Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 09:08am PT
|
Physical science always remains incomplete to a human being because a human being is ultimately not material ........
|
|
Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 09:10am PT
|
"There is a real creation story of humanity, and one only, and it is not a myth. It is being worked out and tested, and enriched and strengthened, step by step.
Mike wrote: And invariably, it is incomplete, inaccurate, and never final. "
And this what I said/posted early on in this thread, science doesn't have all the answers, it strive to find them.
This is what E.O. is saying and if you are honest you will admit that science has explained more about our natural world than religion has.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 09:38am PT
|
Rhetoric and logic remain exacting. Take symbolic logic that breaks down arguments. Have you taken a symbolic logic course?
yes
have you taken a mathematical logical course? are you familiar with the origin of logic, in the mathematical sense, that there are different varieties of logic, and the limitations of logical systems?
it would seem to be relevant to a student of philosophy to do more than learn some dusty hand-me-down ideas from ancient Greece, especially since there is a whole area of directly related modern thought; oh, you might need to learn a little mathematics though.
|
|
Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 19, 2017 - 09:54am PT
|
So another religious zealot goes looking to kill those of another faith, driving their car into a crowd exiting a worship service while yelling epithets against their group.
What in the fk is wrong with people?
I pretty much ignore the long posts in this discussion, as I am not really interested in any philosophical debate as to whether God is "real." My question was whether "religion" is doing more harm than good these days, and it's my opinion the answer is yes.
A person can do good. A group, organized, can do good. And they do. But when someone, or some group, is suggesting any sort of "us against them" poop, based on their particular religious beliefs, they are immediately going into my "part of the problem" garbage heap.
I am so sick of it all. From all angles.
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 10:04am PT
|
Ed, that was such a patronizing reply that I scarcely know where to start.
I would be surprised if Feynman had been concerned with Popper, and even more if he spent much time regarding the philosophy-of-science as something that was relevant to science.
Whether or not he was concerned with Popper is irrelevant. The fact remains that Popper had a dramatic effect on how scientists "cast" what they are actually doing. This shift took place from high-school biology throughout graduate programs.
When I took high-school biology, we were taught verificationism: If the results agree with the theory, then the theory is correct. If they don't, then you refine or replace the theory until the theory is correct.
Now students are taught falsificationism, and it is very widely known, even among the laity, that science is NOT "doing" verificationism (despite how popular literature slips into such loose talk quite frequently).
Feynman virtually quotes Popper, whether he knows to whom the credit should go. And your idea that "science is just doing its thing" is amazingly naive. WHAT "its thing" even is has varied through the centuries, becoming more and more refined even in our lifetime.
Regardless of your dismissiveness, the fact remains that science does not and CANnot "confirm" anything.
As we see, the explanations of how science "works" come after science works, even the word "metaphysics" reflects this.
You'll have to explain that one to me. The "meta" in "metaphysics" means "before" or "logically prior to" or "underlying" or "overarching" or those sorts of meanings (depending on context). Aristotle, for his part, meant that "metaphysics" was more "encompassing" than the physics. So, I don't see how you get "after" from "metaphysics."
The discussions that philosophers engage in are not meant to actually settle anything, nor to predict anything, nor to even limit anything.
And you know this, how?
How much professional philosophy have you engaged in? How many professional philosophers do you know? How many philosophical journals do you regularly read? How many philosophers do you personally engage with regularly?
The broad spectrum of philosophy has produced more branches of inquiry than every other discipline combined. "Ph.D." means "doctor of philosophy," and this is not merely a historical throw-back. What most disciplines quickly lose sight of is that their origins as "separate" departments are grounded in philosophy. So, for example, linguistics departments quite recently sprang out of philosophy of language and remain deeply grounded in that philosophical mode of analysis.
Computer science has deep roots in philosophy of mind, and the pursuit of "hard-AI" is grappling with those very questions, sharing the same journals in many cases.
I could go on. Philosophy again and again refines the questions to the point where a "separate" line of inquiry gets spun off into its own "academic department." Then, the philosophers are not "left behind" but instead further refine the lines of inquiry.
Regarding your notion of "settled," I would put it to you that science itself is about the most "unsettled" discipline in all of academia, including in its professional practice.
Of course, you'll want to emphasize "vast consensus" regarding a host of scientific "discoveries," but to that I would reply that there are equally vast consensus points regarding a host of philosophical discoveries.
So, let's not move the bar of what "settled" means. The very wide-spread consensus among philosophers, for example, is that consequentialist ethics is a dead-end; deontological ethics is the standard basis of further ethical inquiry. That's a pretty "settled" question at this point, and that result is quite significant, given millennia of debate regarding the nature of right and wrong! Please explain to me what science has contributed to the question of right and wrong.
Another thing that's pretty widely "settled" is that some notion of a contract-theory of governmental legitimacy is right. Just as refinements within a paradigm are the norm in science, there is much refining discussion going on in political philosophy. But the contract-theory of legitimacy is the working norm. If you look at the endless "experiments" in government through the millennia, that's another really significant result.
Intro to Phil students sometimes ask, "What does philosophy produce?" Among other answers, perhaps most striking is: The United States of America.
Science didn't produce that, nor could it have. Philosophy and philosophy alone produced our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And there was clearly enough political philosophy consensus to garner widespread agreement about not just the founding principles but even the practical outworking of them that a nation was formed out of discussions about those principles, how to enshrine them, and how to practically protect them.
Science had exactly ZERO hand in that process, as science can tell us NOTHING about, for example, inalienable rights.
They are relevant to trying to understand what is going on, but they cannot, in and of themselves, aid in actually doing anything.
Ridiculous. What a clear-cut example of scientific arrogance. The fact that you have funding AT ALL to pursue your research is firmly grounded in the practice of philosophy, and science contributed nothing toward the founding principles of this great nation. Science didn't produce the nation whose teats you now suckle upon; philosophy did.
And, whether you, Feynman, or any other scientist can get outside your bubble enough to give credit where it is due, the fact remains that "the bar" that scientists seek to get over resulted from philosophy of science discussions that DID change the entire educational system from kids on up, such that they are now trained in falsificationism rather than verificationism.
This is simply a practical observation, the same discussions have gone on for all of human history. They probably went on before then, we have no written records.
My "practical observation" is that, in typically scientific arrogant fashion, you conflate all meanings into scientific meanings. And you do this so subconsciously that you suffer from a worse myopia than the logical positivists ever did. Even "practical" for you means "some product of empiricism."
But this nation was founded on inalienable rights, you enjoy the vast benefits of living in such a nation, and that PRACTICAL result has not one whit to do with the practice or results of science.
Are there any settled philosophical points? None, unless you wish to include modern science as a part of philosophy.
More arrogance. And ignorance. Many fields of philosophy are as "settled" as many fields of science. And philosophy has "produced" more significant and widespread "results" than science ever has. The fact that you know how to blow up a hydrogen bomb and (in general) why it blows up as it does utterly pales by comparison to the production of that nation that enabled you to do such research in the first place.
Don't forget that the first hydrogen bomb had double the predicted yield, because ya'll just happened to overlook some pesky little details about how one form of tritium would be converted to the other form (if memory serves me correctly). You didn't "predict in advance" at that really key level. Instead, you just blew the thing up and went, "Oops. Now we know." You reconstructed "what happened" after the fact, rather than predicting in advance exactly how tritium would react in the theorized environment.
Of course, the public isn't privy to HOW many "oops" moments science has. Instead, it gets popular literature explicitly designed to magnify the "successes" rather than the stumbling path toward "knowledge."
And why shouldn't modern science be included in the practice of philosophy? You guys surely do a LOT of philosophizing! From Dawkins to Kaku to Weinberg (and the list goes on!), you scientists perpetually take up philosophical topics that you then proceed to do VERY badly. You take up questions that no pile of empirical data can possibly answer. To be intellectually consistent, your "answers" on these topics should be one of two: 1) We have NO idea and never will, because these questions are not empirically based; 2) The questions, not being empirically based, are not meaningful/relevant to the best/only approach to assessing evidence that we have.
Instead, scientists pontificate long and hard about questions that science can in principle have no answers to. And the so-called "social sciences" are a flat-out JOKE, yet these most purport to tell us "real things" about human nature, which then bleeds into ethics, political philosophy, and the like.
You try to conflate ALL forms of inquiry into empirical inquiry, and you thereby see as an empirical "nail" every question you have THE "hammer" for. But science never has and never will provide the answers to the largest array of human inquiry.
Meanwhile, philosophy often reaches comparable levels of consensus that are enjoyed in the scientific community, and it "settles" some of the most pressing questions to ever confront human beings. Its successes particularly in ethics and political philosophy are impressive indeed, particularly given how fundamentally abstract and intractable such inquiry has proven over the millennia.
So, I'll end with one question: Given the scientific method, what in principle could be adequate evidence for the existence of a creative God?
|
|
Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 10:32am PT
|
The meltdown has begun.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 10:41am PT
|
I am so sick of it all.
Might I suggest Angels of Our Better Nature, by Steven Pinker.
When things really feel out of whack, it helps keep things in perspective.
Subtitle: Why Violence Has Declined
|
|
Mark Force
Trad climber
Ashland, Oregon
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 11:23am PT
|
HFCS, Good one. I second the motion on The Better Angels of Our Nature.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 11:48am PT
|
I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
The only one having a meltdown is the simpleton dufus who said it has begun .....
|
|
feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 01:19pm PT
|
Werner: I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
+1
ff
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 01:49pm PT
|
I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
Yeah, really thoughtful and well said.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:22pm PT
|
lol!
I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
The only one having a meltdown is the simpleton dufus who said it has begun .....
feralfae
Boulder climber
in the midst of a metaphysical mystery
Jun 19, 2017 - 01:19pm PT
Werner: I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
+1
ff
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
Jun 19, 2017 - 01:49pm PT
I applaud Madbolter1 for his nice thought out analysis.
Yeah, really thoughtful and well said.
All right, marginally motivated by afore posts, I took the time to read MB1's WOT. (1) His "way of talking" (posting) reminds me of William Lane Craig (if not MikeL). If you don't know who this Christian apologist is, you should youtube him. Much to learn from him in regards to how many of our fellow sojourners choose and apparently prefer to express themselves in (fantasy-based) rhetoric over (reality-based) substance. Full of fluff, bouffant. (2) Personally, I could shoot down just about every single paragraph of MB's wall of text - except maybe the one alluding to the social sciences (where there might be some agreement). But thankfully I've got memories of past dealings with MB1 and his (ironic) proclivities (a) to use terms rather loosely and (b) to ignore contexts or definitions (other than his own) or other povs (other than his own); and I'm busy with other fish in the moment (woot) so really I've got no further interest. One point in particular stands out throughout his WOT though - his failure to nuance between (a) historical philosophy (overlaps a lot with science) and (b) contemporary academic philosophy. There's simply a world of difference between the two (eg, re output or legacy). Overall: Sloppy. Grade D.
What we have above is a three way (or four way) groupthink or circle jerk if you prefer. My ending beta: Consider the sources.
Politiking and subtribalism and patent pedantry are alive and well here at ST. lol
PS. MB1... maybe review your OWN understanding of the English language's definition/description of meta-. It could use a honing. Just a thought.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:36pm PT
|
Fruit said: -- "I could shoot down just about every single paragraph of MB's wall of text."
You could, but you didn't.
So your usual egotistical high and almighty fluff piece rant is worthless .......
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:44pm PT
|
As I said...
consider the source(s).
...
PS The battle between consequentialism and deontology is settled? lol
The very wide-spread consensus among philosophers, for example, is that consequentialist ethics is a dead-end; deontological ethics is the standard basis of further ethical inquiry. That's a pretty "settled" question at this point, and that result is quite significant, given millennia of debate regarding the nature of right and wrong! -MB1
Well, maybe it is "settled" amongst today's academic philosophers.
Consequentialist ethics is a dead-end?
Heh.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:49pm PT
|
Talk all you want but you still didn't do sh!t ......
|
|
paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:54pm PT
|
What we have above is a three way (or four way) groupthink or circle jerk if you prefer. My ending beta: Consider the sources.
What I've noticed on this thread and others like it on ST is that science/ tech. people have a unique argument that goes something like this: "you're wrong." The notion of philosophy's importance as a predicate to science seems undeniable and "you're wrong and I know better and I have the education to prove it and you don't know anything," well, that's just not very convincing.
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:58pm PT
|
Today's academic philos, like today's so-called "Social Sciences", has only itself to blame. It could've chose a long time ago to work with the sciences instead of opposing them at just about every turn. If it doesn't adapt somehow, good riddance.
...
Ed, sorry for interrupting your "dialog" with MB1. Please carry on.
You'll have no more interruptions from me.
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 02:59pm PT
|
Fruit man's logic reminds me the time when me and Bachar came back from climbing one day.
We're driving back and I asked John what he thought of Wolfgang's free solo of Separate Reality roof a few days ago.
John shrugs and goes ..... "I can do that".
But he never did .......
|
|
High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
|
|
|
Jun 19, 2017 - 03:03pm PT
|
Hey WB, what's deontology? Hey WB, what's the Greek meta- in English denote? either in popular circles or in philosophy and science circles?
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!