Friday, August 17, 2012

Experimental Reason and Philosophy

Plato, in the Theaetetus, says that the origin of Philosophy is a "sense of wonder", which, as has been previously discussed, can be characterized as Experimental Reason.  Now, the fundamentality of Experimental Reason is evinced by the fact that it can give rise to Dialectical, Deductive, and Inductive reasoning.  Thus, for example, theories of Dialectical Reason seem unable to explain the interrogative dimension of Wonder.  Likewise, the standard defense of Analytic Philosophy's claim that Philosophy and Deductive Logic are co-extensive--that other types of Reason are 'not Philosophy'--hardly meets its own standard of logical soundness.  So, in the absence of a more compelling counter-argument, Experimental Reason and Philosophizing can be conceived as one and the same.

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