(January 27, 2014 at 3:08 pm)ChadWooters Wrote:(January 24, 2014 at 10:53 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: First you need to understand the difference between cranes and skyhooks. All subsequent quotes are taken from Dan Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
"Cranes can do the lifting work our imaginary skyhooks might do, and they do it in an honest, non-question-begging fashion. They are expensive, however. They have to be designed and built, from everyday parts already on hand, and they have to be located on a firm base of existing ground. Cranes are no less excellent as lifters, and they have the decided advantage of being real."
Now you might have already deduced what a skyhook is:
"An imaginary contrivance for attachment to the sky; an imaginary means of suspension in the sky."
Dennett goes on to write: "Greedy reductionists think that everything can be explained without cranes. Good reductionists think that everything can be explained without skyhooks." Furthermore, good reductionism "is simply the commitment to non-question-begging science without any cheating or embracing mysteries or miracles at the outset."
Too bad Dennett doesn't follow his own advice.
Have you read the book? If so, in what way?
