Clarification

"Funeral by funeral, theory advances."--Paul Samuelson (probably adapted from Max Planck)
"Philosophy progresses not by solving problems but by abandoning them."--John Dewey

There's an article by Wesley Salmon titled 'Confirmation' in the May 1973 issue of "Scientific American". But are these discussions about confirmation, completability, verification, and
falsifiability of primary relevance? According to Antonio Damasio (DESCARTES ERROR),
and other neuroscience researchers, the dualism between reason and emotion promoted by Descartes was a mistake. Brainscans seem to reveal the entanglement of emotion and reason in the brain (or more accurately the entire person) just as entanglement has become a large topic in quantum physics.

Wittgenstein believed that philosophy is separate from science. Quine countered that philosophy is really a brance of science. One could propose that speculative philosophy (religion, metaphysics) led to natural philosophy (science, physics--Newton/Steven Weinberg) which led to social mathematics (Condorcet/D. Bernoulli/H. H. Gossen/the failed 20th century c.e. Macy Foundation conferences) which led back to speculative philosophy and the resurrection of religion/metaphysics by Frank Tipler who said, contrary to Weinberg, that religion was now a branch of science: reductive science takes on the duty of religion and provides us with the promised consolation of immortality. Tipler it seems attempts to rebut Robert C. Priddy's and Nicholas's argument against scientism. (Priddy's book SCIENCE LIMITED is on the Internet; cf.: Chapter 7) But Tipler's scientism seems to be a scientism that Nicholas would accept and Weinberg, Ayer, and doc(logic) would not. Weinberg's scientism, rejected by Tipler, would also be rejected by Nicholas but accepted by Ayer and doc(logic). The Weinberg-Tipler dispute is covered in Tipler's THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY.

Two terminologies seem to be at war here, and I think it's time to declare a truce. The two terminologies are science/scientist/scientific vs, scientism/scientisticist/scientistic. I think that Hume and the LP folks failed to recognize the relevance of the connection between human emotion and reason. Hume's friend, Adam Smith, seemed to approach this problem but lacked the machinery to resolve it. Ayer includes a chapter by Carnap, 'The Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language', in his book LOGICAL POSITIVISM. I think poetry, ethics, values may be our first way of saying what we want to pursue and that language clarification and science are the tools we develop to pursue it. We want to be sure that language doesn't lead us into deconstructionist cul-de-sacs like Paul de Man's comment: "death is a misplaced name for a linguistic predicament". I think the early Taoist alchemists were on target when they attempted to use science directly for the achievement of immortality. Because it would have been heresy (overthrowing the Cherubim guarding the Tree of Life) for Christian alchemists to pursue that course, they said they were only pursuing an elixir to keep them alive till Christ's second coming. Smart move. If the South Sea cargo cults keep growing coconuts while waiting for the return of the generous strangers, they won't starve if the strangers fail to return.

I'll close with a word from the poet Virginia Woolf (THE WAVES): "And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!"