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does it matter if a explanation is ad hoc if it is true?The reason why I am asking you this is because a friend of my claimed that it does not matter if the ad hoc fallacy is committed if the explanation itself is true.
The discussion started with Chinese room and myself asking my friend questions about consciousness (is robot with a human brain doing the computing conscious?) and rather embarrassingly assuming that my friend is a proponent of the argument. My friend also claimed that proponents of the argument are by necessarily substance dualisms (which is false since the person who made this argument is a physicalism) I them argued substance by saying that disconnecting the two halves of the brain causes the person to develop two different personalities and he countered by saying that cutting the brain creates another soul. when I pointed out the ad hoc nature of it, he made the claim above. |
| asked on Saturday, Jul 18, 2015 06:57:11 AM by Metaphysical Materialism1248 | |
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Yes, it matters in the sense that a fallacy was committed. Remember that fallacies (informal) don't necessarily make the argument false. For example, "You believe in unicorns. You're a moron. Therefore, unicorns don't exist." Unicorns almost certainly don't exist, but that does not make the preceding argument a good one in any way.
As far as "creating two souls" when the two hemispheres of the brain are separated, if that is not an unfalsifiable hypothesis, I don't know what is! |
| answered on Saturday, Jul 18, 2015 11:39:34 AM by Bo Bennett, PhD |
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