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For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. No,

by kirse 13y ago

For example, you seem to have some concept of "testing" that involves the observer having to cause the observed phenomenon in order for it to be empirical. No, don't project words into my mouth, because that's not what I'm saying. I have a spectrum of confidence when it comes to science, and the more its conclusions are reached under solid empiricism, the higher that level of confidence. If the cause was not observable, then it is completely and totally rational to take one's level of confidence down a few notches. After all, we're not able to observe HALF of the cause--(produces)-->outcomes process. The existence of the sun is not hypothetical, because its existence is on the right side of that process - it's an "already happened" outcome that is routinely confirmed by the senses daily. The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen).

nitrogen 13y ago
The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen). It's not very accurate to use the word "faith" to describe any element of the scientific process. Consider the explanations to that effect from this article, which are good reading, but too lengthy to include here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/faith_in_science_and_religion_truth_authority_and_the_orderliness_of_nature.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... A useful excerpt from that article: "In such cases the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.”"
- kirse 13y ago
  So when you can't subject something to empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Let's look at a few simple cause--(produces)-->outcome examples: - When a chair moves in a room (outcome) and you didn't observe the chair moving, can you with 100% confidence identify why/what moved the chair (cause)? - When your wallet goes missing from your desk (outcome) and you didn't observe its disappearance, can you 100% identify who/what moved it (cause)? - When you walk up to your house with a broken window (outcome) having never seen the window being broken, can you 100% with confidence identify the what broke the window (cause)? I'm not saying that science is using faith to establish confidence in observable OUTCOMES. Science is using faith when it cannot observe CAUSES and proceeds to make claims about those CAUSES. Faith has to do with attributing confidence to that which cannot be observed or subject to empiricism. For example, the original cause of the sun's existence. To be clear, when I use the word "observe", I mean in the sense of using empiricism and the senses to gather data about reality.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Interesting, so when you can't subject something to the empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Causality, as such, is not directly observable. Correlation is, and causation is inferred from patterns of correlation. When done scientifically, the specific method to go from observed correlation to conclusions about causation is to form a hypothesis, predict future observations based on that hypothesis that could be falsified to disprove it, and then go and test those predictions. Eventually, doing this enough, and you'll end up with falsifiable models that have been rigorously tested from which you can make inferences about what must have caused events where you cannot observe the correlated event that you would infer to be the cause that are as strong as the inferences of causation you can make with events where you observe both the putative cause and the effect for which you infer it is the cause. > If you haven't observed the cause, you have no rational reason to establish 100% confidence about what it was. If you have observed the supposed cause -- and its supposed effect -- you have no rational reason to assert a causal link with actual 100% certainty. OTOH, with sufficient related observations, prediction, and testing those predictions, you can construct a model of causality that lets you get arbitrarily close to 100% certainty in stating what the cause of an observed effect is, whether or not you can observe the event that is the inferred cause. > This is really simple rational thinking It is simply incorrect, and seems grounded in both a mistake about what science does and the mistaken belief that causality is directly observable. > I don't get how science arrives at any level of confidence about causes that it can't (nor has ever) observed. The same way it arrives at any level of confidence about causes that it can observe (observe the event, that is, not the fact that it is a "cause", which is never observable, only inferable.) > I have no problem with confidence in what it can observe, I take issue when it can't observe and attempts to take what it can observe and confidently extrapolate that into the past. The whole thing science does is produce and refine methods of inferring things that are not observed from things that are.
    - kirse 13y ago
      Causality, as such, is not directly observable. The whole thing science does is produce and refine methods of inferring things that are not observed from things that are. This is awful, awful science. Science works best when the entire process (from cause to outcome) can be subject to empiricism. I think we've reached an impasse here, because clearly we differ on whether or not unobservable events can be reasoned about with any level of confidence. You seem to state that inference and models that produce predictions will lead to a "arbitrarily close to 100%" level of confidence, and that's where I completely, utterly disagree... especially when we're trying to talk "billions of years ago". Even in the recent case of a broken window, only your neighbor who saw the event could have a decent level of confidence in what caused it. Millions of tests, models, and inferences would only produce an educated guess as to what happened, all of which would be obliterated by a neighbor simply explaining what they saw. As I said before, I am strictly empirical when it comes to science and am willing to call my personal claims about unseen events as "faith" when I am trying to establish truth about them.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago
Well, nothing wrong with trusting theories with more/clearer/better evidence more, of course. Now, apparently, I interpreted your previous post incorrectly as to how you go about distinguishing better evidence from worse evidence, but my main point that I was trying to make still stands: Your distinction is somewhat arbitrary and I have the strong impression that you aren't really aware of it. For example, you are constantly referring to the here-and-now as some kind of special category of evidence. You do realize that there isn't really any "here and now"? There is no "sun here now" - there is only a brain here and now that processes signals that we hypothesize come from photo receptors in the eyes, which we further hypothesize were stimulated by waves of electromagnetic radiation, which in turn we hypothesize has previously been traveling for around eight minutes from what we hypothesize to be a star, about which we further hypothesize how it works internally, which is part of why we hypothesize that it is still creating those electromagnetic waves, even though we wouldn't know for another eight minutes if it had disappeared (or so we hypothesize). That's a whole lot of hypotheses and indirect evidence and quite a bit of looking into the past involved to call that "present knowledge from the here and now", don't you think? And no, we can not observe the cause - you only can observe the effects, ever. In the case of the sun, that is the electromagnetic radiation that we hypothesize to be created by a star in our neighbourhood. And essentially the same thing is true for the big bang: We see its effects, among those the microwave background, which is electromagnetic radiation which we hypothesize to be coming from the horizon of when the universe became transparent, which we hypothesize to be 13.7 billion light-years away, ... - and if you have a radio telescope, it can easily be confirmed by the senses daily. So, if you were to apply your standards consistently, you probably would have to consider belief in the existence of the sun right now or belief in the existence of bacteria and viruses (you can not observe those with your senses, in case you mean that a little bit too literally) as a matter of faith. I would think that that's silly, and it's much saner to say that the empirical evidence for the sun and the big bang and bacteria is all pretty strong, possibly varying a bit in strength, but without any of the qualitative differences that you seem to be implying.

by kirse 13y ago

nitrogen 13y ago

The discussion about what caused the sun's existence is irrelevant to the vast amounts of present knowledge that can be gained from empirically observing it in the here-and-now. Not only that, but any claims (Christian, science, or otherwise) about what really caused its existence can ultimately only be glued together by faith (a confidence in things unseen). It's not very accurate to use the word "faith" to describe any element of the scientific process. Consider the explanations to that effect from this article, which are good reading, but too lengthy to include here: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/faith_in_science_and_religion_truth_authority_and_the_orderliness_of_nature.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... A useful excerpt from that article: "In such cases the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.”"

kirse 13y ago
So when you can't subject something to empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Let's look at a few simple cause--(produces)-->outcome examples: - When a chair moves in a room (outcome) and you didn't observe the chair moving, can you with 100% confidence identify why/what moved the chair (cause)? - When your wallet goes missing from your desk (outcome) and you didn't observe its disappearance, can you 100% identify who/what moved it (cause)? - When you walk up to your house with a broken window (outcome) having never seen the window being broken, can you 100% with confidence identify the what broke the window (cause)? I'm not saying that science is using faith to establish confidence in observable OUTCOMES. Science is using faith when it cannot observe CAUSES and proceeds to make claims about those CAUSES. Faith has to do with attributing confidence to that which cannot be observed or subject to empiricism. For example, the original cause of the sun's existence. To be clear, when I use the word "observe", I mean in the sense of using empiricism and the senses to gather data about reality.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Interesting, so when you can't subject something to the empirical observation... such as the original creation of the sun, where exactly does one gain a sure confidence in the explanation for it's original cause? Causality, as such, is not directly observable. Correlation is, and causation is inferred from patterns of correlation. When done scientifically, the specific method to go from observed correlation to conclusions about causation is to form a hypothesis, predict future observations based on that hypothesis that could be falsified to disprove it, and then go and test those predictions. Eventually, doing this enough, and you'll end up with falsifiable models that have been rigorously tested from which you can make inferences about what must have caused events where you cannot observe the correlated event that you would infer to be the cause that are as strong as the inferences of causation you can make with events where you observe both the putative cause and the effect for which you infer it is the cause. > If you haven't observed the cause, you have no rational reason to establish 100% confidence about what it was. If you have observed the supposed cause -- and its supposed effect -- you have no rational reason to assert a causal link with actual 100% certainty. OTOH, with sufficient related observations, prediction, and testing those predictions, you can construct a model of causality that lets you get arbitrarily close to 100% certainty in stating what the cause of an observed effect is, whether or not you can observe the event that is the inferred cause. > This is really simple rational thinking It is simply incorrect, and seems grounded in both a mistake about what science does and the mistaken belief that causality is directly observable. > I don't get how science arrives at any level of confidence about causes that it can't (nor has ever) observed. The same way it arrives at any level of confidence about causes that it can observe (observe the event, that is, not the fact that it is a "cause", which is never observable, only inferable.) > I have no problem with confidence in what it can observe, I take issue when it can't observe and attempts to take what it can observe and confidently extrapolate that into the past. The whole thing science does is produce and refine methods of inferring things that are not observed from things that are.
  - kirse 13y ago
    Causality, as such, is not directly observable. The whole thing science does is produce and refine methods of inferring things that are not observed from things that are. This is awful, awful science. Science works best when the entire process (from cause to outcome) can be subject to empiricism. I think we've reached an impasse here, because clearly we differ on whether or not unobservable events can be reasoned about with any level of confidence. You seem to state that inference and models that produce predictions will lead to a "arbitrarily close to 100%" level of confidence, and that's where I completely, utterly disagree... especially when we're trying to talk "billions of years ago". Even in the recent case of a broken window, only your neighbor who saw the event could have a decent level of confidence in what caused it. Millions of tests, models, and inferences would only produce an educated guess as to what happened, all of which would be obliterated by a neighbor simply explaining what they saw. As I said before, I am strictly empirical when it comes to science and am willing to call my personal claims about unseen events as "faith" when I am trying to establish truth about them.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 13y ago

Well, nothing wrong with trusting theories with more/clearer/better evidence more, of course. Now, apparently, I interpreted your previous post incorrectly as to how you go about distinguishing better evidence from worse evidence, but my main point that I was trying to make still stands: Your distinction is somewhat arbitrary and I have the strong impression that you aren't really aware of it. For example, you are constantly referring to the here-and-now as some kind of special category of evidence. You do realize that there isn't really any "here and now"? There is no "sun here now" - there is only a brain here and now that processes signals that we hypothesize come from photo receptors in the eyes, which we further hypothesize were stimulated by waves of electromagnetic radiation, which in turn we hypothesize has previously been traveling for around eight minutes from what we hypothesize to be a star, about which we further hypothesize how it works internally, which is part of why we hypothesize that it is still creating those electromagnetic waves, even though we wouldn't know for another eight minutes if it had disappeared (or so we hypothesize). That's a whole lot of hypotheses and indirect evidence and quite a bit of looking into the past involved to call that "present knowledge from the here and now", don't you think? And no, we can not observe the cause - you only can observe the effects, ever. In the case of the sun, that is the electromagnetic radiation that we hypothesize to be created by a star in our neighbourhood. And essentially the same thing is true for the big bang: We see its effects, among those the microwave background, which is electromagnetic radiation which we hypothesize to be coming from the horizon of when the universe became transparent, which we hypothesize to be 13.7 billion light-years away, ... - and if you have a radio telescope, it can easily be confirmed by the senses daily. So, if you were to apply your standards consistently, you probably would have to consider belief in the existence of the sun right now or belief in the existence of bacteria and viruses (you can not observe those with your senses, in case you mean that a little bit too literally) as a matter of faith. I would think that that's silly, and it's much saner to say that the empirical evidence for the sun and the big bang and bacteria is all pretty strong, possibly varying a bit in strength, but without any of the qualitative differences that you seem to be implying.