ahh,SingleDad, what would this thread be without you?
Let me point out that you didn’t prove that our senses are our most reliable means for determining fact from fiction. You simply asserted it. Maybe there is a better way, maybe not. Even if it is, are you making this assumption for purely “logical” reasons or rather is it common sense? I doubt that you’re simply accepting your senses on an axiomatic basis. I think you actually believe in the reality that they represent. Otherwise you would have logically explained why the senses are the best tool we have instead of just asserting it. It seems like you’re making the argument:“my senses are consistent with reality because I can verify them through observation.” This like saying that the Bible is true because the Bible says the Bible is true.
Moving on, Why is there a burden to prove science is culturally biased? How many major scientific discoveries have been made in America and Europe? How many cultures have had decidely different views on reality? Too many to name here.There are also well documented cases of the scientific community’s racial discrimination. (The “Racial” economy of Science, by Sandra Harding goes into detail if you’re interested) Also, how are we supposed to determine the difference between what the majority of scientists think and what science actually is? It’s like saying “I can decide what the real democratic platform is, who cares what the rest of the democrats think.”
Sure, the best ideas are supposed to surface eventually, and vocal minorities with compelling theories have sometimes had their way, but how often is the truth simply shouted down? If you aren’t recognized by your peers, you won’t get published, you won’t get research grants, and you won’t be able to study science any more.
Super rational assumptions: Logic relies on assumptions. If you don’t make any initial assumptions then you don’t have proofs to make. At some point we just intuitively feel something (like our senses) is just right and there’s no point in assuming anything else.Rationality is based on conclusions which are in turn made from assumptions. The assumptions have to come from somewhere. If they came from rational deductions then what assumptions were those deductions based upon?
m3 - it appears that you are confusing the ‘confusion of the senses’ with a Scientific process that allows two separate individuals to come to the same conclusions based on empirical (sensory) evidence. You could argue all day that a person’s senses can be fooled, this does not directly discount the Scientific process. Simply put, it is the best process we have that is suited for the gathering of information about the world around us. I don’t see a valid argument here against it. Would you have medicine men shaking sticks in an attempt to cure sick children?
Science is a regulated process (run by imperfect beings) that is moving towards greater understanding. What is the problem?
m3:
{{{ blush }}} Same to you. This is shaping up to be an excellent debate.
Correct. I am asserting it based on induction from experience. When I carefully investigate any phenomenon with my senses (directly or indirectly) I have found them to be uniformly consistent. I will also assert that your senses, on careful use, are equally consistent, assuming your sane and well-intentioned.
I have found no other mode of investigation so consistent. If you have an alternative, we can discuss it.
Depends. I believe in perceptual reality. Whether perceptual reality accurately represents objective reality is another issue. I may very well be a Brain in a Vat being fed sensory information from a Cartesian Demon. In that case, I’m merely organizing my perceptions, not describing “objective reality.” To me, this is a distinction without a difference. As long as my sensory experience remains uniformly consistent, I assert that empiricism is valid.
You make persuasive points, and you actually persuade me that the practice of science does have racial (and sex) bias.
However, scientific thought stands on its own merits. To argue that science is false because of objectionable behavior of its members is just an ad hominem fallacy.
Being a political party, the Democratic Party platform is defined by what Democratic Party members think.
The same is not true of Science. Few scientists have training in formal philosophy. We must investigate their actual practices to infer a metaphysical position.
If you ask most scientists, “Are you searching for the Truth?” they will probably assent. However, if you ask them, “Is any theory in science guaranteed to be True for all time; no possible evidence or paradigm could possibly overturn it?” they would probably disagree.
What they’re really doing, and why they may perhaps naively assume they’re searching for the Truth, is pursuing the only proven method for providing simple, accurate, consistent and powerful descriptions of empirical reality.
Fortunately, Science has more up its sleeve than pure logic.
Assumptions are pragmatically chosen for their descriptive power. They are not assumed to be true, the are judged to be useful. They have no more “eternal” or “irrefutable” quality as anything else in Science. They are not deduced, true, but they are judged, and harshly at times.
As an example, Newtonian graviation rests on the assumption of absolute space and absolute time. However, such assumptions lead to bizzare deductions when we accept the empirically determined constancy of the speed of light. Those deductions aren’t false, and they can’t be “disproved”.
However, Einstein came up with a different set of assumptions: that space and time are relative; they are not “absolute”. These assumptions made deductions of the same phenomena less bizzare than in Newtonian mechanics. Plus, Einstein no longer required the assumption of frames of reference (absolute space and absolute time) that could not be measured directly or indirectly. Rather, he (actually Minkowski) introduced a new frame of reference (absolute space-time) that was useful and measurable for any observer.
Thus the assumptions of Einsteinian gravity (General Relativity) replace the assumptions of Newtonian gravity for pragmatic reasons.
(You’ll kind of have to take my word for it about “bizarre” deductions. It seems the consensus of scientists that the concept of space changing character is less bizarre than the concept of objects changing character).
I sucked up to Wally and all I got was this lousy sig line!
your = you’re :o
This is indeed a great debate.
I agree with Single Dad that there is no way we can ever get to the TRUTH, defined as absolute knowledge of everything that is. I don’t even know that TRUTH exists, or that it can be coherently defined. However we can discover true things, and this is the job of science.
Is there anyone who seriously belives that atoms do not exist, that genes do not exist, or that tectonic plates are not the cause of earthquakes? Despite Kuhn and other radical thinkers, the evidence of history shows science to be a cumulative effort. New paradigms do not replace old ones but build upon them to form a deeper picture. Newtonian mechanics is still valid for computing planetary orbits or determining where a shell is going to land. It may require now disputed notions of absolute space and time but so what? Newton was not concerned with space and time in themselves, but with how objects moved and interacted. Later investigations into the nature of moving electrically charged bodies forced a deeper investigation into space and time itself, culminating with Relativity. But these investigations could never have taken place without Newton’s origional theory.
In short my point is that while Science cannot reveal the TRUTH, it can reveal true things, and it has done an impressive job of creating a detailed and verified, if still incomplete, piture of the universe.
Perked Ears indicate curiosity - Know Your Cat
I want to belatedly respond to matt_mcl’s post. He raises a number of good points that deserve recognition.
Common sense and ethics should derive from reason; they should never be in conflict.
Creativity and intuition are part of Science; they do indeed balance out formal logic and are part of the larger process of reason.
No, one is scientific fact, the other is an illusion of perspective. In this case, our common sense is giving us a paradigm with poor predictive and descriptive value. It’s much better to abandon the paradigm and see things using the more powerful and complete description of heliocentrism.
As much respect as I have for Chomsky, I think he’s incorrect here. Psychology is no less a science than Quantum Mechanics; both deal with objects that are unpredictable in particular, but are predictable statistically.
Regardless, psychology and philosophy can still identify invariant features of human thought without contradicting free will. We can gain useful information which can rationally illuminate ethics, morality, mental health, attraction, sexual behavior, and so forth.
I’ll keep this brief:
Obvious first principles:
[ul][li]All human beings are substantially similar to myself.[/li][li]I depend on the goodwill of others to survive an prosper.[/li][li]I ask other people not to cause me pain and suffering.[/ul][/li]
From these axioms, and princple of reciprocity (implied by axiom 1), I can derive an entire ethical code. True, the axioms were picked intuitively, but I can still examine their implications rationally.
People can use most any tool to oppress others. But I maintain that any errors in the use of reason to oppress others and violate human rights has been more quickly corrected by reason itself than any religious abuse was ever corrected by religion. I invite you to offer a counterexample.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I think the most amusing aspect of this thread is that most people seem to agree that Science cannot find the Truth, but we still don’t have any problem finding something to debate.
Unless someone wants to step forward with a different formulation (feel welcome), I think the real issues have become “Is the scientific community aware of it’s inability to grasp the Truth?” and “If it isn’t aware(and it can’t find the Truth), can the scientific method overcome the short sightedness of this community?”.
CheapBastid,
I really don’t care whether the senses are being fooled or not. I just think that this is a case of science relying on common sense which is in stark contrast to the scientific method. Science as we know it is based on Empiricism and if it rejects Empiricism it cannot be science. How can one test the scientific method without using the scientific method? The fox is gaurding the henhouse here.
Also , please explain what you think a “greater understanding” is?
Larry Borgia,
Kuhn as a radical? My science professors didn’t seem to think so. Sure, they might a bone to pick with a few points here and there, but I don’t think he’s regarded as radical anymore.
New paradigms incorporate the knowledge of old ones, this is very different from building on them. If science simply tacked on a new wing with each paradigm you would wind up a with a motley arrangement that would probably just fall apart due to a lack of structural integrity . The structure is built anew with each paradigm shift. Some of the same ideas are used, but the old structure must be knocked down or abandoned. You can’t build a skyscaper with flying buttresses at the base.
The metaphorical point to all of this is that eventually there may be nothing in the skycraper that was present in the cathedral.
I wonder how science can reveal true things without revealing some small portion of the Truth. If there is a weaker sense to truth what would it be? We haven’t proven it false yet?
SingleDad,
The phrase “only proven method” is very interesting to me. Science IS the method that requires proof. There are some advantages to having a method instead of a philosophy. One of them being that Science is not equipped with the tools to dismantle itself. This makes it incredibly efficient, but also without guidance.
This brings me to my next point. I was talking about more than “objectional behavior” when I was talking about cultural bias. Believe it or not, ideas like “internal consistency” that are necessary for scientific theories are not always valued in the same way in other cultures. In some cultures, paradox is seen as the state of the world, and they see it as a better idea to embrace the paradox than to deny it. Science purports itself as something which can rise above petty human failings but its roots are historical and culturally specific. Not that it’s necessarily “bad” just that it’s only presenting one culture’s “best description” of the world.
I believe that science is as deeply mired in politics as the democratic party. Do you know how many millions of dollars that it takes to do research in particle physics? Reasearchers need money, and they get that money from the government. A scientist may be more “successful” by greasing palms than by having good ideas. How can you separate scientific thought from the people who think it?
SingleDad,
a side note: As far as another method determing reality than the senses, they do exist and have been used for thousands of years. I would like to point to thought in India. However, I can’t do it any justice in this thread. If you’re familiar with the major themes of their philosophy we could continue the discussion though.
As far as consistency is concerned, I think that consistency is an unconscious effort we all make to put sense into this world. Even though we generally don’t think about it, it’s inherent in our minds, not the world. People who know Astrology have no problem making their world consistent with their outlook on life. I think the word consistency might better be replaced by comfort.
m3:
What is this “Truth” of which you speak?
You might just as well ask: Is the scientific community aware of its inability to grasp the Inivisble Pink Unicorn? If it isn’t aware (and it can’t find the IPU), can the scientific method overcome the short-sightedness of this community?
In short you’ve made an arbitrary definition, asserted its truth, and called the scientific community deficient for not agreeing with you. You’ve not demonstrated to me in any way that this concept of “Truth” you’ve asserted has any validity whatsoever.
You test the scientific method every time you turn on your computer, drive in your car, turn on the lights in your house, get on an airplane, etc. The scientific method delivers the goods. That’s how we test it.
That’s exactly correct. As Sherlock Holmes said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.”
Science does not automatically rise above petty human failings. It contains a set of tools and techniques which allow you to do so. Not everyone, not even every scientists, uses them to do so. But that’s a human failing, not a failing of the metaphysics.
Zen Buddhism, for one, embraces paradox and claims that rationality prevents one from seeing the world as it truly is. Zen is interesting because they claim that they can make repeatable distinctions (between “enlightened” and “non-enlightened”) based on a logic other than propositional calculus. However, I’ve not yet determined whether Zen is an elaborate deception posing as a religion, or a religion posing as an elaborate deception. It’s also unclear whether one can really do anything interesting with Zen, other than acheive “enlightenment”.
I’m somewhat familiar with Indian philosophy and metaphysics, but I’m not sure exactly what part you’re talking about.
As a minor quibble, m3, it would be easier for me to read your posts if you put a blank line between your paragraphs, and use the quote tags to quote text.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Also, one does not need truth, Truth or TRUTH of any stripe to be comfortable. In fact, a clever lie can deliver much more comfort than any stripe of truth ever can. Which is fine. If you want to be comfortable, you can embrace any lie you wish, you can poke heroin into your arm, you can blow yourself up along with your enemies, whatever.
But comfort is not the goal of any sort of truth.
I think, therefore I am nervous.
Actually Zen can make you a better marksman.
In one of those interesting twists where real life parallels fiction, if you ask a particle physicist for THE TRUTH, he will most likely reply “137.”
It’s knowing the question that is the hard part.
SingleDad:
[quote]
You test the scientific method every time you turn on your computer, drive in your car, turn on the lights in your house, get on
an airplane, etc. The scientific method delivers the goods. That’s how we test it.
[/QUOTE}
Delivers the goods? That’s your standard for truth? Slave labor “delivers the goods”, so what?
It seems to me that you are inferring that the scientific method made discoveries that allowed these inventions to exist. Hence when we use them we are demonstrating the validity of the Scientific method. If you are simply saying that these inventions are clear demonstrations of scientific principles, so what? The sun rising and setting was seen as “evidence” for the earth centered theory of the universe( there’s a good word for this theory but I’ve forgotten it).
If you are inferring the former case, I would like to propose another description as equivalent: We test the scientific method every time that we expend limited fossil fuels, pollute the atmosphere, cause another plant or animal species to become extinct, test a nuclear bomb,etc…
Are these the “goods”? I don’t see what’s so good about them.
It’s no wonder that you were dissaponted that Zen philosophy was only good for achieving enlightenment. When you are enlightened, you don’t have any need for the “goods” and there isn’t anything else interesting to achieve.
Scylla did make a good point. I would generalize it to say that the practice of meditation can be a healthful mental discipline that can be quite effective at lowering stress levels and improving concentration at whatever the task is at hand.
SingleDad
LOL. What are the metaphysics of science? I thought metaphysics was a dirty word that scientists threw at each other. Science to me is simply a method. A vastly efficient one, but it has no inherent safegaurds in how it’s used, or a guiding philosophy as what use of the method is superior. Also if science DID contain the set of tools to rise above cultural differences and short sighted environmentally degrading uses, what does it matter? If we all loved our neighbor we could live in peace and harmony, but that ain’t happening yet.
When I said, “delivering the goods”, I mean it makes testable predictions with useful real-world results.
You can’t even lay those all to science. Look at James Watt. The guy believed the second coming was right around the corner, and who cares if we strip-mined the land.
Science is not a panacea. We’re slowly trying to improve thought and humankind. But, as Cecil says, it’s taking longer than we thought.
The science of psychcology is still young, and its the most difficult science we’ve yet tackled. Even so, the most basic understanding of psychcology had done more to improve our ethics than religion ever did in the millennia it had control of the human psyche.
In fact I would assert that our ethics didn’t even start to improve until the Renaissance, which brough us human worth, tolerance, respect.
Sure, people use science for stupid things. Some scientists are even stupid at times. Want to put religion head-to-head against Science? Just off the top of my head, we have the massacre of the Albagensians… The Children’s Crusade… The Spanish Inquisition… Oh yeah, now there’s a basis for an ethical philosophy.
You make good points and your examination is worthwhile. It’s my turn to go on the counterattack.
Can religion find the Truth? (your meaning). Can it make an ethical system that will last for all time? If so, why didn’t the church figure all this out two thousand years ago? (Watch out for the No True Scotsman fallacy in your reply).
What has religion ever proved itself to be but a way for power-mad authoritarians to delude the ignorant masses? Sure some individuals seem to hold onto faith without becoming assholes, oppressors or dupes (and you do seem to be one of those individuals :))
It seems all to often, though, that the Jerry Falwells, the Pat Robertsons, the intolerant bigoted rat bastards who stand on the bible to shout horror and filth seem to be the norm and not the exception.
How many have died fighting it out between varying interpretations of the same damn religion?
Look at science… Nobody ever kills or dies over the mass of the top quark.
Sure the authoriarian genocidal maniac are always willing to use science to acheive their evil ends, but they often have a religious reason as well; you can’t just blame scientists. Oppression, inhuman violence, even environmental disaster go back way before the founding and general use of science and rational thought.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
First off I ain’t exactly religious. I find the philosophical aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism interesting. I caste system makes me ill.
I’ve studied a little psychology,too. Psychology is certainly the bastard child of Science though. It’s still treated as a “soft” science. Perhaps rightfully so, since much of the insight from psychology is based on what many would consider conjecture. Behaviorism is the closest that psychology has come to objective science. But insofar as its repeatable and predictive it is unable to penetrate the inner workings of the mind.
Neuropsychology(/biology/chemistry/ology) has made some progress in the physical workings, but somehow I find it hard to imagine any morality derived from the balance of neurotransmitters in the average human that I would buy into.
I’m trying to emphasize philosophy over the brute force of knowledge that I don’t necessarily consider that useful. I contend that science does not have a real method for determining truth. It’s largely a utilitarian affair, which is great at getting things done, but it has no way of deciding what needs to be done and why. If it was really concerned with finding the truth, then there would be an adequate philosophy of science.
Science is providing the cosmology for most people now, thus supplanting religion. It is, in a sense, making the same claims to absolute knowledge as religion. I’ve seen more people’s mind shut tight by what they taught in school than had their minds opened by it. How many people believe in the big bang? How many realize that this theory isn’t all that well explained? Scientists and science teachers do little to quell people’s blind faith in the current theories. If anything, they defend them as dogmatically as any fundamentalist. There is a period when the theory is new that it is debated intensely, but once it’s accepted it can actually become a road block to further knowledge.
Of course psychology is a soft science. We don’t know yet what to measure, much less how to measure it. But all sciences start out that way. Nothing wrong with that.
We are developing a metaphysics of science:
[list=1][li]Look carefully at the world around you.[/li][li]Use your intuition/quality/best guess to develop a hypothesis[/li][li]Develop an experiment that would tend to disprove your hypothesis[/li][li]Perform the experiment and evaluate the results[/li][li]If the results tend to support the hypothesis, publish. If not, go to step 1.[/list=1][/li]
That’s a metaphysical position. We can deduce quite a lot: The goal of knowlege is to create models (hypotheses) that the careful examination of the evidence of our senses (experiment) fails to disprove.
The epistemology of science is that we call these successful models “knowlege”.
No. People want science to offer “absolute knowlege”. That’s why religion has been so successful. Religion panders to people supersition. Science attempts to dispel it. The second task is much more difficult because people don’t want to lose that perfect certainty, regardless of how illusory it is.
Just what I’m talking about. “The Big Bang theory” says exactly that 10-15 billion years ago, the universe was very small, very hot and very dense. It has since expanded and cooled. The evidence to support this model is so powerful as to be virtually impossible to refute.
The exact details of such a general statement are certainly in doubt, and scientists are trying to figure it out.
But there isn’t any other serious alternative to the basic understanding. The reason that the scientific establishment doesn’t spend any money on alternative explanations is that we’ve already figured it out. There are no facts which make it very difficult to accept such a theory.
Scientists are people. They make mistakes and are as prone to arrogance and pride as anyone else. But the metaphysics of reliance on experiment tends to limit such errors, not perpetuate them for millennia as does religion.
There is not “cult” of Newtonians. Einstein wasn’t a “heretic”. No one in science claims that an idea is right by divine ordination, and if a powerful figure enforces an “orthodoxy”, it rarely survives beyond his lifetime, unless it has real explanatory power.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
(smiles graciously) Thank you. Other people who disagree with me haven’t been so polite in the past.
I say below why ethics do not derive from reason. Common sense I describe as that which we know about the world without having to build a science out of reason to support it. For example: the sun rises in the east; if you touch the stove you’ll be burnt; objects fall when dropped; poor people lead more difficult lives than rich people.
Is it or isn’t it true that the sun rises in the east? I would argue that it is. It is as true as saying that the earth turns and creates the aforementioned illusion of perspective. One is a truth of common sense; the other is a truth of science.
An object will fall when dropped. This is not scientific truth. It is common-sense truth.
Frankly, if you feel that science compels you to deny that the sun rises in the east and that objects fall when dropped, you are abandoning your sentience and better judgment, and making the scientific world-view into a clouding, obscurantist, Scholasticist dogma.
I have a problem with this, mainly with principle 2.
- Isn’t there ever a situation in which you could lose the goodwill of others by doing a good action? Should you still do that action if it meant that people would cause you to suffer?
- if, for example, everyone in the world already hated you, why should you behave ethically?
- if you were about to die, would it matter if you committed an unethical act?
- would you be justified in committing an unethical act on a person whose opinion of you could not possibly affect you?
The problem with this is you’re choosing to let an external system decide your ethics for you: public opinion (I want people to be nice to me, so I won’t piss them off)
I can’t, not because they’re not there, but because it would take too long for me to retype the entire contents of Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, by John Ralston Saul, one of Canada’s leading philosophers.
If I didn’t have a paper due, I’d reread it for some choice examples. Perhaps I still will at some time in the future, but for the present I commend it to your readership.
Sorry, there was some problem with my post.
I wanted to say:
…public opinion (I want people to be nice to me, so I won’t piss them off.) I prefer that my system of ethics be answerable to me, my own sentience, and my own soul, rather to reason, which needs some arbitrarily determined external basis (such as public opinion) on which to base ethics. As Walt Whitman said, review everything you’ve been taught and discard everything that’s an insult to your soul. Refraining from actions which are an insult to my soul is how I define ethics.
If I were to derive my ethics rationally from something external, one of two things would be taking place:
- I would analyze each conclusion to see whether I agreed with it or not, or
- abandon my free will and sentience to be controlled by something external.
The first choice is pretty much the same as what I already do. The second is an insult to my humanity.
I don’t think that there’s a noticeable difference between saying “virtually impossible to refute” and saying “god said so.” (notice I’m not concerned with what philosophies these two statements are supporting) Sure, there’s that supposed shadow of a doubt, but it seems more like lip service to me.
Your “metaphysics” is just the scientific method. What is worth speculating on? What kind of knowledge does humanity really need? Is there a better method than this?
Science can’t answer these questions because it’s committed to experimental validation. If there was a better method, how would it even know?
The sun appears to rise in the east. That is a true perception. It’s a accurate but less powerful model to hold yourself as fixed and see the sun moving.
To me, in the early moring, I visualize myself as being on the moving earth, moving into sight of the sun.
If you’re just going to go to work, come home, watch TV and eat, go to sleep, repeat until dead, it really doesn’t matter all that much what you believe. But if you derive pleasure from really understanding how the universe works, then you have to cast aside your illusions and try to visualize things as they really behave.
So if you decide that murder, robbery and rape are in accordance with your own sentience and your own soul, I should accept that as an equallyl valid ethic to my own? Now you’re asking me to accept a bizarre conclusion!
Besides, ethics is a social phenomonon, not a person one. A man alone needs no ethics. It is only in relation to others that an ethic must develop. Ethics are negotiated and again, there is no consistent basis for negotiation than Science and reason.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Da DA DA, as of 4/9 this discussion considered in whole: sophistry. It is interesting that such great minds of and about the nature of physics have such idle time to chatter. Stephen Hawking sends his misbegotten regards.