The Scientific Worldview has no “Higher Principle”

From Anonymous:

“Your argument contains the premise that there are "correct" and "incorrect" assumptions. The ground of this correctness or incorrectness is therefore a higher principle, beyond your 10 assumptions. This means there is a criterion by which different assumptions can be judged. This is problematic, however. If there is such a criterion, then any such assumptions are actually deductions, since they follow from a higher principle. But okay, I 'might' be willing to accept that. So, this brings up the next question: What is this higher principle? And as it must be quite important, why does it not receive a central emphasis in your treatise?”

There is no “higher principle.” One can have one assumption or a multitude of them. We determine the “correctness” of an assumption by how well it is supported by observation and experiment in the real world. Maybe that is the "higher principle" that you seek. That demand is grounded, perhaps, in the first assumption of science, MATERIALISM (The external world exists after the observer does not.), which implies that the correctness of an idea (internal world) only can be determined by interacting with the external world. Most scientists would agree, but as you know, many indeterminists have proposed numerous sophisticated arguments against MATERIALISM, demonstrating that it is an unprovable assumption. I can’t prove MATERIALISM either; I only can assume it. My claim is that none of the deterministic assumptions can be proven beyond all doubt and that all have indeterministic opposites. The arguments between materialists and immaterialists are theoretically endless, simply because the Universe is, I assume, also endless. Thus, for instance, INFINITY is supported every time we find another thing in the universe; it is “falsified” every time we fail to find another thing in the universe. One can never “prove” a fundamental assumption beyond all doubt. The Big Bangers believe that they have proven that the Universe is finite, but that cannot be. The contradictions keep piling up, showing the idea to be absurd. Even after we eventually show that the Universe is infinite instead, that demonstration will not be absolute either. Such is the nature of INFINITY. I sympathize with your wish to have some a priori or absolute with which to start your thinking. The infinite Universe, however, will not allow that. It is like a merry-go-round. We have to get on somewhere. The infinite Universe makes circular reasoning unavoidable no matter how much it is ridiculed by indeterminists. It is sort of like the question of what is matter? The answer is that matter consists of other matter in motion. That bit of matter, in turn, also contains matter in motion, infinitely so. Another way to look at it is to assume that there are no partless parts. It is an eternal begging of the question. Believers in finity will disagree; classical mechanists and mathematicians will disagree, because they can only deal with equations of finite length. That is why we are having this fundamental discussion. The belief in finity is consupponible with the belief in absolutism, but, in my opinion, it does not describe the real world correctly. Being on the opposite side of the argument, you may wish to use “The Ten Assumptions of Science” in preparing your own book on “The Ten Assumptions of Religion.” I tried to do that, but failed miserably (see p. 117 of TTAOS or p. 114 of TSW). Disconnection messed everything up.