StephenR comments on Rationality Quotes August 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: RolfAndreassen 04 August 2014 03:12AM

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Comment author: StephenR 04 August 2014 04:20:31AM *  5 points [-]

"We must not criticize an idiom [...] because it is not yet well known and is, therefore, less strongly connected with our sensory reactions and less plausible than is another, more 'common' idiom. Superficial criticisms of this kind, which have been elevated into an entire 'philosophy', abound in discussions of the mind-body problem. Philosophers who want to introduce and to test new views thus find themselves faced not with arguments, which they could most likely answer, but with an impenetrable stone wall of well-entrenched reactions. This is not at all different from the attitude of people ignorant of foreign languages, who feel that a certain colour is much better described by 'red' than by 'rosso'.

Paul Feyerabend, Against Method, 4th Edition, p. 59.