Of Puppies and Poxes

Filed under: by: Irami

I had to cut a section of my Harman paper for two reasons: 1) The paper is going over three pages, and more importantly, 2) The segment doesn't actually work with Harman's argument. It does involve puppies and poxes, which makes it perfectly appropriate for the Waltham Circle:

"If I am violently averse to puppies, and upon observing a strange puppy, I think, “That puppy is a pox.” That moral observation does not explain the behavior of the puppy or why I observe the puppy. It doesn't tell me anything about the puppy at all. The observation tells me that, when presented with a puppy, I observe that puppies are poxes, but it does not explain why I think puppies are poxes. I can harken to a principle of puppies without describing why I hold this principle of puppies. If we consider “That puppy is a pox” as a scientific observation, we can explore the theory that equates puppies with poxes, and we can find observable phenomena, with the help of a microscope and kennel, to deny the theory that puppies are poxes based on demonstrable proof. This would seem easily disprovable through scientific inquiry, since one is a virus and the other licks toes. In view of these subsequent scientific observations, my theory would change."