What is Scientism?
I've heard the term used in a number of different situations, all of which in a derogatory sense, but I've never been able to pin down an exact definition.
I'm aware of, for example Hilary Putnam's definition, the belief that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective", but this just describes Realism, or perhaps more specifically, Physicalism, both of which are perfectly legitimate philosophical schools, I'm not seeing the pejorative use here.
Tom Sorrel defines it as "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture.", but I'm not clear here how he is judging how high is too high, nor what other branches of learning he's referring to.
It seems at times to be referring to Positivism and at other times simply a warning to remember that the results from the softer sciences are very tenuous, but In very few cases have I heard specific claims made against scientismists (if that's the right word) which do not themselves suffer from the same dogmatism they accuse Scientism of.
So, What does Scientism actually mean?
Presuming it means something like the excessive use of science, how are we determining excessive?
How does Scientism differ from either Physicalism or Positivism such that it deserves it's own name?
Does anyone have any actual quotes from espousers of Scientism which make a good example of the sort of claim being referred to?
I'm aware of, for example Hilary Putnam's definition, the belief that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective", but this just describes Realism, or perhaps more specifically, Physicalism, both of which are perfectly legitimate philosophical schools, I'm not seeing the pejorative use here.
Tom Sorrel defines it as "Scientism is a matter of putting too high a value on natural science in comparison with other branches of learning or culture.", but I'm not clear here how he is judging how high is too high, nor what other branches of learning he's referring to.
It seems at times to be referring to Positivism and at other times simply a warning to remember that the results from the softer sciences are very tenuous, but In very few cases have I heard specific claims made against scientismists (if that's the right word) which do not themselves suffer from the same dogmatism they accuse Scientism of.
So, What does Scientism actually mean?
Presuming it means something like the excessive use of science, how are we determining excessive?
How does Scientism differ from either Physicalism or Positivism such that it deserves it's own name?
Does anyone have any actual quotes from espousers of Scientism which make a good example of the sort of claim being referred to?
Comments (332)
What does that mean? What are 'values'? Do you mean moral values, or things that people find important, or things that society should find important?
Do you have any quotes from proponents of Scientism that could illustrate what you mean by "treating science as a source of values"?
Yes, I read the Wikipedia article, and I'm familiar with a few of the papers it cites. I'm still not getting any closer to a definition that isn't just personal bias.
Who's judging what is improper?
Perceived by whom?
Who says how much is 'sufficient' and how are they judging this?
What is 'excessive'?
What does 'reliable' mean here?
Quoting Wayfarer
If it's so common, could you help me out with my last question, some actual quotes which typify this definition?
I've read the article, still not seeing the "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective"
Pinker says;
"An appreciation of the particulars of a work can co-exist with explanations at many other levels, from the personality of an author to the cultural milieu, the faculties of human nature, and the laws governing social beings."
...and...
"No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics, chemistry, and biology as opposed to the more perspicuous language of the perceptions and goals of leaders in 1914 Europe.
...and he describes positions that “science is all that matters” as "lunatic"
So I'm struggling to see this as an example of someone claiming that only science can describe the world.
He even specifically states "... the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values," which doesn't provide a very good example of your definition of "treating science as a source of values"
Any more solid examples you have to had would be helpful.
Sorry, but I’m out of coconuts. :-)
Is this your idea of a philosophical debate? I pose two questions asking you to clarify your terms and you give up?
If ideas opposed to yours aren't worth discussing, what exactly are you doing here?
You mean select arguments that are easy targets and dodge them when you're faced with evidence that opposes your world-view?
Lets take Sam Harris as an example of Scientism. Harris seems to claim that science isn't affected by the Humean notion that you can't get an "ought" from an "is". According to Harris, neurobiology is able to measure individual well-being, and thus is able to tell us what actions are moral and which are immoral. I dont know Harris that well, but it seems to me that he subscribes to some form of utilitarianism. The problem that I see with the ¨scientism¨ of Harris, is that it assumes problematic philosophical positions, while disguising it as ´obective science´.
Science isn't suppose to address what is moral. Morality is subjective. Science gets at the objective. Science can explain why we have morals, but it doesn't explain what is moral - other than it is subjective and related to our goals at any given moment which we can all share or not share at any given moment.
Seeing as Wayfarer has just tacitly labelled some of my ideas as so wrong they're not even worthy of discussion, I'm not sure how you're reading my responses as being the 'hostile' ones, but we can put that to one side.
My question was "What is Scientism?", which I elaborated to explain that what I meant by the question was; how it differs from Physicalism or Positivism such as to require a new label and how it satisfies the claims I've read about it that it's adherents use science "excessively".
You've given me an example of someone considered to practice "Scientism" and an outline of his view on morality. What I'm not getting is how you think that differs from Physicalism or Positivism and why you think it is demonstrably an "excessive" use of science.
So I'm discovering.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I understand that such a position exists, but it is not proven to be the case, its a meta-ethical position, a matter for debate, and has been for thousands of years.
Are there people within "Scientism" who are actually claiming that science proves morality is objective, certainly Sam Harris hasn't claimed that (to my knowledge). His claim is that morality seems to be objective (a meta-ethical argument), and therefore, science can tell us what is moral. You might not agree, but I don't see what is wrong with the position such as to justify a pejorative use of the term. I just sounds like an old, well-travelled philosophical position to me.
Physicalism is the claim that everything is physical (and in the case of morals, it supervenes on the physical). The Scientism of Harris seems to be corresponding to Physicalism, and I am not sure if there is such a distinct difference. What do you think?
Edit: to explain why I think it is an "excessive" use of science: questions regarding topics such as Being, Embodied Cognition, Perception and Genealogy should in my opinion, be contemplated without any methodological bounds, as Merleau-Ponty does in Phenomenology of Perception. When science tries to deal with these terms and corresponding questions, and when the inquiry is thus bound to scientific methodological bounds, we will not properly grasp what, lets say, perception, is.
I think that the doctrine of Positivism is much misunderstood. At its heart, positivism is simply a metaphysical claim that no other metaphysical claims are objectively meaningful because they cannot be falsfied. The claim itself, of course, can be falsified immediately should anyone present a metaphysical claim (other than that of positivism) that are objectively meaningful and so is immune to its own criticism.
As such, I think that Harris could be said to follow an extension of Positivism, in that he is claiming to have further metaphysical claims which can be falsified.
I think it is far better, however, to simply see people like Harris as Physicalist and leave the term Positivism to history. As for a difference, I can't see one. His argument seems to be an entirely logical extension from a belief that free-will does not exist (certainly not a new philosophical position). If there is no free-will, then there is no 'ought'. The concept simply doesn't make sense, so morality comes within the purview of science by virtue of the inevitably that we just 'will' act one way or another,and we just 'will' feel one way or another about the actions of others.
Also, it now seems to me that Scientism could be differentiated from Physicalism, in that Scientism makes epistemological and methodological claims that Physicalism doesn't necessarily make. Harris would like to base the inquiry into morality, in scientific methodologies, which certainly is not a claim that Physicalism necessarily makes. Epistemologically, Scientism (e.g. Richard Dawkins) seems to claim that all things will be explained by science, and thus by the use of the methodologies science is bound to. I dont see any such claim as being essential to Physicalism.
Regarding Positivism, you have quite an extentric interpretation of Positivism in my opinion, but that is not a topic I would like to discuss. What do you think about this attempt to differentiate Physicalism from Scientism?
It still seems to suffer from the same subjectivity that I was trying to get Wayfarer to define earlier. The key word in your explanation is 'properly' in "... we will not properly grasp what, lets say, perception, is.". How do you know when we have 'properly' grasped what perception is, such that you can identify at this very early stage in the investigation that the limitations of the scientific method will prevent us from getting there? What does it mean to have 'properly' grasped something as opposed to, say, having grasped it to one's personal satisfaction?
Regarding the distinctions within Physicalism, I agree that further definitions may be required, but still the claims seem to follow using established philosophical positions. Harris wishes to apply the scientific method to morality, not as an ideological principle, but as the logical consequence of his physicalism.
Moreland,for example, shows how determinism (or at least randomness) is essential under physicalism. I've shown how, for Harris (and others) determinism dissolves Humes's divide, so no further ideological positions are necessary to arrive at the conclusion that science is an appropriate tool for deriving morals. He might be wrong of course, he might have made a mistake in his logic, but no further idealogical beliefs are necessary (no further isms are required).
Properly grasping something in philosophy is necessarily to the extent of one's personal satisfaction. Arguments can persuade and not persuade, and the effect the argument has is defined by personal satisfaction. Subjectivity in this sense doesn't seem problematic to me, why do you think it is problematic (why is something ´suffering´ from subjectivity)? In addition, I dont think grasping something properly should be defined by using critera regarding ´properly´, as philosophy (e.g. Phenomenology) has, in my opinion, introduced a much more complex and beneficial understanding of ´properly´ grasping something (as is exemplified by Phenomenology of Perception). But now we are in a realm of opposing language-games, and I don't see much benefit in moving in this direction.
Now when you claim that Harris wishes to apply the scientific method to morality as a logical consequence of Physicalism, that is fine. But it is not the same as Physicalism. You could then say that Harris is both a Physicalist (Harris believes that everything is physical/supervenes on the physical), and Harris subscribes to Scientism (Harris believes scientific methodologies should be applied to morality). It makes sense to me to differentiate Physicalism from Scientism, if you can be a Physicalist without subscribing to Scientism (e.g. I can have the position that everything is physical/supervenes on the physical, and that certain aspects of the physical should be inquired by non-scientific methodologies).
Some people call Sam Harris' moral theory "Scientism" because he insists that you can just use science to tell you what is right and wrong, and you don't need anything else - like a philosophical assumption or theory. Many critics say this is appealing to science in an illegitimate way. Frankly I think Harris' view makes no sense. I wouldn't call it "Scientism" but many people would.
When I hear "Scientism", I think of the idea that the only reliable way of discovering truth is the method of science. This doctrine smuggles in three assumptions. First, that there is such a thing as "the method of science". Second, that this method is reliable. Third, that no other method is reliable. I think there actually are some people who accept all of this, but they wouldn't call it "Scientism", because that term is usually used polemically, with the suggestion that it is a bad thing to accept Scientism.
Does this help?
Shite that takes on the mantle of scientific respectability but pays no regard to the subjective interests in its findings, but most importantly just uses science methods to built a false premise.
Race Theory, Evolutionary Psychology, Sociology, Economics - tend towards scientism.
There aim is to use the methods of science upon matters that are predefined.
Astrology is the easiest example. It starts with the premise that our lives are cryptically encoded in the movement of the stars, because they effect our lives, and thus knowing where the stars are can lead us to predict the future and paint character pictures of people by their birth dates. Astrology piggybacks the findings of astronomy to give a scientific veneer and mathematical credibility to their method.
There is no basis for the premise.
Each of the above examples also have more or less faulty premises.
It's just that you said "we" will not properly grasp... Implying that there is some sense in which you could judge that people other than yourself had not properly grasped something, that's what made me think you were making a claim to objectivity.
I don't object to the idea that people like Harris represent some branch of Physicalism, nor that such a branch might have its own name, I just don't understand why it is being applied pejoratively. He seems to have taken an entirely reasonable logical route to get from his Physicalism to his conclusion that science can determine what is moral.
Yes, I think a lot of people make this association, but have you ever heard or read anyone actually making this claim. I can't seem to find any quotes to that effect from anyone labelled as following Scientism.
What do you mean by ¨reasonable logical route¨? His form of Utilitarianism is philosophically quite problematic. The fact that Harris wants to reason and proceed by using logical thinking, doesn't remove the problematic status of his philosophical assumptions.
You might be interested in these articles describing exactly the epistemological claims made by Physicalism.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20010220?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://philpapers.org/rec/KALEPA
Quoting Nop
I think there's a good argument that Physicalism does imply the arguments made by people like Harris, but that's not really important. I'm more concerned to try and understand the reasons for the antipathy towards such an approach than I am with its correct taxonomy.
Quoting Nop
So when you say 'problematic' here, are you saying it produces results you don't like, or are you suggesting there's something objectively wrong with his logic?
Being and Nothingness by Sartre, and On the Genealogy of Morality by Nietzsche. This is subjective, but so is any preference in philosophy, as philosophy is not science.
I prefer a good Sunday roast to pizza, but I don't describe pizza restaurants in a derogatory way. Its not that 'scientism' isn't to some people's tastes, or that it doesn't approach questions the way some people would like, that I'm confused about. I'm trying to understand why such an approach would cause people to describe it with such disdain.
To me, disdain suggests objectivity. I feel quite strong disdain for certain religions, and I would feel comfortable describing them in a derogatory fashion, but that's because I think I can point to actual harm caused by their beliefs.
With the discussion around Scientism, people seem really quite angered by that fact that those people think this way. I just can't see why.
I remember I called Charleton a "dick" before. I can't remember if I ever called you one. Do you remember?
Yes, exactly. @Pseudonym, you are overthinking this. There is no such philosophical school of thought as Scientism. It is just a pejorative label; it expresses a subjective attitude. If someone throws an accusation of "scientism" in a conversation, don't agree or disagree, but ask to elaborate.
I would not say 'excessive'. As a science junkie myself, too much science is never enough!
Rather, I regard it as the claim that science should be used in areas where it is not applicable. A prime example is Sam Harris's claim that moral values can be deduced by science.
Other primary exponents of scientism are Stephen Hawking, with his claim that 'philosophy is dead' and that we should all just go to science to answer all our questions, and Laurence Krauss, who has said similar things.
The main reason I dislike the things people like that say (to say I was 'angered' by them might be going a bit far) is that they give science a bad name, and make it easier for the climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers of the world to gain traction for their claims that we should not trust scientists when they are talking about science. I feel that the anti-science ethos in US conservative circles is an example of the damage that scientism causes.
Someone posted it here before, but it is a perfect illustration of Scientism:
Scientism --> (i) negation of a priori knowledge + (ii) being completely oblivious of (i).
Not anybody who is actually trained in Philosophy, no. Lawrence Krauss does say it in some of his debates, but he isn't a Philosopher- he's a Physicist. An old friend of mine claimed it, but he wasn't a Philosopher either - he was a Biologist.
This is as good as you're gonna get it. Let us focus on this brief quote.
Notice how Putnam puts 'science' (the manner or method of explaining the world) ahead of the nature of reality.
The question then you should be asking is, First, what reality or world are we trying to describe? Why is science the default method of explanation given to whatever world we are trying to describe?
Oh wait, what? Is there not only "one world"?
Think about that. You, in fact, had already assumed there is just this reality, this one. Which one? Which reality are you trying to describe? Oh, it doesn't matter. Only science matters. It will explain whatever reality there is.
As you can see, science, as that quote would have it (and I'm only relying on that one quote, as a disclaimer) determines the reality-- instead of the other way around.
Explain to me how this happened. (I'm asking a real question)
"Scientism" isn't related to science, it's related to people's dislike of someone's use of science they don't like. Science and scientism have the same relationship that magic and religion have: "Magic is religion you don't like, religion is magic you do like."
Similar to the way the creationist fundamentalism brings religion into disrepute. Scientism and fundamentalism are in some ways manifestations of a similar tendency.
Quoting Bitter Crank
That's a good 'meta-review'. I don't share Pinker's materialist philosophy, but overall I would like to believe that his basic thesis is OK - that material, technological and economic progress are both possible and desirable, and that the among the consequences of Western technology and science are indeed longer life-spans, a better standard of living, and less diseases. So - very fair review, I agree that many of the critics of his latest book were pretty churlish.
It's only when evangelical atheists like Dawkins and Krauss appeal to science to 'prove there is no God', and other such nonsense, that 'scientism' rears its ugly head. Otherwise, science is indispensable, needed now more than ever, if Spaceship Earth is to have any kind of future.
I'm not surprised no-one at your university debates Harris as he's a popular science writer and an academic neuroscientist (I would be surprised if no-one mentioned him in your neuroscience department though). That's not really the point. Nothing Harris is saying is new, as I say, he's a popular science writer, his job is to write scientific ideas in a way that lay people can understand, and often he does that job well, particularly within his expertise (the way we think).
I would be very surprised, however, if your university did not take his ideas seriously. That would mean never discussing Phillipa Foot, Bernard Williams, Rosalind Hursthouse, Martha Nussbaum ... Even luminaries like Gurtrude Anscombe. I know for a fact that Edinburgh do (or used to do) an entire module on Ethical Naturalism in their Ethics course, which covers biological influences, so either you go to a really weird university, or we're still not quite understanding each other regarding terms.
Why, is it the sort of thing you're likely to do?
Curious contradiction I can't quite unpick, in the first half of the paragraph you say I'm over-thinking it, in the second half you advise asking the users of the term to elaborate. Is that not exactly what I'm doing here? Where is the line you think I've crossed between asking for elaboration and over-thinking?
This is entirely my own understanding of it though, and I don't speak for others who might use the label.
It sounds like you're just moving the goalposts, rather than actually defining the accusation. You've avoided having to define 'excessive' by replacing it with 'not applicable', but this doesn't get us any further to resolving how (and who) to define what constitutes either term. Clearly, Sam Harris, Stephen Hawking and Laurence Krauss think science is applicable in the areas they speak about (or all areas in the case of Hawking), you think it isn't. Can you prove it isn't in some way so objectively demonstrable that others could not reasonably hold a different belief?
If you cannot, then I'm still failing to see how the view that science can answer these question is not just another serious philosophical viewpoint like any other, and yet is continues to be treated with derision. I find Solipsism inappropriate to the questions of existence, but I can't prove it is, so Its just another school of thought. I might make an argument outlining why I think it is an unhelpful way of looking at things, but I don't try to get it ousted from serious debate by applying pejorative labels.
Thanks, I will trawl through some of his debates (although I find him quite unpleasant to listen to so will not make quick progress). I don't suppose you happen to actually have a quote to hand do you?
[quote=Pseudonym]science does not have any comment on matters of quality, other than to say that no other approach can say anything meaningful on the matter either.[/quote]
Kind of stacks the deck, doesn’t it?
The one we experience. Why would we have any cause to describe any other?
Quoting Caldwell
Because it provides models which are useful for making predictions about it which is the only purpose I can see to understanding it better in an objective sense.
Quoting Caldwell
I don't see at all how science is determining the reality, so I can't answer your question. Presuming a Realist, Physicalist position, reality is a thing, science makes models of it. How do you think it is determining it, from a Realist perspective?
A good analogy. Reminds me of a recent debate I took part in. Cut off a baby's earlobe, that's child abuse; cut off their foreskin, that's religion.
Quoting Pseudonym
So, you said before you wanted some quotes which illustrate ‘the problem with scientism’. And this is a great example.
The epistemological issue here revolves around what is involved in analysis of objects of knowledge, versus judgements about matters that effect subjects.
The salient point is that human beings, in fact, any kind of sentient being, are not objects, as such, but are subjects of experience. Science proceeds by eliminating the subjective - just as you said. But then, extending scientific judgement to the subjects considered by the humanities, by philosophy, theology, and so on, is the very essence of ‘scientism’. It is reductionist in the extreme, precisely because it excludes from consideration the very reality of the subject, on the basis that it is ‘merely subjective’.
This is captured perfectly by the statement above that ‘Theology can say nothing meaningful about anything because its purview is entirely subjective.’ That is typical of the mischaracterisation of the subject that abounds in the pages of popular atheist writers, such as Dawkins and those of that ilk.
And it is why I declined to respond to your posts earlier in this thread. One can argue rationally with those of opposing views, but it’s pointless arguing against such predudicial polemics.
I think that's not a bad definition, but what is it that you think people find so odious about that viewpoint? I mean, they're just saying that no other type of claim is valid, not that no-one can hold or talk about any other claims.
Obviously you might not agree with them in that, but I would commonly expect such disagreement to take the form "claims made using method X are valid because...", whereas all I hear in connection with the term Scientism, is the complaint that it denies claims of any other sort. Well, why shouldn't it? Surely, if one has at least a reasonable argument about epistemological claims, one is entitled to make it?
I mean that the term by itself expresses more of a speaker's attitude than a motivated stance, which is what you've been demanding. If you are after reasons and arguments, then ask your counterpart to give you that, instead of just giving you the attitude.
That it can (present tense) answer these questions is demonstrably wrong because there are no scientific answers to the questions. That it may, one day, be able to answer some of the questions is a tenable belief, but it is a belief of no interest, as there are no proposals for how it might happen - eg what sort of experiments one might do to detect consciousness, or to detect whether a certain action is right or wrong.
Further the Krausses, Harrises and Hawkings of the world don't stop at saying that science may one day be able to answer the questions. They pontificate that it's the only way to answer the questions, and that other approaches like philosophy should be discarded. Not only is that repellant, hubristic dogmatism, but it flies in the face of the observation that many people have found answers to these questions (questions like Kant's 'What Can I know? What must I do? What may I hope for?) in philosophy and/or religion, whereas nobody has found any answers for them in science.
Yes, but so what if it does? We're not setting out, in our joint investigation of our collective experience, to make sure that we maintain the essence of whatever viewpoints everyone started out with. Unless it is possible to eliminate some viewpoints we might as well not bother with any public investigation at all.
Perhaps (contradicting what I've just said - I am large) "scientism" is perceived as a certain philosophical obliviousness. It is when someone prejudges science to be the right tool for the any job without giving the question any critical thought - i.e. precisely without having a reason for it.
Why is the position that Theology has something meaningful to say a reasonable one, but the position that it does not irrational prejudice?
Well it's mostly quite clearly a heap of horseshit that doesn't even do justice to the science itself, but even more obviously no one likes to have their views dismissed on a priori bases.
I can run 27 miles, I know this because I have run several marathons. I never actually have run 27 miles, I've always stopped at 26, but I don't think anyone would dispute my claim that I can run 27 miles.
Quoting andrewk
This begs the question. Ethical naturalists claim to have a proposal for how science can answer questions of morality, you dismiss it out of hand by saying science is inapplicable to morality, and then you claim science has no proposals for how it might answer questions traditionally tackled by philosophy. It's just a self-fulfilling statement.
Quoting andrewk
Why is it that when scientists make arguments against certain philosophical approaches they "pontificate", yet when people like Heidegger write what many consider to be meaningless nonsense, they are great thinkers?
Quoting andrewk
This is just nonsense. Either 'answers' are entirely subjective or not. If they are entirely subjective then people have obviously found such answers in science. If they are objective, then how are you judging who has 'found an answer' such that you know for a fact that no one in science has?
I take it that in your statement ‘theology’ serves as a placeholder for the various forms of philosophy that are not science. Is this not the case?
I certainly think this gets close to what people who use the term are thinking, but how are they judging whether critical thought has gone into the judgement? It sounds a little bit like "if they didn't come up with the answer I think is right they mustn't have thought about it carefully enough".
Because, by saying that ‘science cannot ascertain a basis of values, but nothing else can either’, then you’ve essentially declared in advance that anything other than your preferred approach won’t be considered. It’s like ‘if I can’t have her, nobody else can, either!’
Except of course if one's view is that scientific investigation is the only meaningful way to form public theories about reality, in which case it seems quite de rigueur do dismiss them out of hand.
Quoting Wayfarer
[s]Never hard to dog whistle an atheist on this forum.[/s] ;-)
Well sure, if one indefatigably thinks one point of view is correct, one will also think that one's point of view is indefatigably correct. I will grant you this tautology, because I grant it.
No, you're putting a future tense into a sentence which did not contain one. The claim is that no other method thus far can ascertain an answer to the questions tackled by philosophy, not that no method ever will.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I agree entirely, that is what is at issue. The idea that values might be facts and if they are scientific investigation could then ascertain them.
Which is plainly an instance of ‘scientism’. At issue is the fact that scientific analysis deals exclusively in what is quantifiable, what is measurable, what is objective. Questions of quality are of a different order to that.
SO your response must be: how can you scientifically prove that they’re of a different order? What is the scientific evidence that questions of meaning and quality are of a different order to the quantitative?
And that response so thoroughly misunderstands the issue that it is impossible to argue with. Not impossible to argue with, because it’s a good argument, but because it’s mistaken in a way that must surely resist any kind of reasoned refutation.
Hey I'm on your side here!
How are you proving or supporting this statement? More particularly, how are you doing so in so absolutely a conclusive way that the alternative viewpoint need not even be considered?
Quoting Wayfarer
It's not necessary to support the claim that they are of a different order. The claim is that if they are of a different order, then we have no method for answering the questions posed in those areas.
Again, rather than actually lay out any argument you've just resorted to your default "you're so wrong I'm not going to even explain why".
Can’t. But what you’re proposing is simply verificationism. Again you’re basically arguing that all knowledge is empirical and then demanding empirical evidence as to why it isn’t.
In any case, the difference between quantitative and qualitative judgements and statements ought to be self-evident.
I do present arguments, but it can’t be helped if they’re not understood.
Quoting Pseudonym
Surely you must see that the second sentence contradicts the first one? In the first sentence, you say that ‘it’s not necessary to support the claim’, then in the second, you say ‘we have no method for supporting the claim’.
In any case, yes, there many discussions of the problem of facts vs values. But as you’ve already declared that only science can ever hope to address such questions then, not a lot to discuss. You need to look at your spectacles instead of just through them.
No, I'm arguing that the idea that all knowledge might be empirical is the best theory for making practical progress in answering the questions we which collectively want to answer about our existence. That's quite some distance from you insulting caricature. And no, I'm not demanding empirical evidence as to why it isn't, any evidence at all will do.
The claim I'm making in defending Scientism is that there is not any conclusive evidence of any sort, that methods other than the use of empirical knowledge make useful progress in answering the questions we have about existence, nor that using empirical knowledge alone makes no progress at all. Therefore is is not reasonable to dismiss the theory that empirical knowledge is the only means of making progress on such questions.
You might disagree with that conclusion, you might well present non-conclusive evidence in favour of your position, I have no problem with that, I'm not claiming it's a fait accompli, I just resent the idea that it's so wrong it can be dismissed out of hand.
I'm thinking for instance of Heidegger's phenomenological investigation (his "existential analytic") into the basic structures of human existence (Dasein) - and Being more generally - as being highly empirical if not scientific in the traditional sense.
But I'm admittedly out of my element here and will just throw that out there as a possibility for others to consider.
Really? That's your idea of a "perfect" illustration of someone's philosophical position, some facetious attempt to childishly ridicule your opponents by mixing up their comments rather than responding to them seriously?
Second thought, actually that is a perfect illustration of the use of the term Scientism. The use of pejorative, often facetious rhetoric to avoid having to actually argue a point.
No, it’s no distance at all - you’re arguing exactly what I say you are arguing, and if you take it as an insult then it’s your problem.
Quoting Pseudonym
OK - you’re stipulating any [i]scientific[i] evidence:
Quoting Pseudonym
I’m dismissing it because you yourself are stipulating, in advance, the only kinds of arguments that you are prepared to consider.
Scientism is the view that ‘all that can be known, can be known by means of science’ (which is a quote from Coppleson, History of Philosophy, chapter on Positivism.) So that’s the view that you’re here to promote, and then being ‘insulted’ when it’s argued against. And yet, I’m the party who is continually being accused of ‘dismissing your position without argument’. See if you can extend your intellectual repertoire to ‘irony’ ;-)
Quoting Erik
I think that Heideggar's existential analytic is scientific. He talks specifically about a hermeneutic approach (implying that there is only an 'approaching' to the truth, not a finding of it) and he talks about it being ceaselessly open to revision.
If there is a priori knowledge, then such an investigation as Heideggar advocates would be one way to find it scientifically. Of course, other ways would be neuroscience, psychology, evolution etc.
No, any evidence.
I haven't heard any evidence at all yet that proves conclusively that non-empirical methods of knowledge acquisition actually produce useful results, nor that empirical methods alone must inevitably fail to do so. Therefore, the theory that empirical methods will produce the most useful results is a valid theory and remains so until you can provide conclusive evidence to the contrary.
Quoting Wayfarer
The statement you quote specifies 'questions of quality', not all questions. If you're saying that how useful a theory is or whether it can obtain all that can be known, is a matter of quality, ie a subjective judgement, then why are you dismissing others who think that positivism is useful and obtains all that can be known? Surely that's just their personal feeling and you've no more reason to argue with them about it than you would argue about someone's favourite colour.
If, on the other hand, you're saying that how useful a theory is is an objective judgement, that you could in some way demonstrate to me how useful a theory is (in the way you could not possibly demonstrate to me how good your favourite colour is), then I expect you to be able to carry out that demonstration.
This is a constant theme of these philosophical arguments. When it comes to who is allowed to speak on the matter, philosophy is all manner of objective "Sam Harris doesn't know what he's talking about", "Laurence Krauss is a bad philosopher", but when asked to actually defend it's claims, philosophy becomes subjective, evidence is not required, it's all about feeling and persuasion. But a minute ago there was something to actually know (something Sam Harris evidently didn't), and something to be right about or good at (something Laurence Krauss evidently wasn't).
Either Philosophical statements can be objectively judged, in which case science has a proven record of making excellent predictions about objective judgements, or it is subjective, in which case there is no justification for making statements about who is 'good' at philosophy, nor who 'knows' what they're talking about. There is nothing to be 'good' at, nor anything to actually 'know'.
I like the way you pitched that and it makes sense to me. Something like hermeneutic phenomenology complementing investigations of other "regional" sciences rather than being set up as an either/or scenario. I definitely find that approach congenial.
I'm not so sure, however, if the "existentials" he lays out - being-in-the-world, being-with, etc. - would be accepted as properly scientific since they represent ways of being (so to speak) rather than physical properties.
You won’t consider any arguments.
Lazy Google on Heidegger and Scientism:
I think the 'scientific' element comes from the fact that Heideggar expected some refinement or revision. That (to me) entails that there must be a 'wrong' interpretation, in order for that interpretation, to be rejected by Dasein in favour of it's later revision. Presumably then, this 'wrongness' is measurable.
Now it might be that the 'wrongness' is entirely subjective, what 'feels' wrong, but then if that's the case, then Heideggar has said nothing more than "whatever feels right, is right" which I think is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
If, however, the 'wrongness' can be judged partly by observations of others, then we have something vaguely scientific. Refine those observations to make them more accurate, make models which fit your observations, test those models experimentally and you have social psychology.
What arguments?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I can't stand Heideggar myself, but I'm a deconstructionist (in the literary sense) about philosophical texts. It's more important to me to look at what can be usefully taken from them than it is to understand what the author actually intended to say.
I haven't said anything about Heidegger. I don't really understand him, but I am open to the idea that there is something very interesting there. If one day I get the time to read him seriously, I might find out.
As to scientists pontificating, the reason I'm happy to use such a term is partly that they are unremarkable scientists, like Krauss or Hawking. Most really great scientists, like Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohm and Newton, realised the significance of philosophy and how it was complementary to science, and made that known in their public comments. I only know of one great scientist that has said silly, dismissive things about philosophy, and he hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, so I won't mention him (and in any case the thing he said was much less dogmatic and generalising than the sort of thing Hawking or Krauss have said).
Like I said, science can tell us what morality is. Morality is the subjective perspective of another's influence on one's personal and group goals. Are you saying that science can tell us what is right or wrong? Aren't those value judgments? How can science make a value judgment? It makes observations and simply tries to explain those observations in a consistent way.
That seems like a really odd way of assessing the value of their contribution to the debate. I think both Kraus and Hawking, though unremarkable (I might disagree about Hawking) have both shown themselves, by their work, to be eminently capable of reaching ration conclusions and considering complex ideas. I don't see anything in their failure to produce groundbreaking physics that justifies dismissing their ideas as pontification. That quite a high bar you've set yourself. Are we only to talk about the ideas of those who have made earth-shattering advances in their field?
Your justifications, however, are your own, of course. What's more pertinent to the question are the first two elements of my response which you have yet to answer.
Claiming that science can investigate a range of problems typically covered by philosophy is not unreasonable simply by virtue of being a claim in the future tense, we make many such claims based on current knowledge.
Ethical naturalism does indeed propose a method by which science can answer questions about a field typically covered by philosophy.
So your contention that it's claims are wrong because no such answers have been forthcoming, and that a belief in the possibility of future answers is pointless because no method had been proposed, are both still wrong.
How do you know this?
Quoting Harry Hindu
The 'how' is, like many theories, complicated and is not easily expressed in a short post, but I will do my best.
Physicalism requires either determinism or randomness because there is no physical means by which free-will can make un-caused alterations to the physical universe without dualism.
If there is no free-will then the matter of what a person 'ought' to do (the value judgement about behaviour) becomes irrelevant. There is only what a person will do.
This way science can make predictions about what people will do in response to certain behaviours together with how they will feel.
What is a moral dilemma, and why is it a dilemma?
Let me ask you this: Did Sam Harris provide the name of the scientific field that studies what is right or wrong? What about any falsifiable theories of what is moral and immoral - did he provide any of that?
In ethical naturalism, a moral dilemma is the rational weighing of two possible methods for achieving the 'right' outcome to see which is most 'right'. Our genetics, coupled with our environment produces the concept of what is 'right', so that can be considered a brute fact, scientific investigation can determine what course of action is most likely to bring it about.
I'm not seeing what your problem is with this approach, you just keep reiterating that morality is subjective. Perhaps you could explain why you think it must be?
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, meta-ethics is the name of the field which studies what is right or wrong. As far as I know the term was coined by GE Moore.
Quoting Harry Hindu
He would probably like to say he did, but personally I don't read anything very new in his work. It's really just some further justification for theories already put forward by philosophers like Williams and Foot.
Certainly not. But with so many ideas around, we need to use some filter to decide which ideas to discuss. When we see somebody putting about an idea about a topic (philosophy) which they have not taken the time to investigate and of which they are patently ignorant, it fails the filter.
I sympathise with the desire to filter new ideas by some heuristic, and if that rules out unremarkable physicists who wish to contribute to philosophical questions then so be it.
I'm really not sure though that philosophy is the sort of subject one could reasonably be asked to have 'investigated' prior to comment. The history of philosophy is so blindly aimless that to suggest there is some canon of work leading incrementally up to the positions held nowadays in some subject is stretching the point.
Yes, and so is the history of art, literature and most worthwhile human endeavours. Yet when celebrities that know little of art or literature say ignorant things about them, they are reported because they were said by a celebrity, then disregarded (I am reminded of when Elle MacPherson said she didn't think people should read books they haven't written themself). Nobody proposes to establish a research project to investigate the 'ideas' of the celebrity.
The same is true when celebrities like Hawking say ignorant things about philosophy. The statements are noteworthy solely because of Hawking's celebrity. It has been noted, and now can be disregarded, being of as little value as Elle MacPherson's thought bubbles.
But when you first experience anything, where did that come from? As a young child, what did you experience and how did you articulate it?
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make by that comparison. If Elle MacPherson said she didn't think people should read books they haven't written themself, that's no less an opinion than the Professor of English Literature at Cambridge. No knowledge of literature provides anyone with an answer to the question of what books people 'should' read.
This is something which crops up a lot on philosophy, the constant switching between objectivity and subjectivity depending on convenience. Philosophy is about providing convincing arguments, it is entirely subjective, in the same way as English literature. If a philosophy professor wanted to offer their opinion as to what they thought the speed of light might be, they would, quite rightly, be told to shut up, but it is not the same the other way round. There is no 'right' way to think about morality, there are just more or less persuasive arguments. No one's comments can be said to be 'ignorant' because there is no body of knowledge to be aware of, only a body of opinion. If I wish to voice an opinion about the beauty of a sunset is it necessary for me to have first read what everyone else has said about sunsets?
My senses, translated into thoughts by my brain.
Quoting Caldwell
The world; and I didn’t articulate it because I hadn't learned how to talk.
I'm not sure where you're going with this.
Roughly speaking I think that's true by definition. Science is the investigation of that which is objective. I think the only grey area might be, as Quine has already pointed out, the classification of objectively measurable objects (and the classification of those classes, and so on). Thus mathematics is potentially objective, insofar as it is set theory based. But even to this point Quine was adamant that further excesses of mathematics were subjective, and issues like Russell's Paradox raised problems even for the objectivity of mathematics as we currently know it.
Personally, and I think it is the information, not the objects which are objective, uniting both mathematics and quantum physics, but that's far from a falsifiable theory as yet.
What can be said with some certainty, I think, is that no other field has a better claim to objectivity than science.
You seem to have answered you own question; "what is scientism"? It's your own belief system.
Well, the headline question maybe. The main bulk of the investigation though was why the term was used pejoratively. I don't yet have a clear understanding of that.
I guess it's pejorative because a religious belief in science is no better than a religious belief in religion. And science, of course, can't lead you to that conclusion.
That raises two questions ;
Why do you think a belief that science can answer questions about, for example, morality is religious, but a belief that it cannot is not?
Do you think, then, that the pejorative use of the term is something which should be admonished, or that it's OK to treat any religious belief within derision. Or maybe for some reason a religious belief in science is reprehensible but a religious belief in God is OK?
What do you mean by meaningless nonsense? Heidegger is a key figure in the history of philosophy, and is still one of the most influential philosophers today, as is exemplified by his relevance for contemporary cognitive science (cognitive science on skillful behavior, for example).
When you say meaningless nonsense, it sounds like you subscribe to a Logical Positivist view of linguistics and meaning. If this does not characterize your view, Iam interested in what you mean by meaningless nonsense.
I appreciate your frankness.
Quoting Pseudonym
Where is there in science a commitment to the sacredness of every individual life, that is basic to Christianity, for example?
Do you think there are scientific reasons why one ought to treat people equally, or care for the poor and sick?
Personally, I don’t think science has any such principles or commitments. But nor do i think that this reflects poorly on science. It’s simply not the kind of thing that science is concerned with.
Or is it? What do you say?
I did say "many consider" rather than claiming a universal truth, but I'm certainly one of those many people, as is Bertrand Russell, for example, so it's not just an uninformed opinion.
I can't speak for Russell, but by it I mean fairly straightforwardly that words do not come to actually 'mean' anything to me, in that they seem to have no propositional content.
I do subscribe fairly closely to an analytical approach to language. Language is a tool we use to help groups with disparate beliefs communicate. It simply fails to work if it is too subjective. Where I differ from Positivists with regards to language is that I don't think it needs to be fixed to predicate logic, only that it needs to be objectively negotiated, not freely redefined without consideration.
I don't think it's present in that form, but I don't think it's present in Christianity either, the crusades are pretty much proof of that. I think what science tells us is that we don't take the killing of another human lightly (which is about as far as Christianity could make any justifiable claim). With science though, it's not telling us we should, it's telling us that we do (together with defining the causes of those rare circumstances where people don't).
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I think there is scientific evidence that we do (in most cases), and there are scientific methods for analysing our efforts to do so to see which work best. The issue of whether we 'ought' is only relevant presuming free-will, and I do not.
This might be a clue to why people use Scientism as a negative term. If somebody claims that some utterance is meaningless because it has no ''propositional content'', it shows the lack of insight somebody has in the philosophical tradition and its recent developments. When Richard Dawkins (who I take to be a Scientism-ist) claims that consciousness works by processcing information similarly as computers do, and concludes from that that computers might one day become conscious, the problem is this: it shows that Dawkins thinks from the unquestioned premise of Empiricism, and having no insight on Phenomenology, Dawkins cannot conceive how philosophically problematic his own position is.
If Dawkins were to engage with Phenomenology and reject its insights, sticking to his form of Empiricism, that is fine. But Scientism seems to include a lack of engagment with anything that lies outside the unquestioned premise of Empiricism, and in this sense it seems a bit dogmatic to me. Similarly, when Heidegger is dismissed as having no ''propositional content'', there is no engagement with philosophy that questions premises from which somebody is thinking (Heidegger falls outside my way of thinking, thus it is meaningless nonsense; although it is exactly my way of thinking that Heidegger is putting to the question).
I hope I don't offend you in this, it's not my intention, but I personally would get more out of the discussion if you could refrain from appealing to authority but rather lay out why you think the counter-arguments are persuasive. Just saying a point is "widely considered to be untenable" or "not taken seriously" doesn't really interest me. I'd be interested to hear why you personally find the ideas untenable or facetious though.
That said, I don't think my criticism of Heidegger relies on equating meaning with propositional content. I expect propositional content from a text claiming to impart some useful theory. Maybe you read Heidegger as poetry, in which case I've no complaints, but it's rarely taken that way, it's presumed that Heidegger is imparting some insight, so I expect to read a proposition there and I find none, hence the words have no meaning relative to their intent.
Quoting Nop
I think this shows some of the presumptions in accusations of Scientism. Why would you presume that Dawkins thinks from the "unquestioned" premise of empiricism? We don't talk of Berkeley as writing from the 'unquestioned' premise of Idealism, we just accept that he's an idealist. We don't dismiss Quine as all his philosophy comes from the 'unquestioned' premise of Physicalism. So why is Dawkins' empiricism such a problem?
By concluding that he has no insight into phenomenology, you're sounding like your saying "if he doesn't agree with me, he must have not understood it properly". Maybe he's decided that phenomenology is an unnecessary part of his model of the world?
You still seem to be presuming that the language of philosophy is necessary for modelling reality and its just not. It's one way of doing things, there are others.
This seems like a silly thing to say, when you make claims to authority yourself: "but I'm certainly one of those many people, as is Bertrand Russell, for example, so it's not just an uninformed opinion", and: "yet when people like Heidegger write what many consider to be meaningless nonsense".
This is precisely what I am trying to illustrate. You assume that meaningfull statements have propositional content, and that without propositional content there is no meaningfull statement. This assumption cannot be taken as self-evident since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and thus you should at least engage with the arguments Wittengestein presents against this view. In fact, when you are not aware of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, you will not (and should not, in my opnion) be taken seriously on the topic of meaning, at least in Western acadamic philosophy.
Just so that I express myself clearly: what I see you doing is making a problematic assumption with respects to meaning, then you use that assumption as a criterion with respects to meaning, and you thus conclude that Heidegger is meaningfull nonsense. So in fact, you just assume the conclusion, since you assume the criterion.
Because Berkeley rejects Materialism, and Quine rejects Immaterialism, both on the grounds that they engaged with the positions they reject. Dawkins doesn't.
That fine and a respectable view. But this is not Dawkins, since Dawkins doesn't engage with phenomenology: he thinks from the premise of Empiricism, and accepts and rejects things based on this assumed premise.
Well, I think the question has been answered. ‘Scientism’ is not a philosophy, but an attitude. It is a pejorative term, but it’s an attitude that deserves it.
The difference is that I've associated authority with a position I've attempted to explain. You just said that the point was untenable purely on the basis that modern philosophy says so,with no attempt to argue the case. The reason why this frustrated me is because I don't agree that modern philosophy finds the position untenable, but I'm unable to form an argument to that effect because you've not told me how you've reached that conclusion. I'm not saying don't ever mention which philosophers have shared your views that would be ridiculous, I'm saying don't just say it must be wrong because 'philosophy' says so.
As to the whole issue with engagement, you seem to have missed the point of what I'm saying, so I'll try again. Phenomenology is not necessarily a thing. Husserl thought it was a thing, so did many other thinkers, but many thinkers didn't. We're not obliged to engage with every concept that anyone has ever thought of in order to present our own world-view. I honestly haven't the faintest idea what you think phenomenology has got to do with what Dawkins has said (because you haven't told me, as above), but presuming you present an argument demonstrating how phenomenology is an alternative to Dawkins' ideas, it doesn't follow that he must engage with it in order to be taken seriously. I'm certain his ideas on religion conflict with Christianity, as they do with Greek mythology, shamanism, the specific animism of every tribe in the world. Does he have to carefully explain how each one is wrong before making any statement about religion?
I don't recall reading any papers where Satre engaged with the latest neuroscience before expounding his own version of existential phenomenology.
I'd like us to be a little cautious with the use of the term Empiricism here. 'Isms' are always a worry, aren't they?
I think that the worldview that seems to be ascribed to Dawkins here, that only Empirically testable things are worth discussing, is quite different from the philosophical tradition that has traditionally been called Empiricism, and which is usually contrasted with the tradition called Rationalism. That worldview ascribed to Dawkins is what is generally referred to as Scientism. I haven't read enough Dawkins to have a feel for whether he subscribes to Scientism, rather than just hostility to organised religion. But there are posters on here that seem to have read plenty of Dawkins and feel that to be the case. My emblematic examples of Scientism are Krauss, Hawking and Harris.
But in any case Scientism has not much overlap with the philosophical tradition of Empiricism. After all, two of the most notable exponents of Empiricism were Berkeley and Locke. One of them became a bishop and the other thought that atheists should be the only religious minority that should not be allowed freedom of belief. Further, the ideas of one of the most notable Empiricists - Hume - are these days seen as quite compatible with various forms of non-dogmatic mysticism, particularly Buddhism and Vedanta Hinduism.
The histories of neither philosophy, art nor literature are anything like "blindly aimless".
Really? So what would you say their aim was?
Each discipline has deployed many diverse aims; aims which have developed dialectically through the course of history.
So taking philosophy for example, what would be some of those aims?
The overarching aim has always been to understand the human situation. This leads to the long history of metaphysics, to the developments of epistemology, ethics, moral philosophy and aesthetics. and in the modern era phenomenology. Each individual philosopher has his or her own aims, which are obviously influenced by the canon, by his or her understanding of philosophy's historical development, as well as by contemporaries, and by other disciplines such as science and religion. All this is so obvious: Have you read much philosophy?
The belief that it cannot is similar to soft atheism, for instance. There's no apparent evidence that science can answer any moral questions, for instance (as @Wayfarer elaborated), so there's no reason to presume anything about such a contention (of course, the issue is that those with a scientistic mindset do so presume. Yourself I might count in their number. Thus scientism).
Quoting Pseudonym
It's not so clear cut. Religion gave birth to science, broadly. That's the first simple realization that should lead to a cautionary perspective about science as an arbiter of truth (and indeed, when we even use that phrase, "science as an arbiter of truth", we're already dealing in scientistic terms).
As to the pejorative use of the term, I think scientism is too soft. I'd rather say the Scientific Religion.
So what does 'understand' mean in this context? How does one judge when one has 'understood' the human condition?
In what way has, for example, Camus, understood the human condition significantly more than Aristotle. If philosophy has been heading in the direction of better understanding the human condition for 2000 years it should be a fairly straightforward task for you to demonstrate the way in which the progress has been made.
Science is heading in the direction of making new models of reality which make better predictions about it. The model of a round earth made better predictions about navigation than the model of a flat one, simple. So what might be an equivalent example demonstrating the 'direction' of philosophy?
Classic. "X doesn't agree with me, therefore he must have failed to understand my ideas".
If you have an actual argument then make it. This is a forum, not a private members club; unless I've mistaken the intention here entirely, it is not do demonstrate, by exegesis, the breadth of one's library in order to gain approval.
The point someone like Hawking is making is that the whole of philosophy is unnecessary in answering the questions humanity has of its existence. You can't answer that charge by saying that one should demonstrate a better understanding of philosophy, that would be begging the question. The answer to the question of whether philosophy has anything meaningful to say cannot be contained within the Canon of philosophy without first assuming that philosophical investigation can produce a meaningful answer to the question.
So if all you came here to do is whine about how 'misunderstood' philosophy is, then I think you've made your point. If you actually wish to put the effort into making a persuasive argument that it has a meaningful contribution to make that scientists do not, then I'd be interested to hear it.
And actually yes, to dismiss an idea or set of ideas requires understanding, at least minimally, the content of those ideas, on pain of unthinking dogmatism. That isn't 'begging the question', that's basic argumentative practice, understood by schoolchildren around the world. To think that you can't even correctly impute a first-year fallacy, let alone think you might have anything to say of interest about philosophy...
There's no apparent evidence that there's a God, does that justify a pejorative use of the term religious, the derision of any arguments to that effect and the exclusion of anyone who thinks there is from philosophical discussion?
What's more, why are you talking in the language of 'evidence' all of a sudden? If your acceptance of a theory is on the basis of whether there is sufficient evidence then you've already joined the club, welcome.
Quoting Noble Dust
That's a bold claim, do you have any evidence for that, or are we switching back to discussing what we 'reckon'? I'm finding it hard to keep track of the constant changes in requirement. When religion and phenomenology are discussed we seem only to require 'intuition' and a sage-like nodding of the head to approve it. When others not 'in the club' make claims we seem to revert to needing evidence.
Perhaps in future you could preface your propositions with some kind of label to that effect, then I know whether I can provide counter arguments from intuition, or if I need to provide empirical evidence.
So no actual argument then? Just repeating the same ostracising bullshit. What I say is meaningless because you don't agree with it, what [insert philosopher here] says isn't meaningless because you do. Unless you have a definition of what is meaningful other than your own personal preference?
Quoting StreetlightX
I wasn't aware that they were in much doubt. What is there? How can we know what there is? What ought we do? Pretty much covers the basics of ontology, epistemology and axiology.
That much is clear. Epecially given that one of the chief virtues of philosophy is to illuminate not merely answers to questions of these sort, but to determine, in varying contexts, what exactly they are asking. One of the things you learn once you shed the amaturism of unschooled ignorance is that engaging with very meaning of questions like these are bulk of what philosophy deals with. The hardest thing to do in philosophy is to get the question right. Taking them for granted is philosophical infantilism, not, perhaps, unlike 'scientism'.
From an interview with Willard Van Quine (1977):
Interviewer: "What would you say were the main questions in philosophy?"
Quine: "What is there, and how can we know what there is?"
Quine's an infantile amateur is he?
Did you not notice that I answered precisely the same question as was put to Quine with precisely the same answer, almost word-for-word?
So in a post limited to a few sentences the statement that the main questions in philosophy are what is there and how do we know what there is, is neither infantile nor amateurish. Apology accepted. Or did you expect me to write an entire canon of investigation in response?
Oh no wait, I forgot the golden rule that when a famous philosopher says it its very meaningful and sagacious, but when someone you disagree with says it its infantile and amateurish.
As I said, stuff you like = meaningful, stuff you disagree with = meaningless.
How beautifully self immunised. "What you're saying is meaningless and I don't even have to present an argument to support that because one cannot argue against the meaningless"
Note also that as someone who loves science, I think this kind of scientism does more to hurt and diminish science than any philosophical critique could. It belittles not just philosophy, but science itself, which becomes tainted by a colonizing and imperialist disciplinary cancer that exists nowhere in its actual practice.
Gets my vote.
Yeah, so still no actual argument then?
Quoting StreetlightX
Have you read my posts, or just presumed you know what I'm saying? I'm arguing that the theory of those accused of Scientism (in a pejorative sense), deserves to be taken as seriously as any other position in philosophy. The arguments to which I refer answer and elaborate those issues at great length. I'm not making the arguments themselves, I'm making the argument that they do not deserve such disdain.
I don't see why it is so unreasonable to ask (of those who dismiss Scientism) why they do so, which means the request implicit in the question is for you to support your claim (that scientism is meaningless), not for me to support my claim that it isn't.
If that's not a question that interests you, if you're happing just dismissing it as meaningless without debating the justification, then fine, just don't take part in the discussion. But I'd rather you didn't try to steer the post to an off-topic debate about how Scientism justifies its claims. Start another post, by all means and I'd be happy to comment. This post is about how those who dismiss Scientism pejoratively support their position.
Do you read your posts?
So my posts about children's rights, free-will, consciousness, ethics, abortion, belief, responsibility politics... All somehow attempting to undermine philosophy are they?
And what if whole swathes of philosophy are meaningless, what discipline exactly would discuss that possibility? Pretty much every major movement in philosophy has to some extent branded the investigations of other movements as meaningless. The idea that some portion of philosophical investigation is meaningless is a perfectly well-respected philosophical position.
Question - how do those who dismiss Scientism pejoratively support their claim?
Your answer - Well how do those who argue in favour of Scientism support their claim?
"No you say first..."
"No you first..."
"No you first..."
We used to argue like that in primary school.
I see, so you're not interested in answering the question, you just popped by to insult my intelligence, and then make an ad hominen argument that if people as stupid as me support Scientism that means it mustbe rubbish.
OK, job done.
One can only be ignorant of a topic if it contains facts to be ignorant of. I cannot be ignorant about dragons because there are no facts about dragons to be unaware of. I do not have to read every mythology involving dragons before declaring them to be most likely non-existent.
Taking phenomenology as an example (seeing as it was raised, by another post as being a subject Dawkins should 'know' about). If one accepts the premise that intuition delivers knowledge, then there is something to 'know' about phenomenonolgy, but if one rejects that premise then there is no more knowledge there than there is knowledge of dragons in a fairy tale.
As I asked in my response to another post, if Dawkins is required to understand phenomenology before making statements about knowledge, why is Satre not required to understand evolutionary biology before making claims about existence?
Where do you get this nonsense from? Since when was phenomenology defined by 'the premise that intuition delivers knowledge'? Do you have a source for this utter balderdash? Or is phenomenology yet another philosophical topic you know nothing about? And even if one were to grant the centrality of intuition in, say, Husserl, would phenomenology stand or fall with the Husserlian theory of intuition? It certiantly played no major role in Heidegger. And Derrida made his critique of Husserlian intuition the centrepiece of early philosophy, without sanctioning any careless dismissal of intuition in philosophy altogether. And if not Husserl, what about Kant, Bergson, or Merleau-Ponty, who also developed well known, if divergent, theories of intuition? Can you engage in any specificity whatsoever, or can you only speak in empty generalities? In other words, are you willing to do philosophy? Or are you content to bask in your ignorance?
I mean honestly, you couldn't get a better distillation of the kind of rubbish that's all through this thread: declarations that look meaningful but are based in either complete mischaracterization or sheer conceptual confusion.
"He then identifies intuition as the original phenomenon that leads to the concept of truth itself" - Introduction to 'The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology' - Emmanuel Levinas
Husserl ?rst calls attention to the intuitive givenness of experience, especially that of
perception. He ?nds an ‘absolute ground’ in it - Hursserl's second lecture in the Five Lecture Series 1907.
"Is it not the first aspiration of this type of philosophical approach ... in which man and his universe emerge by direct intuition, both certain and indubitable" The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology
Or, if you prefer a more lay approach...
"An important and still largely unexplored claim of Husserl's is that any logically consistent meaning can in principle be subjectively fulfilled, more or less adequately, by a unified intuition, such as an act of continuous perception or intuitive imagination"
"...the structure and other essential features of the meaning in question can be read off from the respective mode of intuitive fulfillment"
-IEP
Or more lay still ...
"Husserl's method entails the suspension of judgment while relying on the intuitive grasp of knowledge" - Wikipedia
Take your pick.
Ah, back to this again.
All my quotes are just nicked blindly from the Internet and (and you know this how? Oh yes, because I disagree with you, therefore I must be an idiot, I forgot), whereas all your quotes... no wait, I forgot again, you don't need to provide any quotes because you don't need to provide any support for your argument, it's just so obvious to anyone who isn't ignorant.
I have to do all the explaining and you just sit there and say "wrong" to everything without any explanation.
How about, just for a change, you lay out why you think believing in the validity of the intuitive moment is not essential to gaining meaningful knowledge from phenomenology and I'll sit back and enjoy just telling you you're wrong without any explanation? Then we can swap back again, hell we could play this all day... Or we could actually try to have a discussion about the ideas without resorting to insults.
Unless you're prepared to raise some kind of argument that isn't just an appeal to authority, and have that argument interrogated by someone who might even disagree with its fundamental premises, then I've no interest in continuing this 'discussion' (for want of a better word).
Okay, so give me an example situation that represents a moral dilemma.
What do you mean by the environment and our genetics producing the concept of what is 'right'? If all we needed were genetics and environment, wouldn't that mean we would always be 'right' in everything we do?
Quoting Pseudonym
You've given me names of philosophers but not specifically any scientists, so I still don't see where the relationship between what is right and wrong and science is other than science being able to explain what it is and why it helps us to survive and procreate.
Is human survival and procreation a good thing? It may depend on who else you ask in the rest of the animal kingdom, or even in the rest of the universe for that matter.
I can't work out if we're just talking past one another, or if you're simply unwilling to engage in any epistemological questioning. I'm not asking that you defend phenomenology, I'm asking that you defend the many claims you've made to the effect that phenomenology (just as an example of an epistemological approach) has something meaningful to say, and with such authority that anyone making epistemological claims without engaging with it, is so wrong they don't even deserve an argument.
In making a distinction between phenomenology and phenomenologism, you're implying, it seems, that the belief that something is a way of making claims to knowledge is acceptable whereas the belief that something is the only way to make knowledge claims is a joke, something so untenable as to be deserving of ridicule.
But this falls foul of a point similar to that which Michael Friedman makes about Positivism. You must accept one of three positions; either all epistemological methods are valid, or none are, or some are and some aren't. If the first is the case, then we can make no knowledge claims at all, as every method of deriving them is equally valid. If you like this approach, fine, but what would be the point in requiring that Dawkins read Husserl, he may as well ask my Grandma. If you accept the second, then we can make no knowledge claims either, and still Dawkins need not read Husserl. This leaves us only with the last (which you seem to imply above). So then if only a finite number of epistemological claims/frameworks are valid, what is preventing that number from being one, such that phenomenologism would be an entirely reasonable position to hold.
Whether to give a tithe to the poor might be an example, I'm not sure where this is leading, obviously you're not thinking I'd be unable to come up with a moral dilemma, so maybe I'm missing your point here?
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, knowing what is 'right', by the definition ethical naturalists give to the term, is not the same as doing what is right. The ethical naturalist position is that the we have, by evolution (or simply by our 'nature' in an Aristotelian sense) a range of urges/desires. These are neither complimentary, nor mutually exclusive, since they have evolved without purpose, they just are. Some of these desires represent the types of objective we have called ethical, others don't. So it's entirely reasonable that, given the range of environmental stimuli and the ranges of desires (responses to stimuli), one might experience a desire to both alleviate the suffering of someone in your community (by giving a tithe) and a desire to hoard you possessions (by not giving a tithe). This is not judged or given a value, it's simply something that's going to be the case, and the claim is that science can (eventually) simply demonstrate that it is the case.
Now the issue is, can you have both? Can you maximise the satisfaction of your desires. again this is not the objective because it 'should' be, it simply is, like it or not, you're a biological machine and you're going to do what you're going to do. Again, the theory is that science can (eventually) answer that question. If we know what sorts of thing really satisfy the desires we seem to have, the extent to which they do so, how long such satisfaction lasts etc. then we can derive strategies which maximise satisfaction.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because 'what is' is all there is.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Human survival and procreation is whatever we decide to call it. It is certainly a desire in humans, whether you prefer to think of it as by our nature or by evolution. The ethical naturalist position is that all the desires we've called 'good' are a subset of all the desires we have, we will desire them without any further motivation, as will we desire all the others. The argument of someone like Harris, is simply to further say that, given this position, scientific investigation is the best tool to help us maximise these desires.
Or, tertium datur, different epistemological methods are valid or appropriate for different fields, each one calling for the best or set of best kinds suitable to it. One doesn't use a microscope to conduct anthropology, and rightly so, least you be correctly outed as a loon. And again, as another instance of invalid and unthinking presuppositions, why is knowledge the criteria by which philosophy is judged against? Philosophy has very rarely concerned itself with providing straightforward 'knowledge' about the world, insofar as the kind of 'knowledge' it deals with is largely second-order knowledge, knowledge of, among other things, what it means to know at all. Zizek actually puts it very nicely in one of the interviews he gives with Gyln Daly, where he speaks of the relation between science and philosophy:
"When I understood that this is not to do with megalomania, in the sense of the standard counter-attack of naive scientists, namely, 'we are dealing with hard facts, with rational hypotheses, but you philosophers you are just dreaming about the structure of everything', I then realized that philosophy is in a way more critical, more cautious even, than science. Philosophy asks even more elementary questions. For example, when a scientist approaches a certain question, the point of philosophy is not 'What is the structure of all?' but 'What are the concepts the scientist already has to presuppose in order to formulate the question?' It is simply asking about what is already there: what conceptual, and other, presuppositions already have to be there so that you can say what you are saying, so that you understand what you understand, so that you know that you are doing what you are doing." (Zizek and Daly, Conversations with Zizek) This is what I mean, among other things, when I say that getting the question right is basically nothing other than the work of philosophy.
Or else there is the position of someone like Wendy Brown, for whom the whole point is that philosophy, or theory more generally, ought specifically to strategically disengage us from the actuality of the world: "theory depicts a world that does not quite exist, a world that is not quite the one we inhabit. ... An interval between the actual and the theoretical is crucial insofar as theory does not simply decipher the world, but recodes it in order to reveal something of the meanings and incoherencies with which we live. This is not simply to say that political and social theory describe reality abstractly. At their best, they conjure relations and meanings that illuminate the real or that help us recognize the real, but this occurs in grammars and formulations other than those of the real." (Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty)
This similarly coincides with the view of Byung-Chul Han, for whom the appeal to 'data based science' cannot but destroy any critical gaze upon the world: "Theory in the strong sense of the word is a phenomenon of negativity. It makes a decision determining what belongs and what does not. As a mode of highly selective narration, it draws a line of distinction. On the basis of such negativity, theory is violent. Without the negativity of distinction, matters proliferate and grow promiscuously. In this respect, theory borders on the ceremonial, which separates the initiated and the uninitiated. It is mistaken to assume that the mass of positive data and information — which is assuming untold dimensions today — has made theory superfluous, that is, that comparing data can replace the use of models. ... The latter lacks the negativity of decision, which determines what is, or what must be, in the first place. Theory as negativity makes reality itself appear ever and radically different; it presents reality in another light". (Han, The Transparency Society)
I quote these not as 'arguments from authority' but as demonstrations of perspectives - exemplary perspectives imo - that are totally, absolutely absent from your woefully anemic understanding of philosophy, its place, and its role. To put it excessively and starkly, perhaps philosophy ought to be understood as the study of non-knowledge, to all the better shed light on field of knowledge itself. These are alternate perspectives which far better capture what philosophy can and does do, rather than the violent caricatures presented in your vulgar presentation of the discipline.
You're making claims in the public domain though. You're not saying "for me, knowledge is of this, or that, sort" you're making a claim about what knowledge actually is (or rather what it isn't), including what I and the likes of Dawkins 'should' accept it as being, so what I guess what I'm asking is why should I believe you.
I'm hold a belief that means I require some form of conflicting evidence to dissuade me from any belief I hold. I'm also of the view that philosophy is about making persuasive arguments. So to me a philosophical argument that (for example) Heidegger says something meaningful (contrary to what I currently believe, would either contain some evidence of meaning, or an argument that I should be dissuaded from my beliefs by some other method (and then a demonstration that Heidegger satisfies that method).
What you've provided here are some more people giving an account of what they 'reckon' is the case. I don't really understand what process you think that forms part of in making your argument more persuasive.
Am I? I like to think that I'm making or rather promoting claims about useful ways of thinking about knowledge, ways that can be pressed into the service of different needs, depending on different motivations. What scientism seems to do is deny - in a way that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with ideological dogma - that there are any other kinds of useful knowledge than science. Which is, prima facie, a load of horseshit that any two year old can smell.
And again, that much of what philosophy deals with is 'knowledge' is something I've only granted very provisionally, insofar as it's not at all clear that most of philosophy does in fact deal with knowledge. And the constant refrain for 'evidence' counts for very little, if only because what does and does not count as evidence is of course, precisely a philosophical and even perhaps historical issue of which you remain entirely unreflective about. Again, all these words you think you're using as self-evident - knowledge, evidence, meaningfulness - these are things you seem to think you understand, when most of your posts betray nothing but naivety with respect to their use. You're careless with language, and you wield that carelessness unthinkingly to make invalid claims, over and over again.
OK, so what classes as useful? If philosophical ideas are judged by their utility, then how are you deciding that (for example) the idea that science can determine morality is not a useful one?
Quoting StreetlightX
Again, you're simply imposing your worldview here, because I have a view about what constitutes evidence that differs from yours I must be 'unreflective', I must, through my own inadequacies, have missed something. Is the idea that I might well have reflected long and hard on these matters but simply reached a different conclusion to you so hard to accept?
Quoting StreetlightX
But you've used exactly the same words in your posts. We're back to this condescending insistence that whilst you're free to use such terms in whatever context you see fit, and it's simply implied that you'd be amenable to other interpretation, my use of the terms in a similarly loose, colloquial must be the result of ignorance.
Quoting StreetlightX
So now claims are back to being valid or invalid. So when I ask that philosophical positions validate their claims we get this wishy-washy, "not even really a knowledge claim", different methods for different enquiries kind of relativism, but when claims are made about philosophy itself we turn to strict rhetoric 'invalid', 'nonsense', 'wrong', 'misunderstood'. Such defensiveness does not foster useful investigation.
You're the evidence guy - and so far there is no 'evidence' that you have for a moment thought about, or understood the specificities of philosophy. I mean, there is simply no way to take seriously, for example, the idea that 'science=objective' and 'philosophy=subjective'. What is your theory of the object? What is your theory of the subject? Do you even have one? Or again, are you employing these empty terms that have nothing but a (implied and untheorized) value valence to them, and drawing conclusions based on that fake veneer of meaningfulness? Because, as with most of your terms, you simply haven't discussed or explained their use. did you know that the meaning of objectivity in science has changed so much that it's possible to write 500 page books about it? Or that the idea of what counts as an 'explanation' in science has had a similarly rich and varied history? And let's not even speak about evidence, which is a minefield all on its own.
So yeah, I freely admit that I don't take scientism seriously. It is a position deserving of scorn for it's closemindedness and philosophical vacuousness, and it ought to be treated like the toxic pseudo-philosophy that it is. If 'fostering useful investigation' means anything, it is not the cancerous idea that one and only one discipline (as usual undefined and unspecified by you except nominally) has the right to make claims of and about the world. It's sheer disingenuity to speak for 'fostering useful investigation' while literally denying legitimacy to entire swathes of human understanding. What you call 'wishy-washy' is nothing other than an index of your own inability, and more importantly, unwillingness, to understand the kinds of things philosophy does - it speaks not to philosophy but to your own barren understanding of the very topic you think you're discussing.
And just as another example, when you ask "how are you deciding that (for example) the idea that science can determine morality is not a useful one?" - what are you even asking here? Do you know? What kind of meta-ethics is implied in a question like this? A command theory of ethics? A virtue theory of ethics? What kind of thing would ethics have to be in order for science to bear - or not to bear - upon it? These are not trivial questions, despite your total insensitivity to them. Again, your very questions betray their own emptiness. They're meaningless without elaboration - which is to say, without philosophy.
Good start, so what would class as evidence that I had thought about or understood the specificities of philosophy, whilst maintaining an ability to reach the conclusion that it is mostly meaningless? Or are we still stuck on the idea that everyone who disagrees with you simply must have misunderstood something?
Quoting StreetlightX
I don't think I ever said that, if I did you'll have to remind me of the context.
Quoting StreetlightX
Again with the condescension. You ask disingenuously if I have a theory and then proceed with an attack on my intelligence on the unsubstantiated assumption that I haven't. My theory of the objective/subjective divide is a fairly unremarkable one based on (but not entirely explicated by) the idea of signs increasing the probability of an object being part of mind-independent reality. Signs such as intersubjective agreement, logical consistency etc. Yes I'm aware there are other positions and complexities but I find those positions less persuasive. Am I going to have to suffix everything I say with that sentence now in order to avoid accusations of dogmatism?
Quoting StreetlightX
Again you still haven't explained to me how it is that you are able to use whatever terms you like without any explanation, yet I must add a short thesis to each word proving to you that I've thought about it.
Quoting StreetlightX
No, its an absolutely necessary logical conclusion. If there is to be such a thing as 'useful' or any judgement at all (which you seem to agree with, by dismissing Scientism) then it is simply an inevitable consequence that some methods will come out worse.
Quoting StreetlightX
Ethical naturalism.
Quoting StreetlightX
The term given to a particular type of motivation or reasoning, both of which can be seen and measured in biological organisms.
Quoting StreetlightX
You haven't even asked me them yet, where exactly do you get off attacking me personally, I'm interested in the discussion but I'm finding the personal insults quite offensive.
Do you ever use any scientific results or ways of thinking to inform your people-handling part of the job? (IIRC you work in medical care?)
Understood. I asked because I imagined you'd have thought about it quite a lot and would have a unique/interesting perspective - of all the people here I'd imagine you would have found out if scientific results/training made a difference in how you treated people professionally. Apologies for wasting your time. :)
So in addition to being vacuous, closed-minded, toxic, cancerous, disingenuous, infantile, barren, and ignorant, and I'm now also a troll?
And that is because the short answer to the question 'What is scientism?' is that it is a term of abuse. It is something one is accused of, not something one espouses. And if no one espouses a philosophy, no one is in a position to seriously explicate it. So what is left to talk about except the personal failings of the contributors? Which is what seems to have happened. now if you want to plead innocence of trollishness, and at the same time complain about the bad feeling that has been produced, then you might be well advised to try and learn the lessons, and set up future discussions rather more carefully with a substantial topic.
Quoting Pseudonym
I use the term "human situation" and in your response you change it to "human condition". Probably doesn't matter much, I guess.
You have understood the human situation when you have an understanding of it. There are many understandings; and probably none of them are absolutely comprehensive.
Quoting Pseudonym
I said philosophy is anything but aimless, and that it could even be said to have an overarching aim; understanding the human situation. Now you've changed the subject and seem to be suggesting that I have claimed that philosophy progresses to ever greater understanding. Well, I haven't said that. But leaving that stronger claim aside, it is true that Camus' understanding is more comprehensive than Aristotle's for the very obvious reason that he has an extra 2000 years of philosophy, not to mention history, art, literature, music, religion and science to draw upon. He can have Aristotle's understanding plus all the rest; his understanding can thus subsume Aristotle's.
Quoting Pseudonym
And there you have it, scientism in a nutshell: demanding that philosophy must justify its value to you by showing that it satisfies the same criteria that you believe gives science its value.
That's like saying the answer to the question "what is Idealism?" would just be "it's the name of a school of philosophy", end of discussion. I can guarantee you that if I posted that question it would lead to a wide discussion about the history, principles and criticisms of Idealism, not just a semantic explanation of the use of the term. I think the full post gave a perfectly clear account of what aspects of the use of term I wanted to discuss, so I'm not seeing the leap to trollishness just from the title.
Quoting unenlightened
If Scientism is just a term of abuse, which I was quite clear I already knew in the first sentence of the post, then what is left to discuss is why, which is the question I asked.
Quoting unenlightened
No, that's not it at all. If the topic were insubstantial, it would have simply received little interest, it's eight pages long. We're it simply of low quality, it would have been deleted (I've seen other go that way). I'm open to alternative explanations for the vitriol in virtually all of the responses I've received to any suggestion that science can answer questions of philosophy, but at the moment it's hard to move away from the glaringly obvious explanation, that people are scared it just might be right.
My own definition of what characterises Scientism is that it is a dependence on Newtonian metaphysics. We can recognise it as that metaphysical package that revolves around the notions of reductionism, atomism, materialism, mechanicalism, computationalism, localism, nominalism, monadism and determinism.
So it is not the "scientific method" which is being excessively applied. There are good epistemic reasons to think that rational inquiry - that combination of theory and measurement - is the only proper way to arrive at a more objective view. And that objectivity has been the whole point of philosophy in the modern western tradition.
It is instead a particular brand of metaphysics which is being excessively (or not) being applied.
The Newtonian paradigm justified - at the level of universal observation and mathematical-strength theory - a particular view of Nature. Extrapolated, it says that all there is are atoms blindly following deterministic paths that make all higher organisation or complexity essentially meaningless and epiphenomenal. This is what people object to. The ruling out of everything potentially more interesting than a web of impressed forces acting on dumb masses.
In Aristotelian terms, the Newtonian paradigm allows you to treat Nature as purely the sum of its material and efficient causes. Its formal and final causes just don't have any real ontological standing. Purpose and meaning become a grand illusion of some kind or other. They are now merely subjective.
And that paradigm of Nature obviously has a whole lot of direct philosophical consequences. It says something basic about politics, ethics and aesthetics. It decides what counts as a legitimate question in these areas.
So the modal scope of this reductionist view is completely sweeping. Which is what gets folk squealing.
Obviously I view Newtonian reductionism to be a useful (indeed, super-useful) way of thinking, but also - metaphysically - incomplete. A holistic or systems view of Nature takes the expanded view that brings top-down formal and final cause back into the picture as also elements of scientific inquiry. And of course, science itself is increasingly understanding Nature in this fashion.
So once science cracks holism, then it is game over. :)
Of course, philosophy being a social activity, people can define it as they like. They can talk about other ways of "knowing" - like feeling, or poetry, or revelation.
And that is fine. In an open competition of ideas, all the different ways of thought will play themselves out in good old evolutionary fashion.
My only personal concern is that Newtonian reductionism can be quite a damaging paradigm in long-run social terms. And to counter-act that, it needs a strong and well-grounded response - the kind of response that only a scientific holism could deliver.
Waffling on about feelings, poetry and revealed truth - the ongoing Romantic response to the Enlightenment - ain't going to cut it. The only answer to half-done science is to come back and finish the job.
Right, so what does having an understanding of it look/feel like?
Quoting Janus
I didn't ask how, I asked 'in what way', what constitutes the progress?
Quoting Janus
Who's demanding anything? I'm just asking. Yes, I'd like to know if you think philosophy can show progress in something I can understand as being useful. If it can't, fine, you don't need to get so touchy about it.
Finally, an insightful response not filled with bitter resentment.
I agree that the over application of Newtonian reductionism is a big problem. As is the excessive use of 'survival of the fittest' and a massive failure to acknowledge the biases and statistical failings of modern science.
But none of this changes the basic position, as JJ Smart put it, that metaphysics should be based on science as our best model, despite its failings.
Personally, I'd like to see more work on information theory as well as a more holistic science, as I think that is the only way to reign in the metaphysical woo surrounding quantum physics, but until then we certainly are not going to improve on a flawed and biased science by throwing our hands up and saying we might as well just believe anything.
That is not a point. It is an assertion. And it is unsupported by any argument. Hence it is not worthy of anybody spending any time considering it.
Further, it is an assertion that is observed to be wrong, as many people have been able to find answers to the questions they had about existence, through philosophy. The fact that Hawking has not was a problem for him, not for anybody else. Now you may say that the answers people have found are 'subjective', or 'illusory', or 'meaningless', but that's beside the point. They found answers that were helpful to them, that gave them greater peace of mind, acceptance, sense of purpose, or whatever else they were after. So for them, philosophy served its purpose.
It's as though Hawking said 'I don't like Marmite, so nobody should eat Marmite'.
Obviously depends on the undertsnding. There are countless possible understandings of the human situation.
Quoting Pseudonym
I haven't said there is progress; again you are falling into comparing other disciplines with your conception of science. Having said that, there is obviously a progression in philosophy; it is a dialectical progression; philosophers are influenced by, and respond to, other philosophers. It is a cumulative discipline, just like the arts, literature and music; the possibilities become ever greater in some ways and less in others; philosophy becomes more comprehensive by exploring new possibilities of understanding.
Quoting Pseudonym
Why do you want to cast me as being "touchy"; I don't think I've given you any reason to think that. I probably do become a bit impatient at times with those who seem to have no will to understand the obvious, but that is not the same as being "touchy".
And again you are asking that it should be demonstrated that philosophy progresses in the way you think science does; this just seems to be a prejudice you cannot help yourself repeatedly falling into.
Which is of course true in the context of science; but more or less irrelevant when it comes to philosophy, except in those restricted areas where there are problems caused by philosophers hanging on to the Newtonian worldview, or other reductionist paradigms.
That seems mostly to occur with philosophers who over-emphasize the importance of science to the discipline of philosophy. As I see it, scientism consists in the over-emphasis of the importance of science for philosophy (and for the 'humanities', and humanity, in general); regardless of whether the science being advocated is reductionistic or wholistic.
The "vitriol" is a phantom projection of your own defensiveness, I would say. I certainly haven't felt any vitriol. Impatience is all I have felt in trying to engage with such a one-dimensional perspective as I see yours to be. I don't see vitriol in most of the other's posts either.
On the other side of the argument, there are posters who have contributed to this thread with whom I disagree about the scope of the role of science in philosophy: i think they wrongly want to rule it out altogether; whereas I think all aspects of human life, all disciplines and investigations, creative, intellectual and religious, have relevance to philosophy.
One of my very favourite Hawking quotes:
He might have found out by now ;-)
Quoting apokrisis
Science relies on there being an 'epistemic gap' between knower and known. And ultimately we're not apart from reality. So all knowledge is forever conditional, it can't be any other way. So 'cracking holism' requires breaking out of the dualistic mindset that underlies science.
Well, the history of the subject, going back to the Greeks, is partially 'philosophy of nature', which is your area of interest, but it also has other facets which have been considerably de-emphasised in the post-Enlightenment West. Plato, as Nagel comments, was concerned with making sense of the Universe, not from the viewpoint of engineering and science, but in terms of meaning. Now 'the meaning of life' would probably be categorised as 'romanticism'. And as always in the modern view, Darwin trumps Plato, right? So ultimately it comes down to what survives, or what propagates; that's the only kind of 'meaning' that has currency in today's world. It's kind of like Descartes, but with a slight tweak: 'I propagate, therefore I am' (to put it politely ;-) )
It seems to me that not just science, but all human discourses, inevitably have this dualism of knower and known, self and other; and that this is just the nature of discursive thought and knowledge. @Apo champions (rightly, I think) the incorporation of a third principle; the relation between knower and known; and I think that is what constitutes a coherent wholism.
Obviously, Apokrisis' philosophy based on semiotics and meaning is worlds above mechanistic materialism; the fact that current science (as so ably represented by him) has begun to adopt 'language' instead of 'mechanism' as the fundamental metaphor, is a real sea-change in the whole metaphysical model of Western thinking, and I have great respect for it. But I'm also drawn to 'the spiritual' - which actually is not a very good word at all, in my book, but one for which there are not many suitable equivalents in the modern lexicon (suggestions, anyone?)
As you no doubt know; I am also interested in "the spiritual". The problem is, and we have touched on this before, that spiritual experience doesn't constitute inter-subjective knowledge that can reliably be corroborated by any suitable impartial observer. So, while I would say that the content of religious or mystical experience has no philosophical import, of course i do believe that the fact of religious and mystical experience most certainly does. In that way it is, like aesthetic experience, as opposed to empirical experience. more art than science, more feeling than fact.
Maybe you'll enjoy, if you haven't read them already:
Atheism Considered as a Christian Sect
and (recommended by darthbarracuda, recently):
A Short History of Atheism by Gavin Hyman
So, you did have senses.
Quoting Pseudonym
As a child?
So how are you defining philosophy here?
To me, the disicipline of philosophy exists to teach a particular method of critical thought. It is about the habits of clear reasoning which lead to positions definite enough to be believed or doubted on the basis of some suitable form of evidence.
What you are talking about are then particular philosophies, Within that umbrella definition of critical thought, all manner of theories, and all manner of evidence, might be advanced.
Essentially philosophy is scientific. As a discipline, it simply allows a far wider range of paradigms in terms of their ontic commitments and hence what could,work as suitable evidence.
Theism is acceptable, phenomenology is acceptable, PoMo is acceptable. They each have their own way of arguing and their own matching notions of evidence. To be part of the stable of philosophies, they only have to pass some minimal critical thinking standards.
Science is then that part of philosophy which has become dominant as its particular kind of rigour has proven its value socially. And I agree that also - as reductionism - has often proven itself anti-social.
The question then is what follows? How do we fix science as a discipline so it is more completely pro-social?
But it is silly to say that even reductionist science is a restricted part of philosophy. It clearly dominates in terms of results to the extent it is its own thing these days. It is no longer merely one of the many philosophies residing within the philosophy department.
Two questions; in what way precisely are they necessarily Protestant? And how do you propose that inter-subjective corroboration (which is the term I used) as opposed to inter-subjective agreement, could be reached in regard to religious and spiritual experience?
Hence semiosis - as a science. Hence dualism giving away to the trichotomy of the generalised modelling relation.
So yes, cracking holism is all about getting past dualism.
Logical conclusion of what exactly? The unargued-for dogmatism that you've simply assumed throughout this thread? You all but admitted, previously, that your entire position so far is founded on tautology - that if you assume you are right, it will follow that you will assume you are right. I thought it so obvious a triviality that I didn't bother to comment on it after having pointed it out, but it seems that you are so committed to your pseudo-philosophy that not even the most elementary of logical errors, triviality and tautology, seems to ring any alarm bells with you. The feigned psuedo confusion of why people dislike a stance that aims to exclude most of human understanding began as laughable, and it is now tired. As if the nationalist-xenophobe wondering why, when all he wants to do is kick out everyone else, he is so reviled as the scum he is - and then cries foul about 'openness to investigation'. It would be a joke if it wasn't so clear just how serious you think you are.
Quoting Pseudonym
Another example of hand-waving nomination, as if branding about a pair of empty, unelaborated words explains anything at all, instead of crying out for explanation at the deepest level.
You are the one who needs Scientism to justify your anti-Scientism.
My position is different. Holism doesn’t have to reject reductionism. It just has to show how material and effective cause are a small part of the bigger causal picture.
By not declaring every problem amenable to a scientific solution; by recognising what is and isn't a scientific problem. I still think this OP in the NY Times articulates the issue very well.
Your appraisal of spiritual experience - in terms of it the subjective, but also the apodictic, nature of 'spiritual experiences' - seems to me to be generally derived from a Protestant worldview - which is by no means either pejorative, or unique to yourself, as it's in many ways the prevalent cultural attitude. So, I'm not saying that I think there's anything the matter with it, but it does in some ways, 'bracket' the consideration of the religious aspect of metaphysics. It makes it a private matter, which in the context of trying to articulate a 'metaphysic of value', means that it doesn't have much to say.
Now, as for the alternatives - do have a glance at that OP I posted above. It concerns Jurgen Habermas' re-evaluation of the role of religions in public life. I haven't read the book - it's a dialogue between Habermas and Ratzinger, who went on to become Pope. But it rings true to me - he's saying that at the very least, scientific humanism needs to recognise the role of religion as a way of grounding metaphysics.
Quoting apokrisis
Hey, you're the one who said that
Quoting apokrisis
So - Darwin trumps Plato, just as I said. ;-)
That is a fair point. But it is a general one. Religions might treat prayer or mediation as the universal solvent of problems as well.
Maybe some things, even many things, are merely accidents with no especial causal mechanism.
But then isn’t that what the scientific method already presumes? The null hypothesis is what is provisionally held. It is up to the weight of the evidence to falsify it.
So by training, scientists ought to limit the scope of what demands explaining. They can shrug their shoulders at even quite “miraculous” coincidences.
Positions in science may be able to fulfil this requirement, but not all, or even many, positions in philosophy can. This is evidenced by the fact that consensus is generally reached in science; while it is never reached in philosophy.
Quoting apokrisis
This is where we disagree; I think philosophy is as much an art as it is a science.
Quoting apokrisis
Sure, it is assumed in the eliminative physicalist paradigms which are fairly prominent these days; but not in phenomenological, existentialist, enactivist, process or post-modern philosophical thought. It depends on which country you live, I guess.
I don't agree that philosophy is only about critical thought; although obviously that is a big part of it. Every metaphysic, for example, carries its own set of presupposition which cannot be demonstrated or proven deductively, and there is no way to bring about a situation where everyone will find the same set of presuppositions the most plausible or desirable as a starting point for philosophical investigation and speculation ( and nor would you want to even if you could).
Define art.
There is a reason why modern fine art departments sell their courses as applied critical thinking these days. Just like philosophy departments. Indeed the humanities sell themselves as crucial to the modern economy - another STEM subject in effect as tech goes social.
I think you are trying to preserve some fusty Oxbridge culture wars distinctions here.
Art is a social technology. It always has been since the first beads and cave paintings.
I think you are still conflating the content of religious experience with the fact of religious experience. I*n any case the content is not subjective; it is inter-subjective in the sense that it is culturally mediated. This is obvious if you look at the differences between the expressions of Buddhist and Brahmanic expressions of religious and mystical experience and understanding, and Christian, Judaic and islamic expressions. Also it is not "merely subjective" insofar as there are objective similarities between mystical experience and its expressions in and across all cultures.
To reiterate and hopefully clarify, my only point is that such experiences cannot be inter-subjectively corroborated, not that they cannot be inter-subjectively agreed upon. And it is this sense that they cannot be counted as knowledge in the sense that empirical knowledge can be. I genuinely hope this explanation clears up your long-running misunderstanding of my position once and for all.
You missed out callous and brazen. Those especially amused me. I could only read that bit in the tone of a communist Chinese denunciation of the Western bourgeoisie. The hyperbole dial cranked up to 11. :)
Like any diverse activity, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it cannot be precisely defined in some essentialist manner. But we all can recognize art in terms of its range of "family resemblances" just as we can in the case of, for example, games.
Of course, whether any particular work really is art (in the sense of being good or worthy art) is an entirely different question. No inter-subjective corroboration, as opposed to mere agreement, is possible here just as it is not possible with religious and mystical experience, and, really, even philosophy. Corroboration would consist in universal agreement; the inability of any suitably good-willed and unbiased observer to disagree once they have been presented with, and understood, the evidence. This exists, if it exist anywhere in human activities and enquiry, only in science, and more so in some categories of science than in others, it seems.
Well, that's a very clear explanation. I think where you and I have had disagreements previously, however, is whenever I attempt to say something about there being 'higher knowledge'. So the question becomes 'in what sense can it be 'higher'? And my view is that the vertical dimension, so to speak, is something that has generally speaking dropped out of current cultural discourse. I attempt to illustrate that with reference to those philosophies that do preserve that sense of 'higher knowledge' - among others Platonist, Buddhist and Hindu. And that's where many our disagreements have been in the past - that I'm waxing nostalgic for some bygone age or idealised perennial philosophy that doesn't really exist. I mean, there's probably some truth in that, but it's not the whole truth; there's literally hardly anything in current analytical philosophy that maps against what I am trying to argue for.
Yes, it all comes back to constraints-based thinking. ;)
Quoting Janus
Again, pragmatism already says this.
So the only place where we can differ is that you want to treat the private ineffable experience of the individual as some kind of reliable interior evidence - for a communally-defined externalist methodology.
Which would be Romanticism in a nutshell. It's art if I think it is art ... even if the whole notion of "art" is a form of life, a language game.
No. Communities seek to impose increasingly restrictive standards to socially-construct a hierarchy of "artistic impulse". You know you have really made it when they hang it on a gallery wall as if it were a sacred cultural relic. So some committee of the great and the good gets to choose whose vision is communally celebrated.
It's just like science in other words. Though science pretends to be much more democratic in its admission criteria - and indeed, it often is.
You say - "Corroboration would consist in universal agreement; the inability of any suitably good-willed and unbiased observer to disagree once they have been presented with, and understood, the evidence."
You must know that the art world doesn't operate with this kind of open-minded good will and lack of bias. And the art world justifies that by saying it is all subjective in the end anyway.
It is only science which openly sets this kind of standard of public acceptability. Well, and courts of law and other rational institutions that expect the evidence to tell its own story.
And as I say, in practice, the first thing fine art faculties want to teach its young and impressionable students is that it is social game. You need to network to get ahead. You need to focus on what's the new innovation and then market the hell out of yourself if you hope to earn a living out of it.
So the human artistic impulse is a bad example for your case.
I agree we certainly do feel something when we approach a great work of art with a correctly cultivated mindset. It is not as if we can get eliminativist about that aesthetic response.
But feeling an aesthetic delight at clever solutions to difficult problems is something all our creative endeavours share in common. It is as true of science and maths. And neurobiologically, it makes evolutionary sense that we are atuned to recognising ideas that strike upon the optimal path - the solutions that reduce the most information in accordance to that dearest principle of science, the least action principle.
It is only the target of the art that has changed. The "problem to be solved with optimal efficiency" used to be the manufacture of religious awe and the communication of moral precepts on behalf of the institutional church. Then it became kings, queens and the power hierarchy that needed to be communicated the same way. Then the right national "form of life" - the quintessential Englishman, or whatever.
Eventually it has become the manufacture of social disorientation and dissent. We have reasons collectively to want to shake things up.
The game goes on in the same way, even as its targets change to best suit the problems of the times.
The Romantic view of course is that art is instead an excavation of what is deepest and most precious in the individual human soul. But regard that as just a self-serving cover story of the modern institutional elite, the guard-dogs of the galleries and salons.
I don't think that's fair. The book 'The Grand Design', in which the "philosophy is dead" statement was made, goes on to explain Hawking how feels the answers to questions like "why are we here?" are correctly answered by a deductive nomological model. The answer to why we are consists of a theory as how things like life come to be and then the conditions of the universe which one 'plugs in' to such a theory. Many people disagree with the deductive nomological model, and it has a number of problems, but that's not sufficient to say that no-one can rationally reach the conclusion that they still believe it is correct, and if they do reach such a conclusion, then a supporting argument in favour of the statement that science can answer questions of philosophy would be science answering some of the questions of philosophy, which is exactly what Hawking provides us with in the rest of the book.
Quoting andrewk
No, the fact that the answers may be illusory is not beside the point. Hawking (to my knowledge) has never claimed that philosophy doesn't serve any purpose at all, so the fact that it comforts some people cannot be used to disprove his assertion. The ontological argument comforts some people, so is any philosopher claiming it is in error wrong to do so because they've missed the point?
If the the purpose of philosophy was to comfort people, then why do philosopher debate their theories using rational analysis. Why do they use terms like 'unpersuasive', 'invalid', even just plain 'wrong'. Refer me to a single philosophy paper assessing a text on the grounds of its ability to comfort people and I will concede the point, other wise it seems like it's one rule for other philosophers to criticise each other's work, but when a scientists tries to do it they move the goalposts.
If the 'purpose' of philosophy is to comfort people, then show me a paper marked on its ability to do so. Show me a critique of Kant complaining that it's not very comforting. Or is that just an assertion, without an argument to back it up and so not worth anyone's time considering?
So how does one critique a philosophy then? If there are countless understandings that must mean there's at least one for every person on the planet, and you've stated that philosophy's aim is to produce this feeling of understanding, then how can any philosophy be better than any other?
Yet that's exactly what happens in academic philosophy. No-one starts a paper with "all those previous ideas were great, but here's another one you might like". Literally every philosophical movement has begun by either rejecting entirely previous approaches, or by pointing out what they consider to be flaws in it. But how can there be flaws unless they've checked the entire population to find that absolutely no-one obtained a feeling of understanding from it? I'm finding it hard to marry your idea of the aim of philosophy with the actual way it is practised in academia. Are the two very different?
Quoting Janus
I don't understand this bit, what is it that is 'obvious' and how can one require a will to understand it if it is obvious? the two seem logically contradictory to me. Something which is obvious is surely defined by the fact that it does not require any effort to understand it?
Quoting Janus
How are you getting that I've asked that? I asked "...if you think philosophy can show progress in something I can understand as being useful". Where in that question is any instruction about what philosophy 'should' demonstrate? I'm just asking if it can.
And I'm sorry if I insulted you by suggesting you were 'touchy' but for clarification, this is exactly the sort of thing I meant. I'm just asking some questions about philosophy and you're interpreting each one as an attack on it, a demand that it should do this or that, when I've not used any demanding or pejorative terms. It just seems odd that would interpret my questions as demands, that's all.
Have you read the thread? I (and scientists typically associated with 'Scientism') have been labelled - vacuous, closed-minded, toxic, cancerous, disingenuous, infantile, barren, callous and ignorant. How on earth are you not reading vitriol?
Yes, one of my favourites too, though I suspect for very different reasons.
Quoting Wayfarer
A little in poor taste.
Yes.
Quoting Caldwell
Well as a child I could articulate it because I had learned how to talk.
Where's this line of questioning going? It seems a bit random, some insight into where you're heading might help.
Oh yes, how could I have missed those gems. I'm wondering if the stock of abusive terms has been entirely used up yet, or if we have more to come... I'm offering 3:1 on 'mindless' and an outside 10:1 on a use of the archaic 'hebetudinous' turning up in the next post, if you're interested in a virtual gamble.
I heard an interview with Dan Dennett recently in which he argued that Philosophy nowadays should really contain none of these schools, that theism was it's own thing (unsurprising fro Dennett), phenomenology and the like can be subsumed into psychology (not all of which is scientific, which is important if it is to be a broad enough container), semantics into linguistics etc.. Philosophy's job, he argued, was to act as translator, to allow these various modes of investigation to speak to one another, to translate what has been said in one field into the other so that they might benefit from each other's insights.
I quite like that approach, and I think that science hearing a little more from some other fields might help with it's anti-social tendencies, but it's not going to happen if the other fields don't want to hear anything from science.
I've had enough of this, if all you're going to do is spit bile, I've no interest in discussing with you. If this is the standard of debate exemplified by a moderator, it's a disgrace.
Is the model falsifiable?
If not then Hawking is doing philosophy, not science when he engages with such a model. Which makes his claim that philosophy is dead look rather confused.
Quoting Pseudonym This may be a point where there is less distance between our positions. Some philosophers do indeed debate in the way you describe, even (unfortunately) on this forum. I see such an approach as misguided and unhelpful. I don't think there is any useful role for the word 'wrong' in philosophy, and I think the way that some academic philosophers have lost sight of the role philosophy plays in giving meaning to people's lives is most unfortunate.
I stopped the quote at the word 'paper' because I think the best philosophy is not done in universities, or academia generally. While there are some academic philosophical papers I like very much, most seem to me to be a waste of time*. But that is a comment on the current state of academic philosophy, not on philosophy generally. It is only relatively recently that philosophy was seen as something that principally belonged in universities. I hope for a reversal of that trend.
If Hawking had said 'Academic Analytic philosophy is dead' then, while I wouldn't necessary agree with him, I would not disagree strongly enough to think it worth saying so. But alas, that is not what he said.
* although to be fair, the same could be said, to only a slightly lesser extent, of scientific papers. But that leads to another large and controversial topic - the parlous state of scientific academia and the current corporatist obsession with KPIs dominated by publication numbers and impact factors rather than actual meaningful content. That's best left to another thread.
I agree entirely, it is an act of philosophy to say that philosophy is dead, but I don't see this as any more contradictory than Wittgenstein's 'ladder'. Not all philosophical statements can be true without making each one pointless (unless we accept your 'philosophy as comfort' idea, which I will come back to), not all philosophical statements can be false as that would itself be a philosophical statement and so paradoxical (again, we could argue about whether that's actually a problem, but let's presume it is for now). So that leaves us with the inevitable conclusion that some finite number of philosophical statements are true/valid/useful, whilst others are not. I can't see any logic which prevents that finite number from being one, which means that making a philosophical statement about all other philosophical statements in not itself a contradiction.
Quoting andrewk
I think I broadly agree with you here. I think it's a reasonable role for philosophy to provide people with a story to explain (by which I mean, make consistent) all the otherwise disparate and chaotic experiences they have through life. I think we have a great need for things to be consistent and fairly simple, so that we can feel like we have some chance of predicting the future, whereas in reality, things are very complex. Philosophy can provide that story to take the edge off the chaos.
Where I would disagree though, is that all philosophy then is on an equal footing. I think that the experience of clinical psychology is generally that taking people's word for what comforts them best is not a sound way of helping others. If I asked a Heroin addict what he wanted and simply took his word for it, without applying my own critical thinking, would I really be doing my duty by him? Surely he'd answer that he wanted more Heroin? It's the same with the comfort people get from certain philosophy. I don't thing here would be the right place to go into specific examples, but could you agree that it is at least conceivable that the comfort some people feel from some philosophies might actually cause them more pain in the long run? If that's the case, like the heroin addict, is it not a social duty to try and replace such philosophies with ones we believe are less harmful?
Yes, I agree with that. Ayn Rand's philosophy is an example of one I think it's good to talk people out of, as are the more extreme versions of nihilism. My overall impression though is that most philosophies are helpful rather than harmful.
By the way I didn't say philosophy as 'comfort'. I don't mind the idea of philosophy as 'consolation', since that phrase has a distinguished history going all the way back to Boethius. But I draw the line at 'comfort'. Plus I think notions like 'purpose' are much richer and more open than consolation.
Anyway, I'll try to say something useful.
Quoting Pseudonym
I am not sure if you actually claim this Pseudo. But I've always thought of Philosophy as the examination of opinions and assumptions which are usually taken for-granted. I think here of the existence of the external world, other minds, the existence of God, the authority of science, the distinction between right and wrong, and between fact and value. All of these things are often just taken for-granted. Few people pause to think about what they really mean in making these assumptions, nor how they might justify them. These are tasks for Philosophy.
I don't have any a priori objection to the idea that scientific approaches could answer these questions, but any time I've seen that attempted has made some gross confusion or skipped right over the most contentious issue. This is just what Sam Harris does. He just assumes a kind of Consequentialism and then uses science to work out consequences. That isn't using science to answer philosophical questions. That is assuming an answer without reflecting on what it means or trying to justify it, which is just what I defined Philosophy as not doing.
Hawking's book is an odd case. He says Philosophy is dead. He then discusses extensively scientific realism and anti-realism, a clearly philosophical issue, seemingly without realizing that it is Philosophy.
Yes, the term consolation works better because it actually avoids some of the more heroin-like philosophies which offer a certain 'comfort' in the face of chaos. I think my personal line would, however, be crossed by 'purpose'. The trouble with 'purpose' is it is future-set and that opens up too much possibility for excuse; "your reward's in heaven, don't worry about the state of things now", "yes, the revolution/war will bring death and destruction, but it's all for a grander purpose". I can see the benefits, but the risks are too great for my liking.
How can this even be a question at this point?
Quoting Pseudonym
Abuse shouldn’t be a worry to us ‘chemical scum’, should it? And if it is a worry, you can console yourself that whatever worry you feel is really only the churning of neurochemicals, and doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning.
Yes, to be clear, I would make that claim, particularly in the fields of mind and ethics. Despite SLX's protestations that I explain every position I hold with a doctoral length thesis otherwise I'm not to be taken seriously, I don't actually think an exposition of why I hold those beliefs is appropriate to the thread topic, suffice to say I do not take them for granted, I have thought about them and accept that they are ultimately beliefs. I simply require that beliefs are not overwhelmingly contradicted by objective evidence, but again, I accept that that position itself is just a belief. What I object to is the insulting suggesting that it is not even 'allowed' for someone to hold those beliefs.
Quoting PossibleAaran
I don't think that's a bad thing, but it seems pointless to me unless there is some conclusion at the end of the process, and presuming there is, some of the things thus examined must end up passing the test. The authority of science (in certain areas) might well be one of those things that pass the test surely?
Quoting PossibleAaran
I don't know if you've read Harris, but his work is built upon quite a firm foundation of Ethical Naturalism that goes all the way back to Aristotle (in some form). It's really not just 'assuming 'consequentialism', it's building on the work of those who have argued in favour of it quite persuasively, which is surely all any philosophy can do. Also, I agree with most of what Harris has to say, except that I'm broadly a virtue ethicist. I don't really find the consequensialism necessary to the point he's making about science and morality. It could equally be applied, as Phillipa Foot does, to which virtues it is necessary to cultivate.
What I'm asking is far more basic than 'why' - justification presupposes the conceptual coherency of what is so justified, and what I'm suggesting is that your stance doesn't even meet the minimal criteria of meaningfulness - of sensical speech, let alone justifiability. 'Science (and only science) can answer the questions of philosophy': but this is just language on holiday, a sentence with correct grammatical form bereft of semantic content. It may as well read: 'ornithology (and only ornithology) can answer the questions of paediatrics'. These propositions are not analogies but identities as far as semantic content goes. What kind of questions are at stake here? And what is said about the specificities of both philosophy and science that would make the one be able to 'answer' - if 'answer' is the right word, and it very likely isn't - the 'questions' of the other? But at no point are any of these specificities discussed, except in some hand waving nominalist fashion.
If 'meaninglessness' seem to be just over-the-top rhetorical bluster, take an absolutely concrete case (something unsurprisingly absent from this thread): Quine, mentioned earlier, understood being as a matter of being reckoned with as a value of a variable. What would science have to say here? But what would this question even mean? Quine's signal innovation - the very reason his 'On What There Is' paper is so widely lauded - is not only that he provided an 'answer' to the question posed, but that he changed, or rather provided a new sense to the question itself. Quine transposed, in an entirely original way, the question of ontology into the sphere of language, 'desubstantializing' the question and making it amenable to logical - in the strict, formal sense - analysis. Where does 'science' even begin with this? Or is the question simply a misuse of grammar? But of course it is. Quine's innovation takes place at the level of sense - as does all good and interesting philosophy. And while it is absolutely the case that science can be recruited to help in the quest of sense-making, it is meaningless to say - or again, not even wrong to say - that science can exhaust the interrogations posed at that level.
And this is simply how philosophy operates, as has long been recognized by those with any taste for philosophy: "The truth is that in philosophy and even elsewhere it is a question of finding the problem and consequently of positing it, even more than of solving it. For a speculative problem is solved as soon as it is properly stated. ...But stating the problem is not simply uncovering, it is inventing. Discovery, or uncovering, has to do with what already exists, actually or virtually; it was therefore certain to happen sooner or later. Invention gives being to what did not exist; it might never have happened. Already in mathematics, and still more in metaphysics, the effort of invention consists most often in raising the problem, in creating the terms in which it will be stated. The stating and solving of the problem are here very close to being equivalent: The truly great problems are set forth only when they are solved." (Bergson, The Creative Mind).
My accusations of amateurism by Pseudo aren't nice, but they are absolutely honest.
Quoting StreetlightX
Well, I didn't see that coming, now I'm too stupid to even speak. No mention of hebetudinous though.
Oh, and I can't read either. Mind you, I suppose if I can't speak it pretty much follows...
I hadn't followed the entire thread, and this is the first time I've spoken with Pseudo.
Quoting Pseudonym
I don't intend to ban your view from Philosophy. It seems to me pointless to just ban discussion of unpopular views. I'd be interested to see, though, any convincing example of science answering traditional philosophical questions. By this, I don't mean merely an example in which science is relevant. I don't want to be shown merely that scientific results can sometimes be used to criticize a philosophical view (and/or method). I agree with that. I don't want an example in which science is used to work out the details of a foregone philosophical conclusion. I agree that this can be done (for example, I agree that science can tell you a lot about how humans can be physically and psychologically well). What I'd really be interested to see is a much more ambitious sort of example - a case in which scientific theory and experiment straightforwardly answers a philosophical question.
Quoting Pseudonym Quoting Pseudonym
Of course I think there must be some conclusion to the examination. Does the authority of science 'pass the test'? Well it all depends on what exactly we are asking here, but painting with a broad stroke, there are at least some philosophers who have denied any substantive authority to science - Rorty, Feyarabend, Kuhn (well, not Kuhn, but followers who interpreted his work a certain way) to give a few examples. I'm not sure about that particular issue myself. I mentioned it just as an example of the sort of thing I consider Philosophy, and the sort of thing which you can't answer by doing more scientific experiments and theorizing. Even Kuhn's work, which is primarily historical and sociological, has to be conjoined with other philosophical claims to settle the issue about the authority of science.
Quoting Pseudonym
I've read his Moral Landscape. I don't know if he wrote anything else after that. When you say "Ethical Naturalism", what exactly do you mean? There are several things which go under that name. None of the views I associate with that label are ones which can be established by scientific experiment. They are all argued for Philosophically, and so it may be that this debate about Harris is a distraction from the main topic.
Well, no I don't think what you are calling "private ineffable experience" is really in every sense private or ineffable. I mean, all experiences are culturally mediated, and all can be, on account of the commonalities of human experience, communicated to some degree.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, of course art is a "form of life", and as I have said, what art is cannot be precisely defined. It cannot be as precisely defined as science can, because it has no overarching methodological principle. We can speak about "the scientific method" but we cannot speak about "the artistic method". Art consists in saying something in a suggestive or evocative way, or in a metaphorical or allegorical way, rather than in a logically rigorous way, about the human situation, about the aspects of being that we care about. This is not an exclusively Romantic notion of art; it is an acknowledgement of the shared and yet imprecise character of human concern, feeling and motivation, which is the primary interest and involvement of the arts.
The difference is that with science what is being shared is information that is much more precise, quantifiable, and capable of being corroborated by observation, and mathematical, statistical or logical analysis.
It's not a matter of "open-minded good will and lack of bias" (although these of course are in play too as in all human affairs) as it is difference of taste and critical acumen. In the arts critical acumen is important, of course, but the level of an individual's critical acumen is not as precisely determinable as the level of one's mathematical ability, or skill in statistical analysis, or the extent of one's accumulated factual knowledge, and so on.
Nothing you have said demonstrates that "the human artistic impulse is a bad example for my case", or even that my case was specifically concerned with that. I was not so much talking about the artistic impulse, which is a matter for psychology, as I was pointing out the differences between the arts and the sciences in terms of the ability to achieve, or at least approach, universal consensus. Nothing you have said touches on that point in any way signifiant enough to refute it, as far as I can tell.
I think the difference is that what you think of as "higher knowledge" I think of as "heightened consciousness" or "elevated feeling". And I do see this as knowledge in a very specific sense, the primary kind of knowledge of familiarity (expressed in the Biblical sense of knowledge " a man shall know his wife") but not as any form of discursive knowledge. I just want to say that religious or mystical experience does not tell us anything determinate about anything; it is not propositional in character.That is the distinction I want to draw.
The notion that religious or mystical experience, or religion and revelation, tells us anything of a propositional nature about reality just is fundamentalism, as I see it. And fundamentalism, in any of its forms, whether religious or scientific, is bad and even dangerous. Now the subtle point here is that I do think the fact of there being mystical and religious experience does tell us something propositional about the nature of reality (well, human reality, at least).
Philosophies are critiqued by other philosophies. If you are looking for an absolute standard of critique such as the scientific method (enshrined in the peer review process) then you will be disappointed.
Quoting Pseudonym
Your asking, your question, reads as rhetorical. It is obvious that it cannot demonstrate in the way you are asking, and I believe you already know this (or should if you have read much philosophy). So, it seems that your critique of philosophy is that it cannot demonstrate (and hence progress) in the way science or mathematics can, and this critique only holds under the assumption that it should be able to so demonstrate and progress the way science and mathematics do. Anybody who knows much about philosophy knows that it is not, and cannot be, the same as science, and critiquing it for this amounts to a demand that it should be; and this demand just is an expression of scientism.
The idea I had was that religious types simply repeated the dogma and believed as they were told. ‘Pie in the sky when you die’, I would say, dismissively. But through spiritual experience you could see for yourself.
But as life went on, it turned out that the revolutionary spiritual experience which makes all things clear turns out to be quite elusive. One can get glimpses of it through entheogens but the wise will quickly understand the downside of that approach (notably, dependence). And reality has a way of asserting itself. So looking around for analogies or cultural maps that might accomodate the idea of ‘spiritual experience’ - what was available? It seemed to me that the only feasible approach was that of the patient discipline of meditation. And Buddhism seemed to have the best ‘product offering’ - pragmatic, not bogged down in dogma, experiential, and aesthetically satisfactory. And along the way there have been spiritual experiences, (although it turns out that realisation and experience are actually different.)
But a lot of what I’ve been working on is evaluating various aspects of philosophy and religion in these terms. I now realise that the sort of books I was reading back then are what gave rise to my interest in Platonism, for example; as the Christian mystics, notably Eckhardt, were steeped in Neoplatonic Christianity.
So some of these streams of thought have preserved the understanding of a ‘revolution in consciousness’ whilst others have ossified into dogma. And in many places, it’s been lost altogether, completely forgotten - which is how you end up in the flatland of scientific materialism.
Life goes on.
I’m surprised that you would even target universal consensus so strongly here. In another era, there might simply be a notion of good taste or artistic perfection towards which all creative endeavour would want to aim. This led to the familiar art teachings about proportion and symmetry, the Greek ideal of beauty, etc.
But today - art still being the social technology for inventing the self - the whole point that art would want to teach is the modern cultural ideal. Which is that we are all actually individual and so will show that in our aesthetic responses. The new ideal is the destruction of the old, rather Platonic, notion of a universal consensus. Art has to be challenging, weird, transgressive.
So Romanticism treats selfhood as an inward act of discovery. Artistic practice has evolved as an expression of that metaphysics.
Speaking for the scientistic Enlightenment, I would point out the psychological facts. This self of which Romanticism speaks is a social construction, a linguistic structure. It is not some foundational essence - a soul or spirit - but the very thing that the cultural activity of art is there to manufacture.
So science here explains art in terms of the facts of the world. It provides the larger view of what is really going on.
Alternatively, if there were a soul for creative training to discover, then science would give the evidence for that theory of the wider reality. Science wouldn’t rule the possibility out. But it would be - philosophically - the way we would decide the question as best we can.
Quoting Janus
Yes. So there is here the possibility of another way of doing philosophy - one that claims an evidential basis in the subjective, as opposed to the objective.
It is a familiar argument. Perhaps it is right that there are truths that are best accessed by evocative language rather that direct language. Perhaps there are things we think and feel that are so vague or ephemeral that they break apart if we try to grasp them in a firm and frontal assault.
Yet still, what works will reveal itself to us. We can allow this as an alternative, or even complementary, approach to philosophy, and then judge the results. Science - as epistemic method - doesn’t rule this out. Science here only represents the pragmatic maxim that the approach have some generally agreed social utility as the evidence it is a worthwhile thing to believe.
But if you accept that essentially scientistic view - that a general consensus on pragmatic utility is the epistemic foundation - then that would seem to be at odds with your other desire to treat the subjective as spiritually real rather than collectively constructed.
Again, in appealing to any notion of a universal consensus, you are setting your own argument against itself in contradicting fashion. Evidence that is private is evidence that is not corrobable. And so in that direction you can only wind up with a philosophical method that is solipsistic and completely personal. It’s evidential basis is simply revelation backed by faith.
So yes, philosophy could well entertain two complementary approaches to truth - the objective and the subjective, the real and the ideal, the factual and the poetic. It is a simple fact of metaphysical logic itself that two paths must exist for there to be any path at all. So the fact that philosophy is home to its own counter-impulses is not a surprise but a necessity.
And we can even say both flourish in their different spheres. Science is the branch of philosophy that went off and perfected a method of inquiry into the metaphysically foundational. Art is the branch of philosophy that went off and perfected its own inquiry into the subjective and aesthetic.
Yet science is then the larger exercise - if we agree that it has dispelled a theistic worldview and replaced that with a naturalistic one.
I can see that is still a big “if” for some. But that is what all this comes down to.
And I would note that a defence of an evocative and poetic approach to evidence gathering and consensus corroboration building looks quite carefully a socially constructed position.
In the good old days, God and his supernatural world, just simply existed in a direct graspable way for folk. You could paint God’s picture on a church ceiling. And now to argue we must use the most evanenscent and allusive methods to grasp that same truth seems pretty telling.
The evidence has evaporated before our eyes - our scientistic eyes. At some point you really need to consider the alternative that when it comes to a subjective essence, there was never anything really there beyond a utilitarian social construction.
So within that ‘enchanted garden’, art evokes the archetypes and mythological re-enactments of the great themes and tragedies of culture.
Now we have television.
As for the notion of ‘collective construction’ - it’s certainly true that most of us inhabit a kind of ‘consensus realiity’ which is precisely that. But what that doesn’t accomodate is ‘the boundless’ - the unconditioned, the immeasurable. That is outside of the ‘constructed’ worldview (symbolised in Oriental culture as renunciation, ‘the forest’.) Probably rather too ‘religious’ for your liking but ought to be said, nonetheless.
So was the pre-modern mind actually an enchanted garden or is that the Rousseauian myth of the noble savage?
Do these archetypes actually reside in the collective Jungian unconscious or does structuralist anthropology explain why certain themes repeat as the rational expression of being social creatures creating social organisation?
In a nutshell, is the foundation of our philosophising the coherence of the Enlightenment or the incoherence of Romanticism?
Quoting Wayfarer
OK. But then I approach the "other" of the boundless from a rationalist's point of view. As a systems scientist and natural philosopher, I would talk about it as the Apeiron of Anaximander, the Firstness of Peirce.
Maths and science would be the suitable path, not art or mediation.
Dimensions are things that imply measurements. Do you mean to make that kind of scientistic claim here?
Great if you do, but you then need to spell out the kind of measurements we could make to cash out whatever conception the dimension entails.
So what is the nature of this further dimension such that we can quantify it in the name of philosophic intelligibility?
I can see that that particular type of purpose is risky. There are other sorts of purpose one can adopt through philosophy that are less harmful though. I had in mind things like Sartre's use of the absolute existential freedom that is imposed upon us to create one's own authentic self, or Camus's rebellion against the absurdity of the world, or a Bentham-inspired drive to do what one can to reduce the suffering in the world. Perhaps, like the philosophies themselves, there are some that are helpful and some that are harmful to the world at large, and it behoves (sp?) others to try to talk people out of adherence to purposes that are harmful.
‘Dimension’ in the sense of ‘an aspect or mode of existence or lived reality’.
Quoting Pseudonym
The key passage is this:
The claim that science 'refutes' the 'theory' of 'vengeful gods and occult forces' which support practices such as 'witch hunts, faith healing, trial by ordeal' is a straw man, as nobody that is seriously engaged in the discussion of the relationship of science and religious values would defend such practices (well, other than faith healing, which I believe has reasonable proponents). The assertion that the Universe is 'devoid of purpose' is not a scientific claim at all, but the extension of methodological naturalism to a metaphysical conclusion.
Other examples:
Which is biological reductionism, the assumption that all of these can be understood in terms of evolutionary neurobiology.
He says:
There are many scientists who still practice or observe a religion in their private or even public lives and who see no conflict between their faith and their scientific practice (there's even a Wikipedia list of Christians who are scientists.)
What I'm questioning is the coherence of the notion of 'a scientific worldview' as the basis for such judgements. Science is a methodology, an attitude, and it indeed requires the suspension of judgement about many things which we would normally take for granted. But arriving at a grand judgement about the nature of the cosmos, or of 'meaning' in a general sense, and declaring on this basis, like Steven Weinberg also did, that 'the more it seems intelligible, the more it seems pointless' is not a scientific judgement at all, but pop philosophy. So that is where I found fault with Pinker's essay and why I regard it as example of 'scientism'.
It literally means to measure. So I am pointing out the irony of you using such a scientistic term to lend prestige to your argument against Scientism.
It sounds precise, doesn’t it. So I’m asking, what is precise about your use of it?
"Dimension" also has a figurative meaning.
Previously, we have discussed whether religions are purely or only meaningful in a social or cultural sense, which I believe you had asserted. So my response to that is that there is also a soteriological dimension which is separate to the social function it performs. In fact I would say that adherents of religion would claim that the soteriological function is the only real reason for its existence, but that the cultural forms that religion takes provide support to that.
No, I wouldn't want you to think that I thought that of you personally, I'm just arguing against the pejorative use of the term which seems to me to be aimed at dismissing the position by means other than mature argument. I hope that's clear.
Quoting PossibleAaran
OK, so we need some definitions and caveats first.
1. Some philosophical positions are belief statements, not questions. So when I say science can answer the questions of philosophy, I am making that claim on the presumption that if you keep asking 'why?' somewhen you will end up just making a statement of belief. I don't think science can solve that problem, nor do I think philosophy can. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that such a problem can ever be solved by any means. What I believe science can do, is push back the amount of belief statements which need to be made.
2. There does seem to be some issue with the idea that 'science' is just a method (the scientific method), and this leads to all sorts of problems with the argument. Science is clearly not just a method otherwise there could be no possibility of understanding analytical works like those of Kuhn. Science is clearly a thing that people do such that it's practise can be investigated,but philosophically we need to define it. So when I say science, I mean the scientific method as defined by Popper, and its close relatives.
3. What constitutes 'The questions of philosophy', is obviously arguable and I don't think anyone has made the claim that science can answer absolutely any question you throw at it with a yes/no answer. I think we have to accept that some questions don't have an answer. Obviously science cannot answer those, but I do think a scientific approach can determine which questions are of this sort.
3. The argument is that science can answer the questions of philosophy, not that it already has. I will give you some examples of the sort of thing I think used to be philosophical questions which science has answered, but I really think the interest now is in questions which remain unanswered, should we investigate those by the scientific method or not?
That being said, one simple example of science answering a question of philosophy is the question of what the universe is made of. This used to be very firmly in the realm of philosophy. Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Democritus... All had theories about what the universe is made of. Science has models which make accurate predictions about what the universe is made of, and it is making progress in refining and expanding those models.
Quoting PossibleAaran
The argument for ethical naturalism and the moral arguments presuming ethical naturalism are two entirely different things. Harris focuses mainly on the latter, although he does briefly allude to the former. I should say, at this stage that I'm basically a deconstructionist when it comes to author intent. I'm only interested in what the ideas within a text could mean, not what the author actually intended them to mean, so I'm not claiming here to represent Harris's view, only to present a view I think derives from what he has written.
Im guessing that once ethical naturalism is presumed, the reason why science can determine moral actions is pretty obvious and so the sticking point will be how science argue for ethical naturalism in the first place.
There are several different ways, but a full exposition of each would be of topic. This is supposed to be about why people are derogatory to those who think science can answer philosophical questions. That fact that I'm already being asked to rigorously defend any claims scientists make to that effect is indicative of this attitude. Idealism might, for example, be rigorously interrogated before any philosophers consider agreeing with it. It is not rigorously interrogated just to justify its right to be considered a valid theory. Within the scope of this discussion, all I have an obligation to do is demonstrate the idea of science answering philosophical questions is valid, not that it's right.
That being said, the idea, with ethical naturalism, is that it can be demonstrated by falsifiable theory, that most humans simply are the way ethical naturalists describe them. Of course there are exceptions, but there are exceptions to the rule that animals eat in response to hunger, but that doesn't prevent it from being a scientific theory.
Well, I can't say that I'm sure what the position really is yet, so it would be unwise at this stage for me to throw around pejoratives. I thought initially that your position was that Science can answer all questions of Philosophy, but your recent post seems to contradict this.
You begin by discussing (I think?) a question of great interest to me - is there any way to answer [I]all[/I] "why" questions about our beliefs, and hence is there any way to provide a non-question begging reason for everything that we believe? This is what you say:
Quoting Pseudonym
This presumption of yours is itself a philosophical position, and one which many philosophers of the past would have disagreed with you (these days I think your view is much more popular). If you hold that science can answer all Philosophical questions, one might expect you to claim that this position of yours is at least testable by scientific method. But you don't cite any scientific paper or experiment in which this is shown. It is tempting to think that this is because no such paper or experiment exists and even that no such thing is really possible, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. What you do say here is this:
Quoting Pseudonym
The "problem" here, as you are thinking of it, is that we cannot answer every "why" question with non-question begging reasons. You think that science cannot provide such reasons, and that Philosophy can't either. As I pointed out above, this is itself a Philosophical position, and so, unless it is one you arrive at by "the method of science", whatever that turns out to be, then your claim that science can answer every philosophical question turns out to be in conflict with other views of yours.
Quoting Pseudonym
I think that's right, but I'd also insist that Philosophy can do that too if Philosophers set their minds to do it. What normally happens, however, is Philosophers decide quickly that you can't answer [i]every[/I] "why" question and then they give up on the whole business and don't try to answer any of them - a very hasty step!
I agree with your thoughts on the constitution of the world. It used to be a philosophical question, and now it's a scientific one.
Quoting Pseudonym
Here it depends which questions are at issue. Which contemporary philosophical questions can be answered by scientific methods? [I]All[/I] of them? All of the ones that can be answered at all? You tell me. It sounds like you think Ethical Naturalism is itself a scientific theory:
Quoting Pseudonym
I'm still not sure what you mean by "Ethical Naturalism" and so I have no idea whether it can really be tested by scientific theory. One view going under that label today is the view that the phrase "morally good" ordinarily means something like "maximizes well-being". Vague as this still is, it would be empirically testable. Ask people what they mean by "morally good" and see what they say. Since a large part of the world is still religious, however, I greatly doubt that they mean anything like this by "morally good". But I don't think this view about the meaning of words is what you meant to defend.
No, not quite. It's a philosophical position, but it does not follow that saying science can answer all the questions of philosophy requires me to show scientific proof that it is right to hold this belief. I just do hold it, it is a brute fact that I find myself faced with. I haven't decided to believe this, it was never a question, any more than "what's the best colour in the world?" whilst technically phrased as a question, is a meaningless one.
That's what I mean by saying that all philosophical questions ultimately end up with a statement of belief, rather than an unequivocal answer. That assertion I do have scientific evidence for - My hypothesis is that all philosophical questions end up requiring a fundamental statement of belief, my test is to look through all the philosophical questions that have ever been asked, my hypothesis has yet to be falsified because I have yet to find a philosophical question which has an unequivocal answer not requiring some belief statement. It's not the best theory in the world, and it needs a lot more testing, but it is definitely scientific, by the definition I'm using.
Quoting PossibleAaran
As above, It's a perfectly legitimate scientific theory which is falsifiable (the presentation of a scientific or philosophical 'answer' that is objectively agreed upon) and yet to be falsified (there is no such answer). Questions such as whether objectivity means anything are themselves philosophical question which themselves cannot be answered and again, my proof of this is simply that they have not been answered.
Quoting PossibleAaran
This is the really interesting bit, completely off topic, but I'd love to hear how you think this would happen, are you just hopeful, or do you have a theory as to how? Don't worry about the off-topicness, I don't think anyone's reading this any more.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Yes to "All the ones that can be answered at all". I'm Paraphrasing from Alex Rosenburg's book here; Why are we here? - No reason, What is the nature of reality? - What physics says it is, Is there free-will? - Not a chance, Why should I be moral? - Because it makes you feel better than being Immoral. He's deliberately being glib, but the idea expounded in the rest of the book, is that these positions can be supported, either by scientific theories, or by fundamental beliefs which simply occur to us as brute facts and over which we have no control.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Absolutely, you're getting the idea, although I sense you're just being charitable and don't actually agree with it. The sort of thing you're suggesting is exactly the way naturalists think that science can answer these questions. The only refinement I would make is that we all know people lie through their teeth when asked about personal matters like morality. I would design the experiment to see how people behave in controlled situations designed such as to best elucidate what they really believe, not just what they say they do.
Heh, yeah you're missing the point because you're jumping ahead of it. Be patient. How is tithing a moral issue? Why would you choose to tithe, or not?
Quoting Pseudonym
I'm not sure that I'm following you. Natural selection "selected" the traits in organisms that maximizes procreation and survival. Each organism has it's own goals and because it shares its genes with other members of its species, it will share many goals with its members. It is when the individual goal comes into conflict with the goals of another that a moral issue arises, or when you are deciding which path to take that will maximize your happiness. Our actions can have an effect on others and the consequences may not be conductive to happiness in the long-run as opposed to the short-run. So it is a matter of choosing the right path to achieve happiness for yourself, not others.
Our genes are the governing factor in making any moral decision. As a matter of fact, the organism counts as almost nothing in the grand scheme of things. What matters is the survival and propagation of the genes within the gene pool and we behave in social ways in order to maximize that. This means that while altruistic actions can diminish the chances of the individual getting what they want, their actions improve the conditions of others that share their genes. This is also why we are more altruistic with family members as opposed to strangers. If you find a stranger drowning at the same time as a family member, and you could only save one, who would you save and why?
I admit that I've not read every page in this discussion, so forgive me if this point has been addressed. I've heard scientists such as Lawrence Krauss say things along the lines of "I don't believe that P, I know that P." However, if knowledge is justified true belief (or something in that neighborhood), to know that P entails that one believes that P. Thus, all knowledge statements are statements of belief. It is a different matter, of course, to claim "I don't merely believe that P, I know that P."
Additionally, it seems at least prima facie dubious to me that any affirmative claim at all is not a statement of belief on the part of the agent making the affirmation. No matter our level of justification or certitude in making an affirmative claim, our statement boils down to saying (even if only tacitly) "I believe such-and-such."
(I am using the somewhat clunky phrase "affirmative claim" to denote those utterances of ours which are (1) truth-apt, and (2) which express something we think is true. This would set such claims apart from non-truth-apt utterances and from truth-apt statements which we utter but do not believe, e.g. because we are lying, positing a hypothetical, etc.)
Sorry.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Tithing is a moral issue because it is an example of that class of decisions most people agree to label 'moral'. What I'm interested in as an ethicist, is what properties the members of that class share. It the same as the class 'animal' is that class of object which have a non-walled cell. A zoologist studies the things in this class. We could argue about what 'should' be in and out of each class by means of similarity, and that argument will never be conclusive, but the decision we make in moot cases does not tell us anything about the class, only language. The thing is, despite this ambiguity no-one thinks choosing the colour of my new hat is a moral decision and no-one thinks a table is an animal, so we usually have enough agreement on terms to be going on with.
So, how would I choose?
1. I want to maximise the feeling of well-being I get from living in a mutually supportive society. This is not something I've decided to want, I just find I do. I also find others feel this way too, so any conclusions I draw from my investigation of the best way to achieve this might be useful to others. On examination, I can see how such a feeling could have evolved (mutually supportive communities would out compete those with in-fighting), so I'm happy that this feeling is not something superficially conditioned into me. (I can explain why this matters if necessary).
2. Given that I want what I want, I then have to employ rational thought to the evidence that I have to arrive at a solution. This is where science helps.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, that's one way of looking at it.
I expect that's what he meant. He's a good physicist, but he's not a very good philosopher (in my opinion). I don't think he's got used to how careful one needs to be with words when answering philosophical questions.
Quoting Arkady
Absolutely, I really can't see any other answer, but that doesn't make all claims equal, not does it rule out fair use of the word 'know', it's just a word after all, like any other word it describes a collection of things similar enough that we can mostly agree they can be denoted by a single term. We don't need to all agree, nor do we need to have the answer to every borderline case in order to use the term.
I think the models that are most successful in science are squarely in the middle of the class of beliefs we call 'knowledge'.
It's really simple. You right away defended the following quote by Putnam: Quoting Pseudonym as merely Realism, without providing an argument that the line points to Realism. And that makes it okay to say? Not quite. This is a philosophy thread. You need to explain why you think that's just realism.
Then, I asked you to think about your first experience, and the time when you were able (at an age that you could articulate or communicate it). You admitted under those conditions that not only you've had experience, but you could articulate it or communicate it. Did you have to wait for science to explain it to you and for you?
You should be critical about the quotes you read.
So you're saying that tithing is a moral issue because others say so? It's arbitrary? That doesn't seem to help your argument much.
Quoting Pseudonym
Exactly. No one's goals are affected by your choice of color of hat. If it did affect others goals, then it would be a moral issue. That is my point - that organisms have goals. Tables and hats do not.
Quoting Pseudonym
Yes, because you were designed that way by natural selection. You are a social animal among other social animals.
Quoting Pseudonym
There are plenty of other species that have in-fighting and they have been around longer than humans. Males in many species fight (sometimes to the death) for territory and mates.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well yes, you use logic to determine the best course of action. This is done for any kind of decision - moral or not. You use reason to make any decision whether it be which ice cream flavor to eat, or who to save when you find more than one person drowning and can only save one. The other person drowning that you are not saving wishes that you would save them. In other words, moral dilemmas arise out of a conflict of interests. There is no scientific theory that tells us which person you should save. There are only theories that explain why you saved one over another (you share more of your genes with the person you saved as they are a family member, or if they are both strangers, you save the one with the least amount of risk to yourself).
Putnam was arguing against Scientism, I wasn't defending his quote I was arguing that it was unfair of him to characterise the definition he gave in a pejorative way. The entire exercise of this post is one of being critical of quotes I read.
Quoting Caldwell
Again, if you actually read the whole post rather than just picking a fight, you'll read that just two paragraphs later, the summary of the post is to ask the question - "How does Scientism differ from either Physicalism or Positivism such that it deserves it's own name?", not to make the claim that it doesn't, which is just how it seems to me, not a philosophical claim. The entire post is a question, not a claim.
Since you're enquiring though, to me the idea that science is the only method that can give knowledge is simply a methodological, pragmatic, tool that the Physicalist will want to use. Physicalism infers objective reality, and science investigates objective facts. The fact that, for the Physicalist, other metaphysical assertions can be made, doesn't alter the conclusion that none of them could constitute objective knowledge without falling into the realm of science. But that's just the way I see it. As I said, the post is a question, not a claim. If you think that there are ways of holding a physicalist position but which don't imply that science is the only route to actual knowledge, then I'd love to hear them, that's the point of the post.
Quoting Caldwell
I don't understand this point at all, are you seeing 'Science' as men in white lab coats with bunsen burners? I held theories when I was a child, theories which I tested against the real world. Most of them turned out to be wrong on testing. What's not scientific about that? In so far as an 'explanation' is not the same a s a description, then yes, I did have to wait for science to explain my experiences, until then they were just experiences with no objectively verifiable cause.
How so? I'm arguing that science can determine the answer to moral problems, not that science can decide what words we use to describe what type of thing. Science doesn't decide that the tall thing with leaves on is going to be called a 'tree', but neither does philosophy, it's just the evolution of language. The fact is that some decision has to me made about tithing because the issue exists. What we call it is irrelevant, we could call it a 'fligitybit' issue, if you like.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Fine, moral issues are those types of decision which might affect another organism's goals. I have no problem with that definition, we're still on language here though, you're still just describing the family resemblance that groups together all the types of decision we call Moral. We could take your word for it, or we could ask everyone in the world what types of decision they would use the word 'moral' to cover and use some sort of standard deviation around the mean for our definition. None of this has the slightest impact on how we actually make such decisions (ethics).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, but I'm not one of them (or at least my current theory is that I'm not, and said theory has yet to be falsified), so I don't see how this is relevant. I'm not trying to claim that the answers science would give us to moral dilemmas would also apply to Lions.
Quoting Harry Hindu
There absolutely is, that's the point of ethical naturalism (or at least my specific brand). The way we want to feel after certain decisions is a natural fact determined by evolution, and the means to obtain that feeling is a logical cause/effect system which scientific experiment can determine the probable relations wthin. Therefore science absolutely can tell us which person to save, the one which experiments have shown will provide us with the feeling which experiments have shown we are bound to want.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, there are not only theories why, there are theories about what the consequences will be and how we will feel about those consequences. There are also theories demonstrating what feelings we wish to obtain and which we wish to avoid, thus we can determine which action's consequences produce the feelings we wish to obtain.
That's not what I meant. I wasn't talking about the actual string of symbols we use to refer to things. The fact that we have different languages (different symbols) that refer to the same things shows that language is arbitrary. I was talking about you mentioning that since people agree that tithing is moral, that that makes it moral. That is also arbitrary. We didn't agree that animals evolved from others by natural selection. They simply do, and did before we became aware of it and devised an explanation using language to represent it. We agreed that this is the case, not as a result of popularity, but by being made aware of the fact by observations by everyone. So again I ask you, how is tithing a moral issue without appealing to popularity?
Quoting PseudonymNo, we're not still on language. Again, language itself is arbitrary. What language refers to isn't, or at least shouldn't be when we are talking about objective attributes of reality. You were appealing to popularity. I'm not.
Quoting Pseudonym
It is relevant because it shows that what is good for one species isn't good for another, and it is based on the way we're designed by natural selection. There are many features we do share with these animals - like the feeling of pain.
Quoting PseudonymBut about the person that dies as a result of you referencing some scientific formula? Do you think that they give a damn about science at that moment? They simply have a goal to survive and their feeling of being neglected at their moment of need would not be anything like your feeling after saving someone else. Are you saying that you wouldn't at least feel bad about the person you couldn't save? I find that hard to believe. So I don't see how science can help you feel better in this situation.
Quoting PseudonymThat's all well and good, but you seem to be forgetting a major aspect of morality - and that is the consequences of your actions on other's feelings, not just your own. That is my point. Whose feelings matter the most?
I haven't said that (at least not deliberately). I said that tithing is a moral issue, the decision about whether to tithe is one of that group of decisions we label 'moral'. I'm not saying that tithing is a moral act because people say it is. I'm saying the decision whether to tithe or not is a moral one because people say it is. None of this has the slightest bearing on whether we should tithe or not.
I'm appealing to popular agreement to define what kinds of decisions are 'moral' ones, only for the sake of discussions about ethics. To me, they're all just decisions and science can answer them, it's an artefact of those who think morality is something else that some types of decision are put in a special group, I'd almost be happy to do away with the word entirely.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Absolutely, and what's good for one group is not necessarily good for another competing group. Mostly it's in our best interest to co-operate, occasionally to fight. It's (probably) a conflict between wanting to secure resources for our immediate genetic kin, but not wanting to do so at the expense of making enemies who might threaten then later or killing our slightly less close genetic kin. I don't see how this is evidence of a lack of scientific answer to moral dilemmas, in fact it supports scientific explanations, which favour multiple conflicting desires, over other moral Realisms, which imply one consistent code.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I never claimed that science could always make you feel good. If both choices are crap, the best it can do is least crap.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, the consequences on other people's feelings are often what generate our own feelings. We have mirror neurons which mimic the emotions of others, we literally feel their pain, it's an evolved mechanism, probably to aid co-operation but the jury is still out on that. We're already programmed to care about other people's feelings, it's going to happen anyway. Science can tell us how best to bring about the happiness in others we seem to want to generate (when we're not already sure how to do it).
Sorry if my posts sounded like picking a fight to you. I thought this was a philosophy forum. I should bow out of this thread then and not continue if this is how you summarize my questioning. It will be a waste of my time.
I'm sorry if I've offended you. I have been called just about every derogatory name under the sun in this thread just for asking the question about why Scientism is used in a derogatory sense, so it riled me to have yet another post take a combatative approach of first presuming I must be a fundamentalist supporter of Scientism "You right away defended the following quote by Putnam:..." and then be subjected to this kind of trick questioning aimed at 'catching me out' rather than constructively laying out your ideas as to what Scientism is and why it is used pejoratively, which is, completely unambiguously, the actual question.
Having said all that, it should serve as an explanation for my snappiness, not an excuse for it, so I apologise for my tone.
You're still appealing to popularity. I'll ask a different question: Why do people say that the decision to tithe or not is a moral one?
This is actually a question you should be asking yourself because you keep going in circles. The fact that you haven't seems to indicate that you don't intend to be intellectually honest. Do you ever play devil's advocate with your own ideas?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Pseudonym
Now it's becoming clear that you're just avoiding the questions.
I asked you whose feelings matter the most? We are not already programmed to care about other people's feelings. If we were then there would never be any moral dilemmas.
Because the family resemblance of decisions labelled 'moral' includes things which match the properties of the decision to tithe - namely in this case, it involves the welfare of others, possibly at one's own expense. But like any definition the term is vague. How tall exactly does a tree need to be to not be called a shrub? How many grains of sand are required for it to be a 'pile'? At what stage of hybridisation does a thing cease to be the species it was and start to become a new one? None of these questions have been answered, yet they do not prevent us from using the terms involved. I don't know exactly what determines whether a decision is a moral one or not, I don't think anyone has the authority to decide. I do know a moral decision when faced with one, in most cases. I might have trouble with ambiguous cases, as would anyone with any definition.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What makes you think I haven't - because I haven't come up with the answer you think is right, ergo I can't have thought about it properly? This seems to be a unnervingly common position on this thread.
It doesn't matter to me at all what name we give to these types of decision, nor what rules we use to decide which are called 'moral' and which are not. I'm happy to accept your personal definition, the definition of 'the masses' or some dictionary definition of authority. It makes not the least difference to my argument because I argue that we make moral decisions in exactly the same way as we make any other decision, therefore I do not need to define which decisions I'm talking about, i'm talking about them all.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Our own feelings, I thought that was clear from the paragraph you quoted.
Quoting Harry Hindu
We categorically, unequivocally are programmed to care about other people's feelings. We have specific neurons in the brain which do just that and no other job, people with those parts of the brain damaged or missing become instantly indifferent to other people's feelings, six month old babies show concern for the welfare of others and think of appropriate solutions to those problems, you will not find a single psychological experiment no matter how contrived that shows we are indifferent to the feelings of others. I'm happy to engage with you and see if we can refine each other's ideas, but I'm not prepared to discuss philosophies based on made up facts. To paraphrase, you are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is only true if you presume (erroneously) that our desires are complementary. As soon as you understand that our desires are conflicting, you have a model which allows for behaviour that contradicts one desire because it satisfies another. This doesn't mean that the first desire doesn't exist, just that it was, on that occasion, subsumed by the other desire. This happens rationally in the cerebral cortex. Eric Corchesne (the first neuroscientist to work out how to do fMRI scans on babies) directly observed this activity in the brain of six month old babies. He took away a toy, the child recognised the toy had been taken (sensory perception areas lit up), felt several visceral reactions (several areas of emotional response lit up), processed those feelings in the cerebral cortex, and then cried.
Now there are a whole host of problems with fMRI scanning and the relation to brain states, but is is certainly robust enough to tell the difference between visceral activity and cerebral activity. Babies definitely feel several things in response to stimuli, make some kind of rational calculation, and then feel largely only one thing (with associated behaviour).
Whatever theory you have about morality, the feelings we have for others, the way we make decisions, and how our behaviour reflects our desires has to at least fit the facts. They're vague enough to accommodate a huge range of theories at the moment, but not so vague that just anything goes.
Quoting Pseudonym
This is why I think we spoke past one another, because the Regress problem isn't just about philosophical issues. It is about the justification of ordinary beliefs about ourselves and the world. I say that there is a role for Philosophy at a certain stage - the justification of beliefs about my immediate surroundings, justification of the belief in other minds and unperceived existence, the justification of memory, of various patterns of inference.
This is just one place I think Philosophy has work that science cannot do. Issues of scepticism and relativism enter in, as well as idealism and antirealism. There is also the issue of why we should take scientific theories to be more credible than myths and religious legends and answering this throws up many other interesting questions.
In general, there is a space for Philosophy in examining, clarifying and where possible justifying the assumptions which people take for-granted in other contexts (or the assumptions which are necessary in those contexts). I wouldn't say a priori that no scientific experiment could deal with these issues without further philosophical claims but I've never seen it done, and it isn't the approach I find promising.
Quoting Pseudonym
Essentially as follows. Justify beliefs about the world by appeal to experience (deal with the many objections against this, by doing Philosophy). Justify belief in other minds by inference (again, deal with objections). Justify the inference rules a priori. Justify memory (hopefully). If it turns out all of this cannot be done then that is a shame, but the thing to do is not just to abandon the issue. We could try to determine what the minimum number of assumptions is that we need to make in order to justify everything we want to believe. That would be to reduce the number of things we take for-granted, giving a kind of clarity and order to the mess of our pre-reflective beliefs. I think that's the role Russel saw for philosophy. Modern philosophers had that idea too, but tended to romanticize it.
Quoting Pseudonym
Ah so you do advance the doctrine about the meaning of "morally good". I'd make two points.
What question does Ethical Naturalism answer? As I understand it, it answers the question "what do people ordinarily mean by "morally good"?. It is obviously an empirical question what people mean by "morally good". So in principle scientifc methods can answer this question. I haven't seen the survey results about the matter (ask your favorite experimental philosopher about it. They are the hot new fashion!), but I gravely suspect they would not show that people mean something even close to "maximizes well-being". Many people I know adhere to deontological rules on which some things just aren't acceptable, period. My supervisor, for example, is a Kantian and sure as anything does not mean "maximizes well-being" by morally good. Moreover, large portions of the world are still religious and so likely mean something like "accords with God's will" or "is approved by God" or something like that. You say in reply that you think these people are lying and that experiments would show this. Well maybe, and maybe not. Still, in the absence of such experiments it seems that your suggestion that they are lying is a kind of ad hoc move which saves your theory about "morally good". The relevant point for this thread though is I agree with you that this semantic question can be answered by scientific methods, even if I don't think ethical Naturalism is the right answer.
What many philosophers try to do, (your interpretation of) Harris included, is move from a doctrine about the meaning of "morally good" to a doctrine about how we should live and what we should do. This move is fallacious. Suppose it turns out that everyone in the west means "maximizes well being" by "morally good". Does that entail that we should maximize well being at all costs? Its hard to see why it would. Maybe easterners have a different concept of morally good. Should we live the western way or the eastern way? The ancient greeks seemed to have a different concept to "maximizes well being" (unless they were lying!). Should we live their way or our way? I cannot see how an analysis of "morally good" can help us at all with the philosophical issue of how we should live, unless some how the correct norms for living are built into our concepts, but that sounds far fetched.
I've never understood why so many philosophers think they can draw normative conclusions from conceptual analysis. Stephen Stich calls that idea conceptual romanticism, and I'm inclined to agree with him that its just cultural bias dressed up in fancy talk of "the real meaning" and "analysis". I should say at this point that I actually find debates about the ordinary meaning of philosophical concepts quite interesting in its own right. I just don't see how it really helps answer the fundamental philosophical questions. If "how should we live?" is a philosophical question, I can't see how science helps answer it.
Perhaps coming back full circle to the main topic. It seems silly to me to just label a view "scientism" and be done with it. It might be that scientific methods can answer some philosophical questions. They've done it in the past. I can't see it happening with the questions I've flagged up here. What do you think about that?
Sorry for the delayed reply by the way.
Maybe the difference here, though a subtle one, is between an answer to the philosophical questions, and the answer. I could provide you with an answer to the question "what did you have for breakfast this morning?". I could even have that answer analysed philosophically - if I said "a bucket of pigswill', we could say that that was not a good answer, it doesn't accord with experience (not one eats pigswill), nor with intuition (I wouldn't want to eat pigswill); if I said "toast and coffee", that would be a better answer, purely on philosophical grounds. But neither are the answer, I could not possibly know the answer. Even if I had CCTV footage of you having your breakfast, I can only get more sure. But at some point in this increasing certainty, for the sake of linguistic convenience only, we say we've got the answer. That point is the point at which others agree with our results (maybe they check their CCTV footage as well, they ask a snoopy neighbour who watches you every morning and he corroborates), and at which we can repeat our results (CCTV footage is corroborated by direct observation, which is corroborated by thermal imaging, which is corroborated by the fact that two slices of bread are missing etc...). There is no such continual testing and corroboration in philosophy, so it can only ever supply an answer, never the answer.
In a sense, the argument that only science can answer questions in the objective, public domain is actually trivially true and not ground breaking at all. I could have my own justification (an answer) as to why I think you even exist, why I can trust my memory, why I think that because the laws of physics were some way yesterday they will be that way again tomorrow, but these are my private justifications. I might talk with you about them and we could have a very interesting conversation, but at no point in time could I say that my justifications had any better claim to objective truth than yours. They might be more internally consistent than yours, but who's to say that internal consistency is a measure of success?
This is the problem with philosophy answering these question, I've yet to hear anyone talk about how we know when we have an answer. I agree entirely with your list of issues that science cannot speak on (although I disagree about morality, but we'll come to that), but you've not said how you know when philosophy has an answer. Science knows when it has an answer. All the while the theory is being tested and cannot be dis-proven, it is the answer. The moment a test comes along to disprove it, it's no longer the answer. The clever thing about science is it's only ever temporary, it only ever has the answer for the time being. I just don't see the equivalent with philosophy. A few possibilities to get the ball rolling, but I'd be interested to her what you think a measure of success would be;
Personally, I find a lot of use for the idea of philosophy as justification. Stories we can tell ourselves about why we believe what we do so as not to be "crippled with doubt" as Russell put it. But they are just stories, no one is better than any other. Charles Dickens is not a 'better' author than Emily Bronte, and Kant is not a 'better' philosopher than Hume, they're all just offering something, you either like it or you don't, there's no argument to be had as to why one it more 'right' than the other.
Modern ethics is a classic case in point. I'm an ethicist by training so I've read a considerable amount of answers to ethical problems from various angles. I can honestly say that I've not come across a single example of an ethical problem for which the answer we were all looking for cannot be shoe-horned into whatever ethical theory you care to try. Never, in my entire career have I come across a paper from an ardent supporter of any ethical school where they take on a moral dilemma and say "Wow, Kant (or whoever) gives us a really counter-intuitive answer here, I suppose we'd best follow it though", or "Nope, Kant's got nothing on this one, it didn't work". If the answer is counter-intuitive, you can guarantee that some subsequent paper will come along to show how the intuitive answer was right all along. This is why I became convinced by ethical naturalism (although I've always been a moral realist) every ethics paper I've read seems to be working backwards, it seems to be 'trying' to find the answer the author knows already is right in whatever ethical system they're applying.
Basically we seem to start off with a series of moral dilemmas where we know the parameters of the answers we're looking for ("kill the poor" isn't one of them, for example), but we don't know which exact course of action to take form all the ones that seem intuitively to be viable.
We put these dilemmas through various ethical theories of the greatest ethical philosophers of all time.
And we end up with a list of possible answers depending on which particular application of which particular ethics you've applied, that matches almost exactly the list of possible solutions our intuition delivered us at the beginning of the process.
Philosophy has done absolutely nothing to narrow down that list.
What it has done is given us reasons why we might believe in any one of the solutions, which is no small thing, I think it's really important, but it's not answering anything.
Once I accepted this phenomenon as a feature of reality (a simple belief statement, but based on empirical data, as above), then it becomes possible to at least apply science to determine which of the possible solutions might actually deliver the results we're looking for. Science can't tell us what we 'ought' to be looking for, but that doesn't seem to matter. In my experience we're all looking for roughly the same thing anyway. You mention the deontologist who does not believe in "maximising well-being", or the priest who wants only to "do God's will", but in neither case do we end up with anything we didn't know already. Deontology says nothing more than the golden rule, which it has been demonstrated even monkeys know. God's will suffers from (or perhaps benefits from) Plato's concern that God wills it because it is right. In religions, god only seems to will things that communities at the time think are right. Do you think it's a coincidence that God seems a lot less insistent on stoning adulterers and ostracising homosexuals these days?
The biggest problem with understanding ethical naturalism, and I think Harris makes this massive mistake too, is to think that what we want is in any way simple or consistent. 'What we want' is a large collection of vague and brazenly contradictory desires for particular sensations. Mapping those onto the world to work out what actions to take to achieve them is complicated. Our understanding of the world has a huge impact, our understanding of our own desires does too, as does the timescale we ask the question over. I think you've over simplified ethical naturalisms, and so has Harris. It's more like this.
We desire feelings X,Y and Z (an a hundred others, but lets call X,Y and Z the ones we've labelled 'moral objectives'), this is taken to be a brute fact and although we don't know exactly what X,Y and Z are, we can derive then by looking at the common threads of all moral behaviour, looking at brain function and applying evolutionary principles.
We learn that, in the environment we're in, doing A delivers feeling X, doing B delivers feeling Y and doing C delivers feeling Z. Again, we can test these hypotheses by the means above.
So far, so simple, but the trouble comes in three forms;
1. Change the environment and doing A no longer delivers feeling X, so actions that were moral once become less so as the environment changes (they no longer deliver feeling X, our 'moral' objective')
2. Doing A delivers feeling X in the short -term, but feeling Q in the long term (where Q is a feeling we definitely do not want). Humans apply hyperbolic discounting to desires that are in the future, to a varying degree. again this is just a brute fact, not an 'ought'. We just do apply hyperbolic discounting, like it or not.
3. Those pesky 'hundred other' desires, none of which make the slightest effort to be complimentary. We're constantly trying to balance our actions to deliver these feelings we desire despite the fact that they are not remotely complimentary.
These three factors account for all the moral variation you see in the world, different environments delivering different solutions, different levels of hyperbolic discounting and different rational solutions to competing desires. None of this changes the fact that the desires themselves are scientifically falsifiable theories, as are theories about the solutions which best meet all of them over any given time-scale.
Of course, circling back to the first part, if you don't believe in Physicalism in the first place, then all this is rubbish. If you think God made the world, then anything goes. You have to have the fundamental belief in the first place before any of this makes any sense, but personally I think everyone does. I think that's the reason why 'Scientism' is treated with such derision. people are scared it might actually be right.
:up: Very good post. Re: your point about ethical philosophers working backwards from the desired conclusion to the ethical thesis which supports it, author Heather Mac Donald (herself a conservative scholar) had an amusing line about "natural law" legal/ethical scholars, basically saying that she'll believe in natural law when its proponents offer a conclusion they didn't already want to believe.
When we began I thought you were maintaining that all philosophical questions could be answered by science, but when I gave you some examples of the questions I'm interested in, you agreed that science cannot answer them (with the exception of morality). Then I thought you held the weaker doctrine that any philosophical question which can be answered at all is answerable by science. But your newest post draws a distinction between [I]the[/I] answer and [I]an[/I] answer. You then hold that philosophy can only give an answer to the questions I'm interested in, whereas science gives the answers to other questions.
What's the difference between "the" answer and "an" answer. I think what you have in mind is that in science there are agreed upon methods of answering questions. The answer which results from using those methods is the truth. Thus, you write: Quoting Pseudonym
Add in a touch of modesty, of course:
Quoting Pseudonym
Philosophy by contrast, isn't like this. There aren't agreed on methods for answering philosophical questions. All you get are different answers from different perspectives, taking different approaches, even interpreting the questions themselves differently. The Phil Survey shows you that much.
I agree with you, but this isn't Scientism is it? This isn't a controversial doctrine that forum members detest is it? Its just the plain empirical fact that philosophers disagree a lot and scientists don't. What puzzles me is that you seem to think that it follows from this that there is no better or worse in philosophy. Everything is equal:
Quoting Pseudonym
I disagree. Philosophers can make logical mistakes, their views can be incompatible with scientific findings, they can be in tension with other views of their own, they can be contradictory or self-refuting, a philosopher might have failed to solve a problem even by his own understanding of that problem and by his own standards. In all these ways some philosophy can be better/worse than others.
Some examples. On at least one interpretation of Kant's views, many of his theses contradict orthodox views in physics (about space-time) and psychology (about conceptual diversity). Russell held (although it isn't clear whether he was right) that direct realism about perception was in contradiction with the science of perception. Anselm's original Ontological Argument treats existence as a predicate - a logical mistake, and one of Berkeley's arguments that Esse es Percipi conflates conceiving and perceiving, as well as ontology and epistemology (although I think Berkeley is ingenious in some places!). Many versions of Relativism (I think Richard Rorty's) are contradictory and self-refuting. Plantinga argues that certain versions of Naturalism are self-refuting. Descartes most famously failed to refute his own evil demon hypothesis, because he resorted (accidentally) to helping himself to premises which he himself earlier banned himself from using (there are several interpretations of Descartes and all are fascinating, but he always slips up somewhere). Russell also failed to reduce mathematics to logic, by his own standards and according to his own interpretation of the issue. Of course, philosophers will debate with each other whether any of these mistakes has really been made, but that doesn't mean no philosophy is better than any other; just that it can be hard to tell sometimes.
On to the ethical issue. The Ethical Naturalism which you are talking about in this post is different to the kind which we spoke about previously. I thought you were advocating a doctrine about the meaning of "moral goodness", since that is the view I know of which goes by that label. But in this post you don't defend that doctrine at all. Ethical Naturalism, as you are thinking of it, is a kind of anti-theory in ethics. We all already know what answers to moral dilemmas we want to give, and we all already know how we want to live our lives, so we may as well just use science to figure out the best way of doing it. Looking for an ethical theory is hollow, since philosophers always end up just bending the theories so that they give the results we want. Thus:
Quoting Pseudonym
Its clear that we can use science to determine how best to satisfy our desires and how best to get what we want, even in complex dilemmas. I also agree that many philosophers frustratingly bend ethical theories around their intuitions, so that it doesn't look like there is much difference in those theories, or much point having them. My only complaint is that Ethical Naturalism, I thought, was your example of science answering a philosophical question. The question it was supposed to answer was "how should we live?". But it doesn't answer that question. Sticking only with what can be scientifically established, all that can be said is "these are our wants and desires. These are the most efficient ways of achieving them". That doesn't answer the philosophical question at all. You seem to recognize this here:
Quoting Pseudonym
We can add this part about how "we" already know how we want to live and what we desire, but that doesn't answer the philosophical question either. The end of your first sentence is telling - "that doesn't seem to matter". Your view isn't that science can answer the philosophical question. Its that the philosophical question doesn't matter. Whether or not the question matters, the fact is that science doesn't answer it, and so we do not here have an instance of science answering a philosophical question.
In a way I think neither your Ethical Naturalism nor the intuition driven moral theorists you criticize make the same mistake - to wit - the moral theorists start with the answers they want (their intuitions if you like), build a theory out of them and say that we should live according to the theory. You say "forget the theory" and settle for the answers we are already inclined to give. Neither of these things will help a person who has risen to the level of reflection in which they wonder whether the way they are currently living is the right way to live, or whether there even is such a thing as the right way to live.
I don't really see how this position differs from any of the previous ones in any meaningful sense. If I were to say that drawing cards at random from a deck of playing cards answers basic arithmetic problems, I don't think there's an English speaker in the world who wouldn't recognise this as false. If the question is 2+2=? and I draw a 3 of spades, that has given me an answer, but not the answer, therefore it is incorrect to say that drawing cards answers arithmetic problems. Likewise, if the question is "What is the favourite Librettist of the planet Mars?" however I answer, no-one would say that I have answered such a question despite the fact that I would have undeniably provided an answer, the question clearly has no answer.
So to say science answers all questions, science answers all questions that are answerable, and science answers all questions with the answer as opposed to an answer are all making exactly the same metaphysical claim. They are just further elaborating what is meant by it.
Quoting PossibleAaran
That's pretty much the heart of the whole thread. There isn't anyone (even the likes of Lawrence Krauss) who is saying anything more than I've just said. That science provides us with the best tools to describe objective reality. From scientists like Dawkins, Hawking, or Wolpert, to naturalist philosophers like Rosenberg, Edwards, and Harris, no-one is making any greater claim than this. That, if there is a question that can be meaningfully asked in the public domain, then either science can answer it (provide the answer) or it cannot be answered meaningfully in that domain.
That's why I'm asking the question. What is it about 'Scientism' that isn't just Naturalism (or Physicalism, or even Positivism), and what is it about it that's so detestable? I've certainly had it undeniably confirmed that people hate the position, but I haven’t yet understood why.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Yes, exactly that, and the reasons for it. Scientists don't just agree a lot because they are an amenable bunch, and philosophers don't just disagree a lot because they are particularly cantankerous, so why do scientists agree so manifestly more than philosophers do? Unless you are wanting to claim that it is just coincidence, it must be that there is at least something to a scientific answer which compels agreement, and that something is lacking (or at least in very short supply) in philosophical arguments.
Now, what do we mean by 'better or worse' in that context if not some form of widespread agreement among (to borrow Van Inwagen's term "epistemic peers"? A property we have just concluded philosophy lacks remarkably compared to science?
Quoting PossibleAaran
On at least one interpretation of Kant's views, many of his theses contradict orthodox views in physics (about space-time) and psychology (about conceptual diversity). - That is philosophy being replaced by science, there is no 'better' philosophy of space-time, there is just the science of space-time.
Russell held (although it isn't clear whether he was right) that direct realism about perception was in contradiction with the science of perception - As above, it is the science of perception that has replaced direct realism, not another philosophy, and if Russell was wrong, it will be that same science that show him to be, not a new philosophy.
Anselm's original Ontological Argument treats existence as a predicate - a logical mistake. But if you take existence to be a predicate As it is possible to do (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/is-existence-a-predicate/5E5525776149C95CB218AA50463530C7) then his argument can be believed. No-one has been proven 'better or worse' yet.
Many versions of Relativism (I think Richard Rorty's) are contradictory and self-refuting - But Rorty obviously didn't, and he is at least as rational as you or I. There are no arguments that he cannot understand, that you or I could, and yet he has reached the conclusion he has that differs from yours. It is not the case the Rorty's argument here is self refuting, only that it is possible to construct a counter argument. Show me a philosophical position for which it is not possible to construct a counter argument.
Plantinga argues that certain versions of Naturalism are self-refuting. - Again, the (perfectly rational and intellectual) proponents of those versions clearly do not think of them as self-refuting despite having access to the exact same arguments.
Descartes most famously failed to refute his own evil demon hypothesis, because he resorted (accidentally) to helping himself to premises which he himself earlier banned himself from using (there are several interpretations of Descartes and all are fascinating, but he always slips up somewhere). - Absolutely, but not 'better' philosophy has filled in the blanks he was unable to fill.
Russell also failed to reduce mathematics to logic, by his own standards and according to his own interpretation of the issue. - Again, no-one else has succeeded where he failed.
Quoting PossibleAaran
I really don't see how it can mean anything other. If rational, intelligent people, in possession of exactly the same arguments nonetheless cannot agree, even close to unanimously, that any of those arguments are 'better' or 'worse', then that's about as close as you're ever going to a fact that none of these arguments are 'better' or 'worse'. It is at least close enough to a fact that an unbiased analysis would hold it to be the case for the time being.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Again, I think you're mistaking further elaboration for changing of subject. Ethical Naturalism encompasses "naturalistic forms of moral realism according to which there are objective moral facts and properties and these moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties." - SEP. Ie it is the idea that as morals are natural facts, they can be discovered by science. There is disagreement as to whether they ever will be, but not (as far as I know) over whether they theoretically can be.
What is 'morally good' is a meaningless question in that sense. It becomes a question akin to "what is a whale?" I can provide you with taxonomic reasons why a thing is a whale, but not why such a category exists at all, there are simply a number of 'things' in the world and we've decided to call some of them whales on account of the fact that they share some similarities. There's no single feature of a whale that makes it a whale. Whatever characteristic you pick, there will be the potential for some mutated offspring to be born without such a feature and we would still call it a whale. So it is with 'moral goodness'. There are simply a collection of feelings we have in response to outcomes, some of these we term 'moral goodness' on account of their similarities, but there's no definitive set of features that must be present, just a 'Family Resemblance'.
Quoting PossibleAaran
As I said earlier, the full claim, as per the normal use of the term 'answer', is only that science can answer questions to which there is an answer. Since we are determined beings without free-will sensu stricto, then the question what 'should' we do is the question of how can we most efficiently achieve our desires. Consider the alternative. Ifnot striving to achieve your desire was an available alternative what would you call the thing that motivated you to take that option? If you freely choose which desires to suppress and which to nurture, what would you call the thing that motivated you do the suppression/nurturing? We can call these motivations whatever you want, but the only question that is relevant to them is how best to achieve them.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Absolutely. Science also doesn't answer the question of what Juliet thought of Romeo's haircut, or how many years it takes for a unicorn to grow its horn. It won't answer whether we're real, or whether there's a God (in the widest sense). But neither will anything else. These questions are either meaningless or not amenable to evidence of any sort.(under Physicalism), or rely for their evidence on positions which themselves cannot be proven (Intuitionism, Physicalism, Realism, Divine Command)
Quoting PossibleAaran
Exactly. If a rational person is asking both of those two questions, then a rational person can see that the fact that there is sufficient doubt in the latter means that they cannot, with any certainty, answer the former.
Do you think there is a scientific reason why some people choose scientific careers, rather than careers in diplomacy or the arts?
Everything you’re saying is directly out of A J Ayer, Language Truth and Logic, which insisted that the only meaningful statements were those that can be verified empirically. But when the smoke cleared, it suddenly became obvious that this too is a statement that cannot be empirically verified. It was hoist by its own petard.
The second point is that, scientism is inherently anti-philosophical in nature. It poses as philosophy, and adopts philosophical rhetorics, but ultimately it seeks to undermine philosophy by only admitting what can be definitely known, measured and assessed. The point about the Western philosophical tradition is that there has always been a place for the unknowable, for aporia, questions which really can’t be neatly resolved but need to be asked nonetheless. Whereas scientistic positivism declares all such questions out of bounds.
I would say the difference lies more in the quality of the evidence being accepted.
Mystics are quite happy to claim proof of their theories in terms of feelings, intuitions, revelations and surprising coincidences. You, for instance, regularly cite oceanic experiences as proof of transcendent being. All “philosophy” is empirical in the sense that the structure of explanation involves relating the particular to the general. We have a broad belief because it appears to account for many and varied impressions.
Dig into scientific positivism or instrumentalist enough and I would argue that you discover the underlying pragmatism that in fact sees even “measured evidence” for what it really is - the reading of numbers off dials.
So it is all experiential. But then it is experience rendered in mathematical signs. And this in turn is secured in the western philosophic tradition by our recognition of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
You are always pointing out how Platonism seems to be trying to tell us something deep. Science actually relies on the language of numbers, the rational structure of mathematical relations. That is what it uses to harden empiricism and give experience some actual kind of transcendent status as a form of evidence.
What you feel is what you feel. It lacks objective distance as evidence. It lacks disambiguation,
Science employs number as a rational structure that gives that safe distance. It is the general of a mathematical structure that becomes related to the particular of some act of counting. And so it’s empirical evidence both accepts the subjectivity of our reality models, but also deals with that in the best quality way possible.
The fact that science wants to give everything a number rather than a feeling is the feature, not the bug.
And that was always what was distinctive about the Western metaphysical tradition that arose out of the universalisation of mathematical structure in Ancient Greece. What you call Scientism is simply what has worked best for understanding reality ever since then.
And I agree as usual that Scientism has the flaw nevertheless of being overly enamoured with bottom up construction - bottom up construction being the way mathematical operations generally have to work. Another issue.
Citation, please.
Quoting apokrisis
Actually, that’s not ‘another issue’. That is the issue that I was commenting on. Everything else in your response, is simply your issues with me, it’s got nothing to do with anything I said.
Scientism is an instrumentally doctrinal attitude of truth founded on both natural and modal principles.
Yes. I'm a determinist (or at least a compatibilist), so I believe there exists a scientific reason why everyone does anything. Whether that reason is sufficiently un-complex for us to ever expound it fully is another matter, but we can eliminate thousands of minor factors whose inclusion would make the model way too complex to actually use, but whose contribution to it's predictive power is only small. Thus we end up with a model which has a reasonably high predictive power but is not 100% accurate because of the minor elements we've ignored for simplicity. It's no different to the way we predict the weather, and that has proven incredibly useful despite its fuzziness.
Quoting Wayfarer
We've been through this already so I'm at a loss to understand why you keep bringing it up. No-one is claiming that science can answer all philosophical questions - absolutely no-one. If you can find me a single quote form anyone accused of Scientism to the effect that science can actually answer all questions, then they deserve the pejorative term. I'd like to see them answer the question I used in my response to PA about Mars's favourite Librettist. The claim is that science can answer all questions to the extent to which they are objectively answerable by any means.
With regards to Ayer's claim (or others like it). Either;
- all metaphysical statements are meaningful (in which case Ayer's must also be meaningful)
- all metaphysical statements must be meaningless (in which case Ayer is right, but this statement itself becomes a paradox, so we'd rather not accept it)
- or, some metaphysical statements are meaningful and others not - In which case there is no logical reason why the number of metaphysical statements which can be meaningful is not one.
Meaning that it is perfectly logical to say that all metaphysical statements are meaningless apart from this metaphysical statement. The evidence for this is the lack of any other metaphysical statements which are meaningful.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why do questions which cannot be resolved whose answers are unknowable need to be asked?
Quoting Pseudonym
I can answer whether it is right for me to kill my mother; I consider both the question and the answer to be meaningful; and science has nothing to do with how I come up with the answer. Do you disagree with any of this?
So, there's a scientific reason why I might decide to be a scientist - but we can't know what it is.
Quoting Pseudonym
Because of what you keep saying.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well, here, for example:
Quoting Pseudonym
Emphasis in original.
Quoting Pseudonym
Have a think about that. There are many of them in the Platonic dialogues, and they form an important part of the subject.
[B]Scientific Answers and Philosophical Answers[/b]
You continue to press the idea that there is some serious difference between scientific answers and philosophical answers. In my post, I conceded that there is one difference - scientists agree on what methods are appropriate to answer their questions, and they agree on what results would confirm/refute their theories - at least they do this a lot more than philosophers do. Philosophers, by contrast, are always disagreeing about which methods to use, what can be taken for-granted and what can't, what counts as a good argument for what and so on. Most philosophers agree that "logic and argument" are to be used, but these methods radically underdetermine the answers in most cases, far more than in science.
In your recent post, you say that there is more to it than this:
Quoting Pseudonym
The "something" to a scientific answer is just that the methods of finding the answer have already been agreed on. If everyone agrees on how to go about answering a question and then they go about answering it in that fashion, its completely unsurprising that a lot of agreement is reached. What compels agreement in science is agreement on a broadly characterized method for answering questions and a broad agreement about what sort of thing is allowed to count as an answer. In short, what compels agreement in science is commitment to a [I]paradigm[/I]. Philosophers rarely adopt a paradigm as a consensus, and when they do the paradigm is so abstract (and the methods contained are so modest) that it still permits substantial disagreement. What else could the "something" be? Is there something special going on that I've missed?
Is any philosophy better than any other?
Quoting Pseudonym
A philosophy X is better (to some degree) than some other philosophy Y if (a) X contains fewer logical mistakes than Y, (b) X does not contradict scientific theories whilst Y does, (c) X is not contradictory and Y is, (d) X is not self-refuting and Y is, (e) X accomplish whatever aims philosophers had in developing X, whilst Y doesn't.
I'm sure there are other criteria we could come up with. Note crucially that what is meant by "better" here has nothing to do with how many people agree. Even if everyone in the world thought X was absurd and Y was self-evident, X could still be better than Y by meeting these criteria. And again, disagreement over whether these criteria are met does not entail that no philosophy is better than any other - just that it is hard to tell.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, because it isn't Kant's transcendental Idealism itself that contradicts scientific theories. Its some of his arguments for it. A philosophy obviously is better if it doesn't rely on arguments which use premises that contradict established science. Kant's philosophical system isn't just speculation about space-time. It entails some hypotheses about space-time that are contradicted by science. You can't replace transcendental Idealism with the science of space-time, any more than you can replace an apple with a paint brush.
Quoting Pseudonym
The science of perception can't replace direct Realism (if Russell is right about this), any more than an apple can replace a paint brush. Direct Realism entails certain empirical hypotheses which Russell thought science showed to be false. But you can't just throw away direct Realism and be done with it, because - and Russell saw this too - throw away direct Realism and you are landed with all sorts of difficult questions about how we can know anything at all about the world, and how we could even meaningfully say anything about it - philosophical issues, not scientific ones. The point is that sometimes part of a philosophical system can contradict science. Throwing out that part of the system, however, will cause problems elsewhere. So it is never as simple as science replacing a refuted theory.
Quoting Pseudonym
Its curious that you would say this, because you think that majority agreement is crucial for a philosophy being better than another. Yet, that existence is not a predicate is something that almost all philosophers agree on. Yes, I see the article you present, but its a minority position. In any case, the majority of philosophers do think that Anselm's argument makes a logical mistake [I]whatever that mistake is[/I]. Majority agreement isn't a criterion for being better as I am thinking of it anyway, and this last point is what I would say to your point about Plantinga and Rorty too.
Quoting Pseudonym
Some philosophers have taken up the project started by Descartes. W.T Stace, H.H Price, Russell, Fumerton, Bonjour, to give some examples. They have all made great advances over the attempts made by Descartes, even if they have not fully succeeded in completing the project he started. So it seems they are better in that respect.
I drop the Russell example, because I don't know enough about it.
Quoting Pseudonym
I think you really underestimate philosophy. Philosophers tend not to agree on "the" answer to their biggest questions. But they quite often agree that a given argument for a position is fallacious or of no dialectical use. They also quite often agree that [i]particular versions[/I] of certain philosophical theories are susceptible to serious objections. But what often happens is a series of objections are made to a theory, and then in response defenders refine their theory to avoid the objections. Sometimes a theory gets refuted outright, but only very rarely. The result is that positions get gradually refined and the logical space of positions gets narrowed over time. You cited Chalmers' PhilPapers study earlier. He has a lecture on youtube called "why isn't there more progress in Philosophy", where he makes this point about the gradual refinement of philosophical positions. He is much more persuasive than I am.
The Necessity of Philosophical Questions
Quoting Pseudonym
Isn't Physical Determinism a Philosophical theory? Doesn't it presuppose another Philosophical Theory - Physicalism about the mind? If so, then the claim you make above presupposes philosophical theories, which by your own admission, are not better or worse than any others. You did this earlier on too. You said that there is something special about science as opposed to philosophy, which somehow makes it better at reaching objective answers to its questions. When I replied, I did so relying on a Kuhnian Philosophy of Science. If you disagree you will have to disagree with the Kuhnian Philosophy of Science and put forward some other philosophical idea. When you do that you [I]won't[/I] be doing science. You will be doing Philosophy of Science and I can almost guarantee you that you will not be able to do this in such a way as to command majority agreement from all philosophers, or even all members of this forum, or even all members who are reading the thread. Yet, this idea of yours - that there is some serious difference between scientific answers and philosophical answers- is a crucial piece of your position. Without it I'm not even sure what your position would be. But it turns out that the only support you can give for it is the kind of thing you don't like - "an" answer, not "the" answer.
This is a theme which I've noticed by many people who say that Science can answer all questions which can be answered. Assume all of the answers to philosophical questions which are needed to make your position defensible, [I]then[/I] claim that science can answer all questions which can be answered and that philosophy can't do anything. I agree that [I]if[/I] determinism is true and [I]if[/I] Physicalism about the mind is true and [I]if[/I] science is special in using a particularly objective method and [I]if[/I] any myriad of other philosophical views you need to defend the previously listed ones - [I]if[/I] all of those are true then the only questions left to answer are scientific questions. But it is trivial to say that if we help ourselves to all of the answers to the most controversial philosophical questions, then science can do the rest.
I think this is why people have such a bad attitude toward people they associate with Scientism. It typically involves presupposing all of the answers to philosophical questions with one hand whilst dismissing philosophy with the other.
This ties in with 's point that we need to ask philosophical questions. We need to ask them in the sense that we just cannot help it. The biggest and most basic philosophical questions aren't just silly abstract musings that you can just ignore and get on with living. They are questions which shape how you act, how you see other people and how you see the world. They are presupposed in almost everything. Even in trying to get rid of philosophical questions you commit yourself to answers to them. And if you can't help answering these questions anyway, you may as well do so carefully and reflectively, as in Philosophy. It would be nice to get "the" answer, but it isn't the end of the world if we don't get it. Most people interested in the subject are happy if they understand the issues more clearly than before.
No disagreement on my part!
No. Did I at any point say that one could not have any desires or objectives without science telling you what they are first? If, for some disturbed reason, you actually need to answer the question "should I kill my own mother?" then science is your best tool to give you an answer (and the answer would be no), but if you don't even need to ask the question because you already have a satisfactory answer then what's science got to do with it. Are you suggesting you'd consult a philosophy text to find out the answer instead?
If the question is "should we, as a species, kill our own mothers?" from an academic perspective, then science can answer that question. The best current theory might be - 'No we should not kill our own mothers because our mothers are the source of high levels of oxytocin which we desire, killing others tends to lead to feelings which we find repellent (do not desire), even if right now it might feel good (our mother might have done something awful and we think she deserves it) then later on after we've calmed down repellent feelings will arise, etc..'. For the time being, there's no counter evidence - no large body of people who've killed their own mothers and are living happy fulfilled lives for having done so, so the theory stands.
Of course, no-one needs to ask the question because the answer is not in doubt. No-one needs to ask the question "What will happen if I throw this ball into the air?". Just because everyone already knows it will come back down again, that doesn't mean science can't answer the question in terms of gravity and mass, it just means it doesn't need to.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, that's not the question. See, your tactics when in difficulty is to propose some different question that science can answer. This will not do.
Yes, just like there's a scientific answer to the question "will it rain tomorrow", but we can't know what it is. The fact that we can have a damn good guess is pretty important to most transport networks, fisheries and farming. None of these vital industries seem to be making some pedantic complaint about the fact that we can't know for certain whether it will rain tomorrow and so we might as well ask some bearded mystic to guess for us with his crystals.
When there are huge numbers of variables to calculate, the ability of the model to make accurate predictions decreases. Occasionally all these variables have equal contribution to the outcome and the model will be useless, but more often than not, most variable will have only a minor contribution and can be ignored so long as one is prepared to accept the occasional anomaly.
It's possible that a model might simply be too complex to ever be useful (or even known). It's possible that uncertainty at a quantum level might mean some models contain a genuinely random element (although this is far from certain at a macro level).
In some cases, it might even be possible that our brains might be able to make predictions about things that no scientific model has yet been able to. Our brains might already have the model hard-wired into them, but we have yet to see externally which variables it is calculating and how. I can catch a ball faster than I can do the maths calculating its trajectory, for example. But if this were the case, then science would be able to tell us. Put 100 people in a room and see if they can all catch a ball faster than they can do the maths. any claim to 'intuitive' knowledge is relatively easily tested, those that can't be tested must remain opinions, not knowledge claims.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, I keep saying it, you keep trotting out the same counter argument, I refute the counter argument, then you go silent until the next time I mention it when the whole thing starts again, it's getting really tiresome. If you have anything to say about the actual counter argument I offered I'd be interested to hear it, if not, then let's just presume you disagree on some fundamental axiom and leave it at that. There's little sense in you chiming in every time I mention positivist arguments, just to remind us all that you disagree with them.
Quoting Wayfarer
This doesn't even make sense. The first claim is that no-one is claiming that science can answer all philosophical questions, the second claim is that science posits that no system can say anything meaningful on matters of quality. They're not even related. Let me see if I can make this clear;
Science can answer questions about objective reality
All questions (and therefore answers) that are not about objective reality are not matters which can form knowledge in the public domain, they are private subjective matters.
This is just begging the question. The question "what is the (morally) right thing to do?" is not a question which cannot be answered by science, it's a question which absolutely can be answered by science.
Quoting SophistiCat
I've directly answered your question, so you can dispense with the weak defamation. Your question was "Do you disagree with any of this?". My answer was in the very first word "No". So where have I proposed some different question in order to avoid answering the one you asked?
Well, your one attempt so far in this conversation has been to replace the question with a different one (which, I contend, science cannot answer either):
Quoting Pseudonym
What you should have written, to be consistent with what you were saying earlier, is
"Do members of our species tend to kill our mothers?"
Which is even further removed from the original question.
I think we're going round in circles, so I'd like, if it's OK, to return to the claim that I'm making as quite a bit of what you've written is actually arguing against a claim that I've never made (I don't blame you, so many people are putting words in my mouth, it's hard to keep track)
The claim I'm making is not that from first principles, scientific investigation alone can deliver you a world view. I've said countless time that I don't believe it is possible to form any view on the world without some belief statement on which to base everything. To have a scientific view of the world requires a belief in an external mind-independant reality, a belief in the continuity of physical laws into the future (Hume's problem of induction), and a belief in the meaningfulness of logical deduction and inference. Probably others as well.
The point I am making is that this makes 'Scientism' no different from any other philosophical position (which also requires a similar set of fundamental beliefs), and yet it (unlike all other philosophical positions) is treated with derision and hatred.
The other point (unrelated, but we seem to be covering it nonetheless), is that if you are a Physicalist, then it is possible to construct a model of reality by which morality is determinable by science. I've then gone on to explain how that model works if you are a physicalist (and deterministic, although I think the one necessitates the other). If you are a devout believer in Christianity, for example, none of this will be of the slightest interest to you, but then the opinion that we should not have sex before marriage because God said so is not of the slightest interest to me as an atheist either.
Which leads to my third point, that philosophical positions cannot be conclusively argued for or against. If I claim that I have a model which predicts the outcome of some physical event in objective reality (which I simply believe exists) and it does then accurately predict that outcome again and again, you would be crazy to say that my model was useless (you might nonetheless say that). It clearly works.
If, however, you make a metaphysical claim, it cannot be demonstrated to be useful, it cannot be proven to be true and so I could, without any conflict with reason, simply disagree with you. I might have to change the way I disagree with you. I might disagree with you on some grounds which do conflict with logic, but at no point will I be left with no grounds to disagree with you, the field of possible counter-arguments is infinite. This much has been proven by the fact that there has been absolutely no progress on any of the main issues since philosophy began.
This is the point that Chalmers was making (I had listened to the lecture already, but thanks for the reference anyway). That the points themselves are irresolvable, but the arguments for each get better and better, in the opinion of the people making them. I think this is one point where we have definitely got crossed wires, and I'm sure the fault is mine as I didn't see where you were going with your question. I've been arguing that no philosopher is 'better' than any other, that no one of two conflicting world views can be said to be 'better' than another, whereas I think you have been saying that arguments for a particular world view can be 'better' than previous arguments for that same world view, and that they can be made so by having to respond to counter-arguments. This I agree with. Where I disagree (possibly) is the idea that this will ever lead to one of the competing world views having to be abandoned. That hasn't happened in 2000 years of debate, I think it would be irrational to hold the view that it's going to happen in the next 2000 years of debate despite all evidence to the contrary. What will happen is the arguments themselves will get 'better', and this is, I think, What Russell meant by his view that philosophy helps us deal with those areas of life where questions cannot be properly answered (or are meaningless), it helps us give a 'better' account of why we believe a certain fundamental proposition, but it will never demonstrate that proposition to be actual knowledge.
So, to some of the points in your post;
Quoting PossibleAaran
This just moves the goalposts. Now the question is why do scientists all seem able to broadly agree on a paradigm, but philosophers can't. Are be back to the fact that scientists are just more agreeable than philosophers, or is there something about the scientific paradigm they all agree on which makes it particularly compelling? But that point aside, I still do not agree with your conclusion here.
1. A paradigm does not determine the answers. Deciding that one will determine an hypothesis and test it does not, in of itself, determine what the outcome of those tests will be and yet there is huge agreement that the hypotheses of science have indeed passed the tests. The simple fact that everyone agrees they need to pas those tests does not determine that everyone would agree they have passed those tests. There is still something to be explained in why, when an hypothesis is tested (in a manner all agree it must be), there is broad agreement about whether it has passed that test.
2. I dispute the conclusion that philosophers disagree about the paradigm by which their theories are to be tested. No-one thinks the theory with the most words is best, the nicest handwriting, or the longest conclusion. It's pretty much agreed that the argument which is best is the one with fewest presumptions, fewest logical errors, contradictions etc. There are some marks for succinctness, some for erudition. These are all generally agreed upon principles. If they wern't then it would be impossible to judge philosophy degrees and the whole academic project would be abandoned. Philosophers (as you yourself argue) generally do agree on what constitutes a 'good' theory and what a 'bad' one. They agree almost unanimously on what sort of test a theory must be put to in the same way scientists do (they must do otherwise there would not be a canon of philosophical literature, nor any philosophy degrees, there would just be 'stuff people have said'), and yet they continue to disagree as to which theories have passes that test.
Quoting PossibleAaran
I hope that my opening comments answer this point, I think we've been talking past each other on this to some extent. It is our conclusion on the significance of 'better; or 'worse' arguments that we disagree on, but I won't repeat what I've written above, I think it answers your point here.
Quoting PossibleAaran
Hopefully, again, my opening comments will address this. I have never claimed that one must never hold a philosophical position. Indeed, I've claimed the exact opposite, that it is impossible to reach any world view without having some fundamental belief statement at its root. My claim is that no amount of argument is ever going to demonstrate that one belief statement is 'better' than another, and yet that is exactly what is being done with 'Scientism'. It is being derided as a belief which is "ridiculous", "naive" "cancerous", and "a pernicious lie", to quote directly from some responses, both here and in academic literature. That is the point I'm making.
I am not trying to prove that Scientism is true, I don't even believe it is possible to prove such a thing, to do so would be to answer a philosophical question about Physicalism and I've just argued that answering such question is (in all likelihood) impossible. All I'm trying to do is demonstrate that it is no less valid a position than any other, that is it not "ridiculous", "naive" "cancerous", and "a pernicious lie".
I've written, or responded to, 14 pages of posts , half of which have been about the position that science provide solutions to moral dilemmas. If you're going to continue down this line of personal insult then I've no interest in discussing things with you. I have not made "one attempt" I've expounded at great length exactly why I think the question "what is the (morally) right thing to do?" can be answered by science, if you can't be bothered to read it or engage with any of the arguments, then I've no time for you.
Quoting SophistiCat
No, that would just be a description of our actions, not of their consequences. If you want to be pedantic, what I should have written is "Do any of our species kill their own mothers, if they do, what are the consequences on their psychological state, what sort of psychological states do our species strive to achieve and so does a theory that killing ones own mother will lead to desirable psychological states seem useful?" That is what the word 'should' means to me. I can't think of any other meaning of the term without begging the question and presuming that there is some external measure of morality to which we are compelled to aspire. 'Should' is not a categorical word, it is a hypothetical one, Moore showed that pretty conclusively. One 'should' do X if one wishes to achieve y. It simply makes no grammatical or logical sense to ask what one 'should' do without the context of an objective. Ethical naturalism is simply the claim that the objective is already set by our natures and so all that is left to discuss is how best to achieve it in various contexts.
Do you see Nietzsche as a philosopher who contributed to our understanding of the world? Because Nietzsche's main contribution is asking questions that cannot reasonably be resolved. Would you dismiss Nietzsche based on this?
Richard Feynmann.
No. The vast majority of people haven’t read Nietzche and they don't seem to be doing markedly worse at living than the tiny minority who have. There are also some people who I have no reason to doubt the intelligence of (Bertrand Russell, for example) who have read Nietzche and still feel their understanding of the world to be completely unaffected by the experience.
Quoting Nop
Yes
Interesting. However, you miss telling us that even if we were to have a movement advocating eating when hungry, it doesn't thereby follow that more people would eat when hungry than already do now. In other words, it is not proven that advocating something will get the results desired.
If the discipline of philosophy is characterized as being concerned with questions, not answers, would you dismiss the discipline of philosophy? In addition, lets say that hypothetically, Russels's paradox regarding set theory fundamentally cannot be resolved, would you be consistent and say that you would dismiss Russels's paradox, as you do with Nietzsche?
Quoting Pseudonym
Okay, I get what you're saying. Positivism, or the claim that science can answer, say, moral questions better than philosophy and other disciplines would be a philosophical claim, but just like other philosophical claims, it excludes other possibilities. My issue is then, how does one arrive to accept positivism as true? Clearly, it is not something that can be empirically determined, granted that it is a philosophical position, and not a scientific one itself.
I don't think that "philosophy is dead" is something to be laughed out of court or dismissed. I think it is a serious statement, that ought to be taken seriously.
Quoting Pseudonym
However, the issue is that Hawking does NOT take it seriously. He does not prove why we ought to think that philosophy is dead. Quite the contrary, he proves how ignorant he is when he, for example, states that Epicurus argued against atomism - Epicurus, of course, being a famous materialist and atomist.
Quoting Pseudonym
Why must something be reproducible to be valid? If there is a paper on it, it means that we have the capacity to reproduce results, such as comforting people. But the issue is that people are extremely complex, intractably so, if I may say that, so we have no way to "reproduce" any of this comfort giving when it comes to people. Everyone's situation is different, it's not like we're dealing with atoms, all of which behave in the same predictable ways. The situations with people are extremely complex, so it makes little sense to expect philosophy to provide reproducible results in comforting people.
Quoting Pseudonym
Yes, if the person in question cannot provide reasons for so believing, then it ought to be treated with derision. Many scientific materialists here have laughable arguments. I've debated a few of them, so I know. You seem to be somewhat more sophisticated than the "God does not exist and religion is a fairy tale" BS of some atheists, so we'll see. But people like Lawrence Krauss (for example) are laughable. They cannot even articulate their position, that's how confused it is.
Quoting Pseudonym
If you cannot provide an account for why you choose Scientism over other belief systems, then you are being irrational. You ought to suspend judgement if all positions are equally likely.
Absolutely, I don't see how it is possible to accept any metaphysical statement as true unless it transpires to be an empirical statement. Even then 'true' is just a temporary label meaning 'usefully predictive for the time being'. Physicalism is a belief which cannot be justified. I think there are logical arguments which lead directly from Physicalism to Naturalism, but they require that one agrees with the authority of logic, which itself is a belief statement.
Quoting Agustino
This, I think is a common criticism (not entirely unreasonable), but is a type of category error. Peter Van Inwagen said something once along the lines of "the only facts in philosophy are who said what, when". Hawking is without doubt quite ignorant of those facts, but this need have absolutely no bearing on his ability to make rational arguments without begging the question. If philosophy is useless, then why would his ignorance of it minutae be relevant? Philosophers seem quite confident in arguing that science cannot answer questions of morality, for example, without knowing all there is to know about neuroscience.
Quoting Agustino
I agree, and I do personally think that a good role for philosophy is to comfort people (although I have some reservations too), and of course if it is to play this role it will not necessarily be able to prove it can do so. The comment I made was not aimed at this proposition. It was meant to point out that the whole of academia, and much amateur philosophy clearly does not see it this way, otherwise there would be no failing as a philosopher.
Quoting Agustino
I think perhaps we can agree there are laughably bad reasons for believing something on both sides of the argument, but if it works for them personally, then I don't think we have much authority to dismiss it. I like the justifications for my beliefs to be a certain way, others are happier with less substance to their stories. I'm not sure we're in a position to judge. If someone comes to me wanting to test their justification, their story, then I'm happy to try and persuade them of mine. It helps them with their goal, and it helps me with mine. Laurence Krauss puts his justifications out there with a self-righteousness I find quite unpleasant, but there's been bad blood on both sides so his belligerence is not entirely self-made.
Quoting Agustino
You are confusing proving with providing an account. I think over the last 15 pages I have provided something of an account of why I am a Naturalist (although that want the intention of my original post). What I don't believe is possible is to prove that my account is correct,and I simply don't believe it is possible to suspend judgement.
So perhaps then we should delve deeply into truth. What does it mean for a proposition to be true? And is all truth limited to propositional truth?
You seem to suggest that 'true' means 'usefully predictive for the time being'. When I tell you that I have $100 in my wallet, is the truth of this proposition granted by its usefulness? If so, what is usefulness? Is it usefulness to me? Usefulness to who exactly?
Quoting Pseudonym
Right, as are the other metaphysical beliefs. Is your belief that "metaphysical beliefs cannot be justified" itself a justified belief? If not why should we prefer it, as opposed to the opposite?
Quoting Pseudonym
I am sure that you will agree that in order to determine if something is useless, you must go into it, you must investigate it, and do so seriously. Otherwise how can you know if it is useless? We do not start from assumptions like "philosophy is dead" or "philosophy is useless" - we must rather argue to them. And to argue to them, we have to engage with philosophy - we have to show that we have engaged with it, and it has proven to be futile.
Quoting Pseudonym
That should be seen as a problem for those philosophers who want to say that neuroscience cannot provide any help in resolving moral conundrums.
Quoting Pseudonym
Who would be able to prove that philosophy is playing such a role, and what would proof consist in?
Quoting Pseudonym
Suppose there is a man who has cancer, and he refuses all medical treatments, and claims that eating grass will cure him of cancer. And he eats grass and he is indeed cured of cancer (let's say it is spontaneous remission). It clearly worked for him personally, in that he did reach the result he was aiming for. What will we say if he now intends to market and promote his idea to other cancer patients?
Quoting Pseudonym
What would it mean to prove that naturalism is true? What does that even mean?
Quoting Pseudonym
No, I have not actually seen you provide an account for it. You have merely been arguing that it's a possibility, there is nothing incoherent or contradictory in being a naturalist. Sure, there isn't. But you haven't provided any reason for why anyone, including yourself, should be a naturalist as opposed to, for example, a Cartesian dualist.
Quoting Pseudonym
Why not? If you perceive so clearly as you say you do that metaphysical propositions cannot be true, why is it that you cannot suspend judgement with regards to their truth, but rather prefer to choose one position amongst the available range?
In the past many things were not understood.
Science has explained many of these things.
Therefore, in the future science will explain things that are currently not understood.
Scientism is problematic in two main areas: Firstly, It doesn't take account of the fact the scientific theory is 'best' explanation rather than 'definitive' explanation. Most scientists accept the heuristic aspect of their work and proceed from ignorance. Exponents of scientism focus on the achievements of science instead of its limited nature.
Secondly, it doesn't take account of the human limitation for understanding and is thus absurdly anthropocentric. Most scientists are acutely aware that scientific knowledge is theoretically limited by the questions that be formulated about it. What can ultimately be known by humans is not the same as complete knowledge of the universe.
Yes, I believe so. I can't think of any other reason why I would be interested in the veracity of the statement unless I intend to do something about it, and so it is useful for me to be able to include your wealth in my calculations. Useful to the person holding the theory, of course.
Quoting Agustino
No, I think that;s a sound empirical theory. There are no metaphysical beliefs which have been proven to be true, there currently is no mechanism by which a metaphysical belief could be proven true, it's a good scientific theory to hold, therefore, that metaphysical beliefs cannot be proven true.
Quoting Agustino
I didn't say we should not investigate it, but it is not necessary to know all of its details, otherwise you're setting up an unfalsifiable premise (popular among philosophers). Anyone criticising philosophy can be automatically disregarded without having to actually engage with their arguments on the grounds of some canonical detail they were unaware of. "Ah, but did you not know that Kant accidentally misspelled 'Zwecke' in the first draft of the Critique of Practical Reason? No? Well I don't have to take any notice of anything you say then, you obviously know nothing about philosophy", it's a lazy cop out. If there's a sound argument against what Hawking has said, it should be easy to make, there should be no need to brandish his poor reading of Epicurus, only correct it.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, but it isn't. If it were, we would have to declare the whole of ethics a closed subject. Philosophers are no longer allowed to discuss it because they are not fully immersed in the details of neuroscience, and neuroscientists are not allowed to talk about it because they are not fully read up on philosophy. Metaphysics is out of the window too, unless all metaphysicians are fully trained quantum physicists, and physicists are expert metaphysicians, no-one is entitled to comment. Philosophy of mind goes the same way, as does epistemology. So what's left to discuss?
Alternatively, we could just take people's statements seriously and if some lack of knowledge on their part is actually undermining their argument, we can point that out. If it isn't then we can stop using it as a stick to beat them with in order to avoid actually having to engage with them.
Quoting Agustino
Nobody and nothing, I'm fairly certain that it would be unprovable. If there is even a single person who derives some comfort from some philosophy, then it has achieved that task.
Quoting Agustino
This is basic science, we hold a theory that eating grass cures cancer, we test that theory in controlled trials during which we find out it doesn't, end of story.
Quoting Agustino
This is the same trick that SLX used, I thought you were above that. What does it even mean to ask what does it mean? What would the answer to the question "what does it mean?" be like? What does it even mean to 'be like' something? What does 'something' even mean? What are questions anyway? How do we know when we have answers? What do we even mean by 'answer'?... I presume you're wearing a black polo-neck, a beret, and chain-smoking in a French cafe whilst asking this?
Quoting Agustino
That is an account of it. The best we can do with a belief that cannot be proven is demonstrate that it is not self-contradictory or incoherent. As PA pointed out in his post (though we got slightly crossed wire over argument vs. conclusion), it's just about the only thing we can say about a philosophical argument, that it is not incoherent or contradictory.
Quoting Agustino
That's because there isn't one. I've been saying this in different ways for the past 10 pages, but perhaps I've not been clear enough because it's a paradigm that people seem to struggle to get out of. It does not go - argument->testing of argument->conclusion. It goes conclusion (the thing you've already decided to believe)->argument (to justify that belief)->testing/refinement of that argument (by debating with others). The only point at which one might change their world-view if if the testing/refinement of their justification for it went so badly it could not be repaired. This rarely happens.
I have no intention of providing reasons why someone should be a Naturalist, that would be a complete waste of my time. I simply don't believe that people derive their world-views from the strength of the argument in favour of it. They justify the world-view they've already decided they want. If I had some absolutely watertight argument for Naturalism that was so powerful that people would feel stupid believing anything else, then I might go on that mission, but I don't.
Quoting Agustino
I just can't. I believe this to because we have evolved to form models of the world and our brains simply do this without any concious thought. Suspending judgement until it is needed is a dangerous tactic, it means that when a decision is needed, you have to slow your brain down to decide what model of the world it's going to use. If you're on a runaway train and it's about to hit a broken bridge, you'd better decide pretty quickly if you're a realist, if you're going to take Hume's problem of induction as sorted, if you're going to believe the scientific account of physical forces, you can't be working all this stuff out as the train plunges off the cliff.
Excellent questions! Much better than most of waffle most of this thread has so far been.
Now you're on @Pseudonym's side once @Agustino joins in. :rofl: Why is this jig so familiar?
I remember post after post where you ripped him/her to shreds. Was that some sort of Darth Vader tactic that I was unaware of?
But what is an 'excellent' question? What is a 'question' at all, and how could it possibly be excellent, what is it excelling in? How do we know what a 'question' is meant to achieve such that we can tell it is excelling in it's task? Can a question have an objective at all? What do we mean by 'objective'? What do we mean by 'have'? What do we mean by 'mean'?... Oh look, we're back where we started.
Oh, then show me. Clearly my memory is "deplorable" (is that a nifty enough word for your ivy-league standard?)
Yes, keep going, soon enough you might actually have an inkling of how philosophy operates.
By the way, do you only respond to posts that allow you an opportunity to look smart? For instance, I'm waiting on a reply from you in the thread named "What is the difference between gnoseology and epistemology"?
Oh, clearly :love: your posts are so scintillatingly devoid of emotional appeal, it's simply seductive.
Do I get the beret and the black polo-neck yet?
Nah, lad, but yer close. Oh so close. Do keep tryin'
Hemlock perhaps? Your questions are exemplary Socratic ones, after all (the bloke who founded, y'know, Western Philosophy).
Actually, ya do seem so close. What causes ya' ta' brake'off saw?
Toga, sandals and beard it is then.
No, but;
a) That is clearly not the case. Philosophical literature is not a series of questions (at least not since Plato) it is either a series of propositions supported by arguments from axioms, or a series of counter-arguments to dispute a previous proposition.
b) Even if that were the case, there would still be little point in the discipline as a whole unless it had some objective measure of success at asking the 'right' questions or 'better' questions, otherwise we can all ask questions, no need for a separate discipline dedicated to it.
Quoting Nop
Russell dismissed Russell's paradox, that's the point. He set out to provide a justification for our belief in mathematics and failed (by his own admission) to do so. Nietzche (and his supporters) think he had a sound justification for his philosophy which rendered other philosophies false. That's an entirely different claim. The if you want to put them on the same footing you have to describe Nietzsche as having set out to justify a certain type of Nihilism but failed by his own admission to do so. Then I would say they could both be dismissed on the same grounds, but that's clearly not what happened.
So if usefulness is a reason to be interested in the veracity of a statement, that necessarily means that usefulness is not the same as veracity. Usefulness is merely what makes you interested whether a statement is true or not. So then the question naturally follows - what makes a statement true? I get that you become interested in its truth once you see how it is useful to you, but how do you find out about its truth-value?
Quoting Pseudonym
Please explain to me what you mean by "proven", since I don't understand what you're saying. I don't follow what it would take for a metaphysical statement to be 'proven' true.
Quoting Pseudonym
What is the problem with something being, at the time it is made, unfalsifiable? I thought that you, out of all people, who favour science over philosophy, would certainly realise that scientists do not follow Popper's vain philosophy - in fact, there have been numerous criticism of the latter amongst scientists. The Multiverse, for example, is not falsifiable at the time being. Should it be disconsidered? What about the multiple dimensions required by String theory? Or even Darwin's theory of evolution, who Karl Popper himself recognised is not scientific.
Quoting Pseudonym
Not knowing a word wasn't spelled correctly is different than not knowing the philosophical positions someone held to, and thinking they endorsed the OPPOSITE position of what they actually endorsed.
Quoting Pseudonym
The problem is that Hawking, most likely, did not read Epicurus at all. It's not that he has a poor reading of him - he has no reading whatsoever.
Hawking actually makes no argument against philosophy there. He just espouses his own view that models are valuable only in-so-far as they make predictions about the world. And he claims philosophy is dead. That's not enough.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, it doesn't follow from what I've been telling you. I don't know if neuroscience has anything valuable to say about ethics because I have not studied neuroscience. But I know that philosophy has some useful things to say, because I have studied philosophy. Therefore I can freely speak about ethics, what I cannot do is speak about whether neuroscience is capable or not to make contributions.
Quoting Pseudonym
What's there to engage with, with regards to Hawking for example? With regards to Hume, who said to commit metaphysics to the flames, there is a lot of possibility of engagement. He is making an argued position, but Hawking does not even understand what he is saying with regards to philosophy. He is not philosophically literate, how can he know philosophy is dead? That's ridiculous. He doesn't even know the most basic thing, which a first-year philosophy student can tell you, that Epicurus did not argue against materialism/atomism.
Quoting Pseudonym
No. That's not the point. You said:
Quoting Pseudonym
Now you're telling me that we should dismiss it if we test it with controlled trials and it proves false. Before, you told me that if it works for them personally, then we don't have much authority to dismiss it. Which is it? Clearly you can't have it both ways. Either we are able to determine something, or we're not, and it's up to each person what the truth is. There is no in-between here.
Quoting Pseudonym
It is not a trick. Clarifying what terms mean is important. I have no problem answering your questions. So there is no reason for you to hide behind this finger pointing. If you are not capable to answer the questions just tell us, it is okay.
Quoting Pseudonym
It means that I want you to clarify what sense a particular term or belief has. What are its truth conditions, how do you determine them, etc.
Quoting Pseudonym
Like the above.
Quoting Pseudonym
Questions are inquiries into something, a particular matter that, for whatever reason, we are interested in. We know we have answers when what is looked for in the question is found or understood. An answer is that piece of data which, when obtained, completes an inquiry or question. 5+x = 12. What is x? 7. What is the question? It is asking for what number completes the equation. How do we know we have the answer? By checking that it is a number, and by checking that when we add it to 5 we obtain 12. What is the answer? The number which can be placed instead of x.
Quoting Pseudonym
Absolutely :cool:
Quoting Pseudonym
No. An account is a reason to believe it. That it is not contradictory or incoherent is NO REASON whatsoever. It's not contradictory or incoherent that the sun will not rise tomorrow, or will disappear, etc. That's not reason to believe it.
Quoting Pseudonym
So then there isn't a reason not to make fun of scientism.
Quoting Pseudonym
I am quite sure that is a fallacy called rationalization. So if that's how you operate, I certainly recommend a change of operating system.
Quoting Pseudonym
This makes absolutely no sense. It is ridiculous. Look at it. Re-read it. Look at it seriously. When someone is deciding on their view they must decide also on what it is that they want. It's not like our wants are immediately given - most of the time we don't know very well what we want. The process of forming a world-view helps clarify this. So it is absolutely preposterous to say that reasons just justify a worldview that is chosen a priori - no. If you look how this happens, you will see that the reasons and desires arise simultaneously, as the result of investigation.
Quoting Pseudonym
How did you arrive at holding this belief? What was, phenomenologically, the process?
Quoting Pseudonym
No. I've asked you to suspend judgement with regards to a theoretical matter, not a practical one.
Take HIV testing. Let's say that you have had a possible exposure, so you do the test and it comes out negatively. Now two things ought to happen, rationally. On the one hand, from a practical point of view, you go on living as if you don't have HIV - meaning you don't suspend judgement, since that option is now significantly more likely. From a theoretical point of view though, you remain aware that sometimes the test really ought to be positive, but it comes out negative. So you keep an open mind - if in the future any circumstantial evidence comes up which could suggest HIV infection, in the absence of significantly more likely explanations, then you will redo the test. So theoretically, you do suspend judgement in such a situation.
With regards to metaphysical beliefs, they are theoretical in nature. You will not die by suspending judgement on this. Why wouldn't you? This isn't the same as the train example you give, etc. These are theoretical beliefs. If it really is true and you don't have a reason to prefer naturalism over Cartesian dualism, then you ought to suspend judgement. That's the natural thing to do.
Would it be fair to say that in making this claim, you reduce the history of philosophy and philosophical literature to analytic philosophy?
So do you think that Russel´s attempt to ground mathematics in formal logic, has contributed to our understanding of the world, even though it failed?
What I see happening here is somebody interpreting Nietzsche from a Logical Positivist perspective. Nietzsche did not claim that his philosophy rendered other philosophies false, as Nietzsche isn't concerned with notions of ´truth´ and ´falsity´. This is expressed quite clearly in Beyond Good and Evil: “We do not consider the falsity of a judgment as itself an objection to a judgment; this is perhaps where our new language will sound most foreign”.
There is nothing wrong with doing philosophy exclusively from a analytical perspective, though there does seem to be something wrong with projecting your own analytical perspective into philosophies such as Nietzsche. In any case, to stay on topic, reducing meaning to what is understood from a analytical perspective sounds like Scientism to me, since you express a opinion on Nietzsche, without making the effort to grasp his philosophy in his own terms. In my opinion, the derogatory meaning Scientism has to me is related to the closed-mindedness with which philosophy is approached. If you asked me something on Quine, I would be hesitant to make a statement as I dont feel like I grasp Quine in his own terms. I would not project my continental orientation onto Quine. You seem to be fine with making a claim on Nietzsche without grasping him in his own terms, which adds to the derogatory meaning Scientism has to me.
I agree, though Scientism does seem to leech on analytic philosophy. Figures such as Stephen Priest who do analytic philosophy, would not make the claims Scientism makes, yet Scientism seem to invoke analytic philosophy.
Check this very short essay about it:
https://philpapers.org/archive/PIGISA
Unfortunately Mariner, he is a philosopher, not a physicist :lol:
:lol: Sometimes one has to wonder how it is possible for seemingly learned people to uphold such ridiculous principles. However, I watched a debate between Rosenberg and W.L. Craig awhile ago, and in that interview Rosenberg kind of admitted that it is mostly an intellectual position he takes - so it's very possible that the book was written as a splash & marketing effort.
Quoting Agustino
You can't, not in the dedective sense you're thinking of. I'm talking about abductive reasoning. I believe that when Agustino tells me he has $100 in his pocket, he has $100 in his pocket. Agustino has just told me he has $100 in his pocket, therefore he has $100 in his pocket. If, on several occasions I find that after you've declared that you have $100 in your pocket, you in fact don't have, then my theory is no longer useful. The truth value of whether you actually have $100 in your pocket at any given time doesn't enter into it, it's simply an unknown. It's the theory that has a utility value, not the results it predicts.
I don't know. Its like asking what a Martian would look like and then claiming that I can't say I haven't seen one because I can't give a description of what it is I haven't seen. I haven't seen anything I would call a proof of a metaphysical theory. I know what isn't a proven metaphysical theory - one that perfectly intelligent people can provide rational reasons to disagree with for a start. That alone covers all of current metaphysics.
Quoting Agustino
Not enough for what?
Quoting Agustino
No, you think philosophy has some useful things to say. Peter Unger, a published professor of philosophy recently wrote a book detailing exactly how metaphysics says nothing at all of any value. He's definitely studied philosophy, so either he's lying, or you do not know the philosophy has some useful things to say because you have studied philosophy. You simply believe philosophy has some useful things to say and you have studied philosophy. The one did not cause the other, it was incidental to it.
Quoting Agustino
Then I have no argument with you on that score. So what would you say if I asked you whether ballroom dancing had any meaningful contribution to the study of ethics? Still sitting on the fence because you don't know anything about ballroom dancing? What about sewage engineering? Anything meaningful to contribute to epistemology? Still can't say because you don't know the intricacies of sewage engineering?
Quoting Agustino
Of course I can. The first theory is that eating grass cures cancer in that person, the second you are leaping to is that eating grass will cure cancer in other people. Two different theories. We've already tested the first. To test the second we'd need some other people.
Quoting Agustino
What do you mean by 'clarify'? What is the 'sense' of a term? What do you mean by 'truth conditions'? And what would constitute having 'determined' them?
Quoting Agustino
What is an 'inquiry'?
Quoting Agustino
What does it mean to 'find' what is looked for and how do we know it has been understood?
Quoting Agustino
OK, so what is a reason to believe something?
Quoting Agustino
I'm quite sure that's a fallacy called rationalization too, doesn't mean its not what everyone is doing nonetheless.
Quoting Agustino
You're presuming that people decide what they want. If they do, what criteria do they use to decide? What they want to want? then how do they decide that? What they want to want to want?
Quoting Agustino
Where do they come from then?
Quoting Agustino
And we're back the the SLX approach, no actual argument, no evidence brought forward, just 'look at it, re-read it' like the only reason you can think of that I might hold a different view to you is that I can't have looked at it properly. Are you even considering the possibility that you might not have looked at it properly?
Quoting Agustino
I can give an account if you like, but I think phenomenology is nothing but the study of the random stories our concious brain makes up to make sense of the disparate and often contradictory messages we receive from the various parts of the brain so I hold absolutely no useful information is contained there. My experience, however, goes something like - All the people I know who seem intelligent in areas I can judge also seem to believe that we evolved through a process of evolution through natural selection so I find myself drawn to that opinion, I check it is not utter nonsense against empirical observations and find it isn't, so I'm happy to hold that belief. I wonder how our brains work, philosopher disagree on just about every aspect of that question and I can't see any mechanism by which they could know in any way that could actually make useful predictions, so I turn to neuroscientists. I might first have a theory that I'm in charge, but find no reason why I should be (given the evolutionary theory earlier adopted) and no evidence of that in neuroscience. Again, I listen to people I trust developing theories I already seem drawn to like David Eagleman and Bruce Hood, they seem like they should know what they're talking about and have no reason to develop a theory which contradicts empirical observation, so I'm happy to adopt their theories for now.
Quoting Agustino
I know, but my instinctive brain doesn't, hence it wants me to decide.
Quoting Agustino
Why? What benefit is it to me to suspend judgement? I'm obviously not going to maintain my view in the face of empirical evidence or a model which better predicts the world, that's exactly the scientific approach I've adopted, so what possible benefit is it to me to suspend judgement, on what grounds do you determine that it's the 'natural' thing to do, and what exactly would someone whose suspending judgement sound like on a forum such as this? Do you read any comments which are suspending judgement about the question of whether philosophy has anything meaningful to say here?
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Do they sound like someone suspending judgement when faced with an opposing world-view?
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
? Friedrich Nietzsche
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
? Friedrich Nietzsche
“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
? Albert Camus
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
? Albert Camus
“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
? Jean-Paul Sartre
Sound like questions to you? They sound an awful lot like a series of propositions to me.
Quoting Nop
No, we act no differently now than we did before Principa Mathematica was even started. How can it possibly have contributed to our understanding of the world? Maths does exactly the same job now as it has always done. People still act as if maths were real, so the idea that it is founded in something is still around and new arguments have come about as to how that concept might be supported. Our ability to predict remains unchanged, our attitudes towards one another unaltered, I can't observe a single change that has happened in the world as a result of Russell's investigation. It's interesting, but the world would be no worse off without it.
Quoting Nop
So is the statement Quoting Nop
neither true nor false then? If so, why would we act in any way on it, what does reading it give us if it is neither true nor false?
Quoting Nop
And your opinion on, say, Rosenberg (a self-proclaimed Scientismist) is based on an effort to grasp his philosophy in it's own terms. Have you read his papers? Do you 'understand' them in their own terms? You seem quote happy nonetheless to reach the conclusion that Scientism approaches philosophy with "closed-mindedness". I'm curious as to how you think you can support that assessment after only a cursory look at the claims these people are making from your self-professed 'continental' perspective.
I did not say there are no propositions. I said you reduce the history of philosophy to propositions. Just like you now reduce Nietzsche and Sartre to propositions by using quote's out of context. It is possible to distill propositions from Nietzsche's and Sartre's texts. The phrase “There are no facts, only interpretations” is not a proposition, as Nietzsche did not make the claim that this phrase is 'true'. The whole point is that he is avoiding making a truthfull proposition. It is something else than a proposition, when you read the phase in the context of the book as a whole.
The Sartre quote is a proposition as Sartre is trying to say something which he believes to be 'true'. I could now find a quote of Foucault to show you that Foucault is more interested in questions than answers. But my point is not that there are more philosophers which are more interested in questions than answers. My point is that there are philosophers in the history of philosophy, which were not interested in proposing propositions. Of which Nietzsche was one.
So only practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge which can be translated into practice can contribute to our understanding of the world?
That is the question which Nietzsche asks when undermining the notion of 'truth'. Welcome to the difficulties of philosophy.
I have no idea who Rosenberg is. Did not say anything about him. I was talking about you and the statements you made in this threat, as I took you as a Scientism-ist.
And yet Hawking's claim "philosophy is dead" or Unger's claim that "philosophers proceed to write up these stories, and they’re under the impression that they’re saying something new and interesting about how it is about the world, when in fact this is all an illusion.", or when Rosenberg claims that "Science is the best tool to discover reality" ; these are propositions such that you could claim them to be false? What exactly is it about the context that you are using to divine whether a person is making a statement and claiming it to be 'true' or whether they are just... Whatever it is Nietzsche is doing... Making conversation?
Quoting Nop
Yes, how else will we know if it is 'understanding' and not just 'stuff we reckon'?
Quoting Nop
Nietzsche can't undermine a notion by asking a question, he can only undermine a notion by demonstrating it to be false. I don't undermine the notion that rain is wet just by saying "yes, but is it?".
Quoting Nop
I am, and we're back to the claims you made at the opening of your post. What is it that compels you to 'correct' my claims, which you've clearly taken to be truth claims (although I don't consider them to be) and yet when considering Nietzsche he is afforded the generous self-immunising status of one who is merely saying stuff, not actual propositions, so we can't point out how useless it is.
Fairly straightforward, if Hawking claims that he is making a true proposition, I take him at his word. If Nietzsche is claiming that he is not concerned with 'truth' and 'falsity', I take him at his word.
That depends on what you mean by understanding. I suppose understanding to you means something like correspondence with reality. Then yes, you are right (as you always are if you think exclusively from your own perspective). Though Nietzsche rejects correspondence theories (he has a different perspective, a thing which Scientism finds hard to grasp in general).
From your Logical Positivist perspective, I suppose that is true. Though Genealogy is not Logical Positivism. Lets replace the example you used to clarify: if Nietzsche questions the justificational force associated with the notion 'truth', showing its contingents roots in history, he problematizes the justificational force associated with the notion 'truth' as being self-evident. Thus, asking a question using Genealogy can undermine at the very least the self-evident nature of a notion, which problematizes the notion in general.
Again, you are exemplifying what Scientism means to me. You think from a Logical Positivist perspective, have not invested serious time into understanding Nietzsche and Genealogy in general, yet make bold claims about Nietzsche. When he is doing something (asking Genological questions) that doesn't fit in your own perspective, you say that "Nietzsche can't".
No, you simply don't know what you're talking about at this point. Finding the truth value of a statement requires observation of the world primarily, and has little to do with deductive, inductive, or abductive reasoning. Those get started based on other truths that you know.
Quoting Pseudonym
You're just telling me about how to rationally make use of beliefs - you're telling me nothing about how to find out if I have $100 in my wallet. One way is to take my wallet and look into it - ever thought about that?
Quoting Pseudonym
If you're looking for something, you must know what you are looking for, otherwise even if you find it you will not know that you have found it. So this needs to be settled. If I am looking for a Martian, I know what I am looking for - I am looking at minimum for a living creature from the planet Mars.
So don't blame me for your own inability to form a concept of what truth would be in regards to metaphysical theories. That's your own inability to even form a concept of it, no wonder you can't find it, when you don't even know what it is you're looking for! My God! How could you even find it?
Quoting Pseudonym
Not enough to prove philosophy is dead.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, I maintain that I know that.
Quoting Pseudonym
Oh reallllyyyy? I've read some of Unger's work and I don't remember him being a Positivist.
Quoting Pseudonym
I have no a priori reason to believe that ballroom dancing can provide a meaningful contribution to ethics. But neuroscience being the study of the mind, and the mind being absolutely central to ethical concerns (when someone feels pain, etc.), then I am not sure that neuroscience may not provide contributions.
Quoting Pseudonym
If you think that means we have tested it, then you don't understand what testing something means scientifically.
Quoting Pseudonym
I can answer all these questions, but you're not serious anymore. So I won't bother. You clearly are running out of meaningful things to say, and so you resort to this pretence of an engagement with what is being said to you.
Quoting Pseudonym
So presumably you are aware that you are engaged in this fallacy. Why don't you stop then? If you are aware, you can stop. You can say, I will stop with these stupid rationalizations, regardless of what other people are doing, and I will suspend judgement, because I know no better. That's the honest thing to do in your situation.
Quoting Pseudonym
A whole host of criteria. One simple criteria is that they feel hungry and they want to eradicate the pain of hunger, so they want to eat. And so on.
Quoting Pseudonym
From our biology, from our psychology, from our understanding - all these places.
Quoting Pseudonym
Sure, unlike you I am considering that possibility. I haven't seen you consider that possibility. In fact, you recognise that you have no reason to be a naturalist over and above a Cartesian Dualist, but yet, lo and behold, you stick blindly with one of them.
Quoting Pseudonym
This "random" story is quite coherent, that's why you're capable to have goals, pursue them, and fulfil them most of the time. If you want to find food, you know to go look in the fridge. So it's not a "random" story at all. You really should think more about what you are saying.
Quoting Pseudonym
Accepting evolution has almost zero to do with naturalism. You can be a theist and accept evolution. Also accepting evolution has nothing to do with believing in freedom or in strict determinism.
Quoting Pseudonym
So can't you disobey? You are aware of it, so this isn't a reflex that you cannot stop, the way if I hit your knee with a hammer you cannot but move your leg. So you are aware of it. You are aware that you are doing something irrational and are engaged in a logical fallacy. So stop it.
Quoting Pseudonym
You'd be more rational to begin with?
Quoting Pseudonym
:rofl: - for real? Until now you were telling me that your instinctive brain forces you to accept it. So now you've dropped that ridiculous theory?
Quoting Pseudonym
Sure, that's what happens when I read Sextus Empiricus for example.
Quoting Pseudonym
No, YOU should suspend judgement because you claim that you have no way to distinguish the truth of metaphysical propositions. I don't make that claim, so I am under no obligation to suspend judgement, since I affirm that I can determine the truth of metaphysical propositions.
Well that didn't take long did it, we're back to just insulting your opponent's intelligence - "You don't know what you're talking about"..."No you don't"..."No you don't". I'm not wasting my time on this type of playground argument.
Quoting Agustino
No, because you still need a theory which ties you subjective experience of those observations to the objective reality you posit exists.
Quoting Agustino
Firstly, I'm in England, bit tricky to look in your wallet. Secondly, as above I'd still need a theory which tied my subjective experience of seeing $100 dollar to my proposition that $100 existed in objective reality. Have you never heard of optical illusions? Seeing the $100 would put me in exactly the same situation as I described. I would have toa priori hold a theory about the relationship between my observations and reality, therefore conclude a 'truth' resulting from both my actual observation coupled with my theory about how such observations relate to reality. There is no way to access reality directly other then through theories which model it.
Quoting Agustino
You can't observe that a creature is from Mars, you have to infer that fact. So how do you infer such a fact when you don't know what features would indicate that a thing is from Mars?
Quoting Agustino
No, well done, I just made that up, but you caught me out, nice work Sherlock! Google 'Empty Ideas'.
Quoting Agustino
Are you seriously suggesting that your opinion about ballroom dancing is a priori?
Quoting Agustino
I never said I was testing it scientifically, that's the whole point.
Quoting Agustino
Nice cop out.
Quoting Agustino
"Man can do whatever he wills, but he cannot will what he wills"
Quoting Agustino
So did they want to be hungry?
Quoting Agustino
I have a perfectly good reason to be a Naturalist over a Cartesian Dualist. I like Naturalism.
Quoting Agustino
Back to the insults again. Read David Eagleman, Bruce Hood, Vilynor Ramachandran .. basically any neuroscientists or modern psychologist, then come back and discuss whether the stories our concious brain makes up are actually coherent. You don't even see half the world, your peripheral vision is actually black and white (your brain just makes up the colours), stuff can happen right before your eyes and your brain just blanks it out if it wasn't expecting it, your memories can be manipulated and even implanted just by suggestion, self-reports of just about any sensation you care to mention are universally shown to be inaccurate. Your brain is just making this all up.
Quoting Agustino
Have you read anything I've written? I'm not claiming that any set of empirical data 'proves' any metaphysical position. Of course you can be theist and believe in evolution. You can twist any set of evidence to support any metaphysical position, that's the point of what I've been saying all along. No metaphysical position can be demonstrated to be better than any other, no evidence can be brought which cannot also be twisted to support the other argument, no logic can be applied for which there is no counter-argument, nothing whatsoever can be done to demonstrate that one metaphysical position is better then another, only the arguments for them can be improved, but never defeated.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, that's right. Again, I advise you take a look at literally any psychological experiment ever.
Quoting Agustino
And what benefit would that bring me?
Quoting Agustino
No, I said 'wants', not 'forces'.
Quoting Agustino
Well, that's settled then. If you have some magic way of determining the truth of metaphysical propositions, then its pointless discussing them with you isn't, just use your magic and tell us all what's right and what's wrong. Do you seriously think you're more capable than Kant, Hume, Strawson, Wittgenstein, Russell, Unger, Carnap, all of whom vehemently disagree with each other about the very propositions you're claiming to have worked out the truth of?
Well, that's very magnanimous of you. If Hawking claims he's making a truth statement, I take it to be brave attempt to further our understanding, If Nietzsche claims he's not interested in Truth or falsity, I tend to think he's talking rubbish in order to immunise himself form criticism so he can spout whatever garbage comes into his head and not have to worry about whether it's actually true or not. But maybe I'm just cynical.
Quoting Nop
Interesting, How exactly does he reject correspondence theories if he's not interested in truth and falsity. Does he reject them because he doesn't like them much?
Quoting Nop
No, he only does that with the answer to his question, not the question. He presumes that the question is a valid one, otherwise it is again like me asking if the speed of light really is 299,792,458 m/s. I don't undermine anything by asking. But ultimately, I have no problem with the idea that there is no such thing as 'Truth'. If you read the rest of my posts, that's exactly what I've been saying. It's the idea that some philosopher truthfully has something meaningful to say that I'm arguing against. The statement that all philosophy is just empty ideas is either a perfectly reasonable statement to make, or it is you who are claiming some 'truth' value. The 'truth' that philosophy in fact does have something meaningful to say.
All I've evr tried to argue in this whole post is that the idea that philosophy does not have anything meaningful to say, that no philosophical position can be shown to be 'better' than any other, is a reasonable position, not that it's true. It's everyone else who are arguing that the position is not even a reasonable one, that the meaningfulness of philosophy is such a verifiable 'true' fact that it is not even possible to hold the opinion that it isn't and remain rational.
Quoting Nop
So have you read all of Alex Rosenberg's works? Peter Unger?, JJ Smart? Yet you seem quite happy to cast aspersions about what Scientism is, what it can and cannot grasp, the intentions and limitations of its proponents.
Nobody can force you to do philosophy that falls outside of Logical Positivism. And nobody can force you to invest time into understanding the position you are attacking. Thus, the discussion on Nietzsche becomes a dead-end, as we are not talking about the same Nietszche.
Yes, as Nietzsche wrote: ¨I shall abandon correspondence theories, as I dont like them much¨. It seems you have invested more time into Nietzsche than I thought, my apologies. Back on a serious note: Nietzsche rejects the value of certain notions, not based on the fact that they are false, but on the idea that they are dangerous to human flourishing. But I dont see how me explaining Nietzsche to you is helping this discussion.
Then you reject the method of Genealogy, which deals with questions to undermine the self-evident associations related to certain notions. And that is fine, you can reject Genealogy based on the idea that you believe questions cannot undermine anything. Yet this does exemplify what I understand to be Scientism, and why to me, it has a degoratory sense. Namely, because you have decided what is meaningful to you (critera you adopted from Logical Positivism) and refuse to see things from any other perspective. It is, in a sense, like clinging onto a language game (and one that hasn't been taken seriously in academic philosophy in a long time).
I have no idea who those people are. As I said, right now I am only reacting to what you are saying, who I take to be a Scientism-ist.
You've mistaken my position, and that of the Logical Positivists for that matter. The claim, that this bulk of philosophical statements are meaningless, is not made on the grounds of having looked for some meaningful statements and found none. Were it made on those grounds you could justifiably say "well you haven't looked here, or you haven't understood the meaning here" and make the claim that we should read Nietzsche (or do so again, but more charitably). But that's not the argument that's being made. The argument is that philosophy, simply by virtue of it's means of investigation, cannot say anything meaningful in that way. This claim does not require anyone to read or understand the results of those investigations, the argument is not about the result, the argument is about the means. As I said to Agustino, you do not need to know anything about the pronouncements of ballroom dancing judges to know that it doesn't have anything meaningful to say about ethics. You can argue that it has nothing meaningful to say about ethics simply on the grounds that examining a couple's dancing and comparing that to a series of 'perfect' set moves with an added element of innovation will not yield any meaningful information about ethics. You do not need to know or understand the information it actually does yield in order to make this judgement.
So Logical Positivists (or rather their descendants) are making the claim that the methods of philosophical investigation are such that in most contexts it can yield no meaningful statements. You feel quite at liberty to dismiss that proposition in derogatory terms despite that fact that you admit to not having read any of the arguments which support it, and yet you demand that anyone making the proposition not only read all the arguments against it, but all the results of the investigations which took place under the presumption that the proposition is false.
This is like demanding that someone who wishes to make the claim that the astrology is meaningless read, not only all the arguments of astrologers, but all the star-sign predictions that have been written presuming astrology is true, all the while allowing that the astrologers demean normal predictive sciences without having read anything about them.
When faced with this kind of argument, philosophers always seem to retreat to the "meaningful to the individual" position - the one you're taking now. That I'm falsely determining that because it's not meaningful to me, by my criteria, it's not meaningful objectively. They claim that because philosophy might be meaningful to someone, it is therefore valid. This is all very well, but then philosophy cannot have it's cake and eat it. If the claim is that a text must only be meaningful to someone, in order to be taken seriously, then Harry Potter is a work of philosophy, lots of people find the struggle written there meaningful, especially school kids dealing with the same issues on a less fantastical scale. But when it comes to entry to, and discussion of, the philosophical canon, philosophy reverses it's subjective "meaning to someone" definition and tries to hold an objective "this is good, this is bad" position. It cannot be both. Either arguments are good or bad based on objective criteria (in which case it is possible to critique those criteria without having to read all the arguments based on them) or it is not good or bad at all and no meaningful discussion can take place on those grounds.
It is exactly the same argument. Logicial Positivsm accuses philosophical works of being meaningless, on the grounds that it doesn't meet the verification principle. Thus, Logicial Positivsm assumes criteria regarding meaning, and subsequently simply employs it. Everything that doesn't meet the verification principle, is meaningless.
You are doing the same. You assume criteria regarding meaning, and reject Nietzsche on the grounds that he doesn't meet your criteria (and to make things worse, all this without actually reading him). It is closed-minded. You have decided in advance what you assume to be meaningful, and subsequently only employ that assumption. The closed-mindedness of Logicial Positivsm is exactly the same as your Scientism.
Do you honestly think comparing the capacity of ballroom dancing judges to say something meaningful regarding ethics, with philosophy, the discipline that has invented contemplation on ethics, is a useful comparison?
Couple of points here:
(1) Not sure why you attribute this to me, but I have not said I did not read any of the arguments which support Logical Positivism. To be precise, I have invested time into Carnap and Schlick, so we could go into their arguments supporting Logical Positivism if you like.
(2) Nietzsche did not presume that Logical Positivism is false. Logical Positivism emerged around 1920. Nietzsche died in 1900.
(3) I am not assuming Logical Positivism is false, I understand that it is false. One of the key principles of Logical Positivsm was the analytic/synthetic gap. If you read ¨Two Dogmas of Empiricism¨ by Quine, you see that the distinction is untenable.
And I am sorry to say, but the fact you are not aware that since Quine, Logical Positivism is untenable, only shows how you have a big opinion on something you have invested little time in. Its what you read and learn in any first year bachelor of philosophy.
Philosophy is a academic discipline. Which text must be taken seriously is not only decided by the individual (i.e. you want to take Harry Potter seriously), you are also bound to the language game (in a Wittgensteinian sense) of the discipline. You presume there are only two kinds of critera: subjective and objective. I want to introduce Wittgenstein here, but I am afraid you are unaware of how, at least in acadamic philosophy, Wittgenstein replaced the subjective objective distinction when it comes to meaning, and that I will become trapped in explaining Wittgenstein and its current hold on philosophy to you.
Either means that the Scientist can track their physical Statement WORLD3 back to the physical world WORLD1 which is the causal agency AT the creation of WORLD3 which is all that is perceivably manmade in this respect, which is mostly the written word, the statement.
The Scientist REJECTS any attributation of "causal agency" to the "world-of-thoughts" WORLD2 which is nothing else than the properties of matter.
The properties of matter are mere illusions. It is only KANT who akknowledged, that "space" and "time" are illusions - unfortunately he did NOT akknowledge that "space" (volume OF matter that is) and "time" (age of matter FROM a change that is) are nothing else than properties of matter, together with a lot more other properties of matter, like mass and energy. I am the author of the listing which summarizes the properties of matter in 4 lines. Nobody will find this listing ANYWHERE.
WORLD2 = mere inside-brain effects-, perception-hoods, thoughts-, awareness-, consciousness-, Knowledge-, concepts-, descriptions-, properties- = subjective truths- = opinions-, epiphaenomena- = illusions-,
ON-, OF-, obtained/acquired FROM-, ABOUT-
outside-brain causal agency aka Facts; the physical; object[IVE Template outside the brain], matter, the cosmos.
WORLD2 is comprised of
1)ALL sensations, emotions, values, necessities, purposes, wills
2)ALL numbers, constants, parameters in the language of mathematics and physics,
mass, distance, area, space, time, velocity, acceleration, force, pressure, power, energy, temperature
3)ALL laws, of legislature, of logic, of morality, of physics
4)ALL those and ONLY those G-Ds we DO [mean to] know, like YHWH, J(the)C and Allah.
Scientific method: Accepts that you cannot demonstrate a causal agency of ANY of the Elements of WORLD2 as listed above.
Religious method: Claims that at least certain Elements of WORLD2 -
A)be entities in independent existence outside the brain rather than fabricated inside the brain
B)be causal agencies
Why do you accuse Logical Positivism of 'assuming' criteria regarding meaning. I think positivists over the years have written a quite some length detailing the exact argument as to why they consider that meaning is only present in verifiable statements. They haven't just 'assumed' it.
Quoting Nop
As above, I haven't just 'assumed' it, I've asserted it with some arguments outlined here, but mostly off the back of the work done by modern positivists, none of whom you seem to have even heard of (let alone read) but all of whose conclusions you seem nonetheless willing to dismiss, not only as wrong, but as so wrong as to be deserving of derision.
Let me be clear so we don't keep going round in circles.
Positivists argue (by substantial logical argument) that we do not need to know the content of a philosophical work in order to determine its meaningfulness, we only need to know the methods by which it has been derived.
You (and philosophers like you, I'm not sure if there's a collective term) argue, with equally substantial logical (or otherwise persuasive) arguments that one cannot tell the meaningfulness of a philosophical work by its method alone, one must analyse its content.
Two different positions, both supported by logical (or otherwise persuasive) arguments, both supported by a wide base of epistemic peers.
I'm persuaded by the first position, you are persuaded by the second. The difference, which I am struggling in this thread to understand, is that you don't just disagree with the first position, you treat it (and those who agree with it) with derision. Why?
Quoting Nop
Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have made the point. You are begging the question by already presuming a position on ethics (that it is not naturally occuring) and that philosophy has generated that position (as opposed to simply reporting it). Without those presumptions you would have to demonstrate that philosophy has actually contributed to the normative function of ethics before you can raise you own personal incredulity to the level of actual evidence.
The people on this forum are so arrogant when it comes to repeating the received wisdom of popular philosophy as if it were fact and then presuming anyone who disagrees with popular opinion must be ignorant, it beggars belief for a group of people supposedly striving for open-mindedness. Have you read Michael Friedman, JJ Smart, Crispin Wright, David Wiggins, Pete Unger... All of whom disagree to varying degrees with Quine's conclusion that you think was so irrefutable. It may well be what you learn at bachelor level, try reading about what you learn at doctoral level, you'll find it's rarely that simple.
First, I’ll rephrase the questions as following: Why is scientism used as a pejorative term, what metaphysical position is this pejorative term aimed at and what reasonable arguments can be made against this metaphysical position?
Why is ‘scientism’ used as a pejorative term?
First, scientism is used as a pejorative term because it was coined as such. It started out as a criticism of someone else’s metaphysical position, not describing someone’s own. Second, from a psychological point of view it is not surprising that a metaphysical position that is asserted by some of its proponents in a way to fundamentally challenge and exclude any other metaphysical position can be perceived as a provocation and cause an emotional response. So can these other metaphysical positions, this alone should not be enough to justify the use of a pejorative term.
What metaphysical position is this pejorative term aimed at?
It has been argued here that the metaphysical position in question is that scientific method is the only possible way of reaching certainty. One argumentation that has been made for it, as far as I understand it, is that all metaphysical positions are accidental, but one happens to coincide with objective reality. For evolutionary reasons, someone was bound to accidentally come up with a metaphysical position coinciding with objective reality, and someone is bound to accidentally adopt it. This metaphysical position could probably be called physicalist, so there would be no need to use the term scientism in either a pejorative or defiant way.
However, as far as I can see the use of the term scientism is often not aimed at a particular metaphysical position itself but rather at statements and conclusions based on it, as well as supposed motivations for adopting it. So the point in question isn’t whether any metaphysical position is more valuable or factually true than another. While the criticism does often seem to be partly caused by an emotional response, as the use of a pejorative indicates, that does not necessarily mean it is unjustified.
So I would propose that both the reason for the use of a pejorative, and the difference between scientism and, for example, physicalism, is that the former designates a metaphysical position and the latter designates invalid conclusions or rationalizations reached through holding this metaphysical position. To answer the question in the thread title, scientism is not a particular metaphysical position but a particular set of actions based on a particular metaphysical position.
What reasonable arguments can be made against this metaphysical position?
The arguments I am aware of either criticize statements and conclusions based on it from a methodological point of view, or motivations for adopting it from a psychological point of view.
From a methodological point of view, the line dividing physicalism from scientism would be crossed once the metaphysical position interferes with scientific convention. I here postulate scientific convention to be right from a functional point of view because it has shown to lead to fairly accurate predictions and consistent results within its field. For example, scientific convention proposes X cannot be proved or disproved by scientific methods, period. Physicalism proposes X cannot be proved or disproved by scientific methods, therefore it does not exist. It is however not the metaphysical position that is scientism here, but the refusal to suspend it in favour of scientific practice, just as any theist would need to suspend his metaphysical position in favour of scientific practice.
A common criticism against scientism is that it declares whole areas of empirical experience as illusory and whole areas of knowledge as irrelevant on the grounds that they cannot be proved or disproved by scientific methods. It is a nice twist that it thereby also declares its own metaphysical position to be illusory or irrelevant on the same grounds, which either accidentally or intentionally makes it unassailable. This may be one reason why physicalism is prone to scientism, as it assumes either that metaphysical positions do not influence the results of scientific experiment and are therefore irrelevant, or that since its own metaphysical position accidentally coincides with objective reality it therefore does not interfere, so in either case it does not need to be scrutinized.
While a metaphysical position does not change the scientific facts, it might determine what scientific facts are found and how they are interpreted by influencing the formulation of the theory, the choice of method, the set-up of the experiment, the interpretation of the data and so on. But even supposing all scientific facts can be found regardless of or unaffected by the assumed metaphysical position, then it does not follow why any metaphysical position should be given up, either scientism, or for example theism. As long as everybody sticks to scientific method, a diversity of metaphysical positions might only get the job done sooner, which in turn would confirm the practical usefulness of metaphysical positions other than physicalism.
From a psychological point of view, it would depend on how important a belief in the validity of science is to the structure of an individual’s personality. The line dividing science from scientism would be crossed once a refutation of the universal and exclusive validity of science is perceived as a threat to one’s own psychical integrity. In this case it would serve the function of an ersatz religion. It turns the fundamental uncertainties shown by science – that we cannot fully trust our senses, that we cannot fully control our actions – into metaphysical certainties – that we cannot trust our senses at all, that we cannot control our actions at all, except through scientific method. Paradoxically, uncertainty and reserving judgment are the very virtues of scientific method.
That certainty might be a psychological need could be explained on biological terms, for example that it is necessary to survival to be certain a given plant is edible. To presume scientism is adopted as an ersatz religion does not contradict its own assumption that the adoption of metaphysical positions is accidental and biologically determined. If the motivation for adopting scientism is a psychological need for certainty or inability to tolerate uncertainty, then maybe this explains why it is associated with materialist metaphysical positions. In practice, theist scientists seem to be more comfortable in keeping science and belief separate than atheist scientists. Maybe this is because, supposing metaphysical certainty is a psychological need, then religion satisfies this need for religious scientists, while atheist scientists expect science to satisfy it.
If I had to pick, I'd argue mathematics, which is what all theories, scientific or otherwise are presumably constructed from to begin with, Bacon's method never being a "pure" science in the sense that mathematics is, as well as being a relatively short-lived one, having only be around in its modern incarnation since the 17th century, while mathematics has been around and developed as a field since the ancient Greeks, if not before.
I agree that the scientific method (properly construed) is the best way of telling facts about the world, but there are a whole bunch of fields that are not in the business of trying to do that. Mathematics, much of linguistics, all of the arts, philosophy, and what I would call the ethical sciences, or ethics more generally; never mind all of the trades...
1) It presumes that current scientific knowledge is just about complete, so anything not currently confirmed by science is a probably a detail or footnote at best and can otherwise be ruled non-existent.
2) It assumes there will be no upcoming paradigmatic shifts
3) It does not realize that the term 'physical' is an expanding term, meaning it now covers not only more 'things' but that these things need not have qualities that physical indicated earlier and may have qualities that were not indicated early by that term. IOW it means things/processes now considered real in science, and does not weigh in on substance. It's actually a poor term, now.
4) Those who I would class as believing in scientism act as if all their beliefs are based on scientific research. But this simply cannot be the case. They, like everyone else, have beliefs based on intuition, for example, and they act on these beliefs in the world in ways that affect other people. Note: I am not saying here that science is really just intuition. I am talking about what it means to be human, in situ, in life. We not only have to do this, it is good that we do this. So, it not only a false presentation of oneself in relation to others, but actually it would be a bad idea if they even could live up to it.
5) Those I would class this way to not seem to conflate technology with science, and tend not to be skeptical at all about technological changes. IOW they will often also hurl the term Luddite at people and consider their skepticism about specific technological advances and 'advances' as emotional at base and thus dismissable. This could be anything from gm products, to nanotech, to AI, to more specific applications, to the social and even physical effects of cellphone technology. There is no possible way that industry could be, in their minds, controlling the information related to harm and potential harm. That is they conflate scientific epistemology with what actually happens in the world where power and influence come into play. There is also a kind of if it can be done, it should be done.
6) any good scientist will be aware of uses of and importance of ecological/system effects and interaction the uses of and importance of using reductionistic thinking. Scientism is when the awareness of systems, side effects, interactions, problems of tracking effects, emergent properties etc. are low. Those people have a poor philosophial understanding of such things. Speaking mainly metaphorically they are Newtonian and have blinders even when dealing with extremely complex systems, like brains or ecological systems, say. They think they can get in there and tweak much as we can with a car, a car being a machine we built for specific purposes and something vastly simpler.
I would say that in forums like this one gets a taste of scientism when one finds a team mentality. If one's post seems to perhaps indicate a belief in something not confirmed by science then it is attacked in a category way, rather than in a point for point way. All a post has to do is remind the other poster of something he or she considers unscientific and the battle is on. Of course this attitude (an us vs. them attitude is not restricted to scientism-ists, but is held by -ists of all types.
IOW the goal is to win, not explore, and there is a reaction to apparant opposition rather than a more nuanced reading and response. Ad homs and dismissals without argument can also be portions of this.
And I suppose may be necessary to say that none of this is a criticism of science, nor is it intended to be in the slightest.
Scientism is similar to positivism. Some well known scientists: Dawkins, S. Harris, De Waal, Th. Huxley...
Its greatest contradiction: it is a philosophical position that states that all philosophy is invalid.