poke comments on Hand vs. Fingers - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 March 2008 12:36AM

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Comment author: poke 30 March 2008 06:39:16PM 0 points [-]

Richard,

I think your refutation of "scientism" is somewhat disingenuous and suffers from what I like to call the "everything is philosophy fallacy." When a scientist says "philosophy is nonsense" they have obvious scientific grounds: philosophical reasoning isn't a part of the scientific world view. There's no difference between saying "philosophy is nonsense" and saying "religion is nonsense." Criticizing them on the grounds that this isn't good philosophy is ridiculous. One doesn't need to philosophize to communicate.