# Of delusional believers and naive positivist scientism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 24, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/of-delusional-believers-and-naive-positivist-scientism/507529 "2009-08-24T18:05:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 29
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/of-delusional-believers-and-naive-positivist-scientism/507529/29 "2009-08-24T23:49:33Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > This is a useful example to illustrate the point that I (and I think **mswas** ) are trying to make. > > You refer to the “actual cause”. However neither you nor the shaman have access to the “actual cause” of the fever-reducing properties of the willow bark. All you have are subjective abstractions that correlate to a greater or lesser degree with the observable reality. So it’s not a simple case of “shaman wrong/SenorBeef right”. The Shaman’s model of reality is not wholly inaccurate; it does have some predictive value. Your model of reality is certainly MORE accurate, but the possibility remains that some future medical researcher will develop a more sophisticated abstraction that captures elements of reality that currently elude you. So speaking of the “actual cause” of the cure is a bit disingenuous. It sets up a spurious true/false dichotomy when actually you and the shaman merely have two different abstractions with varying degrees of correlation. Oh come on. To come up with a less ambiguous example: Some ancient people thought the Sun God propelled the sun through the sky every day. We know it’s because the Earth rotates. Because our perception of reality isn’t completely objective then both ideas have merit? After all, the idea that the sun god propels it across the sky every day has predictive value. > [@](#): > > Now in the case of you and the shaman, one abstraction is clearly far superior for most purposes. But it’s worth recognizing that when we, as materialists, say “the world is organized in such-and-such a way”, we’re actually constructing a fantasy. The fantasy we create may correlate with reality to a very high degree, it might be very beautiful or useful, but it isn’t reality. This extends to even the most fundamental elements of our cognition. I may say “I see a tree,” but “tree” is merely a fantasy I’ve \*constructed \*to encompass a particular configuration of matter. The individual molecules of the tree don’t contain any essence of “tree”. The “treeness” of a tree is a category that I IMPOSE on the universe around me as a way of dicing it up in manageable chunks. “Tree” is a human tool, not a fundamental element of reality. > > Naive positivism is a form of essentialism. It’s the implicit claim that one’s preferred abstraction IS the reality, rather than merely a particularly useful tool. And it’s a failure to recognize that other abstractions can still be useful tools even if they sometimes correlate poorly with reality. I can’t say I’ve ever liked these sorts of debates because it seems like some sort of philosophical masturbation where people try to show off with their deep thoughts about the nature of reality while ignoring the practical. It’s silly to pretend that all views on how the world works have merit. There is an objective reality. The biological nature of our minds limit our ability to see it in a completely objective way. There are cognitive biases, lack of intuitive understanding of the scope of the universe, things we wish to be true rather than observe, etc. Science is man’s best attempt at eliminating our limitations to understand the nature of reality. It comes to erroneous conclusions sometimes based on false premises or false or insufficient data, but it subjects itself to scrutiny and it’s self correcting. It’s our best attempt at describing nature with the best tools we and methodologies we know how to. It is superior to magical thinking. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/of-delusional-believers-and-naive-positivist-scientism/507529)._