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Davidmanheim comments on Rationality Quotes: April 2011 - Less Wrong
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"Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
-Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Doesn't that mean "An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding" should be committed to the flames? I didn't notice much numerical or experimental reasoning in it.
The quote is somewhat experimental, but we'd have to ignore its advice to find out if it was correct.
Well, of course we would! Executing an action based on the truth of a hypothesis while trying to determine whether its true or not would be somewhat odd.
Consider the quote. If it is false, it should be committed to the flames. If it is true, it should, according to itself, be committed to the flames. Therefore, we can commit it to the flames regardless of its truth-value.
I would say that advice from an experienced practitioner in a given field falls into a broad definition of "experimental reasoning", since at some stage they probably tried several approaches and found out the hard way which one worked.
I think "experimental reasoning" is not what we now call scientific experimentation. It's more of what Schrodinger did with his cat; think through the issue with hypotheses and try to logically understand them. It's better than most philosophy, but not quite what we would now call science.
Personally I enjoy illusions - some of them look pretty. I'm keeping them.