Quotes About Empiricist

The Turing Test – the sort of thing that only a demented empiricist could devise – is one of the silliest tests ever to be taken seriously as a test. It's equivalent to saying, "If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck" – even though we know it's actually a machine-duck with no organic parts, which we have painstakingly programmed to exhibit duck behavior … to quack like a duck.

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

A modern empiricist historian's response to ancient (especially Israelite) transcendent historiography might be: "It has not provided information that is reliable since it is so full of deity." The ancient historian's response to modern empiricist historiography might be: "It has not provided information that is worthwhile since it is so empty of deity.

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a single wound. Not so are victories either over enemies or over nature gained. Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf. At any rate, it seems the fittest thing for the empiricist philosopher.

One outcome of this lack of appreciation of the relevance of epistemology for the study of psychology and psychological development is that epistemological assumptions often remain tacit. Practically, this amounts to many psychologists basing their theories on assumptions that originate in the empiricist tradition (Piaget, 1970/1972a, p. 10).

the relevance of epistemology for the study of psychology and psychological development is that epistemological assumptions often remain tacit. Practically, this amounts to many psychologists basing their theories on assumptions that originate in the empiricist tradition (Piaget, 1970/1972a, p. 10).

For many philosophers, causation is a suspicious metaphysical concept that we do best to avoid when trying to understand science. This suspicion is, again, common within the empiricist tradition. It derives from the work of Hume. The suspicion is directed especially at the idea of causation as a sort of hidden connection between things, unobservable but essential to the operation of the universe.

Classical science, the mythical science of a simple, passive world, belongs to the past, killed not by philosophical criticism or empiricist resignation but by the internal development of science itself.

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?