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From: flink@mimsy.UUCP (Paul V Torek)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Knowledge and the Academics
Message-ID: <6779@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 23-May-87 01:03:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: mimsy.6779
Posted: Sat May 23 01:03:58 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 18:45:18 EDT
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Reply-To: flink@mimsy.UUCP (Paul V Torek)
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Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
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obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes (in reply to Carnes):
C>You are arguing a philosophical (epistemological) point:  that the only 
C>adequate basis for knowledge is the repeatable testing that characterizes
C>the hard sciences.  But you can't prove this philosophical point by 
C>testing and measurement; therefore, by your own reasoning, there is no
C>adequate basis for accepting it as true. [--Richard Carnes]

>By Kenn's own reasoning, there *is* an adequate basis.  His thesis has
>received repeated tested over the centuries.  (NB-Kenn did not say "re-
>peated".)

Tested how?  A bunch of techie types get together and decide that other
bases for knowledge have repeatedly produced "inadequate" results?  To put
it less confrontationally, what standard of "adequacy" is being used here?
Not mere agreement, I hope.

But even if he uses a better standard of adequacy, Kenn faces a regress 
problem here.  How does he know that his test for adequacy of knowledge-
bases is a reliable one?  By yet another test?  Regress beckons...

>In essense, is the solution to Hume's dilemma provided by Loeb's theorem!?
>[I mentioned the theorem in my review of Smullyan _Forever Undecided_.]

I saw your review, but "Hume's dilemma"?  Which?  You owe us phil.tech 
readers some filling in of context here -- I don't read religion.misc.
--
Paul Torek				flink@mimsy.umd.edu