Caledonian2 comments on The Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 April 2008 11:16PM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 06 April 2008 01:23:31PM 0 points [-]

Caledonian: Has anyone ever suggested to you that you look into early-mid 20th century refutations to "positivism"? Operational definitions etc are good heuristics, not divine edicts.

They are neither heuristics nor edicts. They're what's necessary for a definition to be functional and make sense - if you cannot divide the world into A and ~A based on a provided definition, it is invalid.

As for positivism, the 'refutations' made certain assumptions critical to their validity that I assert do not hold. With a whole field dominated by Richards, why would you assume that long-standing consensuses are valid?

The concept of logical positivism is certainly wrong... but it's the 'logical' part that's the problem.