RE: A question regarding proof
September 9, 2011 at 4:01 pm
(This post was last modified: September 9, 2011 at 4:16 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
So, on the one hand we have observations, and indeed experiments that show how changes to the brain produce changes in the mind or self, and on the other hand we have the great unknown. I'm not sure I'd call it a leap. We could perhaps speculate that something else is happening, that there is an unobserved cause, but if our thoughts produced changes in the material world (which is most definitely where the brain resides) then theoretically we should be able to find some sort of "mind over matter" elsewhere. That's an area that's been hugely unproductive. It would be difficult to form a body of knowledge about anything if we were to prefer speculation over observation, and so I predictably side with observation (evidence of anything else would of course give us reason to reevaluate our position). I'd never argue for absolute certainty, but provisional certainty allows me to make statements which are correct to the best of our knowledge (which is always subject to revision), if I could not make such statements communicating an idea would be almost unimaginably cumbersome. One could bootstrap the unknown into almost anything and by doing so invalidate everything. The infamous "but where's the missing link for that missing link" argument. Criticisms of the lack of totality of knowledge are hardly support for any given alternative.
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