RE: Philosophy Versus Science
August 22, 2025 at 2:32 am
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2025 at 2:33 am by Sheldon.)
(July 19, 2025 at 7:14 am)Belacqua Wrote:You don't offer a criteria of what you think such evidence would be, that exists entirely outside of the remit of science or the natural realm I mean. Could you give me an example, so I can understand what you mean by "evidence" in that context?(July 18, 2025 at 9:42 pm)Alan V Wrote: [Happy Skeptic wrote:]
If the world included magic, science would be able to study it. If it included miracles, science would be able to identify them and categorize under what conditions they happened, and create hypotheses about what might induce another "miracle" to happen.
[and you agreed:]
most of us are not philosophers at all [...] keep asking for evidence rather than one argument piled on top of another.
Here you show that although you are not a philosopher, you are still committed to metaphysical naturalism.
Because when you ask for evidence, you are asking for the kind of thing that science would be able to study. And if it's something that science can't study, you don't consider it to be evidence.
One does not need to be committed (solely) to scientific naturalism, to recognise it is exponentially more successful at understanding reality than any other method. There is an important epistemological distinction between disbelief, and holding a contrary belief, as any philosopher should know.
FYI magic by definition is outside of the remit of science, but then so are all non-existent things of course.