Inocente:
- Science is to be respected for what it has achieved.
- Science works so well because it excludes the subjective.
- Hence we must exclude the subjective from what we believe.
I think people do sometimes think along those lines â if they have absolutely no self-reflection on how we live our lives and evaluate claims and beliefs.
Your post gives me the impression that you seem to think that if someone demands empirical evidence for a specific set of claims (claims about the world outside of our heads, remember), then itâs some kind of contradiction for that person to ever rely on his subjective experience (for entirely different sets of claims, like claims about the world inside of our heads) or to experience irrational feelings (and all feelings are irrational) or to ever hold a belief about anything at all â no matter how mundane â without using the scientific method.
Thatâs just utterly and completely wrong.
We use evidence to determine whether or not beliefs are likely to be true or likely to be false. The more evidence we have, the more sure we can be. Different
kinds of claims require different
kinds of evidence.
Claims about my subjective experience (âI feel X emotionâ or âI find meaning in X activityâ or "I really like so-and-so) only require my observation of my subjective emotional state. And sure, peopleâs minds can certainly mislead them (we might think we love someone when in fact weâre just compensating for some childhood issues, for example) â but as we observe ourselves more and more (and in more and more situations with others), we get more information about ourselves to work with (if weâre observant).
Value judgments fall into this category. âI value nature over technologyâ is a value judgment, not a claim about the world outside of my head. To try to conflate value judgments with truth judgments â as you later try to do in your post â is to make a mistake.
Claims about the world outside of my head require evidence from the world outside of my head. In the case of mundane matters, this almost never involves doing science. Right now, I believe that my car is still parked outside, where I left it when I last saw it. I believe this on the basis of evidence: that I left it out front and that I have knowledge that theft in my neighborhood very rarely happens. This belief, that my car is still outside, is less certain than my belief that my car keys are in the other room, where I just saw myself put them there. And that belief, that my car keys are in the other room, is less certain than my belief that Iâm looking at a coffee cup right now.
In fact, all of those beliefs that Iâve listed above have so much evidence going for them, that Iâd be willing to say that I know that theyâre true. Thatâs not a claim to absolute knowledge about them â Iâm merely saying that my evidence is so good that it would be almost absurd for me to run around and seriously worry about being wrong about them all the time.
Science and the scientific method apply to a specific set of claims about the world outside of our heads: non-mundane questions about the reality where we live. In our daily lives, observations produce the evidence we use to reach conclusions; in science, experiments and observations with special tools produce the evidence we use to reach conclusions. Questions like, âIs there a black hole in the center of our galaxy?â can only be answered with data collected from such tools.
In other words, conducting scientific experiments has nothing to do with whether or not we find a poem meaningful or a Philip Glass composition interesting or the face of our spouse attractive or the taste of yogurt super yummy. Scientific experiments also have nothing to do with our decision to value human nature over technology â or the other way around.
It is simply
not a contradiction in any way, shape, or form to find meaning in life and to enjoy all of the wonderful, irrational, and ridiculous things life has to offer
and also insist that truth-claims about the world outside of our heads measure up to a standard of evidence.
Science can tell us things about the world weâre a part of, but it canât tell us what we want to have for dinner tonight: questions about the world outside of our heads require evidence from the world outside of our heads, and questions about the world inside of our heads â like, for example, our personal food preferences â require evidence from the world inside of our heads.
The movie contrasts our technological worldview with the Hopi belief that the heavens, Earth and all life are sacred - we are in danger of losing something profound that the Hopi know without rational foundation.
And Iâm in complete agreement that technology run amuck is a bad thing. This is a common theme found in many great works of literature and in popular culture (Recall Star Warsâ famous reiteration of this theme, with the human will â i.e. the force â triumphing over the âtechnological terrorâ of the Death Star, with Luke turning off his targeting computer and everything).
But just because I personally value the human will over the technology that we seem intent on replacing it with â and thatâs a value judgment on my part, not a judgment of truth about the external world â that doesnât mean that we can just believe any truth claims we want about the world outside of our heads.
Let me put it another way: âClaim X gives meaning to my lifeâ isnât a valid argument for claim X â itâs a consequentialist fallacy: you like the implications of it being true, but that isnât evidence that itâs true.
The fact of the matter is that you can derive meaning from religious stories, art, and myths without having to accept that they are literally true. Check out the work of Joseph Campbell, where he does exactly this with all world mythologies, including Christianity.
