Why do some people think that Science is the only source of knowledge?

[inocente]

So what is your point? The mind could just be a very difficult reality to characterize using language that is almost entirely sensory image based. Most of science uses comparative or analogical terms to describe all physical phenomena. Your issue with philosophy of mind is simply the result of language limitations. We do not have anything in our language to adequately describe mind, therefore there are many alternative ways of doing so, the Seven Wise Men and the Elephant story does not mean the wise men were all wrong in their limited views, just that they were all inadequate. It would seem a good thing to know that much, no?

I don’t think that will be a problem. What’s needed is a hierarchy of models, such as one which explains a thought element in terms of the physiology (neurons etc.), another explaining a thought in terms of the elements, and so on up to, well, psychology. It’s a big job but there’s a lot of experience in doing this kind of analysis, both bottom-up and top-down, in many areas of science and industry. There will no doubt be competing schemes, at each stage the winner will be the one which can be tested most completely against observation to give a firm foundation for the next phase. The ability to test as you go is a major advantage of science over philosophy.

 

[inocente]

Einstein publicly stated his regret. Yes, that was wisdom after the fact, but it was not wisdom before the fact. Today we are saddled with wisdom arrived at too late, thanks to the anxiety of nuclear physicists.

Roosevelt wasn’t Einstein’s lapdog so it’s nether here nor there. Roosevelt made the decision, and Roosevelt was elected by a majority to represent America.

No point trying to make Einstein a scape goat for what an American president did on behalf of the American people, that’s not going to work is it?

 

[inocente]

That’s where science is far superior to philosophy because it assumes:

1. The mind doesn’t exist

or

1. It doesn’t matter what is the mind is because it is not a scientific subject - and there is so much irritating (and pointless) disagreement among philosophers.

Nor does it matter that Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism has changed the history of the world because, after all, it’s just another of those philosophical theories.

Science will, of course, sort out all our problems - not immediately but when neuroscientists have had more time to investigate our behaviour and work out how the brains of trouble-makers can be suitably modified to transform them into peace-makers…

Were you not having a good day then?

To brighten your mood, are you aware that gut-feelings actually come from a second mind in your stomach? Only 100 million neurons, about the same as in a cat’s brain.

bbc.co.uk/news/health-18779997
scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gut-second-brain

 

[Charlemagne_II]

inocente

Roosevelt wasn’t Einstein’s lapdog so it’s nether here nor there. Roosevelt made the decision, and Roosevelt was elected by a majority to represent America.

Ideas have consequences. Einstein had an idea that a great new weapon could be made. Over several letters to Roosevelt he urged Roosevelt to consider the idea. Roosevelt did. Few Americans had any idea of the diabolical weapon about to be created under the sponsorship of the world’s greatest scientist and the world’s greatest politician.

Einstein was urged and elected by a majority of the nuclear physicists to bring this awareness to Roosevelt. To his credit, Einstein later regretted he had done so after HIroshima and Nagasaki. We are to this day suffering the consequence and the threat of nuclear annihilation because a world famous physicist and a world famous Protestant politician teamed up to make some future Armageddon possible.

Do you always have a problem with accepting the facts of history unless they favor science or absolve scientists of any moral responsibility for their acts? Stop being a lapdog for Einstein.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I don’t think that will be a problem. What’s needed is a hierarchy of models, such as one which explains a thought element in terms of the physiology (neurons etc.), another explaining a thought in terms of the elements, and so on up to, well, psychology. It’s a big job but there’s a lot of experience in doing this kind of analysis, both bottom-up and top-down, in many areas of science and industry. There will no doubt be competing schemes, at each stage the winner will be the one which can be tested most completely against observation to give a firm foundation for the next phase. The ability to test as you go is a major advantage of science over philosophy.

It isn’t a question of science over philosophy. Science deals with a very different set of phenomena and only that set. It is a mistake (which you are obviously making) to think of them as two competing approaches. Science has its own body of inquiry - natural, evidential phenomena - while philosophy is concerned with truth itself, including, but not limited to, the truth claims of science. Science cannot say anything about “truth” per se, but it can report about what happens in the natural world with consistency. That is, however, all it can do. To claim science can go beyond that is to make a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality, i.e., that the only reality is the physical one.

That claim is problematic precisely because, as a metaphysical claim, it assumes what it is trying to establish: that only physical evidence can be considered when making metaphysical claims.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

…]To his credit, Einstein later regretted he had done so after HIroshima and Nagasaki. We are to this day suffering the consequence and the threat of nuclear annihilation because a world famous physicist and a world famous Protestant politician teamed up to make some future Armageddon possible…]

That sounds supportive of what innocent was saying earlier.

The logic of wisdom is usually being wise after the event.

 

[Peter_Plato]

That sounds supportive of what innocent was saying earlier.

Only to someone who looks at life through a rear view mirror. Wisdom is (and must be) forward looking or decisions could never be made. Just because wise decisions are borne out after the fact does not mean wisdom was not used (or should not have been) in actually making the forward-looking decision. That’s why faith, hope and courage are virtues to be exercised along with good judgement towards what is the most important consideration: a determination of the end good.

We are in the metaphysical and moral position of acting now with a view towards the future. Science is inherently backward looking because its evidential base is what has consistently happened in the past. It cannot tell us what the good to aim for ought to be or what ought to be done with our science-derived knowledge. Those are not scientific questions at all, but are far more important than any undertaken by scientific inquiry.

 

[Peter_Plato]

We can observe the activity of the brain during rational thought. We can destroy parts of the brain and watch those rationales change. It can be shown more so to exist in the brain than it can be shown to exist outside of the brain.

Now is there an end to these ridiculous questions or are you just trolling? If you have a point, make it, don’t troll.

Thats how I feel. We need those checks and balances, the more the better.

Say 19/20 scientists with avg vision see a plane in the far distance. 1 of those scientist has better than avg vision and says “that is not a plane it’s a bird”. Eventually those scientist may develop binoculars but they can’t yet say it’s a plane, they can only say well it’s probably a plane, but it could also be a bird.

Somehow scientist have gone astray in thinking that it’s impossible to have a different faculty of understanding, such as this one scientist with better vision. They currently lack the ability to test the one scientist, but that lack of ability doesn’t prove him right or wrong. We should obviously be prudent about things, but I think it would be just as imprudent to entirely dismiss that one scientist.

This is a valid point and shows why we should keep an open mind about areas not currently within the realm of the scientific method. We shouldn’t be accepting any claim without adequate warrant, but, at the same time, should not be dismissive or dogmatic about such claims. Lack of physical evidence is just that, a lack of physical evidence. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[tonyrey]

*That’s where science is far superior to philosophy because it assumes:

Personal and irrelevant remarks do not alter the fact that science is supposed by some individuals to be far superior to philosophy because it assumes:

1. The mind doesn’t exist

or

1. It doesn’t matter what is the mind is because it is not a scientific subject - and there is so much irritating (and pointless) disagreement among philosophers.

Nor does it matter that** Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism has changed the history of the world because, after all, it’s just another of those philosophical **theories.

Science will, of course, sort out **all **our problems - not immediately but when neuroscientists have had more time to investigate our behaviour and work out how the brains of trouble-makers can be suitably modified to transform them into peace-makers…

 

[tonyrey]

It isn’t a question of science over philosophy. Science deals with a very different set of phenomena and only that set. It is a mistake (which you are obviously making) to think of them as two competing approaches. Science has its own body of inquiry - natural, evidential phenomena - while philosophy is concerned with truth itself, including, but not limited to, the truth claims of science. Science cannot say anything about “truth” per se, but it can report about what happens in the natural world with consistency. That is, however, all it can do. To claim science can go beyond that is to make a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality, i.e., that the only reality is the physical one.

That claim is problematic precisely because, as a metaphysical claim, it assumes what it is trying to establish: that only physical evidence can be considered when making metaphysical claims.

To deny the validity of metaphysics reveals ignorance of the **rational **foundation of physics - and every other branch of science.

 

[tonyrey]

How would you prove rational thought is a product of the brain? Is the mind a myth?

The lump of tissue inside the skull doesn’t even know it exists! All it does is transmit electrical impulses. It is merely an instrument used by the mind. A guitarist and his music do not cease to exist if the guitar is damaged.

 

[Semangelof]

The lump of tissue inside the skull doesn’t even know it exists! All it does is transmit electrical impulses. It is merely an instrument used by the mind. A guitarist and his music do not cease to exist if the guitar is damaged.

No but if the guitarists brain gets damaged he won’t be making anymore music. Last chance to make a point. Do so or consider yourself ignored.

 

[tonyrey]

The lump of tissue inside the skull doesn’t even know it exists! All it does is transmit electrical impulses. It is merely an instrument used by the mind. A guitarist and his music do not cease to exist if the guitar is damaged.

Your assumption that persons are merely biological organisms is based on a crude materialistic interpretation of reality which is obsolete and abandoned by anyone who has any insight into its inconsistency, inadequacy, sterility and lack of correspondence to the way people live and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…

Last chance to make a point. Do so or consider yourself ignored.

Your failure to refute any of my points speaks for itself…

 

[inocente]

Do you always have a problem with accepting the facts of history unless they favor science or absolve scientists of any moral responsibility for their acts? Stop being a lapdog for Einstein.

The site you linked in support of your attempt to rewrite history is a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, holocaust denial hate site.

Einstein wasn’t even an American citizen at the time of the letter, which he signed but didn’t even write. It was an American president who ordered the development of the Bomb. It cost 26 billion American dollars in 2013 money and employed more than 130,000 Americans. It was the American air force which dropped the bomb. America remains the only country ever to use a nuclear device in anger.

Take responsibility for your country’s actions and stop trying to palm it off on a solitary foreign scientist.

 

[Semangelof]

Your assumption that persons are merely biological organisms is based on a crude materialistic interpretation of reality which is obsolete and abandoned by anyone who has any insight into its inconsistency, inadequacy, sterility and lack of correspondence to the way people live and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights…
Your failure to refute any of my points speaks for itself…

If you actually made a point maybe it would say something, but you didn’t. Instead you asked me an unending serious of ridiculous questions. Perhaps predicated on your false assumption that I carry the belief that we are merely biological organisms.

You have been obnoxious in vain, because we apparently agree with each other.

 

[inocente]

It isn’t a question of science over philosophy. Science deals with a very different set of phenomena and only that set. It is a mistake (which you are obviously making) to think of them as two competing approaches. Science has its own body of inquiry - natural, evidential phenomena - while philosophy is concerned with truth itself, including, but not limited to, the truth claims of science. Science cannot say anything about “truth” per se, but it can report about what happens in the natural world with consistency. That is, however, all it can do. To claim science can go beyond that is to make a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality, i.e., that the only reality is the physical one.

That claim is problematic precisely because, as a metaphysical claim, it assumes what it is trying to establish: that only physical evidence can be considered when making metaphysical claims.

Philosophers never imagined the reality painted by quantum mechanics, thus proving for all time they simply don’t have the vision to do justice to reality.

And Einstein’s law of gravity doesn’t stop working if a philosopher somewhere questions whether it’s a truth claim per se, philosophers weren’t asked to approve plate tectonics before publication, or much else, CNN never thought to ask philosophers’ opinions when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, CERN seems to get by fine without them.

Philosophers on science are as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Philosophers never imagined the reality painted by quantum mechanics, thus proving for all time they simply don’t have the vision to do justice to reality.

And Einstein’s law of gravity doesn’t stop working if a philosopher somewhere questions whether it’s a truth claim per se, philosophers weren’t asked to approve plate tectonics before publication, or much else, CNN never thought to ask philosophers’ opinions when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, CERN seems to get by fine without them.

Philosophers on science are as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

Your points above again demonstrate that you could benefit from some basic courses in philosophy and logic.

The fact that nominative philosophers have failed, in the past, to do philosophy well (which is a debatable point that I am far from conceding) does not argue against the enterprise of philosophy itself. Neither did scientists imagine the reality of quantum mechanics, they had to discover it. That just points out the limitations of human beings in general, not just philosophers. Reality is far more complex than any human could imagine. Great! However, that point does not argue against philosophy itself just as the failure of scientists to imagine the reality beforehand doesn’t argue against the enterprise of science, itself.

On the other hand, scientists who made headway in QM relied on logical principles and made inferences about where the evidence pointed in order to uncover the reality of quantum mechanics. In short, they were doing philosophy and would have gone nowhere without doing it minimally well.

In order to move forward, good science relies upon good philosophy. The premises are provided by science, but the implications, plausible inferences and conclusions, to be validly true, must adhere to principles of logic, philosophy and reason. To throw out the enterprise of philosophy is to throw out the means by which science makes progress. The fact that you don’t get that shows, quite clearly, that you have a very limited view of both science and philosophy.

Philosophy, far from being an ashtray on a motorcycle, is actually the means by which the possible routes the motorcyclist could take are plotted. Without philosophy the motorcyclist would remain stationary and have no idea where to go, ashtray or not.

 

[yppop]

And Einstein’s law of gravity doesn’t stop working if a philosopher somewhere questions whether it’s a truth claim per se, …

Inocente,
What is gravity? Is it “action at a distance”, a gravitational force?, a gravitational field? a bending of space? or is it the exchange of gravitons? Are you sure that “gravity” is not merely an abstraction that man devised to explain at an explicate level that which God created at the implicate level? Might there not be a better way of explaining, at the ground of reality, what appears to be the mutual attraction of 2 bodies of matter? (And I say 2 bodies, because none of the explanations I mention above explain a situation when 3 or more bodies are involved). Or, are we (science) stuck with a philosophy (logical positivism) that restricts truth to that which can be observed/measured and verified by repetition? Yes, philosophy does have an impact on how science proceeds: in addition to the general approach devised by logical positivism, scientists are strongly influence by Kuhn’s paradigmatic thinking, and Popper’s falsification criterion.

…philosophers weren’t asked to approve plate tectonics before publication, or much else, CNN never thought to ask philosophers’ opinions when Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, CERN seems to get by fine without them.

I think your examples are poorly chosen to advance your argument, for example:

Your two examples are 5% science and 95 % technology and there is a philosophical difference between those two appoaches. Science is analytical; technology is heuristic. And if you don’t know the difference between those two “philosophical” approaches you don’t understand just how overrated science is in the advancement of human well-being.

Since nothing associated with plate tectonics can be verified it is not very pure science; it lays claim to its scientific identification through its plausibility, a way of explaining an observation that is closer to philosophy than science.

The moon landing was virtually pure technology. Can you cite the contribution of science to that great adventure?
Yppop

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Inocente,
What is gravity? Is it “action at a distance”, a gravitational force?, a gravitational field? a bending of space? or is it the exchange of gravitons? Are you sure that “gravity” is not merely an abstraction that man devised to explain at an explicate level that which God created at the implicate level?

As I understand it one of the outputs of science is models of predictive utility. The “mechanism” behind gravity could actually be none of the above. But if the model still has predictive or some other utility then it may end up sticking around. I.E. these models are not necessarily expressions of “absolute truth”

Might there not be a better way of explaining, at the ground of reality, what appears to be the mutual attraction of 2 bodies of matter? (And I say 2 bodies, because none of the explanations I mention above explain a situation when 3 or more bodies are involved).

In my celestial mechanics college book the term used was “n-bodied” problem; a description that allows the problem description to be applied to scenarios with a number of different mass counts.

 

[yppop]

As I understand it one of the outputs of science is models of predictive utility. The “mechanism” behind gravity could actually be none of the above. But if the model still has predictive or some other utility then it may end up sticking around. I.E. these models are not necessarily expressions of “absolute truth”.

TS
Yes, one of the outputs of science is predictive models, a successful endeavor that gives science its very powerful reputation, a reputation that allows the materialist to dismiss all other forms of knowledge with a wave of a hand. However, a large amount of knowledge that doesn’t predict anything is called “science”. That doesn’t bother me because I ascribe to the idea of accepting the most plausible explanation. In the mean time science is influenced by philosophy, namely:

Positivism, a philosophy introduced by Auguste Comte in the eighteenth century has its roots in Locke’s empiricism, Hume’s skepticism, and Kant’s criticism. Positivism was further developed as Logical Positivism in the first part of the twentieth century by a group of intellectuals known as the Vienna Circle. Logical Positivism emphasizes the meaning and use of language, but also defines the general ideas on which modern science operates.

Positivism:

1. rejects the idea that reality has some purpose;
2. rejects any attempt to explain natural phenomena by attributing to it an essence or a secret cause of things;
3. rejects as meaningless any explanation not verifiable through the senses;
4. advocates the study of constant relationships among things without delving into the underlying causes.

It is easily understood why positivism has become the philosophy of science: it defines the deferential role of science in its quest to understand objective reality and isolates it from metaphysics and religion while diminishing their role. Unfortunately, positivism is a fast track to scientism, the belief that science is the only path to understanding the true nature of reality. I contend that reality is more than objective reality; that subjective, rational, and transcendent levels of reality, which can’t be reduced to an emergent property of matter, also exist. Science, the knowledge derived from the study of objective reality, is inadequate for explaining the phenomena associated with other three levels of reality. Science constrains itself to an explicate view of reality.

Newton successfully wrote the law of gravitation as an inverse square of separation law because that is how reality happens. Bodies of matter react with one another in the way that they do, not because of Newton. He did not and could not explain the ‘what and why’ of gravity or the nature of mass independently of the relationship that he observed. What he did was to recognize the fundamental generality of matter in motion and described it mathematically. He was able to do this only because that is the way objective reality is; whether or not it can be any other way is another matter. I am of the implicate view that objective reality is quite different from what we experience and science describes at the explicate view.

Yppop