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From: myers@tybalt.caltech.edu (Bob Myers)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Do philosophers need defending?
Message-ID: <3341@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu>
Date: Sat, 25-Jul-87 15:13:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: cit-vax.3341
Posted: Sat Jul 25 15:13:17 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Jul-87 01:55:22 EDT
References: <3219@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl> <3227@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Sender: news@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu
Reply-To: myers@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Bob Myers)
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Organization: California Institute of Technology
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Summary:

Keywords:


In article <3227@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> rjf@ukc.ac.uk (Robin Faichney) writes:
>In article <825@klipper.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) writes:
>
>>Now I would wish more people dug into the philosophical basis
>>of that methodology, so that they would become a little less confident in
>>yelling "it's scientifically proven!".
>
>Does this mean 'significantly less confident in a significant number of
>cases'? If so, it seems to me obviously false. If not, why say it?

Obviously false? Not to me. Seems quite likely to me, at least for
non-scientists. Among scientists is a different story.

But I think many non-scientists associate "scientifically proven" with
Truth (capital T). Just think about the way some people will say
"{Relativity, Evolution} is only a theory!", thinking that theories
are not scientifically *proven*, and therefore aren't really Truth.
As if that really had any relevance at all.

The point is that scientific proof is not absolute, but it is often
taken as absolute truth.

The nature of *scientific* truth is not well understood (in my experience)
by most non-scientists.

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Bob Myers                                         myers@tybalt.caltech.edu
					...seismo!tybalt.caltech.edu!myers