71–80 of 139 posts
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> My intuition says you have angry feelings. This is just the kind of dismissive attitude that makes philosophers unpopular.
I was answering honestly. I receive strong cues from my intuition about other people's feelings.
Those are your mirror neurons, I think.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html
Or maybe not. We'll find out using science.
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> Consciousness/experience. These are both scientific.
Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
Not yet. Can you explain morality in terms of your favored philosophical framework?
> I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
A fine example of what people do when they don't reason things through. How does this discredit science?
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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…
That science can't yet know you're experiencing love at this moment (if indeed that's the case) isn't a reason to think it never will be able to. I know it's common to think of our internal thoughts and experiences as metaphysical things, but I know of no evidence that they're anything but chemical and physical processes. You know, science.
The question I was responding to was: "Show me something that's not science that we know". My response is that there are lots of things that we, as people, actually know but can't study scientifically.
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Are you sure? As far as I know, none of those have testable explanations.
> Consciousness Neurology has a lot of information about where consciousness comes from. It's not complete, but nothing we know is. > experience, spontaneity More neurology, from what I can tell that these words mean. However, they're vague, and can be defined in so many ways that I don't know precisely what you mean. > 'the present moment' This is amazingly vague. It could be related to time, to consciousness, or to…
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Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please.
> Ah, so you can scientifically replicate an arbitrary unique experience? Not yet. Can you explain morality in terms of your favored philosophical framework? > I'd like a slice of roast dodo bird please. A fine example of what people do when they don't reason things through. How does this discredit science?
It sounds like you're assigning omniscient characteristics to science.
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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…
> I'm speaking broadly here, but qualia are not scientific. Do you think they'll remain unscientific?
As a matter of fact, there is an interesting book about it: [What We Believe but Cannot Prove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Believe_But_Cannot_Prov...).
Just off the top of my head, I'd say the most obvious thing that people know that isn't scientific is to make creative leaps and discover/invent new ideas. Science can tell us a lot about how it happens, but there is no scientific formula for creating new, true, useful, or provocative ideas. When people make a creative leap, do they know it's true, in the scientific sense?
Or how about humor? Can you scientifically prove a joke to be funny? I know what I find funny, but humor is not provable, or created following the scientific method.
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.
"Science works, bitches" -- to answer particular types of questions which have certain properties. Questions about ethics (that is, what one "should" do) can be informed by science, but there is no such thing as a falsifiable ethical framework; an ethical framework must by its nature involve assumptions which are not determined by science.
Thus, an "answer" or "truth" within ethics is a different type of thing than an "answer" or "truth" within, say, chemistry. Coyne glosses over this by assuming the only type of "answer" or "truth" that matters is the type that comes from science or can be verified by science. This is not an isolated misstatement; he has previously said that "Only science has the ability to answer questions" [0]. Rather amusingly, this is a philosophical and non-scientific assumption.
This is why Coyne's response is essentially useless. Science is an awesome tool, but there are questions it can only address within a framework dependent on non-scientific assumptions.
[0] http://vimeo.com/31505142 around the 34:20 mark
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I was answering honestly. I receive strong cues from my intuition about other people's feelings.
> I receive strong cues from my intuition about other people's feelings. Those are your mirror neurons, I think. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html Or maybe not. We'll find out using science.
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What are some [legitimate] examples of non-science ways of understanding the world?
Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses. Other ways of understanding the world include our five senses but also rely on other phenomena, such as our dreams and emotions, and then are subject to somewhat rational but mostly irrational personal and subjective interpretations. Note that irrational is not the same as incorrect, and I don't consider it a pejorative. I guess as a primary ex…
Well, science is based on the rational interpretation of our five senses.
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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?
1) Should the US sterilize the mentally retarded? 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] Lat…
1) Should the US sterilize the mentally retarded? [...]
2) Should the US develop and use Orion-style nuclear propulsion?
Also, you seem to be confused between the differences between science and technology. Can you not differentiate between basic and applied research?