A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Salmoneus wrote:
Xing: I disagree, actually. I think it's more helpful to see 'teaching' as a reflexive action - the teacher is the one who learns. The attempt to express, formulate, argue for, make clear someone you THINK you know about is a very good way to learn about it. [Someone above linked to that threat I did years back on the ZBB - I actually learned an awful lot from writing that! I think maybe philosophy courses should have compulsory coursework, 'describe the history of philosophy, in your own words...'] And of course it's an invitation for others to come in and share alternative perspectives too.
I think both "theory" and "practice" is necessary to learn philosophy. You need the theory - that's the thing that may be taught in lectures. I would be disappointed if I enrolled in a philosophy course, and it turned out that the teacher had misunderstood basic philosophical notion, and it ended up with the students having to correct the teacher. But then you also need to practise – by arguing/discussing philosophical issues with people with various degrees of philosophical background knowledge and argumentation skills.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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gestaltist wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment
Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course.
Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see science as a social institution. Scientific predictions are 'correct' or 'incorrect' according to the social norms of the enterprise. An overarching scientific theory is a form of language, and relative to that language various sub-theories may be true or false (but the same theory extracted to a different science-language could have a different truth value; likewise, science-language claims can change truth value when extracted into ordinary language); there is no objective, inherently superior science-language. Science-languages develop and change over time, and are not discrete or objectively enumerable, and are constituted by their constituent theories. Science-languages - sciences - as a whole can be evaluated by the power (ability to carry out intentions) of those who believe in it. The norms of scientific institutions are justified instrumentally by how much they improve science.

Any other specific issues you had in mind?
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Salmoneus wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment
Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course.
Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see science as a social institution. Scientific predictions are 'correct' or 'incorrect' according to the social norms of the enterprise. An overarching scientific theory is a form of language, and relative to that language various sub-theories may be true or false (but the same theory extracted to a different science-language could have a different truth value; likewise, science-language claims can change truth value when extracted into ordinary language); there is no objective, inherently superior science-language. Science-languages develop and change over time, and are not discrete or objectively enumerable, and are constituted by their constituent theories. Science-languages - sciences - as a whole can be evaluated by the power (ability to carry out intentions) of those who believe in it. The norms of scientific institutions are justified instrumentally by how much they improve science.

Any other specific issues you had in mind?
Great, you make it sound like a religion...
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Salmoneus wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment
Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course.
Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see science as a social institution. Scientific predictions are 'correct' or 'incorrect' according to the social norms of the enterprise. An overarching scientific theory is a form of language, and relative to that language various sub-theories may be true or false (but the same theory extracted to a different science-language could have a different truth value; likewise, science-language claims can change truth value when extracted into ordinary language); there is no objective, inherently superior science-language. Science-languages develop and change over time, and are not discrete or objectively enumerable, and are constituted by their constituent theories. Science-languages - sciences - as a whole can be evaluated by the power (ability to carry out intentions) of those who believe in it. The norms of scientific institutions are justified instrumentally by how much they improve science.

Any other specific issues you had in mind?
Thanks.

I had one issue in mind, actually. I remember an old post of yours on the ZBB where you make a Marxist analysis of someone’s conculture. After that, I always assumed (wrongly, as it seems) that you were a Marxist. Your views are actually not very different from my own, although I may be a *little* less of a subjectivist.

Do you believe in objectivity of the formal sciences or do you see them as science-languages, as well?
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:Great, you make it sound like a religion...
You make it sound like an insult...
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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gestaltist wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:Great, you make it sound like a religion...
You make it sound like an insult...
To suggest science is a religion opens doors to many wrong assumptions, especially by the scientifically illiterate. "Science is a religion, so it's no more true than mine" is a position some people actually hold. And I am of the opinion that religion, while having dogma and rituals, is mostly subjective and unreasonable and tied in with culture. It's no longer (if it ever was) a valid means of obtaining knowledge, epistemologically speaking.

Science is a tool for obtaining knowledge to distinguish justified belief from subjective opinion and that one would equate it with something less effective in doing that, is--yes--demoting science.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:Great, you make it sound like a religion...
You make it sound like an insult...
To suggest science is a religion opens doors to many wrong assumptions, especially by the scientifically illiterate. "Science is a religion, so it's no more true than mine" is a position some people actually hold. And I am of the opinion that religion, while having dogma and rituals, is mostly subjective and unreasonable and tied in with culture. It's no longer (if it ever was) a valid means of obtaining knowledge, epistemologically speaking.

Science is a tool for obtaining knowledge to distinguish justified belief from subjective opinion and that one would equate it with something less effective in doing that, is--yes--demoting science.
Just so you know, calling religion unreasonable and invalid while rambling on about the greatness of science also kind of makes science sound like a religion (and really, more like a cult than a general religion, since most Christians I know are fine with all the Buddhists and Jews and such, while people who talk about science like this don't seem to be fine with anything else).
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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HoskhMatriarch wrote:Just so you know, calling religion unreasonable and invalid while rambling on about the greatness of science also kind of makes science sound like a religion
Your comparison is wrong, because I'm talking about epistemology and making a comparison between two methods of obtaining knowledge of the world.

It's your problem if you can't distinguish between what I am saying and what a religious person would say comparing their religion to others.

And I did not explicitly say that religion is invalid for obtaining knowledge of the world, only that it is less effective than science. But, I don't really consider religion to even be a method of obtaining knowledge, I mean, I think religion hasn't really ever explained anything about reality and a lot of notions have been proven to be false by science. In fact, a lot of "knowledge" gained from religion stems from teleological thinking, overactive agency detection, and other tricks of psychology. Things which you wouldn't know of if it weren't for science.

However, people who really discuss epistemology might argue otherwise. After all, from a theological point of view, powerful beings that control the weather and seasons IS knowledge and so is the notion that the world is held up by something or someone because how else could you explain why all the land looks flat? But science has inevitably disproven such notions.

I'm just saying that science is a more effective tool for obtaining knowledge (of the universe and stuff, I might add) and justifying belief than religion is, which is why you shouldn't demote science to a religion.
Maybe one day we will have a new tool that will be even more effective than science.

With all that, I strongly recommend that you look at both this but also this for what I see as two opposing viewpoints on this epistemological issue.

But yes, the notion...
scientific predictions are 'correct' or 'incorrect' according to the social norms of the enterprise
If this is true, then it is a fault on part of the humans who practice it.

And the last sentence(s):
as a whole can be evaluated by the power (ability to carry out intentions) of those who believe in it. The norms of scientific institutions are justified instrumentally by how much they improve science.
Sounds like a comparison to religious-like behaviour.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Epistemology is to a large extent a normative branch. It is about how we ought to form our beliefs. In my opinion, it cannot be reduced to purely empirical psychology, nor to formal logic or probability theory. Statements like "you shall believe in scientific theories" or "you shall not trust religious dogma" are therefore, in a sense, on par with statements like "you shall help the poor", or "you shall not steal". In both cases, we express (moral) approval or disapproval of people - in the case of ethics, for what they do, in the case of epistemology, for what they believe. Normative claims - whether in ethics or epistemology - are part of our view about how people out to be. They can not IMO be strictly entailed by empirical evidence – though they might be pragmatically supported by various empirical considerations.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Xing wrote:Epistemology is to a large extent a normative branch. It is about how we ought to form our beliefs. In my opinion, it cannot be reduced to purely empirical psychology, nor to formal logic or probability theory. Statements like "you shall believe in scientific theories" or "you shall not trust religious dogma" are therefore, in a sense, on par with statements like "you shall help the poor", or "you shall not steal". In both cases, we express (moral) approval or disapproval of people - in the case of ethics, for what they do, in the case of epistemology, for what they believe. Normative claims - whether in ethics or epistemology - are part of our view about how people out to be. They can not IMO be strictly entailed by empirical evidence – though they might be pragmatically supported by various empirical considerations.
I'm not reducing it to pure empirical psychology nor to formal logic nor probability theory. I'm comparing tools of obtaining knowledge, and I don't see how in doing that I've reduced epistemology to those things above.

Regarding what you say above: why should people use a less, or even not, effective tool for something when a better tool exists? Because it sounds like you are trying to put equal footing.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:
I'm not reducing it to pure empirical psychology nor to formal logic nor probability theory. I'm comparing tools of obtaining knowledge, and I don't see how in doing that I've reduced epistemology to those things above.

But why should people use a less, or even not, effective tool for something when a better tool exists?
What do you mean by "effective" or "better" here?
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Xing wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:
I'm not reducing it to pure empirical psychology nor to formal logic nor probability theory. I'm comparing tools of obtaining knowledge, and I don't see how in doing that I've reduced epistemology to those things above.

But why should people use a less, or even not, effective tool for something when a better tool exists?
What do you mean by "effective" or "better" here?
Hard to explain, but something along the lines of being able to predict and explain reality with less margin of error.
I believe in objective truth with regards to the nature of reality, but I don't believe that what we call "facts" are objective truths, but something that is as close to it that we can make it currently. Thus a tool is effective if we can reach closer to objective truth.

For example, you could arrive at the notion that the world is made of atoms by reasoning alone, but science had made such notion all the more definite, thus we are closer to objective truth.
On the other hand, you arrive at the notion that the world is flat held up by elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through the cosmos (for a reason that could be justified by logic) when science has proven that it is round, thus we are closer to objective truth. If science then proves that seeing the earth round outside of space is merely an optical illusion, then we are even closer to objective truth, but that has not happened, so truth with regards to the earth being round is satisfactory.

This is why I don't even consider religion to have any value as a means of explaining reality, because it's believers don't really have any objective knowledge of the universe, just beliefs influenced by subjectivity and the experience with their environment. Religion exists as a means of explaining reality, but it does that less effectively than science on account of a higher margin of error without any means of making such claims definite.

Additionally, It seems to me that scientific knowledge is additive, while religious knowledge is absolute. Knowledge gained by science is built upon previous knowledge, while knowledge gained by religion is usually agglutinated with other, maybe contradictory, beliefs.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:
On the other hand, you arrive at the notion that the world is flat held up by elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through the cosmos (for a reason that could be justified by logic) when science has proven that it is round.
It's not really a good strategy to make use of caricatured versions religious theories. Most religious people I know of who are into science do practise science according to the same norms as non-religious people. When it comes to miracles and other supernatural events - they would claim that they are just that – one-time events in which the "normal" laws of nature are suspended, and as such events that lies beyond the domains of science. This wouldn't of course prevent them from practising medicin, physics, chemistry or whatever according to the same norms as non-believing scientists.

(To take a radical example: We could have religious scientist who claimed that the universe was created in a "finished" state 6,000 years ago, with everything being in place to give it an illusion of age. Ever from the creation, the world has worked according to regular, predictable laws. Now a creation of this kind would be a unique, one-time event. It either occurred or did not occur. If it did occur, the "scientific method" would have 0% effectiveness when it comes to explain the origin of the universe.)
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Xing wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:
On the other hand, you arrive at the notion that the world is flat held up by elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through the cosmos (for a reason that could be justified by logic) when science has proven that it is round.
It's not really a good strategy to make use of caricatured versions religious theories. Most religious people I know of who are into science do practise science according to the same norms as non-religious people. When it comes to miracles and other supernatural events - they would claim that they are just that – one-time events in which the "normal" laws of nature are suspended, and as such events that lies beyond the domains of science. This wouldn't of course prevent them from practising medicin, physics, chemistry or whatever according to the same norms as non-believing scientists.

(To take a radical example: We could have religious scientist who claimed that the universe was created in a "finished" state 6,000 years ago, with everything being in place to give it an illusion of age. Ever from the creation, the world has worked according to regular, predictable laws. Now a creation of this kind would be a unique, one-time event. It either occurred or did not occur. If it did occur, the "scientific method" would have 0% effectiveness when it comes to explain the origin of the universe.)
It isn't a caricature but an example of someone's belief were they to have existed like say, 2,000 years ago, long before science. Most religious people believe the earth is round, but that is knowledge gained secular from religious notions and if a religion did happen to posit the earth is round, then it would only be due to coincidence.

Yes, there are some "unexplainable" one-time phenomenon, but there are many that are simply due to psychological tricks or a misunderstanding of the situation (e.g. vampires). That science can't explain it, does not mean religion can and is probably just as wrong.

As for that scientist dude, yea could posit that, but that doesn't necessarily prove their god and wouldn't be a useful theory to have.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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gestaltist wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:my philosophical views aren't particularly in fashion at the moment
Out of curiosity: what are your views? If you’re comfortable sharing, of course.
Broadly Wittgensteinian. Anti-essentialist, deflationist, quietist, anti-metaphysical, etc. Also perspectivist. On the question of science, I see science as a social institution. Scientific predictions are 'correct' or 'incorrect' according to the social norms of the enterprise. An overarching scientific theory is a form of language, and relative to that language various sub-theories may be true or false (but the same theory extracted to a different science-language could have a different truth value; likewise, science-language claims can change truth value when extracted into ordinary language); there is no objective, inherently superior science-language. Science-languages develop and change over time, and are not discrete or objectively enumerable, and are constituted by their constituent theories. Science-languages - sciences - as a whole can be evaluated by the power (ability to carry out intentions) of those who believe in it. The norms of scientific institutions are justified instrumentally by how much they improve science.

Any other specific issues you had in mind?
Thanks.

I had one issue in mind, actually. I remember an old post of yours on the ZBB where you make a Marxist analysis of someone’s conculture. After that, I always assumed (wrongly, as it seems) that you were a Marxist. Your views are actually not very different from my own, although I may be a *little* less of a subjectivist.
I'm not a Marxist, no - I was putting on a Marxist voice because I was responding to Torco, who is a Marxist (or claims to be). That said, I do think the Marxist perspective has a lot to offer in some situations (I think my analysis there was pretty reasonable, for instance, though obviously not flawless). I generally agree with Marxism on the importance of seeing human society as grounded in economic circumstances, and real cultural change as requiring (or bringing about) economic change - in particular, relations between labour and capital are important. I think it's useful to analyse situations in terms of hierarchies of power and control and exploitation, and I also think it's often useful to identify the inherent contradictions in a way of life, as sources of change. In particular, there are contradictions between personal and class success, which can only be resolved through class consciousness (/human capital/etc). I tend to agree with Marxism both in its pessimism (most if not all societies are systems by which the powerful screw the weak) and its optimism (in the long run, the masses gain more and more power for themselves). But I don't see any need to subscribe to Marxism as an ideology, as a whole, and I don't think there aren't other ways of looking at a society too.
Do you believe in objectivity of the formal sciences or do you see them as science-languages, as well?
Well now, objectivity is a tricky word. How about this explanation? [This may not be what I ought to believe; I haven't thought about things in these terms for a while, so I may go wrong]

- there are objective conditions in the world (probably)
- there is such a thing as objective truth, corresponding to a belief that relates to the objective conditions in such a way that understanding the belief fully would mean understanding fully the objective conditions
(- objective conditions are not mirrored or represented in beliefs, but provide a pragmatic check upon them, through our difficulty in using certain forms of language as a community. To understand objective conditions fully would be to know exactly where and to what extent we will find ourselves checked (checking is not binary, but a continuum of greater and lesser difficulties). This also implies that the 'external check' could be rephrased as an internal limitation)

However:
- the proper bearer of objective truth is the sum totality of all that we believe. Individual beliefs are true or false only relative to that totality - that is, we can evaluate one proposition only by holding all else equal. It makes no sense to evaluate a belief in isolation - a belief is the belief that it is only within the context of the other beliefs we have that define and limit its meaning
- the sum totality of all that we believe is not, at any given moment, objectively enumerable. We cannot summon all our beliefs into our mind at one moment. What we in fact - in toto - believe at any given moment is therefore ambiguous... when beliefs come into question, we must decide for ourselves whether or not we still hold them, and that decision is not binding on us in future. There is no fact of the matter about what I believe when I am not actively believing it - although certainly there are more and less likely possibilities. Therefore, as an individual belief is defined by the totality, and the totality is undefined, the exact content of the individual belief is likewise undefined at any given moment, even while we are in fact holding that belief consciously in our mind. What the belief signifies - which belief it is exactly - will only be made clear by our subsequent mental and physical actions. For instance, the meaning of the belief that "dogs have four legs" depends on how we will react when we see something doglike that has only three legs, and then something doglike that has five legs - was that belief a definition, or was it only a prediction? At what point will we give up the belief? We can for individual beliefs hypothesise about this in advance, but we cannot do that for all beliefs; and even if we do, we are not bound to that hypothetical judgement once the situation arises in practice. We often make quite different decisions when we encounter situations in practice. A belief is therefore not a property, but an action, and the totality of our beliefs is the totality of our process of living.
- no totality of beliefs can ever be objectively true - which is to say that the objectively true totality is not in practice obtainable. If nothing else, the sheer size of objective fact is greater than we can believe in the whole of our lives. In physics, for example, our ability to fully understand a physical situation is always limited - we cannot possess fully and completely accurate knowledge of the position of every possibly relevant particle. [and Heisenberg, of course]. As no totality can be fully objectively true, and as no individual belief can be objectively true unless the whole of the totality is true, no individual belief or collection of beliefs can be objectively true.

However:
- while objective truth is unobtainable, it can function as an asymptote. We can speak of totalities of belief being more or less true, and individual beliefs being true or false within the totality (or more or less likely to be true within the set of possible totalities available to us given the decisions we have made and those we have yet to make).
- in this respect, we can speak of science progressing toward objective truth, as validated by its practical advantages.


Regarding mathematics:
- when we in practice come to decide our beliefs, faced with an apparent contradiction, we prefer to alter certain beliefs rather than others. So, in Wittgenstein's example, when our calculator says that 1+1=3, we believe our calculator is broken, rather than believing we have found an exception to a mathematical law. In this respect, the formal sciences are distinct from other sciences, because it is the formal sciences we prefer to retain the conclusions of. This is what we mean when we call their conclusions necessary rather than contingent; but it is also what it means to say that they are not sciences at all, as they are enterprises of reason, rather than hostages to empirical testing. Inasmuch as they are scientific, they are vulnerable; inasmuch as they are not scientific, they are beyond question.
- however, within any particular formal science, it is again the totality that is objectively true. '1+1=2' obviously depends upon the meanings of the symbols, and it depends upon the truth of a given set of axioms (or upon being held as axiomatic itself). Every time we carry out an equation, we must decide what answer to accept - we must decide what 'solving the equation' means, and what axioms we are to rely upon. We cannot rely upon fixed, dead, omnipotent rules along the lines of 'always do X in situation Y', as it remains up to us to judge whether we are in situation Y, and what exactly would or would not constitute doing X. [Imagine Kripke's scenario, where you wake up one morning to find everybody an operation like multiplication differently]. So we cannot compass the entire totality of mathematics - a living human practice - in anything small enough to have in our head at any one moment. So it is ambiguous what we in fact believe mathematically, just as physically, and what we in fact believe can never compass the totality of all possible mathematical judgements. We cannot, therefore, achieve absolute objective truth in mathematics any more than in physics or morality; therefore we cannot achieve any objective truth at all, though we may achieve greater or lesser degrees of falsehood.

Nonetheless:
- that doesn't mean there isn't a difference of degree between mathematics and physics. In point of fact, our views on mathematics appear vastly more reliable and unsurprising than our views on physics. It is reasonable to believe that we will never, in fact, be forced to abandon many of the mathematical beliefs that we hold.
- a belief is a form of life. To say that our mathematical beliefs are secure is the same as to say that, while it is theoretically possible to envisage a form of life in which we all agree that adding two apples to one apple gives a result in no way significantly different from the addition of one apple to one apple, it is very difficult to believe that such a way of life would ever, in practice, be able to sufficiently mimic our own way of life as to be greatly appealing to us. Or to put it another way, refering back to the ideas of understanding and power, if we imagine a culture that believes 1+1=1+2, it is hard not to believe strongly that if such a culture encountered our own they would, all else being equal, rapidly find themselves completely fleeced by our retailers and commodity buyers.
- to that extent, it is fair to say that many mathematical beliefs are for all practical intents and purposes robust and safe, and that we should probably never have to abandon them in the pursuit of objective truth - or at least that should we abandon them, they would likely be replaced by beliefs of almost identical practical import (for instance, 1+1=2 is different depending on whether it is an axiom or the product of the ruminations of the principia mathematica, but the import of this difference for our daily purchasing decisions is nill).
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:Great, you make it sound like a religion...
You make it sound like an insult...
To suggest science is a religion opens doors to many wrong assumptions, especially by the scientifically illiterate. "Science is a religion, so it's no more true than mine" is a position some people actually hold. And I am of the opinion that religion, while having dogma and rituals, is mostly subjective and unreasonable and tied in with culture. It's no longer (if it ever was) a valid means of obtaining knowledge, epistemologically speaking.

Science is a tool for obtaining knowledge to distinguish justified belief from subjective opinion and that one would equate it with something less effective in doing that, is--yes--demoting science.
Truth is not to be determined by picking which belief system you personally think is nicer. You can't just say that science is one thing because you don't like the political implications of it being something else...


Yes, of course science is very similar to a religion: like a religion, it is a complex of rituals and ethical commandments.

Science is distinct from religion because, unlike religion, science attempts to, as a byproduct, produce scientific theories. Science has great utility because of this. This is not to say, however, that there is no social utility in rituals that do not produce scientific theories.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

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Ahzoh wrote:
Yes, there are some "unexplainable" one-time phenomenon, but there are many that are simply due to psychological tricks or a misunderstanding of the situation (e.g. vampires). That science can't explain it, does not mean religion can and is probably just as wrong.

As for that scientist dude, yea could posit that, but that doesn't necessarily prove their god and wouldn't be a useful theory to have.
I think I might summarise my views like this:

Miracles are by definition unique events, that lies beyond the scope if science. If a claimed miracle is false, then the scientific method is 100% effective in predicting the non-occurrence of the miracle. If the claimed miracle is true, then the scientific method is 100% ineffective in predicting its occurrence. The effectiveness of the scientific method is thus 100% dependent on whether the unique, miraculous event actually occurred.

Now you could claim that it's part of your view of what makes a "good person", that one should not believe in miracles - just as you could claim being generous, kind-hearted or whatever are desirable character traits of a "good person". (And do you think there be something wrong with claiming this?) It's just that you cannot say that "science" somehow demands that one should not believe in miracles, or that people believing in miracles would somehow have an inferior grasp of "the scientific method".
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

Post by Ahzoh »

Xing wrote:If the claimed miracle is true, then the scientific method is 100% ineffective in predicting its occurrence.
Yea, no. Phenomenon always leave traces of its existence, like the cosmic background radiation, the heavy elements from a supernova, or the aftermath of the formation of a planet. All of these are events that occured once, yet we have evidence of them. Traces of them.

But I can't really think of miracles and supernatural phenomenon that can't be attributed to human psychology or human reactions to stimulation that can't be consciously detected or exaggeration of events due to humans not memorizing them properly.

I equate so-called miracles to candles made of potatoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gu-NyD-6AQ
Salmoneus wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:
gestaltist wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:Great, you make it sound like a religion...
You make it sound like an insult...
To suggest science is a religion opens doors to many wrong assumptions, especially by the scientifically illiterate. "Science is a religion, so it's no more true than mine" is a position some people actually hold. And I am of the opinion that religion, while having dogma and rituals, is mostly subjective and unreasonable and tied in with culture. It's no longer (if it ever was) a valid means of obtaining knowledge, epistemologically speaking.

Science is a tool for obtaining knowledge to distinguish justified belief from subjective opinion and that one would equate it with something less effective in doing that, is--yes--demoting science.
Truth is not to be determined by picking which belief system you personally think is nicer. You can't just say that science is one thing because you don't like the political implications of it being something else...
Did not say it did.
Yes, of course science is very similar to a religion: like a religion, it is a complex of rituals and ethical commandments.
Similar but not the same. Don't all philosophies have ethical commandments?
Science is distinct from religion because, unlike religion, science attempts to, as a byproduct, produce scientific theories. Science has great utility because of this. This is not to say, however, that there is no social utility in rituals that do not produce scientific theories.
Yes, but I'm talking about the effectiveness of tools for uncovering truth (AKA epistemological competence), not utility in other things.
Last edited by Ahzoh on 06 Sep 2015 02:37, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

Post by Xing »

Ahzoh wrote: Yea, no. Phenomenon always leave traces of its existence, like the cosmic background radiation, the heavy elements from a supernova, or the aftermath of the formation of a planet. I can't really think of miracles and supernatural phenomenon that can't be attributed to human psychology or human reactions to stimulation that can't be consciously detected or exaggeration of events due to humans not memorizing them properly.
The creation of a universe in a "finished" state would make the same predictions as the prevailing scientific theories. Whether you want to interpret a suggested "trace" as evidence of a miracle, attribute it to some at the moment unknown natural phenomenon, or accept it as a brute, unexplainable fact is largely an "existential" question, so to speak. (Or: you could claim that it's part of your idea of a "good person" that they should not believe in miracles.)
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Re: A badly written introduction to the scientific method

Post by Ahzoh »

Xing wrote:The creation of a universe in a "finished" state would make the same predictions as the prevailing scientific theories.
In the same way Russel's Teapot could. And it would be just as useful.

But please, someone, anyone, tell me more about how claiming the universe was created in 6,000 years but takes the appearance of being billions of years old is in any way a satisfying answer and not just some cop-out?
Whether you want to interpret a suggested "trace" as evidence of a miracle, attribute it to some at the moment unknown natural phenomenon, or accept it as a brute, unexplainable fact is largely an "existential" question, so to speak.
wot?
(Or: you could claim that it's part of your idea of a "good person" that they should not believe in miracles.)
I don't tie in morality with whether you believe in a wrong idea or not, unless, of course, that idea leads to actions that are ultimately harmful.

(Has anyone also read this yet?: https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.co ... ome-areas/)
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