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If your model is not capable of making predictions and being tested, I predict and can test that your model is providing you emotional stability and a comfortin

by trevyn 8y ago

If your model is not capable of making predictions and being tested, I predict and can test that your model is providing you emotional stability and a comforting perception of knowledge despite a lack of actual knowledge. I agree that many people tend to “over-science” and ignore inconvenient data, but this is not a core component of the basic scientific method. In fact, many of the most useful predictions are probabilistic in nature, and so you would expect the data to be fuzzy and the models to be imprecise in the early stages of formation.

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
I was not arguing against the validity and efficacy of the basic scientific method. Scientific method is a great tool - for the tasks that it can handle. I can argue that there are many tasks which it cannot handle. Areas of knowledge which cannot be studied with scientifid method exactly. Another limitation of it is obviously that it needs a hypothesis - which means it requires a preconceived notion of the world, before any testing can actually take place. Which means that the tester is responsible for the basic paradigm and worldview, from which they ultimately produce the hypothesis to test, to begin with. Obviously, the scientific method is less proficient in handling these preconceived prejudices and worldviews, because it comes in after they have been already applied. (It can help indirectly by verifying the hypothesis and perhaps sort out some worldviews, but it can naturally not create a new worldview by itself.) So what happens when there are multiple hypothesis from completely different paradigms that show some evidence? Or what happens when there is a hypothesis which you just cannot disprove directly? This is where other paradigms ultimately come in. I suspect that the question of consciousness is ultimately one of these questions, where we will need help from many other areas, before the scientific method can ever be applied here. Before a testable model can even be conceived.

by trevyn 8y ago

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

I was not arguing against the validity and efficacy of the basic scientific method. Scientific method is a great tool - for the tasks that it can handle. I can argue that there are many tasks which it cannot handle. Areas of knowledge which cannot be studied with scientifid method exactly. Another limitation of it is obviously that it needs a hypothesis - which means it requires a preconceived notion of the world, before any testing can actually take place. Which means that the tester is responsible for the basic paradigm and worldview, from which they ultimately produce the hypothesis to test, to begin with. Obviously, the scientific method is less proficient in handling these preconceived prejudices and worldviews, because it comes in after they have been already applied. (It can help indirectly by verifying the hypothesis and perhaps sort out some worldviews, but it can naturally not create a new worldview by itself.) So what happens when there are multiple hypothesis from completely different paradigms that show some evidence? Or what happens when there is a hypothesis which you just cannot disprove directly? This is where other paradigms ultimately come in. I suspect that the question of consciousness is ultimately one of these questions, where we will need help from many other areas, before the scientific method can ever be applied here. Before a testable model can even be conceived.