Posted: Jun 16, 2011 1:36 am
Hugin wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:For example, I'm not sure how a field like the philosophy of mind could become scientific - what tests could or would we run to falsify dualism or to support materialism, etc?
With increased knowledge, one of them will undoubtly look more likely than the other. Just as atomism turned up to be more likely than Aristotle's elements.
Not comparable. Atomism and Aristotle's elements were both ideas on the physical nature of objects, they are (and always have been) testable by science, hence why they have always been considered a part of natural philosophy (science). In contrast, the philosophy of mind contains arguments which are not solvable by appeal to empirical evidence, so there is (for example) no way for science to demonstrate that materialism is more likely to be true than dualism since they both make the same predictions.