Deleted UserFebruary 01, 2019 at 17:0010925 views116 comments
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Deleted UserFebruary 01, 2019 at 17:23#2522350 likes
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karl stoneFebruary 01, 2019 at 17:28#2522370 likes
In the UK Houses of Parliament they have a register of member's interests - such that any potential biases MP's bring to the debate are known to others. Perhaps that might be a good practice for philosophers.
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karl stoneFebruary 01, 2019 at 18:50#2522710 likes
...using the computer that science derived from mathematical reason, and built using ever more sophisticated engineering techniques. Is your computer imaginary? Does it work on ideas that are just made up? Or must there be a truth relation between scientific knowledge and reality - because technology based on scientific understanding works?
Science works because it's true, right? So it's not just made up, is it? So why would you say that? I'm just asking you to be honest about where you're coming from on this.
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Every idea has a postulate. When the postulates don't apply the idea becomes wrong or irelivent. Science has two postulats I know of. One. what we observe is what is true. Two. Everything has an explanation that can be rooted in previously known science. More postulates are required to explain anything.
karl stoneFebruary 02, 2019 at 00:52#2523610 likes
Computers are built, right? Science works in the same way, knowledge keeps building up, and you build a structure. And it will make sense to you, and it will work, because that's how structures work. Unless it's a poor one. I'm not saying all science is bad, just that people treat it more like a religion. The problem is the way it's applied.
But science isn't "just built up." Science proceeds by tearing down what's proven wrong, to rebuild what's right. It's a method of doubt, as opposed - I suspect, to your method of faith. You're taking pot shots at science for God, are you not?
ChristofferFebruary 02, 2019 at 01:14#2523690 likes
Science also features discovery and exploration that can end up creating new fields. Philosophy is not the only thing that "creates" new fields, it can happen organically.
ChristofferFebruary 02, 2019 at 01:16#2523700 likes
I'm not saying all science is bad, just that people treat it more like a religion.
Only those who do not know what science is or what the scientific process and its methods are would treat it like a religion. On both sides, those who criticize it and those who believe too strongly in it. It is what it is and it's the best way for us to arrive at new knowledge detached from human corruption. It's the closest we have to arrive at "truths".
Science is nothing more than the gradual progress and discoveries based on previous work, and we can describe the source of our current understanding of science as the product of a collective mind of scientists working together, but in different timelines. Albert Einstein did not come up with relativity from scratch, the concept of time was already there. Isaac Newton based his absolute space and time theory on top of Johannes Kepler’s work, and so on.
My point is that we mostly make up knowledge, then build it up, rather than discovering it.
That is essentially the argument of constructivism. The notion of "discovering" knowledge is certainly at least skewed. But where do you want to go from here?
What if you start from the wrong idea? You would be just building a structure, and it will make sense to you because that how structures function. How would you know if you are wrong?
You would know if the structure did not do what you expected it to do. When you learn to walk, you make it up as you go along. You can organize your limbs any way you like, but not all ways get you anywhere.
Science is generally good, but people treat it as a religion nowadays
I think you may be confusing science and metaphysical realism. Anyways how people treat something tells us about the people. Is this a thread about science or about people?
But science isn't "just built up." Science proceeds by tearing down what's proven wrong, to rebuild what's right. It's a method of doubt, as opposed - I suspect, to your method of faith
An example is the idea, the presupposition, that every event has a cause (which apparently was Kant's presupposition, and was not held by Newton or by modern science).
Did Kant presuppose that? I suppose he might, but his argument had the form "if there is only natural causation, then". And the experience of causality exists.
TheMadFoolFebruary 02, 2019 at 07:53#2524350 likes
Reply to bogdan9310 Everything has problems. Nothing is perfect. If there's anything good in science, it's falsifiability and if there's anything bad it's falsifiability.
The primary mission is to get to the truth but one can't hope to do that without an error detection system in place (falsifiability) but that makes all scientific truths provisional and subject to modify/delete.
It's like the tragic Greek demi-god, his flaw is his appeal and also the cause of his donwnfall.
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Reply to bogdan9310 one. This is why we test the ideas or imputations, two you missed the point. Science only works as long as it's postules do. If you start with a different set of postules you would get different answers. So science is just as logically valid as magic. It just has more approval.
I don't want to take down science, and I am an atheist. Just pointing out some of its obvious flaws. People treat science like a religion nowadays, and use it in arguments to back them up, even if they don't know why.
Science is several things:
it's an epistemology: a philosophy of knowledge.
it's a method: the scientific method of testing hypotheses with reference to evidence.
It's a practice: conducting scientific experiments.
and it's a conception of reality: an increasingly valid and coherent worldview.
So everything you said in your opening post is wrong - so much so that you come across as a religious person seeking to undermine science to maintain religious belief, and not at all like someone who understands science such that they could point out its "obvious flaws."
Here's an obvious flaw with what you've said. Atheism is not a scientific conclusion. The scientifically correct position on the God hypothesis is agnosticism, not atheism. It's 'I don't know.' There's insufficient reliable evidence to test the hypothesis. The questions 'what are we able to know?' and 'how are we able to know it?' are what epistemology is all about - and scientific method is the world's best answer to those questions.
The scientifically correct position on the God hypothesis is agnosticism, not atheism.
If we are taking about empirical science then I think the scientifically correct position on God is atheism. God is not part of any scientific theory of the universe, so it doesn't exist.
It ever seems to me that the more closely you look at something - anything - the less it is, or appears to be, what you first thought it was.
Good point. One explanation is that all definitions are inherently flawed given that they are built upon a process of division which doesn't exist in the real world.
We look at a tree, and it seems obvious what it is. And the standard definition has it's uses of course. But we don't see the gas exchanges happening around the tree, the sunlight triggering photosynthesis, the roots underground, the insect and microbe populations which are essential to the tree etc. That is, we see a separate distinct "thing" and not the larger system it is a part of.
If we don't look closely, a tree is an object. Simple, easy, useful.
If we do look closely there is no object, in the sense of being separate and divided from other objects.
Reply to Echarmion but that is circular reasoning resoning. It is true that science is useful but if you going to say it's the more useful without a comparison it creates a feed back loop.
but that is circular reasoning resoning. It is true that science is useful but if you going to say it's the more useful without a comparison it creates a feed back loop.
Oh, I see. But other methods, e.g. magic, do not work as well for the same purpose.
You could make a general argument that what is "more useful" is entirely subjective. But the scientific method is still what we should be using if we want to answer questions about experienced reality.
Reply to Echarmion yes more useful is subjective base on the goal. We have to remember it was not science that gave us gunpowder and the printing press that was alchemy. It was also not modern science that gave us modern medicine that was christianity. If the goal of science is to find the truth, how can it without excepting all the parts.
Secondly we don't know if magic is good or not because as science became more popular it led to more discoverys wich made it more popular leading to more research in it wich made it more discoverys. It then became a run away sinario. It became popular because of the cristians than people cut its ties to christianity. Again it is not using all the parts.
We have to remember it was not science that gave us gunpowder and the printing press that was alchemy. It was also not modern science that gave us modern medicine that was christianity
Are "Alchemy" and "Christianity" methods? If so, how do they work?
If the goal of science is to find the truth, how can it without excepting all the parts.
Is the goal of science to "find the truth"? What truth do you mean? Science makes predictions about observable reality. Whether or not you think these predictions are "truth" doesn't change the fact that they work, and that is all that matters for the purpose of science.
Secondly we don't know if magic is good or not because as science became more popular it led to more discoverys wich made it more popular leading to more research in it wich made it more discoverys. It then became a run away sinario. It became popular because of the cristians than people cut its ties to christianity. Again it is not using all the parts.
So science became popular because it works. Which begs then question: if there are other methods that work, why aren't they popular? You're welcome to try "magic". I am sure people will be interested if it works.
karl stoneFebruary 02, 2019 at 17:52#2525140 likes
If we are taking about empirical science then I think the scientifically correct position on God is atheism. God is not part of any scientific theory of the universe, so it doesn't exist.
I disagree. Given a scientific understanding of the universe - there's sufficient reason to form a God hypothesis. Logically, there's first cause, and physically, there's the fine tuning argument - neither of which constitute proof, but are certainly sufficient to support a God hypothesis. If you would entertain ideas like multiple universes, or the universe as a computer simulation - ruling out the idea of an intelligent, intentional cause is a double standard.
The fact is we don't know. No-one knows if God exists or not. Admitting what we do and do not know is important, because the really interesting thing that follows from such an admission is that, if there is a God - then science is effectively the word of God made manifest in Creation, and through discovering and being responsible to scientific truth, we can secure a sustainable future, and survive in the universe - maybe long enough to find out.
Adhering to the faith that there is a God, the human species is doomed - for faith undermines reason, denies a scientific conception of reality its rightful authority, and sets one faith group against another. As a tool of pre-scientific, religious and political ideology, science gives us the power to destroy the world, but denies us the reason to save it.
Harry HinduFebruary 02, 2019 at 17:56#2525150 likes
My point is that we mostly make up knowledge, then build it up, rather than discovering it.
You're forgetting about observation. How does any human form knowledge without observation? Observation is an aspect of science. All in all, philosophy is a science. The conclusions reached in one domain of knowledge should not contradict the conclusions in another. All knowledge must be integrated.
I disagree. Given a scientific understanding of the universe - there's sufficient reason to form a God hypothesis. Logically, there's first cause, and physically, there's the fine tuning argument - neither of which constitute proof, but are certainly sufficient to support a God hypothesis. If you would entertain ideas like multiple universes, or the universe as a computer simulation - ruling out the idea of an intelligent, intentional cause is a double standard.
Perhaps we have different ideas in mind when we hear (or read) science. I was speaking strictly about science as an empirical method for making predictions about the world. Pure physics, nothing else. That is a form of "understanding" the universe, but it's not the only form.
The theories you listed belong, from my point of view, to the realm of metaphysics. They do not describe what we observe, they interpret it. There is grounds for metaphysical agnosticism (though I think the "first cause" dilemma has been solved neatly by Kant and the "fine tuning" argument is utter nonsense). But in purely physical terms, only what is part of a theory can be said to exist. The concept of God does not describe any part of the observable universe, nor does it make any predictions. Hence, physically there is no such thing.
Likewise, the multi-unvierse theory and the simulation hypothesis interpret the physical world, they do not, as such, say anything about how it works. As such, they're literally meta-physics.
The fact is we don't know. No-one knows if God exists or not. Admitting what we do and do not know is important, because the really interesting thing that follows from such an admission is that, if there is a God - then science is effectively the word of God made manifest in Creation, and through discovering and being responsible to scientific truth, we can secure a sustainable future, and survive in the universe - maybe long enough to find out.
But it is impossible to find out, is it not? There is no way to establish the objective reality of the universe as a mere observer.
Adhering to the faith that there is a God, the human species is doomed - for faith undermines reason, denies a scientific conception of reality its rightful authority, and sets one faith group against another. As a tool of pre-scientific, religious and political ideology, science gives us the power to destroy the world, but denies us the reason to save it.
It's not the place of empirical science to give reasons. That's the realm of morality.
karl stoneFebruary 02, 2019 at 20:15#2525310 likes
Perhaps we have different ideas in mind when we hear (or read) science. I was speaking strictly about science as an empirical method for making predictions about the world. Pure physics, nothing else. That is a form of "understanding" the universe, but it's not the only form.
Perhaps you don't understand the term 'hypothesis' - or how that relates to agnosticism. There are hypotheses that can be ruled out. Geocentrism - for example. It's the theory based on simple observations that the earth is stationary, and the entire universe revolves around us. This idea persisted for a very long time, but was eventually falsified by Galileo, who made the first formal statement of scientific method. The Church arrested Galileo, and tried him for heresy - forced him to recant his claims, and prohibited his works.
This had the effect of divorcing science as a tool, from science as an understanding of reality. Subsequently, science was used to drive the industrial revolution, but to achieve ends described by the understanding of reality constituted by religious and political ideology - rather than, in a manner responsible to a scientific understanding of reality. This was a mistake, and it explains why, now - science can destroy the world but cannot save it. To my mind, you - and indeed, the entire cannon of western philosophy follows in the course of this mistake.
The theories you listed belong, from my point of view, to the realm of metaphysics. They do not describe what we observe, they interpret it. There is grounds for metaphysical agnosticism (though I think the "first cause" dilemma has been solved neatly by Kant and the "fine tuning" argument is utter nonsense). But in purely physical terms, only what is part of a theory can be said to exist. The concept of God does not describe any part of the observable universe, nor does it make any predictions. Hence, physically there is no such thing.
Dismissing first cause and fine tuning by saying "Kant and utter nonsense" is both a redundant repetition and an unwarranted claim to authority. As stated above, science is many things - so saying, 'in purely physical terms' is to seek to put science in a box defined by scientific method, thus to allow free range to all kinds of unscientific ideas. We have suppressed science as a general understanding of reality in favour of religious and political ideology for 400 years, and it's a mistake. Do nation states 'exist'? Is money 'a real thing'? No, yet it's in relation these ideas we apply science and technology. So it's not metaphysics to have a general scientific understanding of reality, or at least, it shouldn't be.
Anyhow, my dinner is ready. And afterward, I'm likely to suffer from postprandial somnolence. So, take you time. Think about your reply!
Perhaps you don't understand the term 'hypothesis' - or how that relates to agnosticism. There are hypotheses that can be ruled out. Geocentrism - for example. It's the theory based on simple observations that the earth is stationary, and the entire universe revolves around us. This idea persisted for a very long time, but was eventually falsified by Galileo, who made the first formal statement of scientific method. The Church arrested Galileo, and tried him for heresy - forced him to recant his claims, and prohibited his works.
This had the effect of divorcing science as a tool, from science as an understanding of reality. Subsequently, science was used to drive the industrial revolution, but to achieve ends described by the religious and political ideology - rather than, in a manner responsible to a scientific understanding of reality. This was a mistake, and it explains why, now - science can destroy the world but cannot save it. To my mind, you - and indeed, the entire cannon of western philosophy follows in the course of this mistake.
These are a lot of words to say "I think you're wrong". It would help if you explained to me what exactly I get wrong about hypotheses and agnosticism.
Dismissing first cause and fine tuning by saying "Kant and utter nonsense" is both a redundant repetition and an unwarranted claim to authority.
It's not an argument, certainly. But this thread isn't about either the problem of first cause or the fine tuning argument. We can discuss both, if you like, but I think that those discussions warrant their own thread, or at least in a thread about agnosticism. Not that I want to tell you what to do though.
As stated above, science is many things - so saying, 'in purely physical terms' is to seek to put science in a box defined by scientific method, thus to allow free range to all kinds of unscientific ideas.
No, saying what I mean when I say "science" is seeking to establish definitions in order to more effectively communicate.
We have suppressed science as a general understanding of reality in favour of religious and political ideology for 400 years, and it's a mistake. Do nation states 'exist'? Is money 'a real thing'? No, yet it's in relation these ideas we apply science and technology. So it's not metaphysics to have a general scientific understanding of reality, or at least, it shouldn't be.
This sounds like you consider "metaphysics" to be some kind of insult. It is not, it's merely the name of a subset of philosophy. We can even call it a "science", if you want. There is a reason I always qualify "empirical science" when I want to talk only about physics. All I am saying is that God does not exist as a physical entity.
Reply to Echarmion ok I miss the goal you stated.
Alchemy is similar to chemistry in the way it also works with the interactions of matter. It's built on a different base thought. Mostly to do with the idea of purity.
Truth in this case would be how the universe works. I believe the goal is to figure out how the universe works.
Then when it has figured it out, we can manipulate to our needs.
Also one discovery can cause us to remove thouse facts that we use that worked for us at the time.
Science became popular because Christians, like my self. are forbidden from using magic by God. Instead we figured, if we could figure out how his creation works then we could then respect it; without turning to Satan and his demons. I will say this now to avoid confusion, we the Christians believe magic is the art of consulting with demons (as described in the bible, not as pictured in culture). So the study of magic is under the study of Christian-demonology. (Note this is not the only view of magic, but it is the one I'm fimlar with)
I'm not saying science is less legitimate, just it is missing parts. If you don't consider all the parts you conclusion is incomplete.
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karl stoneFebruary 02, 2019 at 21:13#2525390 likes
These are a lot of words to say "I think you're wrong". It would help if you explained to me what exactly I get wrong about hypotheses and agnosticism.
If that's all I were saying - that's what I would have said. I've explained why your claim that scientific understanding can only apply to ideas laid out in physics is wrong. It's because science is several things:
it's an epistemology: a philosophy of knowledge.
it's a method: the scientific method of testing hypotheses with reference to evidence.
it's a practice: conducting scientific experiments.
and it's a conception of reality: an increasingly valid and coherent worldview.
You argue that the last, 'an increasing valid and coherent worldview" is not science - but metaphysics. That follows from the mistake of suppressing science as an understanding of reality for 400 years. If you take the sum total of scientific knowledge - the broad picture it paints, then there's sufficient justification for a God hypothesis - but not proof, either for or against. Hence, agnosticism with regard to the God hypothesis.
Metaphysics is an insult. Any valid philosophy begins with epistemology - either explicitly, or implicitly. Heidegger's random obsession with the concept of 'being' for example, is metaphysics, and there's no systematic method to that madness. He adduces observations at random intervals - about hammers and bicycles, to support an equally random line of reasoning - toward a prejudiced conclusion.
Your atheism is similar. You cannot know that "God does not exist as a physical entity." It's 'the problem of induction' described by Karl Popper. You cannot prove the negative. Your epistemology is wrong. You have faith God does not exist - and I cannot truly understand why you would want to believe that. Maybe you're disenchanted - you were taught religion as a child, only to reject it in adulthood, and are left feeling bitter about it. Push past it. Religion is not God. Religion is primitive political philosophy - that occurred in the course of human evolutionary development, at the point where hunter gatherer tribes joined together. They adopted God as an objective authority for social and political values that applied equally to all, regardless of tribal affiliation.
We can know this precisely because religion suppressed science as an understanding of reality. They didn't want to know the truth. They wanted a justification for political power. But if there is a God, and I think it entirely reasonable to hope there is - the path to God is surely to accept true knowledge of reality, and act responsibly in relation to that knowledge. It's certainly the path to a sustainable future for humankind.
karl stoneFebruary 02, 2019 at 21:47#2525410 likes
bogdan9310
12
?Harry Hindu ?karl stone
Having different observers, we could be looking at the same thing, and have 10 different observations. Observation is not reliable. Check out this article: https://exposingtheothers.com/the-problems-with-science/
If reality is observer dependent, explain traffic lights. No-one has ever gone to court and successfully argued - "The light I observed was green, Your Honour." If reality were observer dependent, traffic lights could not exist. Rather, there's an objective reality that we observe in a subjective fashion - subject to greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. Science employs repeated observation by independent observers to test its claims - and the incentives are to disprove other scientist's claims, not confirm them.
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If that's all I were saying - that's what I would have said. I've explained why your claim that scientific understanding can only apply to ideas laid out in physics is wrong.
I have made no such claim. I have never even used the term "scientific understanding" and I do not know what - precisely - it's supposed to mean.
it's an epistemology: a philosophy of knowledge.
it's a method: the scientific method of testing hypotheses with reference to evidence.
it's a practice: conducting scientific experiments.
and it's a conception of reality: an increasingly valid and coherent worldview.
You argue that the last, 'an increasing valid and coherent worldview" is not science - but metaphysics. That follows from the mistake of suppressing science as an understanding of reality for 400 years
Look I am not interested in discussing semantics. If you want to use different definitions from the ones I use, fine. But definitions are not arguments.
If you take the sum total of scientific knowledge - the broad picture it paints, then there's sufficient justification for a God hypothesis - but not proof, either for or against. Hence, agnosticism with regard to the God hypothesis.
Can you tell me what law of physics either includes or at least allows for a God? Failing that, can you explain to me how attributes such as "omnipotence" would manifest in the physical world?
Metaphysics is an insult. Any valid philosophy begins with epistemology - either explicitly, or implicitly. Heidegger's random obsession with the concept of 'being' for example, is metaphysics, and there's no systematic method to that madness. He adduces observations at random intervals - about hammers and bicycles, to support an equally random line of reasoning - toward a prejudiced conclusion.
This is not the most absurd statement I have read on this forum, but it certainly comes close. What is your definitions of metaphysics? Because it sure as hell is not the commonly used one.
Your atheism is similar. You cannot know that "God does not exist as a physical entity." It's 'the problem of induction' described by Karl Popper. You cannot prove the negative. Your epistemology is wrong.
If I cannot know what does not exist, should I consequently be agnostic about unicorns and leprechauns as well? According to Karl Popper, scientific theories must be falsifiable. That means that, since you cannot prove a negative using induction, you are not allowed to ask people to prove a negative. If you want to use Popper's philosophy as the basis for your agnosticism, you will have to establish how it could be falsified.
Anything that is not strictly necessary to explain our observations is not part of physical reality. Physical existence is contingent on the observations that it accounts for. You don't prove that X Y Z do not exist, you prove that you can account for all observations without needing X, Y or Z.
You have faith God does not exist - and I cannot truly understand why you would want to believe that. Maybe you're disenchanted - you were taught religion as a child, only to reject it in adulthood, and are left feeling bitter about it. Push past it. Religion is not God. Religion is primitive political philosophy - that occurred in the course of human evolutionary development, at the point where hunter gatherer tribes joined together. They adopted God as an objective authority for social and political values that applied equally to all, regardless of tribal affiliation.
Thank you for the psychoanalysis, but if I want counseling, I will consult a professional.
Harry HinduFebruary 02, 2019 at 23:22#2525510 likes
Having different observers, we could be looking at the same thing, and have 10 different observations. Observation is not reliable.
This is ridiculous.
Then 10 different people reading your post and interpret it 10 different ways, and your own ( the author) interpretation would be just as unreliable as everyone else's. How do you know you're reading the same words on the screen as everyone else?
karl stoneFebruary 03, 2019 at 00:04#2525570 likes
Then your knowledge is not reliable because your knowledge is based on observation.
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Harry HinduFebruary 03, 2019 at 14:17#2526440 likes
Reply to bogdan9310 Right. I interpreted your words as ridiculous and you say that they aren't. So now what? Who is right? How do you determine who is right?
Harry HinduFebruary 03, 2019 at 14:18#2526450 likes
Reply to bogdan9310 :sad: Experience IS observation. Seeing is an observation.
Only those who do not know what science is or what the scientific process and its methods are would treat it like a religion.
I would counter that those most expert in the techniques of science may be those most likely to treat it like a religion, that is, a "one true way" because they've devoted their lives to science and as human beings are likely to develop an emotion based attachment as a result.
As example, show us the scientists who argue for limits to the advancement of scientific knowledge. I'm guessing such folks are rare, which illustrates the "one true way" mindset.
It seems helpful to draw a distinction between science and our relationship with science.
I would agree that science is just a conceptual machine which generates new data from old data, and is neither good nor bad in itself, like any other mechanical tool. There seems little to debate here.
Our relationship with science is another matter. I would argue that our civilization as a whole has largely transferred a blind unquestioning "one true way" relationship we used to have with religion to science. What confuses many people is that the scientific method is very questioning, but our relationship with that method typically isn't.
I've been writing on this topic for years on many different forums, a social experiment of a sort, and have discovered that it's close to impossible for we moderns to conceive that there should be limits to science, and that the "more is better" relationship with science is dangerously outdated. And it doesn't seem to matter how much education one has, the science worshiping group think has penetrated all levels of society.
Is science a religion? No, certainly not.
Does our relationship with science smell a lot like a religion? Yes, it certainly does. The one true way leading us to the promised land, typically believed without questioning based on reference to authority etc.
There is so much confusion on this subject. We pat ourselves on the back about having transcended religion etc, but really all we've done is transfer an ancient blind faith mindset to a new and far more dangerous enterprise.
karl stoneFebruary 03, 2019 at 18:11#2526640 likes
Reply to JakeHey Jake. I have a problem. I don't want to let your post pass without protesting it, but at the same time, it's all chewed meat. Maybe stating this question suffices to note my objection, to what you repeat endlessly - despite the overwhelming problems with your 'more is better' denunciation of science having been described to you - repeatedly, and at great length. I don't want to go over it all again, because nothing sticks - and like Eldorado above, you're inclined to get testy when challenged. So, what to do?
I would have a lot to say on the subject, because it can't be put concisely into words.
You see, you hear, your smell, you touch, you taste, you have a whole bunch of experiences. You notice regularities within some of these experiences, which allow you to predict to some extent what you will experience.
You observe some ball of light rise in the sky, you call it the Sun, you see it happen again and again, you assume it will keep happening, and you write down the law that the Sun rises regularly, that after night comes the day, and after the day comes the night.
Then you may wonder, does the Sun die every time it disappears and is born again every time it rises above the horizon, or is it always there even when you can't see it? If you assume that it is there even when you can't see it, you are constructing in your mind a world where the Sun goes somewhere out of your sight then comes back. You are imagining that world, you are making it up to some extent. How much of the world we live in do we create ourselves?
Science is about creating a world in our minds that is predictable, about imagining underlying regularities to apparent irregularities. You could come up with vastly different imagined worlds that would have the same predictive power.
The imagined world is called a model, a theory. We don't see the particles or waves or strings of the current mainstream theories, we imagine them. A theory makes predictions of future experiences from past experiences. We don't test whether the world imagined through the theory is an accurate representation of our world, we just test whether the theory's predictions are observed.
Some philosophers and scientists look for the fundamental building blocks of 'reality'. But those building blocks are whatever we want them to be, particles, waves, leprechauns, gods, feelings, so long as we imagine them to behave in ways that allow to account for what we experience, to predict what we will experience.
I see the root of existence as change. And science as an activity that attempts to predict future change, through observation and imagination. But I see 'science' as it is practiced today as very narrow-minded, resistant and oppressive to unconventional ideas, for no valid reason, dismissing lines of inquiry without attempting to explore them, having certainty on things that are far from certain, displaying characteristics similar to religions.
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Harry HinduFebruary 03, 2019 at 21:00#2526890 likes
Reply to bogdan9310 How? You can only observe anything with your senses. The is a difference is seeing vs hearing vs touching vs smelling vs tasting, but they are all observations.
Deleted UserFebruary 03, 2019 at 23:01#2527620 likes
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Hey Jake. I have a problem. I don't want to let your post pass without protesting it, but at the same time, it's all chewed meat. Maybe stating this question suffices to note my objection, to what you repeat endlessly - despite the overwhelming problems with your 'more is better' denunciation of science having been described to you - repeatedly, and at great length. I don't want to go over it all again, because nothing sticks - and like Eldorado above, you're inclined to get testy when challenged. So, what to do?
Ok, good question. I'm not sure I have an answer to your "what to do" question, but I'm willing to explore it, here or in another thread of your choosing.
"Nothing sticks" because so far, in years of discussing this in many places, not a single person has been able to explain how human beings will successfully manage ever more power delivered at an ever faster pace, which is what a "more is better" relationship with knowledge (and thus science) leads to, as proven by the history of the last 500 years.
I do grow testy sometimes, which is entirely my problem. I may be making some progress there as I'm close to giving up on trying to explain for the billionth time that being bored with the fact that we have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat is not very good evidence of a species that is ready for more and more power delivered at an ever accelerating pace. The testiness arises from extreme boredom, and a form of arrogance that assumes that I, Mr. Jake Poster, can have any impact at all on a historic process so much larger and deeper than any us. Perhaps I'm learning to be a bit more realistic about the situation we find ourselves in, or perhaps I'm just becoming more selfish in the realization that I'll be dead soon and so this is somebody else's problem.
In any case, if I wish to lay claim to being a person of reason I have to listen to the evidence, and the evidence from years of discussing this is screaming that reason is not going to solve this problem of our relationship with knowledge, and so there is probably little to do other than wait for the lessons that pain will inevitably generously provide.
I'm not vetoing further discussion on the matter, for I did of course just write a post on it myself. But I'll admit to not being hopeful we can take the conversation anywhere we haven't already been, and by "we" I don't mean just you and I, but this philosophy forum, all philosophy forums, our culture at large.
Here's the thread where this was previously discussed. If you want to try to revive it, go for it.
Ok, good question. I'm not sure I have an answer to your "what to do" question, but I'm willing to explore it, here or in another thread of your choosing. "Nothing sticks" because so far, in years of discussing this in many places, not a single person has been able to explain how human beings will successfully manage ever more power delivered at an ever faster pace, which is what a "more is better" relationship with knowledge (and thus science) leads to, as proven by the history of the last 500 years.
Well first, you might want to acknowledge that science and technology are not applied for scientifically valid reasons. They're applied as dictated by religious/political/economic power structures - for power and profit, regardless of scientific advisability. Were we to correct that error - scientific truth would regulate the application of technology. There's your 'adult in the room' - missing from your approach.
I do grow testy sometimes, which is entirely my problem. I may be making some progress there as I'm close to giving up on trying to explain for the billionth time that being bored with the fact that we have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat is not very good evidence of a species that is ready for more and more power delivered at an ever accelerating pace.
If you cannot recognize 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War as an ideologically driven, and irrational application of technology - as opposed to an application of technology responsible to scientific truth, then I'm done banging a brick wall against your head.
The testiness arises from extreme boredom, and a form of arrogance that assumes that I, Mr. Jake Poster, can have any impact at all on a historic process so much larger and deeper than any us. Perhaps I'm learning to be a bit more realistic about the situation we find ourselves in, or perhaps I'm just becoming more selfish in the realization that I'll be dead soon and so this is somebody else's problem.
Oh, right - because philosophy has never changed anything! If you don't care if there's a future for humankind, your existence was just one long masturbatory fantasy. You took all previous generations struggled to create, from nought but sticks and stones, and merely pleasured yourself with it. Well bravo - but no encore!
In any case, if I wish to lay claim to being a person of reason I have to listen to the evidence, and the evidence from years of discussing this is screaming that reason is not going to solve this problem of our relationship with knowledge, and so there is probably little to do other than wait for the lessons that pain will inevitably generously provide.
I'm inclined to agree. The overwhelming probability is that we will not address the problem of our relationship to scientific knowledge, and will die starving and sun-burnt en masse; but it's not inevitable - and it's not right. If science hasn't proven itself a profound truth that rightfully owns the highest authority, that's our mistake - not anything inherent to science.
I'm not vetoing further discussion on the matter, for I did of course just write a post on it myself. But I'll admit to not being hopeful we can take the conversation anywhere we haven't already been, and by "we" I don't mean just you and I, but this philosophy forum, all philosophy forums, our culture at large.
Well I think I am saying something different, and hopeful, and true. I think you people can't see it because it requires you look beyond your ideological identities - and that scares you. You can't look reality in the eye, and assert the worth of humankind. Reality is a threat to you - as is evident in your entire approach, just as it's a threat to religion, politics and economics. Only it's not. Not if you accept it. From my point of view - nothing looks more like the word of God than science. Politics is merely the business of knowing what's true, and doing what's right in terms of what's true. And the economic opportunities that follow from accepting scientific truth, and applying technology accordingly - are vast, and potentially infinite.
My point is, when scientists run experiments, they have to rely on observations of others, rather than their own observations. How many scientists experiment on themselves?
And this is a problem, why?
ChristofferFebruary 04, 2019 at 09:27#2528430 likes
Does our relationship with science smell a lot like a religion? Yes, it certainly does. The one true way leading us to the promised land, typically believed without questioning based on reference to authority etc.
If this is how you think scientists think about science, you don't have much insight into scientific research. Do you think that scientists don't tread carefully forward? That they don't have ethics? And do you think that all scientists in the world blindly follow science in the religious way you describe? People and scientists trust science because of the facts it provides, because of the technology it develops and invents, because of the improvements for people's lives.
There's no promised land, it's the process of science that proves it's own worth. Religion does nothing, science has done everything for the quality of life that we have and the knowledge about the world and universe we now know. To put trust in science is to put trust in a method that produces facts humanity can live by, not fairy tales and delusions that corrupt mankind. To say that science "smell lot like religion" is pure nonsense in my opinion and totally ignorant of what science actually is.
There's a lot of distrust against science, scientists and the scientific community on this forum. I don't know if it's because of religious apologists who try to push their agenda or if a lot of people have a problem with scientific facts and intentionally try to discredit it in order to try and validate their own incoherent arguments, but most of the time when I read criticism of science it just comes across as heavily uninformed and misinformed.
Harry HinduFebruary 04, 2019 at 12:40#2528660 likes
No, the senses are not observations. How do you define observation? Language is sometimes tricky. My point is, when scientists run experiments, they have to rely on observations of others, rather than their own observations. How many scientists experiment on themselves?
I didn't say that the senses are observations. I said that you make observations with your senses. That is the definition of observation - using your senses. Scientists performing their own experiments rely on their own observations to make sure theirs is the same as some other scientist who made a claim that they are now testing. They are testing the consistency of the claim of another by using their own observations.
I'm going to lay my cards on the table as an agnostic with no particular belief system, but ... -
@Christoffer - This being a philosophy forum, members are going to ask 'what does it mean' - when it comes to science - or indeed anything. Regardless of certain members' claims, the results of scientific experiments have meaning only within a narrow context - in relation to potential technological applications, for example, or in relation to concepts whose definition is circular (e.g. 'energy' = "the capacity to do work" / 'the capacity to do work' = "energy") and therefore lacking in wider or deeper truth claims. For example, humans may have evolved (well yeah, they did), but does that *alone* that mean we should each devote all our mental activity to out-surviving and out-reproducing everyone unrelated to us? {There's a scientific morality for you...} - Science makes predictions about the three-dimensional world; brain science delves into how this links into the human world, but cannot explain it much beyond the point that it can give a physical location for the number three.
As for religion, do you really understand enough about it to call it (even if non-abrahamic faiths are excluded) an attempt to understand the physical universe and nothing more? In this case, science would be on an equal footing with religion in any case. Since spirituality goes straight for the mind, how do you know it hasn't improved our quality of life intangibly, for example by helping create social/moral and psychological/spiritual conditions in which scientists and others felt free and still feel free, inspired, and encouraged to do their work?
The scientific method is not what 'smells a lot like religion'. What does, as Jake implied, are the claims made mainly by non-scientists and popular science writers on the back of rushed and stretched conclusions, that science alone provides ultimate understanding. It does not - As you yourself say, it deals in 'facts', and so its only conclusions relate one physical phenomenon to other similarly-bounded phenomena. Needless to say, phrases like "delusions that corrupt mankind" smell 'religious' - in as much as each religion (at least monotheistic ones) tends to paint the others in similar terms, as well as clarifying that they are *nothing* like they are themselves...
Do you think that scientists don't tread carefully forward? That they don't have ethics? And do you think that all scientists in the world blindly follow science in the religious way you describe?
Which scientists have publicly declared in front of their peers that we should NOT learn X, Y or Z? And if they did, what then happened to their career?
There are millions of scientists so I'm sure there are some rare exceptions, but generally speaking, yes, the scientific community has a simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and thus, with power. It's not a religion, but is better described as being "religion-like", a non-questioning faith based belief built upon authority that holds that the more knowledge and power humans have the better.
I say "faith based" because this "more is better" belief is in direct contradiction to readily available widely known and agreed upon evidence, thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats threatening to erase modern civilization at the push of a button at any moment without warning. That is, the "more is better" belief is not a product of reason, but instead bears a closer resemblance to the relationship we used to have with clergy and religion etc. Our modern relationship with science can be usefully compared to the relationship 12th century Catholics had with their Church.
People and scientists trust science because of the facts it provides, because of the technology it develops and invents, because of the improvements for people's lives.
Yes, this relationship is very understandable given all the benefits science has delivered so far. What you're not getting is that there are limits to this process, just as there are limits to everything in all of reality. "More is better" was a reasonable paradigm when we knew very little, and were still riding horses and such. That era of knowledge scarcity has passed, it's over, and we're in a new era now characterized by an out of control knowledge explosion. You, and our culture at large, are trying to apply 19th century thinking to a very different 21st century reality.
To say that science "smell lot like religion" is pure nonsense in my opinion and totally ignorant of what science actually is.
Again, please note, you are confusing science with our relationship with science. I agree that the scientific method is a largely objective, questioning, challenging, rational etc process. Our relationship with science is none of those things.
I'm not against science. I don't hate scientists. I'm not selling any religion.
I am instead arguing that there is a pressing need for us to update our relationship with science to match the era we are currently living in, and racing towards.
Well first, you might want to acknowledge that science and technology are not applied for scientifically valid reasons. They're applied as dictated by religious/political/economic power structures - for power and profit, regardless of scientific advisability. Were we to correct that error - scientific truth would regulate the application of technology. There's your 'adult in the room' - missing from your approach.
How do you suggest we sell this theory of yours to the scientific community, the politicians who fund them, and the public at large? I understand your theory to basically be saying, "if we were rational the problem is solved". How do you intend to make us rational?
If you cannot recognize 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War as an ideologically driven, and irrational application of technology - as opposed to an application of technology responsible to scientific truth, then I'm done banging a brick wall against your head.
Ok, "an irrational application of technology" seems accurate enough. But, neither you nor anybody else has any credible plan for how we make "application of technology responsible to scientific truth" thus it's a form of insanity to introduce ever more power at an ever faster pace in to the equation.
The fact that these weapons exist, however that happened, is proof enough that we aren't ready for more and more power coming online at a faster and faster pace.
It's the simplest thing Karl, once one escapes the group think. As example, do you believe that everyone should have access to any weapon they want? Or do you believe that such access should be limited in some manner or another? If you chose the later option, you already agree with me the power necessarily has to be limited.
Which scientists have publicly declared in front of their peers that we should NOT learn X, Y or Z? And if they did, what then happened to their career?
There are millions of scientists so I'm sure there are some rare exceptions, but generally speaking, yes, the scientific community has a simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and thus, with power. It's not a religion, but is better described as being "religion-like", a non-questioning faith based belief built upon authority that holds that the more knowledge and power humans have the better.
I say "faith based" because this "more is better" belief is in direct contradiction to readily available widely known and agreed upon evidence, thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats threatening to erase modern civilization at the push of a button at any moment without warning. That is, the "more is better" belief is not a product of reason, but instead bears a closer resemblance to the relationship we used to have with clergy and religion etc. Our modern relationship with science can be usefully compared to the relationship 12th century Catholics had with their Church.
I have significant issues with the equivocation of our relationship with science with the relationship a person living in 12th century Europe had with the Catholic church. To wit, I haven't heard of anyone denying climate change being forced to recant, or flat-earthers being executed for blasphemy.
Be that as it may though, your argument for the out of control nature of science is flawed. Even granting your position that scientists have a duty to limit their inquiries in case additional knowledge is harmful, you are assuming that scientists, and the public at large must share this belief. Given the disagreement apparent on this forum alone, that doesn't appear warranted. If that position is not shared, then your argument that science is religion-like because it ignores this position doesn't follow.
I have significant issues with the equivocation of our relationship with science with the relationship a person living in 12th century Europe had with the Catholic church.
The man in the street 12th century Catholic believed in his Church much in the same way the man in the street 21st century person believes in the "more is better" relationship with knowledge. There's unquestioning obedience to authority and the group think etc.
Be that as it may though, your argument for the out of control nature of science is flawed.
Ok, so instead of just making that claim, please explain to us how exactly it is flawed. Here's what you're up against.
Do you believe that the powers available to children should be limited? If yes, all I'm doing is applying this common sense principle to adults as well. Once you make that one tiny little step it immediately becomes obvious that a "more is better" relationship with knowledge is problematic.
What's confusing you is that for thousands of years when we basically knew almost nothing, in that situation, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge was a reasonable position. We aren't in that situation any more.
Even granting your position that scientists have a duty to limit their inquiries in case additional knowledge is harmful, you are assuming that scientists, and the public at large must share this belief.
I'm not following you here. What is it that I'm assuming?
The man in the street 12th century Catholic believed in his Church much in the same way the man in the street 21st century person believes in the "more is better" relationship with knowledge. There's unquestioning obedience to authority and the group think etc.
According to you. I don't see much unquestioning obedience to the idea that science must always progress. There is no shortage of media that warns of science unchecked, and I don't see much evidence the average citizen is all glassy-eyed about the singularity.
Do you believe that the powers available to children should be limited? If yes, all I'm doing is applying this common sense principle to adults as well. Once you make that one tiny little step it immediately becomes obvious that a "more is better" relationship with knowledge is problematic.
Sure, I believe parents should set boundaries to children. I see no justification to erect similar boundaries with respect to adults. Adults should be bound by law, and guided by morality, not by what some authority considers best for them.
I agree though that a scientist should optimally consider the possible harm a publication might do. But I don't see how we can put the genie back into the box without resorting to outright tyrannical measures.
What's confusing you is that for thousands of years when we basically knew almost nothing, in that situation, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge was a reasonable position. We aren't in that situation any more.
People still die of "natural", which is to say preventable, causes. That is certainly a reason to strive for more knowledge. As are various other social and environmental problems. So how do you suggest we balance the risk of annihilation with the promise of incrementally better lifes?
I'm not following you here. What is it that I'm assuming?
You're admonishing the followers of science for being "like a religion". Your argument is that they are missing the very obvious indications that they have crossed the line and should no longer pursue knowledge without restriction. The problem is, the indications are obvious to you. They are not necessarily obvious to anyone else. So for all you know, their behavior might habe nothing to do with religious adherence to the "more is better" approach.
karl stoneFebruary 04, 2019 at 20:35#2529550 likes
How do you suggest we sell this theory of yours to the scientific community, the politicians who fund them, and the public at large? I understand your theory to basically be saying, "if we were rational the problem is solved". How do you intend to make us rational?
My theory is not 'basically saying' that. It's not a basic theory. It's a very deep theory that's concerned with the nature of reality, the nature of life, and the nature of mind - as that applies to the philosophy, politics and economics of sustainability. My appeal is not to entirely rational motives. Take for instance, your masturbatory, I'm all right Jake disregard for the future of the species. I suspect that argument appeals to your ego.
Ok, "an irrational application of technology" seems accurate enough. But, neither you nor anybody else has any credible plan for how we make "application of technology responsible to scientific truth" thus it's a form of insanity to introduce ever more power at an ever faster pace in to the equation. The fact that these weapons exist, however that happened, is proof enough that we aren't ready for more and more power coming online at a faster and faster pace.
You demand a referee - and yet dismiss the only qualified candidate; that is, recognition of the authority of scientific truth over and above primitive ideologies. You refuse to acknowledge that science as you see it - is science conducted, and technology applied in pursuit of ideological wealth and power. Who would you elect referee? The Amish? Billions would starve. There's no return to the rural idyll for the vast majority. Our only hope is responsibility to science as truth.
It's the simplest thing Karl, once one escapes the group think. As example, do you believe that everyone should have access to any weapon they want? Or do you believe that such access should be limited in some manner or another? If you chose the later option, you already agree with me the power necessarily has to be limited.
You haven't escaped the groupthink. Your kind of anti-scientism is the prevailing paradigm, and exactly what I'm arguing against. It proceeds from the Church's response to Galileo, via Thomas Hobbes and others, and feeds straight into popular fiction via Mary Shelly. Every mad scientist dispatched by some God loving, flag waving hero follows in the course of this dynamic, and so do you.
karl stoneFebruary 04, 2019 at 21:20#2529730 likes
oops!
karl stoneFebruary 04, 2019 at 21:27#2529770 likes
I'm trying to come up with an example of where an increase in knowledge causes harm, or more harm than good. Can you help?
Depends on how you define knowledge, I guess. It's more complex than it appears, particularly as it plays out in society and the world. An idea I've been batting around lately, is the idea of real internet ID - so everyone would have to be themselves online. It's an idea gaining ground in China for reasons I'm unaware of. I think it would create a more responsible virtual world, but there are potential implications for free speech and political organisation in the event of authoritarian government.
We would know more about who people were, but the potential negative implications for free speech would have to be weighed against the drugs, porn, child abuse, visa theft, bullying, piracy, prostitution, and screeching political opinion online anonymity allows for.
@Karl Stone: I have no idea what you've been on about this last three pages. What is this "very deep theory that's concerned with the nature of reality ... life ... the nature of mind"?
karl stoneFebruary 04, 2019 at 22:40#2529860 likes
Karl Stone: I have no idea what you've been on about this last three pages. What is this "very deep theory that's concerned with the nature of reality ... life ... the nature of mind"?
It's something Jake and I have discussed at great length, that he is aware of - but which he mis-characterizes in order to attack. Basically, I argue that humankind made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to recognize the significance of scientific method, and so denying the authority of scientific knowledge, and that it's necessary - and possible to correct this mistake, in order to secure a sustainable future.
Basically, I argue that humankind made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to recognize the significance of scientific method, and so denying the authority of scientific knowledge, and that it's necessary - and possible to correct this mistake, in order to secure a sustainable future.
In other words, a utopian vision with no basis in reality. But then me trying to address these topics on forums is the same thing.
but nuclear technology continues to be one of the greatest benefits to mankind, and will continue to be so for eternity.
Won't matter a bit once the bombs start flying.
Knowledge, and thus science, does produce very many benefits. In the past, that was good enough.
Nuclear weapons do a good job of illustrating the revolutionary new era we now live it. If even a single power of that scale slips from our control and crashes civilization then none of the other very many benefits delivered by knowledge matter. A single power the scale of nuclear weapons going wrong a single time, game over.
This isn't speculative futuristic alarmism. This is the reality of the world we've been living in since the 1950s.
Everybody already knows this. And yet we keep racing as fast as we can to bring other vast powers on to the scene as quickly as possible.
karl stoneFebruary 05, 2019 at 01:34#2530180 likes
"It's something Jake and I have discussed at great length, that he is aware of - but which he mis-characterizes in order to attack. Basically, I argue that humankind made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to recognize the significance of scientific method, and so denying the authority of scientific knowledge, and that it's necessary - and possible to correct this mistake, in order to secure a sustainable future."
— karl stone
In other words, a utopian vision with no basis in reality. But then me trying to address these topics on forums is the same thing.
See! There he does again with the blatant mis-characterization.
It's entirely based in reality. It begins with evolution, anthropology, religion, history, the occurrence - and suppression of science by religion, goes on to discuss the consequences of that mistake - and the potential benefits, and dangers of correcting it.
Sustainability is not utopian. It's been the natural assumption of every generation before ours. It's the very least we should expect - and evidence something has gone very wrong if we can see the final horizon.
As for discussing this topic here, I think it better to discuss such a difficult subject in a relatively quiet corner - from a low platform, and let it filter out. If I'm right, and I am - people will find it.
Metaphysician UndercoverFebruary 05, 2019 at 03:56#2530490 likes
I'm trying to come up with an example of where an increase in knowledge causes harm, or more harm than good. Can you help?
It's not the knowledge itself which causes benefit or harm, it is the way that the knowledge is used which is beneficial or harmful. So knowledge falls into the category of a potency, or power, which may be used for bad or good.
I'm trying to come up with an example of where an increase in knowledge causes harm, or more harm than good. Can you help?
We can debate on whether knowledge in and if itself can ever do harm. This is why I was talking about consequences in general. It is possible that we might one day discover a doomsday device that is so easy to construct and so destructive that the risk of some lunatic setting it off is too high.
Edit: if you want to be technical, there is the notion of a technology trap, a technology that looks incredibly useful and seems save, but nevertheless ends up wiping you out. This might be a case where knowledge itself does harm.
If you cannot defend your point, and instead resort to ad hominem, I think we're done here.
Oh my, we're so very worried about our little baby egos, aren't we? I'm agreeable to being done if that's what you prefer because I know from years of discussing this topic that it's never going to go anywhere.
If you wish to debunk me here's how to do it. For years I've been stubbornly attempting to apply reason to a subject that is beyond reason. On the surface my arguments are very logical, just common sense really, but I've failed to face and accept that logical arguments are never going to be the solution to this.
The fundamental challenge presented by the knowledge explosion is like a force of nature. The notion that we are in charge and driving the process is mostly illusion. The knowledge explosion is like an algae bloom in a lake. The process will run out of control and crash the system, and over some long period of time a new equilibrium will be established. Example, the fall of the Roman Empire, followed by a thousand years of darkness, from which the green sprouts of the Enlightenment arose. This is another cycle like that.
This is the first time human beings have attempted to create a global technological civilization, a very complex project. It's actually not very logical to assume (as I've been doing) that there is some formula by which we can get such an enormous thing right the first time.
Years of discussing this have persuaded me that we're just going to have to ride this out. We'll continue to race blindly towards the cliff, we'll go over the cliff, today's modern civilization will collapse in to chaos, and after some period of time some new paradigm that those living today probably can't imagine will arise in it's place.
I don't rule out that at some point far down the road we'll figure this out, but none of us will live to see what that looks like.
The only rational thing for us to do is enjoy each day as it comes, and be ready to let go of everything on a moment's notice. If enjoying each day involves pretending we can reason our way out of this mess so as to inflate our self images with fantasy, ok, go for it, why not, that's no more silly than bowling and golf and a million other distractions.
We can debate on whether knowledge in and if itself can ever do harm.
We typically seek knowledge for the power it provides us. In the past this wasn't a problem because we had so little knowledge and power that whatever we discovered was within our ability to manage, defined as avoiding civilization collapse. And so, if we are looking backwards instead of forwards, it seems reasonable to keep pursuing more and more knowledge and power.
All one needs to see the problem of today is to use simple common sense. Children have a limited ability to manage power. Adults have more ability than children, but that ability is still limited. You know, adult human beings are not gods.
Thus, any process which generates knowledge and power in a manner which is not limited will sooner or later exceed our management ability, which is limited. This sounds like futuristic speculation until we face the fact that we already have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat.
Consider a simple graph. One graph charts the slow incremental rise of our maturity, the other graph charts the exponential emergence of knowledge, and thus power. As time progresses the two lines move away from each other at an ever accelerating rate.
Nobody can predict when the moment of decision will come, but if we just use common sense we can see that sooner or later it will.
We could hypothetically address this challenge by radically accelerating our maturity to match the pace of the knowledge explosion, except that we have no idea of how to do that. Or, we could slow the knowledge explosion to match the glacial pace of our maturity development, but we refuse to even consider that in any serious way.
Say you're building a powerful machine with all the most modern features, but the logic board controlling the machine is from a 1977 Atari game console. Sooner or later the advanced features out strip the ability of the logic board, and the system crashes.
Common sense. That's all that's needed. But that's a bridge too far for we philosophers, because simple common sense doesn't serve our real agenda, inflating our egos with fancy talk.
See! There he does again with the blatant mis-characterization.
What is your plan for persuading our culture to make the philosophical shift you deem to be necessary? Without such a plan, your ideas are just a utopian vision not based in reality.
Basically, I argue that humankind made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to recognize the significance of scientific method, and so denying the authority of scientific knowledge, and that it's necessary - and possible to correct this mistake, in order to secure a sustainable future.
How do you propose that you will get everyone to "recognize the significance of scientific method" and "accept the authority of scientific knowledge"?
All you're saying is that if human beings were fully rational we wouldn't have these problems, which is true, agreed. But you've living in a fantasy of your own invention, because human beings are instead just barely rational, as it would seem our bored relationship with nuclear weapons should prove beyond any doubt.
I'm not mischaracterizing your theory Karl, I'm just showing you the parts of it that you don't wish to see. And like I said, I'm in the same boat. I keep typing about this as if doing so would make the slightest bit of difference, when clearly that is just my own flavor of fantasy.
karl stoneFebruary 05, 2019 at 11:51#2530930 likes
What is your plan for persuading our culture to make the philosophical shift you deem to be necessary? Without such a plan, your ideas are just a utopian vision not based in reality.
I don't have a plan - how could I? It depends upon persuading other people of the rightness of my views. My plan is expressing those views. What would you have me do - go door to door? "Have you heard the good news about science?" Really?
All you're saying is that if human beings were fully rational we wouldn't have these problems, which is true, agreed. But you've living in a fantasy of your own invention, because human beings are instead just barely rational, as it would seem our bored relationship with nuclear weapons should prove beyond any doubt.
That's not what I'm saying at all. Do you really imagine I'd propose an idea that requires human beings were like Spock from Star Trek - and that I spend all this time and energy weeping over the fact they're not? That kind of naivety would be literally insane. It doesn't require absolute logic to recognize that science is a profound truth, nor to recognize that the world is faced with dire challenges. Indeed, it's the very moral abhorrence of allowing a terrible fate to befall our planet - the love and fear people have for their children, I believe will necessitate action. My theory is concerned with what action is necessary, moral, possible, productive and stable.
I'm not mischaracterizing your theory Karl, I'm just showing you the parts of it that you don't wish to see. And like I said, I'm in the same boat. I keep typing about this as if doing so would make the slightest bit of difference, when clearly that is just my own flavor of fantasy.
No, you're right. You understand as best you're able. It was mere flattery on my part to suggest a mischievous motive on your part. It's like when a dog thinks he's people - and you play along until it dumps on the living room carpet. Then it get's its nose rubbed in it!
Right. You don't have a plan. Nobody does. Which is what makes your thesis unrealistic.
Imagine I said that all these problems would be solved if human beings became gods. Ok, I suppose that would be true. But nobody has a clue how we might become gods. So it's a silly proposal. And repeating it in every thread wouldn't fix that.
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 01:42#2532650 likes
Right. You don't have a plan. Nobody does. Which is what makes your thesis unrealistic.
Imagine I said that all these problems would be solved if human beings became gods. Ok, I suppose that would be true. But nobody has a clue how we might become gods. So it's a silly proposal. And repeating it in every thread wouldn't fix that.
But it's not impossible, or even unlikely - that in years to come people will be looking for a means to systematically address the existential threats bearing down upon us. The way to do that is to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, as a basis to apply technology. It's actually a very reasonable idea, but it would be unreasonable of me to seek to dictate how that might play out. I can't plan other people's thinking and behavior. I can only make the argument that accepting science as truth is a safe and reliable approach.
The problem is, that science as truth has been suppressed for 400 years - and the countervailing arguments laid on pretty thick. Religion, philosophy, political ideology, right through to popular fiction - the mad scientist is defeated by the God loving, flag waving hero. People are afraid of science as truth, but they needn't be. If you look around at the technological miracles scientific thinking surrounds us with - accepting science as truth would allow us to claim that functionality for ourselves, and apply it to the way the world works.
If we accept science as truth, we need not have less, eat lentils and sit in the cold and dark to tackle climate change, or regret our existence as overpopulation. If we accept science is true, and apply technology accordingly, we could make a paradise of this world - and all it requires is changing our minds.
Jeff AllynFebruary 06, 2019 at 06:54#2532890 likes
I read you as giving a reductio ad absurdum argument against scienticism, i.e., the view that science is the only source of knowledge. Here's how I reconstruct it:
1. Suppose scientism is true (i.e., suppose the only source of knowledge is science).
2. Science only analyzes pre-existing concepts. (assume)
3. Pre-existing concepts that science analyzes are known prior to science. (assume)
4. Therefore, the source of some knowledge (viz., knowledge of pre-existing concepts) is not science. (from 2, 3)
5. Therefore, scientism is false. (from 1, 4)
But it's not impossible, or even unlikely - that in years to come people will be looking for a means to systematically address the existential threats bearing down upon us.
Yes, sooner or later the level of pain will reach a point where we'll get serious about such things.
The way to do that is to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, as a basis to apply technology.
Ok, could you perhaps expand on "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" in some specific detail, given that this idea seems central to your thesis? If you are willing, please try to avoid typing the sentences you've already shared a number of times and try to explain it from some different angle, the more specific the better. Perhaps you could use some particular technology like AI or genetic engineering as an example?
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 11:02#2533120 likes
The way to do that is to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, as a basis to apply technology.
— karl stone
Ok, could you perhaps expand on "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" in some specific detail, given that this idea seems central to your thesis? If you are willing, please try to avoid typing the sentences you've already shared a number of times and try to explain it from some different angle, the more specific the better. Perhaps you could use some particular technology like AI or genetic engineering as an example?
Maybe you could expand on what it is you don't get. It really is something you need to 'get' for yourself, because I can't crawl inside your head and point out the contrast between your ideological worldview, and a scientific worldview. I have described the evolution of humankind, and how tribal morality was manifest in an innate moral sensibility, and the tribal kinship structure.
I've explained how hunter gatherer tribes employed God as an objective authority, to allow for an explicit moral code, or law and order, that applied to everyone (think about Moses coming down the mountain with his stone tablets) to thereby overcome the tribal hierarchy problem, and join together to form societies and civilizations.
And I've explained how this created an ideological power structure that had a necessary resistance to the occurrence of science. Science as an understanding of reality has been suppressed these past 400 years - even while science was used to power the industrial revolution. Applying science and technology as dictated by ideological notions brings us to the edge of extinction. We need to accept a scientific understanding of reality - and apply technology accordingly.
I don't know how else to say it. Asking me to "say all that again... only slower, and using different words" is not a legitimate request. If you have a specific question, I'll do my best to answer it.
Maybe you could expand on what it is you don't get.
Ok, here's an example.
Why did a scientific understanding of reality not prevent Los Alamos scientists from CHOOSING to build the bomb?
Wait, stop, no blame shifting please. Every Los Alamos scientist had the choice to refuse. They could have chosen death rather than to build a doomsday device. But they didn't refuse, they instead willingly participated and had pride that they had been selected for such a high priority project.
The Los Alamos scientists had the scientific understanding of reality or they couldn't have built the bomb. Having the scientific understanding of reality didn't stop them from choosing to build the bomb.
I'm not trying to demonize the scientists here. I'm simply saying that they were human beings like the rest of us, and a scientific understanding of reality did not seem to be a sufficient mechanism for preventing them from doing something insane.
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 13:07#2533370 likes
Why did a scientific understanding of reality not prevent Los Alamos scientists from CHOOSING to build the bomb?
Wait, stop, no blame shifting please. Every Los Alamos scientist had the choice to refuse. They could have chosen death rather than to build a doomsday device. But they didn't refuse, they instead willingly participated and had pride that they had been selected for such a high priority project.
The Los Alamos scientists had the scientific understanding of reality or they couldn't have built the bomb. Having the scientific understanding of reality didn't stop them from choosing to build the bomb.
I'm not trying to demonize the scientists here. I'm simply saying that they were human beings like the rest of us, and a scientific understanding of reality did not seem to be a sufficient mechanism for preventing them from doing something insane.
But they didn't, necessarily, have a scientific understanding of reality. They were specialists in particular scientific fields; operating within an ideological context - in which, the world isn't seen as a single planetary environment, but rather - a jigsaw puzzle made up of nation state shaped pieces. There's nothing that more promotes that ideological worldview than war between nations. I assume the threat of another nation developing the doomsday weapon first was the overwhelming factor. But you're asking me what other people thought. I can't know that.
But they didn't, necessarily, have a scientific understanding of reality.
Ok, so who is it exactly that you are referring to regarding "a scientific understanding of reality"? Imaginary people as yet to be born?
The larger point is this. Unless you can aim us at something or somebody specific which can change the equation, it remains madness for us to use the "more is better" paradigm to give ourselves more and more power without limit.
We might reach a compromise by agreeing to:
1) Pull the plug on "more is better" for now.
2) If at some point in the future the world is inhabited by beings who have a scientific understanding of reality, whatever that is, then we could revisit the "more is better" paradigm at that time.
As it stands, you're trying to reject my "more is better" concerns by offering in it's place a vague fantasy world which doesn't exist, at least not at this moment in time.
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 13:57#2533560 likes
But they didn't, necessarily, have a scientific understanding of reality.
— karl stone
Ok, so who is it exactly that you are referring to regarding "a scientific understanding of reality"? Imaginary people as yet to be born?
You're like that fish - who, when asked "How's the water?" answers: "What the hell is water?" There's a difference between an ideological understanding of reality; that is, the world seen through the lens of religion, nation states and money - and a scientific understanding of reality. You don't even seem to realize that your very identity and purposes are shaped by religious, political and economic ideologies.
Well, I'm sorry to break this to you champ, but those ideologies are not true - not in the way science is true anyway. They're conventions, and they do not describe reality as it really is. That difference is the problem. It's why everything is getting in strange ways worse, despite astonishing scientific and social advancement over the past 200 years. It's a mistake in the program - something we need to put right to ensure we can progress toward a long and bright future.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. How's the water?
There's a difference between an ideological understanding of reality; that is, the world seen through the lens of religion, nation states and money - and a scientific understanding of reality.
Um, what exactly is a "scientific understanding of reality"? Chanting the phrase is not an explanation.
To your knowledge, does anyone on Earth currently have a "scientific understanding of reality" as you define it?
If your answer is yes, what are the names of the people who you feel have a "scientific understanding of reality"?
If your answer is no, then can we agree giving human beings more and more power at an ever faster pace is not such a great plan?
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 14:29#2533660 likes
what exactly is a "scientific understanding of reality"? Chanting the phrase is not an explanation. To your knowledge, does anyone on Earth currently have a "scientific understanding of reality" as you define it? If your answer is yes, what are the names of the people who you feel have a "scientific understanding of reality"?
It's in contrast to an ideological understanding of reality - as is quite simply, the world understood in scientific terms. So, it's not something one has as such - but rather, something of which many people are capable. You do accept, I suppose - that the world is a single planetary environment. It's not made up of nation state shaped pieces. The world didn't come with borders painted on it. Nation states are made up - and yet, it's through the lens of these made up ideas, we make decisions about how to apply technology - not least, nuclear technology.
If your answer is no, then can we agree giving human beings more and more power at an ever faster pace is not such a great plan?
No. We can't agree. Stop the world I wanna get off - is never the answer. Responsible management is the answer. Responsible to a scientific understanding of reality first, and ideological considerations, like profit - second.
Who exactly are you suggesting to be capable of responsible management? Who exactly has this scientific understanding of reality you can never stop talking about? Who exactly?
You have no idea. Thus...
A fantasy plan.
karl stoneFebruary 06, 2019 at 16:18#2533760 likes
Who exactly are you suggesting to be capable of responsible management? Who exactly has this scientific understanding of reality you can never stop talking about? Who exactly? You have no idea. Thus... A fantasy plan.
What a stupid question. Who exactly? You mean like Mr Smith of 33 Elm Tree Lane, Nicetown, Anywhere. You want height, weight, date of brith, shoe size and star sign? Who exactly? You have no idea. Thus... a stupid question.
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Jeff AllynFebruary 07, 2019 at 06:24#2535510 likes
Reply to bogdan9310
The way I reconstruct your argument does not imply that all science is bad. The argument presupposes a distinction between science and scientism. Your idea, as I understand it, is that because science works by analyzing concepts we already know before we ever do any science, not all knowledge is scientific or a part of science, i.e., scientism is false.
You mean like Mr Smith of 33 Elm Tree Lane, Nicetown, Anywhere.
Yup, that's what I mean. If you can't identify a single person who meets your standard of "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" then you have no basis upon which to propose that we should give human beings ever more power at an ever faster rate. According to your own posts there is literally no one on Earth currently capable of managing the new powers emerging from the knowledge explosion, and yet you want to release these new powers anyway.
karl stoneFebruary 07, 2019 at 10:01#2535720 likes
Yup, that's what I mean. If you can't identify a single person who meets your standard of "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" then you have no basis upon which to propose that we should give human beings ever more power at an ever faster rate. According to your own posts there is literally no one on Earth currently capable of managing the new powers emerging from the knowledge explosion, and yet you want to release these new powers anyway.
Great. Me! That was easy. Sadly, almost everyone else is operating within an ideological environment - drawing their identities and purposes, their beliefs and terms of analysis from those ideas, existing between them, as if in a collective consciousness. It's thus very difficult for people to see beyond those ideas, to the scientific reality. But I've been doing this for years, and truly have tried to adjust my thinking in relation to scientific truth.
For example, I accept that humankind is a single species - which evolved on this planet, emerged from Africa around 70,000 years ago - and spread in all different directions. I see the commonalities in cultures rather than the differences - like for example, writing, music, art, architecture, agriculture, pottery, jewelry, and so on and on - things human beings do, only in culturally distinct ways.
I find this contrasts dramatically with the ideological idea of other peoples, of other religions and other nations, viewed as alien - because of the acceptance of ideological ideas in themselves, on their own terms. It's difficult, because people do consider those ideas definitive - and treat me as coming from a particular religious, national, socio-economic class group - relative to their own. I haven't encountered anyone who thinks like I do - and to be honest, I go back and forth. I'm not crazy. But it is a useful additional perspective.
Ah, I see now. It's ok for us to proceed with "more is better" because Karl is here to manage whatever might happen. Ok, so it's just one person, but because it's Karl that's ok. So everybody, don't worry about AI or genetically engineered babies, because Karl is here to fix it if anything goes wrong. Phew!!
Sadly, almost everyone else is operating within an ideological environment
My friend, you are TOTALLY LOST within your own ideology. I'm totally ripping it all to shreds and you don't notice, you don't care, but just keep on chanting, chanting, chanting.
Ok, this is how I become Mr. Grouchie Pants dealing with such sillyness, so it's time for me to bow out. Thanks for the chat!
karl stoneFebruary 07, 2019 at 13:06#2535910 likes
I get that reaction a lot. Don't worry about it - it's fine. It seems to me, that writing on a philosophy forum, you should be able to encompass and handle a contrast between the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies, and a scientific understanding of reality - without flipping out, and going all ad hom, but clearly, you're not a philosopher!
Instead, you're one of the people who need be afforded their illusions, even as scientific ideas are applied to direct the application of technology, to secure a sustainable future. The pertinent principle is "existential necessity" - which both justifies adopting science as truth, i.e. to address problems it's necessary to address for humankind to continue to exist, and at the same time limits the implications of science as truth - thus affording people like you your ideologically described identities and purposes. Because honestly, it doesn't matter what you think. Probably best you don't.
Terrapin StationFebruary 07, 2019 at 14:11#2536060 likes
Science only analyzes existing concepts, and there is no scientific research before a concept is created.
"Analyzes existing concepts," "creates concepts," and the word "only" in application to either claim about concepts makes no sense when in the same sentence we're admitting research.
If science is truth, why do scientists contradict each other? If a scientific consensus is truth, why are scientific consensuses of the past contradicted by scientific consensuses of today? And how do you know scientific consensuses of today won't be contradicted by those of tomorrow?
There are big issues with seeing science as providing truth. Scientists identify apparent regularities in our collective experience, then use them to build devices that behave in a regular way to achieve a specific goal. That's the part of what they do that makes people say science works, because it has brought us technology. Another big part of what they do, is making up stories about what happened in the distant past or what will happen in the distant future or what happens on tiny unobservable scales or what happens in conditions with too many intractable variables, we call it science too but what it really is is fantasy storytelling, fiction, remotely connected to the regularities they have identified.
And then if you take one of these stories as truth, and call it the scientific understanding of reality, you're gonna be disturbed when someone else comes with a totally different story that matches the identified regularities just as well.
What I do agree with in your post, is that we would probably be much better off if we focused on what we have in common rather than on our differences. Find what we all have in common then build from that starting point, rather than focusing on the differences and then ensuring that what's different remains separate, under control. People focus on differences because they fear, they fear what's not like them because what's not like them they don't know and they don't understand, they don't want to take the risk, better protect oneself from it or kill it. That's how we get genocides and wars. Now how do you get people to stop fearing each other, that's the hard part.
karl stoneFebruary 09, 2019 at 14:54#2542340 likes
If science is truth, why do scientists contradict each other? If a scientific consensus is truth, why are scientific consensuses of the past contradicted by scientific consensuses of today? And how do you know scientific consensuses of today won't be contradicted by those of tomorrow?
With regard to scientific method and epistemology - any scientist will affirm, that all scientific conclusions are held to be provisional in lieu of further evidence; but I'm not speaking as a scientist. I'm speaking as a political philosopher - using ordinary language, to compare two conceptions of reality. I use the term truth in a less than philosophically exacting manner - but am making a comparison between a religious, political and economic ideological worldview - and a scientific understanding of reality. It's thus fair to say that science is true, whereas ideology isn't true. Ideology is conventional.
For example, from the 17th century until 1979 it was true that the capital city of China was Peking. Now that's not true. It's now Beijing. But one cannot, by the same token argue that the Copernican system of planetary motion was not true - merely because it was superseded by Newton, then Einstein. Compared to several references in the Bible to the Earth 'fixed in the heavens' - Copernican planetary motion is true. Darwinian evolution lacked the mechanism for the transmission of characteristics from one generation to another - but compared to the idea of creatures created fully formed and fixed by God, Darwinian evolution is true. Not as true as the neo-Darwinian synthesis with genetics, that describes today's understanding - and maybe not as true as some future appreciation of how epigenetics functions over time, but true. The bacterial theory of infection - compared to evil spirits, or miasmas - is true. I could go on, but the point, I hope is clear.
If you take the sum total of scientific knowledge, it paints an increasingly valid and coherent, broad brush stroke picture of reality - that's true, and that matters. It doesn't matter if some detail changes as science discovers more. It matters that we understand rather than suppress a scientific understanding of reality, and that we apply technology responsibly, as opposed to applying technology as dictated solely by religious, political and economic ideology.
I agree that it matters we apply technology responsibly. What I don't agree with is that science gives us the way to apply technology responsibly. Some use science to reach the conclusion that some beings are 'better' than others, and use that understanding to justify doing the worse atrocities to beings seen as below as long as it can improve the well-being of the 'better' ones. Sometimes these 'lower' beings are from other species, sometimes they are from our own. Science gives us technology, but remains moot on how we should behave with each other, on where we should go.
You have the view that science gives an approximation to truth and approaches it ever closer, only working out details over time while keeping the same big picture, and that it is not conventional. But what makes that broad-brush picture somewhat coherent over centuries is not that scientists of each generation evaluate all the available evidence and agree that this broad-brush picture is the only one approximately valid, but that they grew up in a world where they are taught this picture, and are taught to build upon it to work out the details. It's the story we tell each other and tell our children and that they tell to their own children that remains coherent, rather than the story remaining coherent as a sign that we must be approaching truth.
As an example, the available scientific evidence does not show in any way that Earth is not 'fixed in the heavens'. All we can really say if we're being scientifically honest, is that the story where Earth revolves around the Sun is easier to match with the available evidence than the story where Earth is the center of the heavens. You can come up with a story where Earth is fixed at the center and still account for the motions of the celestial bodies in as precise a way as we do now. The two stories cannot be compared scientifically, they are a matter of taste. Those who hold simplicity as a greater ideal want to stick to the first story and that's the one taught in schools, while some with other ideals prefer the second one. Why would simplicity make the first story more 'true' than the second one, what would make subjective simplicity a criterion for truth? It's only a matter of subjective taste.
And sometimes some parts of the broad-brush picture do change drastically. It used to be common scientific wisdom that there are no such things as microscopic germs causing diseases, that there are no such things as tectonic plates moving under the surface of the Earth, that we would never reach the surface of the Moon, that we would age at the same rate no matter our velocity and no matter how close to a celestial body we are, that all things have definite trajectories, now the current scientific wisdom is the opposite, and maybe the one of tomorrow will be something totally different yet again. We have now the common scientific wisdom that we can't see most of the stuff in the universe and that in the far future everything will have disintegrated and all life in the universe will have ceased to exist forever, which has far-reaching implications, but possibly the scientific wisdom in some decades or centuries will be the opposite yet again.
And then there is the fact that current scientific wisdom sees us as meaningless heaps of elementary particles subjected to unchanging cosmic laws, if all people really ascribed to this point of view I think the world would fall into a chaos worse than we have now, into even more widespread nihilism and depression. So for all these reasons I don't think that by pushing a 'scientific understanding of reality' onto people you will get what you really wish for. The picture it gives is not that nice at the moment, and not that true or devoid of conventionality either.
We build weapons to protect ourselves from others or to attack others, because we fear others. Increasing the power and efficacy of these weapons without reducing the fear that gives people the incentive to create them and use them simply brings us closer to destruction. We don't see others as beings like us, we see them as potential threats. We don't attempt to understand what led someone to hurt someone else, out of fear we see the one who hurts as a monster. And then we hurt the monster, and become monsters ourselves in someone else's eyes. But what if there is no such thing as monsters, but only beings who fear and who commit atrocities out of fear? What if if we really attempted to understand others we would learn to see the good in them and the fear on which they act, rather than assuming they are threats we need to attack or defend against? Then maybe the solution is not to be found in science, but in caring about others rather than only about oneself. Then how do you get people to wake up about this, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of caring about others every day until love spreads and wins over fear.
karl stoneFebruary 10, 2019 at 09:02#2544820 likes
The argument in your first paragraph can be boiled down to three words: "ought from is." It is an idea proposed by David Hume (1711-76)
"In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning...when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not."
Wonderfully poetic, and in a shallow sense, correct. No list of facts adds up to a value. One cannot derive ought from is. Yet as Hume notes, we do so all the time. If one accepts a scientific understanding of reality, the reason for this presents itself fairly readily.
Human beings were for the longest time, hunter-gatherers living in kinship tribal groups - not at all unlike chimpanzee troops in social structure. Chimpanzees have social hierarchies, and morality of sorts - where they groom eachother and share food, and remember who reciprocates, and who doesn't. Relating this dynamic to human tribal evolution - it's safe to assume that moral behavior was promoted by sexual selection and natural selection, where moral behavior promoted both the individuals breeding prospects, and the success of the tribe relative to other tribes.
The consequence of this is that there's an innate moral sensibility ingrained into human beings by tribal evolution, and so a list of facts does have moral implication for us - even while logically, no list of facts adds up to a value. Hume's conjecture is thus incomplete, yet has been widely employed to dismiss scientific understanding as morally neutral, or worse yet, morally vacuous.
As I've already written almost as much as you have, just on your first paragraph - I'm only going to add that scientific understanding has progressed in leaps and bounds since the advent of the computer, necessary both for communication and large calculations. I hope we will continue the discussion and address the issues you raise, but it would require a ridiculously lengthy post to do so here.
I agree that it matters we apply technology responsibly. What I don't agree with is that science gives us the way to apply technology responsibly.
Forgive the repetition please, but it seems useful to make a clear distinction between 1) science and 2) our relationship with science.
If our relationship with science was objective, detached and rational we could use the methods of science to develop tools and processes which could help us better manage technology. There would seem to be nothing about science itself that would prevent this, as science is just a conceptual machine with no agenda of it's own.
The problem as I see it is not with science itself, but that our relationship with science has taken on too many of the characteristics of the relationship we used to have with religion. The same human frailties that once caused us to accept religions as a "one true way" have been transferred to science. The same human frailties that once caused us to have an unquestioning relationship with religious clergy have been transferred to the new "science clergy". The same human frailties that once caused us to seek a religion flavored heaven have been transferred to the modern quest to create a technological heaven on Earth. And so on...
We think that the Enlightenment liberated us from all these old ways of thinking, but what happened instead is that the old ways of thinking were just aimed at a new target.
Religion is a useful enterprise until one gets all carried away with unquestioning belief in a "one true way". It's the same with science. It's not religion or science that is the problem, but our relationship with these enterprises.
Rank AmateurFebruary 16, 2019 at 14:06#2566120 likes
We build weapons to protect ourselves from others or to attack others, because we fear others.
Yes, and we fear others because we perceive ourselves to be divided from reality, separate and alone, and thus vulnerable. "Me" is perceived to be very very small, and "everything else" is perceived to be very very big, and so fear in all it's forms becomes a foundation of human psychology, and is expressed in symptoms of fear such as violence.
Adding more and more power at an ever accelerating rate to this equation is just poring fuel on the fire. So long as fear remains a foundation of human psychology giving humans ever more power is a prescription for disaster.
We don't get this because we've been getting away with this doomed formula for a very long time, and so we blindly assume that we can get away with it forever. What we don't see is that this formula (giving ever more power to fearful people) worked in the past only because the power was very limited. To ignore this inconvenient fact is to remain stuck in 19th century thinking.
The good news is that the sense we have of being separate and alone (and thus fearful) is an illusion generated by the nature of thought, what we've made of psychologically. Religion has been exploring this illusion in a variety of ways for thousands of years, and now science is as well in it's own way.
A key obstacle that we face in liberating ourselves from this fear generating illusion is that the illusion is generated by thought. Thus, thinking about the problem doesn't solve the problem, but instead fuels it.
Rank AmateurFebruary 16, 2019 at 14:36#2566320 likes
Reply to Jake in my view, it is self evident that, as you say, science has no agenda. Science makes no truth claims that are not experimentally supported. And science makes no claim at all about anything else. All physics is, at every level, at its core is just a mathematical model of an observation. It is just taking the world in front of us, and turning it into numbers. Then we can change variables to predict results, than experimentally check to see if those results happen. That's it.
And every use, or belief, or argument that is made in the name of science that is outside this, is just an argument based on faith in science, not about the science.
Comments (116)
Quoting bogdan9310
...using the computer that science derived from mathematical reason, and built using ever more sophisticated engineering techniques. Is your computer imaginary? Does it work on ideas that are just made up? Or must there be a truth relation between scientific knowledge and reality - because technology based on scientific understanding works?
Science works because it's true, right? So it's not just made up, is it? So why would you say that? I'm just asking you to be honest about where you're coming from on this.
But science isn't "just built up." Science proceeds by tearing down what's proven wrong, to rebuild what's right. It's a method of doubt, as opposed - I suspect, to your method of faith. You're taking pot shots at science for God, are you not?
Science also features discovery and exploration that can end up creating new fields. Philosophy is not the only thing that "creates" new fields, it can happen organically.
Only those who do not know what science is or what the scientific process and its methods are would treat it like a religion. On both sides, those who criticize it and those who believe too strongly in it. It is what it is and it's the best way for us to arrive at new knowledge detached from human corruption. It's the closest we have to arrive at "truths".
Quoting bogdan9310
If that were so, then anything would do. But it doesn't. You can't make an iPhone from wood and feathers.
A method that generates functional predictions about the relations between events
Quoting bogdan9310
The questions "how should I expect this to behave", "what should I expect to happen if I do X" and "what should I do to arrive at Y".
Quoting bogdan9310
Science arguably relies on theories in order to then compare them to experience, buy it's not analytical.
Quoting bogdan9310
Yes, insofar as science, the method, is philosophy.
Quoting bogdan9310
That is essentially the argument of constructivism. The notion of "discovering" knowledge is certainly at least skewed. But where do you want to go from here?
Quoting bogdan9310
You would know if the structure did not do what you expected it to do. When you learn to walk, you make it up as you go along. You can organize your limbs any way you like, but not all ways get you anywhere.
Quoting bogdan9310
I think you may be confusing science and metaphysical realism. Anyways how people treat something tells us about the people. Is this a thread about science or about people?
Quoting karl stone
That's a nice way to put it!
Quoting tim wood
Did Kant presuppose that? I suppose he might, but his argument had the form "if there is only natural causation, then". And the experience of causality exists.
The primary mission is to get to the truth but one can't hope to do that without an error detection system in place (falsifiability) but that makes all scientific truths provisional and subject to modify/delete.
It's like the tragic Greek demi-god, his flaw is his appeal and also the cause of his donwnfall.
Science does not just randomly have more approval though. It is more useful.
Science is several things:
it's an epistemology: a philosophy of knowledge.
it's a method: the scientific method of testing hypotheses with reference to evidence.
It's a practice: conducting scientific experiments.
and it's a conception of reality: an increasingly valid and coherent worldview.
So everything you said in your opening post is wrong - so much so that you come across as a religious person seeking to undermine science to maintain religious belief, and not at all like someone who understands science such that they could point out its "obvious flaws."
Here's an obvious flaw with what you've said. Atheism is not a scientific conclusion. The scientifically correct position on the God hypothesis is agnosticism, not atheism. It's 'I don't know.' There's insufficient reliable evidence to test the hypothesis. The questions 'what are we able to know?' and 'how are we able to know it?' are what epistemology is all about - and scientific method is the world's best answer to those questions.
The answer seems rather self-evident, given that you are asking the question via an Internet forum.
But the answer is because the scientific method provides functional predictions. It allows us to, to an extent, see the future.
If we are taking about empirical science then I think the scientifically correct position on God is atheism. God is not part of any scientific theory of the universe, so it doesn't exist.
Good point. One explanation is that all definitions are inherently flawed given that they are built upon a process of division which doesn't exist in the real world.
We look at a tree, and it seems obvious what it is. And the standard definition has it's uses of course. But we don't see the gas exchanges happening around the tree, the sunlight triggering photosynthesis, the roots underground, the insect and microbe populations which are essential to the tree etc. That is, we see a separate distinct "thing" and not the larger system it is a part of.
If we don't look closely, a tree is an object. Simple, easy, useful.
If we do look closely there is no object, in the sense of being separate and divided from other objects.
Oh, I see. But other methods, e.g. magic, do not work as well for the same purpose.
You could make a general argument that what is "more useful" is entirely subjective. But the scientific method is still what we should be using if we want to answer questions about experienced reality.
Secondly we don't know if magic is good or not because as science became more popular it led to more discoverys wich made it more popular leading to more research in it wich made it more discoverys. It then became a run away sinario. It became popular because of the cristians than people cut its ties to christianity. Again it is not using all the parts.
But given the goal I have stated, science is the most useful method.
Quoting hachit
Are "Alchemy" and "Christianity" methods? If so, how do they work?
Quoting hachit
Is the goal of science to "find the truth"? What truth do you mean? Science makes predictions about observable reality. Whether or not you think these predictions are "truth" doesn't change the fact that they work, and that is all that matters for the purpose of science.
Quoting hachit
So science became popular because it works. Which begs then question: if there are other methods that work, why aren't they popular? You're welcome to try "magic". I am sure people will be interested if it works.
I disagree. Given a scientific understanding of the universe - there's sufficient reason to form a God hypothesis. Logically, there's first cause, and physically, there's the fine tuning argument - neither of which constitute proof, but are certainly sufficient to support a God hypothesis. If you would entertain ideas like multiple universes, or the universe as a computer simulation - ruling out the idea of an intelligent, intentional cause is a double standard.
The fact is we don't know. No-one knows if God exists or not. Admitting what we do and do not know is important, because the really interesting thing that follows from such an admission is that, if there is a God - then science is effectively the word of God made manifest in Creation, and through discovering and being responsible to scientific truth, we can secure a sustainable future, and survive in the universe - maybe long enough to find out.
Adhering to the faith that there is a God, the human species is doomed - for faith undermines reason, denies a scientific conception of reality its rightful authority, and sets one faith group against another. As a tool of pre-scientific, religious and political ideology, science gives us the power to destroy the world, but denies us the reason to save it.
You're forgetting about observation. How does any human form knowledge without observation? Observation is an aspect of science. All in all, philosophy is a science. The conclusions reached in one domain of knowledge should not contradict the conclusions in another. All knowledge must be integrated.
Perhaps we have different ideas in mind when we hear (or read) science. I was speaking strictly about science as an empirical method for making predictions about the world. Pure physics, nothing else. That is a form of "understanding" the universe, but it's not the only form.
The theories you listed belong, from my point of view, to the realm of metaphysics. They do not describe what we observe, they interpret it. There is grounds for metaphysical agnosticism (though I think the "first cause" dilemma has been solved neatly by Kant and the "fine tuning" argument is utter nonsense). But in purely physical terms, only what is part of a theory can be said to exist. The concept of God does not describe any part of the observable universe, nor does it make any predictions. Hence, physically there is no such thing.
Likewise, the multi-unvierse theory and the simulation hypothesis interpret the physical world, they do not, as such, say anything about how it works. As such, they're literally meta-physics.
Quoting karl stone
But it is impossible to find out, is it not? There is no way to establish the objective reality of the universe as a mere observer.
Quoting karl stone
It's not the place of empirical science to give reasons. That's the realm of morality.
Perhaps you don't understand the term 'hypothesis' - or how that relates to agnosticism. There are hypotheses that can be ruled out. Geocentrism - for example. It's the theory based on simple observations that the earth is stationary, and the entire universe revolves around us. This idea persisted for a very long time, but was eventually falsified by Galileo, who made the first formal statement of scientific method. The Church arrested Galileo, and tried him for heresy - forced him to recant his claims, and prohibited his works.
This had the effect of divorcing science as a tool, from science as an understanding of reality. Subsequently, science was used to drive the industrial revolution, but to achieve ends described by the understanding of reality constituted by religious and political ideology - rather than, in a manner responsible to a scientific understanding of reality. This was a mistake, and it explains why, now - science can destroy the world but cannot save it. To my mind, you - and indeed, the entire cannon of western philosophy follows in the course of this mistake.
Quoting Echarmion
Dismissing first cause and fine tuning by saying "Kant and utter nonsense" is both a redundant repetition and an unwarranted claim to authority. As stated above, science is many things - so saying, 'in purely physical terms' is to seek to put science in a box defined by scientific method, thus to allow free range to all kinds of unscientific ideas. We have suppressed science as a general understanding of reality in favour of religious and political ideology for 400 years, and it's a mistake. Do nation states 'exist'? Is money 'a real thing'? No, yet it's in relation these ideas we apply science and technology. So it's not metaphysics to have a general scientific understanding of reality, or at least, it shouldn't be.
Anyhow, my dinner is ready. And afterward, I'm likely to suffer from postprandial somnolence. So, take you time. Think about your reply!
These are a lot of words to say "I think you're wrong". It would help if you explained to me what exactly I get wrong about hypotheses and agnosticism.
Quoting karl stone
It's not an argument, certainly. But this thread isn't about either the problem of first cause or the fine tuning argument. We can discuss both, if you like, but I think that those discussions warrant their own thread, or at least in a thread about agnosticism. Not that I want to tell you what to do though.
Quoting karl stone
No, saying what I mean when I say "science" is seeking to establish definitions in order to more effectively communicate.
Quoting karl stone
This sounds like you consider "metaphysics" to be some kind of insult. It is not, it's merely the name of a subset of philosophy. We can even call it a "science", if you want. There is a reason I always qualify "empirical science" when I want to talk only about physics. All I am saying is that God does not exist as a physical entity.
Alchemy is similar to chemistry in the way it also works with the interactions of matter. It's built on a different base thought. Mostly to do with the idea of purity.
Truth in this case would be how the universe works. I believe the goal is to figure out how the universe works.
Then when it has figured it out, we can manipulate to our needs.
Also one discovery can cause us to remove thouse facts that we use that worked for us at the time.
Science became popular because Christians, like my self. are forbidden from using magic by God. Instead we figured, if we could figure out how his creation works then we could then respect it; without turning to Satan and his demons. I will say this now to avoid confusion, we the Christians believe magic is the art of consulting with demons (as described in the bible, not as pictured in culture). So the study of magic is under the study of Christian-demonology. (Note this is not the only view of magic, but it is the one I'm fimlar with)
I'm not saying science is less legitimate, just it is missing parts. If you don't consider all the parts you conclusion is incomplete.
If that's all I were saying - that's what I would have said. I've explained why your claim that scientific understanding can only apply to ideas laid out in physics is wrong. It's because science is several things:
it's an epistemology: a philosophy of knowledge.
it's a method: the scientific method of testing hypotheses with reference to evidence.
it's a practice: conducting scientific experiments.
and it's a conception of reality: an increasingly valid and coherent worldview.
You argue that the last, 'an increasing valid and coherent worldview" is not science - but metaphysics. That follows from the mistake of suppressing science as an understanding of reality for 400 years. If you take the sum total of scientific knowledge - the broad picture it paints, then there's sufficient justification for a God hypothesis - but not proof, either for or against. Hence, agnosticism with regard to the God hypothesis.
Metaphysics is an insult. Any valid philosophy begins with epistemology - either explicitly, or implicitly. Heidegger's random obsession with the concept of 'being' for example, is metaphysics, and there's no systematic method to that madness. He adduces observations at random intervals - about hammers and bicycles, to support an equally random line of reasoning - toward a prejudiced conclusion.
Your atheism is similar. You cannot know that "God does not exist as a physical entity." It's 'the problem of induction' described by Karl Popper. You cannot prove the negative. Your epistemology is wrong. You have faith God does not exist - and I cannot truly understand why you would want to believe that. Maybe you're disenchanted - you were taught religion as a child, only to reject it in adulthood, and are left feeling bitter about it. Push past it. Religion is not God. Religion is primitive political philosophy - that occurred in the course of human evolutionary development, at the point where hunter gatherer tribes joined together. They adopted God as an objective authority for social and political values that applied equally to all, regardless of tribal affiliation.
We can know this precisely because religion suppressed science as an understanding of reality. They didn't want to know the truth. They wanted a justification for political power. But if there is a God, and I think it entirely reasonable to hope there is - the path to God is surely to accept true knowledge of reality, and act responsibly in relation to that knowledge. It's certainly the path to a sustainable future for humankind.
If reality is observer dependent, explain traffic lights. No-one has ever gone to court and successfully argued - "The light I observed was green, Your Honour." If reality were observer dependent, traffic lights could not exist. Rather, there's an objective reality that we observe in a subjective fashion - subject to greater or lesser degrees of accuracy. Science employs repeated observation by independent observers to test its claims - and the incentives are to disprove other scientist's claims, not confirm them.
I have made no such claim. I have never even used the term "scientific understanding" and I do not know what - precisely - it's supposed to mean.
Quoting karl stone
Look I am not interested in discussing semantics. If you want to use different definitions from the ones I use, fine. But definitions are not arguments.
Quoting karl stone
Can you tell me what law of physics either includes or at least allows for a God? Failing that, can you explain to me how attributes such as "omnipotence" would manifest in the physical world?
Quoting karl stone
This is not the most absurd statement I have read on this forum, but it certainly comes close. What is your definitions of metaphysics? Because it sure as hell is not the commonly used one.
Quoting karl stone
If I cannot know what does not exist, should I consequently be agnostic about unicorns and leprechauns as well? According to Karl Popper, scientific theories must be falsifiable. That means that, since you cannot prove a negative using induction, you are not allowed to ask people to prove a negative. If you want to use Popper's philosophy as the basis for your agnosticism, you will have to establish how it could be falsified.
Anything that is not strictly necessary to explain our observations is not part of physical reality. Physical existence is contingent on the observations that it accounts for. You don't prove that X Y Z do not exist, you prove that you can account for all observations without needing X, Y or Z.
Quoting karl stone
Thank you for the psychoanalysis, but if I want counseling, I will consult a professional.
This is ridiculous.
Then 10 different people reading your post and interpret it 10 different ways, and your own ( the author) interpretation would be just as unreliable as everyone else's. How do you know you're reading the same words on the screen as everyone else?
You're welcome.
Then your knowledge is not reliable because your knowledge is based on observation.
I would counter that those most expert in the techniques of science may be those most likely to treat it like a religion, that is, a "one true way" because they've devoted their lives to science and as human beings are likely to develop an emotion based attachment as a result.
As example, show us the scientists who argue for limits to the advancement of scientific knowledge. I'm guessing such folks are rare, which illustrates the "one true way" mindset.
It seems helpful to draw a distinction between science and our relationship with science.
I would agree that science is just a conceptual machine which generates new data from old data, and is neither good nor bad in itself, like any other mechanical tool. There seems little to debate here.
Our relationship with science is another matter. I would argue that our civilization as a whole has largely transferred a blind unquestioning "one true way" relationship we used to have with religion to science. What confuses many people is that the scientific method is very questioning, but our relationship with that method typically isn't.
I've been writing on this topic for years on many different forums, a social experiment of a sort, and have discovered that it's close to impossible for we moderns to conceive that there should be limits to science, and that the "more is better" relationship with science is dangerously outdated. And it doesn't seem to matter how much education one has, the science worshiping group think has penetrated all levels of society.
Is science a religion? No, certainly not.
Does our relationship with science smell a lot like a religion? Yes, it certainly does. The one true way leading us to the promised land, typically believed without questioning based on reference to authority etc.
There is so much confusion on this subject. We pat ourselves on the back about having transcended religion etc, but really all we've done is transfer an ancient blind faith mindset to a new and far more dangerous enterprise.
You see, you hear, your smell, you touch, you taste, you have a whole bunch of experiences. You notice regularities within some of these experiences, which allow you to predict to some extent what you will experience.
You observe some ball of light rise in the sky, you call it the Sun, you see it happen again and again, you assume it will keep happening, and you write down the law that the Sun rises regularly, that after night comes the day, and after the day comes the night.
Then you may wonder, does the Sun die every time it disappears and is born again every time it rises above the horizon, or is it always there even when you can't see it? If you assume that it is there even when you can't see it, you are constructing in your mind a world where the Sun goes somewhere out of your sight then comes back. You are imagining that world, you are making it up to some extent. How much of the world we live in do we create ourselves?
Science is about creating a world in our minds that is predictable, about imagining underlying regularities to apparent irregularities. You could come up with vastly different imagined worlds that would have the same predictive power.
The imagined world is called a model, a theory. We don't see the particles or waves or strings of the current mainstream theories, we imagine them. A theory makes predictions of future experiences from past experiences. We don't test whether the world imagined through the theory is an accurate representation of our world, we just test whether the theory's predictions are observed.
Some philosophers and scientists look for the fundamental building blocks of 'reality'. But those building blocks are whatever we want them to be, particles, waves, leprechauns, gods, feelings, so long as we imagine them to behave in ways that allow to account for what we experience, to predict what we will experience.
I see the root of existence as change. And science as an activity that attempts to predict future change, through observation and imagination. But I see 'science' as it is practiced today as very narrow-minded, resistant and oppressive to unconventional ideas, for no valid reason, dismissing lines of inquiry without attempting to explore them, having certainty on things that are far from certain, displaying characteristics similar to religions.
Ok, good question. I'm not sure I have an answer to your "what to do" question, but I'm willing to explore it, here or in another thread of your choosing.
"Nothing sticks" because so far, in years of discussing this in many places, not a single person has been able to explain how human beings will successfully manage ever more power delivered at an ever faster pace, which is what a "more is better" relationship with knowledge (and thus science) leads to, as proven by the history of the last 500 years.
I do grow testy sometimes, which is entirely my problem. I may be making some progress there as I'm close to giving up on trying to explain for the billionth time that being bored with the fact that we have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat is not very good evidence of a species that is ready for more and more power delivered at an ever accelerating pace. The testiness arises from extreme boredom, and a form of arrogance that assumes that I, Mr. Jake Poster, can have any impact at all on a historic process so much larger and deeper than any us. Perhaps I'm learning to be a bit more realistic about the situation we find ourselves in, or perhaps I'm just becoming more selfish in the realization that I'll be dead soon and so this is somebody else's problem.
In any case, if I wish to lay claim to being a person of reason I have to listen to the evidence, and the evidence from years of discussing this is screaming that reason is not going to solve this problem of our relationship with knowledge, and so there is probably little to do other than wait for the lessons that pain will inevitably generously provide.
I'm not vetoing further discussion on the matter, for I did of course just write a post on it myself. But I'll admit to not being hopeful we can take the conversation anywhere we haven't already been, and by "we" I don't mean just you and I, but this philosophy forum, all philosophy forums, our culture at large.
Here's the thread where this was previously discussed. If you want to try to revive it, go for it.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3728/the-knowledge-explosion
Well first, you might want to acknowledge that science and technology are not applied for scientifically valid reasons. They're applied as dictated by religious/political/economic power structures - for power and profit, regardless of scientific advisability. Were we to correct that error - scientific truth would regulate the application of technology. There's your 'adult in the room' - missing from your approach.
Quoting Jake
If you cannot recognize 70,000 nuclear weapons at the height of the Cold War as an ideologically driven, and irrational application of technology - as opposed to an application of technology responsible to scientific truth, then I'm done banging a brick wall against your head.
Quoting Jake
Oh, right - because philosophy has never changed anything! If you don't care if there's a future for humankind, your existence was just one long masturbatory fantasy. You took all previous generations struggled to create, from nought but sticks and stones, and merely pleasured yourself with it. Well bravo - but no encore!
Quoting Jake
I'm inclined to agree. The overwhelming probability is that we will not address the problem of our relationship to scientific knowledge, and will die starving and sun-burnt en masse; but it's not inevitable - and it's not right. If science hasn't proven itself a profound truth that rightfully owns the highest authority, that's our mistake - not anything inherent to science.
Quoting Jake
Well I think I am saying something different, and hopeful, and true. I think you people can't see it because it requires you look beyond your ideological identities - and that scares you. You can't look reality in the eye, and assert the worth of humankind. Reality is a threat to you - as is evident in your entire approach, just as it's a threat to religion, politics and economics. Only it's not. Not if you accept it. From my point of view - nothing looks more like the word of God than science. Politics is merely the business of knowing what's true, and doing what's right in terms of what's true. And the economic opportunities that follow from accepting scientific truth, and applying technology accordingly - are vast, and potentially infinite.
The scientist who experiments on his own brain has an idiot for a subject.
And this is a problem, why?
If this is how you think scientists think about science, you don't have much insight into scientific research. Do you think that scientists don't tread carefully forward? That they don't have ethics? And do you think that all scientists in the world blindly follow science in the religious way you describe? People and scientists trust science because of the facts it provides, because of the technology it develops and invents, because of the improvements for people's lives.
There's no promised land, it's the process of science that proves it's own worth. Religion does nothing, science has done everything for the quality of life that we have and the knowledge about the world and universe we now know. To put trust in science is to put trust in a method that produces facts humanity can live by, not fairy tales and delusions that corrupt mankind. To say that science "smell lot like religion" is pure nonsense in my opinion and totally ignorant of what science actually is.
There's a lot of distrust against science, scientists and the scientific community on this forum. I don't know if it's because of religious apologists who try to push their agenda or if a lot of people have a problem with scientific facts and intentionally try to discredit it in order to try and validate their own incoherent arguments, but most of the time when I read criticism of science it just comes across as heavily uninformed and misinformed.
I didn't say that the senses are observations. I said that you make observations with your senses. That is the definition of observation - using your senses. Scientists performing their own experiments rely on their own observations to make sure theirs is the same as some other scientist who made a claim that they are now testing. They are testing the consistency of the claim of another by using their own observations.
@Christoffer - This being a philosophy forum, members are going to ask 'what does it mean' - when it comes to science - or indeed anything. Regardless of certain members' claims, the results of scientific experiments have meaning only within a narrow context - in relation to potential technological applications, for example, or in relation to concepts whose definition is circular (e.g. 'energy' = "the capacity to do work" / 'the capacity to do work' = "energy") and therefore lacking in wider or deeper truth claims. For example, humans may have evolved (well yeah, they did), but does that *alone* that mean we should each devote all our mental activity to out-surviving and out-reproducing everyone unrelated to us? {There's a scientific morality for you...} - Science makes predictions about the three-dimensional world; brain science delves into how this links into the human world, but cannot explain it much beyond the point that it can give a physical location for the number three.
As for religion, do you really understand enough about it to call it (even if non-abrahamic faiths are excluded) an attempt to understand the physical universe and nothing more? In this case, science would be on an equal footing with religion in any case. Since spirituality goes straight for the mind, how do you know it hasn't improved our quality of life intangibly, for example by helping create social/moral and psychological/spiritual conditions in which scientists and others felt free and still feel free, inspired, and encouraged to do their work?
The scientific method is not what 'smells a lot like religion'. What does, as Jake implied, are the claims made mainly by non-scientists and popular science writers on the back of rushed and stretched conclusions, that science alone provides ultimate understanding. It does not - As you yourself say, it deals in 'facts', and so its only conclusions relate one physical phenomenon to other similarly-bounded phenomena. Needless to say, phrases like "delusions that corrupt mankind" smell 'religious' - in as much as each religion (at least monotheistic ones) tends to paint the others in similar terms, as well as clarifying that they are *nothing* like they are themselves...
As I said, you're confusing science itself with our relationship with science.
Quoting Christoffer
Which scientists have publicly declared in front of their peers that we should NOT learn X, Y or Z? And if they did, what then happened to their career?
There are millions of scientists so I'm sure there are some rare exceptions, but generally speaking, yes, the scientific community has a simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and thus, with power. It's not a religion, but is better described as being "religion-like", a non-questioning faith based belief built upon authority that holds that the more knowledge and power humans have the better.
I say "faith based" because this "more is better" belief is in direct contradiction to readily available widely known and agreed upon evidence, thousands of hair trigger hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats threatening to erase modern civilization at the push of a button at any moment without warning. That is, the "more is better" belief is not a product of reason, but instead bears a closer resemblance to the relationship we used to have with clergy and religion etc. Our modern relationship with science can be usefully compared to the relationship 12th century Catholics had with their Church.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, this relationship is very understandable given all the benefits science has delivered so far. What you're not getting is that there are limits to this process, just as there are limits to everything in all of reality. "More is better" was a reasonable paradigm when we knew very little, and were still riding horses and such. That era of knowledge scarcity has passed, it's over, and we're in a new era now characterized by an out of control knowledge explosion. You, and our culture at large, are trying to apply 19th century thinking to a very different 21st century reality.
Quoting Christoffer
Again, please note, you are confusing science with our relationship with science. I agree that the scientific method is a largely objective, questioning, challenging, rational etc process. Our relationship with science is none of those things.
I'm not against science. I don't hate scientists. I'm not selling any religion.
I am instead arguing that there is a pressing need for us to update our relationship with science to match the era we are currently living in, and racing towards.
How do you suggest we sell this theory of yours to the scientific community, the politicians who fund them, and the public at large? I understand your theory to basically be saying, "if we were rational the problem is solved". How do you intend to make us rational?
Quoting karl stone
Ok, "an irrational application of technology" seems accurate enough. But, neither you nor anybody else has any credible plan for how we make "application of technology responsible to scientific truth" thus it's a form of insanity to introduce ever more power at an ever faster pace in to the equation.
The fact that these weapons exist, however that happened, is proof enough that we aren't ready for more and more power coming online at a faster and faster pace.
It's the simplest thing Karl, once one escapes the group think. As example, do you believe that everyone should have access to any weapon they want? Or do you believe that such access should be limited in some manner or another? If you chose the later option, you already agree with me the power necessarily has to be limited.
Expand on what you're referring to here please. Thanks.
I have significant issues with the equivocation of our relationship with science with the relationship a person living in 12th century Europe had with the Catholic church. To wit, I haven't heard of anyone denying climate change being forced to recant, or flat-earthers being executed for blasphemy.
Be that as it may though, your argument for the out of control nature of science is flawed. Even granting your position that scientists have a duty to limit their inquiries in case additional knowledge is harmful, you are assuming that scientists, and the public at large must share this belief. Given the disagreement apparent on this forum alone, that doesn't appear warranted. If that position is not shared, then your argument that science is religion-like because it ignores this position doesn't follow.
The man in the street 12th century Catholic believed in his Church much in the same way the man in the street 21st century person believes in the "more is better" relationship with knowledge. There's unquestioning obedience to authority and the group think etc.
Quoting Echarmion
Ok, so instead of just making that claim, please explain to us how exactly it is flawed. Here's what you're up against.
Do you believe that the powers available to children should be limited? If yes, all I'm doing is applying this common sense principle to adults as well. Once you make that one tiny little step it immediately becomes obvious that a "more is better" relationship with knowledge is problematic.
What's confusing you is that for thousands of years when we basically knew almost nothing, in that situation, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge was a reasonable position. We aren't in that situation any more.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm not following you here. What is it that I'm assuming?
According to you. I don't see much unquestioning obedience to the idea that science must always progress. There is no shortage of media that warns of science unchecked, and I don't see much evidence the average citizen is all glassy-eyed about the singularity.
Quoting Jake
Sure, I believe parents should set boundaries to children. I see no justification to erect similar boundaries with respect to adults. Adults should be bound by law, and guided by morality, not by what some authority considers best for them.
I agree though that a scientist should optimally consider the possible harm a publication might do. But I don't see how we can put the genie back into the box without resorting to outright tyrannical measures.
Quoting Jake
People still die of "natural", which is to say preventable, causes. That is certainly a reason to strive for more knowledge. As are various other social and environmental problems. So how do you suggest we balance the risk of annihilation with the promise of incrementally better lifes?
Quoting Jake
You're admonishing the followers of science for being "like a religion". Your argument is that they are missing the very obvious indications that they have crossed the line and should no longer pursue knowledge without restriction. The problem is, the indications are obvious to you. They are not necessarily obvious to anyone else. So for all you know, their behavior might habe nothing to do with religious adherence to the "more is better" approach.
Note your use of the phrase "followers of science". Speaks for itself, I need say no more.
Quoting Echarmion
Correct.
Quoting Echarmion
And yet you are fighting tooth and nail for the group consensus just as a 12th century Catholic would faithfully defend the Church.
My theory is not 'basically saying' that. It's not a basic theory. It's a very deep theory that's concerned with the nature of reality, the nature of life, and the nature of mind - as that applies to the philosophy, politics and economics of sustainability. My appeal is not to entirely rational motives. Take for instance, your masturbatory, I'm all right Jake disregard for the future of the species. I suspect that argument appeals to your ego.
Quoting Jake
You demand a referee - and yet dismiss the only qualified candidate; that is, recognition of the authority of scientific truth over and above primitive ideologies. You refuse to acknowledge that science as you see it - is science conducted, and technology applied in pursuit of ideological wealth and power. Who would you elect referee? The Amish? Billions would starve. There's no return to the rural idyll for the vast majority. Our only hope is responsibility to science as truth.
Quoting Jake
You haven't escaped the groupthink. Your kind of anti-scientism is the prevailing paradigm, and exactly what I'm arguing against. It proceeds from the Church's response to Galileo, via Thomas Hobbes and others, and feeds straight into popular fiction via Mary Shelly. Every mad scientist dispatched by some God loving, flag waving hero follows in the course of this dynamic, and so do you.
Depends on how you define knowledge, I guess. It's more complex than it appears, particularly as it plays out in society and the world. An idea I've been batting around lately, is the idea of real internet ID - so everyone would have to be themselves online. It's an idea gaining ground in China for reasons I'm unaware of. I think it would create a more responsible virtual world, but there are potential implications for free speech and political organisation in the event of authoritarian government.
We would know more about who people were, but the potential negative implications for free speech would have to be weighed against the drugs, porn, child abuse, visa theft, bullying, piracy, prostitution, and screeching political opinion online anonymity allows for.
It's something Jake and I have discussed at great length, that he is aware of - but which he mis-characterizes in order to attack. Basically, I argue that humankind made a potentially fatal mistake by failing to recognize the significance of scientific method, and so denying the authority of scientific knowledge, and that it's necessary - and possible to correct this mistake, in order to secure a sustainable future.
In other words, a utopian vision with no basis in reality. But then me trying to address these topics on forums is the same thing.
Won't matter a bit once the bombs start flying.
Knowledge, and thus science, does produce very many benefits. In the past, that was good enough.
Nuclear weapons do a good job of illustrating the revolutionary new era we now live it. If even a single power of that scale slips from our control and crashes civilization then none of the other very many benefits delivered by knowledge matter. A single power the scale of nuclear weapons going wrong a single time, game over.
This isn't speculative futuristic alarmism. This is the reality of the world we've been living in since the 1950s.
Everybody already knows this. And yet we keep racing as fast as we can to bring other vast powers on to the scene as quickly as possible.
— karl stone
Quoting Jake
See! There he does again with the blatant mis-characterization.
It's entirely based in reality. It begins with evolution, anthropology, religion, history, the occurrence - and suppression of science by religion, goes on to discuss the consequences of that mistake - and the potential benefits, and dangers of correcting it.
Sustainability is not utopian. It's been the natural assumption of every generation before ours. It's the very least we should expect - and evidence something has gone very wrong if we can see the final horizon.
As for discussing this topic here, I think it better to discuss such a difficult subject in a relatively quiet corner - from a low platform, and let it filter out. If I'm right, and I am - people will find it.
It's not the knowledge itself which causes benefit or harm, it is the way that the knowledge is used which is beneficial or harmful. So knowledge falls into the category of a potency, or power, which may be used for bad or good.
This thread really is a treasure trove for absurd responses. Yes my usage of your term proves your point. Well done.
Quoting Jake
More equivocation. I am arguing with you. If you cannot defend your point, and instead resort to ad hominem, I think we're done here.
We can debate on whether knowledge in and if itself can ever do harm. This is why I was talking about consequences in general. It is possible that we might one day discover a doomsday device that is so easy to construct and so destructive that the risk of some lunatic setting it off is too high.
Edit: if you want to be technical, there is the notion of a technology trap, a technology that looks incredibly useful and seems save, but nevertheless ends up wiping you out. This might be a case where knowledge itself does harm.
Yes, and it's clear this is the first time you've thought about our "more is better" relationship with knowledge, which is completely normal.
Quoting Echarmion
Oh my, we're so very worried about our little baby egos, aren't we? I'm agreeable to being done if that's what you prefer because I know from years of discussing this topic that it's never going to go anywhere.
If you wish to debunk me here's how to do it. For years I've been stubbornly attempting to apply reason to a subject that is beyond reason. On the surface my arguments are very logical, just common sense really, but I've failed to face and accept that logical arguments are never going to be the solution to this.
The fundamental challenge presented by the knowledge explosion is like a force of nature. The notion that we are in charge and driving the process is mostly illusion. The knowledge explosion is like an algae bloom in a lake. The process will run out of control and crash the system, and over some long period of time a new equilibrium will be established. Example, the fall of the Roman Empire, followed by a thousand years of darkness, from which the green sprouts of the Enlightenment arose. This is another cycle like that.
This is the first time human beings have attempted to create a global technological civilization, a very complex project. It's actually not very logical to assume (as I've been doing) that there is some formula by which we can get such an enormous thing right the first time.
Years of discussing this have persuaded me that we're just going to have to ride this out. We'll continue to race blindly towards the cliff, we'll go over the cliff, today's modern civilization will collapse in to chaos, and after some period of time some new paradigm that those living today probably can't imagine will arise in it's place.
I don't rule out that at some point far down the road we'll figure this out, but none of us will live to see what that looks like.
The only rational thing for us to do is enjoy each day as it comes, and be ready to let go of everything on a moment's notice. If enjoying each day involves pretending we can reason our way out of this mess so as to inflate our self images with fantasy, ok, go for it, why not, that's no more silly than bowling and golf and a million other distractions.
We typically seek knowledge for the power it provides us. In the past this wasn't a problem because we had so little knowledge and power that whatever we discovered was within our ability to manage, defined as avoiding civilization collapse. And so, if we are looking backwards instead of forwards, it seems reasonable to keep pursuing more and more knowledge and power.
All one needs to see the problem of today is to use simple common sense. Children have a limited ability to manage power. Adults have more ability than children, but that ability is still limited. You know, adult human beings are not gods.
Thus, any process which generates knowledge and power in a manner which is not limited will sooner or later exceed our management ability, which is limited. This sounds like futuristic speculation until we face the fact that we already have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat.
Consider a simple graph. One graph charts the slow incremental rise of our maturity, the other graph charts the exponential emergence of knowledge, and thus power. As time progresses the two lines move away from each other at an ever accelerating rate.
Nobody can predict when the moment of decision will come, but if we just use common sense we can see that sooner or later it will.
We could hypothetically address this challenge by radically accelerating our maturity to match the pace of the knowledge explosion, except that we have no idea of how to do that. Or, we could slow the knowledge explosion to match the glacial pace of our maturity development, but we refuse to even consider that in any serious way.
Say you're building a powerful machine with all the most modern features, but the logic board controlling the machine is from a 1977 Atari game console. Sooner or later the advanced features out strip the ability of the logic board, and the system crashes.
Common sense. That's all that's needed. But that's a bridge too far for we philosophers, because simple common sense doesn't serve our real agenda, inflating our egos with fancy talk.
Please quote where I used the expression "followers of science". I may have, just don't remember where.
What is your plan for persuading our culture to make the philosophical shift you deem to be necessary? Without such a plan, your ideas are just a utopian vision not based in reality.
Quoting karl stone
How do you propose that you will get everyone to "recognize the significance of scientific method" and "accept the authority of scientific knowledge"?
All you're saying is that if human beings were fully rational we wouldn't have these problems, which is true, agreed. But you've living in a fantasy of your own invention, because human beings are instead just barely rational, as it would seem our bored relationship with nuclear weapons should prove beyond any doubt.
I'm not mischaracterizing your theory Karl, I'm just showing you the parts of it that you don't wish to see. And like I said, I'm in the same boat. I keep typing about this as if doing so would make the slightest bit of difference, when clearly that is just my own flavor of fantasy.
I don't have a plan - how could I? It depends upon persuading other people of the rightness of my views. My plan is expressing those views. What would you have me do - go door to door? "Have you heard the good news about science?" Really?
Quoting Jake
Do you?
Quoting Jake
That's not what I'm saying at all. Do you really imagine I'd propose an idea that requires human beings were like Spock from Star Trek - and that I spend all this time and energy weeping over the fact they're not? That kind of naivety would be literally insane. It doesn't require absolute logic to recognize that science is a profound truth, nor to recognize that the world is faced with dire challenges. Indeed, it's the very moral abhorrence of allowing a terrible fate to befall our planet - the love and fear people have for their children, I believe will necessitate action. My theory is concerned with what action is necessary, moral, possible, productive and stable.
Quoting Jake
No, you're right. You understand as best you're able. It was mere flattery on my part to suggest a mischievous motive on your part. It's like when a dog thinks he's people - and you play along until it dumps on the living room carpet. Then it get's its nose rubbed in it!
Right. You don't have a plan. Nobody does. Which is what makes your thesis unrealistic.
Imagine I said that all these problems would be solved if human beings became gods. Ok, I suppose that would be true. But nobody has a clue how we might become gods. So it's a silly proposal. And repeating it in every thread wouldn't fix that.
But it's not impossible, or even unlikely - that in years to come people will be looking for a means to systematically address the existential threats bearing down upon us. The way to do that is to accept a scientific understanding of reality in common, as a basis to apply technology. It's actually a very reasonable idea, but it would be unreasonable of me to seek to dictate how that might play out. I can't plan other people's thinking and behavior. I can only make the argument that accepting science as truth is a safe and reliable approach.
The problem is, that science as truth has been suppressed for 400 years - and the countervailing arguments laid on pretty thick. Religion, philosophy, political ideology, right through to popular fiction - the mad scientist is defeated by the God loving, flag waving hero. People are afraid of science as truth, but they needn't be. If you look around at the technological miracles scientific thinking surrounds us with - accepting science as truth would allow us to claim that functionality for ourselves, and apply it to the way the world works.
If we accept science as truth, we need not have less, eat lentils and sit in the cold and dark to tackle climate change, or regret our existence as overpopulation. If we accept science is true, and apply technology accordingly, we could make a paradise of this world - and all it requires is changing our minds.
I read you as giving a reductio ad absurdum argument against scienticism, i.e., the view that science is the only source of knowledge. Here's how I reconstruct it:
1. Suppose scientism is true (i.e., suppose the only source of knowledge is science).
2. Science only analyzes pre-existing concepts. (assume)
3. Pre-existing concepts that science analyzes are known prior to science. (assume)
4. Therefore, the source of some knowledge (viz., knowledge of pre-existing concepts) is not science. (from 2, 3)
5. Therefore, scientism is false. (from 1, 4)
Would you say that's a faithful reconstruction?
Yes, sooner or later the level of pain will reach a point where we'll get serious about such things.
Quoting karl stone
Ok, could you perhaps expand on "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" in some specific detail, given that this idea seems central to your thesis? If you are willing, please try to avoid typing the sentences you've already shared a number of times and try to explain it from some different angle, the more specific the better. Perhaps you could use some particular technology like AI or genetic engineering as an example?
— karl stone
Quoting Jake
Maybe you could expand on what it is you don't get. It really is something you need to 'get' for yourself, because I can't crawl inside your head and point out the contrast between your ideological worldview, and a scientific worldview. I have described the evolution of humankind, and how tribal morality was manifest in an innate moral sensibility, and the tribal kinship structure.
I've explained how hunter gatherer tribes employed God as an objective authority, to allow for an explicit moral code, or law and order, that applied to everyone (think about Moses coming down the mountain with his stone tablets) to thereby overcome the tribal hierarchy problem, and join together to form societies and civilizations.
And I've explained how this created an ideological power structure that had a necessary resistance to the occurrence of science. Science as an understanding of reality has been suppressed these past 400 years - even while science was used to power the industrial revolution. Applying science and technology as dictated by ideological notions brings us to the edge of extinction. We need to accept a scientific understanding of reality - and apply technology accordingly.
I don't know how else to say it. Asking me to "say all that again... only slower, and using different words" is not a legitimate request. If you have a specific question, I'll do my best to answer it.
Ok, here's an example.
Why did a scientific understanding of reality not prevent Los Alamos scientists from CHOOSING to build the bomb?
Wait, stop, no blame shifting please. Every Los Alamos scientist had the choice to refuse. They could have chosen death rather than to build a doomsday device. But they didn't refuse, they instead willingly participated and had pride that they had been selected for such a high priority project.
The Los Alamos scientists had the scientific understanding of reality or they couldn't have built the bomb. Having the scientific understanding of reality didn't stop them from choosing to build the bomb.
I'm not trying to demonize the scientists here. I'm simply saying that they were human beings like the rest of us, and a scientific understanding of reality did not seem to be a sufficient mechanism for preventing them from doing something insane.
But they didn't, necessarily, have a scientific understanding of reality. They were specialists in particular scientific fields; operating within an ideological context - in which, the world isn't seen as a single planetary environment, but rather - a jigsaw puzzle made up of nation state shaped pieces. There's nothing that more promotes that ideological worldview than war between nations. I assume the threat of another nation developing the doomsday weapon first was the overwhelming factor. But you're asking me what other people thought. I can't know that.
Ok, so who is it exactly that you are referring to regarding "a scientific understanding of reality"? Imaginary people as yet to be born?
The larger point is this. Unless you can aim us at something or somebody specific which can change the equation, it remains madness for us to use the "more is better" paradigm to give ourselves more and more power without limit.
We might reach a compromise by agreeing to:
1) Pull the plug on "more is better" for now.
2) If at some point in the future the world is inhabited by beings who have a scientific understanding of reality, whatever that is, then we could revisit the "more is better" paradigm at that time.
As it stands, you're trying to reject my "more is better" concerns by offering in it's place a vague fantasy world which doesn't exist, at least not at this moment in time.
— karl stone
Quoting Jake
You're like that fish - who, when asked "How's the water?" answers: "What the hell is water?" There's a difference between an ideological understanding of reality; that is, the world seen through the lens of religion, nation states and money - and a scientific understanding of reality. You don't even seem to realize that your very identity and purposes are shaped by religious, political and economic ideologies.
Well, I'm sorry to break this to you champ, but those ideologies are not true - not in the way science is true anyway. They're conventions, and they do not describe reality as it really is. That difference is the problem. It's why everything is getting in strange ways worse, despite astonishing scientific and social advancement over the past 200 years. It's a mistake in the program - something we need to put right to ensure we can progress toward a long and bright future.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves. How's the water?
Um, what exactly is a "scientific understanding of reality"? Chanting the phrase is not an explanation.
To your knowledge, does anyone on Earth currently have a "scientific understanding of reality" as you define it?
If your answer is yes, what are the names of the people who you feel have a "scientific understanding of reality"?
If your answer is no, then can we agree giving human beings more and more power at an ever faster pace is not such a great plan?
From Umbridge!
Quoting Jake
It's in contrast to an ideological understanding of reality - as is quite simply, the world understood in scientific terms. So, it's not something one has as such - but rather, something of which many people are capable. You do accept, I suppose - that the world is a single planetary environment. It's not made up of nation state shaped pieces. The world didn't come with borders painted on it. Nation states are made up - and yet, it's through the lens of these made up ideas, we make decisions about how to apply technology - not least, nuclear technology.
Quoting Jake
No. We can't agree. Stop the world I wanna get off - is never the answer. Responsible management is the answer. Responsible to a scientific understanding of reality first, and ideological considerations, like profit - second.
Who exactly are you suggesting to be capable of responsible management? Who exactly has this scientific understanding of reality you can never stop talking about? Who exactly?
You have no idea. Thus...
A fantasy plan.
What a stupid question. Who exactly? You mean like Mr Smith of 33 Elm Tree Lane, Nicetown, Anywhere. You want height, weight, date of brith, shoe size and star sign? Who exactly? You have no idea. Thus... a stupid question.
The way I reconstruct your argument does not imply that all science is bad. The argument presupposes a distinction between science and scientism. Your idea, as I understand it, is that because science works by analyzing concepts we already know before we ever do any science, not all knowledge is scientific or a part of science, i.e., scientism is false.
Yup, that's what I mean. If you can't identify a single person who meets your standard of "accepting a scientific understanding of reality" then you have no basis upon which to propose that we should give human beings ever more power at an ever faster rate. According to your own posts there is literally no one on Earth currently capable of managing the new powers emerging from the knowledge explosion, and yet you want to release these new powers anyway.
Great. Me! That was easy. Sadly, almost everyone else is operating within an ideological environment - drawing their identities and purposes, their beliefs and terms of analysis from those ideas, existing between them, as if in a collective consciousness. It's thus very difficult for people to see beyond those ideas, to the scientific reality. But I've been doing this for years, and truly have tried to adjust my thinking in relation to scientific truth.
For example, I accept that humankind is a single species - which evolved on this planet, emerged from Africa around 70,000 years ago - and spread in all different directions. I see the commonalities in cultures rather than the differences - like for example, writing, music, art, architecture, agriculture, pottery, jewelry, and so on and on - things human beings do, only in culturally distinct ways.
I find this contrasts dramatically with the ideological idea of other peoples, of other religions and other nations, viewed as alien - because of the acceptance of ideological ideas in themselves, on their own terms. It's difficult, because people do consider those ideas definitive - and treat me as coming from a particular religious, national, socio-economic class group - relative to their own. I haven't encountered anyone who thinks like I do - and to be honest, I go back and forth. I'm not crazy. But it is a useful additional perspective.
Ah, I see now. It's ok for us to proceed with "more is better" because Karl is here to manage whatever might happen. Ok, so it's just one person, but because it's Karl that's ok. So everybody, don't worry about AI or genetically engineered babies, because Karl is here to fix it if anything goes wrong. Phew!!
Quoting karl stone
My friend, you are TOTALLY LOST within your own ideology. I'm totally ripping it all to shreds and you don't notice, you don't care, but just keep on chanting, chanting, chanting.
Ok, this is how I become Mr. Grouchie Pants dealing with such sillyness, so it's time for me to bow out. Thanks for the chat!
I get that reaction a lot. Don't worry about it - it's fine. It seems to me, that writing on a philosophy forum, you should be able to encompass and handle a contrast between the religious, political and economic ideological architecture of societies, and a scientific understanding of reality - without flipping out, and going all ad hom, but clearly, you're not a philosopher!
Instead, you're one of the people who need be afforded their illusions, even as scientific ideas are applied to direct the application of technology, to secure a sustainable future. The pertinent principle is "existential necessity" - which both justifies adopting science as truth, i.e. to address problems it's necessary to address for humankind to continue to exist, and at the same time limits the implications of science as truth - thus affording people like you your ideologically described identities and purposes. Because honestly, it doesn't matter what you think. Probably best you don't.
"Analyzes existing concepts," "creates concepts," and the word "only" in application to either claim about concepts makes no sense when in the same sentence we're admitting research.
If science is truth, why do scientists contradict each other? If a scientific consensus is truth, why are scientific consensuses of the past contradicted by scientific consensuses of today? And how do you know scientific consensuses of today won't be contradicted by those of tomorrow?
There are big issues with seeing science as providing truth. Scientists identify apparent regularities in our collective experience, then use them to build devices that behave in a regular way to achieve a specific goal. That's the part of what they do that makes people say science works, because it has brought us technology. Another big part of what they do, is making up stories about what happened in the distant past or what will happen in the distant future or what happens on tiny unobservable scales or what happens in conditions with too many intractable variables, we call it science too but what it really is is fantasy storytelling, fiction, remotely connected to the regularities they have identified.
And then if you take one of these stories as truth, and call it the scientific understanding of reality, you're gonna be disturbed when someone else comes with a totally different story that matches the identified regularities just as well.
What I do agree with in your post, is that we would probably be much better off if we focused on what we have in common rather than on our differences. Find what we all have in common then build from that starting point, rather than focusing on the differences and then ensuring that what's different remains separate, under control. People focus on differences because they fear, they fear what's not like them because what's not like them they don't know and they don't understand, they don't want to take the risk, better protect oneself from it or kill it. That's how we get genocides and wars. Now how do you get people to stop fearing each other, that's the hard part.
With regard to scientific method and epistemology - any scientist will affirm, that all scientific conclusions are held to be provisional in lieu of further evidence; but I'm not speaking as a scientist. I'm speaking as a political philosopher - using ordinary language, to compare two conceptions of reality. I use the term truth in a less than philosophically exacting manner - but am making a comparison between a religious, political and economic ideological worldview - and a scientific understanding of reality. It's thus fair to say that science is true, whereas ideology isn't true. Ideology is conventional.
For example, from the 17th century until 1979 it was true that the capital city of China was Peking. Now that's not true. It's now Beijing. But one cannot, by the same token argue that the Copernican system of planetary motion was not true - merely because it was superseded by Newton, then Einstein. Compared to several references in the Bible to the Earth 'fixed in the heavens' - Copernican planetary motion is true. Darwinian evolution lacked the mechanism for the transmission of characteristics from one generation to another - but compared to the idea of creatures created fully formed and fixed by God, Darwinian evolution is true. Not as true as the neo-Darwinian synthesis with genetics, that describes today's understanding - and maybe not as true as some future appreciation of how epigenetics functions over time, but true. The bacterial theory of infection - compared to evil spirits, or miasmas - is true. I could go on, but the point, I hope is clear.
If you take the sum total of scientific knowledge, it paints an increasingly valid and coherent, broad brush stroke picture of reality - that's true, and that matters. It doesn't matter if some detail changes as science discovers more. It matters that we understand rather than suppress a scientific understanding of reality, and that we apply technology responsibly, as opposed to applying technology as dictated solely by religious, political and economic ideology.
I agree that it matters we apply technology responsibly. What I don't agree with is that science gives us the way to apply technology responsibly. Some use science to reach the conclusion that some beings are 'better' than others, and use that understanding to justify doing the worse atrocities to beings seen as below as long as it can improve the well-being of the 'better' ones. Sometimes these 'lower' beings are from other species, sometimes they are from our own. Science gives us technology, but remains moot on how we should behave with each other, on where we should go.
You have the view that science gives an approximation to truth and approaches it ever closer, only working out details over time while keeping the same big picture, and that it is not conventional. But what makes that broad-brush picture somewhat coherent over centuries is not that scientists of each generation evaluate all the available evidence and agree that this broad-brush picture is the only one approximately valid, but that they grew up in a world where they are taught this picture, and are taught to build upon it to work out the details. It's the story we tell each other and tell our children and that they tell to their own children that remains coherent, rather than the story remaining coherent as a sign that we must be approaching truth.
As an example, the available scientific evidence does not show in any way that Earth is not 'fixed in the heavens'. All we can really say if we're being scientifically honest, is that the story where Earth revolves around the Sun is easier to match with the available evidence than the story where Earth is the center of the heavens. You can come up with a story where Earth is fixed at the center and still account for the motions of the celestial bodies in as precise a way as we do now. The two stories cannot be compared scientifically, they are a matter of taste. Those who hold simplicity as a greater ideal want to stick to the first story and that's the one taught in schools, while some with other ideals prefer the second one. Why would simplicity make the first story more 'true' than the second one, what would make subjective simplicity a criterion for truth? It's only a matter of subjective taste.
And sometimes some parts of the broad-brush picture do change drastically. It used to be common scientific wisdom that there are no such things as microscopic germs causing diseases, that there are no such things as tectonic plates moving under the surface of the Earth, that we would never reach the surface of the Moon, that we would age at the same rate no matter our velocity and no matter how close to a celestial body we are, that all things have definite trajectories, now the current scientific wisdom is the opposite, and maybe the one of tomorrow will be something totally different yet again. We have now the common scientific wisdom that we can't see most of the stuff in the universe and that in the far future everything will have disintegrated and all life in the universe will have ceased to exist forever, which has far-reaching implications, but possibly the scientific wisdom in some decades or centuries will be the opposite yet again.
And then there is the fact that current scientific wisdom sees us as meaningless heaps of elementary particles subjected to unchanging cosmic laws, if all people really ascribed to this point of view I think the world would fall into a chaos worse than we have now, into even more widespread nihilism and depression. So for all these reasons I don't think that by pushing a 'scientific understanding of reality' onto people you will get what you really wish for. The picture it gives is not that nice at the moment, and not that true or devoid of conventionality either.
We build weapons to protect ourselves from others or to attack others, because we fear others. Increasing the power and efficacy of these weapons without reducing the fear that gives people the incentive to create them and use them simply brings us closer to destruction. We don't see others as beings like us, we see them as potential threats. We don't attempt to understand what led someone to hurt someone else, out of fear we see the one who hurts as a monster. And then we hurt the monster, and become monsters ourselves in someone else's eyes. But what if there is no such thing as monsters, but only beings who fear and who commit atrocities out of fear? What if if we really attempted to understand others we would learn to see the good in them and the fear on which they act, rather than assuming they are threats we need to attack or defend against? Then maybe the solution is not to be found in science, but in caring about others rather than only about oneself. Then how do you get people to wake up about this, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of caring about others every day until love spreads and wins over fear.
"In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning...when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not."
Wonderfully poetic, and in a shallow sense, correct. No list of facts adds up to a value. One cannot derive ought from is. Yet as Hume notes, we do so all the time. If one accepts a scientific understanding of reality, the reason for this presents itself fairly readily.
Human beings were for the longest time, hunter-gatherers living in kinship tribal groups - not at all unlike chimpanzee troops in social structure. Chimpanzees have social hierarchies, and morality of sorts - where they groom eachother and share food, and remember who reciprocates, and who doesn't. Relating this dynamic to human tribal evolution - it's safe to assume that moral behavior was promoted by sexual selection and natural selection, where moral behavior promoted both the individuals breeding prospects, and the success of the tribe relative to other tribes.
The consequence of this is that there's an innate moral sensibility ingrained into human beings by tribal evolution, and so a list of facts does have moral implication for us - even while logically, no list of facts adds up to a value. Hume's conjecture is thus incomplete, yet has been widely employed to dismiss scientific understanding as morally neutral, or worse yet, morally vacuous.
As I've already written almost as much as you have, just on your first paragraph - I'm only going to add that scientific understanding has progressed in leaps and bounds since the advent of the computer, necessary both for communication and large calculations. I hope we will continue the discussion and address the issues you raise, but it would require a ridiculously lengthy post to do so here.
Forgive the repetition please, but it seems useful to make a clear distinction between 1) science and 2) our relationship with science.
If our relationship with science was objective, detached and rational we could use the methods of science to develop tools and processes which could help us better manage technology. There would seem to be nothing about science itself that would prevent this, as science is just a conceptual machine with no agenda of it's own.
The problem as I see it is not with science itself, but that our relationship with science has taken on too many of the characteristics of the relationship we used to have with religion. The same human frailties that once caused us to accept religions as a "one true way" have been transferred to science. The same human frailties that once caused us to have an unquestioning relationship with religious clergy have been transferred to the new "science clergy". The same human frailties that once caused us to seek a religion flavored heaven have been transferred to the modern quest to create a technological heaven on Earth. And so on...
We think that the Enlightenment liberated us from all these old ways of thinking, but what happened instead is that the old ways of thinking were just aimed at a new target.
Religion is a useful enterprise until one gets all carried away with unquestioning belief in a "one true way". It's the same with science. It's not religion or science that is the problem, but our relationship with these enterprises.
Yes, and we fear others because we perceive ourselves to be divided from reality, separate and alone, and thus vulnerable. "Me" is perceived to be very very small, and "everything else" is perceived to be very very big, and so fear in all it's forms becomes a foundation of human psychology, and is expressed in symptoms of fear such as violence.
Adding more and more power at an ever accelerating rate to this equation is just poring fuel on the fire. So long as fear remains a foundation of human psychology giving humans ever more power is a prescription for disaster.
We don't get this because we've been getting away with this doomed formula for a very long time, and so we blindly assume that we can get away with it forever. What we don't see is that this formula (giving ever more power to fearful people) worked in the past only because the power was very limited. To ignore this inconvenient fact is to remain stuck in 19th century thinking.
The good news is that the sense we have of being separate and alone (and thus fearful) is an illusion generated by the nature of thought, what we've made of psychologically. Religion has been exploring this illusion in a variety of ways for thousands of years, and now science is as well in it's own way.
A key obstacle that we face in liberating ourselves from this fear generating illusion is that the illusion is generated by thought. Thus, thinking about the problem doesn't solve the problem, but instead fuels it.
And every use, or belief, or argument that is made in the name of science that is outside this, is just an argument based on faith in science, not about the science.