Ignorance of the gaps

[balto]

Back to the OP: I simply disagree with your premise. The idea isn’t that science will eventually answer all questions about the universe; rather, it is that if we ever answer a given question about the universe, it will be through science.

I think this belief is justified. No other method of discovery has explained and predicted phenomena to the extent that science has.

While I agree that science is a very valuable method of inquiry, it is not the only method of inquiry. There are a lot of philosophical traditions that have elucidated many facts about reality (such as the validity of the scientific method itself). To say that they are “not as good as science” because they haven’t progressed as much as science is making an apples to oranges comparison.

 

[Oreoracle]

I disagree. They claim that scientific knowledge is the only real form of knowledge, which is a dogmatic claim.

I hate to be “that guy” who insists on clarifications, but…that depends on how you define “knowledge”.

Also, there’s not anything technically wrong with being dogmatic. It can be subjected to rational inquiry much like any other claim to have its veracity examined.

The first definition of “dogma” offered by Webster’s is “a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted”.

If dogma could be questioned, we would just call it “doctrine” instead.

While I agree that science is a very valuable method of inquiry, it is not the only method of inquiry. There are a lot of philosophical traditions that have elucidated many facts about reality (such as the validity of the scientific method itself).

Perhaps they did so on an ex post facto basis, but historically, the scientific method has never been “proven” to be correct. It took centuries of trial and error to determine the best way to test our speculations of how the world works. The notion that claims must be falsifiable and that experiments should be controlled and reproducible did not come from philosophy, but from the realization that philosophy alone can’t replace empirical testing.

Aristotle tried to understand physics in terms of logic without empirical restraints, and the result was a dismal failure.

To say that they are “not as good as science” because they haven’t progressed as much as science is making an apples to oranges comparison.

What better criterion is there to determine the best method of inquiry besides its performance?

 

[polytropos]

Back to the OP: I simply disagree with your premise. The idea isn’t that science will eventually answer all questions about the universe; rather, it is that if we ever answer a given question about the universe, it will be through science.

I think this belief is justified. No other method of discovery has explained and predicted phenomena to the extent that science has.

For the sake of epistemological nitpicking, I present a counterexample. Select a book off your shelf. Check who its publisher was. I have picked up Renewing Philosophy by Hilary Putnam. Its publisher, the inside cover alleges, is Harvard University Press. I think it’s fair to say that I “know” that it was published by Harvard University Press. How do I know it? I do not know it through the hypothetico-deductive method. I never generated a hypothesis; I’ve never checked whether it was the case that most books are actually published where they say they were published. But I nevertheless know where it was published with a fair deal of certainty. So we seem to have other epistemological channels than the scientific method to generate veridical knowledge. In this case, it is received wisdom; I believe my elementary school teachers taught me where to find a book’s publisher.

It seems to be the case that the vast majority of our other knowledge is veridical as well. People have been wrong historically about geocentrism, phlogiston, etc. etc. But by and large our sensory faculties generate real knowledge with real explanatory and predictive value. “To the extent that science has”? Perhaps, perhaps not. We know a lot without recourse to science, but quantifying our knowledge is difficult. (That qualifier seems to change the nature of the claim made in your second paragraph, for no one need deny that science has good explanatory and predictive value.)

 

[KyrieEleison17]

IThe notion that claims must be falsifiable and that experiments should be controlled and reproducible did not come from philosophy, but from the realization that philosophy alone can’t replace empirical testing.

Aristotle tried to understand physics in terms of logic without empirical restraints, and the result was a dismal failure.

Aristotle was an empiricist. Actual experience took the cake with him. Moreover his programme is still useful: you take some curious phenomenon, X. Then you accumulate what any authorities or admitted experts on the subject have said about it. Then you review their works or findings and if they are largely in agreement and there’s nothing obviously flawed or problematic, you move on; if not, you collect evidence and review the phenomenon based on what we know and following logic. In Aristotle’s procedure the phenomenon itself is what had to be explained or accounted for. Thus for physics you would have to account for the actual physical phenomenon itself based on what was known - as we all, ultimately, have to do.

That’s not far from how we are supposed to do things today.

What better criterion is there to determine the best method of inquiry besides its performance?

Physics produces much but it doesn’t produce a lot of wisdom or virtue. Modern physics does not result in rational and objective theories for how society and individuals should guide their conduct in order to be happy; in fact, this is a rather conspicuous failure of modern science.

 

[polytropos]

Perhaps they did so on an ex post facto basis, but historically, the scientific method has never been “proven” to be correct. It took centuries of trial and error to determine the best way to test our speculations of how the world works. The notion that claims must be falsifiable and that experiments should be controlled and reproducible did not come from philosophy, but from the realization that philosophy alone can’t replace empirical testing.

Philosophy alone can’t replace empirical testing, and empirical testing alone can’t replace philosophy. As Duhem and Quine pointed out, once your scientific theories get complicated (ie. once it implicates too large a number of theoretical entities), one can’t discern which component of the theory is being falsified.

 

[Oreoracle]

Granting God has a certain nature then yes, you couldn’t possibly “falsify him” anymore then we presently can realistically just “falsify” gravity (cancel or annul it, I mean) or some physical law.

I’m not sure what you mean. To say that a claim is falsifiable is to say that it is possible to imagine some observation that could be made to refute the claim. There are many observations one could imagine that could falsify gravity. If the planets orbiting the sun suddenly broke free of their orbits, that would certainly falsify gravity (either that, or something massive, like a blackhole, is diverting them from their usual paths).

Unless God is defined in terms that connect him to the observable universe in some tangible way, there is no observation that would discredit the claim that he exists. (The drawback is that if you can’t falsify something, you usually can’t verify it either.)

Actually in the classical system you could prove He didn’t exist but you would have to prove that nothing did. So treated hypothetically the theory of God’s existence, so to speak, wasn’t strictly impossible to falsify.

I’m not familiar of this logical argument you’re referring to.

Ah yes, and this reminds me of our conversations on another thread I would still hold that the scientific method and, frankly, confidence carries with it a lot of assumptions and it’s really those assumptions that we need to look at for their implications.

We could certainly do that. If anyone thinks we could have a method of inquiry that works just as well as science but assumes less, I’d be happy to hear of it,

 

[Catolico65]

I don’t think you’re being fair. There are some prominent Catholic apologists who write about their own opinions on matters that are not yet subject to Church doctrine. They are willing to concede that they are speculating when they do so. However, some people may choose to believe them unquestioningly. That doesn’t mean the apologists were trying to deceive anyone. It simply means that some people are gullible and are willing to place their faith in anyone. You can’t blame scientists for the gullibility of the general public any more than you can blame the aforementioned apologists.

Maybe you should read some of Dawkins and Hawkings comments to see why so many take their commentary as a fact. It is worse than any religion because people do not have to participate and think on their own, they just repeat claims made by others.

 

[Oreoracle]

Its publisher, the inside cover alleges, is Harvard University Press. I think it’s fair to say that I “know” that it was published by Harvard University Press. How do I know it? I do not know it through the hypothetico-deductive method. I never generated a hypothesis; I’ve never checked whether it was the case that most books are actually published where they say they were published.

Well, you have checked the claim at least on a subconscious level. If it were common practice for publishers to lie about which companies publish the books in question, you would notice the controversy and be more skeptical. So your “testing”, in this case, relies on a more or less justified assumption regarding how humans will behave; namely, the assumption that they will make deception known to the public by complaining about it.

But the more blunt answer is that we classify what you speak of as “knowledge” because the stakes aren’t very high if you’re wrong. If lives were on the line, or the fundamental truths of physics were within our grasp, we would be checking the origins of every book to test your claim.

Aristotle was an empiricist. Actual experience took the cake with him.

I’ll grant that he was more of an empiricist than most at the time. But he still made unfalsifiable/metaphysical claims and he made claims about projectile motion that suggest that he either 1) didn’t test the claims or 2) didn’t test them very thoroughly.

Physics produces much but it doesn’t produce a lot of wisdom or virtue. Modern physics does not result in rational and objective theories for how society and individuals should guide their conduct in order to be happy; in fact, this is a rather conspicuous failure of modern science.

I don’t think it’s fair to judge a discipline for failing to provide the very things it admits that it was never meant to provide. Religion didn’t provide us with Newtonian mechanics, Relativity, or Quantum Theory. It would be unfair for me to call that a failing of religion, wouldn’t you agree?

Philosophy alone can’t replace empirical testing, and empirical testing alone can’t replace philosophy.

And I would agree that we still need philosophy to assert the underpinnings of the scientific method in the first place, as well as to use logic and mathematics.

 

[Oreoracle]

Maybe you should read some of Dawkins and Hawkings comments to see why so many take their commentary as a fact. It is worse than any religion because people do not have to participate and think on their own, they just repeat claims made by others.

But again, the gullibility of others is not the fault of Dawkins and Hawking. If I share my ideas and you believe me unquestioningly, that doesn’t mean I’m spreading dogma or trying to pass off my speculation as factual. It would just make you gullible.

 

[KyrieEleison17]

I’m not sure what you mean. To say that a claim is falsifiable is to say that it is possible to imagine some observation

That can’t be entirely correct. The claim “Oreoracle exists” could be falsified by more than just a physical observation if to be an ‘Oreoracle’ precluded, necessarily, being able to ‘exist’.

Unless God is defined in terms that connect him to the observable universe in some tangible way, there is no observation that would discredit the claim that he exists.

Well no again in classical arguments God’s existence followed necessarily from the nature and existence of other things that we do, indeed, observe. Saint Thomas based one of his arguments for God’s existence on the simple observation that “some things are in motion…”

Moreover there are plenty of things admitted in science that we don’t directly observe itself: Gravity, for instance. We observe the effects that gravity is posited to explain.

I think you might be exaggerating a bit the nature of theology or classical philosophy. Aristotle was a rationalist: his system was a completely rational construct. He wasn’t following a theological dogmatic authority. He didn’t base himself off of what the oracles at Delphi were saying, for example.

We could certainly do that. If anyone thinks we could have a method of inquiry that works just as well as science but assumes less, I’d be happy to hear of it,

Not quite where I was going. I meant just the most basic implications in our confidence and ability to do science in the first place and all that entails, which is a great deal indeed.

It’s everything you presuppose or assume before you go out into the field to do some research or study or walk into your lab and peer into your microscope or stare out of your telescope and actually expect to learn something from this experience about the nature of things.

 

[polytropos]

Well, you have checked the claim at least on a subconscious level. If it were common practice for publishers to lie about which companies publish the books in question, you would notice the controversy and be more skeptical. So your “testing”, in this case, relies on a more or less justified assumption regarding how humans will behave; namely, the assumption that they will make deception known to the public by complaining about it.

That could be a justification (though it’s not a hypothetico-deductive justification), but it doesn’t seem to be how I justified my knowledge back when I learned about publishers from my teachers. (And clearly it need not be.) Nevertheless the knowledge was veridical then as it was now.

But the more blunt answer is that we classify what you speak of as “knowledge” because the stakes aren’t very high if you’re wrong. If lives were on the line, or the fundamental truths of physics were within our grasp, we would be checking the origins of every book to test your claim.

This seems largely extrinsic to my knowledge about the book. If lives were suddenly put on the line, then the epistemological status of my knowledge in the publisher’s identity would not be lessened (for I’ve had the knowledge for some time now).

 

[Oreoracle]

That can’t be entirely correct. The claim “Oreoracle exists” could be falsified by more than just a physical observation if to be an ‘Oreoracle’ precluded, necessarily, being able to ‘exist’.

Defining something so as to preclude its existence in principle would mean it necessarily doesn’t exist; that is, you must define it in a logically contradictory fashion. Obviously we don’t use science to test logically contradictory notions. Firstly, it seems unnecessary to experiment when logic alone is sufficient, but perhaps more importantly, science assumes classical logic in the first place. So of course any logically inconsistent statement would be assumed to be false from the outset.

Well no again in classical arguments God’s existence followed necessarily from the nature and existence of other things that we do, indeed, observe.

I’m not sure where your disagreement lies. I said that God can’t be falsified if he is defined independently of observable objects. But to define God as, say, a first cause (Prime Mover, Uncaused Cause, etc.), would be to define him by invoking observable objects.

Moreover there are plenty of things admitted in science that we don’t directly observe itself: Gravity, for instance. We observe the effects that gravity is posited to explain.

We could quibble about the semantics of whether or not one really “observes” gravity, but can we both agree that gravity is indeed falsifiable?

Not quite where I was going. I meant just the most basic implications in our confidence and ability to do science in the first place and all that entails, which is a great deal indeed.

Here are some assumptions I would include:

1. We assume that there are objects to observe. In other words, solipsism is incorrect.
2. We assume that there are indeed patterns to be induced from data. Or, if you prefer, we assume that the universe behaves in a consistent way.
3. We assume that experiments can be controlled; that is, that experimental groups can be distinguished from control groups, and we can reliably identify the independent variable that differs between the groups.

 

[KyrieEleison17]

I’ll grant that he was more of an empiricist than most at the time. But he still made unfalsifiable/metaphysical claims

Can you give an example of a metaphysical claim that couldn’t be falsified?

don’t think it’s fair to judge a discipline for failing to provide the very things it admits that it was never meant to provide.

But if it doesn’t contribute anything meaningful to ethics its overall value becomes questionable. That’s the curiosity about modern science: it is barren when it becomes to ethics, wisdom, virtue and the like. That was never the case before. At the very least, it means science must be necessarily subordinated to (some) philosophy and ethics as it has no means for ethical verification or producing a moral code.

And I would agree that we still need philosophy to assert the underpinnings of the scientific method in the first place, as well as to use logic and mathematics.

Yes I agree that a good philosopher, and not a physicist, even given the successes of modern science in applied technology, would still be your best bet against a radical Scepticism.

 

[Oreoracle]

Nevertheless the knowledge was veridical then as it was now…If lives were suddenly put on the line, then the epistemological status of my knowledge in the publisher’s identity would not be lessened (for I’ve had the knowledge for some time now).

My issue is that just because you make a claim that turned out to be correct doesn’t mean that you “knew” the claim. It could have been a lucky guess, or it could have been faith (like the faith one has in their teachers).

If we define “knowledge” in the traditional manner as “justified, true belief”, then what constitutes knowledge can reasonably be expected to change with the circumstances. Taking the publisher’s word for it (or your teacher’s word for it) may be sufficient justification for inconsequential matters, but it wouldn’t be sufficient if the stakes were high enough.

Now you might insist that, ideally, we should have just one conception of “knowledge” and stick with it, but I think that’s obviously impractical. Have you ever heard the joke “On the Internet, no one knows that I’m a dog?” It’s technically true. For all you know, I could be a trained dog. You can’t claim to know otherwise if our epistemology is strict enough. Obviously, we relax the standards depending on the situation we’re in.

 

[Oreoracle]

Can you give an example of a metaphysical claim that couldn’t be falsified?

Sure. Aristotle claimed that the center of the Earth was the “natural” place for earth (the element, not the planet) to be. Since all objects contained some amount of earth, this was used to account for gravity.

Let’s try to test this idea: I send a rocket into the sky and it escapes Earth’s atmosphere. Would this falsify Aristotle’s claim? No, Aristotle would say that the object just doesn’t have enough earth in it. So then we ask Aristotle to provide an object with sufficient earth. He admits that he can’t find an earthy object without testing to see how attracted it is to the center of the Earth. In other words, he can’t really predict how gravity works without knowing the results beforehand. There is no way to determine the ratio of the classical elements in an object without appealing to the phenomena they were meant to explain. The whole thing is a circular argument.

But if it doesn’t contribute anything meaningful to ethics its overall value becomes questionable.

If that’s the case, then math, linguistics, and economics would all be fields of questionable value as well.

 

[jonathan_hili]

What I see is a real crisis in scientific research due to the influence atheists and their innate lack of ethics by promoting baseless theories and using their credentials as research scientists to promote them as possible. I believe Newton would be rolling in his grave.

There are many that do this, such as Dawkins and Hawing.

Hi Catolico, thanks for the response.

I wouldn’t say that atheists have an “innate lack of ethics”, as we are all capable of discerning to the moral law to some extent. Rather, there is a real temptation to avoid undesirable conclusions but positing less likely or frankly even ludicrous possibilities as an alternative purely for ideological reasons. We see evidence of this in early discussions among the scientific community over the Big Bang model versus a Steady State model, or more recently the hypothesis put forward regarding multiverses.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Back to the OP: I simply disagree with your premise. The idea isn’t that science will eventually answer all questions about the universe; rather, it is that if we ever answer a given question about the universe, it will be through science.

I think this belief is justified. No other method of discovery has explained and predicted phenomena to the extent that science has.

Hi Oreoracle. I’m not suggesting that science will eventually answer all questions about the universe. My concern is that the “who knows” argument is used oftentimes to avoid the likely conclusion that follows from the evidence because the proponent doesn’t like the conclusion.

The scientific method explains and predicts physical phenomena. However, it is only a partner to, and not fundamental, with regards to areas of philosophy or humanistic (and theological) pursuits.

 

[tonyrey]

Hi Oreoracle. I’m not suggesting that science will eventually answer all questions about the universe. My concern is that the “who knows” argument is used oftentimes to avoid the likely conclusion that follows from the evidence because the proponent doesn’t like the conclusion.

The scientific method explains and predicts physical phenomena. However, it is only a partner to, and not fundamental, with regards to areas of philosophy or humanistic (and theological) pursuits.

The scientific method presupposes **personal **activity which is not subject to the laws of science.

 

[jonathan_hili]

The scientific method presupposes **personal **activity which is not subject to the laws of science.

There are a whole host of things the scientific method presupposes that themselves cannot be demonstrated through science, for example, the intelligibility of language, mathematics or human consciousness. Moreover, causality is itself unobservable.

However, I don’t think this is a problem. Krauss doesn’t strike me as necessarily scientistic, just crude in his approach to philosophy.

 

[Oreoracle]

The scientific method explains and predicts physical phenomena. However, it is only a partner to, and not fundamental, with regards to areas of philosophy or humanistic (and theological) pursuits.

The problem is that there is no way to know in an a priori fashion which entities are physical. A popular misconception is the belief that “If something is physical, it lends itself to scientific explanation”. But in practice, it’s really the converse that comes about: “If something can be explained scientifically, it is physical”. There is no method or algorithm we can use to determine whether something is physical before employing the scientific method, thus a Christian who says “This isn’t physical, so we can’t use science anyway” is jumping the gun.

Take energy for example. Energy used to be regarded as something nearly magical. But once we discovered that it could be used in naturalistic explanations in a consistent manner, it became the subject matter of physics. It wouldn’t have done any good for someone to insist that we shouldn’t have started investigating energy scientifically because it’s not physical. We classified it as physical after using science, not before.

There are a whole host of things the scientific method presupposes that themselves cannot be demonstrated through science, for example, the intelligibility of language, mathematics or human consciousness. Moreover, causality is itself unobservable.

Math, at least, also presupposes concepts it cannot demonstrate (such as the axioms of the deductive system you’re using). No one ever seems to make a fuss about this, so why be so critical of science?

Also, strictly speaking, science doesn’t assume what most people mean by “causality”. Quantum mechanics is an example of a discipline where what counts as a “cause” is questionable.

And while we may appeal to causation in our explanations, cause and effect are irrelevant to the math involved. Newtonian physics would work just as well from a mathematical point of view if we instead regarded motion as causing forces and not the other way around.