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Science is just a tool. It's humans who choose to use it for good or ill.

Amezarak 6y ago
Tools do not exist as tools in a world without wielders. A tool is only a tool while someone is using it. “Science” does not exist as such outside its employment by human beings, it is not some Ideal floating in conceptual space. There is no science except insofar as human beings are using it for ends that human beings judge good or ill. So it’s entirely reasonable to consider whether “science” - which I think here is really standing in for a certain kind of technological mindset - weighed in the balance, would be found wanting, whether there is not a better way of approaching the world and the things in it, including ourselves, rather than considering everything in it a sort of Heideggerian standing reserve. This seems particularly true as we advance rather thoughtlessly toward the development of things like AI and genetic engineering.
brudgers 6y ago
just a tool That pretty much misses the character of human experience as humans experience it. There’s no mereness of tools in the fabric of our psychological existence. In particular abstractions on the scale of science in our conscious processes. The “just” is how we rationalize removing half a chimp skull to sell electric cars. It’s how we excuse the inexcusable as ordinary.
- Brian_K_White 6y ago
  I think it is you who missed a point, and don't have a sensible definition of "just" in "just a tool". It's "just" a tool because it is not good or bad by itself, and does not even favor good or bad employment. If you have a problem with a bad use of science, then you have a problem with a bad user of science. By contrast, it's not like saying some deadly poison is "just a chemical" that might possibly have one or two possibly good uses but is otherwise entirely a bad thing that we could all live without if it were erased from the world. Science is nothing but codified rationality. There is no possible way to twist irrationality into being prefferable to rationality. And so there is no slightest trace of a valid argument that science is a problem that should be disfavored. Yes it is in fact "just" a tool. The human experience doesn't change this at all. You don't need science to rationalize removing the top half of a chimpanzee skull. People who will do a thing, will do a thing with any tool. Science, religion, politics, "think of the children", plain might, anything.
  - zdragnar 6y ago
    To your point, most medicines, vitamins, minerals, and even water are life sustaining in some doses and toxic to fatal in other doses. Judging an abstract notion by specific incidents seems to me to be both profoundly human and profoundly wrong.

Tools do not exist as tools in a world without wielders. A tool is only a tool while someone is using it. “Science” does not exist as such outside its employment by human beings, it is not some Ideal floating in conceptual space. There is no science except insofar as human beings are using it for ends that human beings judge good or ill. So it’s entirely reasonable to consider whether “science” - which I think here is really standing in for a certain kind of technological mindset - weighed in the balance, would be found wanting, whether there is not a better way of approaching the world and the things in it, including ourselves, rather than considering everything in it a sort of Heideggerian standing reserve. This seems particularly true as we advance rather thoughtlessly toward the development of things like AI and genetic engineering.

brudgers 6y ago

just a tool That pretty much misses the character of human experience as humans experience it. There’s no mereness of tools in the fabric of our psychological existence. In particular abstractions on the scale of science in our conscious processes. The “just” is how we rationalize removing half a chimp skull to sell electric cars. It’s how we excuse the inexcusable as ordinary.

Brian_K_White 6y ago
I think it is you who missed a point, and don't have a sensible definition of "just" in "just a tool". It's "just" a tool because it is not good or bad by itself, and does not even favor good or bad employment. If you have a problem with a bad use of science, then you have a problem with a bad user of science. By contrast, it's not like saying some deadly poison is "just a chemical" that might possibly have one or two possibly good uses but is otherwise entirely a bad thing that we could all live without if it were erased from the world. Science is nothing but codified rationality. There is no possible way to twist irrationality into being prefferable to rationality. And so there is no slightest trace of a valid argument that science is a problem that should be disfavored. Yes it is in fact "just" a tool. The human experience doesn't change this at all. You don't need science to rationalize removing the top half of a chimpanzee skull. People who will do a thing, will do a thing with any tool. Science, religion, politics, "think of the children", plain might, anything.
- zdragnar 6y ago
  To your point, most medicines, vitamins, minerals, and even water are life sustaining in some doses and toxic to fatal in other doses. Judging an abstract notion by specific incidents seems to me to be both profoundly human and profoundly wrong.