42 lines
2.4 KiB
Python
42 lines
2.4 KiB
Python
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stringo = """
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The trouble with Churchland’s naturalism is not so much that it is
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metaphysical, but that it is an impoverished metaphysics, inadequate
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to the task of grounding the relation between representation and reality.
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Moreover, Churchland’s difficulties in this regard are symptomatic of a
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wider problem concerning the way in which philosophical naturalism
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frames its own relation to science. While vague talk of rendering phi-
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losophy consistent with ‘the findings of our best sciences’ remains
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entirely commendable, it tends to distract attention away from the
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amount of philosophical work required in order to render these find-
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ings metaphysically coherent. The goal is surely to devise a metaphysics
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worthy of the sciences, and here neither empiricism nor pragmatism are
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likely to prove adequate to the task. Science need no more defer to
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empiricism’s enthronement of ‘experience’ than to naturalism’s hypo-
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statization of ‘nature’. Both remain entirely extraneous to science’s
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subtractive modus operandi. From the perspective of the latter, both the
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invocation of ‘experience’ qua realm of ‘originary intuitions’ and the
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appeal to ‘nature’ qua domain of autonomous functions are irrelevant.
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We shall try to explain in subsequent chapters how science subtracts
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nature from experience, the better to uncover the objective void of
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being. But if, as we are contending here, the principal task of contem-
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porary philosophy is to draw out the ultimate speculative implications
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of the logic of Enlightenment, then the former cannot allow itself to be
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seduced into contriving ever more sophistical proofs for the transcen-
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dental inviolability of the manifest image. Nor should it resign itself to
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espousing naturalism and taking up residence in the scientific image
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in the hope of winning promotion to the status of cognitive science.
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Above all, it should not waste time trying to effect some sort of synthe-
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sis or reconciliation between the manifest and scientific images. The
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philosophical consummation of Enlightenment consists in expediting
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science’s demolition of the manifest image by kicking away whatever
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pseudo-transcendental props are being used to shore it up or otherwise
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inhibit the corrosive potency of science’s metaphysical subtractions. In
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this regard, it is precisely Churchland’s attempt to preserve a normative
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role for the ‘superempirical virtues’ that vitiates his version of EM.
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"""
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print(
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stringo.replace('\n', ' ')
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) |