31–40 of 139 posts
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Intuition? (Yes, it's probably pattern-matching taken to an extreme, but can we quantify it? Why not?)
What does that mean? I intuit that your program has bugs, therefore it has bugs? I intuit that there is an alien race living on Mars that is able to disguise itself as red rocks? I do not see how intuition gives you anything other than -- maybe, and only maybe -- a smaller set of hypotheses to test scientifically.
Regardless of whether one agrees with him or not, his argument makes NO sense to me. The relevant question is not whether science can have all the answers, but whether science yields better or more accurate answers than those other approaches.
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What are some [legitimate] examples of non-science ways of understanding the world?
The answers that you'll receive won't be supported by rational thought or evidence. If they were, it'd be scientism.
A reply under the title of "The folly of 'The folly of scientism'" by Professor Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, who frequently reads and comments on issues related to the philosophy of science: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/the-folly... ". . . . Hughes is an evolutionary biologist with wide-ranging interests, and I’ve really liked some of his papers." . . . . "The big problem with Hughe…
Wonder if Coyne realizes the circular and non-responsive nature of his reply. To rephrase this, science is the only thing we know. Show me something that's not science that we know. Of course, you can't. You've given yourself the answer before you begin to ask the question. Effective science and humility have to go hand-in-hand. Otherwise you're just creating a new religion with the rubric "science" stuck on it.
I'm speaking broadly here, but qualia are not scientific. My internal experiences aren't scientific. So I'd say that, on one sense, at least half of what I experience is not scientific.
No one actually knows what is going on inside of my head at this moment. Yet I know my own thoughts, emotions and experiences. Science may know that I can experience love, for example. But it can't tell me that I am experiencing love at this moment, as I write this comment, or who I fall in love with.
Now that a higher level of certainty is available for some subjects people have higher expectations about what level of confidence they demand from an idea purporting to tell them something about reality. They also have a lot more scientific knowledge about the ways in which and the reasons why these other methods fail, often spectacularly.
I guess I'm guilty of scientism. I assume that if these "other ways of understanding" failed nearly completely at discovering truth in every subject that has been touched by science I assume this extrapolates to the subjects we cannot apply science to.
I fail to see why accepting our current limitations about what it's possible for us to know is anything other than the opposite of hubris.
Once another system of thought actually makes predictions that answer questions about reality then I will happily change my mind. Until then I'm not satisfied with the horrible levels of accuracy they have been shown to have. I'll just stick with the humble scientific opinion: "We don't know yet, we haven't figured out how to move beyond conjecture about this issue".
I thought we were done with Constructivism a long time ago. And scientism is not the biggest problem in a world where climate change, stem cells and creationism debates still exist. Unfortunately philosophers alienated scientists with their postmodern (de-)constructivism to the point of creating enmities (such as the Sokal affair[1]). At this point, when scientists speak to philosophers, one gets the impression that…
As for who alienated who in the Sokal affair, it should be remembered that Sokal was the original perpetrator of the hoax, and appeared to have initiated it with the sole aim of discrediting philosophers he did not approve of.
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Name one question for which a scientific answer no matter how inadequate was once the best, but for which now a philosophical or religious one is the best one?
Consciousness, experience, spontaneity, 'the present moment'.. There's a very good book on this called "The Wisdom Of Insecurity" by Alan Watts. It's very short and definitely worth a read if this question interests you.
While charming, these sound to me as borderline serious new-age dualist contraptions. Consciousness and experience are under active investigation by neuroscientists and we have no reason to believe they won't be explained away.
Imho, the most valuable domain of philosophy is still the domain of Ethics.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
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Wonder if Coyne realizes the circular and non-responsive nature of his reply. To rephrase this, science is the only thing we know. Show me something that's not science that we know. Of course, you can't. You've given yourself the answer before you begin to ask the question. Effective science and humility have to go hand-in-hand. Otherwise you're just creating a new religion with the rubric "science" stuck on it.
Maybe we are thinking of "scientific" in different terms, but I know lots of things that are not scientific. I'm speaking broadly here, but qualia are not scientific. My internal experiences aren't scientific. So I'd say that, on one sense, at least half of what I experience is not scientific. No one actually knows what is going on inside of my head at this moment. Yet I know my own thoughts, emotions and experiences…
This essay should be required reading for anyone who thinks science is or should be the only legitimate way of understanding the world. For more information, I strongly recommend: "Naturalism and the Human Condition: Against scientism" by Frederick A. Olafson and "Scientism" by Tom Sorell
Name one question for which a scientific answer no matter how inadequate was once the best, but for which now a philosophical or religious one is the best one?
Quoting Wikipedia: "Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources. Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenicists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York. Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States.[8] Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in a variety of other countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden,..."
We now believe the negatives of the eugenics movement, justifying the genocide done by the Nazis, outweighs any social good which might be possible from the scientific principles behind eugenics.
2) Should the US develop and use Orion-style nuclear propulsion?
Quoting Freeman Dyson: "this is the first time in modern history that a major expansion of human technology has been suppressed for political reasons." In short, it's better to ban nuclear bombs because of the increased mortality due to radioactive fallout than to have a single-stage-to-Saturn lift technology.
In a world with the three body problem and godel, humility should be the defining characteristic of the intelligent. Should.