE: all or nothing at all, part X Hi Jud, i certainly agree that philosophy calls for disciplined thinking, therefor i have a question about the relation between "materialistic nominalism" and "tautology", because you both say to endorse them. To be a materialist means that one is committed to a truth criterium that is based on empirical evidence, i.e. the meaning of a proposition about some state or aspect of the world is derived from experience via (one of) our five senses. Through empirical verification and/or falsification one accepts or rejects the truth of a proposition; thus a materialist always needs proof, he holds the thesis that "we can learn from our mistakes", because without this possibility of refutation there is no development in or growth of science. For him this is the only legitimate way to gain and accumulate knowledge about the material world. Yet a tautology is a proposition that, regardless of the truthvalue of its components, is always true e.g.: a=a; (2+2=5)=(2+2=5); 'X exists as X'; 'it is raining or it is not raining'. These propositions can never be rejected because they need no experience or proof, they cannot be empirically proved, thus they add nothing to our understanding of the material world. >From an empirical materialists point of view a tautology is non-sense, because it possesses no (new) information; it has no meaning, because it needs no, nor can it provide any, empirical evidence to prove it. How Jud do you reconcile this, or better, why do you need these tautological arguments in your materialistic nominalist ontology ? yours, Jan btw. i'm very interested in the etymological roots of YHWH, maybe Allen can tell us some more ? --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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