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The issue is that many people trying to convince me about science are woefully unaware of their own assumptions and are typically ignorant of some basic philoso

by JackFr 11y ago

The issue is that many people trying to convince me about science are woefully unaware of their own assumptions and are typically ignorant of some basic philosophy. In particular, I accept that the scientific method is a reliable path to knowledge, that is, it reliably leads to a true understanding of true things. However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method. Other unvoiced assumptions speak to one's life's purpose. The old quote from Emil Faber, 'Knowledge is good', is certainly not a scientific conclusion, or a testable hypothesis. Valuing wisdom over ignorance and indeed freedom over slavery and life over death speaks to a purpose in life which is necessarily ungrounded in any science. I certainly do value all of those things, but it is not a belief anyone achieved through falsifiable hypotheses.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
I hear this a lot: morality is above science. I don't believe it for a moment. Just look at those that believe in ignorance over wisdom, or death over life - they do very, very badly. Empirically these moral codes are useful and effective. That's science right there.
- JackFr 11y ago
  What does 'badly' mean? Sounds a lot like an opinion to me.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Lets not pretend we don't know how badly murderers end up in court. This is getting silly.
    - JackFr 11y ago
      It's not silly -- it's the whole point. Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well. Or consider Richard Dawkin's famous criticisms of Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa unashamedly put religion ahead material comfort among the poor she ministered too. To say she was wrong in so doing is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of ones personal values.
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        The existence of personal values is a fact that has biological and cultural origins that can be studied. Also, you are conflating one person's opinion with science. On the subject of cultural differences in morality, these can be surveyed empirically and considered within a framework of natural selection (both biological and cultural). One can choose to derive any moral framework they wish, but scientifically speaking, the moral frameworks that survive are those that can yield the greatest memetic survival advantage of the framework itself. And in the end, it's all just physics anyway.
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        >Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well. And objectively, suicide bombers are dead, which puts them far behind those of us who remain alive -- at least, by any sensible measure. Of course, when you unravel the story behind the average suicide bomber, you usually find that they were shamed or pressured into the deed, and in fact, have not accomplished, in committing a suicide bombing, all their own noble goals in life. They are actually sad, pathetic people exploited by powerful clerics to be turned into little more than explosive puppets.
        JackFr 11y ago
        > at least, by any sensible measure That's pure question begging.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Really that's pointing out a bad example, which is fair in a discussion.
        JackFr 11y ago
        It's question begging because 'any sensible measure' is meant to exclude the subjective measure by which suicide bombers are valuing their own lives. The whole point is that their worldview -- what is important, what is to be valued during our brief time on earth, etc. -- is radically different than yours or mine. And yet the only argument I seem to get in favor of the worldview that (I believe) you and I largely share is "C'mon. Don't be silly.", which might be rhetorically effective, but is not evidence based. The important difference is that I am willing to accept that I believe it without proof. You see and the parent seem to need to claim it's 'scientific' and 'rational' to embrace a worldview which values life, freedom, knowledge, etc.
- gizi 11y ago
  Science is a method, producing statements about facts. A type of behaviour is not a fact (e.g. "killing someone"). It is statement. Therefore morality produces statements about statements. How could a method dealing with statements about facts ever be in competition with a method dealing with statements about statements? That is impossible. In other words, by comparing morality and science, you are comparing apples and oranges.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    Are these widely accepted definitions of "fact", "statement", and "science"? Even if the distinction between "fact" and "statement" in this argument is sound, the example statement, "killing someone", is connected to innumerable "facts" of specific historic creatures having killed specific others, and the fact of their individual success or failure to reproduce is inextricably tied to the biological evolution of a moral instinct, and the cultural evolution of a moral code. Furthermore, all human behavior can be linked to activity in the brain, which can be studied by neuroscience. Finally, empirical surveys of human behaviors and moral opinions exist. Therefore, morality is within the purview of science.
  - ThrustVectoring 11y ago
    Game Theory explicitly talks about behavior in a rigorous way. That should be enough of a counterexample. Science can talk about specific events ("John stabbed Joe with a knife"), it can talk about how people categorize them ("the stabbing had features X, Y, and Z that the typical mind categorizes at "murder"), and it can talk about how typical minds perceive and judge events it has categorized. Morality is little more than an abstraction that human brains use to make social value judgements that help them fulfill their complicated set of values. If you can understand the values people have and the way these judgements help fulfill them, you've basically aced morality. I'm not saying it's easy. I know several brilliant people working on this, and they're still getting surprises and uncovering edge cases. What I'm getting at is that statements like "most people think killing people is bad" can be reduced, with great difficulty, into statements about human behaviors and brain activity.
    - 11y ago
- calinet6 11y ago
  This, and most of the other arguments in the whole thread, are so highly simplistic. The links between science and humanity are many and complex, and vice versa. There is no winner, there is no right side. They build on each other, enhance each other, and neither science not the humanities has any real meaning in isolation. Really, the whole dichotomous argument between the two is absolutely ridiculous. We need fewer people on the sides and more who are truly bridges.
  - spydum 11y ago
    you have to wonder if there is some magnetism in people which draws them to polarizing topics (both to build polarizing arguments, and to engage in them). Maybe it's as simple as we are highly competitive, and in the absence of competition, we create rifts just so we can establish who is greater?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Simpler: people like to argue. Some multi-dimensional topics its hard to find a single definitive answer. Those topics, you can argue about forever.
- calinet6 11y ago
  Ask Oppenheimer, after the first atomic bomb test, if morality is above science. "We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him he takes on his multiarmed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"
nitrogen 11y ago
However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method. We would have to agree on the definition of "true knowledge" to come to a complete understanding of each other's positions, but I'll take a stab at justifying my opinion that science is the only possible source for all "true knowledge". I'll define "true" as empirically tested and repeatable by others, and "knowledge" as statements about something tangible (e.g. brains), or about intangible concepts embodied within tangible things (e.g. brains thinking about ideas). One needn't fully accept these definitions for the argument to hold, if one accepts that personal experience is a source of personal knowledge. Basically, if we consider all the claimed sources of knowledge, and consider which "way" of knowing applies in the most places, gains the most new knowledge over time, and has the best track record for producing societal advancements of knowledge and technology, the only "way of knowing" left standing is science. You also mention "life purpose" and "knowledge is good" as counterevidence to science. But scientifically speaking, there is no objective purpose or objective good. There is only natural selection favoring the evolution of a desire for knowledge. That desire can be studied scientifically via neurology and related disciplines.
- JackFr 11y ago
  Ultimately, your 'justification' is just an assertion that if it doesn't come via the scientific method, either its not true or its not science. I wouldn't call the idea that "Knowledge is good", wisdom is better than ignorance, and freedom is better than slavery, etc. counterevidence. But I believe they are true things which I cannot prove via any sort of experiment, in particular because 'good' and 'better' are of necessity subjective.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    I don't think you can dismiss my line of reasoning by saying "ultimately" and then saying something I didn't say at all. It seems that we indeed cannot agree on a useful shared definition of "true". The laws of physics are ultimately indifferent to our notions of truth, and yet our notions of truth are instantiated as emergent phenomena within physics.
andyidsinga 11y ago
> it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge there's something to that. It seems to me its partially because we often make "doing science" a mental / virtual exercise. A process that is done with data and in the realm of one's head. But doing science should includes all of our senses. The idea of gemba comes to mind ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba ): > The idea is that to be customer-driven, one must go to the customer's genba to understand his problems and opportunities, using all one's senses to gather and process data.

by JackFr 11y ago

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

I hear this a lot: morality is above science. I don't believe it for a moment. Just look at those that believe in ignorance over wisdom, or death over life - they do very, very badly. Empirically these moral codes are useful and effective. That's science right there.

JackFr 11y ago
What does 'badly' mean? Sounds a lot like an opinion to me.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Lets not pretend we don't know how badly murderers end up in court. This is getting silly.
  - JackFr 11y ago
    It's not silly -- it's the whole point. Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well. Or consider Richard Dawkin's famous criticisms of Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa unashamedly put religion ahead material comfort among the poor she ministered too. To say she was wrong in so doing is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of ones personal values.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      The existence of personal values is a fact that has biological and cultural origins that can be studied. Also, you are conflating one person's opinion with science. On the subject of cultural differences in morality, these can be surveyed empirically and considered within a framework of natural selection (both biological and cultural). One can choose to derive any moral framework they wish, but scientifically speaking, the moral frameworks that survive are those that can yield the greatest memetic survival advantage of the framework itself. And in the end, it's all just physics anyway.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      >Suicide bombers see a different purpose to their lives than (presumably) you and I do. By their own measure they are not doing badly, they are doing quite well. And objectively, suicide bombers are dead, which puts them far behind those of us who remain alive -- at least, by any sensible measure. Of course, when you unravel the story behind the average suicide bomber, you usually find that they were shamed or pressured into the deed, and in fact, have not accomplished, in committing a suicide bombing, all their own noble goals in life. They are actually sad, pathetic people exploited by powerful clerics to be turned into little more than explosive puppets.
      - JackFr 11y ago
        > at least, by any sensible measure That's pure question begging.
        JoeAltmaier 11y ago
        Really that's pointing out a bad example, which is fair in a discussion.
        JackFr 11y ago
        It's question begging because 'any sensible measure' is meant to exclude the subjective measure by which suicide bombers are valuing their own lives. The whole point is that their worldview -- what is important, what is to be valued during our brief time on earth, etc. -- is radically different than yours or mine. And yet the only argument I seem to get in favor of the worldview that (I believe) you and I largely share is "C'mon. Don't be silly.", which might be rhetorically effective, but is not evidence based. The important difference is that I am willing to accept that I believe it without proof. You see and the parent seem to need to claim it's 'scientific' and 'rational' to embrace a worldview which values life, freedom, knowledge, etc.
gizi 11y ago
Science is a method, producing statements about facts. A type of behaviour is not a fact (e.g. "killing someone"). It is statement. Therefore morality produces statements about statements. How could a method dealing with statements about facts ever be in competition with a method dealing with statements about statements? That is impossible. In other words, by comparing morality and science, you are comparing apples and oranges.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Are these widely accepted definitions of "fact", "statement", and "science"? Even if the distinction between "fact" and "statement" in this argument is sound, the example statement, "killing someone", is connected to innumerable "facts" of specific historic creatures having killed specific others, and the fact of their individual success or failure to reproduce is inextricably tied to the biological evolution of a moral instinct, and the cultural evolution of a moral code. Furthermore, all human behavior can be linked to activity in the brain, which can be studied by neuroscience. Finally, empirical surveys of human behaviors and moral opinions exist. Therefore, morality is within the purview of science.
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  Game Theory explicitly talks about behavior in a rigorous way. That should be enough of a counterexample. Science can talk about specific events ("John stabbed Joe with a knife"), it can talk about how people categorize them ("the stabbing had features X, Y, and Z that the typical mind categorizes at "murder"), and it can talk about how typical minds perceive and judge events it has categorized. Morality is little more than an abstraction that human brains use to make social value judgements that help them fulfill their complicated set of values. If you can understand the values people have and the way these judgements help fulfill them, you've basically aced morality. I'm not saying it's easy. I know several brilliant people working on this, and they're still getting surprises and uncovering edge cases. What I'm getting at is that statements like "most people think killing people is bad" can be reduced, with great difficulty, into statements about human behaviors and brain activity.
  - 11y ago
calinet6 11y ago
This, and most of the other arguments in the whole thread, are so highly simplistic. The links between science and humanity are many and complex, and vice versa. There is no winner, there is no right side. They build on each other, enhance each other, and neither science not the humanities has any real meaning in isolation. Really, the whole dichotomous argument between the two is absolutely ridiculous. We need fewer people on the sides and more who are truly bridges.
- spydum 11y ago
  you have to wonder if there is some magnetism in people which draws them to polarizing topics (both to build polarizing arguments, and to engage in them). Maybe it's as simple as we are highly competitive, and in the absence of competition, we create rifts just so we can establish who is greater?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Simpler: people like to argue. Some multi-dimensional topics its hard to find a single definitive answer. Those topics, you can argue about forever.
calinet6 11y ago
Ask Oppenheimer, after the first atomic bomb test, if morality is above science. "We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him he takes on his multiarmed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'"

nitrogen 11y ago

However it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge. It also does not follow that all true knowledge, or even a fraction of it can be acquired through the scientific method. We would have to agree on the definition of "true knowledge" to come to a complete understanding of each other's positions, but I'll take a stab at justifying my opinion that science is the only possible source for all "true knowledge". I'll define "true" as empirically tested and repeatable by others, and "knowledge" as statements about something tangible (e.g. brains), or about intangible concepts embodied within tangible things (e.g. brains thinking about ideas). One needn't fully accept these definitions for the argument to hold, if one accepts that personal experience is a source of personal knowledge. Basically, if we consider all the claimed sources of knowledge, and consider which "way" of knowing applies in the most places, gains the most new knowledge over time, and has the best track record for producing societal advancements of knowledge and technology, the only "way of knowing" left standing is science. You also mention "life purpose" and "knowledge is good" as counterevidence to science. But scientifically speaking, there is no objective purpose or objective good. There is only natural selection favoring the evolution of a desire for knowledge. That desire can be studied scientifically via neurology and related disciplines.

JackFr 11y ago
Ultimately, your 'justification' is just an assertion that if it doesn't come via the scientific method, either its not true or its not science. I wouldn't call the idea that "Knowledge is good", wisdom is better than ignorance, and freedom is better than slavery, etc. counterevidence. But I believe they are true things which I cannot prove via any sort of experiment, in particular because 'good' and 'better' are of necessity subjective.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  I don't think you can dismiss my line of reasoning by saying "ultimately" and then saying something I didn't say at all. It seems that we indeed cannot agree on a useful shared definition of "true". The laws of physics are ultimately indifferent to our notions of truth, and yet our notions of truth are instantiated as emergent phenomena within physics.

andyidsinga 11y ago

> it does not follow that the scientific method is the only way to knowledge there's something to that. It seems to me its partially because we often make "doing science" a mental / virtual exercise. A process that is done with data and in the realm of one's head. But doing science should includes all of our senses. The idea of gemba comes to mind ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba ): > The idea is that to be customer-driven, one must go to the customer's genba to understand his problems and opportunities, using all one's senses to gather and process data.