🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct13.192242.157437@Cookie.secapl.com>, frank@Cookie.secapl.com (Frank Adams) writes:

[stuff deleted]

> The second example is one without which scientific research cannot proceed
> (although "which we are capable of understanding" might be qualified; we
> need not believe in perfect or even asymptotically perfect understanding
> in order to do research).

I'm going to ignore for the moment the issue of describing the
first three minutes in the existence of the universe and other late
20th-century scientific utterances that I'm having trouble
classifying, in favor of developing what we agree on.

Finally we have something that we agree is a clear example of a
scientific assumption.  I will modify it as you suggested:

     There is a reality outside ourselves that we are capable of in
     some sense understanding.

Now, what I claim is that this sort of statement is fundamentally
different from ordinary assertions (whether these are scientific or
not).  You do not disagree with this either.  Presumably you will
go along if I suggest that at least part of the difference is, that
in the case of ordinary assertions the speaker has evidence for the
factuality of what he asserts, and has the intention to claim that
something is the case; while in the case of scientific assumption
neither is required.  I would like to say that scientific
assumptions are in fact not assertions at all.  (The labels
wouldn't matter except that in current pragmatics we already have
a pretty well-defined notion of what an assertion is.)
-- 
-Ken <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> {Sometimes you have to look reality straight
 OPINIONS ARE MY OWN            {in the eye, and deny it. - G. Keillor