BARRIER TO UNDER-STAN-DING?

Stan and I have been bouncing back-and-forth, and I suppose a quick gloss of our perorations would be 'examining the philosophical basis of scientific practice.' It's that gray area, one supposes, between epistemology per se and the philosophy of science.

But Stan, we seem to have a problem as far as fostering a dialogue that's easy for others to follow, and that is that I can't seem to link to new specific posts on your blog. It seems as if any links I offer automatically take me to this site, which is Stan's web site, rather than to a specific blog post. What a hassle!

Now, Stan has obviously spent a lot of time organizing the above site to articulate his views, and it would be unreasonable to expect him to alter its entire structure simply to facilitate our discussion, so I am going to suggest that perhaps we should just do all the blogging here. With that in mind, I'm going to post a list of some (not all) of the things that Stan described as First Principles now, and respond (in part) in my next post

1. The Intuitive Principles

These principles, while not provable, are known to be valid intuitively

a. Identity. If it is true, then it is true; if it exists, then it exists.
b. Non-Contradiction. If it is true, then it cannot be false; if it exists, it cannot NOT exist.
c. Excluded Middle.A (singular, unity) concept cannot be somewhat true and somewhat false; a (singular, unity) thing cannot somewhat exist and somewhat not exist.
d. Cause and effect. Every effect has a cause that is both necessary and sufficient.
e. Cogito (Descartes). Because I doubt my own doubt, it is true that I think; because I think (truth), I must exist (fact).

2. The Probabilistic Principles.
These Principles seem to encompass both truth and existence

a. The Immutability of math throughout the universe.
b. The Immutability of physical law throughout the universe
c.The mutability of all levels of verifiability (Godel's laws).

3. The Presuppositional Principles
These principles are declared either as empirical constraints, or as part of a worldview.

a. No form of reality exists that cannot be either observed and measured directly or by the use of instrumentation.
b. No Singularities (temporary violations) exist in the physical laws of the universe.