Good! Now we can go to a real war! I'll be quite busy in the next few days but rest assured the gloves are off MindWalk! Hah, I'm kidding of course. Glad to see you went ahead and made the thread. I will have some personal POVs and ideas on this matter and be trying to analyze your post with my personal understanding of this...subject. Karl Marx has been mentioned to say the same thing as Kuhn: I am not a Marxist...
More on this from me later...
You make it sound like science is sacred.I think that science is an interesting diversion that we can enjoy during our recreation period.The real purpose of our lives is to reconcile our spirits more fully to God.After we have dedicated ourselves to this purpose,we can take some time to enjoy science,liturature, our family,friends,sports,or any other vanity.Let's not confuse it with our real occupation.
I know of no way of learning truths about the world without evaluating evidence and arguments. Otherwise, you're just making wild guesses.
Learning "truths" about the world isn't our responsibility.But it's ok to observe truths,just like it's ok to observe an episode of Gilligan's Island. You may do it,as long as you're not disturbing the King's peace. It's a privlege,not a right.
Science is a new phenomina in human culture. It's only been done in a big way for the last few hundred years. It's quite possible for a society to thrive based on submission to authority. You do what you're told. You think what you're told. You don't question this system, because to buck authority puts the entire community at risk.This worked very well in Egypt,and there is no culture that has ever lasted as long.Free thinking has hugely swelled our population,and while nice for us,in our lifetime,it has put huge strains on our ability to thrive in the future. We could revert to the more natural state of near universal submission in the future. Maybe something like the social insects,taking all of our direction from our robot overlords. It could happen.
If objective truth, and our ability to perceive objective truth, is so self-evident then why are we even having this conversation?
We are having this conversation because some people do not seem to understand that scientists do what we all do--just more systematically, thoroughly, extensively, and carefully.
We look around to gather facts about the world, like refrigerators' keeping food cold or birds' congregating at the bird feeder. We notice patterns and regularities in the world, like balls' falling to the ground every time we drop them from a few feet above the ground (and don't catch them or otherwise block them). We look for explanations of empirical phenomena, as when we attribute a knocking sound to their being someone at the door (or to their being Uncle George at the door, if we have observed his car pulling into the driveway and heard Aunt Edna tell us on the phone a minute ago that he was coming to visit and should be there about now). We all do what scientists do. Scientists just do it more systematically, more thoroughly, more extensively, and more carefully.
And we're having this conversation because some people mistake the idea of a unicorn for an actual unicorn and think that describing the idea of God is the same thing as describing an actual God, and become some people think that truths are whatever they say they are when it comes to anything less mundane than "refrigerators keep food cold."
A society can thrive based on submission to authority. Do the individuals composing the society also thrive, then?
Does the individual thriving really matter?
If the systems by which one may attain positions of influence are left more subject to the whims of the collective than a predetermined standard, society will collapse. Too many individuals approving too many powers gives rise to confusion and a total lack of direction & representation.
Most individuals have no desire to thrive, but simply to survive under the rule of agreeable people who thrive. I think it's a mistake to bestow the common person with responsiblity or influence without proof that they can handle either intelligently.
The individual's thriving is *all* that matters. It's not as though the conscious being whose welfare mattered were the collective. No. The conscious beings involved are the individuals. It is therefore their welfare that matters.
What in the world makes you think that most people have no desire to thrive but want only to survive under the rule of agreeable people?
(But even if that were so, it would still be those individuals' welfare that mattered. If their welfare were assured by their being under the rule of agreeable people, then you could defend their being under the rule of agreeable people. But it would still be the individuals' welfare that mattered.)
What if the individual only desires to survive, and not to thrive? Although inconcievable to intellectuals, not everyone posseses the desire to improve themselves or their situation. Therefore, it's not our business to decide for others what happiness is. That would be looking down on them. While I agree their welfare matters, I don't agree their thriving matters. Only if they desire to thrive, should they thrive. Those who haven't earned the rights to influence others should not be granted those rights.
The only reason I bother making this distinction is because we currently live in an uneducated society and I feel that this sort of system is better suited to limit the effects of general miseducation. If the society in question was more educated, everybody would desire to thrive, and your argument would be flawless.
A very definitive answer. So,is the scientific epistemology that you mention above the only valid way of asertaining objective truth?
There are objective truths like "Charlie is angry at time t" (this is an objective truth if Charlie really is angry at time t) and "Alice is in love with Benny at time t" (this is an objective truth if Alice really is in love with Benny at time t), and so on. There is an objective truth corresponding to every mental state of every person at every time t at which persons are alive.
But "I believe that ghosts are real" does not make ghosts' existence an objective fact.
I have less faith in objective reality than I used to have. With hubris I thought knowing Newton's laws, and Maxwell's equations, and some theories about protons and neutrons and photons, that I understood most of the world. But at any given moment the scope of what I can observe is quite limited. Right now my faith in objective reality is being challenged by this new Windows tablet. If I type a little bit wrong, the target window loses focus, and my typing fails to appear in the box; it's as if I've ceased to type.
That's one objective truth we may never discover. (no idea...lol)
Scientism: the belief that science can provide all the answers to all questions that may be posed, and that if a question may not be answered by science then it is not a legitimate question.
To quote Leon Wieseltier:
Unfortunately, the defense of science became corrupted in certain quarters into a defense of scientism, which is the expansion of scientific methods and concepts into realms of human life in which they do not belong. Or rather, it is the view that there is no realm of human life in which they do not belong. Rosenberg arrives with “the correct answers to most of the persistent questions,” and “given what we know from the sciences, the answers are all pretty obvious.” (I have cited most of them above.) This is because “there is only one way to acquire knowledge, and science’s way is it.” And not just science in general, but physics in particular. “All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another.” And: “Scientism starts with the idea that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the biological ones. These in turn have to fix the human facts—the facts about us, our psychology, and our morality.” All that remains is to choose the wine.
In this way science is transformed into a superstition. For there can be no scientific answer to the question of what is the position of science in life. It is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. The idea that physical facts fix all the facts is not an idea proven, or even posited, by physics. Rosenberg does not translate non-scientific facts into scientific facts; he denies that non-scientific facts exist at all. But in what way is, say, The Jewish Bride a scientific fact? It is certainly composed of fermions and bosons, but such knowledge, however true and fundamental, casts no light upon the power of the painting, or the reasons for its appeal. The description of everything in terms of fermions and bosons cannot account for the differences, in meaning and in effect, between particular combinations of fermions and bosons. But Rosenberg’s complacence survives such an objection, since he holds also that “the meanings we think are carried by our thoughts, our words, and our actions are just sand castles we build in the air.”
Mindwalk, I do not even believe you understand what postmodernism is.
hapless_fool wrote: MindWalk replies in red:
Scientism: the belief that science can provide all the answers to all questions that may be posed, and that if a question may not be answered by science then it is not a legitimate question. When intended to mean that aesthetics and morality have no subjective meaningfulness, this is a mischaracterization and caricature of what any reasonable materialist nontheist says. It is certainly not what Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett believes. If it is intended only to mean that science (including logic and mathematics) provides the only *objectively true* answers to any questions that we are able to pose and that if a question cannot be answered scientifically then it is not a question that should be posed with any expectation of getting at objective truth, then yes, some people say this.
To quote Leon Wieseltier:
Unfortunately, the defense of science became corrupted in certain quarters into a defense of scientism, which is the expansion of scientific methods and concepts into realms of human life in which they do not belong. Uh-huh. Of course, I'd like to see some examples of this "expansion of scientific methods and concepts into realms of human life in which they do not belong." Some people just don't like science. Or rather, it is the view that there is no realm of human life in which they do not belong. Yeah. Examples, please. Rosenberg arrives with “the correct answers to most of the persistent questions,” and “given what we know from the sciences, the answers are all pretty obvious.” (I have cited most of them above.) Where have you cited them? I don't see them. This is because “there is only one way to acquire knowledge, and science’s way is it.” You understand that he means objective knowledge about objectively existing reality, and not one's knowledge of his own mental states, right? And not just science in general, but physics in particular. “All the processes in the universe, from atomic to bodily to mental, are purely physical processes involving fermions and bosons interacting with one another.” And you think they're not? And: “Scientism starts with the idea that the physical facts fix all the facts, including the biological ones. These in turn have to fix the human facts—the facts about us, our psychology, and our morality.” You don't think brains give rise to consciousness? You don't think brains give rise to the values underlying morality? You don't think the behavior of social beings in social groups and their brain-states give rise to morality? All that remains is to choose the wine.
In this way science is transformed into a superstition. Oh, please! This is almost surely written by someone who just doesn't like science. For there can be no scientific answer to the question of what is the position of science in life. It is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. And it's a philosophical question that is *answerable*. You want to know what are and are not objective facts about the world? You look, and you draw conclusions from what you see. Gee, wasn't that hard? The position of science is to give you the only knowledge about the world you can possibly have. The idea that physical facts fix all the facts is not an idea proven, or even posited, by physics. Rosenberg does not translate non-scientific facts into scientific facts; he denies that non-scientific facts exist at all. Surely he doesn't deny that you really do hurt, when you're stuck with a needle, or that you really do love, when you love your wife. But in what way is, say, The Jewish Bride a scientific fact? In what way is it a fact at all? It's an object, not a fact. It is certainly composed of fermions and bosons, but such knowledge, however true and fundamental, casts no light upon the power of the painting, or the reasons for its appeal. It has no objective power or objective appeal. Its power and appeal are psychological. Finding it powerful or appealing is not a matter of discerning a fact about it. It is a matter of having a psychological response to it. The description of everything in terms of fermions and bosons cannot account for the differences, in meaning and in effect, between particular combinations of fermions and bosons. There are no objective meanings or effects, in the sense he has in mind here. There are only subjective responses to sensing various combinations of fermions and bosons. But Rosenberg’s complacence survives such an objection, since he holds also that “the meanings we think are carried by our thoughts, our words, and our actions are just sand castles we build in the air.” I haven't read Rosenberg, so I can't be sure, but I have to suppose that he does not mean that you do not find a painting appealing or that you do not feel love for your wife but rather that doing so does not amount to there being metaphysically existent things called "minds" or "appeal" or "love." It's not that meanings aren't important to us; it's that meanings aren't metaphysical existents.
Mindwalk, I do not even believe you understand what postmodernism is. Well, by all means, enlighten me. Of course, I'm not sure I'll trust you to give an accurate account, but by all means, tell me what *you* think postmodernism is. In particular, tell me what you think its virtues are.
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I made that statement in another forum, and f_babaee_a wanted to see what I had to say. I have in mind particularly postmodernism's denial of objective truth. One sees a statement like "Everyone lives in his own world," which is fine if properly construed as meaning that everyone has his own personal experiences of life, that everyone has his own perspective on life, that everyone has his own way of seeing things, and so on, but which is not so fine if construed literally and used as a way of denying the superiority of the scientific enterprise as a way of getting at truths about the world over, say, the mapping of astrological charts.
Thomas Kuhn wrote a book entitled "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that was very influential. Kuhn wrote his book in a way that was easy to misread. Properly read, he made good points about how science is actually done by actual scientists. But because he wrote it in a misleading way, it was easy to read him as a postmodernist, denying that there was any such thing as scientific truth. His book would never have been such a hit--and he would never have become so famous--had he not written it misleadingly; nevertheless, he did write it misleadingly. (Later, after he had been quite understandably misread as a postmodernist objective truth-denier, he was once quoted as saying, "I am not a Kuhnian!")
The harm postmodernism does is that it undermines people's respect for science and makes them think that any other way of arriving at "personal truth" is just as objectively valid as the evidentiary method science uses. It makes them think that intellectuals have realized the bankruptcy of the project of arriving at objective truth and makes them disparage the scientific worldview. All truths become just stories about the world, in the minds of those influenced unduly by postmodernism, and all stories are of equal legitimacy and equal truth, in their minds. And that patent falsehood is what postmodernism has to answer for--or, at least, it's one thing postmodernism has to answer for.