leftrightleft wrote:"By what mechanism is the universe rationally intelligible?"
Interesting that you skip over the several posts wherein this bollocks was dealt with only to erect it anyway.
The mechanism by which the universe is rationally intelligible is quantity.
Several sources disagree with you:
Do they? Have you actually checked with them that they disagree with me, or have you taken what they've said at face value without ever checking that they've actually been rigorous in their formulations? Finding the odd source that disagrees doesn't actually lend weight to your case. You have to justify it logically, and I can certainly do that. Can you?
Either way, let's study your sources, and see if the justification can be found therein, shall we?
Who? What's the justification for accepting this unknown source over me? Can you do better than 'he said, she said'? Ultimately, I can demolish your quotation with a single phrase. When an assumption is justified, it's no longer an assumption, it's an evidentially supported postulate. Ares you fucking sure you want to play the semantics game with me? I guaranfuckingtee I'm much better at it than you or anybody you've ever met.
Of course scientific tests involve making assumptions. In this particular case, those assumptions are known as 'hypotheses' or, in the case of those that have been observationally justified, 'evidentially supported postulates'. My postulate is that you don't have a fucking clue of what you're on about, and the evidence is mounting rapidly.
Please continue to link to resources for elementary school teachers on matters of scientific epistemology, though. It's always fun to watch a fish out of water floundering to save face.
You said that "no constant can ever serve as a variable". I know that some physicists have attempted to test whether the speed of light varies as a function of time. The speed of light is often called a "constant", but I don't see why it is necessary for it to be so.
I'd be careful about slinging terms like 'necessary' around as well, as this has a very specific meaning. Of course it isn't necessary that the speed of light is constant (actually, light is a red herring here; use the forum search for 'light' and 'red herring' and you should have no trouble locating the post in which I detail why this is so), but it IS the case that it is, as has been demonstrated. Yes, some physicists, who happen to like winning prizes erected by fuckwits, have suggested that it might not be, but their attempts have all fallen flat (except their attempts to win the prize money off the fuckwits, of course, because a fuckwit and his money are soon parted, to paraphrase a famous name from my own business).
But the semantic definitions is not what I'm talking about.
Oh dear. ALL fucking definitions are semantic, genius. It's what semantics fucking deals with.
I'm beginning to wonder if you have the equipment.
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