[Adjutant Stormy~]

Yeah, like reminding me how compromising and patient I used to be!

[Adjutant Stormy~]

You should read this short essay, entitled Newton's Flaming Laser Sword
http://school.maths....ser%20Sword.pdf

This is the summary of my thoughts on the subject.

[LinearPhilosopher]

interesting essay stormy. Granted i ended up skimming near the end (all that talk of axioms and whatnot sounded like hegel/Kant and reading them is a pain)

I have difficulty seeing science becoming a religion. Science is based on observable phenomena, empirical evidence which are all grounded in reason.

Religion is based on faith, to be truly religious (a la kiekegaard) you need to realise these irrationalities and make the leap of faith knowing what you're embracing is irrational.

The two have completely different foundations.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

(drunkstormy disclaimer)

I enjoyed the paper on NFLS for one reason primarily. It (moderately successfully) divorced itself from philosophy, and by that virtue, theology..

There is no point in the valid Scientific Method in which people are confronted with a contradiction and say "NOPE. NO. NOPE THAT STATEMENT IS WRONG, NO, NO, NO, NO, NOPE."

[SwiftBenjamin]

Yes - any time you believe something, to the exclusion of something else, you've got faith.

But more specifically: if you have a canon (Holy Books of Peer Review), an ordained clergy (credentialed academics), heretics (any scientist who opposes a consensus position), apostates (any scientifically minded person who leaves the faith, like me), and infidels (anybody who thinks that any other paradigm can help us understand the world), you're a religion. You can't hide behind calling it a 'method' if you then claim that method as a single criterion of proof and admit of no other.

Skepticism means being skeptical of knowledge itself. The modern scientific community exercises a pseudo-skepticism, where it's skeptical of any knowledge but its own. Poor form, and in the minds of the layperson, indiscernible from religious faith.

[Morgoth]

From a layperson with a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to the scientific method, or the culture of science altogether, science may seem like a religion. That, however, does not make this perception true, or even particularly rational.

[Gorefest]

SwiftBenjamin, on 16 June 2015 - 03:22 AM, said:

Skepticism means being skeptical of knowledge itself. The modern scientific community exercises a pseudo-skepticism, where it's skeptical of any knowledge but its own. Poor form, and in the minds of the layperson, indiscernible from religious faith.

Not really sure where you base this assumption on. In any field of science, it is impossible to have a good understanding of the full width of your field, so people have to make assumptions based on the knowledge available to them and the 'facts' as they have been taught during their education. This sometimes means that it is not easy to swim against the current and change firmly rooted theories and opinions, but as long as the evidence provided is compelling enough, eventually acceptance will follow. Sure, some individuals may hold a firm, almost 'religious' belief in their own findings and prejudices and if they are leading experts in their field it may take a bit longer for alternative viewpoints to obtain the credit that they deserve. But over time and with current-day tools like the internet, providing international networks and data sharing, the scientific method and bulk evidence will trump any hardheaded individual.

[dietl]

SwiftBenjamin, on 16 June 2015 - 03:22 AM, said:

Yes - any time you believe something, to the exclusion of something else, you've got faith.

So every believe is faith. There is no difference between the believe in the existence of your parents and the existence of a god?

Quote

But more specifically: if you have a canon (Holy Books of Peer Review), an ordained clergy (credentialed academics), heretics (any scientist who opposes a consensus position), apostates (any scientifically minded person who leaves the faith, like me), and infidels (anybody who thinks that any other paradigm can help us understand the world), you're a religion. You can't hide behind calling it a 'method' if you then claim that method as a single criterion of proof and admit of no other.

(1) There are no holy books in science. If there is evidence that contradicts what is written in a paper then the scientific community rejects the validity of the paper. If you have a position that is opposed to the consensus position you need facts to back it up. Most "heretics" as you call them have a hypothesis that either might turns out to be true someday and becomes consensus opinion or they made mistakes or evidence comes up that contradicts them.
(2) Every religion has authorities. Science hasn't and I think that's quite relevant. In a religion the canon is not up to discussion. The authorities proclaim something as thereby make it true.
(3) Every religion has rituals. Science doesn't.
(4) Every religion has moral laws. Science doesn't (shut up Sam Harris!).
How is that the same as religion?

Quote

Skepticism means being skeptical of knowledge itself. The modern scientific community exercises a pseudo-skepticism, where it's skeptical of any knowledge but its own. Poor form, and in the minds of the layperson, indiscernible from religious faith.

That (the bold part) is simply not true. Tomorrow new evidence might come up that calls into qustion everything the scientific community believes today. But the scientific theories have been established (not been falsified) over decades and centuries with thousands of people contributing to them. That means that the likelyhood of new evidence showing up that contradict them is quite small, but no one questions the possibility.

It seems to me that you are confusing some peoples opinion of science with science itself. Richard Dawkins might practice science as a believer practices his religion, but that doesn't make those things equal.

This post has been edited by dietl: 16 June 2015 - 11:10 AM

[Maark Abbott]

SwiftBenjamin, on 16 June 2015 - 03:22 AM, said:

Yes - any time you believe something, to the exclusion of something else, you've got faith.

There's a marked difference in believing in something because it's provably true (repeated testing yielding the same result, etc) and believing in something due to faith, but overwise without provable evidence.

It feels as though you're merely trying to level at scientific process the same criticisms that religion faces.

[stone monkey]

If you disagree with something that science says, prove it wrong... Congratulations, you've just done science. And guess what? The scientific community will love you for it.

The scientific consensus is essentially about ideas that are provably less wrong than their predecessors. They're still wrong, because it may not be possible to have perfect knowledge of the way the universe works. But then, eventually, the next set of results comes in and convinces a whole bunch of people that another idea is even less wrong than that. Repeat for approx 400 years and you end up where we are now.

For example, physics in the late 19th century was doing a fantastic job of explaining the world around it. There were some problems, but everyone was so convinced that the ideas they had were good that they were seriously talking about "The End of Physics"; these issues were simply a matter of "tidying up". Then Max Planck (amongst others), to borrow an apposite phrase, went and scienced the shit out of black body radiation and we ended up with Quantum Mechanics and a whole load of other stuff that no one saw coming but that appear, in hindsight, completely inevitable.

To borrow another phrase, it's happened before and it will happen again.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 16 June 2015 - 07:32 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Not sure what you make of this Stone, but my radiologist/physicist cousin recently described Theoretical Physics to me as "mathematicians with maths that doesn't work, creating more maths to make the maths that doesn't work, work".

Sorry to drag it off topic slightly.

[stone monkey]

The maths of theoretical physics is a kludge of the highest order. Renormalisation only exists because the maths, very explicitly, did not work and they needed a way to get rid of those pesky infinities that kept popping up everywhere. To be fair though, mathematics itself, provably (which is why Kurt Godel was christened The Dark Prince of Mathematics), does not and cannot work; so we're at a bit of an impasse there

I can't recall where the exact quote comes from, but the general gist of it is that mature scientific theories tell you exactly where they fail (usually when a bunch of infinities start hurtling out of the woodwork and you don't know what to do with them), and thus always hint at whatever has to come next. General Relativity does not play nice in the realm of the very small, whilst Quantum Mechanics has problems with gravity, so they're both hinting (or shouting, even) that to get a handle on gravity at the quantum level we need an entirely new theory of quantum gravity. We know the two work well in their respective domains, so whatever we're going to end up with will look a lot like them when applied there; in the same way that General Relativity looks like Newtonian Gravity or Quantum Mechanics looks like Classical Mechanics/Electrodynamics... if you squint...

But anyway, on topic, it's fine to be skeptical, necessary even, but there is a problem when your mind is so open that your brain falls out. Which tends to be the problem with science skeptics in my experience. That and they really just don't want to believe what the science actually says (for their own political or religious or whatever reasons) so they conceal that behind a veneer of arbitrary skepticism about the science.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 16 June 2015 - 09:48 PM

[SwiftBenjamin]

Morgoth, on 16 June 2015 - 08:12 AM, said:

From a layperson with a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to the scientific method, or the culture of science altogether,

science may seem like a religion. That, however, does not make this perception true, or even particularly rational.

I don't lack a fundamental understanding of the method, or the community. I used to be devoutly scientific in my worldview and I still have many friends with PhDs across a number of fields. I

personally have studied formal logic (whence cometh mathematics) and metaphysics as well. What I meant was that most laypeople who believe in science are indiscernible from a Jew, Christian, or

Muslim to me. They'll only believe what their clergy tells them and everyone else is wrong, stupid, insane, or subhuman. I realise that it's different in academia and that the clergy (scientists)

themselves have a more nuanced view (just as a Fransiscan Monk has a more esoteric understanding of Christianity than the average Bible basher).

Even still, whether you get your revelation from a method, or a dusty old book claiming divine authorship, you put faith in the epistemic soundness of that source. You believe or disbelieve things

on the basis of compliance with that standard. The method, in and of itself, is certainly not religious; having excessive belief in it as a single criterion of proof is. Holding 'scientific method'

in front of you like a cross whenever someone talks about spooky things is. Disparaging any other philosophical system as inferior or wrong-headed is. In philosophy, it's the dogma known as

'scientism'.

An aside: 'rational' is not a compliment or a synonym for 'logical', which is also not a compliment. Rational thoughts are the ones you think on purpose - the internal monologue and your

imagination. You can arrive at any philosophical or theological position rationally. (Irrational thoughts are our sensory perceptions and emotions, which act upon us rather than being actions we

take).

Gorefest, on 16 June 2015 - 08:57 AM, said:

Not really sure where you base this assumption on. In any field of science, it is impossible to have a good understanding of the full

width of your field, so people have to make assumptions based on the knowledge available to them and the 'facts' as they have been taught during their education.

Ancient Greek Skeptics (the philosophical school we get the word from in English) didn't believe anything at all. It's the very concept of knowledge they were skeptical of, let alone an individual

claim to it. To them, it's impossible to have a good understanding, period. It's impossible to know the difference between a good understanding and merely believing you understand. And it's

impossible even to know that we cannot know. Hence the ancient paradox "All I know is that I know nothing".

Modern science, by contrast, is skeptical of any knowledge that isn't materialistic (ontology) and empirical (epistemology). If it's materialistic and empirical than it at least in principle could

be knowledge, but nothing else will do. That's why I said it exercises a 'pseudo-skepticism'. And when this mindset gets into a layperson, it turns them religious. I am not saying "science is

religious" but rather "most people who support science are religious about it". Including the experts.

Quote

This sometimes means that it is not easy to swim against the current and change firmly rooted theories and opinions, but as long as the evidence provided is compelling enough, eventually

acceptance will follow. Sure, some individuals may hold a firm, almost 'religious' belief in their own findings and prejudices and if they are leading experts in their field it may take a bit longer

for alternative viewpoints to obtain the credit that they deserve. But over time and with current-day tools like the internet, providing international networks and data sharing, the scientific

method and bulk evidence will trump any hardheaded individual.

I understand that science changes its mind about the details, but never the fundamentals. If you're swimming against the stream and what you're saying is "spatially extended objects (materials)

can't logically be the fundamental substance" or "logical positivism (empiricism) is not epistemologically sound" then you don't stand a chance, ever, because science will only change its mind using

those built-in assumptions from hundreds of years ago that most modern scientists have forgotten are there. I've converted one PhD Physicist to immaterialism (though, he doesn't believe any spooky

stuff) simply by explaining what his own ontology was and why a quantum field without spatial attributes would undo it. (Wave functions are still material because they have spatial attributes, as

perturbations in the field; but the field at rest has none).

dietl, on 16 June 2015 - 11:09 AM, said:

So every believe is faith. There is no difference between the believe in the existence of your parents and the existence of a god?

Epistemologically, no there isn't. I can't rely on my senses, and I can't rely on my memory of my senses, and many people agreeing on their experience does not objective knowledge make (it's multi-

subjective, there's no such thing as an 'objective observation', that's literally oxymoronic). I *think* I'm experiencing my parents, but I don't *know* it, therefore I can't *believe* it. At the

level of behaviour, I act as if I have parents. At the level of principle, I can't assert it - or anything else - with conviction.

Quote

(1) There are no holy books in science. If there is evidence that contradicts what is written in a paper then the scientific community rejects the validity of the paper. If you have a

position that is opposed to the consensus position you need facts to back it up. Most "heretics" as you call them have a hypothesis that either might turns out to be true someday and becomes

consensus opinion or they made mistakes or evidence comes up that contradicts them.

Fluid Holy Books are still Holy Books if they're the only authority source on knowledge. A community who can accept or reject things as true vs untrue is governing a canon. It doesn't matter if they

change it - any idea how many versions of the Bible there have been?

And, the scientific community is not on a noble quest for truth without any political bias. Being anti-consensus is career suicide, as anyone who's done that can tell you. In Australia, professors

all over the country have been fired for opposing the IPCC's climate model, at least one of whom has been tenured in the field for decades (his job has been to track the earth's temperature using

deep sea cores, and he published over 100 papers before getting the boot). We held a Federal inquest on climate change, which came back saying that the IPCC 'lacked an understanding of the

scientific method'. The head was sacked, a new one appointed, and a new report in favour of the IPCC was issued. If you're against the consensus, you just don't get published, or you get fired, or

your reputation suffers so that the former happens over time. The consensus is as much a matter of political expedience as anything else. If you don't think that's true, you don't know any (post-

doctoral) academics.

Quote

(2) Every religion has authorities. Science hasn't and I think that's quite relevant. In a religion the canon is not up to discussion. The authorities proclaim something as thereby make it

true.

Science has credentials. The people who hold those credentials decide what gets published and what doesn't, what gets accepted and what doesn't. Just like the Council of Nicea.

Quote

(3) Every religion has rituals. Science doesn't.

What's a ritual? Is it repeating the same steps over and over according to a doctrine? To get some kind of...results? Hmm...

Quote

(4) Every religion has moral laws. Science doesn't (shut up Sam Harris!).
How is that the same as religion?

No they don't all have moral laws! Thelema doesn't, Taoism doesn't, Discordianism doesn't, Zen doesn't; Hermeticism and Kemeticism are decidedly 'grey' as well. Religion is something I saw similarly

to you before I actually read into it. And I'm not any more religious now than I used to be - but having read both sides, I see that neither understands the other well enough to debate it properly.

Watching atheists treat religion's most external, superficial details as the meat of it is just like seeing a Christian wonder why there aren't crocaducks if evolution is true.

That aside - science isn't *yet* an arbiter of morality, but it'll head that way, because we as a species have always sought and built one. It is, however, already an arbiter of truth and sanity -

two functions formerly in the hands of the Church.

Quote

That (the bold part) is simply not true. Tomorrow new evidence might come up that calls into qustion everything the scientific community believes today.

As long as that evidence fits the existing paradigm's standards for evidence, you mean? And what of objects/events which won't submit to sensory tests (of which we now have plenty of examples)? What

if they're not made of materials? The method has serious limits, which most of the devout pay lip service to, while refusing to entertain anything outside those limits.

Quote

But the scientific theories have been established (not been falsified) over decades and centuries with thousands of people contributing to them. That means that the likelyhood of new evidence

showing up that contradict them is quite small, but no one questions the possibility.

No-one questions, either, whether a new standard of evidence is required or even whether we might have to postulate things *entirely* without evidence to understand them better. What if Bayesian

inference is just a complicated post hoc ergo propter hoc? What if our senses don't give us access to the objective space?

Quote

It seems to me that you are confusing some peoples opinion of science with science itself. Richard Dawkins might practice science as a believer practices his religion, but that doesn't make

those things equal.

Science itself, if taken as an ontic-epistemic metaparadigm, is not religious. But its credentialed community is a priesthood and its laypeople are devotees, make no mistake about that. In

principle, science is not a religion; in the form we've actually got it, it absolutely is. It's a convoluted faith, but a faith all the same. Praise Be Unto the Method, the One Way to Truth, Amen.

Maark, on 16 June 2015 - 02:50 PM, said:

There's a marked difference in believing in something because it's provably true (repeated testing yielding the same result, etc) and

believing in something due to faith, but overwise without provable evidence.

And there's an even more marked difference between believing things are provably true and admitting you don't know anything. Believing things are provably true is having faith - in the senses, in

reason, in their combined ability to discern objective reality. And yes, there are reasons upon reasons for choosing to have faith in them, but it's faith all the same.

Quote

It feels as though you're merely trying to level at scientific process the same criticisms that religion faces.

Not in principle - only when it's put on a pedastal and used to reject everything that isn't it.

stone monkey, on 16 June 2015 - 07:18 PM, said:

If you disagree with something that science says, prove it wrong... Congratulations, you've just done science. And guess what? The

scientific community will love you for it.

Prove it wrong according to its own standards of evidence? What if what I'm trying to prove is that they're insufficient? Or that there's no such thing as 'provable'? Or anything outside their

narrow criteria for 'proof'?

Also, you can't prove the epistemological validity of something using itself. Godel famously hit it on the head with the Incompleteness Theorem. Empiricists don't seem to grasp that he was aiming it

at them too. If I can't use math to prove that math is valid, then you can't use sense data to prove sense data is valid either.

Quote

The scientific consensus is essentially about ideas that are provably less wrong than their predecessors.

In the same way as a democracy is essentially the will of the people - ie, only on paper. In real life both are shady political games with special interest groups pushing opinions this way and that.

The consensus is sometimes what you say, and sometimes it's what's plausible without being politically inconvenient for the special interests. Sometimes you can only get 97% of academics to agree on

a topic by pushing everyone else out.

Quote

They're still wrong, because it may not be possible to have perfect knowledge of the way the universe works. But then, eventually, the next set of results comes in and convinces a whole bunch

of people that another idea is even less wrong than that. Repeat for approx 400 years and you end up where we are now.

I'd agree that they're still wrong, for precisely the reason that we can't have perfect knowledge (and wouldn't know we had it if we could). And what you describe is, in principle, what science 'is'

and not dogmatic. But if someone says "I believe x because y", and 'y' isn't a scientific reason, then the scientifically minded person rejects the position as a matter of course. Then it's

dogmatic.

Quote

For example, physics in the late 19th century was doing a fantastic job of explaining the world around it.

Yes, and they had all kinds of assumptions that we no longer have. Did Newton or Leibniz's success in physics and mathematics say anything about the ether's existence? Does the efficacy of modern

science say anything about the truth of its fundamental assumptions? The answer to both these questions is 'no'. There's no amount of utility that ever adds up to truth.

Quote

There were some problems, but everyone was so convinced that the ideas they had were good that they were seriously talking about "The End of Physics"; these issues were simply a matter of

"tidying up". Then Max Planck (amongst others), to borrow an apposite phrase, went and scienced the shit out of black body radiation and we ended up with Quantum Mechanics and a whole load of other

stuff that no one saw coming but that appear, in hindsight, completely inevitable.

Platonism, and in particular, Mathematical Platonism, have been saying it since pre-Christian days. It's always been tenable, 'a priori', to reduce objects of spatial extension to unextended

substance. If you believe the Pythagoreans (who are still around!), it's necessary to, or else you have the option either of believing in extension *ex nihilo* or an infinite regress of property-

giving materials, both of which are also arguments against creator-gods.

Science only came to the table once we had 'a posteriori' argumentation, and so what was news to it was actually just catching up to ancient philosophy in many ways.


Anyway guys, I'm not anti-science. I don't dislike it or its conclusions. I think evolution is probably happening and that physics is a pretty reliable description of material phenomena. I just haven't closed my mind to everything else in the process - or more accurately, I used to and then I opened it back up again. Science is a good enterprise, but it's not sacrosanct, it's not the single yardstick by which we should measure everything else.

This post has been edited by SwiftBenjamin: 17 June 2015 - 02:25 AM

[Silencer]

So reading most of that (I skimmed towards the end) it sounds to me like you've got a pretty closed opinion of what science is willing to change its mind about.

While I will readily grant there are plenty of people who take scientific discoveries on faith (the biggest problem with which is that most sources of new information are not good - media reports things as conclusive or certain or whatever when it's barely been peer reviewed and the conclusion of the actual study reads "these are preliminary findings and vastly more research is required to determine the actual veracity and cause of these results").

And there are plenty of people performing science, and at a high level, who are very dogmatic about which theories they believe.

And that's bad. Ironically, however, science itself is fundamentally opposed to taking things on faith. But it's new in the public perception - people are treating it like this because there's too much information to query everything. You can't know enough about all the subjects to make quick decisions, so people wait for new information from people who are specialists in a particular area. This makes sense. It's practical. It's not ideal, but it's a damn sight better than the alternative.

In time, however, the positions of scepticism and evidence based arguments will become more widespread and these problems (people taking news on faith, researchers who won't accept conflicting views or new ideas) will be minimised. Through the application of more science.

Everything is measurable. Maybe only because we are observing it at the time, but it's measurable. Just because we can't measure it right now doesn't mean that will always be the case. Trial and error. New angles. In time. It's a faster progress than we've ever seen before in history but it's still slow. Being so open minded that you'll believe things without evidence is not the solution. Being open to new evidence and ways to apply old evidence, is.

Because at the end of the day, science is not complicated. The only faith required is that eventially any false evidence will be proven so - the method is subject to revision, the validity of our measurements and the instruments making them (be they eyes or machines) is subject to revision. So the faith component is reduced to an absolute minimum, within the field.

Outside of the field, it's just a matter of time. As more people learn what science really means (and there does need to be changes made in the education system to focus more on critical thinking and how it relates to science, rather than 'read this book, do this not-an-experiment, profit!' as currently seems to be the norm) the element of faith will be reduced outside the community as well. An astrophysicist might always have to take the research of a biologist (or rather, of the field of biology) on faith, unless they want to spend time learning the other profession, or their downtime in analysing reports, but that's faith with a little f, in the smallest font. As opposed to Faith which is what most religions run on - willingly accepting something with no evidence or with actively contrary evidence.
But that's going to be gradual. And you can't expect it to happen over night. Nor can you really criticise people for their failings in this area. It's not easy changing how you think. Let alone how society thinks.

[Morgoth]

Quote

Epistemologically, no there isn't. I can't rely on my senses, and I can't rely on my memory of my senses, and many people agreeing on their experience does not objective knowledge make (it's multi-subjective, there's no such thing as an 'objective observation', that's literally oxymoronic). I *think* I'm experiencing my parents, but I don't *know* it, therefore I can't *believe* it. At the level of behaviour, I act as if I have parents. At the level of principle, I can't assert it - or anything else - with conviction.

Ah, we can't know anything. I was hoping for something more interesting.

[Maark Abbott]

Morgoth, on 17 June 2015 - 06:25 AM, said:

Quote

Epistemologically, no there isn't. I can't rely on my senses, and I can't rely on my memory of my senses, and many people agreeing on their experience does not objective knowledge make (it's multi-subjective, there's no such thing as an 'objective observation', that's literally oxymoronic). I *think* I'm experiencing my parents, but I don't *know* it, therefore I can't *believe* it. At the level of behaviour, I act as if I have parents. At the level of principle, I can't assert it - or anything else - with conviction.

Ah, we can't know anything. I was hoping for something more interesting.

Well, I certainly know that I have parents, and by Kruppe's sleeves, trying to arrange anything that puts both of them in the same room gives me a damn headache.

I'm now thinking that this bump of a long-dead thread has been little more than an exercise in solipsism.

[dietl]

SwiftBenjamin, on 17 June 2015 - 02:07 AM, said:

dietl, on 16 June 2015 - 11:09 AM, said:

So every believe is faith. There is no difference between the believe in the existence of your parents and the existence of a god?

Epistemologically, no there isn't. I can't rely on my senses, and I can't rely on my memory of my senses, and many people agreeing on their experience does not objective knowledge make (it's multi-
subjective, there's no such thing as an 'objective observation', that's literally oxymoronic). I *think* I'm experiencing my parents, but I don't *know* it, therefore I can't *believe* it.

Sorry, wrong answer. There is a difference. You experienced your parents with all of your senses and maybe you also experienced other people refering to your parents. As for god, you surely can't even tell me how she/he/it looks or smells like. It doesn't matter if you can reliably or objectively know if your parents exist. That still is a difference epistemologically.
Concerning the bold part: Really? Who is the one being closed minded now?

Quote

Fluid Holy Books are still Holy Books if they're the only authority source on knowledge.

The books are not the only authority source on knowledge. The evidence is the source of knowledge and everybody can at least in principle check it.

Quote

A community who can accept or reject things as true vs untrue is governing a canon. It doesn't matter if they
change it - any idea how many versions of the Bible there have been?
And, the scientific community is not on a noble quest for truth without any political bias. Being anti-consensus is career suicide, as anyone who's done that can tell you. In Australia, professors
all over the country have been fired for opposing the IPCC's climate model, at least one of whom has been tenured in the field for decades (his job has been to track the earth's temperature using
deep sea cores, and he published over 100 papers before getting the boot). We held a Federal inquest on climate change, which came back saying that the IPCC 'lacked an understanding of the
scientific method'. The head was sacked, a new one appointed, and a new report in favour of the IPCC was issued. If you're against the consensus, you just don't get published, or you get fired, or
your reputation suffers so that the former happens over time. The consensus is as much a matter of political expedience as anything else. If you don't think that's true, you don't know any (post-
doctoral) academics.

Like any human endeavour it is full of bias and sometimes corruption. Is there anybody who is saying science is perfect and without flaws? Most of the time decisions are made because of budget reasons. That's just how the world works today and is not because of some scientific principle.

Quote

Quote

(3) Every religion has rituals. Science doesn't.

What's a ritual? Is it repeating the same steps over and over according to a doctrine? To get some kind of...results? Hmm...

A ritual is more than that and there isn't always a "result". There is a very big difference in the intention between a ritual and an experiment.
I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but as someone with training in formal logic, your definitions are quite sloppy. Just because there are some parallels between things doesn't mean that they are the same thing. If you work at McDonalds you probably also have to repeat the same steps according to the "doctrine". Is a McDonalds restaurant therefore basically the same as a church?

Quote

And what of objects/events which won't submit to sensory tests (of which we now have plenty of examples)?

You mean things that can't be measured in any way? I think you have to agree that you can't know anything about those things.

Quote

No-one questions, either, whether a new standard of evidence is required or even whether we might have to postulate things *entirely* without evidence to understand them better. What if Bayesian
inference is just a complicated post hoc ergo propter hoc? What if our senses don't give us access to the objective space?

Then you are left with pure speculation of what to believe. Science at least gives you a reasonably reliable way to predict what will happen in your sensory experience. I see no point in muddying the waters and making your predictions less reliable by discarding some of the basic principles of science (*cough*...and reason... *cough*).

This post has been edited by dietl: 17 June 2015 - 11:42 AM

[Gorefest]

@SwiftBenjamin: I'm trying to follow what the point is that you are trying to make, but it is getting rather diluted with all sorts of side steps, which for me personally makes it a bit of a confusing read.

Going back to the core argument, I believe the statement was that 'science itself is like a religion' (and I appreciate I'm paraphrasing here, it probably wasn't that strictly formulated). You appear to make the case that both laymen and academics are guilty of this, i.e. using 'science' and 'the scientific method' in the same way as a religious person would use 'God' and 'divine plan' and the like. Which is fair enough, I recognise this behaviour myself and appreciate that a lot of people fall victim to its lure. All you need to do is read any random forum and before long you'll come across this, used by laymen and self-proclaimed educated individuals alike.

However, that in my view still does not make science equal to a religion. Just because you put your faith in a certain approach or world view, does not immediately make that approach or world view a religion. A religion is an organised system of beliefs that has many characteristics, not the least of which is its claim to give an explanation for the world around us and our place in it. Whereas it is quite common to see people saying that science can do the same thing for us, there are fundamental differences. The most important difference by far, in my view, is that religion deals with ultimate truths. Things are as a holy scripture or leading clerics or some other authoritive force say they are, no argument. Religious dogmas cannot be proven, they can also not be disproven. You either believe things are the way they are described, or you don't. This simply is not the case with 'science'. Scientific research is a tool, a means to an end, and that end is to increase and evolve our insight into the world around us and, through that process, develop new ways of interacting and living in that world. It is not meant to be a guide to how to live your life. If people choose to use it as such, that is their prerogative, but that doesn't make the method as such suddenly religious. Science encourages you to question established 'truths' and the world around you, religion tells you to accept a certain explanation of events as canon. Religion asks us to believe something first and then make any observation, impression or emotion fit in with the preset framework. Science asks us to look for new observations, ideas, or emotions, and subsequently try to work out why these occur and what it tells us of previously established structures.

Sure, there are many flaws in the science community and in the application of the scientific method, many of these driven by political, cultural or religious (!) bias. And a lot of your post seems to deal with pointing out such flaws. But that does not make the tool itself flawed or dogmatic. In the same way that you cannot look at ISIS to condemn the whole of Islam, you cannot look at misinterpretation of scientific data or the validity of the means of its accumulation (empirical evidence versus Platonic abstractified reasoning, for instance) as an argument to portray the scientific method as something that it is not.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 17 June 2015 - 12:03 PM

[Tsundoku]

Found this article in my interwebz travels, had no idea where to put it. Figured here was as good as anywhere.

Could the universe be conscious?

https://futurism.com...erse-conscious/

This seems a bit creepy though:

"Like Matloff, Koch and his colleagues are actively engaged in experimental tests of these ideas. One approach is to study brain-impaired patients to see if their information responses align with biological measures of their consciousness. Another approach, further off, is to wire the brains of two mice together and see how the integrated consciousness of the animals changes as the amount of information flowing between them is increased. At some point, according to integrated information theory, the two should merge into a single, larger information system. Eventually, it should be possible to run such experiments with humans, wiring their brains together to see if a new type of consciousness emerges."

I like this idea:

“The laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.”

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 25 June 2017 - 11:19 AM

[LinearPhilosopher]

Tsundoku, on 25 June 2017 - 11:17 AM, said:

Found this article in my interwebz travels, had no idea where to put it. Figured here was as good as anywhere.

Could the universe be conscious?

https://futurism.com...erse-conscious/

This seems a bit creepy though:

"Like Matloff, Koch and his colleagues are actively engaged in experimental tests of these ideas. One approach is to study brain-impaired patients to see if their information responses align with biological measures of their consciousness. Another approach, further off, is to wire the brains of two mice together and see how the integrated consciousness of the animals changes as the amount of information flowing between them is increased. At some point, according to integrated information theory, the two should merge into a single, larger information system. Eventually, it should be possible to run such experiments with humans, wiring their brains together to see if a new type of consciousness emerges."

I like this idea:

“The laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.”

Reminds me of a book i am currently reading called Biocentrism, though they are coming to similar conclusion they are attacking the same subject from a different angle as Lanza argues (somewhere i have not gotten beyond the 2nd premise) that consciousness does not arise out of complexity, but rather consciousness is there to begin with.

http://www.robertlan...rism-wikipedia/

For those with time to spare, i Highly reccomend the interview on the ideas podcast that aired a while ago.
http://www.cbc.ca/ra...death-1.3789414

From what I've read thus far

Premise 1:What we perceive as reality is a process that involves consciousness :Phenomenology 101, an experience requires an experiencer though lanzas approach is more scientific given his background and gives a multitude of examples, largely drawing on how we experience the world is an interpretation of certain stimulus. (rainbow require an eye to observe the water droplets reflecting light)

Premise 2:Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are two sides of the same coin.(need to gives this a more intensive re-read), basically can be summed up as the world picture we have in our heads cannot be separated from the internal processes to which we came to it. In essence, there is no world-self dichotomy.


I anticipate finalizing my reading by the end of 2017, regardless any time i encounter an old idea under a new lens i am thrilled and excited at the new opportunity for learning

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 25 June 2017 - 02:13 PM