Resident said: "Classical or not, if you find a part of reality which has not been 'deciphered,' would you give science a chance to decipher it before declaring it off-limits? Do you find that every-day sense experience is indecipherable? Do you have a hunk of stuff or relationships that is
indecipherable? Or are you asserting that there MUST, somewhere, be some indecipherable stuff or relationships, even though you can't point to any."

Let's suppose that Science deciphers V, and from V, they are successful to reduce that to W, and a long time goes by (a few thousand years) and finally W is reduced to X. And, afterwhich, no further reductions seem possible. But, how do we know? How do we know that X will someday (or idealistically could someday) reduce even further to Y? Better yet, how do we know whether Y reduces to other schemes (e.g., Z) ad infinitum?

Alternatively, let's say that after science is successful and they reduce to X and they have reached the truth - 'Ultimate Reality'. In that case, how do we know that we have reached 'Ultimate Reality'?

Rather than guess and ponder, we should just admit to our ignorance about 'Ultimate Reality'. We cannot say more about it then the concept of 'Final Reduction' or 'Ultimate Truth' or 'Ultimate Reality'. This is why I want to rephrase (6) since the term 'things' (which Dick mistakenly translated as things) subtly implies that the things of 'Ultimate Reality' are representable and based on classical logic, etc. These are all invalid assumptions.

Warm regards, Harv

• And Harv........... - dolphin - October 18, 2002 - 14:55 UTC
  • I don't think so - harvey1 - October 18, 2002 - 15:19 UTC
    • need all claims be tentative? - dolphin - October 20, 2002 - 07:39 UTC
      • Reconsidering........... - dolphin - October 20, 2002 - 07:52 UTC