Lisa and Everyone:

Lisa you get a 'gold medal' for inquisitiveness....and

don't you think the definitions below create some special problems for
ethics?

For instance, many phenomena, personal beliefs, feelings, and even
sensations cannot be 'tested' or 'measured'. The psychologist cannot
'measure' the consciousness of pain, the ecologist cannot measure 'holism'
nor can the animal ethicist measure or test 'animal values' (except prices).

Ethical values cannot be 'tested' because ethical values often depend on
'axiological' support; and such notions as goodness, beauty and truth are
'human expressions.' Economic values can be tested (prices, etc.) but
ethical values cannot be tested primarily because animals including humans
are still evolving, still maturing into something else, and there appears to
be 'ends' to nature.....

I think that for something to be said to be 'testable' means that the
observer has to have a particular approach or attitude about generating a
few generalizations (laws) , and that is why I would suggest that a
'hypothesis' does not have to be 'testable' if there are such 'teleological'
notions as the good, the beautiful and the true. We live 'as though they
exist' (Nietzsche would argue for this).

For instance, if the 'whole' is not testable, but it is believed that all
things, all objects together have a certain 'end' or 'telos' then if the
'whole' is affirmed by a certain attitude (eg. life, liberty and happiness
are not simply personal subjective desireables, but rather form a collective
motto regarding what is ultimately experienced as desireable, with
surprises, and upsets), the 'object' which is testable is not finished (ecce
homo). That is, humanity, and what humanity experiences, is what is
unfinished. People are the 'unfinished' and the 'unfurnished' (in the sense
of lacking basic answers to the telological. Only 'finished' things can be
'tested' utilizing 'induction' or 'trail and error'.

So in a sense then everything is testable, all statements, both the
'finished' and the 'unfinished' (excepting the Finnish people). What appears
as 'opposing in nature' is a 'contradiction' in human conversation,
dialogue, discourse.

Ultimately the hypothesis 'par excellence' is God, or the Good, depending on
your "a-, non-, or theological beliefs.

Plato said that the 'soul desires one thing, and that is the Good.' But the
good cannot be known, and the closest that the soul can come to know the
Good is to 'sense' the beauty that emanates from the Good. The point is that
the 'soul' or 'persona (memory, self, etc.) desires only one thing....and
nothing else but the Good.

We share this as humanity with each other, and this itself is 'untestable'
.....or mystical. Thus the 'ecosystem' is more mystical than are animal
values (which include prices in a black market). But the animal values and
the ecosystem are 'untestable' ...both depending on different terms.

chao

John





----- Original Message -----
From: Lisa Dangutis <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2002 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: Query of the day?


> As you all may remember, there has been some disagreement
> about what  a hypothesis,a law, and a theory really is.
>
> I am posing some definitions to you:
>
> "Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be
> used to build more complex inferences and explanations."
> Book Title: Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science.
>
>
> "Theory: In science, a well substantiated explanation of the natural world
> that can incorporate, facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypothesis."
> Book Title: Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science.
>
> "Law: A descriptive generalization about how some aspect of the
> natural world behaves under stated circumstances"
> Book Title: Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science.
>
> I didn't write them, and I apologize for my bad quoting, I didn't
> have the page numbers in hand.
>
> Best
> Li-