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It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe. Remember that science attempts to come up with the best explanation for t

by wl 8y ago

It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe. Remember that science attempts to come up with the best explanation for the evidence we have, often using experimentation to resolve questions. The answers are always tentative—ready to be thrown out if better ones come along. Faith in science is not an unreasonable assumption—says me who holds that assumption—but it's faith nonetheless.

eli_gottlieb 8y ago
>Faith in science is not an unreasonable assumption—says me who holds that assumption—but it's faith nonetheless. Faith is when one acts on a belief without having any rational reason for it. My rational reason for believing in science is simply: it works!
- superqwert 8y ago
  Google: faith /feɪθ/Submit noun 1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something. "this restores one's faith in politicians" So you may reconsider whether you are using a different definition of "faith" to the one you were reading
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jawns 8y ago
  I suppose that's one definition of faith, but it's not the definition I would use to describe my faith. My great grandmother's nickname was, apparently, Jennie. No official records note this fact. But it's something told to me by my mother, who knew her. And because of everything I know about my mother, I have faith that she is telling me the truth. Without any evidence except my mother's word, I can't prove it, but I don't think it's irrational for me to believe it.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    > Without any evidence except my mother's word, I can't prove it, but I don't think it's irrational for me to believe it. It's not irrational because it was never particularly implausible in the first place. If there was an apparent law of the universe saying your great grandmother's nickname cannot possibly be Jennie, and you insisted that your mother told you and that's that, you'd be talking about "faith" on the level usually addressed in the disputes between religious and nonreligious epistemologies.
  - mercer 8y ago
    The difference between 'faith' in a more religious sense and the 'faith' of your example is that for the latter, the evidence that you have is reasonable in light of the claim. Knowing your great grandmother's nickname doesn't significantly affect your life, and assuming your mother isn't a compulsive liar, there's little reason to doubt her. Furthermore, it also strikes me as the kind of information that would probably be passed down intact because it's easy to remember.
- stromgo 8y ago
  Indeed. Subway cars move forward without any horse pulling them, how is this miracle possible? What turned out to work was the steam engine, and now electromagnetism, explained by science. What didn't turn out to work was an elite team of people praying for the train to move.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Look, I don't want to get all in the weeds here because it would complicate things unnecessarily, but if it's really that simple to you then you should know that this argument contains a logical falacy: Argumentum ad consequentiam or appeal to consequences. Once you let go of thinking that truth is knowable you'll realize that there is some faith that you have. It's not in science per-se; but it might be faith that you exist. That you can reasonably conceive of thoughts. That those thoughts order the world and that the world that you perceive is a representation not unduly clouded. That the actions of your being are guided by your own will. Truth might not be knowable in an absolute sense, but you can use these little starting points of faith then come to appreciate that there is a truth continuum and science is a good approach to discovering knowledge. Philosophy seems so stupid before you start learning it, but it really is beautiful and I regret not being able to pour over it more.
  - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
    Redefining "truth is knowable" to "truth is knowable with infinite certainty a la Descartes" is itself a deeply contentious epistemological stance, and still doesn't validate the use of the term "faith" for ordinary abductive reasoning from experience.
    - 3pt14159 8y ago
      I did no such redefinition. Though I also didn't downvote you, because I think it's a valid misunderstanding. I'm arguing that mere truth is unknowable without faith. We have evidence of derangement all around us and it takes faith to proceed as though our actions are our own and are unclouded. From a bayesian perspective, one of our priors must be that there is some probability that the very mind that is doing the thinking may be of a nature that is unable to effectively reason. But there is no escape because the mind is the centre of all investigation.
      - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
        >I'm arguing that mere truth is unknowable without faith. Could you please define "mere" truth? >From a bayesian perspective, one of our priors must be that there is some probability that the very mind that is doing the thinking may be of a nature that is unable to effectively reason. Nonetheless, that probability can be very low, putting us firmly in normal epistemological territory and not requiring any "faith". In fact, millions of people regularly make the rational, but clouded, assessment that they are too drunk to drive, and take a taxi home. (Also, from a Bayesian perspective, the form of the generative model and priors is up to the experimenter. From a formal epistemology perspective, you can either try to designate some optimal universal prior, or you can take a variational approach and simply say you want to minimize KL divergence of your predictive posterior from your available data.)
vinceguidry 8y ago
> It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe. One would have to constrain the definition of "the universe" to a tautological one in order for science, the careful use of rigorous empirical analysis, to be the best at investigating it. We use other forms of analysis to study different things, forms that may share some aspects with science, but aren't quite the same. Some things just aren't amenable to scientific study. The humanities, for instance.

by wl 8y ago

eli_gottlieb 8y ago

>Faith in science is not an unreasonable assumption—says me who holds that assumption—but it's faith nonetheless. Faith is when one acts on a belief without having any rational reason for it. My rational reason for believing in science is simply: it works!

superqwert 8y ago
Google: faith /feɪθ/Submit noun 1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something. "this restores one's faith in politicians" So you may reconsider whether you are using a different definition of "faith" to the one you were reading
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jawns 8y ago
I suppose that's one definition of faith, but it's not the definition I would use to describe my faith. My great grandmother's nickname was, apparently, Jennie. No official records note this fact. But it's something told to me by my mother, who knew her. And because of everything I know about my mother, I have faith that she is telling me the truth. Without any evidence except my mother's word, I can't prove it, but I don't think it's irrational for me to believe it.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  > Without any evidence except my mother's word, I can't prove it, but I don't think it's irrational for me to believe it. It's not irrational because it was never particularly implausible in the first place. If there was an apparent law of the universe saying your great grandmother's nickname cannot possibly be Jennie, and you insisted that your mother told you and that's that, you'd be talking about "faith" on the level usually addressed in the disputes between religious and nonreligious epistemologies.
- mercer 8y ago
  The difference between 'faith' in a more religious sense and the 'faith' of your example is that for the latter, the evidence that you have is reasonable in light of the claim. Knowing your great grandmother's nickname doesn't significantly affect your life, and assuming your mother isn't a compulsive liar, there's little reason to doubt her. Furthermore, it also strikes me as the kind of information that would probably be passed down intact because it's easy to remember.
stromgo 8y ago
Indeed. Subway cars move forward without any horse pulling them, how is this miracle possible? What turned out to work was the steam engine, and now electromagnetism, explained by science. What didn't turn out to work was an elite team of people praying for the train to move.
3pt14159 8y ago
Look, I don't want to get all in the weeds here because it would complicate things unnecessarily, but if it's really that simple to you then you should know that this argument contains a logical falacy: Argumentum ad consequentiam or appeal to consequences. Once you let go of thinking that truth is knowable you'll realize that there is some faith that you have. It's not in science per-se; but it might be faith that you exist. That you can reasonably conceive of thoughts. That those thoughts order the world and that the world that you perceive is a representation not unduly clouded. That the actions of your being are guided by your own will. Truth might not be knowable in an absolute sense, but you can use these little starting points of faith then come to appreciate that there is a truth continuum and science is a good approach to discovering knowledge. Philosophy seems so stupid before you start learning it, but it really is beautiful and I regret not being able to pour over it more.
- eli_gottlieb 8y ago
  Redefining "truth is knowable" to "truth is knowable with infinite certainty a la Descartes" is itself a deeply contentious epistemological stance, and still doesn't validate the use of the term "faith" for ordinary abductive reasoning from experience.
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    I did no such redefinition. Though I also didn't downvote you, because I think it's a valid misunderstanding. I'm arguing that mere truth is unknowable without faith. We have evidence of derangement all around us and it takes faith to proceed as though our actions are our own and are unclouded. From a bayesian perspective, one of our priors must be that there is some probability that the very mind that is doing the thinking may be of a nature that is unable to effectively reason. But there is no escape because the mind is the centre of all investigation.
    - eli_gottlieb 8y ago
      >I'm arguing that mere truth is unknowable without faith. Could you please define "mere" truth? >From a bayesian perspective, one of our priors must be that there is some probability that the very mind that is doing the thinking may be of a nature that is unable to effectively reason. Nonetheless, that probability can be very low, putting us firmly in normal epistemological territory and not requiring any "faith". In fact, millions of people regularly make the rational, but clouded, assessment that they are too drunk to drive, and take a taxi home. (Also, from a Bayesian perspective, the form of the generative model and priors is up to the experimenter. From a formal epistemology perspective, you can either try to designate some optimal universal prior, or you can take a variational approach and simply say you want to minimize KL divergence of your predictive posterior from your available data.)

vinceguidry 8y ago

> It's unprovable that science is the best method to arrive at truth about the universe. One would have to constrain the definition of "the universe" to a tautological one in order for science, the careful use of rigorous empirical analysis, to be the best at investigating it. We use other forms of analysis to study different things, forms that may share some aspects with science, but aren't quite the same. Some things just aren't amenable to scientific study. The humanities, for instance.