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Jayson_Virissimo comments on The "Stick Test" - useful tool or just pointless amusement? - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: DataPacRat 23 June 2011 06:31PM

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Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 23 June 2011 07:31:38PM *  0 points [-]

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, 'I refute it thus.'

If Berkeley's hypothesis is "impossible to refute" or "undisprovable" (as you put it), then how could Johnson have refuted it via his rock kicking experiment? Surely, for all x, if x is unfalsifiable, then x can't have been falsified.

Comment author: MixedNuts 23 June 2011 08:45:45PM 0 points [-]

That's the point. It looks unfalsifiable, but it isn't. It can answer all your words with "O RLY?", pointing to an axiom you need to prove. But it can't answer actions so easily. The bishop could have said "So what? Your idea-of-a-foot interacts with your idea-of-a-stone" similarly, but his sophistry starts showing. And when the actions are harmful to him, he has to admit he doesn't in fact hold the theory, otherwise he'd just say "oh, a concept-of-a-stick".

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 24 June 2011 04:48:02AM *  4 points [-]

But it can't answer actions so easily. The bishop could have said "So what? Your idea-of-a-foot interacts with your idea-of-a-stone" similarly, but his sophistry starts showing.

How so?

And when the actions are harmful to him, he has to admit he doesn't in fact hold the theory, otherwise he'd just say "oh, a concept-of-a-stick".

He has to admit no such thing. According to Berkeley, harmful things like the pain from being beaten with a stick (a particular pattern in experience) are sense impressions (just like color or taste). His hypothesis doesn't deny sense impressions. On the contrary, it doesn't postulate anything other than sense impressions and the patterns they form.

Comment author: MixedNuts 24 June 2011 06:53:45AM 1 point [-]

Okay, then the quote is wrong: this is in fact unfalsifiable. In fact, if you consider interactions between sense impressions, including sense impressions of reports of sense impressions in other patterns-of-impressions called humans, this is indistinguishable from good ol' reality.

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