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I figure this would be the kind of response to this article here. please I highly recommend Facing Gaia by Bruno Latour, mentioned in the article. he's not by

I figure this would be the kind of response to this article here. please I highly recommend Facing Gaia by Bruno Latour, mentioned in the article. he's not by any stretch anti-science. it's about recognizing that's things as such have agency, even if they are "inanimate" and when we treat them that way we are actually better prepared to deal with the impact they impose. in fact, his probably most famous work, We Have Never Been Modern specifically addresses the concern you raise, with regard to exactly what science is supposed to be. but you have to read trying to understand that science ignores philosophy at its own peril.

ergonaught 4y ago
Unless and until someone can identify how chemical reactions possess any degree of agency regarding their reaction, people making such assertions are divorced from fact, reality, and science. They are expressing wholly unsupported beliefs. That's fine, but beliefs aren't knowledge, and they aren't science, and they have nothing at all going for them anymore except that they make people feel warm fuzzies. Those aren't science either. Philosophers have a relevance problem, but as long as you can slap "quantum" on any jumble of nonsense and have a million people agree with it, they'll at least have an audience.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  unless you can demonstrate we humans are more than chemical reactions and physics, can can it be any other way than highly complex, emergent systems based in the laws of physics and chemistry are capable of exhibiting what we both call "human agency?" systems theory is the crux here. and Latour's Actor Network Model is basically just systems theory. if you refrain from reducing the scope of your systems to a single chemical reaction but looks at the complex interplay withing systems, you start to see what I'm actually talking about.
- Errancer 4y ago
  But Latour is precisely doing what you demand in the first paragraph. The fact that he is claimed to be anti-scientific is extremely ironic. His counter-intuitive conclusions come from the attempt of defending science because the traditional accounts failed. You use "fact", "reality", "science", "beliefs", "knowledge" without any degree of irony but do you know how hard it is to defend them on the philosophical grounds? Most people are naive positivists and even positivists from Vienna circle quickly gave up on such positions because they were so hard to maintain. Latour was not a stupid opportunist and you can find this in his biography. If you think he was wrong then first make sure you understand what he was even trying to argue for. Without this understanding how can you square your claims about knowledge and your actions? Do you believe that your opinions have no metaphysical assumptions whatsoever? Or do you think that your opinions are true so you can a priori deny any contrary opinions as false?
  - idontpost 4y ago
    [dead]
- undershirt 4y ago
  > identify how chemical reactions possess any degree of agency regarding their reaction They’re not, but some scientific terms might help demystify the actual point being made— 1. Emergence means that higher levels of matter can have behaviors that are not determinable from its constituents (e.g. chemistry). 2. In cybernetics, Downward Causation means that the constituents’ behaviors can actually be influenced by behaviors at higher levels. I’m not a physicist so I’m not sure how much of the “quantum” weirdness can be isolated to its domain, but complex systems appear to be mysterious across the entire hierarchy. > They are expressing wholly unsupported beliefs... beliefs aren’t knowledge and they aren’t science Science is an instrument for verifying beliefs about very specific things though. My favorite definition of science is that it is a system for drawing out the patterns (regularities) of nature that are the same across space and time. It can only focus on “common denominators” of reality (not the whole of it) in order to reduce it to the parts which can be predicted (material prophecy). But it’s not an instrument that you can use to verify beliefs about segments of reality that it’s designed to ignore. Like it can’t deal with its own foundational question (i.e. “can we truly deduce the unseen by only what is seen?”), and surely Truth is larger than we can know by any single tool for ascertaining it.
UncleOxidant 4y ago
> it's about recognizing that's things as such have agency, even if they are "inanimate" From the article: "A piece of shiny plastic on the street pulls your eye toward it, turning your body in a different direction—which might make you trip over your own foot and then smash your head on the concrete, in a series of events that’s the very last thing you planned or intended. Who has “acted” in such a scenario? You have, of course. Human beings have agency. But, in her telling, the piece of plastic acted, too. It made something happen to you." No, your reaction to seeing the shiny plastic on the ground is what happened to you. Your brain recognized it as something potentially interesting and/or valuable. The shiny piece of plastic did not somehow will you to pick it up, it cannot and does not have agency. (I can't believe we're having this conversation on HN. WTF is going on in the culture that makes animism suddenly attractive?) EDIT: Thought experiement: If you were blind or it was night time and you were walking by the shiny plastic you would not even notice it to pick it up.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye", even as just a shortcut. Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying?
  - UncleOxidant 4y ago
    > If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye" Ok, but the intent does not reside in the plastic, the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. > Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying? The article seems to imply that these inanimate objects exert some kind of influence on us (and possibly on other inanimate objects?). If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? The philosopher in the article seems to be saying that they can draw her form a distance without her even seeing them.

ergonaught 4y ago

Unless and until someone can identify how chemical reactions possess any degree of agency regarding their reaction, people making such assertions are divorced from fact, reality, and science. They are expressing wholly unsupported beliefs. That's fine, but beliefs aren't knowledge, and they aren't science, and they have nothing at all going for them anymore except that they make people feel warm fuzzies. Those aren't science either. Philosophers have a relevance problem, but as long as you can slap "quantum" on any jumble of nonsense and have a million people agree with it, they'll at least have an audience.

LesZedCB 4y ago
unless you can demonstrate we humans are more than chemical reactions and physics, can can it be any other way than highly complex, emergent systems based in the laws of physics and chemistry are capable of exhibiting what we both call "human agency?" systems theory is the crux here. and Latour's Actor Network Model is basically just systems theory. if you refrain from reducing the scope of your systems to a single chemical reaction but looks at the complex interplay withing systems, you start to see what I'm actually talking about.
Errancer 4y ago
But Latour is precisely doing what you demand in the first paragraph. The fact that he is claimed to be anti-scientific is extremely ironic. His counter-intuitive conclusions come from the attempt of defending science because the traditional accounts failed. You use "fact", "reality", "science", "beliefs", "knowledge" without any degree of irony but do you know how hard it is to defend them on the philosophical grounds? Most people are naive positivists and even positivists from Vienna circle quickly gave up on such positions because they were so hard to maintain. Latour was not a stupid opportunist and you can find this in his biography. If you think he was wrong then first make sure you understand what he was even trying to argue for. Without this understanding how can you square your claims about knowledge and your actions? Do you believe that your opinions have no metaphysical assumptions whatsoever? Or do you think that your opinions are true so you can a priori deny any contrary opinions as false?
- idontpost 4y ago
  [dead]
undershirt 4y ago
> identify how chemical reactions possess any degree of agency regarding their reaction They’re not, but some scientific terms might help demystify the actual point being made— 1. Emergence means that higher levels of matter can have behaviors that are not determinable from its constituents (e.g. chemistry). 2. In cybernetics, Downward Causation means that the constituents’ behaviors can actually be influenced by behaviors at higher levels. I’m not a physicist so I’m not sure how much of the “quantum” weirdness can be isolated to its domain, but complex systems appear to be mysterious across the entire hierarchy. > They are expressing wholly unsupported beliefs... beliefs aren’t knowledge and they aren’t science Science is an instrument for verifying beliefs about very specific things though. My favorite definition of science is that it is a system for drawing out the patterns (regularities) of nature that are the same across space and time. It can only focus on “common denominators” of reality (not the whole of it) in order to reduce it to the parts which can be predicted (material prophecy). But it’s not an instrument that you can use to verify beliefs about segments of reality that it’s designed to ignore. Like it can’t deal with its own foundational question (i.e. “can we truly deduce the unseen by only what is seen?”), and surely Truth is larger than we can know by any single tool for ascertaining it.

UncleOxidant 4y ago

> it's about recognizing that's things as such have agency, even if they are "inanimate" From the article: "A piece of shiny plastic on the street pulls your eye toward it, turning your body in a different direction—which might make you trip over your own foot and then smash your head on the concrete, in a series of events that’s the very last thing you planned or intended. Who has “acted” in such a scenario? You have, of course. Human beings have agency. But, in her telling, the piece of plastic acted, too. It made something happen to you." No, your reaction to seeing the shiny plastic on the ground is what happened to you. Your brain recognized it as something potentially interesting and/or valuable. The shiny piece of plastic did not somehow will you to pick it up, it cannot and does not have agency. (I can't believe we're having this conversation on HN. WTF is going on in the culture that makes animism suddenly attractive?) EDIT: Thought experiement: If you were blind or it was night time and you were walking by the shiny plastic you would not even notice it to pick it up.

mxkopy 4y ago
If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye", even as just a shortcut. Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying?
- UncleOxidant 4y ago
  > If that piece of plastic was made with the intent of being eye-catching than I think it's fair to say that "it's trying to catch the eye" Ok, but the intent does not reside in the plastic, the intent was in the person who designed the piece of plastic to catch the eye. > Your thought experiment doesn't hold; if someone were trying to dress attractively and a blind person doesn't see them, does that mean they're not trying? The article seems to imply that these inanimate objects exert some kind of influence on us (and possibly on other inanimate objects?). If they possess this kind of woo-woo influence why does it matter if we can see them? The philosopher in the article seems to be saying that they can draw her form a distance without her even seeing them.