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What’s so bad about Scientism?

philpapers.org

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Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#51

Post by daptaq »

werpon wrote: post #14
juliangamble wrote: post #3

Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will ser…

In my view, the whole concept of scientism is the last attempt of philosophy to stay relevant, and it's usually only backed up by appeals to emotion and loaded words. So, the scientist in me asks: what areas of knowledge are out of the scope of science and the scientific method?

Founding all knowledge on the scientific method is just vulgar empiricism, and it's known to have it's limits, and philosophy isn't just "emotions", since science is part of philosophy itself (asking and answering questions about the world, Truth, etc.)

This comic shows the limits of empiricism nicely: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/132

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#52

Post by paganel »

werpon wrote: post #14
juliangamble wrote: post #3

Of all the fads and foibles in the long history of human credulity, scientism in all its varied guises — from fanciful cosmology to evolutionary epistemology and ethics — seems among the more dangerous, both because it pretends to be something very different from what it really is and because it has been accorded widespread and uncritical adherence. Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will ser…

In my view, the whole concept of scientism is the last attempt of philosophy to stay relevant, and it's usually only backed up by appeals to emotion and loaded words. So, the scientist in me asks: what areas of knowledge are out of the scope of science and the scientific method?

> In my view, the whole concept of scientism is the last attempt of philosophy to stay relevant

I'm not the smartest guy around, but I see myself still reading philosophy while still very close to laying on my death-bed, while I know I wouldn't care that much then about whether worm-holes exist or if the physical Universe is finite or infinite. In that respect philosophy will still be relevant, at least for me. I find the human species one of the most interesting things that I've read or heard about, and I think philosophy does a good job of talking about us.

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#53

Post by acover »

icen wrote: post #18
acover wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1+1=2 is falsifiable as it relates to an experiment. You could show that in an experiment that when you "add" a "one" and another "one" together you do not get "two". If it doesn't aid in understanding the world then I'm not sure it qualifies as knowledge.

How do you go about testing the hypothesis that 1 + 1 = 2? Not just showing that a particular physical representation obeys the logical laws of arithmetic, but to test the actual laws themselves.

I could be wrong but if you wanted to test the hypothesis: given the rules of addition show that 1 + 1 = 2 can be deduced.

The experiment would be to go about the deduction. It is falsifiable.

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#54

Post by werpon »

taejo wrote: post #25
werpon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an axiom. It doesn't say anything about the real world, it just introduces a framework of thought. In other words, if you can imagine a reality where 1+1=2 for some meaning of '1', '2', '+' and '=', then a series of conclusions will hold true.

It's not an axiom, it's a theorem (or maybe a definition of "2"). The more usual definition of "2" is "S(S(0))" (the successor of the successor of zero). "1" is "S(0)". "S(0) + S(0) = S(S(0))" is a theorem , a consequence of the axioms "for all x and y, x + S(y) = S(x + y)" and "for all x, x + 0 = x".

I called it an axiom for the sake of brevity. I felt that reciting the Peano axioms would only cloud my point.

Was I 100% precise? No. Did you add something meaningful to the discussion? That's for you to answer.

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#55

Post by lz400 »

daptaq wrote: post #44
lz400 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large areas of philosophy are routinely demolished by the strangeness revealed by science. Concepts like Time after general relativity, the reach of maths after Godel, existence being coexistence after the discovery of multiverses. Philosophy very often assumes things that the real world ends up proving aren't true.

Science is a part of philosophy, and at the same time it extends it. You're assuming that philosophy is only idealist guessing, which is wrong. I mean, you wouldn't say that "Large areas of science are routinely demolished" by newer science, even though strictly speaking it's true, and you'd therefore give up on science as a whole? (And if I'd really want to be mean, I'd ask you if science has ever even proven the "r…

Science regularly demolishes science too, of course. Scientists don't have a problem with thatm they just move on. But in my opinion philosophers do.

I know philosophy is extremely rigorous. Science is fiddly, it works in approximations. Philosophers hate ad hocs postulates like dark matter or cosmological constants. They hate not knowing how certain things work. That's part of the problem. They need to apply their rigor to theories that have the chance of being false.

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#56

Post by return0 »

icen wrote: post #11
acover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strong Scientism: Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the only “real knowledge.” Stupid question. What is an example of a hypothesis that is not falsifiable by experiment but should still be considered "knowledge"?

1+1=2 And no, apples are not the same things as numbers.

But maybe one day we will know how our brains work, and we will understand what is the neural correlate of "1" , "+" and "2" and we will be able to clearly see that the only answer to 1+1 is 2 in an empirically falsifiable way.

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#57

Post by paganel »

werpon wrote: post #22
xupybd wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What areas of knowledge are out of the scope of science and the scientific method? Um philosophy.....

Is philosophy knowledge? Can I use it, for example, to take an informed choice about the real world? Does it at least contain a set of verifiable, falsifiable statements that every practitioner can and has agreed upon?

> Can I use it, for example, to take an informed choice about the real world?

I might remembering it wrong, but I think one of the main questions asked by Socrates was "how can we be good persons?". And "what does 'good' mean?". That question absolutely does inform my every-day choices about the real world, because me not being a religious person and not believing in the after-life and such I base most of my every-day thingies on thinking if what I'm actually doing is "good" or not. Asking yourself that is a philosophical question. That and a little bit of Kant, and his "people should never be means to an end".

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#58

Post by [deleted] »

kijin wrote: post #28
acover wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1+1=2 is falsifiable as it relates to an experiment. You could show that in an experiment that when you "add" a "one" and another "one" together you do not get "two". If it doesn't aid in understanding the world then I'm not sure it qualifies as knowledge.

When you add 1kg of some stuff to 1kg of another stuff and end up with 1.97kg instead of 2kg, have you really falsified 1 + 1 = 2, or have you just confirmed that some portion of your material was vaporized in the reaction? What does the number 1.97 even mean in a world where 1 + 1 ≠ 2? When you falsify 1 + 1 = 2, you also end up denying the validity of the very experiment that you used in the process. If a hypothesi…

[deleted]

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#59

Post by [deleted] »

kijin wrote: post #28
acover wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1+1=2 is falsifiable as it relates to an experiment. You could show that in an experiment that when you "add" a "one" and another "one" together you do not get "two". If it doesn't aid in understanding the world then I'm not sure it qualifies as knowledge.

When you add 1kg of some stuff to 1kg of another stuff and end up with 1.97kg instead of 2kg, have you really falsified 1 + 1 = 2, or have you just confirmed that some portion of your material was vaporized in the reaction? What does the number 1.97 even mean in a world where 1 + 1 ≠ 2? When you falsify 1 + 1 = 2, you also end up denying the validity of the very experiment that you used in the process. If a hypothesi…

[deleted]

Re: What’s so bad about Scientism?

#60

Post by acover »

TuringTest wrote: post #45
acover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Strong Scientism: Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the only “real knowledge.” Stupid question. What is an example of a hypothesis that is not falsifiable by experiment but should still be considered "knowledge"?

> What is an example of a hypothesis that is not falsifiable by experiment but should still be considered "knowledge"? As the paper points out, things like the following are problematic from a purely experimental approach: "Scientific knowledge is better than non-scientific knowledge." Yet many scientists treat it as common knowledge.

> "Scientific knowledge is better than non-scientific knowledge."

Isn't this a falsifiable hypothesis?

If you analyzed various predictions made by scientific and non scientific knowledge then you could compare them and determine if one was "better".

That historical performance might not hold but the sun may not rise in the east.

That the scientific method has not be employed because our heuristics say the answer is obvious does not mean it cannot be employed.

I do agree that the scientific method is too high a bar for something to be considered knowledge.

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