8 ms·

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

by seiji 14y ago

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.
        Daniel_Newby 14y ago
        > No, religion is all about absolutism, it is a totalitarian world view by definition. It is argument from certainty. This strikes me as scientific fundamentalism. Many religions seem to incorporate a great deal of questioning and reflection, like Wicca and Buddhism. > And seriously, believing something as absolute because it makes you feel good is a definition of delusion. Few people could conceive and systematize people as tending to become trapped in a cycle of appetites and fears, and deduce ways of thinking to help escape from the cycle. The Buddha could. You need not accept every letter of dogma to improve yourself with Buddhism, any more than you need to accept alchemy to learn from the teachings of Newton.
- 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

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

by 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.
        Daniel_Newby 14y ago
        > No, religion is all about absolutism, it is a totalitarian world view by definition. It is argument from certainty. This strikes me as scientific fundamentalism. Many religions seem to incorporate a great deal of questioning and reflection, like Wicca and Buddhism. > And seriously, believing something as absolute because it makes you feel good is a definition of delusion. Few people could conceive and systematize people as tending to become trapped in a cycle of appetites and fears, and deduce ways of thinking to help escape from the cycle. The Buddha could. You need not accept every letter of dogma to improve yourself with Buddhism, any more than you need to accept alchemy to learn from the teachings of Newton.
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