7 ms·

This essay should be required reading for anyone who thinks science is or should be the only legitimate way of understanding the world. For more information, I

by gnosis 14y ago

This essay should be required reading for anyone who thinks science is or should be the only legitimate way of understanding the world. For more information, I strongly recommend: "Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against scientism" by Frederick A. Olafson and "Scientism" by Tom Sorell

seiji 14y ago
What are some [legitimate] examples of non-science ways of understanding the world?
- maratd 14y ago
  Traditional religions.
  - super_mario 14y ago
    Which are now completely discredited as complete lies.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      Complete? Lies? Those are strong statements.
      - super_mario 14y ago
        Yes, they are. But I have spent a chunk on my life investigating the claims of major religions and when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. So, religion and faith comes down to bending yourself, making yourself suspend your disbelief and accepting premises without seeking any evidence. It comes down to wishful thinking really.
        maratd 14y ago
        > when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. You have no capacity to determine if something is true without the process of trial and error. This is the founding principal of the scientific mindset and is the basis of the scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, repeat. How do you "test" a religion? Not with any feeble investigation by your primitive rational mind. You try the belief system. If it makes you happier, if it makes you a better person, you've found a winning formula. If it gives you good results, you win. It is entirely irrelevant whether it passes some "truth" test concocted by your imagination. It either has real, relevant results in your life or it doesn't. Religion is a way of life, a guide for living ... not merely a creation mythology. If you bother asking, you will find the overwhelming majority of human beings on the planet get this, understand it, and will actually tell you just how it improves their lives. Unfortunately, engineers seem to be brain-damaged in some specific way that prevents them from thinking in this manner. You need to work on that. It's not very scientific.
        super_mario 14y ago
        First of all I'm a mathematician, in my 40s and I can think for myself quite well, thanks. Second, it is perfectly possible to reach true statements and falsify well false ones without experiments, like we do in math all the time. But more importantly for this discussion, religion is not some guide for moral living. If it were so, there would be no problem with religion. No, religion is all about absolutism, it is a totalitarian world view by definition. It is argument from certainty. Religion comes down to some people claiming not only they know with absolute certainty there is a god, but they also know his mind, what he wants us to do. It is about gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity. And how do they know? Personal revelation of course, god told them something (often times contradictory to what he told others). Yet, no ordinary evidence is ever offered for these claims, let alone extraordinary evidence it would take to prove the claims. Religion (and I'm referring to the three monotheistic ones, the three desert dogmas) are claiming that without this absolute divine supervision we would not know right from wrong. So, if religion is just a way of life, and if you don't accept the required dogmas wholesale, in what way is it a guide for you? If you get to pick and choose out of all the required supernatural dogmas, does that not show that your morals in fact don't come from religion, but you already know what is good and what is right? Of course, morals and our civility to each other predate religion. We would not have gotten this far without it. And seriously, believing something as absolute because it makes you feel good is a definition of delusion. Can you be any more dishonest with yourself? But some of us care about what is actually true. And besides what religion you get indoctrinated into has nothing to do with the truthfulness of your particular religion, but more to do with where you were born, and the religion of your parents.
  - bendmorris 14y ago
    How do traditional religions helps us to understand the world? Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding.
    - maratd 14y ago
      > Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding. Where is your evidence for this? Humor aside, this is absolutely not the case. Traditional religion stems from human intuition, a natural sense of reality that was shaped my many, many years of evolution. A process of trial and error. Trial and error, of course, is the natural equivalent of the scientific method. Continuous iteration and refinement. If anything, our intuitive sense is more refined than our sense of reason and tells us much about the world around us that our capacity for reason simply does not.
- AffableSpatula 14y ago
  Consciousness/experience.
  - derleth 14y ago
    > Consciousness/experience. These are both scientific.
    - zdw 14y ago
      Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
      - derleth 14y ago
        > Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? Not yet. Can you explain morality in terms of your favored philosophical framework? > I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please. A fine example of what people do when they don't reason things through. How does this discredit science?
        zdw 14y ago
        "Not yet" - really? Reversed entropy or invented time travel lately? It sounds like you're assigning omniscient characteristics to science.
  - thirdtruck 14y ago
    How, specifically? Given the incredible variance in available descriptions of "the conscious experience", I would posit that "consciousness" itself exists only as a mental grouping and nothing distinct. As an exercise: explain what exactly constitutes a "car", including the point where such an item officially "stops being a car" during the process of disassembly. Show your work.
    - MrScruff 14y ago
      I don't think they are referring to the phenomenon of consciousness, rather than the experience of consciousness itself.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  Intuition? (Yes, it's probably pattern-matching taken to an extreme, but can we quantify it? Why not?)
  - rohern 14y ago
    What does that mean? I intuit that your program has bugs, therefore it has bugs? I intuit that there is an alien race living on Mars that is able to disguise itself as red rocks? I do not see how intuition gives you anything other than -- maybe, and only maybe -- a smaller set of hypotheses to test scientifically.
    - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
      Your inability to fit it into your belief system is not my problem.
      - rohern 14y ago
        If that is the strongest argument you can make, I think you've said all that needs to be said about intuition.
        mattgreenrocks 14y ago
        Hehe, I'm not trying to convince you. I suppose I shouldn't be posting, then. Really, I'm not certain you would be convinced even if I did a better job, though. All I'm really looking for is less of a skeptical "explain it to me in terms of science" viewpoint, and more of a "huh, interesting" response. I've never seen someone even try to work with me when discussing these things. It's always shut down so they can claim their Internet points. Not intellectually engaging in the slightest.
        derleth 14y ago
        This purely dismissive attitude is why philosophers are mocked and ignored.
- VMG 14y ago
  The answers that you'll receive won't be supported by rational thought or evidence. If they were, it'd be scientism.
  - aroberge 14y ago
    How can something that is not supported by evidence be a valid answer to any legitimate question?
    - VMG 14y ago
      It can't, that's my point. Arguing against rationality using rational arguments is self-contradictory.
    - georgeorwell 14y ago
      How are you feeling right now?
      - derleth 14y ago
        > How are you feeling right now? Emotions, both feeling and decoding, are smack-dab in the realm of neurology.
    - droithomme 14y ago
      What do you want to eat for dinner? (legitimate question) How about pizza? (no scientific evidence involved in this response)
  - lotharbot 14y ago
    Mathematics is separate from science (at least in the modern sense, to the same degree that philosophy is separate from modern science). It's also a form of rational thought, and relies heavily on evidence -- just not empirical evidence. It relies upon reason and proof, but not experimentation or observation.
- georgeorwell 14y ago
  Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Other ways of understanding the world include our five senses but also rely on other phenomena, such as our dreams and emotions, and then are subject to somewhat rational but mostly irrational personal and subjective interpretations. Note that irrational is not the same as incorrect, and I don't consider it a pejorative. I guess as a primary example, art is non-scientific, but it is an equally valid way of communicating the understanding of our experience to others. We understand beauty. The meaning of symbols in our society seems unlikely to ever come under some scientific theory but forms a very large part of our experience. The search for meaning in life is not a scientific one. It is probably true that science is the only objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical approach to understanding the world. This does not invalidate other approaches, since we are more than objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical beings. Your subjective experience is yours and yours alone and totally resistant to the scientific method.
  - subsection1h 14y ago
    Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Five senses? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense
super_mario 14y ago
Name one question for which a scientific answer no matter how inadequate was once the best, but for which now a philosophical or religious one is the best one?
- AffableSpatula 14y ago
  Consciousness, experience, spontaneity, 'the present moment'.. There's a very good book on this called "The Wisdom Of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. It's very short and definitely worth a read if this question interests you.
  - super_mario 14y ago
    Consciousness, experience or the present moment are not a question. What about these? What in particular about them is answered better (i.e. more correctly or truthfully) by non-scientific answers. What answer can be satisfying at all if it is not tested at all? Or if it does not give correct predictions. Feeling better about something or wishing it were so are not good enough criteria in my mind. Finding consolation in illusion is not a worthy goal either. All questions are scientific questions. What is right, what is moral or what we should do follows from what is true. Science happens to be the only sure way to discover what is true on the other hand. All other methods fail us.
    - Ygg2 14y ago
      If all question are scientific question then what is a question 'What is right (in the sense of morals)?' and can that answer in any way help me? Science isn't about truth. Science is about three things. Making hypothesis, making decisions based on hypothesis and testing them. It has no singular answer and that answer changes depending on scales we operate.
      - super_mario 14y ago
        Of course "what is right" is a scientific question. If science (i.e reason and evidence) has nothing to say about it, then what does? What is right follows directly from what is true. For example, if animals are indeed sentient, if they are self-aware even, if they can suffer, are scientific questions. If scientific answers to these questions are positive, then some of us sufficiently evolved, aware humans can't ignore the fact, and we have no choice but to treat animals differently than what we do now. Some countries like Spain have gone so far as to give protection and right to life to higher primates, our closest cousin apes. We can decide slavery is not a good idea. We can decide that fairly applied laws, rather than nepotistic favoritism, is a good idea. We can outlaw certain punishments with treaties. We can encourage accountability with the invention of writing. We can consciously expand our circle of empathy. These are all inventions, products of our minds, as much as lightbulbs and telegraphs are.
return0 14y ago
I wouldn't agree; this essay takes few examples of bad or half-baked science (which are disputed even among scientists, in specific fields such as behavioral ecology and evo. psychology, and behavioral neuroscience) and generalizes to all of science.

by gnosis 14y ago

seiji 14y ago

What are some [legitimate] examples of non-science ways of understanding the world?

maratd 14y ago
Traditional religions.
- super_mario 14y ago
  Which are now completely discredited as complete lies.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    Complete? Lies? Those are strong statements.
    - super_mario 14y ago
      Yes, they are. But I have spent a chunk on my life investigating the claims of major religions and when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. So, religion and faith comes down to bending yourself, making yourself suspend your disbelief and accepting premises without seeking any evidence. It comes down to wishful thinking really.
      - maratd 14y ago
        > when you start poking around you not only find out there is absolutely no evidence to back them up, but there is plenty of evidence that they man made. You have no capacity to determine if something is true without the process of trial and error. This is the founding principal of the scientific mindset and is the basis of the scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, repeat. How do you "test" a religion? Not with any feeble investigation by your primitive rational mind. You try the belief system. If it makes you happier, if it makes you a better person, you've found a winning formula. If it gives you good results, you win. It is entirely irrelevant whether it passes some "truth" test concocted by your imagination. It either has real, relevant results in your life or it doesn't. Religion is a way of life, a guide for living ... not merely a creation mythology. If you bother asking, you will find the overwhelming majority of human beings on the planet get this, understand it, and will actually tell you just how it improves their lives. Unfortunately, engineers seem to be brain-damaged in some specific way that prevents them from thinking in this manner. You need to work on that. It's not very scientific.
        super_mario 14y ago
        First of all I'm a mathematician, in my 40s and I can think for myself quite well, thanks. Second, it is perfectly possible to reach true statements and falsify well false ones without experiments, like we do in math all the time. But more importantly for this discussion, religion is not some guide for moral living. If it were so, there would be no problem with religion. No, religion is all about absolutism, it is a totalitarian world view by definition. It is argument from certainty. Religion comes down to some people claiming not only they know with absolute certainty there is a god, but they also know his mind, what he wants us to do. It is about gods that care about human beings, that interfere in their lives, that tell you what you should do, what you should eat, on what days, who you may sleep with and in what position, gods who break the known laws of nature for their people, god who stops the motion of the sun around earth so certain people in the Bible can finish their work, god who takes "our" side in a war, a god that gives itself body so it can kill it to save the humanity. And how do they know? Personal revelation of course, god told them something (often times contradictory to what he told others). Yet, no ordinary evidence is ever offered for these claims, let alone extraordinary evidence it would take to prove the claims. Religion (and I'm referring to the three monotheistic ones, the three desert dogmas) are claiming that without this absolute divine supervision we would not know right from wrong. So, if religion is just a way of life, and if you don't accept the required dogmas wholesale, in what way is it a guide for you? If you get to pick and choose out of all the required supernatural dogmas, does that not show that your morals in fact don't come from religion, but you already know what is good and what is right? Of course, morals and our civility to each other predate religion. We would not have gotten this far without it. And seriously, believing something as absolute because it makes you feel good is a definition of delusion. Can you be any more dishonest with yourself? But some of us care about what is actually true. And besides what religion you get indoctrinated into has nothing to do with the truthfulness of your particular religion, but more to do with where you were born, and the religion of your parents.
- bendmorris 14y ago
  How do traditional religions helps us to understand the world? Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding.
  - maratd 14y ago
    > Claims without evidence don't help to increase understanding. Where is your evidence for this? Humor aside, this is absolutely not the case. Traditional religion stems from human intuition, a natural sense of reality that was shaped my many, many years of evolution. A process of trial and error. Trial and error, of course, is the natural equivalent of the scientific method. Continuous iteration and refinement. If anything, our intuitive sense is more refined than our sense of reason and tells us much about the world around us that our capacity for reason simply does not.
AffableSpatula 14y ago
Consciousness/experience.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Consciousness/experience. These are both scientific.
  - zdw 14y ago
    Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
    - derleth 14y ago
      > Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? Not yet. Can you explain morality in terms of your favored philosophical framework? > I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please. A fine example of what people do when they don't reason things through. How does this discredit science?
      - zdw 14y ago
        "Not yet" - really? Reversed entropy or invented time travel lately? It sounds like you're assigning omniscient characteristics to science.
- thirdtruck 14y ago
  How, specifically? Given the incredible variance in available descriptions of "the conscious experience", I would posit that "consciousness" itself exists only as a mental grouping and nothing distinct. As an exercise: explain what exactly constitutes a "car", including the point where such an item officially "stops being a car" during the process of disassembly. Show your work.
  - MrScruff 14y ago
    I don't think they are referring to the phenomenon of consciousness, rather than the experience of consciousness itself.
mattgreenrocks 14y ago
Intuition? (Yes, it's probably pattern-matching taken to an extreme, but can we quantify it? Why not?)
- rohern 14y ago
  What does that mean? I intuit that your program has bugs, therefore it has bugs? I intuit that there is an alien race living on Mars that is able to disguise itself as red rocks? I do not see how intuition gives you anything other than -- maybe, and only maybe -- a smaller set of hypotheses to test scientifically.
  - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
    Your inability to fit it into your belief system is not my problem.
    - rohern 14y ago
      If that is the strongest argument you can make, I think you've said all that needs to be said about intuition.
      - mattgreenrocks 14y ago
        Hehe, I'm not trying to convince you. I suppose I shouldn't be posting, then. Really, I'm not certain you would be convinced even if I did a better job, though. All I'm really looking for is less of a skeptical "explain it to me in terms of science" viewpoint, and more of a "huh, interesting" response. I've never seen someone even try to work with me when discussing these things. It's always shut down so they can claim their Internet points. Not intellectually engaging in the slightest.
        derleth 14y ago
        This purely dismissive attitude is why philosophers are mocked and ignored.
VMG 14y ago
The answers that you'll receive won't be supported by rational thought or evidence. If they were, it'd be scientism.
- aroberge 14y ago
  How can something that is not supported by evidence be a valid answer to any legitimate question?
  - VMG 14y ago
    It can't, that's my point. Arguing against rationality using rational arguments is self-contradictory.
  - georgeorwell 14y ago
    How are you feeling right now?
    - derleth 14y ago
      > How are you feeling right now? Emotions, both feeling and decoding, are smack-dab in the realm of neurology.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    What do you want to eat for dinner? (legitimate question) How about pizza? (no scientific evidence involved in this response)
- lotharbot 14y ago
  Mathematics is separate from science (at least in the modern sense, to the same degree that philosophy is separate from modern science). It's also a form of rational thought, and relies heavily on evidence -- just not empirical evidence. It relies upon reason and proof, but not experimentation or observation.
georgeorwell 14y ago
Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Other ways of understanding the world include our five senses but also rely on other phenomena, such as our dreams and emotions, and then are subject to somewhat rational but mostly irrational personal and subjective interpretations. Note that irrational is not the same as incorrect, and I don't consider it a pejorative. I guess as a primary example, art is non-scientific, but it is an equally valid way of communicating the understanding of our experience to others. We understand beauty. The meaning of symbols in our society seems unlikely to ever come under some scientific theory but forms a very large part of our experience. The search for meaning in life is not a scientific one. It is probably true that science is the only objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical approach to understanding the world. This does not invalidate other approaches, since we are more than objective, factually accurate, rational, logical, and methodical beings. Your subjective experience is yours and yours alone and totally resistant to the scientific method.
- subsection1h 14y ago
  Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Five senses? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense

super_mario 14y ago

Name one question for which a scientific answer no matter how inadequate was once the best, but for which now a philosophical or religious one is the best one?

AffableSpatula 14y ago
Consciousness, experience, spontaneity, 'the present moment'.. There's a very good book on this called "The Wisdom Of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. It's very short and definitely worth a read if this question interests you.
- super_mario 14y ago
  Consciousness, experience or the present moment are not a question. What about these? What in particular about them is answered better (i.e. more correctly or truthfully) by non-scientific answers. What answer can be satisfying at all if it is not tested at all? Or if it does not give correct predictions. Feeling better about something or wishing it were so are not good enough criteria in my mind. Finding consolation in illusion is not a worthy goal either. All questions are scientific questions. What is right, what is moral or what we should do follows from what is true. Science happens to be the only sure way to discover what is true on the other hand. All other methods fail us.
  - Ygg2 14y ago
    If all question are scientific question then what is a question 'What is right (in the sense of morals)?' and can that answer in any way help me? Science isn't about truth. Science is about three things. Making hypothesis, making decisions based on hypothesis and testing them. It has no singular answer and that answer changes depending on scales we operate.
    - super_mario 14y ago
      Of course "what is right" is a scientific question. If science (i.e reason and evidence) has nothing to say about it, then what does? What is right follows directly from what is true. For example, if animals are indeed sentient, if they are self-aware even, if they can suffer, are scientific questions. If scientific answers to these questions are positive, then some of us sufficiently evolved, aware humans can't ignore the fact, and we have no choice but to treat animals differently than what we do now. Some countries like Spain have gone so far as to give protection and right to life to higher primates, our closest cousin apes. We can decide slavery is not a good idea. We can decide that fairly applied laws, rather than nepotistic favoritism, is a good idea. We can outlaw certain punishments with treaties. We can encourage accountability with the invention of writing. We can consciously expand our circle of empathy. These are all inventions, products of our minds, as much as lightbulbs and telegraphs are.

return0 14y ago

I wouldn't agree; this essay takes few examples of bad or half-baked science (which are disputed even among scientists, in specific fields such as behavioral ecology and evo. psychology, and behavioral neuroscience) and generalizes to all of science.