Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!nuug!ifi!bfu From: bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: reorganization? (Was: SCI.PHILOSOPHY.OBJECTIVISM) Message-ID: Date: 5 Feb 90 18:26:17 GMT References: <3284@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <3285@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <9442@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <2018@cjsa.WA.COM> <5056@convex.convex.com> Sender: bfu@ifi.uio.no Reply-To: Thomas Gramstad Lines: 53 >From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) >Date: 1 Feb 90 15:50:52 GMT >When Webster's talks about philosophy as a "science", "science" is surely >used in the very loosest sense. Science is empirical; to be scientific, a >question must--at least in theory--be capable of resolution by experiment. The bit after the ";" is a non sequitur. Your view that only experimental sciences are science is a belief system that you share with a few philosophers and probably some religions. Do you really want to exclude astronomy, cosmology, evolutionary biology, ecology, most of psychology, sociology, history, economics, education etc and so on from the realm of science? I believe that the core problem of this discussion is the somewhat haphazard way the humanities are dealt with in the USENET hierarchy; disciplines and issues from the humanities are scattered all over the hierarchy, or at least in three subhierarchies, namely sci, talk and soc. I believe the optimum solution would be the creation of a hum-hierarchy, as suggested by somebody last week, although I understand that the thought of such a measure, which would include reorganization of some groups, might dismay the people who would have to do this work and some of the people affected by it. There would however be several benefits: 1. A consequent treatment and placement of the humanities 2. The strict definition of the sci-hierarchy would not any more be violated; it could be restricted to technical and/or natural sciences 3. A solution to current inconsistencies, such as sci.econ, sci.education, sci.psychology, sci.philosophy.meta etc -- these would be relocated to hum 4. Everything related to philosophy would be located in the same hierarchy; hum would comprise groups for general philosophy, and for specific aspects or disciplines of philosophy as well as groups for specific philosophies. Discussions whether philosophy or philosophies are sciences or not would not clutter up discussions of their creation, and their location would not be a "prestige issue" -- it would not be an issue at all. 5. Though I would consider this sufficient, I'm sure there are other benefits which I haven't considered yet. :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Gramstad bfu@ifi.uio.no ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Vote yes to hum.philosophy.objectivism -- and hum.philosophy.*