5 ms·

I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here

by corin_ 6y ago

I may well be misunderstanding a definition of science, but no I wasn't confusing it with "good". I don't know what the best definition of science is, but here's the first one Google suggests: > "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment." Can you explain what excludes the studying of human behaviour or mental health from how you define "science"?

ses1984 6y ago
You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I agree that it can be approached from non-scientific angles (I'd hazard a guess that any subject that can be considered scientific can be approached unscientifically - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but I think(?) you're agreeing with me in my responding to this comment: > The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science.
vinceguidry 6y ago
This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. You can obtain three samples of three different kinds of steel and perform a destructive test on all three of them, then when you're done you can obtain more. This is materials science and you can get paid a lot of money to do it. There is "neuroscience" where you do the same thing, with neurons. Neurons are not minds. You'll never learn how a mind works by studying neurons, any more than you can learn how a building works by studying steel. If you're looking to learn how a building works, steel is just one of the hundreds of topics you need to understand. There is no "building science" and there is no "mind science", because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination. Physically speaking, i.e. according to the best observation techniques the field of neuroscience can come up with, a newborn, a brain trauma victim, and a college student are all identical as your parent notes. This deficiency in understanding is what the commenter you were responding to was pointing to. People thinking they can understand the mind by doing fMRIs. And thinking any kind of rigorous exploration and study as "science" leads to this kind of mistake. Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments. Computers are not natural, nor are they physical. Silicon is, and you can study that by running experiments and observing the results. To get epistemic, knowledge comprises justified true beliefs. Science is a type of justification. There are other kinds. If you use other forms of justification, then you don't get scientific knowledge out of it, overloading science makes people believe that all knowledge that comes out of academia is scientific, i.e. made through repeated experimentation and observation, such that we can rely on it to not fail on us.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- montjoy 6y ago
  Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover systems aren’t science? What is left? Surely not physics because that could be quantum OR relativity. Surely not QM because that could be particles OR waves. > Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments Ok now I know you are trolling.
  - danielam 6y ago
    >> The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. > So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan. You will see brain activity correlates between what is most likely someone perceiving an instance of triangularity (e.g., a concrete triangle drawn on the blackboard) or, say, the symbol "8" that's been drawn with a red marker, but those are not concepts, which are general. You cannot imagine "triangularity", only particular triangles. But all physical triangles are concrete and particular. You can't draw or construct an abstract triangle because any such drawing or construction will be a particular triangle that excludes all others (an infinite number of them, actually). Properties like the color red can be thought apart from any particular red thing, but you won't find "red" by itself rolling down the sidewalk. So you have the following syllogism: Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical. So if we can know things abstractly, then it must follow that such things exist in a nonphysical way in our minds. But there is no physical thing in which abstract things can inhere as abstract things because physical things are always concrete and particular. Things get worse for reductionists. Current reductive views of physical reality exile properties like color as we commonly understand them to the realm of consciousness or mind or whatever. I.e., color as we commonly think of it is reduced to the experience of the reflectance properties of matter, that is, to a property of the mind, because as we have assumed, it is not a property of matter. But if color is not a property of matter, and the mind is material, then color cannot be a property of the mind. Therefore, the mind must be immaterial. This latter view of reality is essentially Cartesian where the universe is divided into impoverished res extensa and the metaphysical rug of res cogitans under which we can sweep all of those unseemly phenomena that reductive accounts of reality cannot cope with. Of course, you might be able to get away with that as long as you're a Cartesian dualist, but materialism, the metaphysical bastard child of Cartesian dualism, takes Cartesian dualism, jettisons res cogitans and attempts to reduce all of those unseemly phenomena attributed to res cogitans to phenomena proper to res extensa. Of course, materialism is utterly incapable of dealing with this problem by definition. Stubborn, dyed-in-the-wool materialists like the Churchlands or Dennett, instead of rethinking their presuppositions, have resorted to the pathetic tactic of denying the very thing they were supposed to explain. Can't explain color or abstract concepts? Then they must not exist!

by corin_ 6y ago

ses1984 6y ago

You can apply science to human behavior and mental health. The problem is trying to integrate that work into theories of consciousness, you start to blur the lines between science and philosophy.

corin_ 6y ago
I agree that it can be approached from non-scientific angles (I'd hazard a guess that any subject that can be considered scientific can be approached unscientifically - sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not), but I think(?) you're agreeing with me in my responding to this comment: > The second you say the words "conscious mind", you leave the realm of science.

vinceguidry 6y ago

This is what I meant by "getting into the epistemological weeds" heh. I'll requote your definition with emphasis. > the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. All three of the italicized aspects are not how the mind is studied. The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. You can obtain three samples of three different kinds of steel and perform a destructive test on all three of them, then when you're done you can obtain more. This is materials science and you can get paid a lot of money to do it. There is "neuroscience" where you do the same thing, with neurons. Neurons are not minds. You'll never learn how a mind works by studying neurons, any more than you can learn how a building works by studying steel. If you're looking to learn how a building works, steel is just one of the hundreds of topics you need to understand. There is no "building science" and there is no "mind science", because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination. Physically speaking, i.e. according to the best observation techniques the field of neuroscience can come up with, a newborn, a brain trauma victim, and a college student are all identical as your parent notes. This deficiency in understanding is what the commenter you were responding to was pointing to. People thinking they can understand the mind by doing fMRIs. And thinking any kind of rigorous exploration and study as "science" leads to this kind of mistake. Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments. Computers are not natural, nor are they physical. Silicon is, and you can study that by running experiments and observing the results. To get epistemic, knowledge comprises justified true beliefs. Science is a type of justification. There are other kinds. If you use other forms of justification, then you don't get scientific knowledge out of it, overloading science makes people believe that all knowledge that comes out of academia is scientific, i.e. made through repeated experimentation and observation, such that we can rely on it to not fail on us.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
montjoy 6y ago
Oh come now. > The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. > ... because buildings and minds are not physical, natural things. They're unnatural things, conjured up by human invention and imagination Then likewise Ecology, Geology, Biology and all other sciences that cover systems aren’t science? What is left? Surely not physics because that could be quantum OR relativity. Surely not QM because that could be particles OR waves. > Another example, computer science isn't science. It's math. Computers are deterministic, there's no point in running experiments Ok now I know you are trolling.
- danielam 6y ago
  >> The mind is not a physical object. It cannot be observed or experimented with in a systematic way. > So clearly false if you read the article, or have ever looked at an optical illusion. "Mind" vs. brain. For example, you will never observe the concept "triangularity" or the number 8 or the color "red" in a brain scan. You will see brain activity correlates between what is most likely someone perceiving an instance of triangularity (e.g., a concrete triangle drawn on the blackboard) or, say, the symbol "8" that's been drawn with a red marker, but those are not concepts, which are general. You cannot imagine "triangularity", only particular triangles. But all physical triangles are concrete and particular. You can't draw or construct an abstract triangle because any such drawing or construction will be a particular triangle that excludes all others (an infinite number of them, actually). Properties like the color red can be thought apart from any particular red thing, but you won't find "red" by itself rolling down the sidewalk. So you have the following syllogism: Every physical thing is particular. No abstract thing is particular. Therefore, no abstract thing is physical. So if we can know things abstractly, then it must follow that such things exist in a nonphysical way in our minds. But there is no physical thing in which abstract things can inhere as abstract things because physical things are always concrete and particular. Things get worse for reductionists. Current reductive views of physical reality exile properties like color as we commonly understand them to the realm of consciousness or mind or whatever. I.e., color as we commonly think of it is reduced to the experience of the reflectance properties of matter, that is, to a property of the mind, because as we have assumed, it is not a property of matter. But if color is not a property of matter, and the mind is material, then color cannot be a property of the mind. Therefore, the mind must be immaterial. This latter view of reality is essentially Cartesian where the universe is divided into impoverished res extensa and the metaphysical rug of res cogitans under which we can sweep all of those unseemly phenomena that reductive accounts of reality cannot cope with. Of course, you might be able to get away with that as long as you're a Cartesian dualist, but materialism, the metaphysical bastard child of Cartesian dualism, takes Cartesian dualism, jettisons res cogitans and attempts to reduce all of those unseemly phenomena attributed to res cogitans to phenomena proper to res extensa. Of course, materialism is utterly incapable of dealing with this problem by definition. Stubborn, dyed-in-the-wool materialists like the Churchlands or Dennett, instead of rethinking their presuppositions, have resorted to the pathetic tactic of denying the very thing they were supposed to explain. Can't explain color or abstract concepts? Then they must not exist!