Subject: re : 6 . 44 varia : animals and who , kant and innateness

david powers said : ) the whole point of science is ) to explain the phenomena we observe , and saying that " we are born with it " is ) not an explanation . . . . ) even given the validity of the claim , the fact begs an explanation . . . . ) linguistics has a tendency to stop at being descriptive . science always goes ) further than mere description . describing the commonality present across the ) full range of human language , in a neat , parsimonious way , is but a first step ; ) for science demands explanations : why does language have the form it does ? ) where do these universals come from ? why do we have this range of parameter ) settings ? what relationship does language have to thought ? consciousness ? ) perception ? while i agree that linguistic inquiry should push the ` explanatory ' envelop as far as it possibly can , let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that ` explanation ' , of the type david powers speaks of , is anything more than another level of description . in the ultimate sense , it remains true that science can never hope to explain anything in any essential way . it can only establish cause and effect links but cannot take these back to ultimate origin . to do so calls for an infinite wisdom that human and artificial intelligence are simply incapable of . it is reason itself which tells us this is so . to pretend it is ( or can be ) otherwise is to undermine the very tenets of reason on which we base our analysis of this world and to enter the realm of faith , unreasonably turning reason into a religion in the process . at its very best , human science can only provide us with partial explanations , which are really descriptions in disguise . perhaps this is disagreeably humbling to the ambitions of the human enterprise , but this is the conclusion that we must come to unless we abandon empirical foundations altogether and claim , as an article of faith , that humankind posseses infinite cognition . if we are not willing to accept the latter proposition , then we must recognize that the very empiricism that we adhere to in order to do science leads us to the kantian barrier beyond which reason will not take us . concommitantly , like kant , we must accept that reason , at the point where it can go no further , points us in the direction of a transcendent origin . probably david powers did not intend his remarks to project us into the realm of absolutes . but when it is a question of the philosophy of science , absolutes are not only fair game , they are essential to proper reflection . michael d . picone university of alabama mpicone @ ua1vm . ua . edu
