Quote:
Originally Posted by beppe
everything without a qualifier, like in everything that is contained in my pocket, means literally everything.
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Saying "everything" emphatically doesn't clarify what it refers to - is "everything" like everything in your pocket in the sense that there is a set of things in your pocket which is a closed set and which is in principle knowable, or is it like everything in your pocket in the sense that there is an open set of things in your pocket about which we cannot be certain whether at any point we can know whether the set is approaching completeness?
Quote:
Originally Posted by beppe
You are getting very close to what I think is correct with your second statement:
However, if "everything" means all that is known plus some stuff we don't know, then to expect science to explain and/or describe this is to set science up for failure.
That I would modify as if "everything" means all that is known plus its complement, then to expect science to explain and/or describe this is to set science up for failure.
Otherwise, some stuff we don't know is again quite fuzzy, and it poisons the strength of everything.
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I agree that "some stuff we don't know", is fuzzy, and intentionally so, because I don't know what this other stuff might possibly be. But I'm not sure it's more fuzzy than "complement", if I understand you correctly, where I take it to mean something like "that which completes"". They are both black boxes into that of which we know nothing can be tossed.[/QUOTE]
Quote:
Originally Posted by beppe
It is the word everything the gives trouble, like the word always, like the word everywhere. They are simply not applicable to reality, they are applicable only to logic, or to axiomatic sest, that is, if things are done correctly, to a closed formal system.
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Of course, words, like guns, are not troublesome - it's the uses to which people put them that cause difficulties
