[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Scott Roberts]

Ham (Matt K, Ian, Arlo, DMB, Platt mentioned),

You keep making generalizations about "this group" which are not true. Here 
is your latest:

Ham said: "Richard Rorty is a favorite of this group."

Scott:
Considering how much anti-Rorty sentiment has come from DMB and Platt, this 
should be questioned.

Ham said:
Since I have used the term "physicalism" at least once in my postings,
mainly because I know it is recognized by DMB, Scott and Arlo, let me quote
from what I think is a superior source, Dagobert Runes' "Dictionary of
Philosophy"....

"Physicalism: the thesis, developed within Scientific Empiricism, that every
descriptive term in the language of science (in the widest sense, including
social science) is connected with terms designating observable properties of
things.  This connection is of such a kind that a sentence applying the term
in question is intersubjectively confirmable by observations."

Essentially, Physicalism is another name for Semiotics -- the theory that we
know things only by the "signs" (or words) we use to identify them.

Scott:
This is just not true. You are confusing pragmatism and physicalism. I think 
that the people posting here (some of them) can be divided roughly as 
follows (those mentioned, feel free to object):

Matt K, Ian, Arlo: pragmatic and physicalist.
Platt, Ham: nonpragmatic and nonphysicalist.
Scott: pragmatic and nonphysicalist.
DMB: ? and nonphysicalist (in the past he has attacked Rorty, but lately he 
has been accepting Rortyan terms like "anti-essentialist" and 
"anti-representationalist". )
Pirsig: ? and ?. Of course, he says he is following in James' pragmatic 
tradition, but a lot of what Matt K is posting about (and arguing with DMB) 
is just how pragmatic he really is. And on the physicalist/nonphysicalist 
divide, he would probably say he is a nonphysicalist (physicalism being a 
SOM variant), but in my recent post I have questioned just how far he has 
moved away from physicalism.

- Scott